21st Century Rockstardom

Hey all,

This is going to be a long one. Sorry, in advance. Here we go..

There's been a lot of lip service paid in the last couple of years to the alleged "downfall" of the music industry. I get asked about it all the time in interviews - how we, as an independent band, view the rocky present and cloudy future of the biz. I thought some of you might be interested in a bit of an insider's perspective on the situation... at least, the situation as it seems from where I stand. (As usual, these opinions are my own and don't reflect the opinions of... well.... anyone else).

The music business is, as everyone knows, in a state of clumsy transition between the analog past and the digital future. Although it's well documented that the labels had lots of time to prepare for what's happened, most of them did little or nothing - beyond suing a few potential customers and clamping down on internet service providers, that is. In a stunning example of "cover-your-eyes-and-ears-and-ignore-the-world-ism", many of the people with the power to control the inevitable slide instead ran around applying band-aids to axe-wounds, with predictable results.

What caused this nosedive? Well, to hear the industry execs tell it, you'd think there were cartels of suave techno-pirates working diligently to bring the labels to their knees. Music "thieves" were painted to look like hardened criminals one illegal MP3 download from abandoning the rule of law altogether, running naked through the streets, robbing banks and firing their tommy-guns joyfully into the air. These reprobates had to be stopped in the name of a free-market economy, for the good of the free world, in the name of good, hard working people everywhere.

The problem was, these "criminals" weren't out to break any laws. They saw an industry grown fat on its own excesses; an industry happy to flaunt its wealth; an industry arrogant enough to charge $20 for an album of filler songs and soulless cookie-cutter drivel. And they started to wonder why they were paying so much for so little.

When you control the means of production - when your product is delivered to the waiting public through a narrow, tightly-controlled and highly regulated pipeline - you get to charge whatever the market will bear. This is the basic founding principle of capitalism, right? For decades, we had no choice but to pay whatever the stores chose to charge for music. Fine. Problem was, we had to pay BEFORE we had any guarantee of the quality of the product we were buying. Can you imagine if every transaction was like that?

Suppose you walked into a grocery store and had to order (and pay for) your produce before getting a look at it. Maybe the bunch of carrots they gave you would be great - crunchy, juicy, plump and delicious. Or maybe the grocer would realize that since you couldn't get carrots anywhere else, he didn't have to worry so much about the quality of the produce he was providing. You'd start noticing that instead of 12 quality carrots, you were getting just enough good ones to keep you from returning the bunch in disgust. Chances are, the only carrot you'd really enjoy would be the one you'd heard on the radio nonstop for the last month.

Wait.

Right. My point is, what if you suddenly found out that you could try each and every carrot before deciding whether you wanted to buy them? Best yet, you could sample them FOR FREE, FROM YOUR HOME!! Goodbye lecherous grocer, hello satisfying salads. Never again would you have to suffer the indignity of biting into a rotten carrot you'd been promised was great - nor would you have to sit through the REST of Fergie's album. Heh.

At first, the music industry turned a blind eye to the growing trend of "try-before-you-possibly-buy", with the excuse that "people won't be satisfied with inferior quality MP3 files for long - they'll realize that their CDs sound much better". Sounds reasonable... but it was actually, really, REALLY stupid.

Thing is, the only reason MP3 files sounded bad was that they were compressed digitally, to make the files smaller, to facilitate faster download speeds. This was back in the days when cable or broadband internet was the exception rather than the rule, and a 3 mb MP3 file would take you from a few minutes to a few hours to download. It was nothing short of criminal negligence on the part of the labels not to acknowledge the inevitable: when bandwidth and storage space got cheaper, the size of the files being downloaded would cease to matter - and the quality would start going up.

The funny part is that CDs aren't really all that great when it comes to audio quality. (nerd alert..)

CD quality audio is 16-bit, with a 44,100 KHz sample rate. This isn't really very high at all. As an example, our last two studio albums were recorded and mixed at TWICE that quality, and had to be "dithered" down for the transfer to CD format. I mention this only to illustrate the obvious next step in the downward spiral: when it no longer matters how big your song file is, suddenly you'll see bands releasing super high quality (read, better than CD) versions of their songs digitally - and the CD as a "high-quality" music format will be instantly obsolete. I give it 6-8 months, a year at most, before you start hearing of bands selling ultra-high quality digital albums through their websites... if you haven't already. Labels have been HEMORRHAGING money in their attempt to keep consumers tied to a format that is, for all intents and purposes, already in a terminal decline.

The really sad thing is that the EXACT SAME THING is happening to all forms of video entertainment, be it TV, movies, or music videos. The ONLY reason it's taken a little longer is that video files are harder to compress and are therefore much bigger. When our computers get to the point where downloading a hi-definition episode of CSI Miami takes as long as it used to take us to download the theme song, the TV and movie industries will suffer the EXACT SAME FATE. Thus far they haven't shown many signs that they're ready for the coming crisis.

While this was all going on, another interesting trend was developing: bands were starting to realize they didn't really need the big labels anymore, at least not in the traditional sense.

Historically, the only way an artist could reach the masses in any significant way was to sign on the dotted line, put their career in a major label's hands and toe the line, hoping they wouldn't get TOO screwed in the process. Artists were built and destroyed by commercial radio, MTV, music magazines and industry award shows. There was ONLY ONE SYSTEM, and if you wanted mass exposure you had to conform yourself to that system, to one extent or another.

Then came the internet.

Suddenly, an artist didn't need a team of people licking envelopes and posting newsletters to their fanbase - a couple of minutes writing an email to the email list would take care of that nicely, and much more personally to boot. Artists could target potential fans directly through talkboards and forums, and eventually through social networking giants like MySpace, Friendster and Facebook - sites with demographic-based search engines BUILT IN!

All of a sudden, you didn't need to be played on the radio for thousands of people to hear you - you just had to drive traffic to your website or MySpace profile. With virtually no effort, you could send a message to 10,000 of your fans instantly, telling them about tour dates, new releases, special offers, or just spouting your thoughts and rants on any subject. Kinda like I'm doing right now.

The real catalyst in this whole farce however, comes from a glaring disconnect between the labels and the artists they're supposedly representing. The industry was - and is - OBSESSED with the idea of controlling access to their artists' music, for purely economic reasons. The artists, on the other hand, DON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE MONEY. (Most of them don't, anyway.) For the artist, the whole point - the passion driving them to live below the poverty line and get kicked around by club owners night after night - is writing, performing and living their art. Ask any musician if they'd rather keep their music in an iron fist, control the public's access totally and sell 5000 albums the conventional way, or have their songs spread around the world online, listened to and loved by millions of people, with no personal financial gain. Now take into account the fact that the average major-label act would never see a penny from the 5000 albums sold anyways. What do you think they'd say? I know what I'd say.

An aside: don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with an artist making money from their art. If they produce something that the public places value on, and the public is willing to pay for that product, the artist has every right to expect compensation for their work - however, the very fact that so many artists starve themselves and scrape by doing what they love is evidence of the fact that the art, not the compensation, is the motivation behind the artist. End aside.

What happened next is pretty predictable: the labels attacked the consumers who were stealing their products, expecting the artists to jump on board and join the good fight. What actually happened was the opposite, for the most part. Artists realized that rather than being the million-mouthed monster destroying their careers, the internet was an incredible tool for self-promotion and would enable them to be much more self-reliant, with less and less need for the publicity machine provided by the majors. Plus, by cutting out middle-men, musicians could actually start SEEING some of the money their music was earning. The average independent musician sees more real cash from 10,000 independent sales than many major artists see from a million sales. That's not an exaggeration, it's a fact, and a telling one. And even though most of those musicians aren't in it "for the money", the money is very nice as well, thank you.

What happens next?

Well, the first thing everyone needs to get their heads around (if the music industry is going to survive) is that radio and television, in their current form, are dead. D-E-A-D. Broadcast media will collapse when they can no longer sustain themselves by selling ads; they will stop selling ads when the companies buying ads realize that people aren't watching or listening anymore. Personal Digital Video Recorders like TiVo are speeding this process up; what's the point of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a TV commercial when all your target consumers are recording their favorite shows and skipping all the ads? The most important concept in media in the next few decades will be the concept of Media On Demand. And there's NOBODY out there who, given the option, would demand to sit through commercials. Where will people go to find the entertainment, news and information they crave, On Demand, without commercial harassment? YouTube. Blogger.com. Any number of no-fee-ad-free avenues to digital media. Broadcast TV and radio do not fit into this picture.

When TV and radio disappear, so does the pipeline the music industry has been leaning on all these years. You can't sell 10 million albums if you don't have a way to reach 10 million people at once (bye bye, MTV), and although the internet is a great way to reach a lot of people, it's much less controllable. If you think of websites as "channels", it seems pretty obvious: paying for an ad on NBC makes sense when there are only a hundred channels to choose from, but if there were a hundred million...

The days of a few hand-picked artists dominating the music industry are rapidly coming to an end. True, there are still millions of people out there who will buy whatever they're told is cool - but in order to sell to those people you have to be able to reach them, and to be their ONLY source of information. That used to be easy, but it isn't anymore. Look at what's happened on MySpace: instead of a few bands having a few million fans each, you've got literally hundreds of thousands of bands with tens of thousands of fans each. These bands are out there, touring, selling their music digitally, selling tons of t-shirts and stickers and doing quite well for themselves because they've realized that SUCCESS DOESN'T MEAN SELLING TEN MILLION ALBUMS FOR A FACELESS CORPORATE ENTITY. Success is playing a song you wrote in a city you've never visited, and hearing a thousand people sing it back to you. Success is cultivating a die-hard fanbase who will support you and allow you to do what you love for ten years, twenty years - not two singles in the top ten, a whirlwind of publicity and a lifetime of obscurity. Success is making any kind of a living doing the thing you love. It sure as hell isn't making a fortune for a hundred leeches who can't whistle one of your songs or recognize you at an industry party.

The labels who will survive are the ones who are smart enough to redefine their position in the industry. Labels who understand that success in the new music industry means carving out a niche - finding and reaching out to the people with whom your music will resonate for years to come - these are the labels who will serve a purpose, and who will shape the music industry of the next few decades. We're really lucky to be working with a great bunch of smart people at UFO/Invasion - (www.ufomusic.com). Labels like UFO and other "new-model-indies" are quickly redefining the concept of the record label, and are thriving in the process.

What this all means is that artists are in control of their own destinies in a way they have never been before, and as a result the bands who survive will be the ones who can get back to the basic purpose of being in a band in the first place: producing music that we, as consumers, actually want to listen to. I, for one, am glad to see the state of the industry today - maybe in an age of real freedom of choice the cream will start rising to the top.

Or maybe, in an age of infinite Entertainment On Demand, with no dominant cultural voices shaping public opinion, the mediaverse will fragment into millions of super-specialized slivers and we'll all get lost in the noise. Whatever happens, I think it will happen soon - and those of us who aren't willing to evolve will find ourselves becoming dinosaurs much faster than we'd expect.

Thanks for reading - till next time!

Fiddle vs. Violin

First of all, thanks so much to all of you who came up to me on this last tour to tell me you enjoyed my blogs - I had no idea so many people were reading them! Now I'm all nervous. Anyways...

The most frequent question any fiddle player gets when they're performing and touring is the age-old conundrum, "What's the difference between a violin and a fiddle?" Usually when I'm pressed for time I just answer "about six pints", but for those of you who want the real answer, here it is:

Nothing.

Ok, almost nothing. I thought that would be more dramatic though. Did you get chills? I did.

"Fiddle" playing refers to the style of music being played. Basically, most styles of music that aren't strictly classical fall under the umbrella of "fiddle" playing - be it one of the many traditional Canadian/American styles, Irish, Scottish, Gypsy/Romany, etc. Some jazz violinists call it jazz fiddle, but that's just wishful thinking. (NOTE: my opinions do not reflect those of... well... anyone else. But this is MY blog.)

There are a couple of minor physical differences you MIGHT see between a fiddle player's "fiddle" and a violinist's "bassoon". These aren't present on every "fiddle", and it's really up to personal preference. Here are a few I've noticed:

1. Lower, flatter bridge.

This is mostly to allow for easier double-stops, or multi-string playing (chords). You hear a lot more double-stops in bluegrass/Appalachian playing than you do in Irish or Canadian playing. Typically though, double-stops are more directly related to alcohol consumption, so it's possible to hear inadvertent chords being played in any style. The lower bridge also allows for quicker jumping between strings which is common to all styles of "fiddle" playing.

2. Different strings.

Honestly, I really think this is mostly because no one but an orchestral violinist sees the need to pay $120 for a set of strings. (haha). Really though, different brands/compositions of strings make a huge difference in the sound of an instrument, and violinists typically go for a brighter sound while fiddle players look for a mellower, more "wooden" sound from their instrument. Again, it's all down to your own preference. There are no rules. (That's right, we're rebels. Tell your mom I'm "dangerous".)

3. Bigger body (haha, very funny. The instrument. Jerks).

I've heard people mention this before - that fiddles often are slightly bigger than violins. Again, this is just a matter of preference. There is a pretty wide range of sizes and shapes within the violin world, and a deeper body will give you a deeper, mellower tone (usually). Fiddle players who are looking for that kind of sound will often buy a slightly larger/deeper instrument to achieve it, but they're not buying a different instrument altogether! It's all the same violiddle.

..and sadly,

4. Quality of instrument.

This one's a stereotype, but a lot of stereotypes have at least an inkling of truth in them, right? Basically, the stereotypical belief is that any instrument below a certain price-range is a "fiddle"; and that all "fiddles" are generally lower quality than violins. This is a misconception - it's true that most "fiddle" players' instruments did cost them less than those of a symphony violinist, but more often than not it's a product of their priorities. Orchestral/concert violinists NEED a hundred-thousand dollar instrument; they generally use the whole range of the violin from the lowest to the highest notes, and they need all those notes to sound great. MOST fiddle players don't use more than about half the range of the instrument with any (ha) frequency, so there's less of a need to mortgage their house for an instrument that will sound sweet only to dogs. Besides, there are a TON more casual fiddle players than there are casual violinists, at least in my experience, and anyone who is casual about the instrument they're playing isn't likely to break the bank for a really good one.

That being said, there are plenty of fantastic fiddle players out there with very expensive instruments. The most expensive instrument I've ever personally held was worth more than the owner's house - and it was a very nice house, owned by a very nice Canadian champion old-time fiddle player. Many "fiddle" players who are truly serious about what they do will spend $10,000 or more on their instrument. That is, provided they don't actually play fiddle for a living - then there's no way they can afford such a nice instrument. That's what they call a "catch".

ASIDE: If I have any disgustingly wealthy readers who have $10,000 violins lying around propping open doors and catching water from leaking pipes, please allow me to relieve you of them. Also, if you just have $10,000 cash filling the same role - I'm not picky. END ASIDE.

I know this wasn't the story of my transition from "violin" to "fiddle" that I promised in my last blog - I thought I should try to clear up the difference first. See you next time.

-Brian

seven days to a better you

Hey all -

I'm on day 8 of my doctor-imposed silence and I'm really starting to get used to it. For those of you who aren't aware, I had some minor vocal-cord surgery just over a week ago, and although everything went well a big part of my recuperation process has been to remain silent as a tomb for the last 8 days.

I've spent the time mostly shut up in my room, writing music on my computer (most of which I'm sure will live in the eternal purgatory of my hard-drive), figuring out how to communicate with my housemates and thanking the gods of the internet for making it possible for me to order a pizza without having to actually talk to a human being. Really I haven't missed talking all that much, but there are a few things that are hard to mime without being misunderstood with awkward results. Like, for example, "Would you like a popsicle". Visualize it. Sigh.

Thanks for all the comments on my blog posts, by the way - nice to know it's being read. I think the next blog I do will be about how I became a fiddle player instead of the orchestra violinist I once thought I'd be - and my mom probably still hopes I'll be someday. Till then!

Influences Part 1

OK, I'm not going to do this all at once, but here's a start:

LEONARD COHEN

Probably influenced my lyric-writing more than any other person. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I write like him, but studying his approach to writing lyrics and poetry helped shape the way that I write. Leonard Cohen has a real gift for telling you just enough about a person or a scene to create a picture in your mind, while still leaving enough to your imagination that you can truly make the scene your own. If I had to pick my favorite work of his, I'd say it's "Famous Blue Raincoat" - it's written as a letter to a forgotten friend and rival. Check out these excerpts:

It's four in the morning
the end of December;
I'm writing you now just
to see if you're better;
New York is cold but I
like where I'm living;
There's music on Clinton Street
all through the evening;

The last time I saw you
you looked so much older;
Your famous blue raincoat
was torn at the shoulder;
You'd been to the station
to meet every train;
But you came home alone
without Lilly Marlaine;
You treated my woman
to a flake of your life;
And when she came back
she was nobody's wife;

What can I tell you
my brother, my killer;
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you
I guess I forgive you;
I'm glad that you stood in my way;
If you ever come by here
for Jane or for me;
Your enemy is sleeping
and his woman is free;

Thanks for the trouble you
took from her eyes;
I thought it was there for good
so I never tried;

I see you there with a rose in your teeth;
One more thin gypsy thief;
I see Jane's awake
she sends her regards

and he ends it:

Sincerely, L. Cohen

Just amazing.

I don't know exactly what it is about that song that hits me so hard. It's a beautiful melody too, although Leonard doesn't have the sweetest voice in the world (look up Tori Amos' cover - it's worth it). I always go back to this song when I'm struggling with a lyric, and I ask myself "How can I say more with this line? How can I use one line to convey a feeling; a whole scene?" WWLCD? When I was writing the lyrics for The Barfly, I was trying to write a story without giving away all the pieces, and I was always thinking about the way the lyrics for Famous Blue Raincoat made me feel - and how personal an experience that song was. I attribute that connection to the fact that Cohen didn't TELL you the story, he SHOWED it to you. Just enough to pull you in. That was necessary when writing The Barfly, because the song was just TOO LONG and I had to cut, cut, cut. (Originally there were three more verses. Seriously.) I had to look at the story and decide which parts were superfluous, and what I could get rid of without losing the meaning of the song.

Incidentally, any time you read a lyric of mine and just can't for the life of you figure out what the hell I'm talking about, it's possibly an example of where I tried to do this and failed. There's a fine line between telling so much that there's no mystery, no imagination - and telling so little that there's no thread to grasp. Some lines in my songs are, like, the third lateral jump from the original metaphor, and then I cut the original metaphor out, and it's suddenly a lot harder to piece it together. So.... sorry about that. Work in progress. I also tend to finish lyrics about 30 seconds before I enter the booth to record them, so that doesn't help.

Other songs that really connect with me lyrically:

• Last Goodbye, by Jeff Buckley
• Stumbeline, by the Smashing Pumpkins
• Piano Man, by Billy Joel
• Subterranean Homesick Alien, by Radiohead
• Eleanor Rigby, by The Beatles
• John Wayne Gacy Jr., by Sufjan Stevens (and pretty much everything else, too)
• Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen
• Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen
• The Partisan, by Leonard Cohen (see a pattern?)
• Mr. Bojangles, by Jerry Jeff Walker

Hope that's a bit of a window, anyways. Till next time...

In Rainbows

I'm in the middle of maybe my 10th time listening to the new Radiohead album In Rainbows right now, and it's blowing my mind. It's painful, and romantic, and epic, and under-stated - all the things I knew it would be. Bastards. I hate good music. I swear, if this band isn't remembered as one of the most important rock bands in history, there's something seriously wrong with history.

Their distribution method is very interesting too, and it's got the music industry scrambling to respond: they're allowing fans to pick their own price for the album, and selling it as a download only through their website (www.radiohead.com).

Nine Inch Nails and a few other bands have announced plans to follow suit, so we'll see what effect this has on the industry as a whole.

In the meantime - here's a bit of background on me, since the other guys are all doing it:

I came to music really early - I started piano lessons when I was 3, and violin lessons when I was 5. I loved to sing, and had a talent for singing harmonies from the time I started singing in a choir at the age of 4. I guess it's my ears that I consider my greatest gift - I really suck at sight-reading, my technique is pretty awful - but I can learn and play just about anything after hearing it once or twice. This probably allowed me to be lazier as a musician than some other people; maybe if I hadn't had as good an ear I would have stuck to classical music and more rudimentary forms of music, I don't know.

I wrote songs my whole life, although I'm sure they weren't very good. I was also in just about every play and musical you can think of, mostly because my mom was a high-school drama teacher and always needed extras. A lot of the "theatrical" elements of my songwriting, and my love for melodramatic music, can probably be traced back to my early exposure to musical theater.

My first rock concert was, embarrassingly enough, Richard Marx. My dad was a fan and bought tickets for my brother and I. You know him from the soft-rock mainstay, "Right Here Waiting For You". My life wasn't changed.

My next concert was a triple bill: Live, Veruca Sault and PJ Harvey. I was sufficiently affected by this concert to completely devour Live's album Throwing Copper, from which I moved to the Smashing Pumpkins, Tool and Radiohead - from which I moved to everything else. I guess you always stick with what you're familiar with, but those are still among my absolute favorite bands.

My first band didn't have a name - a few of us just jammed together and decided to play at a school function. The jackass MC thought it was really funny that we didn't have a name, so he dubbed us "Los Lamos Banditos" which he translated as "The Lame Bandits". My Spanish isn't good enough to know if that's an accurate translation.

I actually played electric guitar, sang, and *gasp* played DRUMS in that band. Specifically, I played drums for the song 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins. It was every bit as bad as you imagine it was.

My next band was in the 10th grade - we played a grand total of one song, at one show. We didn't have a name. We didn't have a drummer either - I programmed a drum machine and we played along with that. Needless to say, it wasn't my big break.

The end of that year saw the birth of my first REAL band, unfortunately called Necrolepsy. We weren't anywhere near as dark or heavy as the name suggests - basically we were a cross between all the bands I was listening to at that point. I played lead guitar and sang, and wrote all the songs. The only hold-over from that band is the intro to ETH's song Arcturus - I originally wrote that for the one and only song in which I played electric violin during my time with Necrolepsy. We didn't make it. We did win a battle of the bands once, though...

The next band I stumbled into was called Kuru. They were a somewhat established Goth-Rock band with heavy Queen and David Bowie influences. My brother inadvertently hooked me up with Kuru when he met the lead-singer, Leslea Keurvorst, waitressing in a topless bar (no joke) and struck up a conversation about her tattoo. She mentioned in passing that her band was looking for someone who played keyboards and violin.... So my friend and drummer Eric Lightfoot and I moved to Toronto and eventually both joined the band.

I played around Toronto with Kuru for a couple of years, and eventually one night we played at a Brian Eno tribute night. We covered the song "Heroes", which although recorded by Bowie, was co-written by Brian Eno. In the audience that night was one Michael Pallett (now Owen Pallett) who was getting ready to leave his band, Enter The Haggis, and needed to find a replacement.

For a short while I was playing with both bands, but ETH took priority pretty fast, mostly because playing with them wasn't actually COSTING me money. It worked out well though - Mike Pallett started hanging around with the Kuru crew and eventually took my place. So we effectively traded bands. Funny how things work out..

So that's my story - eventually I plan on doing another "influences" blog in case people are interested, but for now I'm going to listen to In Rainbows again and try hard not to quit music forever. Sigh.

Home for a rest

Got a few days off now - I'm working on the new ETH website, eagerly anticipating the arrival of the Rootstomp CDs, and not talking for a week.

My First Blog!

Well, it took me long enough - I finally have a blog. Now the eternal question: what the hell do I write about? Well, today I spent most of the day dealing with online stuff - I set up the new www.rootstomp.com (the website for the new compilation cd Enter The Haggis is spearheading). I used Bandzoogle (www.bandzoogle.com) and it's pretty mindblowing just how easy they make it. If you need a band website and don't feel like spending a ton of money, go check them out - a really flexible, intuitive system.

Kept working on my Zude profile, too - it's coming along. When I get it to a state I want viewed by the masses, I'll post a link here.

I've been working on the Rootstomp artwork too - I've had it more or less done for weeks, but a computer crash set me back a few days and I had to wait until this week to finish up because we hadn't finalized the track order just yet. Now I have no excuse not to finish it up, so I'll do that tomorrow.

I talked to Kirk McLeod of Seven Nations this morning - they're heading to the Dublin Irish Festival where they're playing with a freaking orchestra. Some guys just have all the fun, don't they? Check Seven Nations out online at www.sevennations.com, or at www.rootstomp.com (which should be online within a couple days).

I also set up blogs for everyone in my band, so go look for them. When they start posting regularly I'll link in a sidebar to their blogs.

That's my day! Hope you enjoyed yours.

-Brian