Pete Williams. What people remember. What fans want. What a performer is. Different.

Didn't you use to be...?

Pete Williams. On stage. In his element

Decades ago, I went to watch my beloved but useless football team (I could tell you but you'd die laughing) fold at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers. I was heading home on the train, when a friend, a Wolves fan, called to wind me up. The train was full of Wolves fans, who rapidly clocked that I was being razzed. They sat back to enjoy the spectacle.

I handed my phone to a pal. He loudly name-checked me. Big mistake. 

Amused consternation in the Wolves camp. Coo – they had a DJ in their midst to tease! To be fair, they were actually very nice... for the next interminable hour of ribbing.

But one phrase in particular stuck in my mind: “Didn't you use to be Robin Valk?”

Still am, pal, still am. And when I told this tale to Pete Williams, he fell off his chair laughing.

Old folks boogie: astute business by Ricky Cool

Wander into Broad Street's Brasshouse at the right time, and you're in for a treat. A free treat. 

    Photo: Birmingham Post 

It's weird. Broad Street Birmingham is the last place I'd expect to see decent live music. The place swapped Ronnie Scott's jazz venue for a lap-dancing club, just when Birmingham was trying to get City Of Culture. The place is full of loud chain pubs, industrial dance joints, karaoke bars and some very iffy catering. You go there to drink, lots.

As the night wears on, Broad Street becomes Purgatory Street: shrieking hen parties, testosterone morons in sports cars and quad bikes, pissed-up conventioneers and lads on the pull. Buses don't stop there now on Friday and Saturday nights. And just watch where you put your feet.

But on a Sunday lunchtime, once they've hosed it down and swept it up, it's a whole different place. In the Brasshouse, you can now catch, free, some of this city's most experienced bands, playing to an up for it, older, crowd. These aren't lame covers outfits who don't 'get' the music they serve up. These are players.

It's all good. And it's all been set up by local muso veteran, Ricky Cool.

Electric Swing Circus: a band with a plan

Electric Swing Circus' Tom Hyland is the embodiment of positive and optimistic. He's easy to chat to, and remarkably open about his band's business. I threw a volley of tough questions at him this week; he fielded them all graciously and with good humour.

I first talked to Tom to chart the band's progress since its formation in 2011. This week? A catch-up, ahead of the Swingamajig festival. 

The band clearly has a plan and a route map. They pretty much have a local monopoly on Electro-Swing, a genre which is huge in the States, big along the South Coast and in London, with devoted, high-energy fans. ESC made a whizzbang start with twostonking videos, making them permanent fixtures in the six-monthly Radio To Go video rankings. Since then, there's been an album, and a steady development of their associated brands, like Swingamajig and Hot Club De Swing. But it's been extremely hard work. The workload, along with the day jobs, can be close to overwhelming. They have a plan for that too.   

Boat To Row. They rock.

Boat, schmoat... the new video is going like a train

Boat To Row at All Tomorrow's Leaving, December 2013

Boat To Row's Lydia Glanville and Anna Louise Bennett are cheerily considering how things are over hipster coffee, while Michael King parks up and finds change for the meter. 

The hot topics are a tour, a single on vinyl and download, their own label, and a video shot for very little money. We're weighing up what they should charge for the single launch gig on February 28th, with the vinyl thrown in. It's all very impressive, garlanded with effortless, unflappable charm. 

Maybe they're horrible cynical bastards with a devilishly smooth act aimed at suckers like me.

Nah, they're lovely. They really are. 

Urban Folk Quartet: what happens when a key member leaves? The classic problem.

How can Urban Folk Quartet handle Frank Moon's departure? Time for radical thinking.

       Joe, Paloma and Tom are staying....    Frank's going....    and Dan's coming  

Urban Folk Quartet are a cheerful bunch. They're fun to watch and very good at going about their business. In fact, they're a shining example of how to do things; other bands could learn from them. Musically, they deliver mainly storming high-octane instrumentals, with a bit of vocals and a lot of badinage, and bravura instrumental work from all four members. 

Up to now, this included fabulous oud and guitar playing from Frank Moon. But Frank's skills and career are taking him to all sorts of new places. So, regretfully, he is moving on, leaving UFQ with a huge hole to fill. The big question was: how do you replace someone like Frank Moon, who has been so integral to the band?  How do you transition?

Joe Broughton (fiddle, expansive personality) and Tom Chapman (cajon, percussion, clever stuff with triangles) spent time with me this month going though their options. 

Dan Whitehouse: old craft, new songs, growing audiences.

How a song develops, from raw demo to the finished article: hear both in this post. 

I first heard Dan Whitehouse when scheduling Rhubarb Radio’s output in 2011, in the dying days of its second incarnation. I used just local material, mixing the best of West Midlands music makers into one audio stream. 

It was great. I got to listen to lots of music in different combinations, which is always interesting. And I saw how unusual and new songs bedded in on air with consistent and repeated play, the way they are delivered on mainstream radio..

Dan’s songs worked brilliantly. The more they came round, the better they sounded. That may well be because of how he crafts his songs. They wear well; they stick in the memory. 

It seems to be working for him. On Sunday 29th September, Dan put together a particularly lavish hometown launch gig for his second album, Reaching For A State Of Mind. Unsurprisingly, the gig sold out.  

Boat To Row: on tour in May, back at Moseley Folk in August, new songs to unveil, and national airplay

The May 2013 Boat To Row tour poster

Boat To Row have been sculling through peaceful waters for some time now. But it hasn't been plain sailing (and that's quite enough boat gags). Time to talk managers, repertoire, accosting national DJs on the street... 

Two or three years back, Boat To Row opened for Goodnight Lenin at a packed Hare and Hounds, rammed with GNL’s mates. That BTR line-up played an understated but highly effective set, swiftly followed up with some early material online, much of which is still current.

This band is astonishingly calm, collected and at ease. They're good company. For all that, there’s been a hefty turnover of musicians, but the current line-up seems stable. And there’s a really rather attractive tour coming up at the end of the month – the Birmingham gig packs in the wonderful Chris Tye, the fast-rising and very appealing Cannon Street and at least four other acts, on top of Boat To Row's headlining slot. And two days ago Moseley Folk confirmed that they will appear on the first day of this year's festival.. . 

And beneath all that sunny affable calm, there’s a good deal of judicious thinking going on.

Everybody Wants To Be a Cat: Electric Swing Circus spell it out

Electric Swing Circus: Big Fun, major YouTube numbers, sellout club nights, a full gig sheet, and now their first festival. All this in 18 months. How?  

With a custom Electro Swing mix from the C@ In The H@ included in this post

Two videos to announce their existence, which in a year have racked up well over 200,000 YouTube views between them; a string of Electro Swing club nights leading up to their first festival; and a snazzy website. 

Then there’s successful crowd-funding to build up funds towards their first album, a pretty unique musical proposition in their hometown, and on top of that, a whole big chunk of their appeal flowing from live showmanship, snappy good-time tunes, and not a little onstage showboating. It’s looking good.

Guitarist Tom Hyland brings a lot of the onstage razzmatazz; he looks the part. Lots of corkscrew hair, extravagant headwear, and plenty of effervescent stage moves. It works. Offstage, he’s just as effervescent, but affably grounded with it. And for all the fizz and affability, there's sound strategic thinking behind the approach.

Juggling tasks: John Fell

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.

So Moseley Folk is 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 website and full gigs list
Katherine Priddy on Facebook

Pushing it forward: The Musgraves and George Barnett And The Ninth Wave take different paths

Two local bands have scored terrific national airplay this year. Here's how they did it. 

The Musgraves (top) and George Barnett

A while back, after a particularly good month of action, I wrote about national airplay figures for local acts. Lots of great bands got BBC network love, including The Musgraves, favoured in daytime shows by Radio 2. More recently, another West Midlands outfit, George Barnett And The Ninth Wave, has scored significant action at Radio 1.

It set me thinking. It would be lovely to be able to draw up some sort of ‘success index’ that suits and reflects the web-based environment bands work in these days: a concrete way to show the creative and economic potential of our local music scene. Some sort of yardstick would be very useful. But, this being the web, there’s no structure, and there are tons of places to track, legal and otherwise. I’m sure something reasonably effective could be cooked up though, and if anyone’s up for developing it with me, let’s talk. 

Back on topic. In the spring, I dug into YouTube views for a while. Strange patterns: some wonderful bands, who I have all the time in the world for, have racked up relatively small numbers, while others, like George Barnett, can boast six-figure views for their material from a standing start this year. 

Clearly some people are doing something right. But what, exactly, are they doing to get these results? I got in touch with Matthew Bennett, who leads  The Musgraves, and manager Eamonn England of Redhouse Management. I also talked with Rich Shakespeare, who has managed George Barnett And The Ninth Wave for less than a year, to see what buttons they pushed. Two different approaches, both with measurable success. Of course The Musgraves are a little further down the road...

Some common threads emerged, despite the fact that both bands operate very differently. There’s evident determination and focus. There’s a sense of detachment and strategy, and an informed take on how the music industry works. And BBC Introducing has played a significant role in both bands’ progress.   

You’ve scored a lot of very gratifying national airplay action recently. How? Did you use a plugger, or just send your stuff in? Or are there any direct contacts you have?

Matthew Bennett, The Musgraves: It’s taken a long time to get to that stage. I suppose the first thing we did, after doing demos, was to get a management company on board. Our drummer sent a CD off to some industry people in London, and after a few weeks we got a call back.

Eamonn England, The Musgraves Management : The Musgraves sent us a demo CD. It was pretty raw but there were some good ideas and we felt that with development we could achieve something together.

A very early 2011 The Musgraves home-produced video

Matthew Bennett: The company got involved and helped us develop our sound and live show and we began to get gigs before going back in to the studio to start work on an album. Via our management we signed our publishing to Imagem Music on the back of the songs we recorded towards our album. Through this deal we were able to fund an EP release and get a marketing team on board. Initially it was a regional focus and we managed to step up a level before going national. Tom Robinson on 6Music gave us some BBC Introducing spot plays and we then began working with a national marketing team and released an independent single through Lookout Mountain Records. It went crazy then!

Rich Shakespeare: We didn’t use a plugger. One has, very kindly, offered to work for us for free, temporarily, but it’s us (myself and George) who spend most of our day researching people to contact, and making that contact. It’s all about linking up with people. Lots of research. I went to a BBC Introducing live night in Hereford
- they had recorded George at a festival in Worcester, and updated Andrew Marston. He put one of George’s songs forward for Radio 1. It went to a committee, and they picked it ahead of many others. We’ve also had a lot of help and advice from a major label, who seem to want to nurture us and show some early commitment.

It’s great to get that sort of reaction. Some people seem to get it effortlessly, while others plug away for years and years. 

MB: We managed to secure a great national radio plugger and Graham Norton got behind us and began playing our single on Radio 2. 

 The video of the single that went national...

We were then invited on to his BBC 1 show, the first unsigned band to do so. Then we got on the Radio 2 playlist. Really happy now it’s all happening. We’re playing bigger shows now, we have more radio play, and more TV is coming together. It’s difficult but we want music to be our full time job and we’re getting closer.  

RS. It’s all about effort. You have to be really focused. Everything you do has to push it forward.

What about novelty value? Lots of media people like to be the first to spot something – which is of course terribly unfair, but it is human nature…

MB: You’re only going to be new once. You’ve got to keep it fresh from there on, almost re-inventing yourself. It’s up to the artist to develop, to produce new stuff.

RS: Not a problem. George is pretty much a chameleon. He changes. If you look at the artists who’ve lasted a long time, they change and evolve. 

and he’s still only 18...

RS: Yes. I’m also using my experience of seeing people I’ve worked with in the past. The best survive, adapt and grow. That’s my model, I guess. 

What is fascinating to me, Rich, is that this is your first managerial role...

RS: But I’ve done tour managing, and been around the industry, so that’s given me a grounding. George asked me to be his manager. 

What about building a fanbase? What sort of tricks would you recommend?

MB: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook really do work. Before, you could play a show and not be able to follow it up. Now, all the fans are there at your fingertips; you can interact with them, and it makes that relationship go further. They feel more involved; we can get information out quicker. Everyone in the band interacts with the fans online and we make a real effort to be as personal as possible, to keep it ‘real’. When a band starts out, the internet is a really good tool for promo and interaction. We make our own videos and really get the fans involved in what we do. 

RS: Difficult. So many ways. We decided we were going to build ours online, at least at first. That’s why the videos are of decent quality. The idea is to keep it fresh and keep it interesting, so that more people watch these videos.  Lone Rose was the first one – it’s only been out for months and it’s got 120,000 views on YouTube. If you compare that to other bands on the same level, we’re doing well.  

Huge viewing figures...after using Pirate Bay

Interestingly, when you go to that Youtube page and scroll down the comments, free downloads via the Pirate Bay get a mention. A strategic decision? I saw you plugged this offer on Facebook as well. 

RS: The Pirate Bay offered a great promo opportunity after liking ‘College Kids’. We had a 3 day front page promo there that went worldwide. Then we decided to allow free downloads. In return many people decided to go back and pay for the album via iTunes/Amazon or Bandcamp, which worked out perfectly for us.   The fans talk to us through all the usual social media sites. We talk right back, but with respect. It’s about perception.

Can we talk finances? Are you making any money? Did you expect to?

MB: We’re making a little money. Not too much. We’re in the middle stage, where we know things are growing. We sold 3500 copies of our debut single but that doesn’t really equate to income, what with recoupment etc. Our management and publisher have been very supportive and there is a third party financer involved too now.

How does that work? 

Eamonn England: There are lots of 'new model' deals going on within the music industry at the moment. Through our production company, which The Musgraves are signed to, we have managed to secure a marketing and distribution deal which lets us release The Musgraves debut album on our own label. This enables us to keep everything in house and provide them with a far better and fairer return from sales than a major record deal would.

RS: We’re not making any money at the moment. George has sold a little over 1000 albums in a few months. We only had 100 cds made up - we’ve ordered a thousand now. The others were online, so we haven’t had to do too much. He’s used that money to reinvest in better equipment. It’s probably costing us more than we’re getting. 

Is there a grand plan? What is your timescale to push on further?

MB: All we’re focused on is the album right now – it should be out in September along with another single and the promo campaign is starting to kick in now. We’re planning a few videos and cover videos too to keep things moving online. We’re touring the UK in October, and then another single in 2013. 

RS: 2013 is starting to be mapped out. We’re probably planning on getting another album out by March. The plan is to make sure there’s enough material to do another album six months after the last one.  George is constantly writing. We’re planning on a video every two to three months, so that keeps going. We’re also doing 30 second video adverts for major gigs…and that helps the sales.

It looks like you’ve had a charmed life…

MB: (Laughs) We’ve done gigs where there’s no-one there; 400 miles and nobody’s at the gig…Three or four years of that….

RS: I think it’s just… knowledge. As a photographer, you pick up all this knowledge. You’re studying and watching all the time, and you meet so many people. You link with more people as a photographer than you do as a musician, and you move through more genres of music.. 

Who has/have been particularly helpful?

MB: Arthur Tapp from The Catapult Club who promotes at the Birmingham Ballroom. It’s important to get a promoter that believes in you at the start, and he’s been there right from the beginning. When you’re just starting, mostly they (the promoters) are bothered about are how many people you’re going to bring to a show but with Arthur, it’s more about building something. Graham Norton has also made a huge difference.

RS: Too many to mention!

Links
The Musgraves
George Barnett

They split. They reformed. Sometimes that works great. Other times...

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.