McCraven, who moved to Chica­go from Mass­a­chu­setts in 2006, has played some of Chicago’s biggest stages, toured the Unit­ed States and Europe, and record­ed albums with var­i­ous bands, includ­ing his own. He played his first pay­ing gig at age 12; now 30, he has been a full-time musi­cian for near­ly a decade. Today, McCraven expe­ri­ences the frus­trat­ing para­dox fac­ing all musi­cians try­ing to earn a liv­ing: though music is more ubiq­ui­tous than ever, con­sumers are less will­ing to pay for what they hear. Even so, he says, glam­orous stereo­types per­sist. This inter­view has been abridged and edited.

As the son of an African-Amer­i­can jazz drum­mer and a Hun­gar­i­an vocal­ist, from his ear­li­est years Chica­go-based drum­mer Makaya McCraven saw up close how hard pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians had to work. Because of this, he says, ​“I’m not dis­il­lu­sioned about the life I’ve chosen.”

Bud Free­man, a tenor sax­o­phone play­er for 47 years, spoke to Terkel for Work­ing about the shock he fre­quent­ly encoun­tered when he told strangers he played music for a liv­ing. Though he admit­ted to fre­quent­ly sleep­ing in until noon, he also told Terkel about the dis­ci­pline required to fos­ter musi­cal cre­ativ­i­ty while sur­viv­ing as a full-time musi­cian — as he said, ​“The dream of all jazz artists is to have enough time to think about their work and play and to develop.”

For three years in the ear­ly 1970s, jour­nal­ist Studs Terkel gath­ered sto­ries from a vari­ety of Amer­i­can work­ers. He then com­piled them into Work­ing, an oral-his­to­ry col­lec­tion that went on to become a clas­sic. Four decades after its pub­li­ca­tion, Work­ing is more rel­e­vant than ever. Terkel, who reg­u­lar­ly con­tributed to In These Times, once wrote, ​“I know the good fight — the fight for democ­ra­cy, for civ­il rights, for the rights of work­ers — has a future, for these val­ues will live on in the pages of In These Times.” In hon­or of that sen­ti­ment and of Working’s40 th anniver­sary, ITT writ­ers have invit­ed a broad range of Amer­i­can work­ers to describe what they do, in their own words. More ​“Work­ing at 40” sto­ries can be found here .

Peo­ple think we just jam out and get free drinks. Some peo­ple think we’re not work­ing, because they don’t think about how much you have to prac­tice, the amount of work it takes to play your instru­ment well.

Peo­ple think music is just a gift and it’s born out of noth­ing — that it’s in your genes. No: Musi­cians work hard. You prac­tice for hours and hours and hours. For me, with my par­ents being musi­cians, it wasn’t that they genet­i­cal­ly bestowed on me the gift of music, but that they were will­ing to let me put many, many hours of my life into it.

Now, I can be work­ing with 10 to 12 bands at a time, and it’s a lot of music to learn. You have to do your home­work; you can’t just show up to the show with­out learn­ing the music first. So there’s a lot of work that I do at home.

And then there’s busi­ness side: the sched­ul­ing of tour dates, the work to get more work, the email­ing, the back-and-forth, trav­el arrange­ments, all the logis­tics that go behind it. You don’t have a team of assis­tants doing that for you unless you’re pulling in a good, con­sid­er­able amount of mon­ey. And then those peo­ple end up mak­ing more mon­ey than the musicians!

My wife will some­times say to me, ​“You work all the time.” It’s a night­time busi­ness, so I can get a text about a gig any­time from eight in the morn­ing to two or three in the morn­ing. You try to respond to peo­ple quick­ly because they might be call­ing a lot of peo­ple at once. There are a lot of ups and downs. Just because you have a great gig or you’re suc­cess­ful for a moment, that doesn’t mean you have any sort of secu­ri­ty, because there’s no retire­ment or anything.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways of going about mak­ing a career in music. You can be in a band, which is risky because a lot of bands aren’t mak­ing much mon­ey — you’re work­ing for mon­ey brought in at the door. You’re wait­ing for the big break.

Then there’s the work­ing musi­cian method, where you refuse to play for under a cer­tain amount but you approach it as labor: You’re going to play a gig at a hotel and you’ll be in the cor­ner, for exam­ple. When the gig’s over, you’re done. That’s very dif­fer­ent from the idea of being in a band.

What I’ve learned dur­ing my time in the indus­try is to diver­si­fy my income and to be proac­tive. If you’re wait­ing for some big artist to give you a call with a life-chang­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, or if you’re the band wait­ing for the big break, you’ll keep on waiting.

But if you’re con­stant­ly try­ing to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for your­self, it’s very pos­si­ble to have a career in music. You don’t even nec­es­sar­i­ly have to be that great, unfor­tu­nate­ly, if you’ve got good busi­ness skills.

There are two sides to it, for me. One is, what am I doing as an artist? Am I cre­at­ing my own prod­uct to sell, to become known and draw peo­ple to my shows? The oth­er impor­tant side is becom­ing known by oth­er musi­cians as some­one who’s reli­able, as some­one who can play the music well and show up on time — you want to be pro­fes­sion­al and to not cause any rifts.

Has the record industry’s col­lapse impact­ed your career?

I’ve nev­er had a liveli­hood that was based off of record sales — the only peo­ple who made lots of mon­ey off of records were sell­ing huge num­bers. But one of the things I see in the music indus­try now is the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the dis­ap­pear­ing mid­dle class of musicians.

These days, big labels put a lot of mon­ey into pro­mot­ing big-name artists whom they know will sell. In doing so, they’ve tak­en more and more mon­ey out of artist devel­op­ment. So you have few­er mid-lev­el artists who are signed and mak­ing a living.

We’ve seen a lot of indus­tries for work­ing musi­cians dis­ap­pear. The adver­tis­ing indus­try once pro­vid­ed a lot of work for musi­cians. Now ad songs can be eas­i­ly done by one per­son at a computer.

And then you see, with reg­u­lar local gigs, that the pay scale hasn’t changed in 30 years. These old­er guys, they used to make good mon­ey play­ing a jin­gle in the stu­dio before going to play a club gig that night. They got paid the same rate that I’m get­ting paid to play. So you can see how tough it can be — the cost of liv­ing has changed.

Part of it is younger musi­cians who are not as tal­ent­ed accept­ing less mon­ey for gigs. They just want to play to get their name out there. I under­stand that, but it hurts the industry.

But part of it also has to do with cul­ture — peo­ple don’t real­ly care about the music in a cer­tain type of venue, or how high-qual­i­ty it is. So lots of gig rates are too low.

What’s the biggest mis­con­cep­tion peo­ple have about the work­ing life of a musician?

There are so many. Say I meet some­body in an air­plane. First ques­tion I get is usu­al­ly, ​“Oh, do you play in a band? My nephew’s in a band.” I’m thought of as some­one who prac­tices in a garage and plays a show a few times a month or some­thing. After I explain, they’re always sur­prised, like, ​“Wow, you do that all the time, like, that’s your job? You don’t have any real work? What’s your day job?” So the big mis­con­cep­tion is that being a musi­cian is like a hobby.

And then there are a lot of peo­ple who think music is about being famous, or try­ing to get famous.

The truth is that there’s such a wide range of things that peo­ple do with­in the indus­try beyond club shows and con­certs: teach­ing, per­form­ing as a ses­sion per­son, being an engi­neer, or work­ing as a wed­ding band or a cor­po­rate group. In Chica­go there are a lot of what are known as ​“cor­po­rate bands” — a com­pa­ny has five or six bands that they run and hire out to per­form for cer­tain clien­tele, for con­ven­tions or cor­po­ra­tions throw­ing par­ties. The com­pa­ny han­dles the busi­ness side. They can charge a lot of mon­ey and pay the musi­cians pret­ty well.

I some­times tell peo­ple that if you’ve ever been some­where that there’s been live music, I’ve done that. I’ve played in some very big shows: in small are­nas, as an open­er for big artists on sev­er­al occa­sions or at large fes­ti­vals. But I’ve also done wed­dings and restau­rants; I’ve played on a movie set. I’ve been in the stu­dio for com­mer­cials, for records and for record­ing class­es with guys learn­ing to engi­neer. I’ve also taught: I’ve done work­shops at uni­ver­si­ties, high schools, ele­men­tary schools and per­formed for stu­dents. I’ve played at an air­port before — that was a weird episode.

I played a funer­al one time. It was def­i­nite­ly strange play­ing an emo­tion­al event for strangers. I had nev­er been to an open-cas­ket funer­al before. And I wasn’t real­ly aware it was a funer­al before I took the gig: Some­times you don’t ask enough ques­tions when some­one calls offer­ing the gig and you need the work. And then you’re play­ing six feet behind a cas­ket look­ing out at fam­i­ly and friends mourn­ing. I def­i­nite­ly didn’t smile dur­ing that gig.

Are you still able to enter a cre­ative ​“zone” when you sit down and begin play­ing at most gigs?

I make that a goal of mine. If you start doing too many straight work gigs, then you can lose the cre­ative spir­it. At cor­po­rate band gigs, for exam­ple, there can be a lot of extra­ne­ous noise to deal with, and peo­ple say­ing you’re play­ing too loud. Those gigs aren’t for being cre­ative, they’re for being wall­pa­per. That’s why I real­ly pre­fer not to do those kind of gigs. I only do them to fill my sched­ule, to keep me busy and bring in more money.

Luck­i­ly, because I invest so much time into cre­ative projects and have cre­at­ed my own unique voice, I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get called as much for that stuff anymore.

Is it hard to jug­gle a mix of cor­po­rate gigs and your own bands play­ing orig­i­nal music?

It can be sur­re­al. I’ve had that: the expe­ri­ence of play­ing a big fes­ti­val in Chica­go in front of five or six thou­sand peo­ple — maybe more — with all the food you can eat and back mas­sages back­stage. Then I get off stage and got­ta rush down­town for a gig that’s going to pay me just as much as the fes­ti­val paid me. But the accom­mo­da­tions and per­cep­tions are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent: It will be a pri­vate res­i­dence for, like, the 65th birth­day par­ty of the broth­er of a news anchor or what­ev­er, and you have to ask the door­man to let you unload equip­ment in the back. You play but can’t min­gle. You’re heard but not seen.

So you have to code-switch a lot. One day you’re the guest of hon­or, the next day you’re a peasant.

What’s the key to mak­ing it on your terms?

You have got to work hard. It pays to have a cre­ative out­look and entre­pre­neur­ial approach because nobody knows what’s going to hap­pen with the music indus­try. Like I said, the mid­dle class of musi­cians is shrink­ing. But at the same time, the Inter­net pro­vides cer­tain avenues for inde­pen­dent artists. Of course, it’s hard to com­pete with the major labels, because they have the Inter­net too! They have the Inter­net and they have the mon­ey, the mar­ket­ing mus­cle — the capital.

So how do you cre­ate a decent life as a work­ing musi­cian? I real­ly think it’s about being an orig­i­nal artist: cre­ate a body of work and be hired for being you, rather than just being a musi­cian for hire.

You have to con­stant­ly cre­ate, col­lab­o­rate with peo­ple and diver­si­fy the work. By doing that, I’ve been able to stay busy and avoid things I’d rather not do. Some musi­cians would rather have a day job and only do exact­ly what they want to do. But I look at it as a livelihood.