I often envy a filmmaker or a playwright or an author where people are like, "Yeah, I sat down every night and read your book and it was beautiful." Or, "Yeah, I went to the movies and all I did was watch the movie because that's all you could do at the movies." Where with music, it's like, "Ugh, I love your music. I listen to it while I'm jogging thinking about how I hate my body." But it is also the privilege of being a musician is you can have your music in this documented form and play it live and that's, I think, what draws me to it the most.
Dan DeaconObviously, selling out is an issue but it's almost like an uncanny valley where you can be pretty unpopular for a while but you'll have die-hard fans that love you. Then as you get more popular, it'll be great and people will be excited for you and then you get to this middle-level popularity and people are like, "Oh, you're not famous but you're also not - we know who you are." You're just this like hideous disfigured music.
Dan DeaconWhen music becomes a job, you all of a sudden have other jobs and you become like a manager of time. If you have no ability to do that, your job gets very hard very quickly.
Dan DeaconGoing back to the paradigm we live in, the only way to do music is if I can sustain living off of it. If I can't live off of it, I'm not going to be able to make as much music.
Dan DeaconI thought I wouldn't enjoy the business side of music, but it's fun because it is completely - like running a DIY venue was the same exact thing but just on a smaller scale and a DIY tour is the same thing. You're just running a small business. Like we live within the paradigm of capitalism. Even if I'm going in playing these anarcho spaces, I still have to buy gas.
Dan Deacon