A car is a great help. In fact, lack of a car was one of the reasons I packed it in back as my main source of income back in the late Sixties.

Hauling a guitar around on public transportation is, in itself, a problem and using public transportation is usually pretty time-consuming. Also, public transportation doesn't always go where you need to go, at least without transferring a couple of times. When it came to gigs, I got by with a lot of help from my friends. But when it came to teaching (about half of my income), I was pretty much on my own. I gave private lessons in a studio connected with a music store and that was no problem. But a lot of my income came from teaching folk guitar classes. These classes were popular enough so I was getting calls from places well outside Seattle to come and teach there. I had the time, but I had no way to get there unless I shot a big portion of the day riding public transportation. This meant I would have to drop some of my private students. If I'd had a car, I could have done it. And I would have been able to afford to remain a full-time musician.

As it was, I was making a living, but it was pretty marginal, and I was getting pretty tired of that. I didn't have enough savings for a down payment on a decent (i.e., functioning) automobile, and month-by-month amount of my income wasn't consistent enough for me to feel safe in applying for a car loan even if I could get one. With a car, I could have taken enough singing and teaching jobs to stabilize my income. Without it, no. Catch-22. So I bagged it, went to work for Boeing, and sang just for fun.

Yes, it really helps to have a car.

Don Firth