Nicolaas J. Kraster- From The Heart

So I’ve been a professional musician for over twenty years, I’ve played in seven different countries, in every type of venue from the street to an opera house, festivals to baseball stadiums and at the stadium gig the president of the United States was there (sadly it was Bush). My parents were entertainers and I was raised to take performing seriously: dress nice, know your music, put on a show and make sure your band is tight as hell.

I have recently realized the values I have used as the foundation of my career are totally obsolete. Value used to be based on excellence, now it’s quantity, if I put out a video of me in a wrinkled t shirt playing impressive riffs on guitar every other day I could probably reach 100,000 fans in a year but…..I can’t. I love art too much, music, film, performance I just can’t play the dancing monkey game that impresses the modern world. So what do I do? I perform locally and tour to places where I get payed less than the servers who are feeding the patrons more and more drinks which make the quality of performance less and less important as noted by the increase in volume of said patrons.

For so many years I’ve tried to “make it” and kept plugging away, hoping. Well, I’m done, this generation can have their YouTube stars. I will keep performing because I love it and I will keep performing in Sarasota where thankfully the older demographic still remembers what it means to be entertained, I am so glad I ended up in Sarasota, I might just be a glorified server to rich people but at least they understand what I’m trying to do. I am not upset or frustrated, I’m in a wonderful freeing mode of acceptance which will allow me to stop worrying about my career and get me back to focusing on why I started doing this in the first place, my love of playing guitar.

photo supplied by Nicolaas J. Kraster on Facebook / Tim Techandphoto