"Now there's someone in the band who knows how to run a business."

July 25, 2019 6:31 PM

Zia McCabe, keyboardist of the Dandy Warhols, is now also a Portland real estate agent.
posted by escabeche (35 comments total)

An online acquaintance of mine was buying a house in the Bay Area, and he claims that the real estate agent was Ouchy The Clown.
posted by thelonius at 6:36 PM on July 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

Good double heist, contribute to the mystique of an area and then participate in the gentrification that sells it off and pushes out the people that that reputation was built on.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:37 PM on July 25, 2019 [14 favorites]

Portland, of course. Hopefully a quirky web series comes of this.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:42 PM on July 25, 2019

Now when you're movin' to the city
You worry on your mental health
Yes you do, now
Oh, you gentlemen and ladies
You've got to be good to yourself
Mm
So get yourself into a ranch-style home
When the neighbor's never more than a stone's throw
Well I can tell you for the money
The simple life honey is good
posted by taquito sunrise at 6:44 PM on July 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

A long time ago
We used to be friends
Are you thinking of purchasing a house in the next quarter at all?
posted by rikschell at 7:07 PM on July 25, 2019 [16 favorites]

Come on now honey/ market’s hot, market’s hot! 🎵
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:15 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

get back to me when i can buy a house from anton newcombe
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 7:16 PM on July 25, 2019 [16 favorites]

Good double heist, contribute to the mystique of an area and then participate in the gentrification that sells it off and pushes out the people that that reputation was built on.

Oh I see you've met everyone on my City Council.
posted by humboldt32 at 7:27 PM on July 25, 2019 [9 favorites]

Bill Janovitz from Buffalo Tom is also in real estate now.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:43 PM on July 25, 2019 [2 favorites]

“as things stand at the moment if you’re not a real estate agent, then you’re probably being a fool to yourself and a burden to others.”
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:04 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Stumptown is for closers!
posted by zamboni at 8:08 PM on July 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

I mean, someone from Thin Lizzy sold me this house years ago, but I guess I'll buy it again...
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:15 PM on July 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

He's just following in Jonny Fritz, LA's premier used house salesman's footsteps.
posted by a halcyon day at 8:33 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Crap, I'm not a misgenderer, just a bad typist. She.
posted by a halcyon day at 8:40 PM on July 25, 2019

Maybe she's just riding the wavves?
posted by Philipschall at 9:16 PM on July 25, 2019

if you’re not a real estate agent, then you’re probably being a fool to yourself and a burden to others

But if I'm buying real estate in Portland, I'm a burden to myself and a fool to others.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:28 PM on July 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

But what is Denk from New Bad Things doing?
posted by snofoam at 9:46 PM on July 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

I guess he has to compete with Sunny Day Real Estate up in Seattle
posted by Jon_Evil at 12:29 AM on July 26, 2019 [7 favorites]

Gentrification is so passé.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:16 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I was once shown a string of crappy apartments in Brooklyn by a real estate agent who claimed he was engaged to Tigra from L'Trimm
posted by phooky at 5:21 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you dig on
vegan food
Come over to my work
I'll show you a neighborhood that you'll really love
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 5:32 AM on July 26, 2019 [5 favorites]

Came to this thread for a We Used To Be Friends joke. Was not disappointed.
posted by seasparrow at 6:17 AM on July 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Dig
posted by Maaik at 7:14 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this. But this is completely unsurprising to me. Real estate people generally try to become minor celebs in their own world... they even routinely use their faces in all their ads and business cards. Who wouldn't want to work with the woman from the Dandy Warhols? You either pick an agent based on word of mouth or... looks, I guess? The "good" ones have great reputations.

And it's not like being a band member in the DWs makes one a multi-millionaire.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:28 AM on July 26, 2019

Yeah, I'm consistently fascinated and depressed by how commonly you hear that [$non-primary member of band big enough that you know of them but not huge] wound up in some mundane job later. It absolutely makes sense but it's a bummer. Not sure if it's still the case, but I know that for quite a while it was pretty easy in Minneapolis to wind up with one of the former members of Son Volt as your bartender.
posted by COBRA! at 7:45 AM on July 26, 2019 [4 favorites]

Fuck the Dandy Warhols, the more I know about them, the less I like them.
posted by evilDoug at 8:50 AM on July 26, 2019

Weird, Bela Balogh of Portland band (and recent Oregon Music Hall of Fame inductee) 3 Leg Torso is also a real estate agent.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 9:35 AM on July 26, 2019

I know that for quite a while it was pretty easy in Minneapolis to wind up with one of the former members of Son Volt as your bartender.

One of my favorite bands is Kikagaku Moyo, and apparently one of their members (the guitar player, I think?) is a bartender at just, like, a neighborhood bar in Tokyo. They're big enough to be known internationally, but obviously they don't rake in the cash.

I feel like the only bands that allow you to quit your day job are the really, truly big ones. I remember an article years ago about how all the members of Grizzly Bear, at the time one of the most celebrated bands, were all working menial jobs. And then especially after a band's peak, you get all these people who wind up becoming realtors and science teachers and stuff.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 9:44 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Well, yeah. Bands make almost no money from record sales or streaming . You can't support yourself for life by doing van tours of rock bars and selling t-shirts.
posted by thelonius at 10:34 AM on July 26, 2019

One of my favorite bands is Kikagaku Moyo

Hell yeah, they rule.

Most of the musicians I know are bar tenders or retail workers or something of the sort. It's insanely hard to get time off to tour if you're in a 9 to 5 gig. But I also know several from touring bands that are in tech, which doesn't shock me at all.
posted by Young Kullervo at 10:53 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Kikagaku Moyo played at least two amazing sets at Pickathon last year. I'd never heard them before and was blown away. But it kinda makes more common sense for a musician to bartend, at least while they're an active musician.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:11 AM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

He wasn't a real estate agent, but Jesus built my hotrod.
posted by Quindar Beep at 12:02 PM on July 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

(A member of) your favorite band sucks (in their choice of profession).
posted by ultraviolet catastrophe at 12:11 PM on July 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

I know that for quite a while it was pretty easy in Minneapolis to wind up with one of the former members of Son Volt as your bartender.

My son has done the lights for Son Volt a few times and they run a seriously bare bones tour. It's just the four musicians in a van and they use the sound and lights of whatever venue they're at. He said that they didn't even give him any notes on how to run the lights.
posted by octothorpe at 12:33 PM on July 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

I tried to look up Elizabeth Elmore from Sarge and The Reputation a little while back, just in case there was any chance she had flunked out of law school and decided to start a new band or something, and found out she's now an assistant appeals counsel working at the United Nations Security Council's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague. I don't know exactly what that means, but I was duly fucking impressed.
posted by Mothlight at 12:36 PM on July 26, 2019 [4 favorites]