Double Duty: Dana Goldberg

For all the readers who’re just not ready to quit their jobs and plunge full-force into the lifestyle of freelancing, I offer this new column: “Double Duty” reveals the lives of artists and entrepreneurs striving to bring their creative goals into fruition even while juggling full-time employment.

Is it really possible to live that kind of double life? I wanted to know, so I’m asking.

“You don’t need to completely jump off the cliff.”

Six years ago, when I nine-to-fived with Dana Goldberg, I knew her as the friendly editor who slipped away once a week for singing lessons. More recently, I caught a glimpse of her at one of my favorite evening haunts …. on stage. Turns out Dana’s been fronting for Young Moderns, a rising San Francisco band (“like a leisure suit for your ears”). As she’s pursued her musical interests, she’s not only managed to keep her day job, but even to scale the ranks.

Can you talk a little about your day job–the basic responsibilities and demands on your schedule?

I’m an editor at a small nonprofit press that publishes multicultural and bilingual picture books. My job is to acquire, develop, and edit a small number of books a year, to choose an illustrator for each title, and to work with a book designer on the art direction and layout of the books. Thankfully, it’s not a job I frequently have to take home with me, though I do have to travel a handful of times a year for conferences and such. Our production schedule gets pretty hectic twice a year, when we’re getting ready to send our book files and artwork to our printer, but I can generally anticipate and prepare for that.

Tell us a bit about the band. How did your involvement with them unfold?

We’re currently a six-piece band that performs original music under the power pop / post-punk umbrella, I guess — our influences are people like Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Blondie, Joe Jackson, the New Pornographers, the Jam, Talking Heads, and Devo. Maybe four years ago I had been taking voice lessons when a friend suggested we play music together. Never having done anything like that, I jumped at the chance, and roped in my boyfriend as well, who plays bass and some guitar. At a certain point he got in touch with another friend who is also a very talented guitarist, and we took it from there, finding a drummer on craigslist, figuring out a way to work collaboratively on the music, lyrics, arrangements, etc. Our first drummer moved back East and after finding our current drummer, we actually changed musical directions. We’ve been playing together as the Young Moderns (though not necessarily with the same configuration of people) for about two years now.

How often do you practice, and how frequent are your gigs?

We practice 2 or 3 evenings a week, depending on what we’re working on (whether we’re recording, practicing for an upcoming show, working out new songs, etc). I think we’ve played 15 shows since December of 2005.

Do you ever get paranoid that you’re not giving enough attention to one job or the other?

I don’t necessarily get paranoid that I’m not giving enough attention to one or the other, but sometimes the band does feel like a second job, in terms of the time commitment and the creative effort it requires. They’re also similar in that the more you put in outside of your required hours, the better you’re going to be at them, for sure. But I don’t see them as being in competition for my time and attention.

Are there skills that you’ve kept sharp in your day job that might have paved the way for your musical endeavors?

 

I think in some ways there’s quite a bit of overlap. The most obvious thing is that I use my writing and editing skills when I’m trying to write lyrics. Also, my job requires me to be constantly reading and learning and making connections between things that might make for interesting books, and writing lyrics demands the same thing. Lastly, so much of my job is about negotiating different perspectives and egos, nurturing creative people to do their best work, asking the right questions, bouncing ideas around, being positive about solving problems in the creation of something beautiful…and those all apply to the band as well, of course.

Ultimately, what’s your professional goal?

My goal is to produce something meaningful, something fulfilling for me personally that also makes the world a better or more beautiful place. That goes for my job and my extracurricular activities (so to speak).

Any tips for those who are nursing a dream but aren’t ready to quit their jobs?

Turn off the TV! You’ll find you have so much more time to devote to what you really want to be doing. And just do it — do something.

If you want to write, take a class or start a blog. If you want to be in a band but you’ve never done it before, use craigslist to find people who are similarly interested and inexperienced. Seriously, there are so many more hours in the day when you turn off the damn TV. So much of pursuing any dream is just getting off your ass and doing it — doing something, anything. You don’t need to completely jump off the cliff. There are tons of opportunities out there to be doing what you want to be doing, if you’re open to seeking them out — or creating them yourself if you have to.

And finally … where can we find your music?

On the Internet, of course, at http://youngmoderns.com . We’re also on the ever-ubiquitous MySpace at http://myspace.com/thevandykepajama .