All on Black

All On Black

Or: How I Spent £18 Being Petty and Got Reimbursed by The Universe

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The thing about being a musician that nobody tells you when you're seventeen and dreaming of sold-out shows is that you're basically a professional gambler. Except instead of betting chips at a casino, you're betting your mental health, your bank account, and occasionally, missing saying goodbye to your evil cat because you're in a different country chasing a gig that's about to get cancelled anyway...

The middle of October was a lot to process. I flew to England from Spain for what was supposed to be a paid gig - the whole reason for the trip, really. We'd done the promotion, booked rehearsals, got the band together, coordinated schedules. Everyone had taken time off. Our tour manager was ready. The van was packed.

And then, 48 hours before showtime, we got an email. Not even a phone call. Just an email saying we'd been dropped from the bill. No apology. No negotiation. No offer of anything to make up for the time, money, and energy we'd invested.

When we arranged a phone call to discuss it, we got gaslit. Every time we opened our mouths we were told "you're being emotional", "you're rude", or "you have an attitude." At one point, the promoter's wife randomly appeared on the phone call like a plot twist nobody asked for. It was the most unprofessional thing we'd dealt with in a long time.

That's when we looked at each other and knew: time to burn this bridge to the ground and walk away.

The Financial Roulette Wheel

In music, you're constantly throwing cash at things that might pay off. Might. Maybe. Possibly. If the stars align and Mercury isn't in retrograde.

Band rehearsals. You can't just show up cold to a gig (well, you can, but it's painful for everyone involved). So you're already investing before you've earned a penny, hoping you'll make it back at the show.

Recording costs. Most of us don't have investors, so we're using credit cards to fund our albums. We're gambling that high-quality production will attract high-quality listeners who'll actually buy the CD or stream it enough times to... well, let's be honest, streaming doesn't pay anything. But you tell yourself it's worth it because you believe in the art.

Early in my career I spent every penny I had on an album that never got released. The production was rough, the songwriting was still developing, and it was a huge waste of money. Some songs were good enough that I re-recorded them years later but mostly it was a very misguided attempt at a body of work. It got me to the next step and gave me a few (very expensive) demos to work with. Mostly, it taught me what NOT to do.

Tour deposits. Sometimes you have to pay the venue, pay the sound engineer, and then hope you make it back on ticket sales. It's terrifying. It's also sometimes necessary.

Merch. Don't even get me started on merch. Half my music room is boxes of t-shirts from 2012. Someone will buy an extra-small of a design I printed a decade ago, and I'll spend 45 minutes digging through boxes wondering if it even still exists. The worst is when you lose track of your stock on tour and accidentally oversell on Bandcamp. You're often selling to existing fans, so new t-shirts for tours means that merch is a regular expense.

PR campaigns. The biggest gamble of all. You throw thousands at PR companies who promise the world and deliver a single blog post on a website with 12 monthly readers. We don't really do traditional PR anymore unless it's someone we know and trust. We've had too much experience of pouring money down the drain.

The Time Gamble

I'll admit it: I love a last-minute panic. There's something about the adrenaline of "where are my in-ears?!" five minutes before stage time that just does it for me. It's a problem. I know.

But the real time gamble? It's your entire life.

While other people are buying houses and having kids and doing normal grown-up things, you're jumping in a van for another six-week tour. You're missing birthdays. You're missing family milestones. Mish missed her grandma's 100th birthday because we were touring France.

And that week in October my cat Dustbin Sam - yes, that was his name, and yes, he was the most evil creature to ever exist - passed away while I was in England. I wasn't expecting it. He'd been ill, but it escalated fast. And there I was, in a different country, unable to say goodbye to this important (albeit demonic) part of my life.

For a gig that got cancelled anyway. You want to talk about resenting a situation? That's it. That's the feeling.

But ultimately I understand and appreciate that this is a choice I've made. A career in music means sacrificing moments like that. It means being okay with living by the seat of your pants. It means accepting that you're going to miss things, lose things, and often question everything that's brought you to the place you are now.

Which brings us to...

The Emotional High Stakes Table (Or: Betting Your Mental Health)

This is the big one. The gamble that costs the most and takes the longest to recover from.

Every time you step on stage, you're making yourself vulnerable. You're putting yourself in a room full of strangers and letting them control your emotional state by how they respond to your music. Some people will love it. Some won't give a shit. And somehow, it's always the ones who don't care that get in your head.

I remember someone coming to the merch desk after a Crimson Veil gig and trying to teach Mish how to do a pig squeal. He wouldn't stop or leave and he eventually had to be escorted from the room. Another time, some guy asked if I was going to wear my hair "real sexy" like in my music videos to "make the men weep." Unfortunately these kind of things are something you experience time and time again at gigs.

You'll watch friends' careers explode while yours feels stagnant. You'll compare yourself. You'll wonder when it's your turn. You'll log into your PRS statement and see royalty splits going to people you never want to see again, and it'll sting every single time.

The worst part is when these doubts creep in while you're performing. You'll tune into the one person talking at the back, and suddenly your internal monologue is: "I'm a failure. This song is crap. Why am I here? I've dragged everyone to this terrible gig and we're not good enough..."

It can be really tough.

The Petty Pot (A Silver Lining)

The thing that gets us through the low points is definitely our sense of humour. After we got dropped from our October gig, we posted about it on social media - professionally, just saying the promoters made a business decision and we'd been removed from the bill. We put a "CANCELLED" stamp over our band name.

Then I accidentally boosted the post. I meant to boost it a little bit so our fans would know not to show up, but in the chaos of the weekend I spent £18 on it before I realised it was still going.

That £18 of pettiness delighted me more than it had any right to. Our cancellation post got over 100 likes and comments asking what happened. I sat there with the popcorn just DMing everyone who messaged me.

And then - this is the best part - a royalty payment came through from one of our distributors the following day. It was exactly £18.

The universe literally reimbursed me for being petty. So now we have The Petty Pot - a fund specifically for petty boosts, petty posts, and petty energy. Because sometimes, being petty actually feels very high vibe. I'm literally laughing as I write this paragraph. It fills me with an unreasonable amount of joy.

Why We Keep Playing

So why do we do this? Why do we keep betting everything on something that might never pay out?

Because we can't do anything else.

No, really. I wake up some mornings and think, "I don't have the energy to do this job." And then immediately: "But what else am I going to do?" I'm completely unemployable in any other field. This is all I've got.

But I feel ok about it. Because even when things go wrong - and they will, constantly, in spectacular fashion - there's something about creating art and putting it into the world that makes it worthwhile.

I've got five albums and an EP out as Hana Piranha. That's a massive body of work. When things go wrong now, it's a blip. The foundation is there and the gambles get safer as I go, because I've already proven I can survive them.

Every small win resets your willingness to bet again. Every time you challenge yourself - even if it fails - you grow stronger. You learn what not to do. You figure out how to problem-solve in impossible situations. You become resourceful in ways that surprise you.

We managed to replace the show for the gig that was cancelled. We found an amazing horror venue in Blackpool with a lovely owner. The sound was epic, the crowd was lovely, and we made new contacts that have already led to offers for February. We're booking our next tour now, and that feels empowering.

We dodged a bullet with those promoters. Imagine if we'd booked a whole tour with them (as we'd been planning to) instead of just one gig.

For Every Musician Reading This

If you're putting it all on black right now and it feels terrifying: you're not alone. You're doing the right thing by carrying on.

The financial gambles, the time gambles, the emotional gambles - they're all part of this absurd, broken, beautiful industry we've chosen. You'll lose money. You'll lose time. You'll get your heart broken. But nothing is ever wasted.

Every gamble, even the ones that fail, is an investment in yourself and your career. They teach you resilience. They show you what you're capable of. They connect you with people who'll support you when everything goes wrong.

And sometimes, the universe reimburses you £18 for being petty, which is the most joyous thing of all.

You're defined by your best work, not your worst. Your wins will outlast your losses. And the real success is that you're still here, still creating, still betting on yourself.

As Madonna said: "The most controversial thing I've ever done is to stick around."

So stick around. Build your portfolio of proof. Invest in the people who invest in you. And remember: you can't win if you don't play.