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Making a living as a musician or artist can be a life of sacrifice and uncertainty. The music industry has been gradually changing and artists taking on a lot of their own promotion, investments, recording and booking is much more common place these days than joining a label and being marketed out to hopefully rise up into stardom and making a decent income. The major label formula is more of an exception than a rule and in this area it’s relatively rare. There are some artists who are now with labels from the area have definitely gained National and International recognition through that route but self promotion is how many get started out and where many stay. In the case of Venus DeMars, s/he has made a living playing music for many years, but according to the Minnesota Revenue Department s/he is a “hobbyist” not a “professional” artist and since s/he didn’t make enough as a performer, DeMars now owes nearly $100,000 in back taxes since her work-related deductions are considered illegitimate.

DeMars has been a musician, performer and artist in the area for over 20 years. DeMars grew up in Duluth and moved down to Minneapolis to play in a band called Straight Face in the 80s. S/he eventually started up her current band, All The Pretty Horses, in 1994. The Pretty Horses have played in the Twin Ports on several occasions at venues such as The Main in Superior and Pizza Luce’. Venus will be making appearances this weekend at R.T. Quinlan’s on Friday and at Prove Gallery on Saturday. Unfortunately s/he recently suffered a heart attack and will be doing short acoustic performances rather than her usual high energy glam-rock set.

We had a chance to talk to DeMars a little bit about her upcoming show and struggles from her audit.

Reader: Tell me a little bit about how things transpired with this audit.

DeMars: Being in a band and having the opportunity as a trans person, originally we started to do the classic thing where you try to play a lot, get a label interested in you and try to get something like that happening. But we were also hearing all these horror stories of people getting signed and having a problem with that. They’d get used up or the label wouldn’t treat them right. So we had two minds on that, we’ll talk to somebody if they talked to us but we’ll also see if we can do a DIY thing because that seems to be going well for people. We did get approached by a friend of mine from Twin/Tone and we got on Twin/Tone but that crashed and burned, the partners on Twin/Tone didn’t agree with us being on the label and it kind of got shelved and it never worked, so we gave up on it. And then my being trans, it really became evident that’s one of the reasons there wasn’t anybody looking to sign us because they were too afraid of me being transgender and in rock and roll they couldn’t figure out a way to promote me. They were very conservative, but not now, this was the early 90s. We even talked to a lawyer in New York at one time…the lawyer said with the trans thing, if I toned it down it would be ok, but he kind of suspected that I wasn’t going to and I verified that, “no, I’m not, it’s who I am.”
Basically my band has spent the last ten years being an independent record label for my own band and promoting it and trying to position it every way I could in order to advance it on a career trajectory that I felt was going to result tipping the balance until we could make enough money to begin to hire people on a professional level who would be able to work as our management agency and that ideal.

I’m financing all of the albums, I happened to find a friend of mine who is a producer, I hired her, she was very good and we started going to New York to do the albums and that made them sound better and better. I had opportunities to tour England and I took advantage of that. The documentary on us came out and that opened more opportunities to tour New Zealand and go back to England and all over the world and this costs money. We had to finance our own way at some point, there was always this investment that was going on and after ten years of that it resulted in losses and that was the flag for the audit.

The Auditor came in and didn’t listen to me and said, “you’re doing your business wrong. You shouldn’t be promoting anything at all, you’re past the start up. Your name’s out there enough already, you don’t need to promote at all, you don’t need to tour.”

Reader: So what did they expect you to achieve?

DeMars: Initially they expected me to be signed to a major label and follow this old world classic way of doing it. I tried to explain to them that that’s old-school from the 1970s stuff and it doesn’t happen that way any more.

Reader: I think that’s becoming less and less and that the music industry is evolving away from that from what I’ve noticed.

DeMars: Absolutely, the internet has opened up all kinds of opportunities. I was trying to explain to the auditor all of this and he was nodding and seeming like he was understanding, but would come around with the next round of questions as if I wasn’t even there and the things that I was saying would just flood back into the old argument that I’m not interested in profit because I’ve got music on The Current in Minneapolis, because they don’t pay royalties. That’s ridiculous, it’s really well known station. Then they ask what I’m doing to promote my record, this is what I’m doing, and then they use what I say against me.

Reader: One thing you touched on when I initially contacted you was that your album, “10 Bones,” that your investment in that furthered their suspicions against you.

DeMars: Yes, the audit period is the last three years before 2012. So from 2009, 10 and 11 I was investing in “10 Bones.” The band had come out of hiatus and we reformed it…I needed something to present the new formed band. The bar was set high enough where I needed to make it a good album and unique. I went with the vinyl since that’s become popular, I was happy to be able to do that, also digital and also a CD. I hand screened the vinyl to make them collectable, it’s limited to 500 and only printed 50 at a time so each looks different. I number them all so it’s the real deal. That was the last three years and that’s when the audit came in and said, “this is what we’re going to look at,” those three years. I said, “ok, that’s fine, this is what I was doing, these are the losses for those years. I was recording out in New York, most of the losses where around that, I was (band of the week continued)
touring during that time to present the new band. I had established a new route out South West, so I was working that, getting people familiar with us and building an audience base along the way. And then I was planning on selling the album and making a profit after that. When I told them that, they didn’t really care. I gave them one of the albums to listen to get a sense of the quality of it and collectible nature of it and that I do this on my own, it was like I was just talking to nobody. In their mind they felt that I didn’t press enough of the vinyl. The fact that it’s collectible shows that I’m not interested in profit, I should have made more than a 1000 or 2000 of them.

Reader: To me it’s amazing that they have these expectations of you. Now what does this mean and what do face in the future?

DeMars: What it means now is that they’ve made the final determination that I’m not a working artist, therefore my tax status as a business has been denied for the state. They say that I cannot write anything off as a business anymore and that they’ve denied my tax status that I’ve had for 15 years…Their reasoning is that I’m not interested in profit. That’s what they are trying to prove and they’re trying to prove that by saying I’m not on a major label, I’m having music on The Current, I’m promotional touring and that’s not considered appropriate, these are things that they say that I’m running a business without ever thinking that I’ll make a profit. In fact what they’re saying is that I’m pretending to run a business, having fun instead and causing myself and my wife to not have to pay taxes.

Reader: I’m guessing music is one of your primary incomes. I’m not too sure what else you do.

DeMars: Yeah, music is one of the things I’m known most for, that fuels my income. I also have income as an artist and performance artist and get grants.

Reader: As far as your image and everything you are ever since I met you probably ten years ago, that seems to be what you’re doing.

DeMars: I tried to explain to the auditors that the music is kind of like the bow of the ship, but I use that to do everything else. People know me from the music so they want to see my performance art, my visual art, so they want to see what I do there. I got a $10,000 grant for my performance art but they say that’s not considered income because it’s too unpredictable and they won’t consider that as artistic income. I’m still trying to figure that one out.


Reader: How do you hope this situation ends up panning out? What are you going to do?

DeMars: We’ve been fundraising up to this point and we’ve made enough to retain a lawyer to represent us. The lawyer is absolutely positive that we’re going to win, he says there is no case. He feels that I’m doing the right thing by fighting it, so he’s on board. With the fundraising efforts we have money to pay him, so that’s been wonderful. We’re going into an appeals process now and going to the upper crust of the Minnesota Department of Revenue and telling them to review it and reconsider their underling’s decisions and if they don’t back down and say, “ok, we made a mistake and you are really working legitimately as an artist,” then we go to tax court…then a judge will decide. Me and my lawyer will come in and plead our case concerning my running a business.

Reader: That’s down the road though.

DeMars: That is down the road. And if that happens and we win, the Department of Revenue will lose all of their leverage to go after other artists because that would make a precedent that anybody could use to cross reference. The lawyer thinks they would be insane to push it that far. But we didn’t settle with anything. There’s a “hazard settlement,” where we could agree to pay cents on the dollar to get them to stop pursuing this, but it’s kind of a way for them to get money and I wouldn’t agree to it. To me it was like, “I’m not giving you a cent, it’s all or nothing.” We agree that I’m giving you the right amount and that I’m a business or we go to court. That’s kind of where it is now.      

Reader: You’re aware that it’s going to be Pride Fest when you show up next weekend?

DeMars: I think that is great. I didn’t know that when we began to do it, but it turned out that way and I’m so impressed that Duluth is doing a Pride Festival now, joining in with Superior. I love the timing.

Although there will be a lot going on this weekend for Pride Fest, be sure to stop by R.T. Quinlan’s on Friday at 10 p.m. and at Prove Gallery from 6 to 8 p.m. to show support for this artist who has faced many obstacles in making a living doing what s/he loves to do. Venus will be playing some short acoustic sets and will be happy to talk with those who show up.