We were lucky to catch up with Lara Ruggles recently and have shared our conversation below.
Lara, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?
The music industry is up against so many factors that make it almost impossible to make a career as an artist. There was a study that came out of Chicago showing that music is a HUGE driver of local economies – every $1 spent on a concert ticket results in $12 more being generated for the surrounding economy on sales at local restaurants, hotels, bars, and retail stores. Yet the US spends EIGHTEEN TIMES LESS on music and the arts than any other similarly developed country. On top of that, music streaming has created a situation where artists can’t generate album sales because almost no-one buys albums anymore, (but it costs more and more to make them) and streaming doesn’t even pay pennies. (Literally, it pays less than a penny per stream – significantly less). Add to THAT something I just found out a few days ago – that songwriters can’t legally unionize because we were classified as independent contractors during the Reagan era. So you don’t become a songwriter with making a profit as the end goal. You write songs because you are loudly called to do it by a voice that your body and your mental health won’t allow you to ignore. This is illustrated by so many artists I know who look more successful than I am, who have way more followers, but are racking up credit card debt to go on tour and make albums and who all have stories of receiving an annual check from Spotify of about twelve dollars for their thousands of streams. I remember being on tour with my band in my twenties and my van broke down – it was going to cost about $900 to get it back on the road, and I only had about $300 in my bank account. My dad bailed me out that time, and I called and left him a voicemail thanking him for keeping our tour going and apologizing for choosing such an unprofitable, illogical career. When he called me back, he said, I’d like for you to reframe that, because how is it any more logical to go do something you hate doing every day just for the money? That was maybe the most comforting thing anyone has ever said to me about a career in music, and I still carry it with me every day.
Lara, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m a singer-songwriter performing down-tempo electronic pop anthems and acoustic folk songs under the stage name Sharkk Heartt, and I’ve released an EP, two albums, and four standalone singles since 2011. I’ve been writing and performing songs since I was 15 and a HUGE fan of Jewel, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Tracy Chapman, and Natalie Merchant. I’ve toured the United States something like a dozen times – by myself, with my own band, and as a musician and crew member for other artists such as Gregory Alan Isakov and poet Andrea Gibson. The biggest moments of my career so far have included opening a Christmas show for LeAnn Rimes (she wore red pajamas, and I never got to meet her) and being selected as the artist-in-residence at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park earlier this year, which allowed me to spend a month on the Big Island writing and recording new songs, and having close encounters with more sea turtles than I can keep count.
I believe music can be both healing and revolutionary, helping us feel less isolated, providing expression and context for the things most of us feel, and putting to words a vision for a kinder world. The songs I write are affirmations of our fundamental wholeness and worth, rejecting the narrative that our value as humans depends on our labor, productivity, or accumulation of wealth.
I write songs on commission and occasionally record vocals and instrumentals for other artists and songwriters. I also consult with both creatives and nonprofit organizations looking for fundraising guidance and written content creation.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In 2017, when I was 30 years old, I had been touring and working hard to make a career in music for about 7 years. I had done just about every part-time independent-contractor gig job under the sun, including driving for Lyft, delivering for Postmates, Grubhub (the worst!), and Amazon, teaching sewing classes for kids, running merch on tour for bands much more successful than I was, nannying, and offering free samples of products in grocery stores. I was so broke that I was donating plasma for money even after I moved back in with my parents. At one point in the middle of a shift for a food delivery app, with $5 left in my bank account, I had to make a choice between eating lunch that day and putting enough gas in my car to finish out the shift. Once I moved back in with my parents, things got a little easier. I was able to write a handful of new songs and learn how to use Ableton Live to produce electronic arrangements, live loop my vocals, and lean into a new sound. I went out on tour again. And I used the skills I had built as an independent musician to start a new career in fundraising. Just before the COVID pandemic, I was working a job I loved at a music venue, and touring and playing music with poet Andrea Gibson. Then the pandemic hit, tour got cancelled, and so did all the shows scheduled at the venue where I worked. I jumped into action and put my newly honed fundraising skills to work, overseeing a GoFundMe that raised over $20,000 to pay the venue’s furloughed employees, and working to coordinate with the newly-formed National Independent Venue Association and other venues across the state to advocate for federal relief funding for independent music venues, which were facing a much longer shutdown than most businesses. Ultimately these efforts were successful, and a $16 billion relief package was passed in Congress, the largest public relief for the arts in US history. The venue I worked for received a $2.3 million grant, and I was elected to the board of the National Independent Venue Association and served a 2-year term. However, after all that, the venue told me there would be no permanent position for me, so I made another big transition and accepted a position as Director of Development and Marketing at YWCA Southern Arizona. Now, I work with an incredible team to fundraise for YWCA’s mission of eliminating racism and empowering women, and I make music on the evenings and weekends. I’ve continued to release new music, with my most recent single, “How to Love”, coming out last year, and I’ve started touring again this summer!
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
At one point one of my side hustles was writing instagram captions for a woman with a bohemian clothing company, and she often paid me several weeks after invoices were due. I was expecting a larger-than-usual payment that was already three weeks late when I left on a tour with my band, and we had to drive all the way from Denver to Seattle for our first show. The payment got later and later, and by the time we reached Seattle, I had had to borrow money from every one of my band members and my boyfriend at the time just to fill our van up with enough gas to get us to the first show. If we hadn’t done well and made good money in tips and CD sales at that first show, I do not know what I would have done. But we did, and each gig got us to the next one, so that even though that payment didn’t get made until after the tour was over, we made it through. And I learned to put it in writing on my invoices that once a payment was 5 days late, I would start adding daily late fees. Which didn’t stop this particular person from paying me late, but it did compensate me for the extra time I spent reminding her that her invoices were overdue.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sharkkheartt.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/sharkkheartt
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lara-ruggles-b2258490/
- Youtube: www.youtube.com/LaraRuggles-SharkkHeartt
- Other: www.patreon.com/sharkkheartt
Image Credits
Kevin Hainline Pete Connolly Bianca Zendejas Mike Tallman