The Only Thing He Missed Was The Sound Of Frothing Milk...

This quote, I think, captures the essence of what it's like to scratch away as a singer-songwriter. It was originally printed in the inside of the gatefold cover of Gordon Lightfoot's album GORD'S GOLD:

"Playing in bars had its advantages. You could try out all kinds of new things and make all kinds of mistakes and hardly anyone ever noticed. Sometimes you could hold the audience by throwing in some off-color humor and following it up with a good up-tempo country song or a bawdy ballad. Sometimes they'd be watching the hockey game on TV with the volume turned up so you couldn't sing over it. So you just sat down, waited for the period to end, and got a few songs in during the intermission. But that was O.K. It was paid rehearsal." --Gordon Lightfoot