Relationships are hard.
Being in a band with four other people consists of being in a situation
that revolves around 20 individual relationships. If one person decides they can’t work with
another person and leaves, then there is a possibility a third person may
decide they don’t want to work without the person that left and also leave. It
can all fall apart because one out of 20 relationships didn’t fit.
Heaven forbid that two members of your band start fucking. If you have a coed line-up then romantic entanglement is likely inevitable, and that never ends well.
A friend of mine that makes a nice living playing other peoples music told me “fuck friendships. Hire some musicians, pay them a fee, and tell them what to do.”
Heaven forbid that two members of your band start fucking. If you have a coed line-up then romantic entanglement is likely inevitable, and that never ends well.
A friend of mine that makes a nice living playing other peoples music told me “fuck friendships. Hire some musicians, pay them a fee, and tell them what to do.”
When we were recording the first album Chris Snyder played
violin on one of the songs. He and I
were talking and he asked me what kind of music we were doing. I told him it was Grunge and Country. He laughed and called it Gruntry. Because of that, as a joke, I put on our bio
that we were “heavily influenced by the Gruntry music trend taking place in the
Ouachita and Kiamichi Mountains.” Nobody else would understand it, but I
thought it was funny. The Ouachita
Mountains are not known by many people. I
grew up in that area. It is Southeast
Oklahoma and there is nothing down there.
Have you ever seen the Ed Norton movie Leaves Of Grass? It takes place near that area. It is a very poor area where people can’t be
burdened by trends. The Kings Of Leon claim to be from Talihina Oklahoma which
is in the Ouachita Mountains. At this
time they were VERY trendy so saying we were a part of a fictional music trend
taking place in their home town made me smile.
After Bria left the band we tried a few different female
singers. Nothing clicked. In addition
Billy and I were struggling with whether or not to just let Less Love die. In 2012 one of the bands we were promoting,
Big Okie Doom, did a video shoot and needed extras. Billy and I went to participate. On the set I met Brooke. We talked and at some point it was mentioned
that she was a singer. Before that but around the same time Rebecca and I began
exchanging emails via the music social network page Reverbnation. She and I met, and decided to see if our
musical tastes aligned.
A TV show contacted me checking to see if Less Love would be
interested in performing on their program.
I liked the idea but had no band.
I contacted Rebecca. She said she
would like to do it but didn’t want to sing lead. I contacted Brooke and she said “no problem.” I contacted Mr. Snyder and asked if he wanted
to do the gig with us. He said yes.
With Rebecca, Brooke, Chris and myself we were going to play
this TV show that, for some unknown reason, asked us to perform even though it
had been two years sense our album came out. Usually media only wants to talk about new
projects. Plus our album was called Go Fuck Yourself so it was really hard for
me to imagine they wanted to promote that. I quit thinking about it. Some of our friends had recently been on the show so maybe that is how they heard of us.
The show pre-records all performances. We went in and did our songs, and they asked
us to come back on another day to be interviewed. None of our friends had been interviewed.
They just performed. This was beginning to interest me. I
asked them politely why they wanted to interview us and the producer gave me a
vague answer.
Chris and I went back on the specified day. They put the microphones on us and told us to
stand on the side of the stage waiting to be announced. The show started and the host said something
along the line of “we have a very special show for you today. With this weekend’s music festival taking
place in Pushmataha County…” Leading up
to that moment I was trying to determine why they wanted us on the show. I
never once thought about our bio. I
wrote that over two years before the interview.
As a matter of fact I think at that point I had forgotten all about the
bio. When he said Pushmataha County I
paused. I know where that is. It’s down near where I grew up. He said “With this weekend’s music festival
taking place in Pushmataha County we are dedicating the whole show to the music
taking place in that area.” OH FUCK
ME!!! FUCK!!! FUCK!!! FUCK!!! I began to panic. The only reason we were
there was to talk about the bogus Gruntry music trend taking place in the
Ouachita and Kiamichi Mountains.
During the interview, internally, I was a mess. My mind was running a thousand miles an
hour. As he would ask me questions about
Gruntry music or what the scene was like in the Ouachita Mountains my inner
voice was screaming at me “how could you be so stupid?” I was wearing sunglasses, but in some of the
shots you can see that my eyes are huge.
I didn’t want to lie. With each
question I tried to construct an honest answer that would hopefully change the
course of the questioning. It was a
struggle.
I have experienced similar situations of extreme anxiety,
and had people tell me that my fear did not show. After it was over I was convinced that I
looked like a fool, but when I watched the replay I thought “man I look calm
and collected. If that guy (me) was
running for president, I would vote for him.”
After the show I asked the players if they would be
interested in doing an album with me.
Each said they would.
Aware of the fact that Bria likely left because of me, I
tried to take a more gentle approach to this incarnation of the band. In the end that approach also didn’t
work.
The desire to be an artist is a dreamer’s desire. Most dreamers are not people of action. I
have vivid memories of being a child laying stomach down on the floor, drawing
pictures, and thinking “when I grow up I am going to be an artist so I won’t
ever have to work.” That plan didn’t
work out. As I got older, just barely
out of my teens, I had children. Working no less than 60 hours a week became
necessary for survival. Being involved
with musicians (artists) I often see in them that child that thought he could
get away with never working.
All and all that version of the band lasted only a few
months. We recorded the album “Paradigms
In The Design” between October 2012 and April 2013. Due to Brooke’s success as a stage performer
she was only available to record for one week in December 2012. Due to Snyder’s family problems his involvement
was limited and spotty.
In addition to Billy and me, Rebecca was a main player on
that album. Her insight and creative
contribution was unsurpassed. I cherish
every person that has ever been a part of the band, but my appreciation for
Rebecca goes above all others. There
were often times I was unreasonably difficult.
She never hesitated to call me out on it. She never coward away, and regarding the
music she always had new ideas to offer.
She eventually had an opportunity to move to Washington D.C. and
understandably jumped at the chance.
While all of this was going on Billy was trying to be in two
bands: Less Love and Wondernaut. In addition
he and I were working hard to build our production company. He was engineering several of the albums we
were promoting. During much of that year
he was recording and mixing the album “The Ten Year Hangover” by the band 3
Dates Later. During the same time I took
on a project that was bigger than our ability.
It was the album “Come Morning” by the band The Harmed Brothers. So while we were individually struggling with
our own band problems, we were also focusing the majority of our attention toward
the other groups we represented.
We had two albums in the making, one by Wondernaut and one
by Less Love. Schedules were not lining
up and productivity seemed to be dragging.
If we were able to finish the two albums, Billy would have no choice but
to once again take a temporary break from Less Love because he would need to
focus on promoting Wondernaut. Though he
has always been available during our recording sessions, he hasn’t always been
available to do shows due to Wondernaut obligations. One night at the studio he and I were talking
about all the obstacles both albums faced and it was suggested that the two
bands do an album together. This would
help us overcome the musicians scheduling problems, and enable us to take the
energy of promoting two albums and focus it into one.
“Paradigms In The Design” was released under the band name
Wondernaut & Less Love. I never
thought about it, but it’s not common for two bands to release one album
together. I am not saying it has never
been done. I am just saying that it
hasn’t been done often enough for the system to recognize when it happens. Many of the retailers, and media sources only
registered the first band name. The album is often found listed as a Wondernaut
release.
We had completed two albums and both times there was no band
to promote the album. When it happened
with the first CD I considered just letting the project go and walking away. This time I was determined to not let it stop
me. When a band promotes an album, the
media prefers to interview the singer, and they usually want the singer to
perform a song. Not only was I not a
singer, but I have had many people tell me they hate my voice. With absolutely no confidence and against my
better judgment I did the interviews and sang the songs. The optimistic assessment of those
performances would be to say I have done worse.
The album did well, and we earned some bragging rights. We received more airplay, more reviews, and
significantly more attention than we had ever received with the first
album. Despite that, it sold
nothing. G.F.Y earned more money in a
month than P.I.T.D. has earned in 18 months.
At the time, when we were seeing all this positive attention
but no sales, we didn’t know what to think.
It was the end of 2013 and we were too close to it to recognize it for
what it was. As a production company we
would release another bands project and then receive the revenue that it
generated. For the most part all that
revenue suddenly stopped. For the other
more popular bands everything stopped except for revenue generated by Spotify. We still saw a few bits of revenue from other
sources, but now for the first time Spotify was about 98% of the revenue we
received. The number of streaming plays for these bands sky rocketed. In the middle of 2013 the most popular band
we represented would have around 100 plays on Spotify per month. By the end of 2013
one of our bands had 20,000 plays in a month.
The same bands, during the same amount of time, went from selling a healthy
number of download each month to selling none.
It’s pretty common knowledge but just in case you don’t know I feel
obligated to mention that Spotify doesn’t pay shit. A band that was easily earning $500 a month
dropped down to earning anywhere from $9 to $60 a month. I am comparing June 2013 to June 2014. All of
this changed in one year. It would be
different if I was comparing the music industry of the 80’s to the modern day
music industry.
There is another part of this that I never see anybody
mention. We work with bands that are
pretty popular and we work with bands that are just getting started. In June 2013 people used multiple sources to
hear new music. If you were a band just
getting started that meant that we had multiple opportunities to get people to
hear you. A lot of those sources played
“recommended” tracks. So “if you like
this” then “you may like this” and the new, unknown artist would get
heard. Common sense is if you go from
people using multiple outlets down to people just using one outlet then the
artist’s chance of getting heard decreases as well. Spotify’s “recommended” track system is not
very friendly to unknown bands. Unless
somebody goes on that service and specifically looks for you, they won’t hear
you.
My daughter told me the other day that it’s not going to
change. She said that people are not
going to go back to buying music. I know
there is some validity to that. I am
grotesquely driven by my ego. The magic 8 ball says all signs point to no, but
I still think I can create something that people will want to own.