I almost didn’t bother with a second season of this podcast.
Not because I ran out of things to say, but because I genuinely wasn’t sure I had a point.
Season 1 of The Lady J Podcast was full of great conversations about what it takes to build a career in the live music industry. My guests and I truly do believe that live music matters, which is why we’ve spent our lives doing it.
However, while I love providing a platform for people to share their stories, it sometimes felt like preaching to the choir. I couldn’t shake the feeling that just talking about how to do a good job on a gig was not actually getting to the heart of the matter.
And this matters to me.
I wanted to get it right.
As I was grappling with finding the new direction of this podcast, a war broke out around us in Dubai, with missiles flying overhead on a daily basis, and our gigs disappeared overnight.
Poof. Gone. Income zero.
With extra unwanted time on my hands, I chose to put it to terrible use by scrolling anxiously through social media for hours at a time. Amidst all my panic over regional news I also got sucked into the discourse about AI.
Cue: next cause for alarm.
Alarm at how AI is being sold to us as the glorious future, smarter and more skilled than any human could ever be, and alarm at how we’re being told that it’s inevitable and we’re powerless to stop it.
Oh great. Dystopia starts today. Fan-freaking-tastic.
But despite the AI-creep on every platform, I also saw artists and creatives - of all kinds - going, uh NO.
And that gave me hope. There were other people, like me, horrified at the thought that we were expected to just slide into an AI-stupor, give in to the embrace of the abyss and just go to sleep. Like freezing to death.
So when I asked myself, is being a full-time musician really the best use of my time and energy in my one and only life? I decided: yes. Very much so.
Because making music live and in-person, that beautiful and tiring and flawed and irreplaceable combination of vibrations, is one of the most human things we can do.
Made by humans, for humans.
The human effort and emotion, and acquired skill and proficiency, and flaws and workarounds, and time and energy, and the story and the struggle, are literally the point of making art. At a moment in time where any kind of art that can be reproduced digitally is at risk of being altered or stolen by AI, in-person arts remain immune.
And somehow, championing human things has become an act of resistance.
So, no matter which side of the microphone you’re on, to support live music is one of the most fundamentally human things you can do. And not only does live music matter, but humans matter.
Vive la résistance.
00:00 – Intro
00:52 – Great conversations with live music veterans during Season 1
01:47 – Struggle to find direction for Season 2
03:16 – Covid flashbacks
04:00 – Live music as a pro-human, anti-AI imperative
05:31 – Artists and creatives resist
06:21 – In-person art is immune to AI creep
08:00 – Thank you from this human corner of the internet
08:35 – Lightning Round
14:00 – Stay tuned: upcoming interview with David Craig in episode 2
14:54 – Original music: Bourbon Belly Blues (free download available here)
16:22 – Credits