Tag Archive for: Band management
Band Management: Blog 38: Online Radio
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” for one year, because I want to understand the current music eco-system, post implosion of the larger music industry, where we now have this mass produced corporate kick-in-the-balls awfulness (oh but I do like Taylor Swift’s Shake-It-Off) and then a post-apocalyptic landscape with all the cockroaches creating basic communities to survive. Well, us cockroaches are making the greatest music ever, greatest art explosion ever, greatest music scenes ever.
I’ve been kinda successful at getting Band A played on college and indie radio stations: if I send out 20 emails to stations then Band A will get played or put on rotation somewhere. And then I had the idea that there are tons of great online radio stations – also flopping around in the wilderness and dust and ashes. I started digging around and found Karen’s Indies and Belter Radio over in Scotland. Sure enough “Band A” got played…
In other “Band A” news – they headed back to El Rancho Morbido Studios for another morning with engineer/producer Edward Madill to finish their cover of Suicide’s “Johnny” for the Kafadan Kontak Records compilation release. Somehow “Band A” has turned the original 2-minute electronic blues drone about “Johnny” into a 4-minute blues drone about “Johnny.” Well, it doesn’t sound like musical soup and the vocals are catchy as all hell. Still working out with Ed how much we want the vocals in the foreground. But I love early REM and Nirvana when the vocal’s aren’t so clear… But maybe that is dumb because Band A is like early Blondie, that punk/new wave/garage rock, and those vocals are way in the front of the mix…
Also, “Band A” just played The Grey Eagle and the singer is real excited about being on their TV sets…
Band Management: Blog 35: Profanity and the FCC…
The Music EconomyThis stuff only happens when you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m managing “Band A” for one year, as an exploration of the music industry – and I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’ve had success sending out music by “Band A” to college and independent radio stations. I won’t say overwhelming success, but if I send out a “Band A” release to 25 radio stations then a radio station will play “Band A.”
Back in May I sent out a bunch of emails. One radio station (a pretty influential station) sent a great email back, that one of the DJs liked a song, was sharing with a couple other people at the station, and could we send a physical copy? So I printed 50 CDs of the release – and I sent them out to a bunch of radio stations. I didn’t hear anything. Crickets. I sent a couple of follow up emails to stations that had expressed interest. Crickets.
So “Band A” is not a profane band. It’s not about profanity. Maybe in the total catalogue of 10 songs there is profanity in one song. They’re garage, new wave, pop.
On Tuesday morning I received an email from the radio station: “Hi John, did you warn us that the title track has a FCC violation? I played it tonight and the F bomb was rather clear over the airwaves.”
I broke out into cold sweat – because I truly love this radio station. They chose a song that has a lot of shouting in it – like it’s purposely recorded to sound as if the band is playing at a late night dive bar. Me, the band, our engineer/producer Edward Madill all shout-along the chorus. And there are some random shouts and claps during the song. And, yeah, sure enough, in the middle of the song, in the middle of a guitar solo, I am shouting the f-bomb. Me shouting the f-bomb like an idiot.
Do you want to read my cringey/total wanker apology response:
“I am so sorry. “Band A” are not a band that uses profanity – except that word in the title track. I know I need to be more clear with an “explicit” on that track. When KPSU put us into rotation they reached out to confirm the lyrical content of “Cloak & Dagger” – but I understand I need to be more pro-active and clear with profanity. You are one of the greatest radio stations in the country – and we are so lucky to have you. I am so sorry. I will be adding “explicit” to the track listing and “Band A” will be back in the studio on Monday and I’ll get the band to create a clean version of for the radio.”
Cringey…
Band Management: Blog 34: Touring Bands…
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” for the course of a year – and writing about it – as an exploration of the music industry. Playing live and touring is a big part of a band’s plan for sharing their sound, for seeing how an audience responds, for gaining fans.
It used to be rare for an Asheville band to go out on tour (Kitty Tsunami, Tongues of Fire), and now more and more Asheville bands are sharing this underground sound (The Styrofoam Turtles, Sane Voids, Bombay Gasoline, Supervillain) with the outside world.
I asked these bands how they put together tours – and the answer is pretty simple: get on a bill when a touring band comes through Asheville, play a good show, and be a nice person. Doesn’t mean that every touring band you play with will match up with your sound, but be a decent human and let them play first or second on the bill and share any funds from the show.
Tucker Riggleman and the Cheap Dates came through a few months back and played with “Band A” at Fleetwood’s. They sounded like great underground/punk/indie/Americana/country – those stories of living in a small town and having big dreams, of having an old love that never fades.
Tucker Riggleman started another tour and reached out to “Band A” – so we put together a show with them in Black Mountain. We grabbed our friends, hung some massive eyeballs around the stage, and played out in the parking lot of Seven Sisters Tap Room as the sun went down and day turned to night. The majority of “Band A” took advantage of the bar and tried to get into as much trouble as possible. But Tucker’s band was really great and we want them to play here again.
And now “Band A” can start their massive national tour in Tucker’s hometown – in Harrisonburg, VA…
Band Management: Blog 33: Getting Back on that Horse…
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” for the year. Often the escapades of “Band A” read like a shaggy dog story – but I promise you everything I write is true. It’s not been so bad: “Band A” are on a label (Kafadan Kontak Records), they’ve been played on the radio (KPSU), but they’re impossible to manage over the summer – so they haven’t been together for two months. This week they played twice in three days, including a three-hour 27-song set at the The Town Pump Tavern.
Their warm-up show was Wednesday night at The Odditorium, with 8 songs, which lasted about 20 minutes. It was fine – they have that spirit when they’re all on the same track. However, apart from the singer and the drummer – visually speaking – the show was a little bland. “Band A” has been known for costumes and stage props, but they brought nothing. The opening band, the Skewed Collective, had a guitarist with no shirt, a bondage mask, and played his guitar with a violin bow. Can’t tell you about their songs – but great visuals.
I lay awake that night thinking how everything has to be art, everything has to touch this primal creative energy, and that every show has to be massive entertainment. I guess I wasn’t the only one. On Friday night “Band A” had painted 5 extra-large Chinese lanterns to look like eyeballs and brought two screens which showed loops of 1950’s noir movies and Stanley Kubrick movies.
The show was a bit wiggy – a little madness in the air. I wore my lewd t-shirt that Hotdoggrrrl and the Sesame Buns sent me, which probably added to the chaos. The show went over really well with the packed house. $68 in the tip jar, plus another $150 from the establishment. And this part is absolutely true – some guy in the crowd proclaimed he was a music promoter and that the lead singer for “Band A” had sung with the B-52s in the late 90s when Cindy Wilson took time off – and this was her new band.
Something was off with the band. For a group of nice civil people, something touched wildness. If you ask people to invest 100% in an artistic enterprise – and as an artist you have to be that committed – this is dangerous territory. I don’t think art is always good for mental health, with the ups and downs. An artist is challenged to be totally true and unguarded and show this to the world – to be truly vulnerable.
Oh I am looking forward to sending “Band A” on the road this fall to Franklin, Morganton, Greenville and Johnson City. Especially Johnson City. Johnson City is pure madness….
Band Management: Blog 30: What’s Not Working
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” of a year – and I have an idea for direct psychic intervention of underground music into the larger world. Boomboxes. I’m gonna carrying one around playing the best of Asheville, Australia, world-wide underground rock-n-roll. Kind of think it would be fun if we all got second-hand boomboxes and walked around everywhere with them.
Also, in case you didn’t know the Holy Crap Records Podcast name came about because 1) I did some street art stuff in NYC as Holy Crap (a combination of the sacred and the profane), 2) I am super interested in the legacy of all the great indie labels (Clare Duplace), and 3) We started a podcast…
We’ve had bands approach us to see if we want to put out their record – and I’ve told them we’ll know after a year of managing “Band A” if we can actually do anything to help a band. I don’t want to be bullshit – so if “Band A” gets significant publicity and playing at festivals then maybe we can actually be a label.
Which gets me back to the boombox idea. The only problem with the boombox idea is you need cassette tapes. And then this leads Holy Crap Records Podcast toward releasing a cassette with our favorite underground bands (like BURGER RECORDS and Godless America Records)… Anyway, that’s a future decision, and in the meantime I think I’m going to start making Spotify playlist each month of the bands we played that month..
A couple of updates:
1) What isn’t working: I sent out 30 packages of “Band A’s” CD to 30 publications and radio stations. Crickets. It wasn’t a genius packet like The Space Buggy – but it had a sticker and a pin in it. A couple of months ago I simply emailed 30 college radio stations about “Band A” and had three respond to me. So emailing actually seems to be working better than regular mail. Also, buying FB likes doesn’t work. I spent $5 on FB likes for “Band A” and I got three extra likes.
2) Drunk Mums w/ Tongues of Fire and Tan Universe at The Grey Eagle. We have an event where the best of the Asheville underground Tongues of Fire is playing with the best of Australian underground Drunk Mums on Aug 1 at The Grey Eagle!
3) This is the start of an epic month or so – we’re promoting Fleetwood’sand the Fleetwood’s Fest // Saturday line-up on August 10th. In case you didn’t know – Fleetwood’s has done an amazing job of curating and supporting the underground sound of Asheville and touring bands coming through. And we’re promoting the Beer City Metal-Fest that’s happening on September 12-15 at Sly Grog Lounge and 27 Club Asheville. Also The Styrofoam Turtles are headlining the The Orange Peelon August 10th…
Band Management: Blog 29: Content Creation
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” for one year – and during this year Band A will head into the studio at least a couple of times. They’ve been invited byKafadan Kontak Records to add a single to a Suicide (NYC band) compilation album, and then they’ll probably head back to El Rancho Morbido Studios with Edward Madill again in the fall to record some originals. It seems to work for Band A to have 5 songs, mostly worked through, and spend 2-3 days in the studio.
A band works hard to get a core 8 songs so they can play one of those 30-minute sets as part of a 3-band line-up. Then the band works on getting 24 songs, so they can play a dive bar for three hours. And then there’s the process of writing better songs and letting other songs go. Joe Strummer says you have to play live so you can hear which song is a “turkey.” Bruce Springsteen and Keith Richards talk about working on covers first, so you understand song writing, and then replacing covers when the band plays an original that is better than a cover.
So Band A finally gets enough songs – and THEN you have the question of how and when you replace old favorites with new songs. Some people are always writing (Derek Frye, Brandon Holcombe, BROTHRS, etc…), every single day, and to ask them to stop is impossible. I am always interested in this, the artist’s creative process. It is one of the most fascinating things in the world and I’ll happily sit and listen to an artist talk about process for hours. Creativity is a slippery process and meanders in its own direction.
I’ve been on the Connecticut Shore for two weeks. For about six months I’ve had this image of a house in Connecticut. This house that collects all the memories a mother passing when I was in my mid-twenties, of family members and addiction, of the house witnessing the family holding together. My father owns a house on the Connecticut shore which faces a mansion on an island. So this initial idea of this resonant house was turned into the line: “there’s a house on the Connecticut shore that faces a billionaire’s island.” I’d been playing with B-minor, D, and A chords, which seemed to work with that line. Then I thought about the song being anti-billionaire and anti-capitalist, but I’ve written too many of those songs. I thought about the song being about a rich girl on the island and a poor boy on the shore – but that’s a cliche. Also, I’m shit at writing love songs – my love songs are usually opaque and hidden in 17 levels of bs. So I listened to the words and listened to the rhythm of the words and how they fit in a line and how changing a single word changes the intent – and ended with a narrative about a boy and a girl going over to the mansion in the dark and burning it down. It kind of has a punked-out Celtic feel, a slightly more folksy version of The Pogues – I blame this influence on Jim Mccarthy and Skunk Ruckus…
Anyway, here is photo of a storm descending on the Connecticut shore. We had a couple of days of 97 degrees and then this storm hit… I was in the passenger seat of a car. The flowers in the foreground are a blur but the tree is in focus.
Band Management: Blog 28: Booking Shows
The Music Economy“Band A” had it’s first show in a barn. With six songs. They had a projector, a smoke machine, and a bubble machine – just to make sure. And all the adults left the barn and their kids ran around and played with the bubble machine. One piece of grainy video (thanks Bobby McHugh) documented the event – and makes the band look way cooler than the actual experience. There were months of practice, sleepless nights, before and after. Then there was a sandwich shop that allowed the band to play the back-yard patio, once a month, through a summer – streamers, the smoke machine again, the bubble machine again, balloons, silly string, and a large papier-mache tarantula that dangled from a branch of a nearby tree. There were the The Town Pump Tavernshows, The Mothlight Mondays, and The Odditorium on Wednesday night, and a disaster at an open mic at the White Horse in Black Mountain… And here we are 5 years later…
So I’m managing “Band A” – and I have to start booking shows for this fall. August was easy. Two venues contacted me – and friends in a band from WV (Tucker Riggleman) are touring through the area and I found them a show with “Band A” opening. I have a spreadsheet of about 25 venues in the region. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the news that Band A was played on the radio, has been reviewed, and is on a label. So will the breweries book “Band A” – ?? Will my favorite underground music venues give a fuck? Can “Band A” put together it’s first tour – I’m pretty sure we can book shows in Morganton, Greenville, Moorefield WV, and Johnson City… Also, things are changing – interest in this underground sound, hard blues / garage rock / punk rock / surf rock is growing. The Styrofoam Turtles are headlining at The Orange Peel and The Grey Eagleare showcasing local heroes Tongues of Fire and Drunk Mums.
Anyway, I’ll document all of this. And you can contact me if you want an example of the email I’m sending around. At the end of the year I will compile all the blog posts, the lists of radio stations, publications, labels, all the interviews, and all the press releases and email I wrote… And probably some choice rejections…
Band Management: Blog 27: Joan Jett and Joe Strummer
The Music EconomyHow did I get into this? Into managing “Band A” for a year? Into the Holy Crap Records Podcast thing? Here’s the answer: a photo Joan Jett’s and Joe Strummer’s guitar, from an exhibit in NYC. I ask people how they got into music, when they got the hook? Well, I have an older brother who knows everything. He lives in Berlin and has one of those massive collections of vinyl. When I was a teenager he’d read the English music magazines and on my birthday he’d buy me albums which he really wanted to own. I got “London Calling” by The Clash. I got “Floodland” by Sisters of Mercy. I got “Unknown Pleasures” by Joy Division. He told me you could either like New Order or the Pet Shop Boys and you had to choose sides, and I went out and bought “Low-Life” and then “Substance” by New Order. My freshman year in college by roommate owned The Waterboys “Fisherman’s Blues” and The Pixies “Doolittle.” Doolittle was a massive album for me – because it wasn’t something my brother handed to me – it was all mine. I would say that was the moment music really got a hook in me. After college I moved to New York City and went to the final days of CBGBs. CBGBs was cheap entertainment. You could get in for $5 and drink cheap beer and watch 3-4-5 bands a night. Once I saw a young guy with all these older leathery musicians backing him. He had a wrist cast and still played guitar and jumped up on the bass drum – and everything he sang was the absolute truth. I’ve been a writer and I work in video – but, look, I only read music biographies and I only watch music documentaries. I listen to music all the time and talk about it and share new favorite songs. I can’t get enough of it. So this Saturday I went to NYC and to the MET, and there was an exhibit of rock-n-roll instruments. I walked around these darkened rooms, with all these guitars and drums and keyboards. I wasn’t so impressed with Chuck Berry’s guitar or The Beatles instruments – but then I stood in front of Joan Jett and Joes Strummer’s guitars. I was at a holy shrine. Everything seemed to disappear. The guitars glowed. These holy relics…
Band management: Blog 26: Back to Work
The Music EconomyI am managing “Band A” for the year – and therefore I can ask all the questions I want about the current music industry. For the next two weeks I will be in Connecticut on the shore. There’s no genius on the Connecticut shore – so I’m actually going to put in some serious exploration of the music industry. And I’m going to see a bunch of shows in Connecticut and in NYC. So far these are my thoughts: in this post armageddon – living in the rubble of a scorched industry – this is the best time for music. For music + art. Anything goes. There is no industry so you better live and love your scene, support your friends, and create whatever comes into your imagination. This is what I want to do: 1) manage a tour of a dozen of the best Australian garage rock/shit rock/pub rock/punk rock bands (The Chats, The Pretty Littles, Amyl and The Sniffers..) playing across the US, and 2) put out an album of our favorite bands playing Duran Duran covers, 3) put out an album of our favorite bands with songs about their experiences with the overdose/opioid crisis … Just putting it all out there…What I’m doing to be actually useful is I sent out requests to interview executives from Spotify and Bandcamp. That is something. And I’m looking at my Linkedin to see if I know anyone who is an A&R person for a major label, in NYC. I actually know a bunch of people, but they’re all friends of friends. My sister is a writer for comedy shows on CBS and I have another friend who is VP of data at 20th Century Fox, and they’re connected, but I’m nervous about calling in favors for introductions…