Noah Zacharin, 61, a singer, songwriter and guitarist, has never lacked talent or passion for making music. Playing guitar since age nine and performing since his early teens, Zacharin has long worked toward his dream of being a full-time musician. Yet, until recently, he straddled two distinct worlds: the music stage and the dentist’s chair.
“I made my first record while I was in my first clinical year at dental school,” he says. “While performing, writing and publishing poetry, I was also managing a patient load in a very rigorous school environment.”
For decades, he then worked as a dentist to pay the bills while devoting his nonwork hours to his art and first love—creating and performing music—folk and blues initially, then adding ragtime, country, jazz and more.
That was until December 2015, when he quit his day job to devote himself to music and poetry full time. It wasn’t an easy decision, but Zacharin, who lives in Canada, recalls that a friend recently told him, “You weren’t a dentist who also did music. You were a musician who did dentistry.”
A Wakeup Call
The move to full-time music didn’t come out of the blue. He’d thought about it—and talked about doing it—for years. In fact, Zacharin got a wake-up call when he saw an old friend for the first time in several years and announced, “I’m thinking of leaving my job.” The friend chuckled and told him he had mentioned that the last time they saw one another.
And now, more than three years, two highly acclaimed albums and thousands of touring miles later, Zacharin’s only regret is that he didn’t make the move sooner. The biggest difference is that leaving dentistry has allowed Zacharin to tour and travel more readily, something he says is essential.
While straddling dentistry and performing music, Zacharin received critical acclaim and deep appreciation from fans and fellow musicians, many of whom are also fans. With more time to devote to touring, he’s seen a real change. “There’s no substitute for it. It’s how you meet the people,” he says. “I’m pleased with the level of travel I’ve done and the resoluteness I’ve had when I get in the car and go.”
Critical Acclaim
Through his perseverance, he has received positive reviews. These include praise for his songwriting and guitar playing––“virtuoso command of the guitar” and “stunning guitarist”––in tributes from some of Canada’s premier musicians, such as Penny Lang, and various radio hosts and recording artists. While this is gratifying, Zacharin says he wishes he’d paid more attention to promoting his music earlier. “A friend and a veteran on the international folk scene referred to me a few years ago as ‘having decided to be unknown.’”
Zacharin says he had a romantic childhood notion of his musical heroes as “great obscure musicians who threw their guitar in the back of their van and drove from town to town and made a few bucks.”
Since finding more time to create, in addition to touring extensively, he has produced two highly acclaimed albums, Startle of Wings and Strange Rider, to go with his six previous albums. He has also produced music for others, and played guitar on many other recordings.
Financial Security
Zacharin, who admits to living frugally, wouldn’t have left his job without knowing he’d be all right financially. Some people have questioned his financial priorities in leaving behind the security of dentistry for the less lucrative life of a working musician. Zacharin’s response: “It depends on what currency you’re talking about.”
Living just west of downtown Toronto, in a modest house that he bought almost three decades ago, when real estate in Canada's largest city was still affordable, Zacharin has lived simply, frugally and always well within his means. So, although he currently earns a fraction of what he did as a dentist, he can get by financially.
It helps that at age 61, he's only a few years away from receiving monthly checks from the Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security, which form Canada's public pension plan. But even then, he says he has no immediate need for those benefits, which he plans to delay claiming. (Like U.S. Social Security benefits, Canada’s pension benefits pay more per month for the rest of your life for every month that you delay claiming them up to age 70.)
Finding Purpose
Zacharin admits that money earned playing music is important but not in and of itself. More important, he says it provides validation of the music’s value to others. “Essentially, the biggest challenge is to feel that your time here is purposeful,” Zacharin says. “As a dentist, it was easy to see the impact of my work. People arrived in pain and left pain-free. They had something rotten in their mouth and then it was gone.” As a musician, one’s value is much more difficult to discern, he says. "It’s more faith-based and more metaphysical.”
But in the end, it’s the simple love of making music that drives Zacharin on: “I played a lot when I was young because I loved doing it. There was nothing that I loved more. I never called it practicing. I was just playing. And it’s the same now, 50 years later. I like to pick up the guitar and as I like to say, shake it around and see what comes out.”
Based in Shelburne, VT, Allan Kunigis has written about personal finance for more than two decades.
Inset photo courtesy of Noah Zacharin.