This site is a blog for musicians and music industry people. It is a free educational resource and it is also the way I advertise my music consulting services. I am an entertainment professional with deep roots in the music industry. Throughout my music career I have been a major label A&R representative, a music supervisor, an artist manager, a reality show producer, a bass player and the head of a digital record label.
Lou Giordano is an award-winning music producer who has over 30-years’ experience working with a variety of bands, including Mission of Burma, The Lemonheads, King Missile and Sugar. He got his start in the music industry playing in bands in high school and while attending MIT in the 1980s, where he first had the opportunity to learn about the elements of the recording studio by working with a variety of local bands in a studio originally built by Amar Bose, founder of the Bose Corporation. In the ‘80s, Lou spent three years accompanying Husker Du on two world tours and worked throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s at Radiobeat Studios and Fort Apache Studios in Boston. In the mid-‘90s, Lou produced the Goo Goo Dolls’ multi-platinum album A Boy Named Goo. Most recently, he produced gold records for Taking Back Sunday and The Ataris.
Lou talked to me about how he found his way to music and shared some advice for artists about choosing the best producer for them and the elements that go into putting together a high-quality record.
Thanks for taking some time to chat, Lou. How did you get started in the music business? I know you played in bands while you were at MIT.
LG:
Yeah. I went to MIT, and I had been in bands in high school, so I just kept playing. And in college, I bumped into a couple people who got me into new things. One fellow in particular, Seth Gussow was renovating an old recording studio on campus that was used by Amar Bose when he was doing his doctoral thesis there, studying acoustics. He was working out the different techniques for what would later be his speaker company. He built a studio – a small recording room – and then there was a bunch of tube equipment that was in there. But it was all in a state of disrepair. Seth was restoring all the equipment. I didn’t really help him too much with that part of it, but I helped him with a few recording projects and really liked it. I got my feet wet with that.
Then, I started off at an 8-track studio in Kenmore Square. At the time I was more interested in the music side of it, not so much the recording. So, I was going out and discovering all these hardcore bands. The whole idea of punk rock to me was really fascinating, because I had been a big classic rock fan during the ‘70s and then got a little disinterested and felt like it wasn’t really speaking to me anymore. When this whole punk rock thing came up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s it was just really eye opening. The music was exciting, the fashion was fun.
And I made friends with a lot of the bands in Boston. Boston was a unique development environment for bands at the time, because you didn’t need to make a record. You could just go into the studio and make a tape. And then you’d make a few copies of the tape and carry it around to the three big radio stations at the time. You’d take it to those three, and then all of a sudden you were broadcasting to the entire Boston metropolitan area. And then, when you’d have a show, people would go. It was just incredible. It was this whole micro-economic development pot there.
It sounds like the process of getting your music heard was a lot simpler then. There were a lot less players, etc.
LG:
Well, you didn’t need a recording contract or any corporate approval to get your message out. As a result of that, there was a big business opportunity in recording radio tapes for bands. I went to the studio – Radiobeat – and that was what they did. It was funny, because the owner was more of an old school punk guy. So when all this new hardcore stuff like SS Decontrol and all the Taang bands were coming into the studio to record, the owner didn’t really like them very much. He didn’t want to be a part of recording some of those bands, so he taught me how to set the levels, and that’s what I ended up doing for a couple years.
A few people like Mike Dreese over at Newbury Comics decided to get into the game. He did the “Boston, Not L.A.” compilations and financed that and the whole Modern Method record label. That was kind of the beginning of that type of recording. At the beginning it was just recording. There was no production involved. It just became clear that there was a whole separate job to do. It was one thing to record the music. And it was another to sit back and say, “Not only can you record the music and make it sound good, but you can also make the music better by suggesting changes, rearranging the songs, suggesting lead guitar parts, harmony vocals, etc.” It was just really eye opening.
Some of the bands didn’t want any suggestions at all and were very protective of their content creation. But others were able to take suggestions and sing the vocal differently – play with all the little things that go into it. It was really a process of teaching yourself how to do it for everyone. And one thing led to another …
You’ve produced a string of super successful acts. And you were in a place where you had exposure to a large volume of recording. What would you advise someone to do that is interested in getting into the production side today? Is it about getting into a bigger studio and being part of as many records as you can?
LG:
At the time, I think there was an element – and there still is an element – of being in the right place at the right time. But then again, there’s also the idea that the more you do something, the better you get at it. You really learn from every single project you do, no matter how big or small it is. If you have your eyes open, you can learn something from it. I happened to be in this little college town where there was a lot of work being done. And opportunities would come up where you’d get out of the college town and go national. Then you really see what’s going on.
The one “golden ticket” – as you referred to it when we were talking the other day – with that time period was going out on the road with Husker Du. That was just an incredible experience in many ways, even just in terms of learning about how to make a financially-profitable tour. But then, just making all the connections with all the different local scenes around the country was huge. It was right after they got hooked up with SST Records. It was really interesting to see how they were running their label and getting everything going.
Getting back to your question, it’s challenging to know how to advise somebody to be a producer these days. One of the things I’ve seen over the years as the labels have downsized and we’ve felt the effects of illegal file sharing is that what was once a very lucrative career has become less lucrative in some ways. In some instances, people are paying one-tenth of what they used to pay for the same kind of content creation. I think a different model is developing now. And I think there will eventually be a way of monetizing music in a better way.
I wanted to ask you a little bit about what you think bands should be doing before starting to work with a producer. Are there specific elements they should have planned out in advance? And then, also, what should they be looking for when they are trying to find a producer that’s a good fit?
LG:
The first part of your question about what they should do is very important. And I know it sounds obvious, but I think a band needs to make a demo of a song that includes the lyrics and the music. That sounds so obvious. But I had a situation with a major label band where they wanted me to book studio time, and they didn’t have any lyrics or melodies written for their music. And I refused to do it, even though it was a big gig.
In my opinion, about 90% of people don’t write well in the studio. So, #1, have a demo of your song that includes the lyrics and melodies. You can always change things later. And now you have tools like GarageBand. The sonic palate you get with that is unbelievable. There’s no excuse for not having a good demo. Some bands have come to me with very elaborate GarageBand demos. And sometimes, it’s difficult to recapture some of the things they’ve done on there, and I end up using them straight out of GarageBand. I bought Logic Audio and trained myself how to use it – not that I would ever really use it in production, but just to extract some of the really cool stuff people were doing on their demos.
The second part of our question about choosing a producer – obviously, you want to go with their track record. If you like the way their records sound, that’s one thing. But the other thing is, I think there are different styles. There are some people who really like to get into the nuts and bolts of the song, take it apart and really be a very active presence in the content creation process. Then there are other people who just sit back and put the right people in the room, make it a party, have fun and have things get done that way.
A band doesn’t always necessarily know what’s best for them. But they usually know whether they’re going to let somebody into that inner circle and be a part of that creative process or whether they really don’t want that. I think that’s one of the big questions you have to ask as a band. And then you have to ask around. It’s pretty easy, because bands talk amongst each other. I think it’s pretty easy to find someone who’s worked with a specific producer you’re thinking of. And it’s easy to ask them what it was like, whether they enjoyed it, etc.
Sometimes there’s a little bit of tough love involved. Artists don’t necessarily want to be told that what they’re doing just isn’t cutting it. So, as a producer you have to deliver that message. And it may not resonate too well with certain egos, but it happens. It’s a difficult thing to manage as a producer.
There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a producer. Not everyone can afford the A-list. And some people might be surprised at their involvement in the project. Sometimes the band ends up working more with their team.
Well, and I’ve been told that if you make a record with Rick Rubin, you meet him once or twice and spend days and days with the engineer. That’s probably not that uncommon with some of the bigger names.
LG:
I agree. And I guess they’re doing it more as an executive producer than a hands-on guy. I never really could do that, and I think the people I’ve worked with have enjoyed the contribution I’ve made to their material and their music.
You’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of bands and artists. Of the ones who made it vs. the ones who didn’t, was there a specific type of personality or a work ethic they all shared? Is success a random spattering of luck, or are there some common traits?
LG:
I think there’s a very large element of randomness to it. Some of the people who were least prepared for the studio in advance ended up having some of the most successful records. The Goo Goo Dolls is one example of that. On the record I did, they had demoed a few songs, but very few of them were finished melodically and lyrically. And that’s one of the most successful records I’ve done.
I don’t really think you can see any personality traits or work ethic that’s a recipe for success. A lot of it has more to do with somehow identifying with this elusive idea of just being able to write a musical phrase or melodic phrase that really sticks in people’s heads. It’s funny, because I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times with bands: “You wrote this great verse of a song here, and it’s building up to a chorus. And now you have a chorus that is lyrically so complicated that no one could ever possibly remember it or walk around singing it. How do you expect this song to be successful?” I think there’s an element of simplicity that has to be there.
Unfortunately, it gets carried too far, and people dumb things down a lot. I’ve always tried to work with people who want to make the music in a clever way, understanding the constraints of the medium and understanding that you have to play the game a little bit; you have to have a repeatable chorus if you want people to remember the song. But you don’t always have to structure it “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, double chorus.” There are ways to structure a song that can make it very unconventional, but still memorable.
To learn more about Lou Giordano and the work he’s done throughout his 30-year career, you can visit him on LinkedIn.
Robert Smith is a seasoned producer, engineer and mixer who runs Defy Recordings in New York City. A musician and avid record collector since the age of 11, Robert got his start in the music industry when he moved from his home town in upstate New York to New York City in 1986 and immediately threw himself into the studio. He got his professional start at Green Street Recording studio – known in the 1980s as the home base for Def Jam Records – and had the opportunity to work frequently with Jam-Master Jay and Run DMC as well as with Public enemy and R&B legend Allison Williams. From there, he went onto work at the Hit Factory and also Power Station Studios. During that time, he made records with an array of artists across many genres, including Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, David Sandborn and Luther Vandross. Robert also helped start and grow a multi-media company where he worked on post production on film scores and major commercials with clients such as Reebok, Coca-Cola, Oil of Olay and Proctor and Gamble. Eventually, he decided to return to his love for music and focus on Defy Recordings.
Recently, I talked to Robert about his experience in the music business, some advice he has for folks that want to get involved on the production side and why he feels persistence and fearlessness are the keys to success for anyone that wants to achieve real career longevity.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, Robert. How did you come to be an engineer and producer?
RS:
I moved to New York City from upstate New York in 1986. I’ve been a huge record collector since I was about 11-years old. I’ve never done anything else but immerse myself in music since then. I’ve been very lucky to have been at the right place at the right time. I began working at many studios around town starting in the late 1980s, and it just grew and grew, and here I am, still doing it.
Who are some of the people you’ve worked with during the course of your career?
RS:
One of the first people I worked a lot with was Jam-Master Jay of Run DMC. The first studio I worked with was Green Street Recording, and it was pretty much the unofficial home base of Def Jam Records. For the first year of my career I was working in the same studio as Run DMC and Public Enemy. Def Jam also had a lot of R&B stuff like Allison Williams, Orange Juice Jones, who were keeping us really busy. My first recording session was 24-hours long. And I thought, “How am I going to do this?” But it was amazing.
Then I got a job at the Hit Factory. And that meant working with artists like Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Mariah Carey. I worked a lot with her right before she got her record deal. At the time, everyone was at that place.
From there, I went to the Power Station where I worked with David Bowie, David Sandborn and Luther Vandross. The only people I didn’t get chance to work directly with who were recording there were Madonna and Bruce Springsteen, though I did talk about fish with Springsteen once when we were looking at a fish tank. That’s about as close as I got to it.
I went freelance from there. And I tried something a little different by starting a multi-media company with two partners. We did post production on film scores and big commercials for advertising. Our clients were Reebok, Coca Cola, Oil of Olay and Proctor and Gamble. We did a lot of movies, like the movie Waitress with Keri Russell, which did really well. I did that for about five years and then decided to go out on my own again. We were fortunate because our multi-media company got big pretty quickly. By the time I left, we had 20 employees and two floors of a building. But I wasn’t really interested in meetings; I was still all about the music. So, I decided to re-focus on that side of it and continue what I really love to do. And I am fortunate to still be doing it in this day and age.
It sounds like you didn’t spend much time as a performing musician. You just got right behind the board.
RS:
Yes. Before I moved to the city, I played bass for a while in a band and I was also a DJ. But I liked the tech side of it and was definitely drawn to that side of the glass pretty quickly. It’s not like I moved to the city and played with bands; I moved right into the studio, and that was pretty much it.
And you’ve been at it from 1986, to 2011. Are you doing more production or engineering these days?
RS:
I’m probably doing more engineering and mixing. I produce on average about five albums per year. But I’m working every day on mixing, mastering and engineering.
You’ve been around for 25 years making records. I’m sure a vast number of the people you started working alongside are no longer in the business. What did you do that other people didn’t?
RS:
Many have been long gone. It’s an insane business. I guess you could call it a business with an incredibly bad business model. What I mean by that is that if you’re looking to have a career, have a family, buy a house, go on vacation and have a 401K, this is not the way to do it.
I get students all the time asking me what it’s like. I remember an email I got from a high school student in Arizona with what looked like a standard-issue questionnaire in it including questions like, “How many hours do you work per week?” And I thought, “I don’t know … Zero, to 100?” Those questions are more for someone that works in a bank. This has never really been a job. It’s way more of a “life” than your standard-issue career where you look forward to your retirement. For me, it’s just been about persistence. And also, I wouldn’t know how to do anything else. I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s what I do and who I am.
Let me reverse the question. What were some of the traits of the guys that didn’t make it?
RS:
I don’t know why, but that’s a tougher question than I might have thought it would be. With those guys, a lot of it had to do with family stuff. Once you get married and have kids, it’s a little harder to justify being up until four or five in the morning every night, getting home when it’s sunny out and then having to come back again early evening. It’s an “all in” thing. If you really want to do it, you need to really immerse yourself in it. The people that didn’t hang in always treated it like a job or a part-time gig. They were around for four or five years, but then they just got out. If you want something normal and stable, this isn’t the job for you.
Let’s talk about the musician side of things. Because of your long list of credits, you must get approached often by relatively unknown bands. Other than somebody that can string together a good handful of sentences and has a high-quality recording – which is of course the X-Factor – are there things people should do to prepare before reaching out to you that will make their project more desirable?
RS:
Sure. The biggest thing I miss from the major label days is the filtering process. If you were signed to Columbia in 1990 and in front of me in the studio, it meant you had passed the test; you had dealt with the A&R guys, the managers and had recorded the demos. By the time you got to me, you could generally write a song and sing, because back then we couldn’t fix your performances as much as we can now. I knew you were at a certain quality level, because no one would’ve invested that kind of money in you as an artist unless they thought they could get it back. I miss that side of it, because there are so many artists I get approached by now that don’t know that process. There is an unprofessional side to it now, which means there is a lot of grooming I end up having to do that I didn’t have to do before because a lot of it had already been taken care of: how to sing in tune; how to really play an instrument and all those things you would do if playing music your job. When someone hasn’t had that kind of experience, I have to groom them towards that, which can be a lot of extra work.
That makes it sound like your job description has shifted and now includes making up for people’s lack of shedding time and education.
RS:
Completely. It seems like part of my job now is to have a chat first and say, “Here’s what we’re going to do today.” There’s always some kind of story involved. The benefit of my experience is that I’ve seen just about everything. So, when someone comes in and we’re having a terrible time, I’m able to steer it some way; I can apply an antidote. I think that’s why I’ve been really busy too, because I’ve been fortunate to come up in the days of tape, and I’ve been around some really classic records and know how to get the right sound because I was there at the beginning. In that sense, it’s been great. I’m still young enough that I can relate to younger artists. But I’ve been around enough that I know how to edit tape and what people talk about when they are thinking about the “golden days” of analog and a certain sound.
Along those lines, for people wanting to perfect their craft behind the glass, there are a lot less opportunities like the ones both of us had coming up. There are a lot less studios in business. What advice would you give to somebody that has a pirated copy of Pro-Tools and are trying to figure this out on their own? How can they compete with an education with the guys out there that knew analog?
RS:
The advice I always give is, “Find a mentor.” I was really fortunate to have learned from all the best people on the planet. The guy who was a mentor for me for the first two years was buddies with Queen and was one of the engineers on “Bohemian Rhapsody.” He shoved me into this. It’s that whole idea of throwing people into the deep end and seeing if they can swim or not.
I have an example. A kid from Texas wrote me, and she wanted to come to New York and be a producer. She was 19, and I said, “You probably shouldn’t do that right now, because all you’re going to do is come here, clean toilets and try to find a job. You’ll barely be able to eat and pay your rent.” And she had never been in a studio. I said, “What you should do is stay in your town, find somebody that owns a studio and learn everything you can from them. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be up against kids that have come here from all over the world and have done that. You’re going to be behind right from the start.” So, I advised her to master it in her home town by learning from someone with a studio and learning to be better than they are. Then, she can come to New York with a leg up as opposed to with no clue at all. And no one had ever told her that.
I’m continually surprised by how often people just don’t get any sound advice at all.
Getting to know musicians in the studio as you have for days at a time, what advice would you give artists about relationships with management and labels? Can you talk about any pitfalls to avoid for aspiring musicians and musicians just coming up?
RS:
It’s tricky. It seems like now everyone that used to be in the music business before is now just a consultant. Because the money is now in those types of positions, we’ve all had to figure out ways to use our experience to still get some kind of income and still do what we do. There are those guys that still call themselves managers, but maybe they haven’t really managed. You just have to be really careful and not be too anxious to sign your life away. Throughout the history of music there are stories of people signing contracts that don’t know what they’re doing. And the next thing they know, they’ve signed away everything. It’s been like that from way back in the day and continues to be that way today. An artist will actually have success and then realize they don’t actually own a song or will just get a couple thousand dollars.
Yes. Jacob Slichter of Semisonic wrote a book, So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star, and he described the traditional relationship between label and artist as “rock & roll sharecropping.” And he was right.
RS:
Yeah. There were stories back in the day where the guy would find an artist and give him a couple hundred dollars and a Cadillac. And the artist thought, “Wow, I’m a pop star now.” Little did he know he wasn’t going to see a nickel of record sales that ended up sometimes totaling millions and millions of dollars. You have to be really careful of being that make promises and say, “I can make this, this and this happen.”
I had a friend who actually got onto The Voice, and right before she was going to get on a plane to go to L.A. for six weeks, she got a contract – and thankfully she read the fine print – that said that whether she won or lost, this company would own everything she did for seven years.
That’s the Viacom and American Idol model.
RS:
She actually has had some deals in the past and already had stuff going on, so she decided not to do it. I think if you have nothing going on, you should go for it. But you just have to be really careful and read contracts carefully as opposed to just signing because you’re so anxious to become a pop star. We’ve also heard the stories about someone signing an artist and then putting that person in a box for two years while they figure out what to do with the person. Then all the other interest goes away because the artist is already signed.
It’s pretty amazing what they’ll do. Atlantic was known for this. They would sign an artist from the Southeast and do what I call the “shiny shirt treatment.” The band would get signed and celebrate. Then they would stop doing everything that made them interesting to the label in the first place, and the publicist would say, “You know, you would look better in shiny shirts.” They would give everyone a shiny shirt and take new photos, and then nothing would ever happen. It’s very sad.
Do you have any parting words of advice?
RS:
The people that make it in this industry don’t have any choice. It’s built into them, and they are just so talented that it can’t be denied. In the end, it really depends on how badly you want it. If you just want to come into the studio and do it for a couple years, it’s not going to work. I’ve never seen anybody just dabble and find success. The ones who have made it are “all in” from the very beginning. You don’t have a choice. It is what you’re meant to do.
There is one word describes all the people I’ve seen that have had success: fearlessness. The fearless people always do well. The ones that question and pause are the ones who are still sitting and wondering what happened or asking, “Why isn’t anything happening?”
To learn more about Robert Smith and the work he does, please visit the Defy Recordings website.
JJ Appleton is a successful singer / songwriter, producer and session player and has had a great deal of success getting his music placed and licensed. JJ was signed to Universal records out of the UK several years ago and has toured extensively in the US and abroad. For the majority of his career, he’s done these things completely on his own.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
Bring me back to the very beginning and tell me the things you did in your first band to build a following that worked and the things you saw them try that didn’t.
JJA:
I’m definitely dating myself a little bit, because in my first band I was really young – I was 16. But there wasn’t really any Internet. E-mail was just sort of rearing its head. It was a lot of more in-person sort of promotion, which still works, and I’ve done a lot of this in bands over the years even when the Internet was really prevalent. I just think if you’re going to other bands’ shows and you’re meeting people and letting people what you’re doing and when you’re playing, people will be curious when they’ve met you, and they’re going to want to know what your music is about.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
So even today, you’re saying nothing really replaces that human connection?
JJA:
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say I go to my Myspace page, and I have 50 bands that have added me that day. I decide what bands I’m going to band based on whether I like their name. I don’t listen to them. It doesn’t work. There’s a glut. So, in person definitely makes a difference. It helps to have an outgoing personality, and there’s the fine line between saying, “Hey, come check out my band” and being a used car salesman about it.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
How do you walk that line gracefully?
JJA:
How do you walk that line? I think especially with rock and roll and anything that has a little more of an organic feel, people can kind of smell it if you’re putting it on. There’s a way of just turning people onto your music that’s about you being confident, positive and upbeat, but at the same time maybe being cocky is too far in the other direction, saying, “We’re the greatest band in the world.” I don’t know who’s going to buy that, especially these days.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
Have you found that there are just endless amounts of bands, more so now than in years past?
JJA:
Maybe there are or there aren’t, but we certainly see a lot more because of the Internet. Unfortunately their shelf life in our minds is nanoseconds, unless you happen to listen and you really like them. In my experiences, the combination of in-person promotion, touring, Internet, they all work very well together. If you’re missing a piece of those – not touring, etc., not going to other people’s shows – it’s going to be a little harder. But if you’re doing all three, you can generate a little buzz. There’s no question about it, with some elbow grease.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
You’ve done a fair amount of regional if not national touring. How did you first go about making those connections to even leave your home city?
JJA:
For me it was colleges. I had friends who were going to school somewhere – maybe upstate New York, maybe New England – and they would tell me about being in a frat or they knew about the coffee house that had bands or the little pub on campus that had bands and they’d tell me about it and help me get gigs. And some of those gigs actually would pay a little money so some expenses would be covered. So that would help get the touring going. If I got a decent college gig I could build other shows around that. Obviously it’s great to break even and not lose money. But I’ve had my fair share of all three scenarios where I’ve lost money, broken even or made a little money.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
How have you been sustaining yourself as an artist? You run a studio and do a lot of session work. At what point did you realize you had to diversify your skill set in order to exist?
JJA:
I was in bands and I had day jobs. I was always getting fired because if I had a gig I would blow off work or try to get out of it. So I would actually lose my jobs a lot. Really, it was just sort of luck that I bumped into a high school friend who worked at a company that did music for commercials – jingles, etc. – and she asked me to bring my band in to do a Diet Coke commercial. It got picked up and, and it was before it was sort of hip to have your songs in commercials. And we didn’t do one of our songs, we did their Diet Coke jingle. And all of a sudden, I saw there was a potential to make money with that. And then also just by having a studio – it doesn’t have to be Avatar – it can be a project studio with decent equipment. I was trained by a record producer – a guy named Mike Thorne – he produced Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” I worked for him for three years (that was actually one job I didn’t get fired from). But I was actually working in the recording studio every day. So learning from that I was able to start a little studio of my own. People would come in and bring in song demos and I would do a whole arrangement for them – soups to nuts. I still do a lot of that, actually. And then that led to other production work with artists and then a lot of co-writing that led to a lot of music licensing. It’s a very good avenue to start generating revenue. But then there’s always that fine line of if you’re an artist, there’s also that line you cross where you become a “jobber.” All you’re doing is work for hire. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s just that if you also want to be an artist, you have to find that balance between the two.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
I’ve known a lot of people who have really done the cover circuit or the work for hire and then just never got around to doing the stuff that drew them to it in the first place.
JJA:
The key is the writing. You have to write every day. Of course, I’m not perfect, I don’t write every day. But I write something almost every day. The book to get is the book by Stephen Pressfield called “The War of Art.” If you are a songwriter – if that’s what you do, or a composer – that book could be really helpful for you in becoming disciplined to write every day. And that can include all sorts of avenues – songs for yourself, for your band, could be for stuff for television, commercials, could be stuff for other artists.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
What kind of impact have all these co-writes, work for hire and session gigs had on your personal art?
JJA:
Mostly positive in that I’ve met amazing creative people through doing that. Touring is also a doubled-edged sword as well. It can be great to get paid and tour and make a little money, and then meet other musicians and play great songs. The downside is if you’re an artist you’re taking time away from your own goals as an artist. Balance is something I’m always trying to maintain.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
You’ve had a string of successes getting your individual music as an artist placed in commercials and films, etc. Tell me about that hustle. What do you do right that you see other people NOT doing?
JJA:
I think the key is you don’t wait around for other people to make connections for you. You go out and try to make them yourself. For example, I’ve had music placed on Fox television shows, indie films – these are from connections actually I went and met in person with the people at Fox TV in Los Angeles.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
How did you get in the door?
JJA:
Well, it was interesting. That came from a place I didn’t expect. I worked with a guy who produced a couple of my albums named Stephen Lironi who’s possibly best known in the States for producing Hanson, their first album. But he’s also produced a ton of other stuff. I had a list of music executives at television companies. I sent cold e-mails and sent packages and just by following up via e-mail the woman at Fox recognized his name and said, “I used to work with him when I worked at Polydor.” Also, I was going to be in L.A. because I was playing at a Triple A radio showcase in Palm Springs, and I flew my band out. I was going to be out there anyway and I killed two birds with one stone.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
I guess a lot of that had to do with the marketing materials and how you associated your name with your friend’s.
JJA:
Yes. You have to spell it out for people. You can’t wait until you get them on the phone to tell them all the great stuff you’re doing. You basically get one shot in front of most people. These days that’s usually an e-mail or some sort of Web site. It’s all got to be right in one place, telling people everything you’ve done. And these things compound each other as your career goes on. For me, I had a friend that was crazy about this one song that ended up being my single in England that came out on Universal. She hounded this friend of hers that was a manager to come see me play, and he reluctantly took me on, and then over time, we actually developed a very good relationship. He was able to use a lot of his strategic partnerships to garner me quite a few valuable thing for my career. For example, I got sponsored by Budweiser for a year for touring, and they gave me $10,000 a year for two years towards the road. One request they had was that they had this Budweiser guitar, and they requested that we play it one song per show. I thought this thing was hideous. It was one of the ugliest guitars I’ve ever seen. So I made my guitar player play it for one song every show. The point being, again, my friend who hustled to get me this manager believed in me because what I was doing was real and she could get behind it. It comes down to the quality of music, which comes down to your work ethic. Are you writing every day? Are you listening to songwriters, etc. who have more experience than you? You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but are you getting them to help you, either through a co-write or just feedback?
This manager was also able to use relationships he had from working at record labels. As an indie artist, he really pushed for me very hard. He got me on “Last Call” with Carson Daley. Once I got that and had that to show people, there’s nothing more valuable than television. People in my experience view you with a different sort of legitimacy if you are on television. There may be bands that were way better and more deserving than my band at the time, but we got there. And then it’s over very quick. You can’t rest on your laurels forever. It has to be the next thing too.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
Tell me about how you got signed to Universal?
JJA:
Again, I had a chance meeting with an English guy who was a record executive and manager. I met him on a beach.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
You’re really not afraid to talk to anyone, are you?
JJA:
Well, there you go. I always think about if I hadn’t because I actually didn’t really want to talk to this guy. I think we were actually put together on this boat, and it was sort of awkward and no one knew each other and no one really wanted to talk. But once the ice was a little broken, it turned out to be one of the most fortunate meetings I probably had. We got to know each other a little bit, and then I followed up with him (another key thing), but I didn’t hound him either. But eventually it was the music that drew him in. I’ll tell you one key thing I did – I never offered to play my music for him; I waited for him to ask. And in certain cases – in this case – that was the right thing to do. Because if you put yourself in the place of someone who is a record executive, how many people are coming at them daily? I just knew that I had this guy – he’s on a beach – I can get to know him a little bit. It ended up being a very fortunate thing. He took me on as a manager, he got me sort of a small publishing situation with Universal and then that led to him taking me to a label that was distributed by Universal called All Around the World. The idea was we took most of my second solo album and a little bit of the first and we made a new album. And he got it released in the UK through All Around the World and then hired the best radio promotion team in the UK and brought the single to BBC Radio 2, which is probably the biggest listenership. It took a while for it to get off the ground – maybe 6-8 months – and at the time I was living there. Just as the single got played, the label All Around the World had some political shuffling. The people who had brought my album on left and just when it needed the push, unfortunately it didn’t get it. The good news is, I kept the rights to my album in the United States territory, so I never gave that up . And I’ll get the album back in four years.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
It seems to me that you spent a lot of time waiting.
JJA:
They brought me over to do a couple showcases, some for BBC Radio and also some live stuff – I played at Ronnie Scott’s in London and the Borderline in London – and I was sort of traveling back and forth quite a bit, and then just through a certain set of circumstances basically I realized that actually relocating to London for a while would be a good idea. To be there and with my management team, with the radio promotion team, with the label would get them fired up even more. It was a career move and also just an adventure. The thing is, it took a while for this to even get off the ground, or to even get started to get off the ground. There’s so much. I would wait around for a long time for the radio promotion team to call me up and say, “We have another showcase.” A month would go by and I’d hear nothing.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
What were you doing in the meantime?
JJA:
I booked my own tours in England. I put together my own backing band there. I got busy. All the while I was still writing music for television and commercials for here in the U.S., just from there. These days you just e-mail the track in. So I was keeping busy, but on the artist side, it was this great thing, because here was this label, and there was a promotion team and a management team and they were definitely excited about it, but it was also like starting over. No one really knew me over there. Fortunately I did fall in with a lot of good people, especially the musicians I met over there. I was able to put together an amazing band. I did the same thing over there that I did over here. I played at universities, I played at clubs, and I had a little bit of tour support, not a lot. I tried to make it so it was at least a breaking even venture looking towards building towards a money-making venture.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
This was done on your own with the occasional backing from your new team?
JJA:
My management team wanted nothing to do with booking of clubs and universities and anything like that. To be fair, my manager was always bringing booking agents down, and had the single taken off, we would’ve easily gotten a booking agent. But because there was no booking agent, who’s going to do it? Me. I know that it’s a mistake not to be playing. If I’m just waiting for my single to show up on the radio, I want to be playing and I want to be getting the word out. And I was able to do that. Of course I would’ve loved for my record to take off and the single to be a big success, but just because it didn’t doesn’t mean I didn’t get to do some amazing things.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
You made the best of the situation.
JJA:
It wasn’t the intended outcome. But you can’t control the outcome. What did I do? Once I knew this record was dead, I immediately went into the studio with Steven Lironi and recorded the “Black and White Matinee” LP. I didn’t wait. What am I going to do, sit there and lick my wounds? Once I got off my ass and quit feeling sorry for myself, it ended up being great. I made one of my favorite recordings I’ve made. It wasn’t a losing situation. It was actually a great situation in the end.
MUSICIAN COACHING:
What would you do differently if you knew then what you know now?
JJA:
There are a lot of things. I would worry a lot less about ego-related things: how many people are in the audience on any given night; what bad review said what about my album; etc. I definitely have a thick skin, but if I could’ve I would’ve developed it much sooner. Hopefully someone will read this and realize that’s not the stuff that matters. The stuff that matters is the creativity, the art, the songs, the recordings, the shows – that’s what’s important. The rest is just all the stuff that happens to go along with it.
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If you want to check out JJ’s music or are in need of a gifted producer please check him out at JJ Appleton.
***Editor’s note – since this interview was conducted JJ has partnered with a huge music firm in NYC Called JSM Music and begun writing songs with many different pop acts including Kesha.***
