Adam Schatz is a musician, writer, record producer and human being. His band Landlady has three records out and another on the way. He most recently produced Allegra Krieger’s album The Joys of Forgetting and has successfully cooked pad thai, soup dumplings and bagels since the pandemic began. He has a monthly Patreon page and that is currently his only monthly income, isn’t that cool? His favorite new hobby is getting emailed by coffee shops he’s been to once. Find him on Twitter here and hear Landlady here.
(Photo credit: Sasha Arutyunova.)
Welcome back to Problem Solving with Adam Schatz, where Adam Schatz or someone wearing a suit made out of my skin attacks the issues plaguing the music industry today.
For our third edition, we’ve got a chronic issue that is a pox on our community. This month’s problem:
The W9
Close your eyes and imagine with me. You’ve just gotten off stage. The roar of tens of audience members has validated your life choices and you are all but certain you will live to rock another day. After all, art still matters in this cruel world of ours, and now more than ever the role of the artist in society has weighted value. Sure, you might not be the mailman delivering the mail, or the milkman delivering the milk, or the milkman’s mother’s midwife who delivered the milkman who then delivered the milk, but you still make a difference dammit.
You go back to the green room, still buzzing from the last song of the set, a triumphant finish considering that you almost forgot the opening lyric because you thought the drummer said “tree” instead of three when counting off the song. But you recovered and won the day. The barback running the lighting board successfully flashed random colors throughout the duration of your set and it seemed like everyone had a good time. You take a long drag off a celery stick dipped in hummus that has that nice film over the top of it that hummus gets when your bassist doesn’t put the lid back on before going on stage to shred, and you think to yourself, We did it… we’ve made it.
“Making it” is, of course, a product of tempered expectations. If you continue to pursue professional music up to 10 years beyond high school, just having your name occasionally appear in digital print will constitute “making it” to the people you grew up with. And while your initial reaction to those insistences of your success might be to reply, “Well, then how come I just had to raise my cat’s rent?” Eventually you begin to understand that making it is in the eye of the beholder. To defy the gravity of economics and personal relationships and continue to perform in a band on a stage, playing your songs loud and occasionally proud — well, if that isn’t making it then I don’t want to know what is (seriously, please keep it to yourself).
So there you are, a victor in the rock wars, ready to collect your prize of a free cheap beverage or a discounted decent one, and then lift from the knees as you put your amp into the back of your Elantra, when the guy knocks on the door. You know the guy. Every rock club has a guy. This guy works in an office in the rock club, and the sheer existence of this office is the first pin prick to pop the balloon of rock & roll fantasy. If playing shows for adoring fans is the counterculture dream we dared to dream, then how come there’s a desk with an ethernet cable hard line so close to where the songs about fighting the power are being performed?
The guy is necessary, you remind yourself. The guy pays you. Sure, it’s never as much as you think. And sure the guy only pays you after the sound engineer and the light tech/barback, and the bouncer and the door person, but every little bit helps. So you invite the guy into your green room and he says, “Nice show,” and you ask, “Oh yeah, what was your favorite song?” And he says, “Don’t do this man,” and you say, “No, really, if you liked the show then I want you to prove that you actually watched it,” and he says, “Fine, I liked the one where the drummer said ‘tree’ instead of ‘three,’” and you say, “I knew it.”
With that out of the way, you can get down to the matter at hand. You prepare to be given an envelope with the earnings that will then be split amongst the band members who will then invest them in the content streaming subscriptions of their choosing, but the envelope doesn’t come. That’s when the guy looks you dead in the eyes and unflinchingly asks for your W9. You can’t be paid without it, he says.
Well, ain’t this the most un-rock-&-roll fucking thing of all time.
But it happens. Every. Single. Day. Right now, artists you love and admire all around the world are being asked for their W9s. And with that simple request the illusion is mocked and bullied into submission. You haven’t “made it” at all. On the contrary. This life pursued of three chords and the truth actually turned out to be a sham. A lot less “thank you, Cleveland” and a lot more, “My accountant says I owe the state of Ohio $3.”
Alas, the call of the wild cannot be ignored. You can’t quit the game, especially not with such a thorough paper trail for how invested you’ve been in the game (all those instrument cables you’ve bought are write-offs baby!).
So you buckle at the knees and fill out the W9 while the guy watches and slowly nods his head, licking his lips and giving a big thumbs up to the security camera in the corner. The cruel joke is that you only got paid $500, below the $600 threshold where you’re even required to fill out the form. And you’re pretty sure you actually emailed the W9 a week before when you were asked to, but that was to a different guy, not the guy here. Those guys must not talk much.
Oh, where did we go so wrong? Was this the taxation that Alexander Hamilton was rapping about? These hoops we have to jump through just to prove that we made a little money from a hundred different sources, isn’t the shame of having to exchange a red raffle ticket for a Stella Artois and pretend the audience didn’t just see you tune your own guitar when you come back out five minutes later to play the show enough punishment for the life you lead?
Alas, there’s no escape, which I’ve heard is going to be America’s sweet new slogan for the foreseeable future. So maybe it’s just time to gently slump and accept that “making it” is the W9s we’ve filled out along the way. Plus, you can’t quit now, you’ve got a tour next month opening up for Milkman’s Mother’s Midwife, and you better believe the shows are at least nine hours away from each other.
OH, RIGHT. I’m supposed to offer some solutions. Well, I’ve prepared them, and don’t you dare say I did so hastily. Only I can say that.
My Suggestions for how to Deal with the Perpetual Filling Out of W9s
- Protest the act by throwing your green room veggie trays into the Boston Harbor (this will also help repair the ecosystem that was disrupted when I threw all my MiniDiscs in the Boston Harbor in 1998 to protest my MiniDisc player breaking).
- Conveniently forget your social security number and write some funny ones instead, such as 696-96-9420 or 420-69-6969 or 800-81-3S69.
- When pressed for your W9 at the venue, respond with, “Oh, if you’re that obsessed with me why don’t you just propose!” It’s win/win, because you might get a life partner out of the deal.
- Promise you’ll fill out the W9 as soon as you’re done “meditating,” then lower your eye mask while another band member screams “WELLNESS!” at the guy until he forks over the money.
- Ask to be paid half of the advanced ticket sales up front. When the venue says half of zero is zero, idiot, and shoves you in the venue locker, maybe consider playing somewhere else next time.
- Reply that you filled out the W9 and it’s “under there.” They’ll surely reply “under where” and by the time they recovered from the shame of what you made them say, you’re half way to Mexico with a trunk full of drink tickets and a pocket full of kryptonite.
Feel free to write to me with your own solutions and new problems you’d like to see me solve. Submit your ideas to [email protected] and we’ll see if I set up the email forwarding correctly!
Until next time,
Adam.
