Phil Carillo: Me No Play, Me No Roof — 45 Years of Steel Pan, Scaling Down on Purpose, and Why Quality Is the Enemy

MoneyGigs is supported by Trifloral.com T-R-Y-F L O-R-A-L.com TheMoneyGigs to get your discount, Trifloral produces THC beverages. They come in 2.55 and 10 milligram varieties in all sorts of flavors. I have one prior to my gig and everything is so smooth. Visit T-R-Y-F l O-R-A-L.com themoneygigs that's trifloral.com. Themoneygigs and get your discount. Hey, it's Cliff. Welcome back to the Money Gigs podcast, the show where I sit down with working musicians and talk about the part nobody put in the brochure. The money, the venues, the logistics, the anxiety, the actual business of making a living playing music. My guest today is Phil Carillo, 45 years gigging out in Southern California, LA man, steel pan vocals, the whole thing. He's the rare musician who figured out the business side and isn't the least bit shy about it. We get into why he charges 3500 for a two hour wedding and refers you to a competitor without blinking. The time he got banned from the Orange County Fair for making too many people dance. And somewhere in the middle of all. This, he flips it around and starts interviewing me. I met him on TikTok. This one runs deep. Let's get into it. So let's just start with your baseball card. And where are you from?

I am originally from the lbc, Long Beach, California, born and raised.

Okay, where are you now?

I am in the LBC still. I have moved around SoCal in my life, but I find myself living close to where I was born.

Yeah, well, we share that in common. I've done my best to try to get out of Cincinnati, but I can't seem to do that. Anytime I hook up with someone, we have a kid and I call it the Death Star tractor beam of domestication. You're done because the schools are here are really good. Yeah, it's a good place to be a parent, but okay, so I did a little homework and this is interesting. You've got steelparade.com and so I know you play the steel drums and you've got lots of projects around that. But you started off with clarinet.

Yes, I was a clarinetist on a clarinet scholarship in the college. I played clarinet from elementary school and studied with people and took it seriously, quote unquote. And that was my main instrument, which I always believe gave me a leg up when I switched on over to percussion and. And drums.

And how did that happen?

How did the switch happen? Yeah, okay. Well, I was young when I graduated. I was pushed up a grade when I was younger. That's a whole other story, because I was a smart kid or whatever. And when I got into college, looking. Back at it now, I was not ready for it. I had zero guidance. I was not mature enough. But I was a player that was able to ace out the first clarinetist at the colleges I was playing. So it really thrusted me into a position I was not ready for. The reason I share this is because I became very unhappy with the clarinet and. And the whole culture of it. And in the midst of that first semester of college, there were the drummers, specifically the drummers that were also struggling. And I had that realization of, like, you know what? I could walk back there and do that better than them if I had to, because I don't. I was already playing drums for this youth organization that I was involved with that was. Ran kind of like a DCI group or military style. We were the state champion youth band in California called the Long Beach Junior Concert Band, ran by director Marvin Marker, an institution here. And I went through all the ranks and I was president of it. And I was the one and only single drum set player out of 150 musicians at the age of 15.

We have another thing in common. I got into college on euphonium scholarship and also marched in a marching band that won a state championship with a Beatles show. Thank you very much. And. And it was because the jazz department already had like seven or eight piano majors, and so they didn't have room for me. And so at the time, the deal was, hey, if you play in the symphonic band on your euphonium, we'll give you a scholarship to study jazz here. Which was wound up really interesting because then I got to play in John Von Olin. He's a famous Stan Kenton jazz drummer from Cincy. I got to play in his lab band on euphonium. He just loved the sound of it. So. Yeah, so we have that in common too. Okay, enough about me.

The follow up with that, though, really quickly, just real quickly. You have seen the Long Beach Junior Concert Band. You've seen it many times on tv where the go to band for things for were, for Disney. We're on the movie King Kong, Donny Marie show, all of these things that I was actually on. And they were the final band that every year for the Hollywood Christmas Lane Parade, also in the Rose Parade every Year. So it's a very red, white and blue patriotic band, played the governor's inauguration, all of that stuff. I feel it's important because of all. The training I had in my life, that one director had the single most impact on me and carried me through to who I am now. That was your next question. Like, who am I? Where am I now?

I was gonna say I have to follow up on that as well because I think having exposure, all those students and all those young kids having exposure of bigger things. Oh yeah. It kind of takes away any sort of being daunted about getting in the midst of all those things. And we don't have that kind of thing here in the Midwest.

So, you know, and that's something I've become aware of as I've gotten older. When I started going out into the world in the United States, that. And I'll say this and it'll come out sometimes arrogant, but I don't mean it that way. I mean it in identifying it. We're the West Coast. Music comes through here. This is Los Angeles, baby. And I know you might be from somewhere or whatever. It's a cliche, an absolute cliche in my life to watch people come from out of town, come into this town, make a big splash about something, and a year or two later they've left with their tail between their legs. Whether that be usually musicians or an actor, actress, that type of thing. And I share that because I just assumed everyone was doing radio and television by the time they were 13, 14. I just assumed everyone had these things that were almost annoying, like can't we just do something without being pushed into some movie, being pushed onto some recording thing? And it's a common thing out here on the West Coast. I even witness it with my two stepsons who are both full time musicians in production. It's an industry out here now as I speak. It's all being broken up and rightfully so. And everything happens everywhere now. But growing up, this was the place I can say that wholeheartedly. Not to denigrate or say other places weren't, but LA is definitely has been a, an industry. I mean, once again, everyone comes through here at some point.

Let's use you as the sample metric. So what kind of things are you involved in now and things that are upcoming? What's going on in Phil's life?

Okay, well, I'm an old dude now at 59, I'll be 60 this year. And things have slowed down because live music has changed as you Know, there. Was to be a time where I. Was managing five bands simultaneously. I had two people working for me full time. We were booking shows. I could have two of those bands. I was in one of them. We peaked Several times over 200 shows in one year. That's completely changed now. Also, what has changed for me, too, is me. I'm way more particular about where I perform. We're not the most expensive thing in. The world, my product, but we're not cheap. You're gonna pay for our expertise. And if you don't want it, then. You don't get it. You go get something else out there. If we're out of someone's budget, I. Have a whole list of other people that are similar to us that are. Maybe fit into that budget. It's. I'm totally okay with it. I want everyone working. So to answer that question. Where. Where am I right now? I'm a numbers person. I'm gigging at about 60 to 80 gigs a year the past two years. Of course, this is coming out of Pandemic. I probably could have increased that by safely 40 more gigs. But my ideal life, what I'm aiming. For right now is I'd like to. Perform two to four times a month and have three months off and have that cover all the bills and do everything. And it's actually very doable given where. I'm positioning ourselves and everything. But you got to get work, and. You have to be good and you have to be consistent and there are no excuses, and you must deliver. When I'm charging $3,500 for my trio for two hours for your wedding. That's how it works. That's where I am now. And I get mixed feelings about it sometimes, but I'm very.

What do you mean?

Well, you know, I think it was last July or one of the busy months, one of the months where we're usually slammed. I worked four to six times. I think the number was like six gigs in that month. And we could have worked 60 times in that month. We could have worked 30 times, 20 times, 10 times. And I have these feelings of like,. Should I be working more? Should I have taken that one gig that the guys would have got paid more or whatever. I wonder, you know, when does it become a breaking point where maybe my numbers could be increased because I'm actually working more? Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of a byproduct of Gen Z. There's lots of open question around grinding it out at all costs and balance is now kind of the new real flex. I think you were doing something like 140 according to your info. But how do you sustain that physically, mentally?

It's actually easier to giggle, I have found, when you're got a lot of them. Some things don't leave the van or the car. Like, we're all packed up, we're ready to go, we're in striking distance. It turns out I'm a very good director of information. Maybe that's the control freak or whatever. There's no guessing. If you play to my band, you're going to know everything, you're going to have everything ahead. I just need you to show up and perform, do a little bit of homework. That's how we sustain it. We sustain it by being very prepared and then, you know, and then the. Physical aspect of things, I use the. Lightest and cheapest equipment I can possibly find. I encourage that with everyone else too. I know that it's 99% the player and not the tool. I've had that thrown in my face. And I'm talking like drum sets and sound systems. You know, the majority of my gigs, if there's no backline or anything, I show up with, what is it like a little five channel board, 500 watts with 2:10 speakers. And I've done literally thousands of gigs that way with hundreds of people dancing.

And you're on the steel primarily, right?

Yep. And vocals. I'm the lead vocalist and we do a very interactive performance. I reach out to the audience and you don't just sit there and watch us. It's I'm going to make you dance.

I'm curious, were you always like that? Because I wasn't in my 20s and 30s, I think I wandered into gigs and just hoped that I didn't screw up the notes. And now in my 50s, it seems like a requirement that I reach out to audience members. Were you always like that?

No, absolutely, I was not like that at all. In fact, I was very quiet and straight out introverted, to be honest. But I was very fortunate to be picked up and start working with a fellow at the age of 15. I just turned 15 and his name was Eric Strom. I like saying his name, Eric Strom, because he's the other person very responsible for my career. He was this wonderful flamboyant man out here on the west coast. And when I had met him, by the time I had met him, he was 10 years older than me. He had already performed and toured with Barbra Streisand. Cher worked in Vegas. He was larger than life. And I'm sharing all this because I backed him up for, I estimated about 300 shows. He was also a theater director. And everything I do to this day and I have done over the last 40 years is either mimicking him, modeling after him, or modeling after Marvin Marker, the director I mentioned earlier of the Eve band. I had very good models. So when it was time for me to go out in front and do something, I had, from behind the drum set, had seen him perform in front of a thousand people. Two thousand.

Got to go to school.

Yeah. Not even realizing at the moment, even saying the exact things he would say. You know, yesterday I was the master of ceremonies for A Celebration of Life, and we had about 200 people there,. And they didn't let me know I. Was going to be this person till the day before. They were like, oh, by the way, you're on the mic and you're going. To do this whole thing. And I'm like, because I'm known around here, like, the guy can do that. I was like, oh, okay. Thank you for letting me know. There were things I was doing and there were phrases I was saying that were literally word for word verbatim what. Eric Strom would say, wow, 30 years ago. So did that answer the question? That was a very long winded answer. But, no, I'm not that way. When I'm not performing. We have this running joke in the band, like, after we've done like three or four gigs in the week, say, like, okay, I'll see you next week, the next gig in a week or two. And I don't want to ever see your faces. And I'm going to talk about everything about other than music in my life between now and then. And I'm going to hang out with people who are not musicians.

So that's how maybe you avoid burnout.

What is this burnout with musicians? I can think of one time specifically that I looked at my band and went, I realized that if I was to book 500 gigs over 300 days,. They would just say, yes, I work. With only good people. So it was my responsibility as director to go, although they'll do these gigs, I'm going to make sure that they're balanced. And by the way, with my band,. They all know this. When you're on my gigs, I pay for everything. I pay for all the meals before and after. I pay for all parking. I pay for all the gas to and from. It's all budgeted in there. That's why I get paid more. It's my job to do that. So I think that prevents burnout too, because I'm always looking at it like, how would this gig better if I was the musician and someone else was the director? I bring the sound system. I expect no one to ever help me, ever. And these days, I bring oftentimes the bass system and always the drum set for the drummer. All you have to do is walk in and play. Okay, here's the flip side of that spectrum. I will fire you immediately with nothing. We'll still be friends, everything's cool. But I need you to perform. You're not allowed to be late once. Not once. This is showbiz, folks. That's how it works. I don't make the rules. If we want to work, if you want to keep it going and everything, we can't. That's the way it is.

I always make it so easy for them, too. I mean, you're really facilitating a lot of aspects. So there's really. Aside from, you know, a hurricane or some. Some.

I just want it to be fun while I'm here on this planet. Again, everything is always set up so negatively, so against musicians at every single turn, at the clubs, at the orchestras, at the pay, at the everything. And I just am not about that. I want to oper at the 1%. Always had that mindset.

You do a lot of stuff in sort of the private event world, playing for celebrities, Staples Centers, openings, International wedding show. What does that market look like, sort of from the inside? Like, how do you get in and stay in and get paid fairly well?

It has shrunk. It's not as easy to get those gigs. There was a time. Let me back up. I live here in LA. I live here in SoCal. We've got 30 million people over the four counties. Surely I can. Even if we had just a million people here, I can tap into 1% of that, the businesses and everything. To answer your question, you know, we have the convention centers here. We have several of them. We have literally thousand hotels. And all of them are doing something every weekend, Wednesday morning, whatever. So you contact them, you let people know your services, and you remind them. And I'll say this very quickly. I pride myself on my marketing skills. Marketing is not a bad word to me. Like with musicians, like, oh, I got into this not to be a marketer. Well, okay, then you go ahead and live and die by those words, man. I'll just sit here and watch because it doesn't matter if you're doing music or if you're doing real estate or if you're a plumber or your whatever the heck you're doing. At some point you're going to have to let people know your service, don't take it so seriously, just do what you got to do and the work will hopefully come.

I almost believe, and I'm experiencing this both in music and in app development, is that your product almost doesn't matter now. It's a whisper and a forest of screams. But I agree with you that there's a. There's a natural aversion to anything, quote, unquote business from some musicians, as if it's going to encroach upon their product and their creativity and all they want to do is focus on this. And my advice would be go hire someone to be your rep and to do all that stuff for you if you really want to create that moat around your creativity. Otherwise you have to somehow mentally craft that moat yourself and say, okay, I'm putting on the marketing hat now, or something like that, because it's not optional. Especially now.

I'm calling it marketing in this moment right here, but for this podcast. But what we really call it here is community. And I have a community of people, of contractors I know on a first name basis who like the contractor for the Orange County Convention center where the NAMM show is. It's in my best interest and hers and everyone else's that we're friends because we're of service to each other. There's nothing deceitful or sinister about that or I'm any. My integrity is being lowered or whatever. And there's some people that I get to know that like, you know what? I don't want to perform for them for whatever reason. It's too far, their budgets are too strict or whatever. I think it's a healthy thing. And I've always had an attitude about that. For whatever reason, I'll get in. Someone gets in my face about something that's going on and I will immediately go, well, did you market correctly? Did you get a contract for that gig? Did you secure the deposit? Did you have an attorney look over that stuff? Because if were selling insurance right now, this is stuff we would do the first week. But because we're doing music now as a business and you want to get paid, you want all your dreams to come true and all this stuff, you're not willing to participate in that thing that every single other service industry does from day one, it's absurd.

I've always been in that position as a keyboardist. I feel like it would be different if I was like a solo trumpeter. But the keyboardist is always something of the quarterback of the situation. And so I'm always kind of in that situation. And I often wonder with musicians if it just feels like a mountain to them. And so they take that sort of form of indignation against it because they personally can't see themselves handling it. They just want to do their thing. But, yeah, there is an aversion.

I get it then, to that. To that thing. I would say, well, show me how it's done. And if you're not willing to do these things that are pretty clear out there that kind of be done, then. Maybe you don't want to, like, get. Paid or you don't want to be able to say. And I mean that, like, honestly, like, you know, just play your instrument. That's cool. Go play for free at the church. Or the carnival or whatever, and it'll. Be a beautiful thing. My thing is different. No playing equals no eating. It's. I don't know how else to pick that any clearer. Me no play means me no roof over the house, my head. You know what I mean?

Well, but I think it's also. There's an opportunity, I think, that most musicians miss, and that is you're in. You. You become in more control of your own destiny when you participate more in it. If you're giving away 50% of the experience of the execution to other people in other circumstances, you're going to get not paid, you're going to have negative experiences, but just a modicum of more control is offered when you make the simple choice to say, I'm going to participate in the marketing, be aware of my financial situation and work it. We talked about this private event world, but I need to hit this story before we forget it. I've got this bullet point in my list of things to talk to you about. You got banned from the Orange County Fair for making too many people dance. Can you unpack this for me?

Oh, my gosh. And I like the Orange County Fair. I attend it every year. But this was years ago and I had a very heavyweight band. You brought up something that I haven't revisited in a long time. Yeah, we made a lot of people dance so much that they were dancing in places that they shouldn't be dancing. And, you know, Orange County, California is just like a turn. All Southern California, every attorneys are everywhere. And we don't move or think or Whatever, they rule us. Because everyone's gonna lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit. Maybe that's true everywhere, for that. For that matter, but it's heightened in Orange county. And they were like, hey, people were dancing on stage and. And someone jumped on top of that, you know, truck and started dancing. And we can't have that. And I was like, I'm the performer. I'm not, you know, okay, I'll make announcement on the second set. Like, but you know how this works the minute you say you can't do something or ask for people to do it. So that went on. Then they moved us to a different stage the next year, and it just got bigger. And were opening up for, like, sets or Brian Setzer Orchestra and some other groups. Like, what was another one that already had a big crowd? One time were talking to the contractor. And this is a true story because the person who brings it up is. Well, I won't say his name, but he was a guitar player for Zappa, and he had his own band that was playing over there. And he was in the room. And after that, they told me, like, we don't want to hire you anymore because you make too many people dance. He just would always rib me about it for years after that. Hey, Phil Carillo, make sure you don't make everyone dance too much and have a good time. You might get fired again. You know, I was like. I was like, it's fine, man. We don't play there. We just moved on to the LA County Fair at that time.

Well, it's just an interesting dichotomy for me between the private event world and then this sort of extreme public performance story. I mean, I believe your band has performed for all sorts of people. I'm listing Brad Pitt, Kobe Bryant, Spielberg, Tom Cruise, the Kardashians. So you do all that private event stuff. I wonder, you know, if that helps with public performance or what the relationship is between those two different situations.

Well, I've. I'm weird in the sense that I never really cared about public performance. And even to this day, I do it out of necessity. I like playing private performances. Private performances are great. We create a moment. We're good at it. I make it as personable as possible. Those names you said, like, yeah, that's for advertising. It's true. They're advertising purposes. But it's still the same thing. If we're playing little Susie Durkin's P Patch Parade in the backyard, we're giving it the same intensity. If you have an attitude about that in my band. You're not in my band. We're honoring everything we do. It doesn't matter. We just happen to live in the land of celebrities. Of course, word gets out and they want to hire us. So when I play publicly, it's much easier. It's not as intense. To me, even to this day, the most intense thing you can do as a musician is playing a wedding. There's a lot of room for things to go wrong. You're a pianist. I'm sure you've had moments, man, where you had to back up someone or the power goes out or whatever. The ring, you know, and that's someone's moment. I mean, that's. They, they spent the money for it. I don't sleep the nights before weddings. I'm and I' there hours, if not the day before that, you know. And I charge a lot. This has to work. This and you get one shot. There's no like, oh, I'll make up for it tomorrow. So I honor private events. I know some musicians really poo on things like that. But I could really care less if I'm playing for 20,000 people unless I'm getting paid. Well, it's like it's the numbers doesn't validate this thing anymore. I think it's the intimacy and the exchange between people's memories, if you will, and creating that space and atmosphere for people to really enjoy themselves in the moment. And live music can do that in a way that canned music cannot.

That's right. And I appreciate. I think what I love about you is the steel pan. It's like to me, a wonderful sort of analog, right?

Yeah, totally.

I play a keyboard with sounds on it and I stick to pianic sounds. And for me that's the best I can do because I can't lift a piano. But I really love the analog and there's a huge sort of push toward that now.

I hope so. Yeah.

Well, we can dip into that for a second. Can I get Phil's take on AI and its influence and has it hit you yet in some way?

Okay. To lead in that real quickly. Like I said, I ended up before this life celebration Yesterday with my 21 year old nephew at a bar, at a having a drink and he's graduating college and he was asking when are you performing again? When are you performing? Because he's been showing up with the friends and I'm like, oh man. It's funny that you want to go hear this jokingly like, oh, boomer music you know, as the kids say or whatever. And he says, no, my friends and I, man, if it's live music, if it's live, we want to be there. Anything now, like a DJ or anything is like we're not about it anymore. Live music. Oh, wow, okay. Very wonderful to hear you say that my nephew. Because that has not been the case the way things have been going. So yeah, maybe it's going over that way now. Getting to AI unto itself. I know this is going to rub people the wrong way. I mean, I get it, but I'm not thinking like normal people by habit. I'm always just trying to think critically for my own self. The tool itself is undeniably, incredibly impressive. It's out of the bag and every industry is dealing with it. I mean, we could have a whole podcast on that. I'm even working with somebody as a tester who's created an AI platform. It's not being released yet, but he is all, he's a very good person, absolutely not motivated by money. One of the few people on the planet. I could say that I've known this person when he had no money and he's now a very wealthy man with his. Everything he's done. I'm going to keep him nameless right now. But he's trying to save music through AI. He is developing a system where everyone gets paid instantly through AI, specifically musicians. And he's like on the third leg of like a five leg project steps of how he's doing it. I'm glossing over it. So the AI music itself, it just depends on how you're using it. I personally don't use it at all. I'm trying not to use it all. I'm old school, that's who I am. I don't really find the need to do it. But I have seen some things demonstrated for me that were absolutely phenomenal. For example, I saw a very proficient and full time orchestrator in la has been studio and very successful name, I won't drop his name but he had the idea and then said create a full orchestral arrangement for this. And it did it in about 30 seconds. And then he said, I'd like the parts, please print it out or you know, PDF doubt and set the four score. And it did it all in about two minutes. If I would have access to that analysis in college, I, I mean I can't even. I'd be a different human being right now. So that's my long winded answer to the AI thing. It's I know that 99.99 musicians hate it. Percent of musicians hate it right now, and rightfully so. Okay. For a lot of the stuff it's doing, the garbage. We've got to protect the artists, of course. Absolutely, 100%. But I just happen to know someone who's actually using the AI onto itself to protect the artist. So I'm in the middle there with no judgment on it on either way.

I think AI is going to be more affected when it's wielded by people who have seen things. So I'm not going to put an age number on it, but if you've got a ton of experience in music, decades of experience in several situations over several genres, different group types, you're going to know how to prompt. I'll just say it that way. You're going to know how to guide it in the way that it needs to be done, versus someone in maybe their teens or 20s who are just gig hungry, trying to get experience and trying to push things out.

I think people will collectively decide as anything else, I feel like it's being shoved down our throats right now. Time will tell. I don't have to have an opinion on everything at every moment, so. But I will say that I'm not 100% against it. Like, the majority of my musician friends are in this moment, understandably. And I'm not 100% for it. I'm somewhere in the middle here. Life is bigger than me. And, hey, look, if we collectively reach a point where there are no live musicians and AIs taken over everything, and everyone wants to do that and that everyone's happy with that kind of thing, then that's where we're going. I guess I can't stop it. But I believe that as long as there's somebody like me, at least one person who's like, hey, it's Sunday. Let's go out and hear something live by a talented person. Hey, Cliff is playing solo down over there at the pier. Redondo beach, man. Let's go check that out. Let's go drop 100 bucks and drinks.

I think kind of back to what you said about marketing, and you talked about it as though it's community. And as long as that community thing is wanted, I think AI has a short Runway in terms of achieving that. Now, if you're using AI to somehow achieve that community, it's different. But I really feel that you're hitting on it. It's still about connection. People want to see people to try. And I think that's really important, which is something you do. I think almost every day on TikTok I see your spiel parade at PhilJ Carrillo. You do the free expression session. How long have you been doing that and why do you do that?

Okay, so this comes out from Mike Monday Splurges. His name is Mike Monday. I want to give credit where credit is due. And he calls these splurges. And it's just basically a technique where you create something not pre planned. I've taught this at the college level now, and it's a way of getting everyone off their butts and creating instantly. I've been doing it for about five or six years. I recently changed the name to Free Expression Session just because the common public seems to understand that if I say the word splurge. So I sit, I go into the studio and I just do something for 30 seconds a minute. I'll do a shaker, I'll play a drum, I'll hit my steel drum in some weird way. Not concerned with any form, any key, any idea, whatever. And then I just start layering around it and I put it together and whatever comes out. And a lot of stuff is really crappy. And there's a lot of stuff also too. Much to my surprise, if you do this, it's like, wow, that's really good. I've sold work, I published stuff because some of these ideas are like, oh, we want to use this for this commercial and wherever. And like, yeah, okay. And it started out literally something I was doing while the dog was at the vet or something, and I had like a half hour to kill. You know, there's more to it than that. Let me, let me ask you this right now. If there was something you were working with, either musically, technically, anything related to music, there was something that you like right now in your mind, what is it that Cliff needs to work on or learn or study or review? What would you say right now?

Oh, that's easy. My own work. Like I'm 52 and I haven't put out anything.

Okay, so we would do a free expression session where I would just say, okay, so you've got three minutes right now. That's all you. And just go ahead and play something that's your original thing right now and record it really quickly, just real quick. Don't worry about mistakes. Quality is your enemy. We just need this thing done. Just go ahead and play the idea. Don't worry. Go ahead and start playing it, even if you don't know how it's going to end up. Do 30 seconds of it and then you would do it and then we would build from there. Wow.

Yeah. Well, I think both your free expression and your approach here, I think that cringe is valuable. Now. Cringe means to try. And so if there's little mistakes and little cracks in the armor, little chinks, not perfect. But I need to go back because you started with clarinet where generally the objective is to get, I'm assuming classical. So generally the objective is to get all the notes right. And yet here you're saying it's okay to mess up. And I think rote music education, sometimes it did it with me. Like I studied classical for the longest time and my hands couldn't do it anymore. My attention span couldn't. And I switched to jazz, which was far more freeing. What was your early like? I don't want to talk about parents and things like that, but what was your early disposition with music? Has it always been that way? And then, and now you're, you know, you've kind of grown through experience. Right. But were you a get the notes right kind of guy initially?

Let's be very clear with this. I am studied classically, both in voice and in percussion. I am surrounded by classic, full time successful classical musicians. My stepson, his wife, the other stepson I teach. I have taught theory, classical music theory at the college level, AP level. So I know classical, rote by rote, Western, civilized music, whatever you want to call it. I am of that ilk. It is one of my strengths and I love it and I enjoy it to this day.

Okay.

But I also grew up in west side Long Beach. Everything was funk, everything was urban, that whole thing. And I'm proud of that. You know, I don't want to get into that whole background because it's something, whatever. But let's just know I know Long beach musically. Yeah, I don't want to be narrow minded about anything. So that was really kind of early on, even going through stuff. And I walked away from a major symphony that I was actually starting to play with just because I didn't like the energy of the people there at the time. And no regrets. They told me I would. But I think it's about balance getting into that. You're saying the free expression thing, creation comes from planning something. I have an idea, I'm going to do it. I have the score song, I'm going to do it. This something express. And that is 100% valid. Of course. That's how things are created. But it is not the only way creation can happen. There's spontaneous creation. Frank Zappa speaks into it. You know, if you watch videos continually, we can create on stage will be mystical, magical. I'm paraphrasing, but we can't comprehend it in this moment. But lo and behold, watch me tonight and you will see it happen within some parameters. So that's always interesting to me as well. I'm always inspired to see the fourth grade beginning band, you know what I mean? Like I, I want to see it Any new kids doing anything. Someone, some kid wrote a song and they're giving it their 100%. I'm not some trained classical snob teacher, whatever. I don't care. I don't care if they miss the notes. It's all love, it's all pure heart. And that's what connects with people. And people can be transformed through music in a way that nothing else hits that way. And if we limit ourselves to only playing the right notes and everything has to be perfect, you know, that whole thing and even getting back to this long winded answer, but you know, I don't like the word cringe. I don't like all these little kind of new phrases that this new generation, we used to call that trying. We call it falling on our faces. And I will say that to your face. And I, you know, I guess what, I can actually back it up. You want to go toe toe? Let's do this. Let's start with who you've worked with. Let's see what. Let's see you play right now.

Well, you do something very important in that statement and with the free expression sessions and just the way you are. And that is, I think it's a bit of a shepherd of the sheep who are musicians still, God bless them, and they want to be at that level. But they have this thing, this feeling that they're not in a safe place to do that. So you lead by example with your free. That's what I'm trying to get to your free expression session. Even for me, like personally, I look at that and I go, hey, he's doing it. Why am I not doing it? I'm on my patio, nobody's here. I've got my keyboard with me. Why am I not doing this?

You know, everyone's going to react to things different. I have family members are like, oh my gosh, Phil Carillo, I hate those things you create. They're terrible. You know, I mean, they love me. And I. And they know that they could say that to Me, they're like, I like it when you go into the studio because that other thing, I just want to block you. I'm like. And I love that when someone doesn't like my stuff, which is very rare, I have to. I'm blessed. But when they don't, I'm always like, oh my gosh, I want to be your best friend. I want to know.

You mentioned the school thing. I just did my kids recital on.

Wednesday and I saw that video. My gosh, I was. You got to be proud. Well done, father. I mean, I know he did the work.

Yeah, double proud. He's so good. And, you know, I bought him a new keyboard last June on almost on a whim. And I, I did it reluctantly because I'm a keyboard player and I didn't want to make him feel like he had to do what I do. But the keyboard is just such an easy way to absorb all that theory, muscle memory, all those things.

And he is just, well, he's doing it, man. Was he playing like it was a little Chopin or something. I can't recall anything.

I think it was Haydn and some Clementine.

Yes.

At the end of the video, he kind of. He hits a spot that he. This is what he did that blew me away. He hit a spot that he likes. There's an accidental or some sort of key change. I don't remember specifically, but he kind of turned his face toward the audience and said like this expression on his face was, isn't this some cool shit?

Yeah.

And I have seen kids piano recitals and I've never seen a kid do something like that. Holy cow, we have a problem. I feel fortunate because, like you, I feel like I can, like I said in the video that I made, I can see it. I'm not just hearing it. And I'm not just going for notes. I'm looking, I'm looking at all the kids. And first of all, I'm thankful that there are 20 kids that are trying to learn how to play music. Number one, I mean, amen. And number two, all of them kind of messed up in a little bit. A little bit. And for me, that's the entertainment. It is. How do they push through? It's that mental muscle of the show must go on. And they all did it and it was really miraculous.

Well, you're hitting upon a part and you know, let me add this right now. So my partner of 23 plus years or whatever, she's a full time artisan and artist, has the whole world clamoring for her stuff. I'm very fortunate to be with this woman. And while we may disagree on a lot of things, we always meet on this conversation of creating art or craft, you know, and we say that around here, her sons know it. And anyone who enters these doors or works with us is like, you know, the end result is just kind of a byproduct. We just want to focus on the process. It's everything that kind of happens leading up to there. If you do that performance and you suck, then you know what, you'll get it the next time. But did you do the work in between? Did you struggle? Did you try again? Did you get so mad that you swore you're not going to create that thing or play that instrument again? Guess what? That's part of it. We're smiling.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? That's it. And sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't, but you're doing it and you're fine. You're in touch with yourself in a way that no other thing can bring out. I was speaking at the services yesterday to a long distance runner and she was telling me how when I'm at that 20th mile, I'm in a state where nothing else can make me feel that way. And I totally understood. I'm not a runner. But like, yes, you're doing it now. Maybe you didn't have the best time. You didn't do it. It's about doing it. And if you do it enough and you enjoy it and allow yourself to not enjoy it, you're going to have a beautiful life. You're going to do this thing, okay? If you're not, if you're cringe, if you're afraid, you're going to be bragging. If everything I put out there has to be perfect, I'm going to guess you're never going to put anything out.

Wow.

Wow.

Good stuff. We're coming up on the hour.

An hour.

I want to thank you. It's a great way to cut that right there. It's a really good message. I think we've talked about a lot of really good things. My goal here, it's funny, I use a AI every morning. It's a product called Rosebud. It's an executive function app, sort of journal thing. And I pay for it. And it actually talks to you when you pay for it. And that's like I, I'm not alone. And it actually quoted the Gandhi. I think it was Gandhi who said something like, you know, something about living Life and service to others. And, you know, that's really what I'm trying to do with. With everything I'm doing now. I do need to make money. Like I said, Orthodontics, Berkeley School of Music.

But scared.

But every time I lean into that, things go really wrong. And anytime I lean into. What can I do today to help Phil Carillo? And how can Phil Carillo and I help musicians? You know, what can we talk about today that helps? Even beyond the music world, other people. Things start to open up a lot more.

Yeah, I think. I think everyone's. Well. Yeah. Yeah. We can end it on that. I like what you service. What that's. This applies to music, but applies to everything for me. This is my belief system that doesn't matter if you're selling cars or playing music. If you're coming from service. I feel like you're kind of in an abundant state. Things will somehow mystically, magically work out if it's all about you and everything. And I'm not to say it. Not to say that doesn't have some part in the universe, but in my experience, it's just very difficult to be abundant if I'm not coming from service.

Thank you so much. I came upon you TikTok, and you were surfing and. And all this other stuff, and then Steel Pan. I'm like, this guy is really living, like a very content, dynamic life. I had no idea what I was getting into. Zero clue from that. You are literally an ocean of information and experience. So thank you so much.

All good.

Enjoy your. Your California dreams and we'll talk again.

Okay, sounds great.

That's Phil Carillo. You can find him as Steel Print Parade music creation over on TikTok. And the surfing plus steel drum content is exactly as good as it sounds. The thing that stuck with me from. This one quality is your enemy. Phil's whole message is that the work happens in the trying, the falling on your face, showing up, coming from a place of service instead of scarcity. That's the thread. Whether you're booking weddings or building something from scratch. If this hit home, do me a favor. Follow the show wherever you're looking, listening, and send it to one musician who needs to hear it. You can even monetarily support the show. There are links in the description for that. To join the support crew. And hey, if you've ever handed someone your set fee and quietly wondered what your actual hourly rate was, or you've showed up at a venue not knowing the things you needed to know before. You walked in the door, that's the. Whole reason I built Money Gigs. Free download, and there's a code in the description that gets you into the venue database. Thanks for listening. We'll talk soon.