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Making Music, Making Ends Meet with Amber Lawrence: ‘The Stability of a Regular Pay Cheque Is Something I Gave Up a Long Time Ago’
Award-winning Australian country artist Amber Lawrence is the latest guest in our 'Making Music, Making Ends Meet' series
Musicians have always worked day jobs and side hustles to fund their art, and as Australia and Aotearoa continue to battle a cost-of-living crisis, the need to do so grows greater.
In Making Music, Making Ends Meet, Rolling Stone AU/NZ meets different musicians to discuss their life away from music, how they sustain their careers, and what they think needs to be done to improve our music industry.
Through a mixture of op-eds, interviews, videos, and more, our series captures their experiences, both good and bad, as well as their hopes and fears for the future.
Next up is Amber Lawrence, who has spent more than two decades building a career as one of Australian country music’s most enduring independent artists.
Her eighth studio album, Suburban Cowgirl, recently earned Lawrence her first No. 1 on the ARIA Australian Albums Chart, while her extensive regional touring schedule continues with an appearance at this year’s Deni Ute Muster. Check out her full tour dates here.
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But behind the records, festivals and live shows is a career Lawrence approaches very much like a business. A former Qantas finance graduate who spent nine years with the airline before pursuing music full-time, she now self-funds and self-promotes her tours, relying on the accounting skills she picked up long before music became her day job.
Below, Lawrence discusses the realities of independently funding a music career, why touring margins are under increasing pressure, the sacrifices she has made over 20 years on the road, and why spreadsheets might just be one of her greatest assets.
Amber Lawrence’s Suburban Cowgirl is out now.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ: Can you remember your earliest job?
My earliest job was genuinely entrepreneurial – I lived near a golf course in Sydney and started cleaning golf clubs for the neighbours and relatives. Very niche, very me. After that I became a clown at children’s parties, which I was absolutely dreadful at. No tricks whatsoever. Still got paid, though, so perhaps that says more about the parents than the clown.
My first proper paid job was at a pizza shop in a Westfield food court. I was in Year Ten. It was a formative experience in customer service, time management and the art of not eating your entire wage in garlic bread.
Have you had a favourite job?
I worked at Qantas for nine years and there were stretches of that where I absolutely loved it. I joined as a finance graduate straight out of university – one of the best decisions I ever made, this was my dream job, before I even knew that music was my dream.
The role I loved most was in the Treasury Dealing Room, where we were moving enormous sums of money and navigating foreign exchange on a scale that still makes me blink when I think about it. I wasn’t the one signing off on the big calls, but being in the room, being part of it – in an airline where something extraordinary is happening every single day – was genuinely thrilling.
What I didn’t know then was how much that experience would shape me as a business owner. Learning the value of cash flow management, understanding how money moves, how to read a balance sheet – that Qantas chapter is the reason I can run a music career as a business rather than just as a dream. I’m more grateful for it now than I think I was at the time.
Has the balancing act between music and work gotten easier or harder over the years?
Music is my full-time job – I don’t have a side gig that sits outside the industry. But the balance within the music itself is something else entirely.
The parts of this career that actually generate income – the touring, the merchandise, the live shows – represent maybe twenty percent of what I actually do. The other eighty percent is everything that makes those twenty percent possible: making content, writing songs, planning logistics, booking travel, marketing shows, managing the admin, running the business. That eighty percent doesn’t pay directly, but without it, the twenty percent doesn’t happen.
It’s not a complaint – it’s just the reality of being an independent artist in 2026. But the imbalance is real, and I don’t think it gets talked about enough. The romanticised version of a music career is all stage lights and songwriting. The actual version involves a lot of spreadsheets and relentless consistency – it’s exhausting!
What significant sacrifices have you made to make it as a musician?
I think it’s only in hindsight that you can see the sacrifices clearly – you’re too busy making them at the time to name them.
The most obvious one is the events you miss. Weddings, birthdays, funerals – the moments that matter to the people you love. I’ve missed so many. The people who truly get it keep inviting you anyway, and you’ll forever be grateful for their grace. But you also notice when the invites quietly stop, not out of unkindness but just because people assume you won’t be able to make it. That one stings a little.
Then there’s the financial sacrifice – the stability of a regular pay cheque is something I gave up a long time ago, and I don’t always think people understand what that actually feels like to live with. You’re constantly budgeting around when money is coming in, hustling for the next gig, carrying a low-level anxiety about cash flow that never fully goes away. It’s manageable, but it’s always there.
And then there’s the one I find hardest to talk about. Pouring yourself so completely into a career – which is what the music industry generally requires if you want to make it work – means that other things get pushed back. For me, that meant starting a family later than I’d have chosen. That’s not music’s fault, and it’s not a regret exactly, but the years of touring and career-building meant I didn’t start trying until my late thirties, and that came with its own very difficult chapter. Any pursuit you give yourself to fully carries that risk. You don’t always see the cost until later.
Do you think there’s a taboo in the music industry about working part-time jobs to fund one’s career?
Absolutely not – and I think it would be a shame if there were. It’s not just common, it’s often necessary, and it’s completely understood by anyone who has actually tried to build a music career from the ground up.
We all want to play music. Most of us don’t want to live on the bread line. So you do what you need to do – whether that’s a job within the industry or something completely different on the side. Some of the most talented musicians I know have built careers that way, supplementing the dream until the dream can support itself. There’s no shame in that. There’s a lot of sense in it, actually.
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Have you found it easy or difficult to get funding for your releases and touring over the years?
I’ve had all sorts of models across the eight studio albums I’ve released – from fully independent to being signed to labels – and I’m very lucky right now to be with ABC Music, who assists with the funding of these more recent records. That support makes an enormous difference.
In terms of government grants, I’ve received three or four across my entire 20 year career, but definitely submitted many more applications which didn’t make the cut, and I’ll be honest – I think that’s largely on me. I didn’t always have the forward planning in place early enough to have the numbers and the information needed to make a strong application. Grants require you to be organised and future-focused in a way that doesn’t always come naturally when you’re deep in the middle of making something. That’s something I’ve gotten better at, but it’s been a learning curve.
Tell us about the economics behind your most recent tour. Was it self-funded?
All of my tours are self-funded and self-promoted – every cost comes back to me. That’s just the reality of being an independent touring artist, and it’s something that I’m proud of.
For this most recent tour, though, I was genuinely fortunate to receive a Sounds NSW Travel and Tour Grant, which covered travel expenses and various costs across eleven of the shows. That kind of support doesn’t sound glamorous, but when you’re independently funding a national run, having even a portion of the travel costs covered can be the difference between a tour that makes sense financially and one that doesn’t. I’m grateful for it.
How thin are the monetary margins when it comes to something like a national tour?
The honest answer is they are often on the thinner side. But I don’t think there’s a universal number, because every tour is different – and what determines whether you come out ahead or behind isn’t just the ticket sales, it’s how well you know your numbers going in.
My accounting background is genuinely one of my greatest assets as a touring artist. I live by the spreadsheets I have for every tour. I know what I need to sell, what I need to recoup, and if/and where the gaps are before the first show happens. If merchandise needs to do heavy lifting to get us to break even, I know that before we load the van. If we need to add a house concert or a smaller regional gig to plug a hole, I can see that coming rather than discovering it at the end.
From my experience, the artists who get into financial trouble on tour are often the ones who reconcile at the end and go ‘damn, we lost money’ – and I’ve worked hard to make sure that’s not how I operate. You have to know your numbers before the show, not after. Costs are so high currently, from fuel & travel, to marketing, to food costs whilst on the road – so the margins are definitely under pressure. The difference is whether you’re managing them or just hoping.
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Do you worry that independent musicians are going to be priced out of touring in the near future?
Honestly? No – though I understand why the question gets asked.
I think what sometimes gets lost in this conversation is that touring isn’t one-size-fits-all. Yes, the seven-piece band national tour with full production is getting more expensive and more complicated. But that’s not the only way to get your music to the people who want to hear it. You can strip it back. You can do house concerts. You can play regional venues, community halls, smaller rooms with devoted audiences who drive two hours to see you. The market tells you what’s viable if you’re willing to listen to it.
If you have fans – whether you’re independent or signed – you can make this industry work for you. The form might change, but the connection doesn’t have to.
Have you found your fanbase to be based more overseas or at home? And how important has your music community been to your career?
My fanbase is very much rooted in Australia – particularly regionally. And my music community isn’t just important to my career. They are my career.
They are the people who turn up to the shows, buy the merchandise, spread the word, and then do it all again. Year after year. It is genuinely humbling to see orders come through from the same names, again and again – people who have been with me for a decade, fifteen years, more. There is no version of this career that exists without that core group.
I always think about it this way: if I were a coffee shop, and I had the number of loyal, returning customers I have, I’d be doing very well. My job is to make sure they always know how much I appreciate them – because without them, there is no job. “Sing Me Home” from my new album is a love letter to 20 years on the road, and openly a song of gratitude to the fans that have given me a career.
It’s the regional touring, the small venue touring, that built this career and continues to sustain it. Those are the shows that build the brand, build the numbers, and ultimately earn me a place at the bigger festivals. I didn’t get there from the top down. I built it from the ground up, one room at a time. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
What can the government do better to support artists and musicians?
A few things come to mind immediately.
First, the superannuation legislation for artists & musicians needs serious attention. The way it currently works is genuinely nuanced and often confusing – clearer, fairer guidance would go a long way toward making artists feel supported rather than bewildered by a system that wasn’t really designed with our business in mind.
Second, the grant and funding support that emerged during Covid was a lifeline for many of us, and that need hasn’t gone away. The cost-of-living crisis is real and it’s hitting independent artists hard. Continuing to invest in that support isn’t charity – it’s an investment in culture.
And third – and I feel strongly about this – we need meaningful protection from AI. I’m genuinely concerned about what’s happening to our art. The very thing that threatens to diminish artistic connection and impact is being built, in large part, on the work of artists who were never asked and never compensated. Our art is being used to train systems that could replace us. That cannot continue to be allowed. This isn’t a fringe concern – it is one of the defining issues facing creators right now, and the government has both the power and the responsibility to act on it.
What do you think needs to be done to improve the live music scene in ANZ?
I’ll be honest – I don’t have a neat, comprehensive answer for this one. The market ultimately determines what it wants and what it will sustain, and that’s a complex, moving thing.
What I will say is this: increased exposure for Australian and New Zealand artists across media, major festivals, radio and streaming platforms would make a genuine difference. Not just to the artists, but to the culture. We have extraordinary talent in this part of the world that doesn’t always get the platform & or respect it deserves at home, let alone abroad. If the industry and the platforms that drive discovery chose to champion local artists more intentionally, the live music scene would feel the benefit. The audience is there. It’s about making sure they can find us.
Finally, tell us about your latest release!
Suburban Cowgirl is my full-circle story.
It’s the album of the girl from the suburbs – from Mascot, Sydney, to be precise – who built a twenty-year country music career from the most unlikely of postcodes. The songs paint the picture of that life: the suburbs wherever they may be, the desire to live true to your calling, the importance of community, and yes, the very real need to offset mum guilt with a glass of wine and your best girlfriends.
It’s fun, it’s honest, it’s unapologetic – and it’s the most fully Amber Lawrence version of country music I’ve managed to make since I started doing this in 2004. I’m very proud of it. I hope it finds the people who need it.
