Pause/Play

Pay for musicians in Austin has stayed the same for decades, and streaming often doesn’t bring in my money. So if you can’t make money playing music and you can’t make money selling music, what can you do?

You’ll hear how Sara L. Houser, Chinasa Broxton and Carlos Dashawn Daniels Moore from Tribe Mafia, and Carrie Rodriguez figured out how to make a living in music by expanding their ideas of what they can do with music.

Find out more about Laboratorio Arts.

The full transcript of this episode of Pause/Play is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

Elizabeth McQueen I’m Elizabeth McQueen.

Miles Bloxson And I’m Miles Bloxin. And this is Paws Play, the podcast about live music, why it matters, and what comes next. Miles, this is our sixth season. It’s hard to believe. Yeah, Elizabeth, we’ve covered so much about Austin music in this podcast. And this season, we’re looking into the future.

Elizabeth McQueen Yes, we are. I mean, right now we’re in this moment where everything is changing so quickly, not just in music, but like everywhere. And we’re wondering what the future of Austin music might be. Are there alternatives to streaming? Or what about social media? Can artists ditch socials and reach their fans other ways?

Miles Bloxson What about AI, Elizabeth? How are artists using it or not using it? And what about the future of South by Southwest after the changes the organization made around the music part of the festival? What is Gen Z up to? I mean, after all, they literally are the future. Yeah, they are. And in this episode, we’ll be looking at what the future may hold for how musicians make money here in Austin. How can you make a living when the things that used to bring in money, they don’t anymore?

Elizabeth McQueen I mean, we’ve covered this a lot in this podcast. Musician pay has stayed the same for decades in this city.

Miles Bloxson And let’s be honest, streaming often doesn’t bring in much income for local artists. So if you can’t make money playing music, and you can make money selling music, what can you do? Well, in this episode, we’re going to talk to four musicians who are trying to answer that very question. Their solution? Do lots of things.

Elizabeth McQueen Like Sara

Sara L Houser I’m Sara L Houser and I am a musician in Austin.

Miles Bloxson In her solo work, Sarah goes by S.L. Houser. We play her music on KUTX. In fact, she’s been an artist of the month, but she does more than just play her own gigs. She tours in other people’s bands.

Sara L Houser I’ve been on the road a lot the last couple of years with two artists, Zela Day and Matthew Logan Vazquez.

Elizabeth McQueen She works in the studio playing piano, and she does background vocals and vocal arrangements on other people’s recordings.

Sara L Houser I did it for a Spoon record, I did for Golden Dawn, I’ve done it for Walker Luke.

Miles Bloxson Walker Lukens is a musician and producer here in Austin. He also hosts the song confessional podcast, which we distribute. She’s also written orchestrations.

Sara L Houser Started by making some for Walker. And then that kind of spiraled out into doing some for other artists around town. She’s written film scores. I did a short film with a guy named Jordan Langmore this last year that maybe will come out sometime. She’s a producer. I’ve produced an album for Lizzy Lehman a couple years ago and was part of Jimmy No’s Project Traction. And she teaches. I’m an adjunct professor at ACC in the ATI department and I freelance teach kids.

Elizabeth McQueen Yeah, Sarah does a lot of things. But this wasn’t always the case. When Sarah was growing up, she was obsessed with music. I could like identify every song on the radio. So when she was seven, her parents got her a keyboard. And they were just kind of like explore. She signed herself up for formal lessons at 11. And after that she was into piano, like into piano. She practiced four hours a day into it. She actually studied classical music at first.

Miles Bloxson Then Sarah went to a performing arts high school where she studied classical piano and got into jazz.

Sara L Houser Started playing gigs for the first time. I started playing in jazz combos at restaurants and stuff when I was like 15 or 16. So I guess that’s like where I first started like, oh I could make some money.

Miles Bloxson From that time, she also started writing her own music. She ended up going to Berklee College of Music, studying piano and songwriting. After she graduated, she moved to Austin. She didn’t think too much about her choice, though. All she knew was that she was burned out from Berkley and she didn’t want to move to New York, L.A., or Nashville.

Sara L Houser I didn’t really have a plan. I did know that I wanted to come and I want to start a band. And I wanted play live music and I wanted be a part of the music community. Plus, one of her favorite bands was from Austin. I loved Spoon in high school and knowing that they were here was like, that was even a carrot enough for me where I was like oh man.

Miles Bloxson Sarah did have an idea of what. She wanted to do, though.

Sara L Houser My one goal was to move here and start a band.

Miles Bloxson So she got a job at Guero’s.

Sara L Houser I got it two weeks into living here.

Elizabeth McQueen And she started a band called A House at Home. Then that ended. She joined a band, called The Couch. It was a band her now husband, Taylor Wilkins, was in. Then after a couple of years, she left that band and started her own project.

Miles Bloxson And for a while that’s what she did. She worked at a restaurant and played gigs, but then about eight years later, she started

Sara L Houser to get this itch. I’d been far enough away from college and like from my academic world where I was like hi, there’s like so much stuff I want to do with music. Maybe I could start teaching, you know, I knew that I wanted to kind of bring that part of my brain back to the forefront and not just like the live show setting, which was super fun and fulfilling, but like was a completely different part of my brain than like my academic experience.

Elizabeth McQueen So, she’s started Teaching.

Miles Bloxson A couple of years after that she started playing as a sideman in a band called Golden Dawn Orchestra which is a huge band that plays like psychedelic world funk jazz.

Elizabeth McQueen And the way she got That gig was pretty random.

Sara L Houser Rick from Nine Mile called me and he was like, hey, I know you play piano, but would you be interested in auditioning on Vibraphone for a band and going to Europe for five weeks?

Miles Bloxson Rick is Rick Pierrick, owner of Nine Mile Records and Touring.

Sara L Houser And I was like well, I played vibraphone a little bit in jazz band in high school. It’s like piano with sticks, you know? And auditioned and then like three weeks later was in Europe with them. The two things I love probably the most are playing music and traveling. And so I was like, oh, touring, like. Duh. And I was really lucky to fall in with them and like, just they’re my family, you know, at this point. But working with them and working on their records kind of like cracked me open and like oh, I could do this for anyone, you now.

Elizabeth McQueen So Sarah was playing live with her own band and teaching. And touring.

Miles Bloxson And around this time she was also getting more comfortable in the studio.

Sara L Houser Walker was the first person to pay me to come in the studio and put background vocals down.

Elizabeth McQueen the record sang background vocals on is called Tell It to the judge.

Elizabeth McQueen Walker ended up introducing Sarah to Jim Eno, the drummer for Spoon.

Sara L Houser Which is like how I ended up on the spoon record.

Elizabeth McQueen That spoon record was Hot Thoughts.

Miles Bloxson Wait, didn’t Sarah say one reason she moved to Austin was because Spoon was like one of her favorite bands and they were from here?

Sara L Houser It’s funny cause the spoon record was like probably the second time I ever got paid to come in and record vocals. And it was like, you know, just so surreal to be asked to do that and stuff. But then I had them on my resume. And so it turned into like, oh, Sarah can do this thing. I think where I sort of started to like assert myself is vocal harmony work and being really efficient in the studio and an efficient communicator. And so it was like. I can come in and knock out a lot of stuff in like a pretty short period of time, which when you’re paying for time is important.

Miles Bloxson And that connection to Jim Eno led her to work with him on Project Traction. According to their website, Project Tracton is about empowering women plus gender-expansive musicians to gain traction in the audio production and engineering fields.

Elizabeth McQueen Sara Didn’t really think of herself as a producer.

Sara L Houser Just even like having somebody like Jim say, I think he would be really good at producing was like huge. Yeah, so I did Project Traction with him. I produced a song for Lizzie. Lizzie really loved it, loved working with me. And then we did a whole album together at Estuary.

Miles Bloxson Lizzy is Lizzy Lehman. You might remember Lizzy from one of our past episodes. The album they made together is called Technicolor Love.

Elizabeth McQueen Walker Lukens also got her started doing orchestrations. I had gone in and like conducted a session he knows I can read music being from like my classical background and stuff like that and so we started talking about this project he’s been working on and he was like I want you to do the strings for it would you be open for that and I was like, I could do that for sure and I would love to do that.

Elizabeth McQueen So Sarah plays her own shows and teaches and tours with other bands and does background vocals and produces and does string arrangements. Like we said Sarah does a lot of things.

Miles Bloxson She’s a busy woman. And how does that all work out financially?

Sara L Houser I’d say, Touring Session Work is probably like, it’s like a quarter and a quarter, and then teaching is like probably about half, I would say. Or maybe like teaching is a third, and the remaining fraction, because I’m not doing that math, is just random jobs or one-off gigs or, you know, just the kind of stuff that sometimes falls into my lap.

Miles Bloxson So a third of her income is teaching music?

Elizabeth McQueen Yeah, and Sarah says sometimes musicians feel away about the profession of teaching.

Sara L Houser I think a lot of musicians have kind of a very jaded look at education of like, oh those that can’t do teach that trope, and I just really hate it because, I mean, I would not be here without both the good and bad teachers that I had growing up, but getting a chance to really share your knowledge with somebody is so special.

Elizabeth McQueen I mean, and I have to say, like, it’s a huge accomplishment to not have to do anything else, you know, to like make your living doing music in whatever form is like.

Sara L Houser I feel incredibly grateful. I think there was a significant portion of my time in Austin where I wasn’t sure that music was ever going to be any kind of income for me. I was going to have to pivot or I was gonna have to find some kind of work or I just was gonna barton and wait tables and then do music on the side. I really struggled for a long time, especially coming from Berkeley and seeing. Lots of people that I went to college with either quit music altogether or really struggle in the music cities or alternatively be on the Grammys or touring with giant bands or working on records that were really famous or scoring movies that were winning Oscars and stuff. And so there’s a lot of weird comparison thing that I had to get over and go through and just kind of. Acknowledge that I’m on my own path and I know that I am going to figure it out eventually or figure out a way to make it work.

Elizabeth McQueen Sars’s created  an LLC called Sirenhouse that covers all the things she does that aren’t teaching or her solo work as SL Houser.

Sara L Houser I wanted like an umbrella term or company for like all the touring and session work and all that kind of stuff that I was doing. And I wanted to sort of kind of try to put it out there that like I could be this like one stop shop in some ways. I wanted to put a name to it and sort of treat it like I would a band.

Miles Bloxson And Sarah said she’s able to make a living in music by saying yes, a lot.

Sara L Houser I kind of saw the writing on the wall with the gig economy pretty early on and knew that it wasn’t good for me and my brain space. So that’s where I did shift into the diversifying role where it was like, okay, well, I want music to be how I make my money. But I also like to do lots of different things with music and I have an education that supports that also. I’m just gonna say yes to like every job that I can and see what sticks. And I did that for a long time. And, you know, did the one-off gigs with people or played in the airport, or I did like one day on set of Walker as a piano supervisor.

Miles Bloxson She’s talking about the TV show, Walker, Texas Ranger which was filmed In Austin.

Sara L Houser Like I just did like anything I could until I got to a place where it was like I could sustain myself and start to say no to certain jobs or like weed out what really wasn’t serving me and stuff. But in terms of like just being in a band and making a living and being able to afford to live in this city, I don’t know anybody I don’t anybody in this town that is able to do that right now. I could be wrong, but. It certainly was not feasible for me, which is tough when it’s a city that says it’s the live music capital of the world.

Elizabeth McQueen Sarah does so many things, it’s actually really inspiring.

Miles Bloxson I love the fact that she figured out a way to make it work by just trying everything that she possibly could, even though it wasn’t what she set out to do when she initially moved here.

Elizabeth McQueen Totally, and you talked to a couple guys who also figured out a way to make a living by expanding their ideas of what they can do with music. Yeah, I talked to Chinasa and Carlos of Tribe Mafia. Coming up after the break, we’ll hear from them.

Elizabeth McQueen This is Pause Play, the podcast about live music, why it matters, and what comes next. In this episode, we’re talking to artists who’ve figured out how to make a living in music by diversifying what they do, like Chanasa and Carlos from Tribe Mafia.

Chinasa Broxton Chanasa Broxton, I’m an artist, sound engineer, temporary videographer while our creative director is not in town, and an anime ampid watcher.

Carlos Deshawn Daniels-Moore I’m the other half of Trimafia, Carlos Deshawn Daniels-Moore. And I’m an artist too, also.

Miles Bloxson We’ve talked to Tribe Mafia before on this podcast, way back in like 2021. Back then, they all lived in a shared house and worked day jobs to support their art. And over the years, they’ve built a name for themselves and they’ve figured out how to make it work and make a living in music. So besides like doing like live shows and putting out music, how else do y’all make money from music?

Chinasa Broxton We sell merch, we do sync, and we help other artists with their music, if they need to come record, I’ll record them. Basically, whatever that we can get into artistically, we’ll try to see a dollar sign in it and thrive at it as best as we can, because I always tell people when I work for them or if I work with them, like I’m not going to be like the best person, but I’m going to give you what I do for myself, and I put 110% in whatever I do, so.

Carlos Deshawn Daniels-Moore Yeah, you’re like a walking business, so you gotta treat yourself like a walkin’ brand. So anything that a regular business is doing, just do it for yourself. Musical-wise or outside of music.

Miles Bloxson And based off of all the stuff that you listed, Chanasa, what would you say the top two streams of revenue, like where do they come from?

Chinasa Broxton Definitely sync and then selling merch. Yeah, because people like a lot of our stuff that we you know Produce out and then sink wise. I mean you can always you can make a full-time living off of doing sink

Miles Bloxson Sync licensing is when music gets placed in TV shows, films, and commercials. We’ve gone in depth about sync licensing in earlier episodes, but Chinasa really laid out why it can be so good for

Chinasa Broxton artists. Every time you get music placed on a TV show, you get paid. You get paid every single three months from Roaches with BMI or ASCAP, whoever your rights are with. So you get pay quarterly. And if you’re doing good on shows and if it’s like a top show, good. My goal is always just to make like at least 10 sync placements a year, like good ones. And yeah, you ain’t got to do anything else. I mean, if you ain’t trying to live all bougie, like if you just trying to like a regular life. And just enjoy the music that you’re making and it gets placed on the TV show, you can live really good, you can do good.

Miles Bloxson Chinasa told me sometimes that the amount you can get paid for these placements can really vary.

Chinasa Broxton So for the lowest we ever made was like $50, which is cool. And then the most we ever make was like a 25,000 sync placement.

Miles Bloxson And that’s why you said if you do 10 sync placements, then you’re good for the year.

Chinasa Broxton Yeah, 25,000 times 10, you do the math.

Miles Bloxson You do the math. He pulled out his calculator, ladies and gentlemen. And then how did y’all get into placements?

Chinasa Broxton That’s the producer name, Quality. She was dope. We did like one song with her. It didn’t get placed, but she had told us that she did music for a TV show and it paid her this much. I was like, what? You know how many streams that would be for us to make that? You know? And I was just like, wait, so you’re telling me that we’re doing all this hard work to get 10,000 streams, 5,000 screens, and we only get 50 cents.

Carlos Deshawn Daniels-Moore And it was so weird because at the time we was already looking for other ways to get paid more with music Like yeah early on he was already lookin for that and then it just came

Chinasa Broxton When we got our first placement, we was like, what the?

Speaker 8 $5,000 for this how we just freestyled this ain’t saying then we get royalties after that ?

Chinasa Broxton And get Royalties, real royalties? We got our BMI check this past, what was it? 25Th? It was not that long ago. And I was like, oh snap. I mean, we’ve always been getting like pretty good royalty checks ever since we started getting stream placements. But I was just like, oh snap, this is what a real royalty check looks like. And I said, wow, we can actually like, it’s not gonna go only to the gas. You know, it’s gonna pay some bills. And we’re gonna have some. And I say, dang, so this is what it looks like when you actually like getting like real placements like quality placements. And I’m just telling people like, yeah, you gotta focus on sync first because if you get on sync stuff, I know it’s a tedious thing to get into and it’s hard to get in to, but once you actually start getting in to and start placing songs, yeah, your good because it’s so much more worth it than like hoping to get a million streams or spending all your money to get a million stream that doesn’t even pay you back out.

Miles Bloxson We’ll be talking about streaming in an upcoming. Episode, by the way.

Elizabeth McQueen Chinasa said once they saw how much money they could make from sync, they started researching who they could send their music to to get placements. They would watch the credits on shows and find music supervisors and reach out to them on Instagram.

Miles Bloxson But that didn’t work. And then one day, a person they reached out to gave them some advice.

Chinasa Broxton You need to go reach out to one of our libraries because these are the people that we trust. We’re not gonna just take music from you because what if you’re using like samples or loops or illegal stuff from like YouTube, you buying beats. We don’t want that.

Elizabeth McQueen Yeah, there are these music libraries that you can submit your music to. And this is often where music supervisors will go when they’re looking for music.

Chinasa Broxton So like with us, we went to like audio vibes because they look for, they’re always looking for like hip hop music. We went to super selective. They’re always look for hip hop. But you can go to any kind of library and see what best fits the genre of music that you make. And don’t try to make something that you don’t normally make just to be inside the music library. Because if you do that, they’re gonna be like, why are you giving us this? This doesn’t even make sense. Like if you know you make hip hop and you’re trying to submit to like metal music, why? You’re just wasting time.

Miles Bloxson And Chanasa told us that getting your music in a library is just the first step.

Chinasa Broxton Once you get past that library stage, you go into like the phase of working directly with like a supervisor or an agent. Once you pass that stage, you go directly with working with an editor. Once you past the editor stage, you go straight to working with the creative director. There’s like, there’s levels to this. There’s level one, level two, level three, level four, level five.

Miles Bloxson And you said the second thing is merchandise.

Chinasa Broxton Yeah, because you know when you do shows and you do a show good you bring out some merch Just tell people every every single two songs you get by on a set Hey, I got some merch over here who wants to buy something they’re liking you They’re feeling you you brought your own people out there A lot of people is gonna want to support you anyway, and if your merch look great You’re gonna make some money off of them And I think that’s the most important thing that an artist especially independent artists can do is you know to make their money back Cuz every time we do shows we do a live band we got people that we’re bringing out from different parts of the states and that comes out of our pocket and the most that you can do for yourself if you’re doing stuff like that is to make some of your money back.

Miles Bloxson Chinasa and Carlos told Miles they often don’t make money from live shows.

Chinasa Broxton All of our money goes to rehearsals, it goes to our band, especially in Austin, they be taxing over here. They be taxin’. But I get it, we’re the live music capital. And if you wanna do good shows, you probably gotta have live music because people don’t wanna only hear DJ sets, which I love DJ sets. I think that’s fun because it’s just us. We can keep some of that money for the most part, but to keep it real, like no, I noticed when we got our own band, we started getting booked for bigger events. We started… We got sponsored by Ford, Sennheiser. We started getting like all these big placement shows.

Carlos Deshawn Daniels-Moore Brought to states

Chinasa Broxton We never thought we would ever get, but when we’re just doing DJ sets, we barely got anything and the pay was nothing. Sometimes it was for free. You know, so it was like, okay, we got to do what we got do, but if we’re going to do that, we need to have some merch so we can make some money for ourselves. I love performing, but it’s still gotta make sense. We don’t wanna just wing a show. Everything that we do is a reflection of us and a reflection on everybody else around us. We’re so heavy on bringing people with us when we do shows because a lot of people around us, they don’t get these kind of opportunities that we get. And it took us a while to get the opportunities that we can. We see how hard it is for people to be recognized here in Austin, especially for the brown and black community. It’s hard to get these really good shows. And when we start bringing out people, we’re like, okay, here. Whenever you got a show, you don’t got to bring us up, but if you do, at least do it, do it like how we do you. You know, I fly them out from LA, I fly to them out of New York, I fly the amount from wherever they coming out of there, if they’re our guests, I’m gonna make sure that they’re taken care of, they’re gonna get their own hotel. It’s out of our pocket. So whenever we do our shows, yeah, we got some merch cause we’re trying to make some of that money.

Miles Bloxson They told me that these new revenue streams have actually changed their focus. They’re playing fewer live shows. Instead, they spend a lot of their time making music for sync placements. In fact, I had trouble scheduling this interview because they were so busy.

Chinasa Broxton Like you saw when you called me last week, I had to make 12 songs that was due that week.

Elizabeth McQueen And now, what they want out of their careers is just…different

Chinasa Broxton We first started off, yeah, we definitely wanted to have the most numbers. We definitely wanted to do the most biggest shows, but none of that stuff matters. Like we just want to make good music and as long as that, you know, as long we’re making good music to ourselves and it’s it’s making sense. Yeah, we’ll do whatever we got to do. Somebody better know about me

Miles Bloxson And finally, we talk to an artist who has really expanded how she approaches what she does. Meet Carrie.

Carrie Rodriuguez Carrie Rodriguez. I am a singer-songwriter, violinist, vocalist, and the founding executive director of Laboratorio Arts.

Elizabeth McQueen Now, if you know Austin music, you may know Carrie. She’s a classically trained violinist who also played roots music first in her teens with her dad, David Rodriguez.

Miles Bloxson And then in her early 20s, she started playing with Chip Taylor. He wrote Angel of the Morning and Wild Thing. He asked her to do something she’d never thought of doing. He asked to sing.

Carrie Rodriuguez And I had never sung before. I mean, I would definitely not have considered myself a singer at all. And I very shyly was like, well, OK, I’ll try. OK, so we sang one duet. And then a week after that, he’s like, let’s make an album of duets. And

Elizabeth McQueen That’s such a short timeline. Seriously. Oh my gosh.

Carrie Rodriuguez Um, but I was game, you know, even though I’m like, I have no idea how to do this. But I, I don’t know, I’d love to figure it out. I think I’ve always just, if there’s an opportunity, I take it and I have faith that I’ll figure it

Elizabeth McQueen Carrie and Chip made a bunch of albums, and then in 2006 she released her first solo album, Seven Angels on a Bicycle.

Miles Bloxson And for a long time, she toured and released her own music. She moved to New York for a while, and she moved back to Austin, but she was still

Carrie Rodriuguez touring a lot and didn’t really feel like I knew the Austin musical community much and just didn’t feel involved in a part of things.

Miles Bloxson And then in 2015, she had a baby.

Carrie Rodriuguez And that changed everything, of course. And suddenly I’m like, oh, I need to be home and I need figure out how to get to know people here. And one thing, growing up in Austin, I always felt like, I mean, honestly, we are a very segregated city. And by geography, there’s all these lines and the I-35 and neighborhoods. And in terms of Latin music, I always feel like it was this separate thing over here. And it had its own following, but then people so often talk about us being the live music capital of the world because they’re talking about the singer-songwriters and the country folk artists. And I just wanted to find some space for, like, a more diverse musical experience for myself, for an audience, for my bandmates. So I called my friend Michael Ramos, who’s a wonderful producer, musician here in town, and told him, I want to start this kind of like Latin music series. And I say Latin music with air quotes because what is Latin music? I mean, it can mean so many different things.

Elizabeth McQueen And that’s how, in 2017, the Laboratorio music series was born.

Miles Bloxson At first, the series was a pretty low-key affair at the Cactus Cafe, which is like this legendary venue on the UT campus. Lucinda Williams, the Dixie Chicks, Lyle Lovett, they all played there, but the room is tiny.

Carrie Rodriuguez You can pack 120 in, but it’s uncomfortable.

Elizabeth McQueen Carrie and Michael got a band of great Austin players, and they would learn songs by guests like Ruben Ramos, Adrian Casada, and Eva Ibarra. They would have one rehearsal and then play the gig, and then they would just see what happened on stage.

Miles Bloxson It was a lot of fun, but at a venue as small as the cactus, it was financially kinda hard.

Carrie Rodriuguez I would invite a guest and say, well, we’re going to charge $20 for the tickets at the door, and then we’ll split everything. And then I realized, well I need to at least be able to guarantee the guest something better than that. And then often, basically what it meant would be that I would pay everybody a very humble fee, and some of that was coming out of my own pocket, because I couldn’t enough at the door to even come up with a humble fee. So it was really expensive on just a personal level. I just, just every single show there was that weight and challenge of how do I pay everyone for the time they’re putting into this?

Elizabeth McQueen Laboratorio went on hold during the pandemic, but when it came back, it was at a new venue. It was at the State Theater.

Miles Bloxson State Theater was bigger, it fits around 300 people, it’s right next to the Paramount Theater, and it’s one of the oldest theaters in Austin. They are both run by the same people.

Carrie Rodriuguez The state and the Paramount really, I mean, they gave us a very, very generous guarantee that at least let me like, okay, I can pay everybody a respectable amount of money.

Elizabeth McQueen Carey said the organization really got behind the show. In addition to providing that generous guarantee, they went above and beyond with marketing and production help.

Miles Bloxson And little by little, the project that Carrie had created as a way to connect with her community and with other artists started to grow.

Carrie Rodriuguez We were like whoa Really love to get some artists that aren’t just from here, but like, let’s get, you know, someone from another place. Then they have to fly in and then you have to put them up. And as it started to grow, it was like, we can’t, we still can’t sustain.

Elizabeth McQueen And that was when the idea of making Laboratorio a non-profit and not just a show came up.

Carrie Rodriuguez We have dear friends who are huge supporters, not only of what we do with Laboratorio, but of our community and so many great organizations in Austin. Our friends are Lynn Dobson and Greg Wooldridge. And basically, they set me up with this consulting company who consults with nonprofits and helps them get organized and get started. And this company got me started with the process of doing the application with the IRS, switch. I mean, as a musician, we are not prepared for such things, such forms. And it was wonderful. So our dear friends, Len and Greg, were responsible for getting the whole thing started. And then, extremely generous, they gave us this kind of nest egg for three years in a row through the Austin Community Foundation that gives us the funds to start the right way. And to be able to set up everything in the right way and just all the help with like, what are best practices, having the right kind of board that has the right kinds of skills. So we are incredibly supported through this process that I knew nothing about and I’m learning more and more every minute of every day.

Miles Bloxson Being a nonprofit allows Cary to expand how Laboratorio is funded. The organization can now apply for grants and take in donations. They actually got a two-year Thrive Grant from the City of Austin Economic Development Department. It also expands with

Carrie Rodriuguez what the organization can do. So one of the things we’ve gotten to do recently was, for example, we had Flora de Toloache. They’re an all-female mariachi ensemble. We got to take them to the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders and talk to the all- female orchestra about what it’s like to be an all female band on the road. Things like that could have never been possible before we became a nonprofit.

Elizabeth McQueen What’s the biggest thing that you’ve learned from being the founder and creator of a non-profit?

Carrie Rodriuguez That’s such a good question. Wow. I think as, like coming from my background of being like a, you know, performing touring singer songwriter, I’ve always felt like I have to do everything myself, kind of to an extreme. And I’m learning that with a nonprofit, you cannot do that. Because first of all, your nonprofit belongs to everyone. It’s like we are part of the community and we belong to the community. So you have to. Allow them to help you. And that’s something that I, I would say it doesn’t maybe come naturally just because I’m always just felt like I have to do it all myself, you know? And I’m really like, no, I have actually ask for help and let people help and they want to. So that’s my big, big lesson. I’m so happy to be saying it out loud actually at this moment. I need to say this every morning.

Elizabeth McQueen And does having a nonprofit make not just the laboratorio endeavor, but like your financial situation more stable?

Carrie Rodriuguez I feel like that could happen. I mean, honestly, I mean just to be like, like last year, I think my total, I guess my total salary last year was like $5,000 for the year. Because I’m trying to do so much right now, but I do have these hopes that I could figure things out so that I could actually, you know, have some kind of salary, it wouldn’t be enough just a loan from La Bordatoria, but something that could pay for the time that I spend, spend working on it in combination with all the other things that I do with music. Um, so yes, I think that’s a possibility that it could bring financial stability. One thing that it has brought though that I just there is nothing that feels better than writing checks to musicians that feel like they are compensating them for their work in a very fair legit way. Like there’s nothing that fills better because that’s the hardest thing for musicians to get paid what they really deserve to be paid.

Elizabeth McQueen Carrie told us that she could have paid herself more as the executive director of Laboratorium, but she chose not to this year because she was the songwriter in residence at UT. She actually got a monthly salary to be a songwriter and give labors a month’s salary.

Miles Bloxson Lectures and workshops. Instead, she chose to give money to the people who worked on projects and shows for her nonprofit. And over the course of last year, the nonprofit paid around 80,000 to artists and musicians and other creatives for various projects. Which is so rad.

Carrie Rodriuguez And while she’s been building laboratorio, Carrie’s also been doing other things. She wrote the music for a musical called Americano, which is based on the true story of Tony Valdivinos, a man who wanted to enlist in the Marines, but when he tried to, found out he was undocumented.

Carrie Rodriuguez Often I was writing about things that I really, you know, didn’t know from experience. You know, any songs that were about wanting to be a Marine or the Marines, like, I had to study. I had to talk to Marines.

Elizabeth McQueen It premiered Phoenix and had a run off Broadway.

Miles Bloxson She wrote music for a multimedia show called Postcards from the Board.

Carrie Rodriuguez Postcards from the Border is a collaboration between myself, writer Oscar Cáceres and photographer Joel Salcido. And when Oscar came to me and asked if I’d be interested in writing songs to go with these postcards he had written about the border and about these communities, it was a lot easier for me to say yes and feel confident that I could maybe do that because I’d been through it.

Elizabeth McQueen Carrie, like Sarah and Tribe Mafia, has made a career in music by being open to new paths—paths she didn’t exactly choose.

Elizabeth McQueen If you had anything to say to those musicians who were thinking like, I really want to make a living in music, but I’m having a hard time just like playing gigs, like what would you say to them?

Carrie Rodriuguez Yeah. Well. Strength can always be found in in collaboration. I feel like I’ve since my earliest days I’ve looked to that and even working with Chip Taylor like to start with I that was a collaboration and through that like I think coming together with other musicians and artists can bring a lot of great things and it’s a good starting place you know because maybe also like growing up playing classical music, I would see that that. It can be kind of a limiting, lonely place if you are just trying to do one singular thing. Like, I just wanna play the violin as perfectly as possible so that I can get that job in the symphony. And that’s kind of, it’s A, very, very difficult, but B, it just kind of lonely, hard situation. So like opening yourself up to new experiences is a good starting place. Let’s turn the rain video.

Miles Bloxson Opening yourself up to new experiences and saying yes to everything, that’s just good life advice.

Elizabeth McQueen Especially if you want to make a living playing music.

Miles Bloxson We want to thank Sarah, Tribe Mafia, and Carrie for telling us about all the things they do.

Elizabeth McQueen In the next episode of Pause/Play, we’ll be talking about social media. Lots of artists are getting fed up with it. Some are even leaving it all together. What does the future of social media and music look like?

Elizabeth McQueen Pause/Play is a production of KUT and KUTX Studios. It’s hosted and produced by me, Elizabeth McQueen. And me, Myles Bloxon.

Elizabeth McQueen Hearing and editing help from Jake Perlman and Rene Chavez.

Elizabeth McQueen Abby Bryfogle and Tinu Thomas helped with production. Stephanie Federico is our digital editor. Michael Minassi is our multimedia editor. Our theme song was created by the talented Jaron Marshall.

Elizabeth McQueen Pause/Play is a listener-supported production.

Elizabeth McQueen Of KUT and KUTX Studios in Austin, Texas. You can support our work by becoming a sustaining member at supportthispodcast.org.

This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.