The Animal Farm

One of the Animal Farmers working in our beautiful offices is Brendan De Belder. That’s not a real collar he’s got there. It’s just a piece of paper. But it looks good nonetheless. Brendan’s been working with us for a while and during his tenure he’s helped us develop ideas on how to operate as an emerging band in the cut and thrust of the modern business.  He was recently on tour with someone in Europe and wrote a blog about it, which we are happy to post here. Scroll down….

I just got back from a month-long tour around Denmark and Ireland, with a successful American/Irish band, which is run and fronted by my cousin. I got to do pretty much everything except manage the tour and drive the van: sound engineer, roadie, singing lead on stage, merch seller, guitar tech, drum tech… But now that I have returned, it occurred to us that seeing this band run their career DIY, like a small business, is perfectly aligned with the ethos preached here at the farm and with the things we encourage our bands to do. They bailed on their label, because they run things tighter themselves. Imagine that.

The music:

These guys have honed their skills to the point of being called on by the likes of Bruce Dickinson, for solo projects; they get called to play on film soundtracks, like Titanic and Braveheart; they have met and played with many of their musical heroes… the band members have their status as career musicians, thanks to the undeniable skills they have amassed… but it all started by playing in little pubs. A lot. They learned by doing covers, put their own spin on them and now have some pretty successful songs of their own… It took ages, but it worked… Aside from bigger gigs and festivals, they still say yes to play in small pubs.

They also respect the process of discreetly making demos in the bedroom and then collaborating with producers, to create something that is market-worthy. It bores and frustrates them, as much as it would anyone, when people send their bedroom or demo-studio recordings to them, expecting nothing but praise and a checkbook to be opened. There seems to be an epidemic of this going around…

Live:

The gigging was relentless. 10 in 12 days at one point, which was viewed as ‘business as usual’. That’s the work rate that seems to have kept this band in business all these years. Some gigs were big, some small. It made no difference. There may have been occasional whinging about this, that or the other, but the job always got done. Done really well. And the whinging always turned out to be a waste of time, as ever.

There were definitely Spinal Tap moments. Plenty of them. Right from the start – the guitars didn’t arrive on the flight with the band and the bus driver would occasionally stop to ask for directions, only to turn around and urinate all over the friendly direction-giver’s garden… maybe that’s a local Danish custom… But we did find the venues and the guitars showed up for the first gig. So… cool.

The ease with which they handled every difficulty was astonishing. Things inevitably went wrong, but their experience and attitude made the whole thing a breeze (even when big arguments had to be had over things like pay… in Danish). No amount of hangovers, long drives, injured backs, getting trapped in lifts, exhaustion, bad news from back home, unexpected costs or delays in the schedule made any difference to their ability to hit the stage every night. I mean really HIT it. Not in a desperate ‘love me! love me! love me!’ sort of way, but with a commanding authority over their ability to bring the rock. That’s experience and dedication for you. A joy for a musician, such as myself, to behold.

(Brendan doing his rendition of 99 bottles of beer on the wall)

What draws the fans in:

Partly due to their fanbase being in their 30s/40s, there was no need to shout about things on social networks. No desperate feeling around trying to get something to go viral… oddly, in this advanced stage of the band’s career, there seemed to be little rush at all, certainly in regard to getting exposure, attention or making a big deal about something… The way they worked it, was by actually hanging out with the fans, giving them a break from their normal jobs and commitments, to hang out with a successful rock band. That means a lot to a fan. Some brought friends and family, because they knew they could introduce them to the band. Others discovered the band for the first time, by simply noticing the gang of revelers and wanting to join the party. This wasn’t the only way that the band promoted itself, but it was a well oiled cog in the machine.

The 86 American fans who flew over to Ireland to see the band perform 3 times over 10 days on this tour, all got to drink (a lot) and chat with the band. That’s how word got out about what the band was releasing; that’s how the band’s pledge funding went through the roof; that’s how they have kept a small, loyal fanbase.

Make no mistake – every band member was expected to put their time in with the fans. “If we don’t keep them rocking, they wont come back” was the mantra. The effort made, to just have a chat, went a long way and the many years of doing so showed, in the frontman’s ability to work a room like a rockstar. These were the “away” fans and they were treated in a way that ensured they would sing the praises of the band to anyone who would listen. Arguably, a lot of this happens on social networks now, at least in part, but when it’s done well, it works so well.

Practice What You Preach:

If much of this post sounds familiar, it’s because it’s an example of many of the other blog entries on here having been put into practice. At The Animal Farm we always face the challenge of getting new bands to actually do the things we have carefully thought out, planned and then recommended to them. But the most consistent motivator for continuing to urge bands to do these things, thus taking their career’s rate of progress into their own hands, is the recurring evidence of bands achieving results by these methods. At every level.

For some, it’s a difficult pill to swallow – that there’s more to it than just making a cheap recording, doing one gig and letting management do the rest. Particularly at first. But bands who appreciate the purpose of such guidance, using the early stages of anonymity to become very good in these areas – bearing the goal in mind and being results-orientated – develop a respect for the process, which can last an entire career.

(Ville says: a great blog can be made better with an occasional reference to squash.)

In a project management triangle you can pick any two options, but never all three. Your project can be Cheap and Fast – but it won’t be Good. It can be Fast and Good – but it won’t be Cheap. It can also be Good and Cheap – but it won’t be Fast.

This applies to the business of making records. If people aren’t reacting to the record you made cheaply and quickly, it’s because it isn’t very good.

If your aim is to get other people to react positively to your music, you can’t be Cheap and Fast, because then you won’t be Good. People only react positively to Good.

If your aim is to progress relatively quickly, i.e. within the natural lifetime of 1-2 years of an emerging band, you won’t have the time to do it Cheap and Good. Because it will take too long for you to learn to do it yourself.

This is a good game to play when you think about what you’re going to do next. Remember to pick any two, but only two.

A recurring phrase that comes out of the mouths of emerging artists is “a gig worth doing”.

When discussing this topic, I’m always reminded of the speech Bruce Springsteen gave at SXSW earlier in the year. In it he said that by the time he hit the road nationally he’d been in a bar band in New Jersey playing 4 x 45 mins for a long time. By the time they got the opportunity to shine, his band were an “unstoppable hurricane”. The reason? Because they’d done a lot of gigs “not worth doing”.

Oh, the irony.

Recommended viewing for anyone who dreams of a career in music.

We meet a lot of people wishing to get into the music business. Artists, producers, songwriters, people who’ve started labels etc. are usually nice people, but some have unhealthy attitudes and weird expectation levels that make a hardened warrior like me wince.

They share a strange sense of entitlement.

True Artists

I read a poem by Charles Bukowski titled “air and light and time and space” (see it posted below) in which he writes about someone who’s never had the opportunity to write because of this reason and that. But now that this person has a studio in which to do it (where there is air and light and space and time), creativity becomes possible. Bukowski says that no matter what your surroundings or circumstances, you will always create. That is, if creativity is in you.

We get a lot of artists looking for someone to give them the opportunity to make music their number one priority. Listen closely: no one but you can give you the opportunity. Just quit doing whatever it is you’re doing and start making music. It’s that simple.

Of course, then you’ll starve.

In another of his poems Bukowski writes about the endless shitty rooms he’s lived in, in almost as many cities, writing, writing, writing, while surviving on whatever the landlord would hand out in pity. He writes about being so thin he could have cut bread with his shoulder blades. If there had been any bread to cut.

I can’t remember being that thin. But I do remember being awfully hungry first thing in the morning, once during the day and when I went to bed at night. This was when we first moved to London and had very little of anything except our desire to make music.

Before that, I remember when my brother and I used to spend every single penny we made on making new studio recordings. We practically kept a studio in Helsinki going with our custom. It was all we would think about and live for. Just write the songs and get them recorded. How else can we show other people what we’re capable of?

Those songs got us a publishing deal. With that deal we were able to move here and start starving in English.

Years went by and we developed, if not double chins, then definitely jowls. We got jowly. It’s nice and we’ve been very fortunate, I accept it. However, you can’t take away the amount of work it’s taken (is still taking!), the bloody mindedness, the focus, the perseverance.

We are featured in the current issue of Music Week as having a key release with Violet Bones – Decline Of Vaudeville, out Nov 26th. What makes it cool is that all the other labels on the list are majors. Eight years since starting the company (which was more than a decade into our career), we’ve come far.

What Comes First?

I read an interesting article in The Guardian about Jessica Ennis the Olympic athlete. The telling line in it is when she realised that as a kid she was always training with a new bunch of people, because others just kept dropping out.

Back to my point about the sense of entitlement. From my perspective, to come across the following scenarios is baffling on the one hand, insulting on the other.

Band can’t afford to make recordings. But they can afford to go on holiday.
Band don’t want to do a gig because doing it might cost them £xx and “it’s not worth doing” because chances are they will play to not many people. But they will happily spend more than £xx on beer in their local that weekend, not playing to any people at all.
Band cancels a confirmed gig because of a work do.
Band cancels a confirmed gig because of a family do.
Band cancels a confirmed gig because of whatever.

If you’re serious about your music it has to come first. Literally. Not metaphorically. In words, of course, but especially in deeds. It means that you will starve and disappoint a lot of people. You won’t go out much, because you can’t afford it. Holidays. C’mon… forget about it.

The World Is Full Of Alternatives

The stench of desperation that rises off the streets of Camden High Street or around Hoxton Square leads me to believe that there should be an alternative way to participate in the making of music. An enjoyable way.

I had a conversation with a A&R guy from Virgin a couple of years ago, during which he said that artists should have other sources of income so that they wouldn’t have to make artistic decisions based on commerce. It was surprising to hear a major label guy say such a thing. But he was onto something.

Why not indeed create a life for yourself where you do a bit of this and a bit of that, make music, do gigs, float in and out of work situations that compliment what you do as a musician?

I know an artist, who was in a very successful band with hits in the 80s/90s, who also managed an amateur football team and was the caretaker of a block of flats. These three things constituted his working life. He loved football and got to dabble in it. He loved music and got to have success in it. He made sure that he had a day gig to supplement his income and help finance his hobbies.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

The point to make is that there are alternatives to consider. What if instead of the empty rhetoric we hear day in day out from artists coming to us with tales of 110% commitment (with 30% willingness to actually do it) we started talking candidly about what is possible, what is desirable and what is a good idea?

That would make this a doubly nice business to be in!

I was watching on YouTube clips of Toto live in concert. Toto, to educate the uneducated, are/were an American band formed in the 70s by the best, the very best, session musicians in LA. You’ve heard their playing on countless hit records made over as many decades. Phenomenal cats the lot of them. Of course, they were always roundly derided by people who believe that punk was and continues to be the zenith of popular western culture. Musicians, though, hold Toto in high regard.

There’s a simple way to test whether or not you’re a musician. Do you respect Toto? If you don’t, because you’re a snotty nosed new kid on the block with the fastest chops, we’ll forgive you. You will grow out of it when you start working for a living. If you don’t respect them because you think they’re just a bunch of tossers, then you’re not a musician. Fact.

It occurred to me, while watching the footage, that I was looking at a very different kind of gig. The performers were old, they weren’t particularly cool or good looking, some were fat, all of them were wrinkly, they wore uncool clothes, there were no stage gimmicks, lasers, dancers, they didn’t ask the crowd to make some noise every fifteen seconds. The bass player, Leland Sklar, looks like someone’s demented grandfather. Or Gandalf.

I don’t wish to insult. Rather, I wish to make the earnest point that all the things the Toto gig was not about are the main event, the only event, in most other gigs. Correspondingly, the one thing the Toto gig was about is gloriously missing in most others. That thing is musicianship.

I used to wonder why in old footage of legendary bands’ gigs people just stand there or often just sit around watching the players play. I used to think that gigs must have been really boring back then. But it hit me this morning. They are witnessing and appreciating the craftmanship of an artisan. Just sitting there watching, appreciating someone’s handiwork is the whole point of the exercise!!

When it’s that good there is no need to make noise and wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care.

Being an artisan has its benefits. It means that you can pretty much go into any old pub with your instrument and start entertaining people. You have their attention because your skill commands attention. Most indie bands, the kind who approach us with their tiresome, endless bitching about finding better and bigger gigs, can’t hack it in that environment. Instead, they insist they need the setting of a “gig with people who appreciate music”. What a load of bollocks!

It’s true that if you get a decent support slot with a big band the crowd is predisposed to going through the motions of what they deem to be correct behaviour at a rock show. The duly wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care every so often. They respond to questions of whether or not they’re having a good time with respectable gusto.

I remember this from my own touring days. The revelation that much of it is just a show, a pantomime, was kind of disappointing. One incident sticks out: somewhere in Nowheresville I threw caution to the wind and played a screaming guitar solo using two handed tapping and a lot of widdlydiddly…. the kids in the front row went ballistic. Maybe they hadn’t seen anything like it before. Dunno. But the t-shirts sold well that night. It didn’t hurt that one very drunk gig goer had vomited all over the other bands’ shirts and ours was the only clean stock in town.

In the end, the fact remains that unless you can hack it up close and personal at the local Frog And Radiator, it isn’t going to happen anywhere else either.

I’m not saying that being a virtuoso is a prerequisite to a career. It clearly isn’t. But being able to play is really really wonderful and cool. It’s an end in itself and watching Toto on YouTube reminded me about the reasons that got me into music twenty odd years ago. Actually, I was surprised that the same reasons are still so important to me. So much so that I spent five hours practising guitar last night. Got up at 7am this morning to do it again. My wife came down to breakfast saying that the last thing she heard last night is the first thing she hears in the morning.

I got that warm, fuzzy feeling. Nice.