Other than How do I get a record deal? or How can I License my music? the question that comes up the most is How do I make it in the music industry?” “Making it” to me just means making a living playing, writing and recording music. Top 5 Behaviors that will help you make [...]
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Modern Music Education
Posted By Musician Coaching on August 23rd, 2010
Irwin Kornfeld is a musician, media entrepreneur, CEO of In Tune Partners, LLC and its sister companies Westchester Media, Inc. and The Miami Music Festival. Kornfeld founded In Tune in 2003 following his years as Associate Publisher of Billboard Magazine. Both In tune and Westchester Media publish several music and music business education magazines such as In Tune Monthly, Music Alive!, ASCAP’s Playback and Teaching Music. The Miami Music festival was founded in 2009 as a multi stage live music and emerging artists’ conference and will be held again this year from November 12th-14th, 2010.
Irwin, thanks for your time today. Tell me a little bit about how you came to music. You were a guy who started out with a fairly corporate background and then got more and more involved with music.
IK:
I started in publishing, but since I was a child I was a hack musician and a garage band player. It’s a love that doesn’t die easily. It also made me a strong fan and a critical listener. And when my publishing career led me to Billboard Magazine, it just seemed to be a wonderful opportunity to match location with avocation.
When did you go from Billboard to doing your own thing? You now publish several music education and music-related magazines through two separate companies.
IK:
Yes. We do magazines. We also have quite a few electronic products and produce events for our own portfolio and our media clients. Billboard was just a fantastic opportunity. It was a way to get close to the music industry and see how it worked, at least at the time. Then, as it began to change, I saw media’s role change with it, or we could see it would be changing in the future. I was doing advertising and sponsorships and business development for a franchise that was locked into the recorded music business, as we all knew it. That was of great concern to me. I went out and took a job to feed the family but at the same time established a side project that today is my primary gig, Music Media. We create an integrated suite of media products and services to serve independent artists, music teachers and their students.
As someone working with multiple outlets that cater to music education, the aspirational music business and music teachers, what is that climate like? Is there less education, more education, more of a need for established mentors? What is that side of the business like of late?
IK:
The music business itself is all about education today, because so many elements of it are changing or new. So whether we are serving independent artists, teachers or students, it’s really all about figuring out how to succeed in a rapidly evolving environment. In that sense, music education is needed and our business is good. If you’re asking about the economic aspects of music education, I think a traditional scholastic education is as much under fire or more under fire than it’s ever been. But we also see a lot of change within that frame, because the industry is dictating which skills people who come to it have to have. We’re noticing a tremendous change at the collegiate level. We see more schools offering music content, music education at the higher ed. level, and the subjects and degrees that are being offered are more real world and innovative.
Back in the day, the only popular music education program at least that is recognized was at Berklee. This summer we got together with ten universities that are creating extraordinary, relative and robust music education programs. Now the high school teachers know they have to prepare their students for these courses and the educational programs they have to offer have to be different from the original curriculum. There’s a trickle down that changes the industry, the college, the trade level where recording, engineering and sound engineering programs are concerned, down into high schools and even lower. Young graduating music educators are beginning to understand how much fun and how impactful teaching using popular music examples can be. We notice a closing of the gap between what young people like to listen to and what is used in school. Once educators understand that a popular music illustration can be used to teach bedrock music theory and technique, you just get a better program, a student who plays longer and practices harder which leads to more and better musicians. I’m very optimistic right now about the music education business and its prospects in the foreseeable future.
I am curious what your thoughts are either personally or professionally about all these music business education programs that have popped up. There are more of those than ever and seemingly less paying jobs in the traditional industry. What do you make of that discrepancy? What are we preparing people for?
IK:
I think there are fewer music business jobs in what you and I know as the traditional music industry but as that industry crumbles, the DIY industry is changing. People like you are getting the call for coaching or marketing / product management because that’s where there’s a vacuum. We need to train more people in the product management that DIY musicians need and want rather than the kind of people the majors are going to hire. I think there’s more opportunity than ever, we’re able to carry more music, more people are listening to more music. I don’t think there’s been a change in the volume of music consumed, I just think there’s been a change in the way it’s recorded, produced, distributed, marketed and sold. I think there are lots of interesting music jobs, they are just not traditional. I think many people who go through music business programs are going to be performers or music educators and they will benefit from a music business perspective. I don’t necessarily think people who graduate from music business programs go to work in recording, management or publishing. I think if you’re going to be an artist you better have a music business background, and as a music educator, you will benefit from a music business background, not only because you will need to diversify your revenue stream as a music educator, but also because of the need your students will have and the need you will have to teach music business at an earlier age just because of the proliferation of independent opportunities. That’s my holistic view of music business education. The more, the better.
What are the goals of the publishing businesses you run and how did the Miami Music Festival come into being?
IK:
The businesses I run are really about artist development. I think that’s the best way to phrase it. Whether we’re creating a magazine for a fourth or fifth grader and talking about songwriting, a subject we pretty much don’t teach to music students today or doing something else, it’s artist development. Most kids have no idea the people singing the songs haven’t written them and don’t have an appreciation for the skills involved and the way music finds its way into every nook and cranny of our lives. There is the need and interest to expand the four walls of the music room. We knew a horizontal source of information about musicianship did not exist, and certainly one did not exist that was dialed into the tone, voice and sophistication needed to capture the interest of young music students and provide ancillary text for their teachers. To do that all in a very appropriate space, trying to be fun and interesting and relevant at the same time and not deal with themes and lyrics and behaviors that are all over the music industry and product won’t work. We don’t want to sanitize it because then it’s not cool. Getting that right was something we felt we could do because we recognized the challenge. That’s been our hallmark with our In Tune Monthly magazine. Now we now publish In Tune’s sister music magazine that has been started and published by Cherry Hill Music for years called Music Alive. In Tune is grades 7-12, and Music Alive is grades 4-10, primarily.
We have been publishing ASCAP’s Playback for about eight years now. That magazine and our relationship with ASCAP brought us closer to the music creation community, which was good for everything we do. We began business development with ASCAP and five years ago created a broad based music creator conference – the ASCAP Expo. Last year we had 55 companies and about 2,800 musicians and creators attend and every year it has been getting better.
So I had this event background from working at Billboard’s events and more recently with ASCAP and had done trade shows and conferences and one of my business partners is very active in the Miami market. He was asked to chair the Miami Dade Advisory Committee on Culture and Entertainment. The conversation in that group became, “What can we do to stimulate live music?” Miami as a town has had great success with recorded and DJ music and its club scene is as vibrant as any in the country. But some of that has happened at the expense of live music, just because a lot of clubs have turned their stages into DJ booths.
I certainly don’t think of Miami as a live music town.
IK:
What’s happened is that the whole South Beach scene has matured to a certain extent, where it was very Bohemian and insider with fashion designers and photographers running around. Now it’s more of an attraction to a more mainstream group. As the scene on the beach maturef, a lot of the locals were looking for other experiences. The pioneers who hung out there are no longer looking for the same club scene that takes place on the beach. The live music scene needed some support, so this committee that my partner chaired scheduled a town hall meeting to talk about stuff. He got the flu, so I came down on a plane to moderate a panel, and it was a roomful of people that wanted to see more live music in Miami. I was thinking about the cycle that’s kind of hard to break. You need stages, club owners with the confidence that live music would fill their clubs the same as DJ music. Bands don’t know the stages exist and it goes around and around.
I thought what we needed was an event and some way to turn the spotlight on live music and the emerging live music scene. And I thought what this town needed was a multi-cultural version of South by Southwest where Latin and Caribbean as well as rock and singer/songwriter music can be featured at another time of the year. I thought, the music industry is changing to the extent that the DIY and the independent artists need the opportunity to get in front of the press and network with one another and try stuff out in a live environment made for showcasing. Everybody wants to go to Miami when it gets cool in the North of the country. So, we floated the idea of doing a multi-stage emerging artist festival and conference that catered to the kinds of music that people in Miami enjoy but have connections all over the world. We put 250 acts on 25 stages in 17 clubs last year and did some things very right and very wrong, but we were able to see right afterwards exactly why we had success and why we didn’t. There were enough people that thought it was a good idea, our partners liked, it, our industry partners liked it, we had support from ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, Sound Exchange, the state, city, county and we had corporate sponsors and a lot of local music fans that just wanted to see it happen again.
We wrote a plan for this year and we widened our footprint and picked up a daytime venue – an all ages venue, because the clubs are 21 and over – and made a commitment not to present mixed genre shows but book the kind of music people want to go out to see live in the clubs they want to go to. November 12-14 we will be in 35 clubs on 435 stages and present over 300 acts with a wider array of sponsors and partners and media companies than we had last year.
Tell me about the selection process. Tell me about what caught your attention. Was it purely the audio recordings or was it that people had gotten some notoriety for doing the DIY thing on their own?
IK:
There are two ways to get on our stages. One is to be invited by a sponsor or a media partner or a producer we’re working with. The other is to go on the website and pay the $35 and send us your electronic press kit. Obviously with the sponsors, while we have approval, we’re listening to a third party. In many cases, the third parties are pretty plugged in. When BMI comes and wants to do a Latin showcase, we can be reasonably certain we’re going to get five pretty great acts. For the half of the festival talent that gets chosen by the organizers, we pulled together a diverse listing group. We have one in New York and one in Miami and a couple of artist managers and a couple of artists, and a couple of recording engineers and an attorney. We probably have had about eight or nine people who sit and listen first to the music. We’re interested in live video, and obviously the tracks are carefully recorded, and sometimes people don’t arrive with the same instrumentation as the recording. We’re mindful of that, and every time we can see a live video, it’s helpful. We’re looking for a balance, so if we get a good jazz act, because they’re harder to come by for our festival, that’s a great thing. We might been have a little bit wider leeway. We’re looking at photography and at social network traction. You’ll see people’s profiles, and if you have people that have six friends rather than 6,000 friends, that often tells you something. That’s not always an indicator, because sometimes you have people that are great but just starting out but it’s something we look at. It happens relatively quickly. You can hear in 30 seconds this is an act we want to hear more of, and we start digging through the press kit. It could also be someone that is recording their first track, and either their voice or instruments are really flat, and we move on.
You’ve seen many different sides to the music business and music business education. Do you have any advice for people hoping to make a career?
IK:
There are three distinct areas of the business right now and there’s opportunity in all of them.
If somebody were to burst on the scene as a truly dedicated and high-impact music educator who can truly capture the challenge and opportunity for students they are going to be in great demand. On the business side – setting up artists who need to help themselves and need to be left and right brained and be business people and at the same time creative is a great thing to do. I think people who truly offer service and can find an economic model for helping artists navigate these waters can do very well. For artists themselves – we always tell artists the way to make it is to find an audience and the rest will follow. That is as true today as it has ever been, but I also think there’s an opportunity to come to the attention of the media and the industry just because there are so many opportunities for communication. I think being a student of communication right now is a good thing for an artist to be. I don’t just mean hyping yourself, but being in the right place at the right time with the right music. There’s no substitute for a great song or for musicianship but if you’ve got those things, learning how the media works is probably as valuable as anything else you might do today as an emerging artist.
—
Learn more about Irwin’s work at In Tune Monthly and The Miami Music Festival
Posted in Music Career
Now and then with Skid Row’s Snake Sabo
Posted By Musician Coaching on August 18th, 2010
Dave “Snake” Sabo is best known for being a guitar player, songwriter and founding member of Skid Row but he is also currently an artist manager at McGhee Entertainment (KISS, Ted Nugent, Darius Rucker, Night Ranger, Down and many more). He directly handles management for Down and Warner Brothers recording artist Meghan Kabir.
Snake, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. You’ve been working for McGhee entertainment as a manager for the last five years and Doc and Scott McGhee used to manage Skid Row, correct?
SS:
Yes, they were both very involved but Scott was really involved. Doc is like a big brother to me, and Scott is too, but we’re more friends. We became so close in the time we worked together it was like we were siblings. We would yell and fight with each other, quit on each other, fire each other. One of the things that was always true is that I was always a sponge and wanted to learn the business side of the music business, because it intrigued me and I loved the idea of how it worked and all the different moving parts. People see a band that goes out o stage for a couple hours, and they go home and go back to doing what they do. I don’t know if people realize that it’s a 24-7 moving machine. That really intrigued me from a really young age, from the time I was 17 years old starting bands and being in bands and playing in cover bands. Whatever the case was, I was always interested in the business side of it. Throughout the whole time we worked together I was always over their shoulders. Doc used to call me “The Gnat,” because I would always be over his shoulders. I was the guy who right after a show when we were on tour with Bon Jovi or Aerosmith going over the merchandise sheets and seeing what we did per head and what the building got. I made sure I knew how to read contracts, because I wanted to know what I was signing. Not that I didn’t trust anybody- I absolutely trusted Doc and Scott implicitly, but I wanted to know. I need to know why. I’m the guy at the computer who can be in deep and working on editing music, and if my clock is wrong, I will spend two hours trying to figure it out. That’s my OCD.
You had an enormous amount of success at a time before there were a lot of artists handling their business on their own. You were either a local band in a club or signed to a record label getting onto a tour. Did being observant of your business dealings serve you in your career?
SS:
Absolutely. It served positively and negatively. There’s something great to be said about an artist who is just an artist and goes out and has been able to position themselves with a team. They just go out there and do their gigs, write the songs, go out and perform to the best of their ability, tour and record. In that case their business would be handled by their team. There are a lot of artists out there like that. I wasn’t one of them. For some reason, I always want and need to know how things work. I was always interested in statistics and things of that nature from the time I was really small. When I was playing in bars in NJ, I was the one collecting money, going out and booking shows, dealing with the club owners and getting screwed over, getting taken advantage of as a 16-year old kid underage. What legs did I have to stand on? All I could do is stand there and be strong and respectful. It’s funny, because even while you’re getting screwed, sometimes as a kid, if you just stand tall and are not a dick, that reputation begins to follow you. People say, “He’s a good guy to work with and a good guy to deal with.” I always think regardless of what has happened I’ve been a pretty stand-up guy doing the right thing and have been good to people and treated people with respect and I have never taken myself too seriously. That fell into every project I worked on from the time I was playing in cover bands to the time I was starting Skid Row.
In the beginning it was more of the same; I was dealing with the club owner or dealing with a booking agent on a very local level. You still had to go through the business of it though and I liked doing that. As the business of Skid Row got bigger, my interest and participation in that also grew. And it was great because I had and have two amazing teachers in Doc McGhee and Scott McGhee. And also learning from John Bon Jovi and his work ethic, and the amount of knowledge he amassed and passed on to me. In that aspect, it helped me out immensely in that at least I understood what was going on around me, and I wasn’t in the dark. So I was able to make educated decisions. Whether I was right or wrong, at least I was able to be educated in where my decision came from.
I loved all that and still do. I think the progression from being in Skid Row to being in management was a very natural progression. The trick of it was, “How do you actually make that leap?” Luckily for me, the McGhees are my family and have been for the last 23 years. No matter what, the one thing I can say is that we’re not a corporate company and are more of a boutique management company- it’s a family atmosphere. I know and have always knows that if anybody is ever in trouble with anything, they can always come to me. And I know if I’m ever in trouble, I can always go to them. Doc and Scott have been there for me many times. There are so many other people that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and get to know in this business who have been able to impart their knowledge and wisdom and experience upon me. I take all this as a gift and a blessing.
You do work with Down, who is the product of an older system. But you have a new project, Meghan Kabir. You were a part of the business when record labels were the only game in town. You were signed to Atlantic in 1988 at the height of the business. The metal scene was well established, it was before the alternative scene was built up and of course many years before digital changed everything. What are you doing with Meghan to make it work in this new climate that is different from what you had to do in the past?
SS:
The one thing I love that I think we’ve gotten back to in lieu of everything that has gone on with P2P file sharing is that we’ve gotten back to making sure every song is a great song. It used to be that way. In Skid Row we looked at it that way. Every song on that record had to mean something. It was that old stupid line “All killer, no filler.” The thing is, it’s very true now. Every song has to count, because people aren’t relegated to going out and spending $15 on a CD of ten songs where only two or three are good. The consumer has gotten smarter, and technology has given way to the fact that you have to make every song great in its own way. I love that. It’s the way it should be and the way it used to be. You used to buy a Zeppelin record, and every song on it was great, or at least good. Any artist that stood the test of time was that way – Aerosmith had great albums.
Now, that philosophy has been forced upon us again as artists and managers, and I love it. Things are different from a distribution standpoint, and you have to be creative, which I love. Necessity is the mother of invention, so for me it’s trying at times to figure out how to get your artist exposure and different ways to distribute the product in a manner that gives them the maximum amount of accessibility and availability. So, how do you do that in this day and age with a new artist when radio doesn’t mean as much as it used to and we have mostly big box retailers with very limited floor space? You have to figure out new ways to get the music out there, and it all starts with making sure the music is great. There are different ways of doing it, whether you release a single for an artist like we are doing for Meghan Kabir. The way we look at her is she has great songs with great melodies, and she’s a great performer. Our job is to make sure we give her every opportunity to be seen and heard because her music and her artistry deserves that.
What tools and promotion and marketing techniques do you deem are absolutely necessary today that may not have existed previously?
SS:
Dealing with Down and how we work their product and dealing with Meghan Kabir are in a lot of ways the same but in a lot of ways very different. The thing with Meghan is we want to spread out her releases over the course of 18 months. So three songs or four songs every four months. I’m saying this theoretically because it all depends on which songs we’re choosing and how much life they will have. She’s an artist that if it’s going to happen, she’s going to need support from radio. We want to build her fan base through modern rock radio. She has the ability, at least in our minds to cross over to Top 40. She’s unique in the sense that I think it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this amount of talent in such a young person. She is so driven and smart and keeps you on your toes. I was saying earlier, the one thing I love about Scott and I working with her is that if you don’t keep up with her, she is going to run you over. That’s the way it should be!
I believe gone is the day when an artist can lay back and let it happen. You have to be so much more involved in every aspect, but you have to trust the people you surround yourself with. That’s remained the same. You need to have a great core of people around you and allow them to do their gigs to the best of their ability. She’s on top of everything, and I’m inspired by that. She’s signed to Warner Brothers. One thing I’ve learned is that A&R and management and artists are always going to have disagreements, but I think they’re productive and valid in a lot of ways. At the end of the day if you’re working with people you trust and that you’ve known for a long time, I believe you’ll get to an endpoint where it makes sense to the artist. Meghan’s songs have the capability – though who knows in this day and age, because I just know what I love and what moves me, and I hope that translates to a mass audience.
Our theory is that if you start out going to Top 40, you live and die by each single. And today it is very much the case of “here today, gone tomorrow.” People like Paramour and P!nk, those people have done something that gives them longevity in their career because they’ve worked very hard to build up a loyal fan base and are not necessarily going to live or die by their next single. By the same token, you have to make sure the next song is great. That’s what I love about where we’re at right now.
I’m hearing a lot about a push at radio and releasing songs in a grouping as opposed to an album, which is smart because it gives the press more to talk about with each new batch of songs that comes out. What about the grassroots and the touring? What are you doing to ensure success if the first or second single misses?
SS:
I believe every artist has to build from a live standpoint. We want to be entertained and be able to go to a show and see these songs and be entertained. I still believe in real artists, artists that are not just about a song, but are great performers as well. I think everything needs to tie in together for someone to be successful on a long-term basis. Meghan has the goods, and we’re going to put her out on the road as much as we can, and she’s going to learn by that. She’s a very good performer now, but being a performer myself on many different stages, I don’t care how good someone is at 22. They’re going to be that much better at 23 and so forth. I know I was. You do that by going out and playing every place you can possibly play. That’s an old school mentality, but I still believe in it. You have to play the dives and build your persona and comfortability in front of an audience. She has that X-Factor that connects to people. Coming from Nashville, she isn’t a country artist, but she has people in that community respect her and go see her play and react to her songs.
Do you think technology has made it considerably more difficult for people to have time to practice. In theory I can go out to Guitar Center tomorrow, buy a guitar – “me” being not being “me” but “someone who’s never picked up an instrument before” – and plug into Garage Band, record a song and put it up o MySpace and have everything everywhere. Do you think technology has made it more difficult in some ways for artists to develop? If so, is there a workaround?
SS:
Technology is a blessing and a curse. What I loved about what happened when Skid Row was starting out is that you wouldn’t get signed to a deal until you rose above everything else that was out there. There was a brutal competition between bands and artists in the Tri-State area, and it was like that all across the country. We didn’t have the access to throw our stuff out there all over the Internet. We had tape trading. If you traded tapes, people would turn you down if they didn’t like it and pass it along if they did. It was this word of mouth thing that was happening that wasn’t out there contributing to so much damn noise, people had the choice of whether they wanted to pass that tape along or not. Now, technology is beautiful and I love it and utilize it, but there’s no gatekeepers to sit and say, “This stuff is good enough for people to hear.” I think people now have become lazy and generally don’t sit there and take the time and work their asses off and have people telling them, “No it’s not get enough” to help them raise their game and make it so they have worked hard enough and honed their craft enough where people need to hear this music and hopefully will respond to it in a positive light. That’s when the whole marketing machine would come into play back then.
Now, I’ve made records for 20-some years. But I could just sit there and throw anything I want up on the Internet no matter whether it sucks or is great. All that does is contribute to the noise pollution out there. Most artists throughout history were lucky enough to see people that have talent and nurture that talent, instead of just throwing stuff out there. John Hammond, one of the all-time great A&R people in this business who signed Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan saw that these people needed time to nurture, and he helped them become the artists they would become because there was an inherent talent. Now I think people aren’t critical enough of themselves as artists starting out. We don’t sit there and just have people telling them, “No, this is not good enough yet, and it could be better.” When you don’t have a sounding board, I don’t know how you go from good to great.
That bums me out, because that work ethic I have was built through all those years of being in the shitty clubs in NJ and Philadelphia and New York City. You could tell if you were a good band or not, because people would be truthful. I’m not talking about the 20 friends that would come out that you would bring with you. It was the other people that didn’t know who you were. You could look a t their faces and know whether what you were doing was good enough. My story is a perfect example. When the five of us in Skid Row came together, myself and Rachel, Scotty, Sebastian and Rob, you could tell we were onto something. You get that feeling. I don’t know if that happens a lot anymore, because I don’t think there’s a standard that people have to adhere to. I’m not saying that from a major label standpoint at all, because I don’t believe you need to get signed to one. But I just don’t know if people work hard enough now at their craft and then finally get to a point where they say, “This is good enough where I could throw it out there in public and it will stand above everything else.”
Too much instant gratification?
SS:
We live in a fast food nation, unfortunately. The idea of “product development” has really gone by the wayside. I can’t say that about Meghan though and thankfully she has so much talent that it’s not an ass-ache, it’s a pleasure.
You spoke early on about many of the things you were taught along the way. What stands out as stuff you wish you’d known as an 18-year old kid just starting out on this journey?
SS:
In all honesty, I reflect on things pretty honestly with myself. I never looked at success as something that life and the world owed me. I looked at it (and still do look at it) as an absolute blessing and a gift. It has to do with being humble and being fortunate enough to have a modicum of success in this business. And I swear on my life I never took that for granted ever. That being said, I knew that at some point it was going to stop and go on the decline. It’s easy to have faith when things are good. Having faith in yourself is difficult when times are tough. I never lost faith in myself even when the band broke up, because I always believed there was something I had inherently that would allow me to stay in this business. That’s just from the fact that I believed in myself. I never thought I was the greatest guitar player or the greatest songwriter. I just always felt if I believed in myself I could be somewhat successful in this business. I’ve always maintained that attitude. It was easy to be happy when I was selling millions of records. They say that adversity builds character. But that’s B.S. Adversity reveals character. For me, I had the opportunity to see a lot of people’s characters revealed when things got very bad.
I was happy that my upbringing was such that I was raised to be a humble guy and to do the right thing and not be so egotistical that I believed the world owed me whatever good came my way. It’s always been a gift. To answer your question, I look back on it and think that everything that happened was the right way for it to happen to get to this point. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, no doubt. I compromised myself at times I shouldn’t have, etc. But at the end of the day, it is about the journey. I’m going to be going through this when I talk to you 20 years from now. I’m sure my experiences will be completely different, but my attitude will remain the same. Sure, I probably could’ve sold more records if I made different decisions or made more money, but I am a lucky guy. I get to work with people I love, I get to work with music I love and to be around people that are great people that I learn so much from. I’ve always been a sponge and I take every opportunity to learn whatever I can from whomever I can. A lot of people walk into a room with their chest and shoulders up and say, “Look at me,” but I walk into the room and I’m wide open to learn everything I can possibly learn from the people I’m with…
Follow Snake on Twitter or learn more about Mcghee Entertainment and Snake’s clients Down and Meghan Kabir.
Posted in Music Career
What is Music 3.0
Posted By Musician Coaching on May 27th, 2010
Bobby Owsinski is a sound mixing pioneer and author of books for musicians and music industry professionals. Bobby got his start as a guitarist/keyboardist, songwriter and arranger before working his way up to a producer/engineer. As one of the first producers/engineers to be involved in surround sound music mixing, Bobby has worked on commercials, TV, DVD Film projects with many influential recording artists, including Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and the Ramones. I sat down to talk to him about his career and the underlying principles two of his books: How to Make Your Band Sound Great and Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age.
Thanks so much for your time, Bobby. Tell me a little bit about How to Make Your Band Sound Great and why you wrote it.
BO:
How to Make Your Band Sound Great is a band improvement book. The reason why I wrote it was that when I was a kid in my first band, I couldn’t understand why my first band didn’t sound as good as the best band in town. And then when I got to be in the best band in town, I couldn’t understand why we weren’t as good as the best band in the region. And then when I got to be in the best band in the region, I couldn’t understand why we weren’t as good as the Doobie Brothers or any other of the great bands that were on the radio. Over the years, I figured all this stuff out and wanted to give what I learned back, because I remember what it was like when I was a kid and just starting out, then later playing in clubs, and asking, “Why don’t we sound like what’s on the radio or what’s on the record?” Giving back is a passion of mine. I want to teach others about all the stuff you learn when you’re in the studio. When everything’s under a microscope, you learn about what makes things tight, dynamics, turnarounds and phrasing and all the details you have to be conscious of when you’re playing.
So what is the gist of the book? How does the book lay out what a band should sound like at different stages for musicians?
BO:
When you’re first starting, and even when you’re farther along in the game, you’re always saying, “Why doesn’t this sound right? Why doesn’t this sound as good as [fill in the blank]?” When you make a record, you put things under a microscope in such a way that you begin to know what to focus on to make things really sound great. The book is really about how to listen to what you’re playing and analyze these details.
Is this more a book on finding great tone, or is this about gelling a band? And is it coming from your perspective as an engineer?
BO:
That’s one of the problems I had with the title, unfortunately. The book is completely about music. It’s not about being in the studio. It’s about playing live and what happens when you do a show. Why does it sound great and why doesn’t it sound great sometimes? It all comes down to simple fundamentals that players sometimes forget about, like phrasing, attacks and releases. Even if you’re good at phrasing, you’re not always aware that the releases count just as much and sometimes even more than the attacks of a phrase towards making you sound tight. The book details things like finding the groove and answering questions like, “What is the groove? Who’s laying it down, and what do I have to do to fit in?” I also talk about overlooked but important parts of the song like turnarounds and builds. Until you get into the studio, you forget about those things and how important they are. Everybody kind of fluffs over those things when they’re starting out, but they’re really important in making you sound tight. Dynamics are also a really big thing, and perhaps maybe the most important thing of all.
I agree. People seem to be on “11” all the time, and it drives me crazy. I think, “Will you just shut up until the chorus?”
BO:
You’re right. That’s a really big thing, figuring that out. What happens is that everyone confuses intensity with volume. They’re completely separate, and you have to understand they’re completely separate in order to actually learn to command dynamics. The book is about details like that, but it also goes into songwriting. I have a pet peeve about songwriting, in the event that you’re in to writing your own music. I’m sure you get this too, because people send you songs. There are always a number of things that happen with neophyte songwriters: a two-minute intro that doesn’t get anywhere; no bridge, which usually means there’s no peak in the song; no differentiation between the verse and the chorus. Also, arrangement is huge, because so much of songwriting is based upon the arrangement. But I really wanted to make this book for everybody, so if your aspirations are only to play in clubs, it works for you too. It tells you how to make your band tighter and how to make your show better. For example, it tells you why you should buy LED lights rather than regular tungsten, and what to look for when shopping around for them, as well as ways to improve your show, and even how to get gigs. It’s really an overall picture of how to take your band to the next level.
Talk to me about Music 3.0 and why you decided to do it? I’ve certainly heard 2.0 bandied about. What is the philosophy underlying this book?
BO:
“Music 3.0” stands for the era that we’re in today. It’s the fifth generation of the music business. “Music 1.0” was the old days, in the 50s, 60s, 70s. What happened there was that you had a record label that controlled everything, and artists eventually had to sign with a record label if they wanted to further their career. The record label sold their product to a record store, people bought their product from the record store, and the radio was used specifically to promote the record. You had that chain of command that was really important at that time. When we went to Music 1.5, what changed was the fact that suddenly you had conglomerates that came in and bought up the major record labels – the ones that were available anyway – and everything changed. Instead of thinking about developing the artist they were thinking about the bottom line instead.
I saw that when I worked at majors. It was, “Releasing this greatest hits record might not be good for the artist, but we have a fourth quarter number to post up for corporate.”
BO:
The other thing that happened during this period was MTV. MTV came along and all of a sudden it became more important than radio marketing. The label began looking more at the image of the artist than the creativity of the artist. Then there was “Music 2.0.” This was when digital music came onto the scene. What happened here was that the major labels downplayed it and couldn’t see the significance of it, but everybody else did. Music 2.5 was when digital music became monetized and we saw iTunes and Amazon MP3.com, etc. Now there was a way to suddenly make money with digital music. “Music 3.0” is different. It’s where the paradigm shifts. Now it’s the first time an artist can finally reach out and touch the fan, and the fan can reach back and touch the artist. The more that happens, the more the fan loves it. They more than love it; they need it and demand it. It’s that interaction that makes Music 3.0. Now you can finally sell to your fans, market to them and communicate with them. You can do everything directly with the fan without needing the infrastructure from a record label that you needed up until this point. You no longer need radio, because radio has become irrelevant. You don’t need record stores because they’ve pretty much gone away, and unless you’re high on the major record label system, you’re not going to get in there anyway. That’s how Music 3.0 came about. The book goes another step and explains where we were, where we are now and how we got there. Then it breaks it down and looks at who the people are that control the business. Obviously record labels are not in control, like they used to be.
Who do you believe is controlling the business these days?
BO:
Well, managers more than anybody. But I look at specifics. For example, people like Irving Azoff, who has more control of the music business now and more clout in the music industry than just about anybody else. But there’s also Trent Reznor, who’s a huge influence on Music 3.0. A lot of the book I’ve written has come from Trent. He knows how to use social networking and social media better than anyone to get his point across. He doesn’t need traditional media and anything other than his social media. He’s been a big influence on the way things have gone. Seth Godin is a big one as well with his theory of permission marketing and his concept of “the tribe.”
I noticed “How to establish your tribe” on some of your marketing materials. What is the Music 3.0 line of advice on building/establishing a tribe? Every aspiring artist I know wants to have that tribe – a dedicated fan base. Does that happen on talent alone, or does it happen when people interact with the artist and the fan?
BO:
The first thing is, and I see this a lot, where people say, “Your music has to be great. It can’t suck.” I certainly agree with that. But one of the things that is behind the idea of Music 3.0 is the fact that no matter what kind of music you make, chances are there are some fans out there for it. It might be bizarre to the rest of the world, but you might have 100 or 1,000 fans out there that are going to really dig what you’re doing. You just have to find them, and they have to find you. I take the quality of the music out of the equation, because who’s to say what’s good and what’s bad? What it comes down to in establishing your tribe and growing you tribe is social media management. This is something that people kind of forget. When they think of social media, they just think, “We have to be on Myspace and Facebook and Twitter.” But then they just haphazardly manage all of it. What I advocate is two things:
- The center of your online universe has to be your website, because you’re better able to control your message.
- 2. Your e-mail list is definitely all-important. What you’re trying to do with all your social media – your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace – is funnel those friends into your e-mail list.
Everybody gets funneled to the e-mail list and your website. The social media is just a point of contact and a way of telling them, “Come back to the mother ship.” Your e-mail list is extremely important, because while Facebook is great today – and you may have 100,000 friends on Facebook – what if it goes away tomorrow? If you don’t have those contacts connected to your email list, you’re in trouble. There are many cases where bands have a million friends on Myspace and no way to leverage them. I know a band whose label went in and said, “you have to take your Myspace page down.” And when their Myspace page came down, the band lost all their contacts. Their online popularity didn’t help them at all at that point. That’s why trying to control your message is done best through your website and e-mail list. Everything additional is a strategy by which to do that.
Is this methodology of driving people towards the e-mail list and website content based and a steady stream of ancillary marketing strategies?
BO:
It’s an overall strategy of social media management. There’s a certain point where too much contact is counterproductive. An example of that would be your e-mail list. People don’t want an e-mail from you every day. But on the other hand, if you tweet four, five or eight times per day, that might work for your followers if it’s good content. Of course, if you’re providing useless information, it might not work as well. I kind of draw the line when people tweet, “I’m having bacon and eggs for breakfast.” That doesn’t constitute an effective tweet. But there are certain ways you can bring your fans into it as well, through shout outs, contests, insider information, etc. Social media management is what builds the tribe along with the amount of content and the quality of content. That’s one of the things I advocate in Music 3.0. There’s a section that says, “You can only do this so many times and get away with it. There’s a study that says if you do this ten times as opposed to five times, it’s counter-productive.” That’s where we’re going with it.
You also touch on ten music marketing ideas that could only happen in Music 3.0. Without giving them away completely, are there mistakes you’re seeing that people are regularly making out there, or things they need to do that they aren’t doing?
BO:
In Music 3.0 marketing, you can reach out directly to your tribe and fan base through your e-mail list and social media. The problem is you can’t be too overt about it. You can’t say, “Hi. Buy our new CD.” You have to say, “The new CD is out. Take a listen and let us know what you think.” One thing I did do in Music 3.0 – and this is what I do with all my books – is that I dedicated about a third of the book to interviews with people that are a lot smarter than I. In this case, what I did was interviewed one of the gurus of SEO and SEM, Gregory Markel, who was extremely helpful on his SEO techniques. He’s so at the cutting edge that what everyone else knows or assumes is the current technology. I’ll go to him and say, “How about this strategy?” And he’ll say, “That was last year. This is what Google’s looking for now.” He was also signed to Warner Bros as a singer, so he’s very hip to the music business. They do the SEO for Led Zeppelin’s website and a few others. I also interviewed people like Michael Terpin, who has gone from running a traditional media PR firm to one that just does social media PR. To help explain the shift to Music 3.0 I also interviewed people like Rupert Perry, who was the president of EMI and the vice chair of EMI worldwide and has perspective on the way the music business used to be and the way it is now.
Are there any parting words of advice you’d give to artists?
BO:
I think the opportunities are great now. That doesn’t mean that everything is easy though, and that’s probably one of the fallacies of Music 3.0. A lot of so-called experts are out there saying, “Now that you can communicate directly with your fans, it’s going to be easy.” It’s not. I think the big takeaway is, you have to utilize Music 3.0 and all the technologies available to you, but you also can’t ignore the traditional strategies. You still have to tour, get the fliers out, use street teams. All of the traditional efforts are equally as necessary as the online technology.
You can learn more about Bobby and check out his Music 3.0 Blog.
Posted in Music Career
The Zen of Screaming
Posted By Musician Coaching on May 18th, 2010
Melissa Cross is a New York based vocal coach by way of being an actress and musician herself. Although she teaches all kinds and styles of vocal training she is best known for teaching people how to scream correctly. She has worked with Maroon 5, The Bravery, Ben Lee, Shinedown, Thursday, Coheed and Cambria, Slipknot, Stone Sour and Andrew W.K. to name a few.
I knew this was going to be an insightful and fun interview when while describing how she became a vocal coach she said:
“The music business is such a bad boyfriend kind of relationship. It’s like the ultimate bad relationship, so toxic. I really stepped over it and found a very wholesome place for my soul to be and my work to be where I could be a performer and be helpful and be a star in my own mind.”
Melissa- thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to speak with me. You’ve worked with several platinum artists and while you teach all kinds of different singers you have become known as someone that teaches people how to scream correctly?
MC:
In the music business there has always an underground movement that bubbles to the surface. Rap used to be underground. I happen to have had my finger on the pulse of the bubbling underground but I didn’t do it on purpose. I was there at the right time for some reason. Metal has always been there. It’s such a tired and true commodity because of the loyalty of the fans. And metal is a lifestyle choice, just as rap is a lifestyle choice. That’s why it survives even in the worst climate in the industry, because of the fans. I was privy to that movement in the early 90s. There was a producer that was trying to get a singer through a recording session without coughing up blood. I went to school with him years back, and he said, “You’re a voice teacher. You can figure this out.” And he brought this kid in and some other kids in, and some of those kids turned out to be well known. One of them was Jesse Leach, who turned out to be the lead singer for Kill Switch Engag. People started talking and said, “Did you know there’s this girl that actually figured it out?” And then this onslaught of artists just came one by one. There was Andrew W.K. and this whole genre of people that used their voices in ways that most voice teachers would say, “Oh, you can’t do that. Stop doing that.”
You also teach people to sing conventionally and not just guttural or Cookie Monster too, no?
MC:
As with everything, there’s more underneath the surface. Cookie Monster is just one kind of scream. Metal has now compartmentalized itself into all different kinds of metal. We have hardcore, we have metalcore, we have metal, death metal, black metal. And each one of these mini genres are defined by different positions in the larynx. It’s absolutely bizarre. Some sociological paper could probably be written about how this developed, and these little tribes and their sounds. Some of them need to sing now. I’ve always taught singing. I was a voice teacher and taught people on Broadway and people in the movies. But I was a singing teacher that was willing to embrace a subculture that most people would say was just blasphemy. These kids don’t have the option to stop. They’re making a living doing this and have to do it sometimes 30 days in a row with just a couple days off. It’s impossible to do it in the way that it started out where they were doing shows on the weekend and would have the whole week to recover. If you don’t do this properly, you will fry yourself. And it’s happened many times.
And that’s true for any type of singing, right? If you do it too much, you can burn out your vocal chords.
MC:
Absolutely. Often times these things happen at inconvenient times, where there’s a buzz on the record and a tour coming up. I don’t know if you remember – I’m sure you do – but Chris Cornell in Soundgarden actually in the middle of the tour for SuperUnknown – had to drop everything because he blew his voice out. He’s okay now, but I was often getting people that were on the brink of having to quit. The thing is, vocal damage is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, there are some damaged vocal chords that make millions of dollars, even in the non-metal world i.e. Rod Stewart or Bruce Springsteen. These are people who have nodules and bumps on their vocal chords, and this is what makes them money. The unfortunate thing is they have to navigate that condition. It makes their performance inconsistent. For instance, the top metal band – there are two of them that invariably go gold and sometimes platinum – and one of those, his sound is absolutely predicated on the damage of overuse and cigarettes and drinking and lifestyle and screaming in titty bars. His sound is that. The way he operates, his voice is magnificent, because he gets this overtone on the scream that has a high end and slices right through bass and drums, and he has the darkness of the bottom part because he’s a baritone, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, but it’s damaged. It’s not an option for someone like that to go to the doctor and have an operation to scrape that stuff away, because then he wouldn’t be able to sound like that anymore.
I did want to speak generally about vocals. What generally is a first session with you like? What are you telling people? Are there things that people can do on their own that would help them protect their vocal chords?
MC:
The first thing that happens in a lesson with me is that I would give you the manual to your car or your voice. I would give you a brief overview and something that couldn’t be over-thought. If you think about things, you hold your breath, and you need your breath for the sound. The information has to filter through you in a spontaneous way, which means it has to filter through your imagination, which is why all these voice teachers seem so wacky with all their imagery. That’s the only way a teacher can bring forth the behavior is through imagery. Getting back to the point, a person needs to understand that proper vocals depend on the balance between the closure of the vocal chords and the amount of breath pressure in the lungs. Basically, there’s this zone or balance that needs to be second nature or completely intuitive that’s always there. It’s about learning the breathing. But breathing in singing is not “in, out, in, out.” It’s the way to maintain a level of air pressure in the lungs without holding the breath and without locking it down and without letting it go. There is some muscle memory stuff that needs to be addressed breathing wise. It sounds very difficult, but it’s not. The breathing is a very important part of it. And then the imagery about the way the vocal chords work needs to ultimately be something about where you are like an artist painting with sound. Rather than approaching it from a technical way, just like any instrumentalist, like a guitar player – he doesn’t look at his fingers and then calculate which note comes next. It becomes a feeling thing. It combines all the senses. You paint with vowels. I like to think about launching vowels to the back of the venue. Once you start that imagery stuff, it’s funny how everything starts to work all by itself. There is a good way for you to learn all this stuff, and I don’t want to be too self-promoting, but I have a DVD “The Zen Of Screaming” that covers everything. It explains everything technically and visually, the breathing, and everything else. The second DVD is all about the mechanics of the distortion of actually screaming. The first is basics and the second DVD is extreme phonation. You can’t go to #2 without getting #1. Again, that breath pressure thing is so key to making things work, so you have to start from the beginning. It doesn’t take that long, but you have to make a commitment to be very precise and do it right. Don’t skip or cut corners.
What are the common things you see people doing as vocalists that are glaringly wrong?
MC:
The first thing I would say is that they imitate. Instead of being the sound or being inside themselves and making sound, they listen to what they think they are supposed to sound like and try to copy it. What that does is robs the material of all the soul and actually makes you use your throat to imitate. Imitating is the biggest one. Comparing yourself to the sound of a CD – this is particular with pop singers and rock singers and not metal singers – they listen to a CD and think their voice is supposed to sound like that, when actually that is layered and compressed and EQ’ed. No one sounds like a CD in the air live. They say, “I want to sound like so and so” and then so and so has tons of reverb and it’s compressed. It’s ridiculous. You can’t compare yourself to anyone or anything you hear on a CD, so you might as well just be yourself. That is what you need to do first – be yourself.
The other one is, people think you need more air for high notes and more air for long notes and more, more, more. Everything needs to be contained within a consistent place. The strength does not come from the idea of louder or better or sweeter or more beautiful, all those labels that come into the mind when one’s performing vocals. Those labels actually go against proper vocal production, because it operates the wrong part of the body. It goes straight to the throat. If you think or imitate or become judgmental or even make appraisals of what you’re sounding like, your breathing is off, because it’s going through the wrong part of the brain. It’s like driving from the passenger seat. Taking big gulps of breath is the big one.
What are some of the common misconceptions about voice?
MC:
A big misconception is that teas and lozenges help. The vocal folds are in the windpipe, so no tea or lozenge will ever, ever reach your vocal folds, because you’d choke to death. It’s in the airway. If you get anything into your airway, you’re calling 911. Hydrating and drinking water is something you need to do over long term, not just drink a gallon of water before you go on. It makes no difference at all. Everything you do to your vocal folds has to be done systemically. The placebo affect is a different thing. Placebos work. Anything that makes you feel warm and fuzzy, go for it. If you think that stuff works, do it, because it’s really all about a mind thing. The lozenges and the teas and all that stuff, what that does is makes a coating of the area above the airway, so there are nerve endings there that receive warm and fuzzy messages. If you have vocal damage and you get hoarse, those lozenges are not going to fix it. The only thing that fixes swollen vocal chords is vocal rest. It’s like a sprained ankle. You have to stay off it and use it a little bit and let it restore itself. Swelling is swelling. It’s inflammation. You shouldn’t take Aspirin, you shouldn’t take Motrin or Ibuprofen – only Tylenol when you’re on the road. Blood thinners are really bad for trying to heal broken chords. You need blood to be blood. Watch out for blood thinning painkillers.
Smoking is bad for you, in case you didn’t get the memo, but especially at a younger age, you can’t blame a bad show on smoking. There is one instance in which that is not the case, and that’s when someone is truly allergic to cigarette smoke. That’s different, because if there’s anything that causes mucous, you don’t want that. But young people that have been smoking are going to get their ass kicked down the road. When you’ve been smoking for 25 years or 30 years, you’re going to start to see the damage. Up until that point, it’s absolute rubbish that smoking is the cause of vocal problems. It’s technique, technique, technique. I have people on the road that smoke and drink and do drugs. The ones that stay up all night are the ones that get into trouble, because lack of sleep and getting sick are two components that invariably lead to vocal damage without proper technique. You’re on the road, you’re not sleeping, you’re innately fatigued and have a cold, and the mechanisms you need to operate the voice are compromised, so you will get damage especially without training. Smoking is bad for you but not necessarily the culprit in vocal problems, especially at an early age.
Drinking is a loss of control, so it works really great for people that are on the anxious side. Drinking is okay, but you can’t go out of control, because you’re going to lose that consistency and control you need.
So drinking affects breath control then?
MC:
Well, it does if you’re drunk. It affects everything. It’s also dehydrating, so if you need to drink, then you need to drink a lot of water. The reason water is important and good and even imperative for screamers and people that are on tour for any kind of music, is because water creates padding for when the vocal folds come together, as they do in phonation of any kind. If you don’t have that padding of liquid, you’re much more likely to get damaged because there’s not enough fluid in the tissue, so it hits harder. The vocal folds come together to vibrate at pitches, and even when I’m speaking, if I’m making a sound, it’s because the pair of my vocal folds are coming together, stopping air and creating sound. When they come together, they need a padding and a protective fluid base so they don’t bang so hard. It’s like having something underneath the carpet to give it that protection.
Having been doing this as long as you have, do you have any general music advice or advice beyond just protecting your voice?
MC:
I would say that you need to keep in mind why you’re doing this. It doesn’t have to be a verbal reason, but it’s a love. Don’t get caught up in music business bullshit. You’re doing it for love, and just keep doing it and don’t worry. The music business is in a state of flux, and truly the direction with a major label is that they’re looking for the next big thing. The next big thing is something that nobody has seen before. If you do anything derivative at all, and you want to be involved on a larger level with a major, forget it. If it sounds anything like anybody else, it’s not going to fly, because there’s not enough money anymore to promote artists that sound like anybody else. And also, if you want to go the major way, you have to have brilliant, bullet proof songs. If the writing is not bullet proof, forget it; don’t go with major labels. If you have a cool vibe and maybe the songs aren’t great, but the whole trip is very good and you love what you’re doing, you can promote that very easily yourself to a point where someone would take on the distribution of that product. You’ll make a living, but don’t think of it as the Britney Spears path. Just be grateful that you’re not going into debt and can feed yourself and pay your expenses and live off the t-shirt money. You do it for love, not for money, because there’s no money. Forget the money.
————–
If you are interested in Vocal Coaching learn more about Melissa Cross
Posted in Music Career
Music Business and Music Business Education
Posted By Musician Coaching on May 13th, 2010
Dave Kusek is a musician, author and manager of the first online music school at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Prior to being at Berklee, Kusek was a pioneer in the music software business and co-founder of Passport Designs- one of the first companies to develop MIDI recording software. In addition to consulting and managing the Berklee Online Music school Dave co-authored the book “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” and created the online information service for musicians “Music Power Network”.
Tell me a bit about what’s going on with Berklee’s Online school these days-
DK:
BerkleeMusic.com is Berklee’s online school, and we’re currently teaching music production, songwriting, music theory, guitar, vocals, bass, drums, keyboard and growing our catalogue. The idea is to deliver really high-quality music education via the Web to anybody anywhere. So far we’ve taught 25,000 people online, and they literally come from all over the world. It’s so interesting to have these people who are by and large professional musicians, people working in the industry, that’s the majority of the people studying along with serious hobbyists and weekend warriors and people trying to get into the industry. To have this international mix of students working with us is really eye opening because we think so much about the U.S. market and what is happening here, but it’s not that way in lots of places in the world. Some places are behind us and some are ahead of us an some places have different copyright laws and issues. It’s very interesting to have the perspective of a global music-making community and all the issues they are dealing with. It’s very eye opening.
You must have a unique vantage point on what aspiring musicians are thinking these days- what have you been seeing?
DK:
It’s amazing to me how many people still want to get signed to a label.
I had a similar revelation when determining what kind of keywords people were searching for online when I started marketing this website. Very few people searched for terms like “marketing my music”, “sell my music” or “sell more records”. Amazingly thousands and thousands of people still type into search engines “How do I get a record deal?” or “How do I get signed” I didn’t expect to find that either…
DK:
It’s true. Even after they might take three or four classes with us, and we’re teaching them about direct-to-fan, setting up your own record company, finding a publishing company, distributing digitally. Even after all that, when you’re wrapping up the classes sometimes and ask, “What are you looking to do next?” it’s astounding how many people are still looking to grab that brass ring somewhere and have somebody take care of them and make their life simpler.
I should actually clarify my position on labels though because it’s often misunderstood. When people ask “Why are you so anti major label?” I almost always reply “Well, I’m not anti major label, but I think if you are waiting around for one of them to call you, you’re screwed.”
DK:
I totally agree. Some people will get calls, like Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn that are blowing up on YouTube with their video songs. I bet they’re getting calls from any label that has their lights on at all, just because of their popularity. They may sign and they may not, but I’m sure they’re getting the calls. But the vast majority of people are not. You know better than most people the reality of the situation. I think mistakes people made are still holding out hope that will still happen and not doing the hard work, honing their repertoire and performance skills and creating a fan base and getting out there and playing and networking with people. If you don’t do that, you’re not going anywhere, and if you’re not great, you’re not going anywhere.
What in your mind are some of the online essentials for artists? Part of the problem I have as a business person promoting my own services and part of what my clients say about their workload is that they could spend all day signing up for social networks and promoting. Where do people put their energy? Do you have any advice on that front?
DK:
I think it’s critical that you have your own website and drive traffic to your own website in any way imaginable, and that you set up ways to do business transactions on your websites. That can be collecting names, cell phone numbers, Twitter follows, selling product, building dialogue, communication, selling tickets and merch. That’s essential. At Music Power Network and Berklee Music we teach a lot of people DIY basics. Get your act together, get a website together, have a business partner that is going to help you create a strategy and deal with promotion and distribution and touring and publishing and your finances and the business aspects of your career so you can focus as much time as possible on creating art and getting better and practicing and becoming a better artist. I think that’s essential. Lots and lots of people I’ve seen – musicians, artists – have thought, “I’ll get online and Facebook and YouTube and get a bunch of friends and spend all my time blogging and tweeting.” But if they’re not working on your music, most of the time that other stuff doesn’t matter at all. If you’re not really great, nobody is really going to care. It’s such a fine balance to strike between perfecting your art and being unique and different and having something to say and getting the word out. That’s the conundrum. We often counsel people that you have to have a business partner. On Berklee Music we teach entrepreneurship, artist management, how to start your own business, how to run a business, how to market direct and use social media to market, what copyright law is all about, what contracts are all about, how to tour, how to make money, the realities of the different levels of touring and how you can get paid and use that to be a driver of your career. We teach all that stuff.
What is the section of your coursework that always elicits the most surprised reactions from your students?
DK:
I don’t think this is going to be news to you, but one o the things that catches people off-guard is the horror stories of the labels and the reality of a label deal. For the vast majority of people that have been signed previously, what they ended up with and how the money worked really surprises them.
Jacob Slichter from Semisonic referred to it as “Rock and Roll Sharecropping.”
DK:
Yes. Exactly. The popular media has been bashing the labels lately, but prior to that the successes of being known and the dream of being a rock star was what was held up, and that was what people wanted to know how to do. When they realized the reality was that you basically had to do it yourself anyway before the label would even look at you, and then nine times out of ten the label would not properly execute on your career, and you’d be better off staying independent unless you were one of the lucky ones.
What are some modern examples? Who are some people that are doing it correctly and making noise in an entrepreneurial fashion in your opinion?
DK:
I am fascinated by Nataly and Jack who I mentioned earlier. They are creating covers and using video very effectively to show the recording process. They’ve covered Beyonce and Aerosmith and a bunch of classic songs and have written a lot of their own songs and now are getting into tens of millions of views on YouTube. They’ve created this music in their condo or apartment and coupled a real creative approach to video production and editing – it’s low budget but high impact and very interesting to watch. They have showed how they record the music, made it interesting to watch, it’s funny, the production is good enough, and they are good enough musicians that they can pull it off, and people are responding to it. I think those kids have an incredibly bright future in front of them. Their phone has to be ringing off the hook. Where they go from here is the question. If they can stay independent and keep it together and get a manager and a team around them, personally I think that would be the way to go. If they sign to a label, let’s hope it’s a smaller one that is focused and willing to make some commitments to them in that they don’t sign away everything.
This video product that they’ve created is very unique. I think it comes down to if you want other examples, you’ve written about a lot of them. A lot of the modern music blogs are talking about OK Go and Arcade Fire and it’s been rehashed a thousand times. Using social media to present a unique story or a unique product is the way to go. If you can stand out from the crowd somehow and know who you are and know what you want to go for and understand what success is going to mean to you, you can put a career together and have a lot of fun. With Music Power Network that is what I’m trying to do. That’s really the extension of the “Future of Music” book. A lot of people ask me to write another book or manage them or help them with their career, and I thought, “I’m not a manager and I don’t want to live that life, but if I could create a site where people could go to get the information and focus they need to put a plan together for their own particular career whatever it might be. I’m preaching to the choir here, but I can keep a site live and constantly update it as things change and as new technologies and services come into play that people can become aware of, which we couldn’t do with the book.
I can’t fathom keeping up the level of content you do in terms of multimedia. I often wonder if you sleep.
DK:
I feel the same way about a lot of other people, so it’s really overwhelming. I’m lucky with my gig at Berklee to have a lot of really smart people around me that are always telling me to look at this and that and flowing in and out of the office, and the students we are meeting are doing a lot of interesting things, so that helps. It’s an easier way to keep up.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the Music Power Network?
DK:
There are four components: an online course that is a real overview of a lot of different aspects of the industry; video interviews that I’ve done with people all over the world doing different jobs so you can get a good perspective on all the different aspects of the music business and what has been happening in the last year or so; a business planning tool where you answer a series of questions and start to create a plan for yourself, and it’s completely customized based on how you respond and what you want to do and what your goals are and act is all about; a database of a couple thousand resources of blogs and managers and merch companies and publishers and marketing and web development so you can get access to the team you need to take your career forward.
Is there some content you could share?
Maybe to contextualize it a little bit, we have a tremendous amount of free content available at BerkleeShares.com and on our Berklee YouTube channel where we’ve gotten tens of millions of views. Music Power is kind of for people beginning their careers rather than more advanced people. More advanced people would tend to go to the online school because they want to go deeper and want more information and more interaction. That’s kind of how we tier it.
It’s a huge ambition that we have here at Berklee to try and help create a healthy music industry going forward. If there isn’t a healthy music industry, none of us have jobs, none of our students have jobs and the whole thing goes down the toilet. We have to help people be free thinkers, entrepreneurs, to break the rules. When we started the online school ten years ago there was no iPod, YouTube, Myspace, Facebook or Apple iTunes store. That all happened in the last ten years. So if you think about what’s going to happen in the next ten years, it’s going to be completely different and almost impossible to predict what’s going to happen. People that want to be in the industry have to be willing to accept that it’s going to constantly change for the foreseeable future. There is nothing you can be sure of, and the things that work today probably are not going to work tomorrow. God willing, some kid is going to create the next big thing in music like Sean Fanning did with Napster or a new format or a new kind of virtual experience that is as good as a concert. Something like that is going to happen, and who the hell knows what it is going to be? It’s hard to predict.
My disappointment with music of the last ten years is that the revolution in music has not been the music itself but rather the methodology by which it is delivered and consumed.
DK:
Yeah. That’s somewhat true. I think if you get outside of the U.S., there is a lot of really innovative music being created throughout the world that never gets out of its little region. There are people that are starting to blend different styles and genres from completely opposite ends of the earth together. I’m not as pessimistic about that because of what we hear with the students we see and the kind of crazy stuff they’re doing. There’s more going on than most people see in the western world. There are a lot of really cool things going on in Asia, India and Africa that are still yet to hit the mainstream or to be promoted at the level where normal people would know about it.
———-
Check out What Dave is with some Free Lessons from Berklee and some video from the Music Power Network.
Posted in Music Career
A Nerd’s Guide to Building a Band
Posted By Musician Coaching on April 27th, 2010
Some of you may not know who the Nerds are but if you were like me and grew up in the New York / New Jersey Tri-State area and ever opened up a weekly gig guide – you have seen an advertisement for one of their shows if not been at one of their shows. The Nerds are a New Jersey based cover band who have been together for 25 years and have played between 200-230 dates every year for the last twenty-two years. I was lucky enough to get some phone time with Jim “Spaz” Garcia the bass player and lead singer for The Nerds.
The Nerds - (Jim @ bottom right)
Jim, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. I was hoping you could share some wisdom about what it’s like to be a band that plays that regularly and tell me how this all started for you guys?
Spaz:
The first year was kind of getting our feet wet, but we weren’t planning on doing it very seriously or for any length of time. And then when things started building up, we thought, “Let’s keep trying to do this until it runs its course.” The longer we did it, the more we learned about business, the more we came to appreciate the lifestyle it afforded. By that I mean, not so much money, but having days and having the day to spend with our kids and stuff like that. Before we knew it, it’s 25 years later.
Do you have originals? Was this ever something to support your original music, or was it just that you guys got together and played covers for kicks?
Spaz:
We actually started as an original band doing originals. And then we started The Nerds as a breakout from that to get out and play in front of more people and become more comfortable playing with each other as a unit and as a band. And pretty soon we abandoned that original project and just kept it as The Nerds. Then after doing The Nerds for a number of years, we decided to do some originals and record them. So we did a CD back in 1994 that was mostly originals but a bunch of live covers that we did. At that point we kind of tried to pursue the whole A&R route, but before long we decided maybe this wasn’t what we were cut out for and maybe we should just keep doing what we’re doing and have been doing successful. We kind of abandoned the originals thing and tried to create an entertainment product and keep that going for as long as we could. Never did we expect it to go on for this long, because historically no one has ever done that. There might be one of two acts still around in Jersey that have been around for that long, but at the scale and presence that we’ve been doing it at not really. We’re kind of on our own, so it’s pretty cool.
There are bands that have good runs, but 25 years is something else. Tell me what it is you think you did right that so many others have done wrong.
Spaz:
I think a lot of it was that we didn’t start when we were 20. We started when we were in our late 20s. By that time I think there was a little bit more of a reality check situation happening, and we just wanted to play together with the same exuberance that a 15-year old just wants to play, but without all the baggage and hang-ups. Starting in our late 20s was like, “I like this kind of music, you like that kind of music. Let’s respect it all and try it all and let’s just try to be really good musicians and let it not be about the party or the drinking or the girls or all the other trappings. Let’s really just try to be a really good band.” Since we kind of went into it with that attitude, we were very laid back about it. We had really good management that helped push us through. Then we started talking about formalizing the business of it. Then we started learning – especially me – about the mechanics of marketing a band. I would say probably if you had to point to the one thing, it would probably be that we quickly got really comfortable with the idea that this could also be a business and not be afraid of the business side of it. I remember when I was about 18, and I wanted to be in a band, the last thing in the world I wanted to worry about was business. It was almost like the ugly side of what you want to do. Not until later and to this day did I really embrace that and say, “This could really be a means by which we can just rock.” Once everybody felt really comfortable with the idea and started to say, “Let’s just really run this as a good of a business as you can and think more like business men and get all that done by 6:00 so we can just rock and be the band we wanted to be when we were 16 or 17.” That and really having respect for each other. I think the mistake that a lot of bands make is expecting the guitarist to be much more than a guitarist. If you really start using people and simply exploit their strengths – and I don’t mean in a bad way – but really just let that shine and expect the very best of that thing they do really well, and they do the same for you, that makes all the difference in the world.
What does the division of labor look like for you guys? I’m going to guess after 25 years that it isn’t just one guy doing everything.
Spaz:
I pretty much administrate everything, as far as the business end of things goes, and by the business end I mean the way payroll is done, health insurance, pension plan, all the classic trappings of the business. And then I work with our agency hand in hand with all the promotion and marketing that has to be done. On the job, I’m also the guy that deals with the club guys or the company that hired us to play their event as well as the radio stations and any kind of mass marketing that’s being done by radio print. I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done with the New York Times and other big periodicals. I’m the guy that does all that stuff, plus I’m the lead singer and bass player. Then what we have is a guitarist who is very shy and introverted but is an amazing guitarist. That’s what he does the best. He’s also somebody who’s a devil’s advocate. Whenever we’re talking about, “We’re going to do this song or play this place or we have the opportunity to do this,” he’s the guy who will always step in and look at the downside of it. That helps things out a lot to work things through the system. We have a drummer who is a precision clock. He’s the best drummer I’ve ever worked with. You can just lean on that and know night after night, he’s not going to be a little bit slower or a little bit faster.
As a bass player I know first hand how you’re only as good as your drummer…
Spaz:
Our keyboard player is all about sounds but he’s also very good at picking material. And that’s the thing, everybody in the band is very aware of the material that we do and the effect that it has and the demographic we may be playing for on that particular day. When you put us all together in the dressing room, there is a big analysis of everything that’s going on. Nobody’s pulling out graphs or sketching everything out, but we have a good sense of feel with everything. And the other thing generally with everyone in the band is that everybody really listens more than any other group of players I’ve ever played with. It almost becomes a single pulse going through the whole band. That makes things really solid and enjoyable.
How did you guys go from, “Hey, we’re going to go play a couple covers to be a better band” to playing as much as you do and being a guy that has been on the phone with the Times and being in touch with radio stations. What was it that started you out?
Spaz:
It was very grass roots. We started up in North Jersey because most of us lived up in that area at the time. We were playing a regular Wednesday at a regular joint, and we were starting to build a following because we weren’t playing what everybody else was playing at the time. It was a following that really liked the eclectic nature of what we were doing. Of course we dressed like nerds and stuff, but we didn’t play the “Urkel” nerds. We were more generic about it and just playing off the freedom that that allowed us. If you dress like a clown, you don’t have to worry so much about how seriously you come across. So with us, we were dressing like nerds, and it just allowed us to be musicians who could play whether we were playing a song by the Rolling Stones or Steely Dan. It didn’t make a difference, because it just kind of helped blur all those walls in between that stuff. We started developing this following, and before I knew it, I remember calling my manager one night and saying, “You’re not going to believe this, but we got 300 people in this little tiny club that holds 200. Things are going well.” And then we got a raise at the club and it was little things like that. Next thing you know, we made the jump to play the Jersey Shore. Our first show at the Shore was not great and nothing really great, but suddenly people started calling us a Jersey Shore band. Next thing you know, a summer later we were a Jersey Shore band and everyone was hiring us. It was just a good coordinated effort between management, booking and ourselves and everyone just looking out for each other and keeping each other in check. And then we just steamrollered it. Then we were doing colleges and playing down in Delaware. Then we were becoming a big college town kind of band. It just went and kept going and going. At that time the club and band business was a lot better. There were a lot more big venues than there are now. It has seriously tapered off. Even national acts that were doing big stadiums are now doing club tours.
I really wonder how any of the arena rock will ever sustain itself. We aren’t building artists of that caliber either.
Spaz:
It was really a grassroots kind of a thing, and we’ve built from there and it really has changed over the years. We’ve gone from being a barroom darling kind of band to being the big show band at the Shore in bigger places to now doing all these exclusive kind of parties here and there in one town or another town. We’re drawing people in their 20s, 30s and 40s and they are having the time of their life. Some of the older people are discovering that if you want to go out and have a good time, it’s not like it used to be where there is a band at every other court. We’re carving a niche market even now for ourselves after 25 years. It has always changed.
Talk to me about the strategic partners. What did you do as kids to get a good manager and a good agent?
Spaz:
It’s almost a fairytale story. He was having a barbecue at his house 25 years ago around Memorial Day. I was in another band that was rehearsing at a rehearsal studio that he owned up in Fairfield. Long story short, I was at his barbecue, and he said, “I really like the way you play. Why don’t you put a band together and call yourselves ‘The Nerds’ and play soulful music. The irony of it will be fantastic. I’ll talk to Sammy Boy and we’ll book you guys and do this, that and the other.” And I said, “Sure, okay.” It was that simple and benign an approach. I spoke to the guys I was working with at the time, and said, “Let’s go out and do this. If nothing else, it will hype up the band.
By August the 15th of that summer we were gigging. We just threw it together in the most haphazard throw-all-your-stuff-in-the-car-and-let’s-go-to-Florida kind of way with no planning. We threw together some posters that looked like a bunch of yearbook pictures – the worst yearbook pictures you’ve ever seen. And we made up names. That all happened in about 45 minutes over the phone. Next thing you know we had two bookings a week starting on August 15th. Within three months of doing that, that agent bailed and didn’t want to do it anymore, and a different friend of mine that was an agency picked up the ball and ran with it for about two years. And when that ran its course, Steve was just managing us at the time and putting up money for production and PA and stuff, and he decided to be an agent. He went and got his booking license, and that became S.T.A.R.S. Production the agency. From Steve came the idea, from the idea came The Nerds and from the Nerds, three years later came the agency.
So he’s the fifth nerd.
Spaz:
Exactly. That’s been the deal all along. He’s as strange a character as anybody you’d want to meet in A&R and anything like that. He’s very creative and crazy. That’s how a lot of things happen. We played Carnegie Hall in 1992, and that was like, “What do you think of this? We’ll play Carnegie Hall, and we’ll sell out.” So, next thing you know, we booked Carnegie Hall and sold it out – 2800 seats. There we were at Carnegie Hall.
Did the majors ever knock on your door and ask you to do an original record?
Spaz:
You know what? Some people did, and honestly it was a lot of smaller labels. But nothing really ever came from it. I don’t know that we were too willing to jump into that game anyway. It was kind of hard to tell at the time because everyone was getting married and having kids, and we were getting nice and settled into the stay-at-home, play a gig, drive three hours to get back home kind of thing. It would’ve been a tough sell even for our crazy manager for us to do something like that. If somebody said to me at the time, “Would you like to be the house band on this TV show?” I would’ve said, “Sure, no problem.”
It’s just amazing that you guys have made your living at this without much outside help. There is a movement now with DIY because there are now so many digital tools available but you guys have been DIY for a really long time. I don’t want to pry but is the live how and merch the bread and butter of your business?
Spaz:
Not even merchandise. That kind of dried up after a few years as soon as CD sales dried up. By the time they closed Tower Records in the Village, no one was really buying anything we were putting down. People just wanted free whatever they could get. It’s really just been the live shows, which is not just clubs, but a long time ago, someone would say, “Would you play a wedding?’ Now we do maybe 20 weddings a year.
I’m getting the idea you guys didn’t say no to much.
Spaz:
Not much. That’s the thing. We’re just open to a lot of seemingly stupid things. A couple years ago we did the Yankees Fan Fest, a big thing set up at Lincoln Center. A big Yankee fan, merchandising, opening day kind of thing. It was like, “We’ll do that.” We had made enough at a corporate gig in Mexico and said, “Why not?”
And you think this has all generated because you just found a way to always play?”
Spaz:
Yeah. We were just always there. The thing is, the longer you’re around and the branding sells itself at some point. Its’ phenomenal if you can persevere and stick around long enough, just the sheer number of people that have seen you. We’ve played corporate for just about everybody who is now gone on Wall Street. We probably got the last couple bucks out of Lehman Brothers before they went under. We played for all those guys and for companies all over the place. We’ve played everywhere from Whistler, Canada to the Bahamas and everything in between. We’d fly overnight to do a corporate thing and get back the next day to play some local bar. That’s the kind of availability we’ve always had, even though everybody is married with kids. I don’t even have to ask anymore. I just say, “Listen, next February we’re going to Cancun to a wedding for the weekend.” They trust me, and everybody figures for all the right reasons and for the right kind of money. That happens after 25 years. With us it happened after 10 years, where everybody was just comfortable enough with any decisions that were being made and would just go along with it with their hearts on their sleeve and play their asses off. That’s a lot of business as well as just a lot of musicianship and passion.
Was there a distinct strategy as to how you and the band rolled out into different markets, or was it just, “Okay, we’ll play?” Do you have any advice about burning out markets by playing them?
Spaz:
The only markets you could burn out by overplaying would be like a club scene. A long time ago we realized we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to the club scene. There are so many clubs that we started taking ourselves out of a monthly rotation and realizing that some places you can play once a month, some once every four months, some places twice a year. And you try to build on that strategy of trying to be at the right place at the right time. We won’t play Killington Ski Resort in July. We’ll play on President’s Weekend, because we know it’s going to be packed. And then the phenomenon builds on itself. Really good strategy has always been there. With strategy comes everyone’s willingness to play.
Were there mistakes along the way? You must have so much you would tell yourself of 20 years ago. What were the biggest pot holes in the road that you’d like to cal out attention to for other people?
Spaz:
Early on it was the agency situation. At one point we were just part of a roster, and once we started building up, the agent would kind of use us as a negotiating wedge if they wanted to put in one of their older acts for $5,000. They’d say, “You can have The Nerds for $500,” and we were already doing $2,000 at the door. There was a little bit of that. As far as mistakes, the mind is a forgetful thing when it comes to things like that. We have definitely made some mistakes along the way. Even little ones. There haven’t been a tremendous amount of them because we’ve always put our focus on the main thing, which is to make sure we always look good and played really well and that the billing was right. Our manager Steve has been in the business forever. He was playing since 16 with Tony Bennett, Manhattan Transfer. He’d been around the block many times before we came around, so he helped us skirt around a lot of that kind of stuff. If it looked like there was going to be a problem, he’d tell me. One thing we learned really harshly was that we were playing a place and next thing we knew was we got a call from a lawyer because somebody wanted to sue us because someone claimed we had hurt their hearing at one of our shows. I will never forget the guy’s name. What did we learn from that? Insure yourself to the teeth with liability insurance. Unfortunately things like that happen. We learned a lot of lessons along the way. You’re at your best when you’re at your most natural. When you can be Howard Stern about things, it’s almost better than being Jay Leno about them. It’s going to have a better bite, have more lasting power and matter more.
How important was an aspect of community? Did you have friends in other bands that helped you out, or do you have friends whose bands you like that you have helped out? Did that play into your story?
Spaz:
That helps. It’s funny because I brought up Jay Leno, and that’s where you learn some things from Jay Leno. You be nice to everybody, and you be supportive to everybody and try to help out people as much as possible. That’s always come back in a very positive way. There have been one or two people that we’ve given a leg up to who have come back and bitten us in the ass, but that’s going to happen. We’ve always tried to keep that sense of community. When we were coming up in the 1970s and early 80s, there was a vast community of musicians all over the place that would get together and jam. One band would show up at another band’s gig, etc. And then it became very narcissistic and people were not doing that. We came along and tried to pull that back into it. So when anybody shows up, we get them up on stage to play a song with us. We’ve had some pretty funny things like that. Not just musicians, but pro football guys from the Giants we’d drag up on stage. I took them through a whole choreographed version of “My Girl.” You want to see something funny, you see 7-foot tall guys do a dance like the Temptations. We’ve had all sorts of celebrities, sports guys, Bon Jovi’s gotten up and sang with us. It’s that kind of thing that keeps the mystique and the magic of the live performance and that whole community thing goes a long way.
How has the game changed for you guys in the Digital Age?
Spaz:
Right now it’s all about the social networking. They’ve created a division at our agency of people that are just doing that. Talk about having to learn a whole bunch of stuff in a hurry. We creatively bounce ideas back and forth about our website and what we want there. The website has been great, but everything else – the Myspace, the Facebook, the Twitter – is suddenly at the forefront of everything we do. We try to stay on top of that and keep people informed about every place we’re playing. It’s been quite a run so far.
Do you have any other parting words of advice?
Spaz:
Everybody has always said and you’ve heard it time and time again but we really love doing this. We’re so fortunate. That’s the thing. You have to love and at the very least appreciate what you’re doing. And in this economy, if you’re doing anything, that’s a good thing all by itself. We found out a long time ago that we could do what we love and make a pretty good living at it. That’s all we’ve done for the last 23 of the 25 years. This is our one and only full-time job. What’s involved in the job? Staying healthy. That’s the biggest challenge of this job through all the smoky clubs and hands you shake and diseases to get out there. Being of healthy body and mind and indulge yourself in this passion you have. To be able to walk home with a paycheck is fantastic.
Learn more about Jim and The Nerds. You won’t be sorry.
Posted in Music Career
Community Vs. Audience – STS9
Posted By Musician Coaching on March 23rd, 2010
Eric Pirritt is the Manager for the band STS9 and the VP of Live Nation Rocky Mountains. Eric started his career in college promoting shows on the program counsel In New Hampshire and at the University of Denver and went on to work for various independent promoters and doing marketing for venues until becoming the VP of Live Nation and the manager for STS9.
I first heard of STS9 in an interview I did with Tom Silverman of Tommyboy who mentioned STS9 by name as one of the few independent artists who sold over 10,000 records in 2008. Eric, being very on top of all things going on with his band emailed me the day after the article ran.
So just tell me briefly how you started working with STS9.
EP:
One of the first bands I ever really worked with as a promoter where I booked every show they played for a month in Colorado was STS9. About halfway through that relationship they were saying they were looking for new management and at a show I booked for them they said, “We’ve been talking about a new manager, and he’s standing right in front of us. Can you do what you’ve done for us in Colorado everywhere else?” And I said, “I’ll try.” That was five years ago.
How did you go about building this? Obviously, it’s been a long time coming- they are not an overnight success. But what did you do to grow these guys from a band in George who had pockets of fans in Colorado to a national touring act?
EP:
The band was from Georgia when they first started building in Colorado. The sound was just something that made a lot of sense to Colorado. Colorado’s a state where people move from all over and have all different tastes, and they were this completely unique act. I remember the first time I listened to their first album, and I’d never heard anything like it. It was just one of those things where I started telling everyone about the band, and they would ask, “Who do they sound like?” and I couldn’t figure out who they sounded like. And if I go back now and look at it, that’s it. That’s one of the main reasons why everyone loves them so much, because they didn’t come off as something where they sound like “so and so.” Everybody always seems to want to compare something now to something in the past to make them feel comfortable with a description. They’re one of the bands out there that everyone goes to when describing the new bands: “This new band Lotus” or the “Bass Nectars” or “Pretty Lights” of the world, that are starting to come up. They came from our shell much like bands for many years would “sound like the Grateful Dead” or say, “They came out of the Grateful Dead scene.”
Your business with STS9 though is primarily the live show. You come out from a concert promotion background and you met them through live shows. They are mostly an event-based product, right?
EP:
Absolutely. We’ve made a lot of steps to get more out there in the world of getting our music into movies. They are in a documentary that just got accepted to some big film festivals. But yes, we’ve made our money on the road, we’ve built our fan base on the road, we’ve built our community on the road from the record label that we own and all these acts that are coming up right now. But it’s primarily a touring thing and an experience live.
What was your first step? I know they’re in the jam circuit. Did you pair them with other bands? Where did you start?
EP:
For Colorado, the first time they played, they needed a Thursday night, and at the time Thursday nights were Ladies’ Night Hip Hop Night at a local venue in Boulder that I booked. I loved the band so much, I said, “Let’s put you guys on Ladies Night,” and it was free to get in until 10. I brought some extra lighting because I could kind of just sense the vibe. I had never met any of the guys in the band, and none of them knew who I was until that night.
We created this kind of event that night. We were turning people away at the door. There is a good combination in Colorado, but it boils down to the fact that they had a promoter who found his favorite band. They’re still my favorite band to this day. I love them, and it’s not a business thing for me, it’s not a job for me. I get to manage my favorite band. I’ve said it before, that if there was a promoter who loved the band as much as I do in every town across America, these guys would be playing arenas. They’re actually starting to move towards that anyway. They got put on a Jay-Z show at an arena. They got announced on it nine days ago and the ticket count doubled. It’s almost sold out now.
That’s amazing news. What about online tools? Is there a community that sprung up? Did they do anything right or wrong there, or were they fortunate enough just to have fans to pick up and carry the ball for them?
EP:
I feel like we were one of the bands that clicked right when the Internet was starting to really be meaningful in ’99 or so. We were looking online the other day and re-registering our website, transferring a bunch of stuff around -we were first online in late ’98. They had a message board they built themselves. Everything they’ve done so far has been out of the concept to build community. We built our website ourselves. We didn’t use anybody to do it. We sell all our own merchandise out of a warehouse. Our label is us. The point is that we’ve made a lot o decisions that probably made our lives a lot more difficult in the grand scheme of things when we could’ve just gone to a ticketing company and said, “Just sell our tickets,” because we wanted to be connected to the fans. I would take it so personally if one person at customer service with the ticketing company we used to use was short on an e-mail back to somebody who had a problem. We do everything ourselves. We own our sound, our lighting, our warehouse, everything we do. I think that feeds off of it. We were able to build a sense of community. We toured a lot. Last year the band played 58 shows when we definitely used to play 150-200 per year. All this said, as a side note, if the band wasn’t good, none of this would matter.
One thing you can’t teach is talent. Clearly you have a product that appeals to people and that people want to be proud of in some way, shape or form. I was just kind of wondering about the things that really got it to the next level. How did these guys support themselves until the music became their career?
EP:
It took a long while for them to get to a point where they were making the money they are making now. If they’d have a big gig and make $10,000 for some big show, in Colorado or Atlanta or San Francisco, their first reaction was to take the $10,000 and make the machine bigger. They never said, “Let’s split the money five ways.” A couple of these guys were still living in their cars not as long ago as you would think because it was all about making the show bigger and making the show better. The amount of times I have to stop the ideas they come up with because they are artists in the true sense. They don’t think about what anything costs ever. They just want to make it something that when people leave they don’t forget it.
Right now with two semis on the road, it was the same way nine years ago with a van with an old white parachute that they would project their light show on. Or it was renting lights or decorating the stage with flowers. They always wanted it to be a unique experience. We’ve been able to still do that. For example, at Red Rocks last year in Colorado, we were doing two nights, but we decided to do one night just because we wanted to do something different so it didn’t feel like the same thing every year. We very easily could’ve put one opening act on and sold out Red Rocks. Instead, we built a second stage, started the show at 3 p.m. and put 12 bands on this thing for the same price as we charged before, just because that’s what we do. And people saw all this new talent, and these acts that had never played in front of 50 people played in front of thousands of people at Red Rocks Amphitheater. It was just a really cool thing. We’re doing the same this summer. The tour I’m rolling out this week is amphitheaters every weekend, and we have two opening acts, but we’re not going to stop there. We’re going to have DJs spinning on the side of the stage and have people in the beer tents of venues that have beer tents. We want people to look at an ad and see 7-10 acts and feel like they are getting the best deal they’re getting that summer.
So when you’re talking about reinvestment, you guys really have reinvested purely not in the infrastructure or the bureaucracy of your company, but in the product itself.
EP:
Absolutely. We probably spent $50,000 last year at Red Rocks with that whole second stage and starting early and paying the staff, but we just felt like it was the right thing to do. It was. The show sold out and people had the night of their lives. Even when we used to play 200 capacity bars to 10,00 seat amphitheaters, not much has changed; it’s just more trucks.
What are you guys doing now online that you’re finding effective?
EP:
There’s a message board that we host. We kind of stepped away from it a little bit in the sense that we gave it to the fans, because it was a lot of work for us, it was us hitting a point in our career where the keyboard player needs to be spending his time learning the new songs or being with his family, not moderating a message board. We picked a few fans and gave it to them. We still have that. A lot of it is content. We have a schedule, for example, for the next six months of what we’re doing every week online, whether it’s releasing a video of an old show that no one’s ever seen before or putting a new video on our YouTube page or making sure we send them a certain number of tweets about a certain number of things. Every e-mail blast for the next six months is already planned.
Do you do find it important though to have an on-going stream of media out there so people don’t get bored, even your hardcore fans?
EP:
Absolutely. There are two things: hitting your core fans, which is the important part of why we’re here; getting things out there like playing with Jay-Z tonight and putting up a remix of a Jay-Z song that we did in the studio. We’re always coming up with different stuff. The band just played their first acoustic show ever at an opera house and sold out in ten seconds. It was a flawless evening and the next album coming out is going to be an acoustic album. It was them on grand piano and no computers, acoustic guitars, acoustic bass. It was a legendary night. It’s content driven, but it has to be good and it has to be done smart. If I know we’re putting out this acoustic album, a lot of times maybe your reaction is to just tell everybody now, but no. Right now we just got off a tour that sold out 19 of the 23 shows, we’re opening for Jay-Z tonight at the Pepsi Center, big deal, and we’re announcing our summer tour. I think a lot of it is spacing things out and making sure you don’t overwhelm too. You have to be smart.
Most bands don’t have the luxury of talking about so many high-profile events they can talk about all at once, but your point is a good one. Talk to me about Coattails. The fact that they seem be giving back to other artists, and possibly were there other artists that helped them starting out? How important was that to them starting out?
EP:
As far as people on our coattails?
Or vice versa. The relationships with the community, not only fans but also other musicians. How important was that in their development and does it continue to be in their development?
EP:
I think it’s extremely important. It’s one of those things that it’s hard to tell what’s working when it’s happening. We just did a remix album where we had 30 artists donate tracks and we donated all the money to build a house in new Orleans. We just hit our goal of $150,000 last week. I read somewhere that somebody said once, “Your career is a forest fire filled with tiny sparks.” It’s all about having an end goal and an end game about what you would love to see if it worked. There are definitely artists we’re going to sign to our label that get a ton of traction, and there are artists that don’t get a ton of traction.
We’ve always said, “No matter what, we’re going to go out of this at least being one of the more unique artists out there. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to fall down trying to run, we’re not going to fall down trying to walk.” That’s been a big part of it. It’s hard to say what’s really triggering everything, but there’s always a reason for hundreds of different people to be talking about STS9, whether it’s our album, or because you’re on our label, or because we put you on a late night show because throughout our whole tour we promote after parties everywhere, where we put all our label people on. We’ve got this built-in audience, so a band that can’t sell 100 tickets in New York plays a sold-out Irving Plaza. I think it’s a big part of everything, and that’s where it’s at these days: how do you keep evolving? How do you keep being fresh? We’re never going to be the new band on the scene. We’ve been doing this for 12 years. We’re never going to be the new guys. So how do you evolve that? It’s not an idea of going out there for the sake of being relevant and just coming up with stuff to pretend you’re relevant. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what certain things we did, but there’s no better description than that our career is a forest fire filled with tiny sparks.
There are a lot of compromises in life you make as a band. If I could give advice to some of the people that may read this, I could sit here and tell you about all the great stuff we’re doing, but all five band members are 100% involved in everything. I would never be able to do this without them, and I’d like to think I’ve done a lot for them too, but these guys are as involved as it gets. We all work together and are a 6-person management team and a 6-piece band only one of us doesn’t play an instrument.
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Check out STS9, their record label and an upcoming Documentary about the band.
Posted in Music Career
Paul Conroy on Fighting the Good Fight
Posted By Musician Coaching on January 28th, 2010
Paul Conroy is a music manager and co-owner of the company Good Fight Entertainment. Prior to running this company Paul had been an A&R representative, a music publisher and… ah hell I’ll just have him tell you…
Give me the really quick glance over your career. You started in the music business as a band manager, you’ve run labels and you’ve done both simultaneously. Why don’t you gloss over the past ten-twelve years.
PC:
I’m actually at thirteen years in the music business at this point. I started off as a local band manager in Philadelphia. I had no contacts whatsoever in the music business, and just through a lot of hard work and networking between Philadelphia and New York I was able to build some solid relationships. I went from there to work with Steve Hutton when he was managing Kid Rock over at Upper Cut Management. I did that for a couple years and then went from Upper Cut Management to Roadrunner Records where I was an A&R rep for about three years. While at Roadrunner I started doing A&R work in the area of publishing and while there went over to records and really learned that I did not want to be an A&R rep while at Roadrunner; however, it was a priceless experience for me because I learned how record labels worked from the inside, out. In my thirteen years as far as learning goes, my most intensive training came while I was at Roadrunner. After leaving Roadrunner with all that knowledge I went to work for Larry Mazer, and I was doing artist management with Larry Mazer.
For those who might not know – who has Larry worked with?
PC:
Cinderella, Nelson, Kiss, Pat Benetar, Cheap Trick and most recently Stone Sour and Breaking Benjamin. He’s got pretty much the highest pedigree as far as managers go. And in my mind, when you look over the last decades, to me, he was the most successful independent manager in the music business. I went from there to partner up with Carl Severson at Ferret Music. At the time Ferret Music was just a record label, and we had this vision to build this – for lack of a better word – “360” company. I helped Carl build the profile and business of the label and while doing that I started a management division, touring company .as well as a publishing company.
For those who wouldn’t be familiar, Ferret was primarily hard rock/metal stuff and it was primarily bands that would tour, tour, tour.
PC:
Yes. One-hundred percent. Carl discovered bands like Killswitch Engage and Every Time I Die. These were bands that when Carl found them they were basically playing VFW halls and basements, for the most part regionally on the East Coast. And the bands that were signed to Ferret beyond having a unique sound and being stylistically ahead of the curve as well as hard rock and metal goes, had a tremendous work ethic. Carl himself was in a hardcore band called Nora, which when he wasn’t working with the label, he’d be out touring as much as he could. The work ethic of the artists on Ferret were definitely an extension of Carl.
Tell me, how do you get a band that is playing VFW halls and basements to even become a regional act let alone national?
PC:
I have a good story about that. In April of 2003 there was a show in Bensalem, PA, at a VFW Hall, and there were about ten bands on this line up. Lamb of God was the headliner, Unearth was a support band, Every Time I Die was a support band, as well as Twelve Tribes, Nora, and A Life Once Lost. And the next summer three of those bands made up nearly ½ the second stage at OzzFest. That’s how quickly it happened, and then beyond that there were a couple of those bands that moved onto have pretty promising careers. It happened that quickly. It was in just a little over a year, from VFW Hall to OzzFest, playing in front of 10,000 people per day, which is crazy.
What did those bands do right that so many other bands don’t do from a business perspective?
PC:
Putting aside talent, the things that these bands do correctly that so many bands don’t do correctly is have a relentless work ethic. These bands basically would meet up at bigger VFW shows, or a festival called Hell Fest years ago where a lot of these bands would congregate, and these bands would put everything into playing shows with no concern for their own economics. They didn’t work day jobs, or if they worked day jobs they were jobs that afforded them to be out canvassing. And they were also savvy enough to network with each other. It’s amazing. It’s really easy to network in this day and age with Myspace and Facebook and everything else, but not so easy in 1999, 2000, 2001. You literally did your networking by meeting people at shows and staying in touch over the phone. From a promotional perspective, it was all about flyering. Beyond the bands, there were promoters that were relentless, and when they would put on a show they’d spend the eight weeks before the show flyering wherever they could to raise awareness. It was really work ethic that it came down to, and it is that simple.
You were at Ferret Music, you started doing 360 deals, you’re managing acts, you partner with Warner Bros and pioneered a tour called …
PC:
Sounds of the Underground was actually a tour we launched prior to partnering with the Warner Music Group. Just to be clear in terms of 360 deals, in 2004, 2005, we weren’t doing 360 deals. In 2010, we’re not really doing 360 deals because we don’t take touring revenue from our artists because we’re not staffed up to take touring revenue from artists. I don’t feel good about labels that do that. The reality is there’s no label on the planet that is staffed up enough to take touring revenue. That’s something I have an issue with in the music business. Anyway, we launched Sounds of the Underground which was a great vehicle to make big artists bigger and get smaller artists off the ground. We’ve had that tour for three years, and it’s something I’m quite proud of. During the process of launching that tour, we engaged in a partnership with the Warner Music Group, which was in 2006. The relationship with Warner was a 360 partnership of sorts where they were able to partner up and share in the revenue of our management business, tour business and record business and in exchange for that they provided support to us – financial support and a business acumen that Carl and I frankly didn’t have. They taught us how to run a business. We are quite proud of our history with the Warner Music Group. We are also excited to be truly independent again.
That must’ve been a great experience. Moving forward, you’re doing something called Good Fight.
PC:
Good Fight Entertainment is the next step in the Paul and Carl partnership. Leaving from a partnership with the Warner Music Group, we wanted to start with a clean slate, and we decided to rebrand our company. Good Fight we felt like was a name that was representative of where we are in music in 2010. When I talk about relentless work ethic and things of that nature, it’s more important now than ever. So we felt like “fight the good fight” was a name that would be synonymous with what we were going to put into our company.
Philosophically is it the same kind of company – making and breaking artists from as many angles as you’re able?
PC:
Philosophically it’s pretty much identical. I think for us starting the year off we moved into a different office space that we’re really excited about, and it was really a psychological thing for Carl and myself and the team. We’ve put so much into the last three years building up our company, and now we’re stepping out as a true independent, so we wanted to re-brand ourselves to serve as a continual reminder that we’re out there on our own now and we have to fight the good fight. Philosophically, I’d say it’s business as usual, but it’s more an internal, psychological thing than anything else.
Tell me who you’re working with these days.
PC:
On the management side, we’ve got bands like Between the Bird and Me and August Burns Red – two bands that are having great moments right now with their touring, merchandising and record sales. We also have more senior bands such as Cannibal Corpse who are the reigning kings of death metal or Behemoth, that is the prominent black metal band from Poland. I’ve got a band Children of Bodom as well too. Children of Bodom has Alexi Laiho, who is one the highest profile guitarists in modern metal right now. Beyond that we’ve got much younger bands. As much as there is a need for us to generate revenue being on our own, we can’t stop developing young bands even if the payoff is not immediate. We’ve got a hard rock band from Canada called Bleeker Ridge that just recently signed to Roadrunner and we’re very excited about. I’ve got a traditional metal band from L.A. called Holy Grail that I’m really excited about and I just picked up. It’s really important for music in general. There’s more pressure to generate revenue because times are getting tougher, but you still have to put energy into developing new bands. That’s just a reflection of the management side of the business, but the record side right now, we’re just finalizing a distribution deal and we’ll have a half dozen records that we’ll be putting out in the next six months on the label side.
Tell me a little bit about the elbow grease that goes into developing an artist. You’re obviously flexing your Rolodex and using your relationships. Is selling yourself business-to-business as an artist when you are just starting out kind of how you see management working, or how does it work for you?
PC:
Absolutely. The good news about the music business today is that due to the internet there’s no barrier of entry. The bad news about the music business is there’s no barrier of entry. You have a lot of bands that put up really terrible songs online that aren’t well thought out because they want to be a “band”. I’d say, first things first, stay in your rehearsal space and don’t put out songs until you feel these songs are ready to represent your band. I would say step one is to make sure you actually have your songs together and step two for me as a manager and label owner is I will not spend any time on bands that are not prepared to be self sufficient. That means living a lifestyle where you are 100% committed to your music. As a band, whether it’s moving back in with your parents, moving in together, quitting a day job to deliver pizzas or landscape. Whatever it is, you have to be committed. You have to be prepared to eat shit. I would say that’s really step two.
I think I’ve got the article title right there. “Eating Shit with Paul Conroy.”
PC:
Yeah (Laughs). The reality is, Rick, knowing me as well as you know – the dude who moved back in with his parents at 26-years old and was $40,000 in debt by 28-years old because I wanted to make it happen. This is what we do. This is a part of it, and if you’re not prepared to do it as a band, stop reading this interview right now and go back to college. With that said, prepare your lifestyle to dive into the music business and from there, one issue I think right now is so many bands put so much emphasis on building themselves up through community sites, which is awesome – Myspace, Facebook, etc. – but you also have to get out of your apartment and out of your house and physically be a part of it. When you’re not rehearsing and when you’re not playing shows, you have to be at shows. Seven days a week, even if it’s not the kind of music you’re playing, you have to be out there, you have to be active, you have to be visible. That’s the lifestyle you have to live. By doing that you’re going to make connections. And if you’ve got the right music and you’ve got the right work ethic, it’s going to happen. It’s really that simple.
Check out more on what Paul and his company are up to @ Goodfight Entertainment
Posted in Music Career
