In this economy, you can't just do one thing anymore and hope to make a steady career of it. No, sir - if you want to make ends meet, you have to get a side hustle going.
Blues singer Nellie "Tiger" Travis, who will be one of many performers at the fifth annual Raleigh Blues Festival this weekend, has quite the fascinating side hustle: She sells her own line of costume brassieres.
It all began when Travis, 51, went out looking for a bra that could go with her ensemble for a show. "What happened was I had in mind of a rhinestone piece to wear, a bra to wear," says Travis, on the phone from her Chicago home. "And I went to this place to purchase one and they wanted $100 for it - just a bra! So, I decided I could do it myself. And after I did me one, I was like, 'OK, I can do this.' "
Her affordable, bedazzled bras for others are for sale on her website ( www.nellietravis.com), in three designs: studs, hearts and bling. Travis can make bras (which she says can usually take less than three hours if a definite order is made) for various sizes, from an A cup all the way to a DD, all in the $30- $40 price range. And while she hasn't necessarily made a killing off the bras (she says she's sold about eight of them), making them shows Travis' talent isn't only in the blues-singing department. She says she has her Mississippi upbringing to thank for her industrious ways. "Being from the South, we were taught to make do, because I grew up very poorly and my grandmother taught us to emphasize on the things that we needed."
Once you hear that Travis grew up in the cradle of Delta blues, you might assume becoming a blues singer was an obvious choice - especially since she now has made a home in Chicago, that other North American blues temple. Yet that originally wasn't the plan. Mostly coming from a gospel background, Travis didn't get fully into blues until she moved to Chicago from Los Angeles, where she spent the late '80s performing R&B and top-40 music in clubs.
She came to Chi-Town in the early '90s to take care of her mother, who was ill. "I just kind of went around to a few clubs to sing and look at how the blues scene was," she remembers. While she was a bit apprehensive about working in a scene she didn't much about, Travis came around once she got her first gig at a blues club in '92. "Within five years of being here, I was on every billboard, with people calling me and hiring me to sing the blues - and the rest is history."
Her mother became well enough to see Travis become a local fixture on the blues scene and adopt the nickname "Tiger," a name given to her by one of her cousins. Unfortunately, a New Year's Eve show in 1998 would be the last her mom would get to see. "My mother was videotaping me," she recalls, "and she fell dead at my feet with a massive aneurysm."
While the death of her mother was difficult, Travis persevered, building a rep as a brash, boisterous blues performer. With mentors like the late Chicago blues goddess Koko Taylor having her back, she spent the past decade turning and belting out such tunes as "Tornado Wrapped in Fire," "Do What He Didn't Do," "If I Back It Up" and, last but certainly not least, the self-explanatory "Slap Yo' Weave Off."
While she enjoys performing for her stateside kinfolk, like most blues performers, Travis has found she gets more love overseas than in her own backyard. "When I go to Europe, it's like I am respected as the celebrity that I am," she says. "When I go to Japan, baby, they just make me feel so welcome. When I go to Greece, they make me feel so welcome. Everywhere in Europe I go, they give me celebrity status - which is what I am."
But she doesn't go just abroad for the star treatment. "They show you how much they appreciate the music. Some of them don't even understand English. It's just the fact that they respect our craft. They're respectful of what you're doing, and they show props to that."
Travis says she would love to move to some exotic, European locale like Milan (along with her husband, Buddy Guy drummer Tim "Awesome" Austin), but that isn't in the cards at the moment. Besides, she has her hands full with three boys - one teenager and two grown men in their 30s.
For now, she's content dropping new music (she has an album coming out in the summer) and touring, giving blues fans her trademark, vocal ferocity. "I want them to take with them the fact that I am one of the hottest artists out there and I sing strictly from the soul and it's felt through every soul." She adds, with a chuckle, "And I should be working a lot more than I am."
In the meantime, while she waits for more gigs to come her way, she'll gladly take your orders for custom-made bras.
