We recently connected with Mary Cutrufello and have shared our conversation below.

Mary, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I began taking guitar lessons at age 9. There was a guitar in my childhood house that no one knew how to play. It’s not even clear why it was there. It fascinated me. My mother–ever the educator–said I could play it if I took lessons. So I did.

I was an indifferent guitar student for the first couple of years, dutifully learning my chords and scales without really understanding how it all fit together. I had been writing songs too though, thinking that that was required; all my rock heroes had their own songs, after all.

Two major events jumpstarted my musical journey. The first was the Major League Baseball strike of 1981. With my main summertime passion suddenly gone, I had the time and the headspace to really delve into music in general and guitar specifically. I didn’t really get back into baseball until the mid-90s, by which time I was playing music professionally.

The second was the death of my grandmother, who had been living with my family. When Grimma died, I inherited her bedroom. No more sharing a room with my little sister! The effect of having my own space, with a door I could shut, was nothing short of life-changing. It still took many years of growing, listening, and practicing to become proficient on the guitar, but I finally had a place to stretch and experiment on my own. The songs and instrumental compositions began to pour out of me!

Playing guitar and writing songs are very different skills. I wouldn’t have explained it that way at that age, but I did work on them separately even then. I think that’s made it easier to play guitar for others, and to write songs that don’t need me singing them to work. That in turn makes all of those skills more useful and valuable.

Learning to play with others, lead a band, and run a business all came later, on a fairly standard trajectory. But all of it built on the things I put together in Grimma’s old bedroom, with all the endless time and intrepid excitement of adolescence.

Mary, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I play guitar, sing, and write songs. I started at 9, and “turned pro” at about 23. As a child in the suburbs of New York City, I grew up listening to Springsteen and Sondheim: classic rock and Broadway. In college, I discovered country music. When I graduated, I moved to Texas to learn the genre and also to figure out how to make a living as a creative.

That was in 1991. In the years since, I’ve made my living working in the rock and country genres, as a writer and instrumentalist. I perform under my own name, and as a sideman (on lead guitar) for others, predominantly in the Upper Midwest, where I’ve lived for almost 25 years.

While my calling card has always been live performance, in my opinion, a great song is at the foundation of any meaningful musical endeavor. I’m proudest of my body of work as a writer. I’ve taught guitar for years, but my most challenging and fulfilling students are those who’ve come to me to unlock the secrets of songwriting.

The two skills are related but not the same!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Making a living as a creative is not like other ways of keeping the lights on! First of all, it’s not a job, or even a career. It’s a calling. That sounds romantic, and I suppose it is, but it also means forgoing or at least backgrounding many of the securities that lots of folks use as markers of stability or success in life. Depending on your path, that could mean where and how you live, whether you have a significant other or raise children, little things like health insurance–it goes on and on.

If this is your life’s work, you’re willing to walk away from all of that, and anything else that might get in your way. You don’t even think about it. If you get where you set out to go, the choices you made will be obviously right. If you don’t, you can take comfort in knowing you lost the game honestly. There have been things in my life that didn’t go my way, but not because I didn’t give it everything I had!

The acceptance of that level and type of risk, and the way we actually embrace it, is I think one of the biggest things folks don’t understand about how creatives think. For me, it hasn’t been a cramp in my style–I was born to this life, and I don’t even consider it a sacrifice. But I understand that it’s not how everyone wants to roll. When friends ask me to talk to their kid who’s shown an artistic or entrepreneurial bent, I always tell the kid don’t do it! Because if they just want to play at it, it’ll break their heart. Better it happen now.

But if they’re called to it, it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else tells them. They’re just going to do it!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Pay us.

That’s obvious, and yet so many of us scrape by. None of the rest of it matters.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Just calling yourself a creative in no way means you’re entitled to the largesse of the populace, to say nothing of the State, or, historically, the Royal Court. You have to be worth the money,

That said, it’s the valuation of that worth that I take issue with.

I’ve been playing gigs for $300 for 30 plus years. Believe me, $300 went a lot farther in 1991 than it does today. For what it’s worth, the $300 gig as a lingua franca goes back to at least the 196os. If I could make a living on $300 gigs in the early 1990s, imagine how far $300 went in the 1960s!

This issue is WAY more complicated than this, but this is the crux of it. And it’s the only thing that matters at the end of the day. No, all creatives are NOT created equal, even at the lowest levels, and no one is entitled to anything, ever, especially if they don’t move you.

But if they do…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.marycutrufello.com
• Instagram: @cutrufello.mary
• Facebook: https://Facebook.com/marycutrufello
• Youtube: https://YouTube.com/marycutrufello

Image Credits

David Tanner Photography