Herstand has carved out a successful career as his own manager, agent and publicist.
When Ari Herstand told his guidance counselor at Madison Memorial High School that he wanted to be a rock star, she laughed at him. “She said I had a better chance of becoming an NBA star,” recalls Herstand, who graduated in 2003.
His parents didn’t react much better a couple years later when he told them he was dropping out of college to pursue his musical dreams. “My dad nearly had a heart attack,” says Herstand.
His parents eventually accepted his career choice after they attended his jam-packed concerts in Minneapolis — his home base from about 2004 to 2010. And they will likely be in the front row for his solo performance at the High Noon Saloon on Feb. 26. Sam Lyons, another up-and-coming singer-songwriter — whose dad, Phil, as it happens, was Herstand’s middle school art teacher — opens the show.
Now based in Los Angeles, singer-songwriter-guitarist-trumpeter-loopmeister Herstand has quieted the naysayers and forged a successful career as the quintessential DIY musician, serving as his own business manager, booking agent and publicist. In addition to his 600-plus live performances and handful of live and studio albums, his music has been featured in numerous television shows and films; he writes for music trade magazines; and he’s even dabbled in acting, including a guest spot on Mad Men as a hitchhiking musician.
As his indie career began to bloom, other musicians sought to tap into the body of knowledge he had accumulated through trial and error. They asked him about practical matters like how he set up his tours, how he got his songs placed on TV shows, how to get all the royalties that are owed and how to pick the best platform for getting material on iTunes. He tried to respond to everyone, but eventually the volume of questions became overwhelming. So about five years ago, he launched his own blog, “Ari’s Take.” The blog became so popular it landed him a book deal. Weighing in at more than 400 pages, How to Make It in the New Music Business — released in December 2016 by the W. W. Norton imprint Liveright — may be the most comprehensive guide for DIY musicians written to date. Herstand is doing a book signing at the Barnes & Noble bookstore on Madison’s west side on Feb. 28.
Herstand’s live shows are mostly loop-based solo performances where he builds songs by layering elements like beatbox, guitar, trumpet and vocal harmonies atop one another on the fly. His current tour includes those kinds of shows in his old stomping grounds of Madison and the Twin Cities, but mostly the tour is about promoting the book, so it includes lots of college speaking engagements. Some of those colleges plan to incorporate the book into their music business curricula. Herstand believes college courses on the business side of music are badly in need of updating to reflect the industry’s new realities.
“When I was at McNally Smith College of Music [in 2004 and 2005], they were teaching me the old music business, how things used to operate,” Herstand says. “But this was in the height of the Napster craze. iTunes was just becoming popular. Things were drastically changing. So I didn’t really learn anything that was immediately applicable to my solo music career.”
Even while the old music industry is crumbling and traditional music business jobs are disappearing, Herstand believes there has never been a better time to launch a career as an independent musician.
“Stories of managers or labels screwing over artists are endless,” he says. “But now everything is digital and transparent. You don’t need an entire accounting department to monitor your downloads. More than any time in history, musicians are able to take back control of their careers and their music, and don’t need the permission of the traditional gatekeepers to have a career.”
