I voted Remain, for what it's worth. I'm still gobsmacked I had to vote at all. Still stunned at David Cameron's catastrophic unleashing of a political and economic sh*t-storm.
It's been three convulsive, compulsive weeks. The Tories have slaughtered one another spectacularly and dishonourably. Labour is doing much the same thing, just more slowly and messily. Labour doesn't do clean-cut, but they match the Tories for dirt. Tragically, no matter who comes out on top in the Labour leadership race, the party will probably now never be a real-world, viable, opposition again. I really, really hope I'm wrong, but I won't hold my breath. Just do the math.
Sorry, I realise I'm venting, and this is a music and radio blog. I don't usually touch on politics, but this is massive. It impacts on all of us.
Brexit and Brum music? It's not good news. John #1 says so. John #2 is cautious at best; John #3 has already taken the hit.
A modest crowdfunding appeal to get their album pressed: 88% of target in 16 days. Great going.
Wayne Fox Photography
Chatting with Boat To Row is a pleasure. They're great company, and damn fine musicians to boot. The band has quietly built up a very loyal fan base in their six years. Now they're working that fan base to cover production costs for a first album, using that cornerstone of fan-funding, Pledge Music. We met for coffee in Brum this week: me and three band members. The other two? Tied up with a very new baby and teaching paperwork. But the Colmore district was packed with celebrities: Perry Barr MP Khamid Mahmood was hanging at Yorks, and Julian Lloyd-Webber, the new Principal at the Conservatoire, was in the Wellington. Movers and shakers clearly surround this band.
The Highbury Studio pledge campaign. It's different.
If
there's one brutal fact to take from musicbiz posts on this blog and
elsewhere, it's that the old model is broken. Now? There's no
mid-ground, no comfortable living to shoot for, no clear path to take
you from promising, brilliant and unknown to big and successful.
This gulf is everywhere. Record companies seek surefire hits and quick returns; careers can go
hang. Huge numbers of name acts have been turfed off their rosters. Online? Apple's bombastic launch of their new music service had fine words, but the small print shows they will pay artists nothing for the three months of free trial each subscriber signs up for - this could not be a clearer example of the mighty exploiting the vulnerable.
And that brings me to crowd-sourcing - a natural development for working music businesses and beyond to tap into support, now that the previous providers have lost interest. Now, there's a very inventive campaign, freshly launched, that you really ought to know about. It ticks boxes - a lot of boxes.
This is about doing it differently. It's also about Record Store Day, the annual Indie record store bash where 700 UK stores – yes, there still are that many – celebrate their independence, and, often, survival.
This follows on from last week's, on the Album format. If artists are using the format the way last week's post suggests, Indie record stores are where you'll need to go to get them.
On Record Store Day, a world of lovingly prepared, unique and mainly indie collectibles will be on sale. Pressing runs will be insanely limited. I really can't see any acts gaining financially: it's done to highlight a retail sector which supports independent artists, sometimes in very difficult trading conditions.
On Sunday 23rd March, Goodnight Lenin were in Birmingham's Highbury Studio to cut two songs for Record Store Day. The tracks were mixed at Artisan; all done in under 24 hours, with a limited 7" vinyl run to come from the results. The songs? vintage Crosby Stills Nash and Young. The band's many reasons, along with session photos, exclusive rehearsal audio and the finished articles are after the jump.
Rich Bitch studios. What kind of name is that? For starters, a pretty long-standing one Update: Saturday 6th Dec sees a Rich Bitch Anniversary gig at the Crossing Birmingham. Rob may even strap on a guitar again. Lots of star guests from the studio's history. Buy tickets here.
In the Lobby: Rich Bitch's very own Manikin Pis
When you chart local music
history, artists get most attention. Maybe a bit goes to
venues, a tiny bit to the fans. But we don’t hear stories about the other guys: the road crew, the PA boys, the promoters who put up gigs, the
lighting boys. All of them enterprises that both underpin and depend on the business of local music. Then there are rehearsal studios. Ilike rehearsal studios. They mix professionalism and knowledge with a constant stream of new young talent. Sure, there's muso ego and grandstanding, but there's also the chance for of ideas to flow and mix, for contacts to be made. These places smell of hope, potential, aspiration. And work and sweat - in a good way.. Here’s a story about the oldest rehearsal studio complex in the city, which also houses its oldest continuously
working recording studio, with a client list that reads like a rock Who's Who: Rob Bruce's Rich Bitch. It's an odd name to work with in 2013, but we'll get to that.
Recording studios #3: It takes a special kind of enthusiasm to run - and to record at - a seriously retro recording studio. But it seems to be working at Highbury. Where does an analogue recording studio, stocked with vintage 80s kit, like a reel-to reel multitrack tape recorder, fit in our relentlessly digital age ? Like so many 20th century technologies, the accepted norm has been savagely upended by digital technology. The bottom end of the market has been eaten by laptops running free software, while the top end is left to at Air or Abbey Road - see herefor more on this. Studios left in the middle have had to become nimble and, sometimes, specialised. There are, of course, different ways to specialise. John Mostyn runs Highbury Studio, one of the oldest studios in Birmingham; one that is cheerfully old-school in its approach. Built by Bob Lamb on producer royalties from UB40’s 'Signing Off' album, it sits happily in a onetime cricket bat factory, in a quiet side street in King’s Heath, Birmingham. John lives, literally, over the shop. It’s a unique place.
It's been a busy year for John Fell, and it doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon.
The band he plays in, Goodnight Lenin, have packed in a ton of gigs, including tours of Scotland and, this week, Ireland, supporting Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny. Tracks for the first album are now in the can; mixing is underway. There are winter gigs to plan for, including a hometown Christmas special. Before that, a string of releases are due, including a live EP. And in addition, it’s been a frantic summer of booking acts for Mostly Jazz/Funk and Moseley Folk Festivals, as well as the Lunar Festival. So - a busy man. On top of all this, he's also championing new talent, such as Katherine Priddy. For those who don't know Goodnight Lenin yet... they are a hugely promising five-piece, all from Northfield in South Birmingham, who, pretty much, have all known each other since childhood. They are cheerfully happy to be seen as anything but modish. The music is folk-rock, strong on harmonies, with definite nods to giants of the 70s like Neil Young. On stage, they ooze relaxed goofy charm - in fact their gigs are generally a hoot. But their strong suit is a terrific portfolio of songs, which you can explore by checking out their YouTube pages and on their website. One song, 'Wenceslas Square', is embedded here, and it's an absolute gem; you'll find it further down the post. And, for all their knockabout live appeal, the band has the ability to reel off breathtaking numbers which stop you in your tracks. What makes things more interesting is John Fell's role within the Mostly/Moseley festivals group, where he is events manager and has responsibility for booking most, if not all of the acts. It's a tricky balancing act to pull off.
Goodnight Lenin at Moseley Folk 2012. John Fell second from left :-)
First things first. You’ve been recording for what seems like a long time. What’s the release schedule?
We’ve got a single, and an EP – a Live EP – planned before Christmas. The album will arrive next year. The album’s pretty much recorded. We did it on analogue tape at Highbury Studio. It’s the way we wanted to record. So you get that warmth, and it also means you work in a certain way. When you’re recording digitally, you know you can fix anything. It feels a little bit like cheating… But our music is on 16 tracks, with some stuff bounced down (combined on one track), and that’s how it’s going to stay.
Is that a good discipline?
It’s great. It really tests us, because we do like to layer and layer and layer. We might put up five sets of strings on it. Then we need to add our harmonies, so it really is tight. It’s great for us, because we do get that warm, live feel; we’re all looking at each other – you can tell when we’re all grinning. It adds something to it. But we are going to get that digital side too, because all the tracks have been converted to digital for the mixing.
The single is out at the end of October, and it’s being mixed by John Wood, who did a lot of work for Joe Boyd back in the day.
Vintage names from the heyday of Brit folk-rock!…Do you sometimes feel you were born thirty years too late?
We’re quite content where we are! It’s just what we listen to. There’re artists from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s that people still listen to. We want to be the band from 2012 that people listen to in thirty years’ time.
Talk to me about finances – there’s a lot of stuff to pay for here.
Finances? it’s tough. Obviously, most bands at our level – in terms of where we are release-wise – don’t get 400 people to a gig. So that’s unbelievable for us. But then we’re still financing the band. We’re putting in £40 a month, each, and that pays for our practise room.
So you are still funding the band? No rock and roll lifestyle yet?
Absolutely. We don’t take any money from the band at all. It’s all done for the love of it.
But you’re getting a name…? There has to be some light at the end of the tunnel?
We’re getting looked at. Some producers - names we’d never dream of - have checked us out. There are publishers and labels looking at us. We’re happy to stay with Static Caravan, who released our last EP. If a bigger label came along to give us that marketing push, we’d be happy. But we still want to do everything ourselves. If we make any mistakes, it’s down to us. We’ve had a few sync offers come along, which is nice, bit I’m very wary of all that, especially if it means losing publishing rights. I don’t mind doing one-off non-exclusive deals where we keep the rights in the long run, but that’s not the way most sync deals work. I don’t want to be the guy sitting in the pub at Christmas when my Christmas hit comes up, knowing I’m not getting anything for it.
Are we talking about 'Wenceslas Square', maybe perhaps….?
Well…
About Wenceslas Square… would you mind telling me how much you paid for that very wonderful video?
It’s a difficult one. The person I did that video with would have charged a lot more. I could tell you that the puppets and the puppeteer cost a thousand pounds. And there were twelve people working on it. It took a year to make. Does that give you an idea?
So, not cost-effective whatsoever?
Not yet! But there were a lot of favours done.
Let’s sum up: The band’s had a good year. Lots of lovely new songs, a growing audience, you’ve reinforced your standing; if I was still programming at radio in Birmingham, I would happily be playing your stuff; I can't understand why people don't… and yet and yet, and yet – it’s all to play for in 2013, and there’s not a precise plan yet. It’s almost like you’ve casually surfed into this position on the back of your songs and onstage appeal…
I think that’s fair. In terms of the band, we’ve done everything we wanted to do. Next year, we’re going to step up. But we’re not in a rush. Bands who are in a rush just bang stuff out.
SoMoseley Folkis done and dusted; I thoroughly enjoyed it. But you’re in kind of a tricky position, as you book most of the acts. So you are... a gate keeper: people have to come to you for a slot. How do you keep everyone happy?
You don’t. I’m picking the acts, but I’m picking for the Festival. If I have a friend, and I don’t think that friend’s very good, I can’t give him a slot. If some industry person is looking for some new talent, and I have a bad reputation for bias, they’re not going to respect my choices. So when I book people, there’s no favours being done, it’s people I genuinely think will go over well.
There’s more talent emerging than you can fit onto the slots you have.
With local bands, some people, you see them once, and they’re in. I don’t care about their Facebook page. It’s what they do live.
How much sleep do you get when you’re doing the Moseley events?
I’m up about 5, putting the last things together… and I go to bed about 2 the next morning. I stay away from the afterparties… until Sunday. And Goodnight Lenin played on the Saturday as well. You know, I'd planned to sleep for a week after the end of Moseley Folk
Did you?
Of course not!
And the Christmas show has been announced now. Tell me about it.
We’re back at Birmingham Cathedral, which we sold out last year. We're not sure about support. I’ve got a few ideas. There’s this new girl I’ve found. She’s mind-blowingly good. I’m kind of... helping her, not being her manager or anything. She’s just 17, so she’s got a lot of choices. I’ve just told her to speak to me if she needs some advice.
That’s highly creditable.
But it’s what I love doing.
Katherine Priddy at Moseley Folk 2012 - picture Richard Shakespeare
The ‘new girl’ John Fell has found is Katherine Priddy. She made her Moseley Folk debut in the Acoustic tent on Sunday, in the middle of the afternoon, and it pretty much felt like she owned the place after two songs. I talked to her last week after a support set in Birmingham. She plays a mix of originals and material from Nick Drake, John Martyn, and some more contemporary songwriters. It’s rare to find someone so new digging so far back into the golden age of British Folk and Folk-Rock.
I was brought up on a mixture of Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa! … but also John Martyn, Richard Thompson… I really really like that sort of music, and so I decided to follow it myself. My dad used to sit around and play those songs, so I chose to to do that tool. He played one song in particular – John Martyn’s 'Golden Girl' – which made me decide to try to teach myself guitar.
How many gigs so far?
Not many! This is probably the first that people have paid to see, with me as a named support. Moseley Folk Festival was probably the first ‘big’ gig.
So now you’re writing, writing, writing… who are you using to bounce your songs off?
John is good! Lots of people, really. I upload a lot of stuff on YouTube. I got some good responses, and now have quite a lot of subscribers; they’re quite dedicated, and give me some very honest feedback and critiques. I met John by chance at Lunar Festival. I kept sending songs over to him on Facebook.
Next steps?
University, hopefully! I want to keep on playing for the sake of playing. If it did go somewhere, that would be lovely, but if it doesn’t, it’s a lovely hobby to have.
Goodnight Lenin on a jetty; Old Dance School on the run
The web has rewritten the
way we hunt out new music, not always for the better. For a start, there's no road-map. Of course, that could be a good thing.
Old-school record shops have been crushed and swept away; their online replacements throw 'priority' acts at you. You have to step past that, and that is where I particularly miss the old way of doing things.
But instead we now have the power to
endorse and recommend, and this works in a lot of different ways. It’s changed things. Online momentum can build worldwide for any act that is able to reach an audience. Ironically, one of the music
genres that have gained most from this is one of the oldest: folk music. There’s been a huge
resurgence in folk and folk-associated forms in the past ten years.
Singer-songwriters are coming to the fore again; new bands are enjoying success
to rival the 70s veterans.
And this is, I think, down
to three factors.
Marketing: Bands build
great, direct, online relationships with their followers through the web. It’s
powerful and personal, and especially suits music people can get passionate
about.
Technology: Equipment has
never been cheaper, and, especially with acoustic instruments, musicians have far
more scope to record and distribute their own music in their own way. So,
creatively, that frees musicians to do what they feel is right, rather than
what a record company exec thinks is right.
The electronic oral
tradition: Folk and world music has always spread by the passing on of songs from
person to person, down the generations and across borders. That process used to
take years; now it happens in a heartbeat.
Robin Beatty and Laura
Carter are founder members of the Old Dance School,
who mix things up with a vengeance. The new album, their third, 'Chasing the Light', is just
out. The first album worked in some distinctly non-trade grooves in with the
guitars, fiddles, recorders and percussion.
Laura: "The first album
('Based on a True Story', 2008) had one piece we called the drum and bass section. We’ve moved away from that. Now we’re focussing on all the
instruments, rather than the rhythm section. "
Robin: "All folk music is
very modal – it’s all open positions of the fiddle, whistles in D. But we’ve
got a trumpet in B flat, and a bagful of whistles and recorders. We’ve had
loads of fun moving through different keys in different sections of a song.
It’s been really interesting."
Three albums in,
where you find yourselves? Is it progressing the way you think it should be
progressing?
Laura: "In some ways it’s been a
lot harder for us, because we’ve come from nothing. You start off doing gigs
for not much money, and then you have to work on your own profile. Maybe it’s
gone a bit slower than I anticipated. We’ve been together for five years now.
But in the last two years we’ve been pushing ahead. "
One of the reasons we’re
talking is to follow up on a post from the beginning of April, which noted how
much radio play West Midlands bands were getting, especially
on Radio 2.
Laura: "We’re doing really well
with radio plays on the new album. We’ve gotten a lot more interest from festivals… "
Robin: "We seem to have a good
loyal fan base now, which is nice. But we may even have missed out on one or
two things this year because we’ve been so – focussed – on our music and the
album."
Discussion shifts to the web, the power of the Facebook share, and on Spotify and Last-FM, the user playlists and the prompts from the programmes themselves.
Robin:" Having all this stuff
recommended to you… the discoveries that are fed to you on the internet… You do
come across some great things. I just hope that it doesn’t extinguish that
hunger for exploration that you have for music. That is one of the biggest joys
on music. Being oversaturated and overfed with all these recommendations – I
wonder if it extinguishes your desire to explore. "
That’s more than fair, and
something I hope to dig in to in a later post. But back in the present, Old Dance School have
further fish to fry. Now, they’re also doing a festival. Robin Beatty comes from
high in the peak district, where the Edale Festival will take place. Delivering
this has meant years of discussions with the council, clearance for campsites,
staging, power and more, wrangling for support funding and so on. But, weather
permitting – Robin admits to being a bit ‘gripped’ by all this – Edale gets
underway halfway through the month (18th to 20th May),
with a very strong West Midlands presence, including the Destroyers, Joe Broughton’s Conservatoire Folk Ensemble, Abie's Miracle Tonic, and of course the Old Dance School.
Setting this up is the
indefatigable John Fell from Goodnight Lenin, who also play.
Why is Moseley Folk doing
this, given that the organisation already has two very successful but
labour-intensive operations going in the city already?
John Fell: The only thing that
Moseley Folk doesn’t have is camping! Obviously we don’t want to make it
exactly the same as Moseley Folk, but we do want to keep the same sort of
friendly vibe, but to bring that camping element in as well, so it becomes a
little bit more of a holiday, than just a day-by day set of shows.
But it’s tiny this first year,
right?
"It would be interesting
to find out if it is the smallest festival in the UK! It’s got a capacity of 500 each
day. So yes, it is minute. We wanted to start in a small way, and grow from
there."
But you’ve got room to
expand?
"Oh yes. The fields round
the site are vast… "
If I wanted to run a
festival, I think I’d be declared insane. You’re already in the business, so that
doesn’t apply. But how, exactly, do you go about it? Where do find a friendly
farmer, for a start?
"You need the right venue.
That’s key. You need a reason to do it. You can’t just say ‘I’m going to run a
festival to make money’… "
Because several festivals
have cancelled this year already…
"You can understand it.
There are so many festivals that are the same, that offer the same, on the
same weekends. "
And prices aren’t going
down.
"No, they’re not. That’s one
of the issues we want to address. With Moseley, we try to keep it at around £79
for three days, which is fair. Tanworth is going to cost £65 for four days
music – you can camp for five days if you want! "
But with only 500 paying
customers a day, you’ll be very lucky to break even…
"We’ve worked it to break
even. This is to try running a new event. We got offered a nice venue, which
was perfect for our interests, where we could try something new. "
For our interests…?
"It’s where Nick Drake spent most of his life, and where he is buried, two minutes down the road from the festival site. This is what I mean about not doing a festival for money, but doing it for an idea. A beautiful plot of land, and the associations with Nick Drake – and it all clicked. Over the last twenty years or so, he’s become more and more iconic."
Now that’s interesting. Back in the day, Nick Drake was not exactly a huge commercial success. Island Records certainly believed in him. Old hippies like me have memories of rootling around in the bins in record shops – remember them? – and coming across Bryter Later and Five Leaves Left. But, to me, the buzz wasn’t – really - there at the time. Now, it certainly is. And I think that credit has to go to the Moseley Folk organisers for riskily putting their money where their personal interests lie. The bill is pretty impressive too, and most of
the acts will be performing at least one Nick Drake song.
So give me a quick update
on Goodnight Lenin?
"We’re still recording, at Highbury Studio, where we were always meant to be. It’s great. To record analogue tape live is fantastic. I’m a song writer – I’m not technical. I write the song, bang it out, it’s done. So the delicate intricacies of digital – it’s very unreal for me. To just walk in the room, crank up the amp and play the song… it’s the way I want to record. We’re never going to go back (to digital). You lose a lot of warmth. You lose a performance."
Hmm. Now there’s an idea
for a future blog piece…. But that sort of brings me, full circle, back to the
start of this post. It’s ironic that folk, the most basic and direct form of
music has flourished because of digital and web technologies. The Goodnight Lenin video above has jumped into people’s awareness… and that could not have happened ten
years ago. But they still want to record their music the old way. Band Links Old Dance School Goodnight Lenin
Revisiting the good old days isn't always the best of ideas. But sometimes it works beyond everyone's wildest dreams. It just depends on what you may be looking for.
Sometimes people do it for fun and memories; sometimes, there’s unfinished business. Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do, at the right time. And sometimes the results are just not what you might expect.
And it’s never the same.
This post covers two bands who have split and reformed. One's Punk, one's Folk. And, before you ask - yes, they do have a lot in common.
