The Shoestring

Making Music on a Shoestring

It's the beginning of September, and I hope everyone is settling into the new season well. There's something about this time of year that brings fresh energy and motivation—that familiar back-to-school feeling that makes me feel totally fired up for the final quarter.

I'm finally getting back on track with my exercise routine after several months of dealing with mild injury and illness that kept setting me back. I've lost a lot of fitness and strength during that time, but I'm very happy to be running more regularly again and feeling like myself. It's funny how physical setbacks can ripple into other areas of life—I feel like I'm fully back to work now too after months of disruption.

This renewed focus feels like the perfect time to share some brutally honest insights from a recent podcast conversation I had with Mishkin Fitzgerald about working on a "shoestring budget." We talked about the reality of making music when you're basically broke, and I realised we've learned some things the hard way that might help other musicians avoid some of our more spectacular failures.

Listen to the podcast here

Asking for Help (And The Ick Factor)

I'm going to be honest—asking for favours makes my skin crawl. There's this awful moment when you're about to hit send on an email asking someone to work for free, and you just feel like a parasite. But here's the thing: if you want to make music and you don't have money, you're going to have to get comfortable with this feeling.

I did a Kickstarter for my Wingspan album, and it was honestly one of the worst experiences of my life. You're basically going to everyone you know and saying "give me money," and it's horrific. But you know what? People want to help. The trick is not being a dick about it.

When I approach someone for a favour, I try to think about what I can give back. Not immediately—sometimes you literally can't—but eventually. I play violin, and I've done string arrangements for people in exchange for work. My relationship with Jel (who does all our artwork) started as a skills swap and now we work together all the time. He does design work that would take me hours and probably look rubbish, and I do strings for his project Third Bloom in return—again, something that's easy for me but valuable to him.

But sometimes people just help because they like what you're doing. And that's okay too. If I had loads of money, I'd definitely fund artists I love. Some people feel the same way about your music.

The Art of Making Something From Nothing

From when I was a child until very recently (God bless Vinted!), all my clothes came from charity shops. At the time it always felt a bit frustrating not being able to buy exactly what I wanted, but looking back, it probably made me dress in ways that were way more interesting than if I'd just bought stuff from normal shops.

Having no money forces you to be creative in ways that having a budget never would. Some of my favourite music videos have been the cheapest ones we've made. Birdeatsbaby's "Better Man" video cost us maybe £200 in total—we got costumes from charity shops, used a pub across the road for free, and most of the cast were friends and fans. It looks like something from Peaky Blinders. Arron West and I shot Back Again in a day, just walking around town with a camera.

For my most recent "Elixir of Life" video, my biggest expense was ballet lessons (which added up, but were a very gradual expense so it didn't sting). I hired a council hall, and when they quoted me a price I couldn't afford, I just asked if they could do it for half. And they said yes. Sometimes you just have to ask. The setup was very basic—Arron West set up a single light in the space. And I'm so proud of what we achieved because the finished video just looks so expensive!

The key is knowing where to spend money when you have it. For videos, I always put money into skills—dance lessons, fight choreography, freediving. Those are the things that make videos special. I like to get creative with props—handmade or from places like Facebook Marketplace. For our HVIRESS video Golden Apple we hung cotton wool from the ceiling, which is about as low budget as it gets!

When Everything Goes Horribly Wrong

Let me tell you about the worst videoshoot of my life. I was doing "Blue Skies" at Rickmansworth Aquadrome with a whole wedding scene planned. We had actors, makeup artist, my brother with his double bass—it was obviously a proper shoot. And then we got kicked out because we didn't have a permit.

I was devastated. I'd paid people and had no more money. Fortunately, my videographer Arron had a friend Damian whose garden we used two weeks later, but that moment when everything falls apart and you have no buffer? That's the reality of working on a shoestring.

You learn hard lessons when you're broke. I once forgot to put a track on an album before getting CDs pressed. Mishkin ordered artwork that came back completely pixelated. We've all slept in horrible places, driven through the night to get home, and asked friends to do things that were probably too much.

I remember dragging Arron West and a friend (again, Damian) to Dartmouth to shoot "Waiting to Burn" in brutal cold, then booking us into what turned out to be a hostel where we couldn't even hang out together after the shoot. At the time I felt awful about it, but that video is one of my favourites and again, I'm so proud of what we created.

The Stuff That Actually Matters

Here's what I've learned: you can cut corners on almost everything, but don't mess around with production quality. I had a whole album I never released because it just wasn't good enough sonically. Poor production will hold you back more than any cheap music video ever could.

People judge your music by how it sounds. A lo-fi production at the start is fine if that's your thing, but if your songs sound demo-quality when they should sound professional, that's a problem. Invest in a decent mic, learn to record at home, but when it comes to mixing and mastering, find the money somehow.

The Reality Check

Being a musician means accepting that you're in a job where the product often doesn't pay you. It's not fair, and it's not how it should be, but it's how it is. You shouldn't have to work for free or ask friends for favours constantly, but if you want to make music professionally, this will sometimes be inevitable.

The relationships you build while working this way become everything. The people who help you when you have nothing are the ones who'll still be there when things get better. And they do get better—not always financially, but you get better at knowing what you're doing.

I'm not going to pretend it's always fun. There have been nights when I've gotten into bed after a brutal shoot day, knowing someone's still driving home at 2am because of my song, and I've felt so guilty. But there have also been moments of pure pride when we've pulled something amazing together from basically nothing.

The key is remembering that when you're asking for help, you're not just taking—you're trying to create something that will bring joy to people. That's worth something, even if it doesn't always feel like it at 3am when you're driving back home on a week of no sleep.

Working on a shoestring teaches you things you can't learn any other way. It forces you to be resourceful, to develop your own artistic identity, and to build the thick skin you'll need in this industry. If you can afford to simply pay other people to handle everything, you miss out on this crucial development. I wouldn't change any of it—seeing yourself grow and adapt under pressure is incredibly satisfying. I don't regret the hard things I've had to do on a budget because they've shaped me into the artist I am today.

If you want to hear more of these stories and probably some I forgot to include here, you can listen to the full podcast episode where Mishkin and I go into way too much detail about our various disasters and triumphs.