We recently connected with Rebecca Roudman and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rebecca thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
I was a barista for 3 weeks, and other than that, the only jobs I’ve ever had have been music related. For many years, people have been told that being a full-time musician is unobtainable unless you are super-famous, but I’d love to get the message out there that this is not true!
To earn a living as a full-time musician, I’ve focused on a couple key components – being versatile and hustling like crazy. By being versatile, I mean being able to play just about any style of music. I went to college to become a classically – trained cellist and have had a great career in symphonies. However, that can only get you so far, so I’ve also explored playing hip-hop, recording movie soundtracks, improvising, and many other avenues for performance. My main gig is fronting a blues and rock band called Dirty Cello.
Dirty Cello is my main source of income, and with that group, I travel all over the world playing big shows. We just returned from a crazy trip to Portugal and Northern Ireland. Early on, this group was just meant as a hobby, but it became something much bigger and we started out by playing coffee shops, then moved to bars, and now we primarily do theaters and festivals.
Continuing with the theme of versatility, I’ve added 3 other groups to my Dirty Cello schedule. The first is the San Francisco Yiddish Combo (a Klezmer band), then the Renegade Orchestra (a giant rock and roll orchestra), and finally the Death and Taxes Swing Band (a 1940’s style big band.)
With all of these various projects, they would remain unheard, except for hustling. By this, I mean that I devote a substantial amount of time to emailing, making connections, and above all, sounding good when we perform in order to be invited back.
Now I make a full-time living as a musician, but there were definitely hurdles. One of our earliest shows, we were offered payment in pastries, but by the time the show was over, the coffee shop had run out of pastries. This is a silly example of learning how to make sure contracts are in place, and to also make sure that we’re performing at quality venues. Now instead of pastries, the focus is on making sure that my bands get the right percentage of ticket sales and that we’re playing at a place which does their part for advertising.
You can find my various projects at their respective websites and social media, and we’ll come play just about anywhere – just be sure to have enough muffins on hand!
Rebecca, 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?
My name is Rebecca Roudman and I’m a cellist and vocalist who stands up and rocks out instead of sitting down and playing softly. I began my career at age 7 as a young cellist following the standard path – lots of lessons after school, then music school, and then the world of classical cello. After lots of years of this, I got a bit bored, and now I lead my band Dirty Cello to play at various events darn near anywhere you can imagine. We’ve played close to the Arctic Circle in Iceland, deep in a middle-eastern desert, and of course all over the United States.
What you can expect if you hire my band or one of my side projects is energy, excitement and tons of fun. My band doesn’t stand on ceremony and loves to engage with the audience and we have just as much fun as someone attending our show.
The music we play starts with blues and rock and roll and goes from there. On any given show, you can hear us performing Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones, and even some Dolly Parton, plus our own original tunes.
The main problem that I have as a band is convincing people that a cello can rock out. The way I do this is to make sure people understand that this isn’t some sleepy, candle-lit project, but is a more akin to a shredding guitar band, just with a cello.
I’m very proud of all of the exciting things my band has done, and I love to remember a specific moment when we were playing at a big blues festival on the main stage. On that specific day, and on that stage, my band was the only one that didn’t have a Grammy, but we held our own.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being a musician is getting to make connections with our fans. We’re not the most well-known band, but we have some very loyal folks – people that will come out and see our shows over and over again, and we love to make them happy. We also love to meet new folks, and introduce people to our band.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Picture this – my band has loaded a cello, a violin, a guitar, a bass, a bass amp, and a drum set onto a plane and flown from the Middle East to Germany to catch a connecting flight to Iceland. We get off the plane and look for our next flight. It was then we realized that although we got off at the right airport, our next flight was at a completely different airport. It turns out Berlin has 2 airports.
With very little time to spare, we went through customs, grabbed our luggage, and slowly ran outside carrying all of our gear. Each taxi we tried to flag down refused to take us with all our gear, so we split into 2 groups and hailed 2 separate taxis.
Like a scene from a movie, we raced across town, 2 taxis following each other, and got to the correct airport. Bailing out, we went through security, dealt with all the trouble of getting our gear on the plane, and then made it with just enough time to get on the next flight. That night we rocked a big show in Iceland.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Dirtycello.com
- Instagram: @dirtycello
- Facebook: @dirtycellomusic
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@dirtycello
Image Credits
Jason Eckl