Toy Hearts: Family. Tradition. Attitude. Experimentation. High Heels. Don’t Mess.

Hannah              Stewart                Sophia           

Birmingham has brilliant musical dynasties. Many of today’s brightest are the children of 70s veterans; they grew up absorbing music, tech skills and more from their parents, almost by osmosis. 

Fabulous talent can emerge from this kind of music-intensive family environment, and that’s a great thing. But that doesn’t mean that, even if you’ve got the music nailed, the path is any smoother. 

Promo work: flyers and posters ready for mailing at THHQ

On a hot Spring afternoon, Toy Hearts are hard at it, doing promotion, prepping the latest mail-out, marketing, answering emails and booking gigs. That’s Sophia and Hannah Johnson, who run the band. Their father, Stewart, who also plays in the band, isn’t working quite so hard – but then he’s just engineered their next album. Hard work it certainly is. Four albums, constant touring, developing and self-managing over six years is a lot of work, most of it an uphill slog.

Toy Hearts operate in a very tricky and sometimes unforgiving area. Family bands aren’t uncommon in Folk music in the UK, and even more so in Country and associated genres in the US. But it just so happens that followers of those genres in the UK are not always, shall we say, the most open to new and experimental approaches. Genre-bending works a treat in Rock, Jazz and Urban fields…  but you mess with ‘traditional’ genres at your peril. To negotiate those landmines, Toy Hearts have developed tougher skins. They're now battle-hardened, and perfectly happy to go eye to eye and toe to toe. 

Marketing yourselves as a bluegrass-western swing-country band, in a home territory which doesn’t really get this music, can’t be easy.

Hannah: I don’t think it would be anything any of us would have chosen to go into – such small, niche genres – especially as young people. People have expectations of a down-homey, check-shirt, dungarees type look, and we definitely don’t have that. That’s made it difficult in a way. People see us and then don’t expect us to be able to play our instruments well, or think we’re going to play pop music. 

Fact is, Toy Hearts can really play. Sophia Johnson is an ace guitar player, and Stuart has excelled on dobro, lap steel, banjo and other exotica for well over thirty years. Hannah is a great singer and a seriously good mandolin player with it. 

With what you play – bluegrass, country and western swing - you have to be ironclad; bullet-proof, especially when you take your act to the US…

Sophia: Actually, I disagree! I think where you have to be bullet-proof is here. We go to America, and people are lovely to us. In this country, we’re told we shouldn’t be writing our own songs; or we should only be playing Bill Monroe music from the period when Flatt and Scruggs were in the band… Don’t you go down the Chris Thile  route! Who wants to win a Grammy and sell out concert halls all over the world? 

You’re kidding… 

Stewart: No, that’s a typical set of English attitudes! In America, they’re just fantastic. We’ve never had anyone in America pick us up on what we do, or try to tell us what we should be doing in the genre – unlike in England. 

But England doesn’t own the genre

Stewart: The people who are into bluegrass in Britain are a very closed community.  Those are the people who criticise us. When we put this music in front of people who’ve never heard it before, they just seem to get it. The actual bluegrass/country community in this country… unless they can have some kind of ownership over it, they just want to criticise what we do.

On the other hand… because you can play really well, and Hannah and Sophia have that sisterly harmony thing going on, doesn’t that get you acceptance?

Sophia: We have more success going into rock gigs and converting people who’s never head this stuff before, than in the UK bluegrass scene. The festivals don’t book us. 

We in the UK tend to consume and re-interpret big chunks of American culture, and put these chunks in boxes which have nothing to do with how the music emerged in the first place. People dressing up at country gigs…

Sophia: The Americans would be horrified at what goes on here. Nobody dresses up at US Bluegrass festivals in America! 

Stewart: We did a UK tour with Robert Joe Vandygriff. He’s from Texas. One of the first gigs was full of people, all dressed up... wearing guns. Robbie Joe got really uneasy.  We had to reassure him. If anybody walks in to a bar in Texas with a gun strapped on, everybody hits the deck! We had to explain to him that these are people living a fantasy, which they probably got from cowboy films rather than music.  And of course, this sort of thing puts young people off. Nobody in his right mind would want to go to a gig where he might see his uncle dressed as Wild Bill Hickok…

The band is unusual. A Father and Daughters combo 

Sophia: This was never, in any way, Dad making Hannah and I join his band. Of course he influenced us; we heard all this stuff we really liked; bluegrass was one of those things. When got to be 14-ish or so, we started to see all these Bluegrass gigs over at this Bluegrass club in Kenilworth, ad we fell in love with it.  We wanted to be in a band. And we told Dad.  

So, not Svengali territory…

Stewart: No, not at all. I mean, I would come home, and I’d hear Bob Wills coming out of one bedroom and Hank Williams out of the other, and I’d think: Those are my CDs; will I ever get them back?  The first gig that we did together… I was playing with some people at the Ceol Castle in Moseley, and they all dropped out. So I asked Sophia and Hannah them if they wanted to sit in. An ad-hoc arrangement. That became a regular one night a week residence. 

When did things move forward… seriously? Now you’re slick, tough and road-hardened. I watched you waltz on stage at Moseley Folk last year, without a sound-check, and knock the crowd dead. How did you get to that place?

Hannah:  That’s really hard. I don’t think there is a specific point when we could look and say, yep, we’re there. I don’t think we’re there! We still think we’re not good enough, and there’s work to be done; and we probably always will. All we’ve ever tried to do is to be the best we can be and be on top of our game. That’s helped us.  Constant gigging, constant practising… I’m not saying it’s made us good – but it has made us really tight – and people do notice. A lot of bands don’t do that.

You can always tell a band that works that way. It shines from the stage. 

Sophia: Dad always said to us that from day one, you need to get out and gig. Give yourself permission to not be that great for the first year or two, and to really work at it. There are so many musicians that I know who really great musicians – in their bedrooms. They cannot get on stage and perform. Part of learning to do this is that we were made to get up and perform. Play a song a million times in your bedroom – fine. Perform that song once on stage and you learn far more about it.

The album isn't officially out until late May; the rough mixes that Toy Hearts kindly let me hear me when we did the interview are very promising indeed; bearing in mind last week's post about local bands scoring national airplay, I would not be in the least surprised to hear their new material daytimes at Radio 2. Here's a video from last year, where Hannah went over the top with the kohl... 

So, the new album…

Sophia: ... is called ‘Whiskey’. We recorded most of it right here, in this house, and then we sent all the files to Nashville for mixing by Ben Surratt. We wanted to have a go at doing it our own way, so we weren’t clock watching. Another big factor in the album, bluegrass apart, is our big love for Western Swing. We’ve been to Austin, Texas about four times, and one of our favourite bands over there is the Hot Club of Cowtown, who really inspired us. A couple of years ago, Dad bought his triple-neck steel guitar, and I bought my 1958 Gibson Arch-top. And then we said… right! These have to work their way in. 

It’s the first album which is half covers, half original material. Two Bob Wills songs, a Bessie Smith song, a Ronnie Self rockabilly song, a Wayne Hancock song. And it’s the first album that has drums on it – courtesy of Dean Beresford, Richard Hawley’s drummer. We added fiddle in Nashville. 

Weird feeling doing all your tracks, and sending it all over to someone to mix – someone you trust, but still, they’re your babies, aren’t they?

Hannah : It’s a good thing, but… ooooh – when you’ve spent so long writing and crafting them, and getting so involved with them… it’s actually a relief. We became really ground down by the whole process with previous albums. You live with the tracks and the mixes and the remixes for soooo long. I guess the key to it all is trust.   

In terms of basic kit, how did this work?

Stewart: We wanted a total live rhythm track – no tracking on the core of the band. We put the drums in one bedroom… the double bass in another, I had Sophie playing rhythm guitar in that room over there (up the hall), and Hanna singing live guide vocals in here (the kitchen).  I recorded on to my computer in the front room, with industry-standard software… but I used vintage mics – some vintage Neumann U87s, with valve pre-amps. The only problem was running cabling all over the place, and closing doors and wrapping people up in duvets… and it’s worked! 

Marketing the band is critical…You take that one on head-on.

Hannah: I’ve never understood why, playing the music we do, that we can’t have a commercial image. That doesn’t wash with me. We want to get a certain look – to be true to who we are as young women, and how that relates to our music. 

That’s crystallised over the past couple of years…

Hannah: We’re in an industry dominated by men. I’m five foot two, and I do feel more empowered when I’m on everyone’s level!

Sophia: We’ve always dressed up. The Bluegrass bands that we really loved made an effort. Sometimes they got it horribly wrong – all the band are wearing putrid yellow shirts… but at least they all matched!

You’ve amped this up several notches over the past couple of years. . You’re a lot more made up, the heels are higher…

Sophia: We live in a visual world. Our music is good enough if we get people to the gigs, but you’ve got to pique the interest. And that gets us to newer audiences.

Is there a danger that you’re going to be dismissed as two cute girlies?

Sophia: We are continually dismissed as two cute girlies. But you’ve only got to come to our shows and watch us play. 

                                      

In a lot of the photos, you (Sophia and Hanna) are upfront… Stewart, you’re in back.

Stewart: It’s important that they see what the front of the band is. The girls are the front of the band. I don’t see my role as a very visual one for publicity purposes. But I am wearing a cowboy hat on the new shots…  After all, they formed the band; the asked me to be in it. Actually they said I’d better be in the band 'cos I’m the only banjo player we know…. 

And you’re doing all the PR right now

Sophia: Not just the PR. Hannah and I joke that our second instruments are our laptops. You can’t not. It takes too bloody long, but it absolutely has to be done. There is no manager to this band – everything that has to be done, it’s done by us. 

Helluva workload…

Sophia: Eventually we’ll get a manager - but it has to be someone we trust. 

For full gig details, check the gigs page on the Toy Hearts website. 

March/April 2012 Airplay

Last Month saw a really pleasing burst of radio activity at national level for West Midlands acts. Time for a few facts and figures. 

Impressive music is emerging from the West Midlands. Some of it is starting to get equally impressive recognition at National radio. 

This is a big deal. Scoring airplay at Radio 2, the country's most listened-to station, even in off-peak shows, means more than scoring airplay on any other station in the country. It means that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people, will have heard your song, and that it will have been presented, sympathetically, to an unusually receptive audience. It's a great trick if you can pull it off, and it is definitely not easy - just ask anyone who's tried. 

Local acts are breaking out. When you gather it all together, it begins to look good: we're talking about millions of listens at national level. Of course, I have no way to ensure that this info is comprehensive; there's probably a lot more to celebrate.


Star performers in March:

The Musgraves: Last of Me single, with 6 plays in the past month at BBC Radio 2

Also shining brightly: 

Destroyers: Hole in the Universe single. Transition Records 
Mike Harding Show, BBC Radio 2, 28 March
It’s also worth noting that the Destroyers logged two sell-out shows last week to alarmingly enthusiastic crowds in Birmingham and London. And if you play the video, do note the comment, from Taysidethistles, up near the top.

Urban Folk Quartet: Jaleo Bus/Up In The Air. Taken from 'Off Beaten Tracks' CD 
Mike Harding Show, BBC Radio 2, 28 March

Dan Whitehouse: My Heart Doesn’t Age, It Just Gets Older single, Tiger Dan records.
Alex Lester, 21 March; Steve Lamacq, 3 March, BBC Radio 2; also playlisted at Q Radio (National Digital)   

  Sam Redmore: Is This Love Remix 
Craig Charles, BBC 6 Music, 17 March.

Thanks to the excellent Compare My Radio website, we also know that
Ruby Turner scored more play at BBC Radio 2 with Lord I Thank You - thank you for the update comment, PF - in March. 

Nightingales: Best of British Luck / The Burster, new CD tracks
Marc Riley, BBC 6 Music: 8th/13th/19th/22nd/28th March

Chris Tye and Wes Finch 
Honourable mentions in Guardian reader playlist, 21 March

So, so far, so good, but I've almost certainly missed some stuff out. Researching this in detail is time-consuming; getting play details out of all the key specialist shows isn't the easiest thing in the world. If you're not on the above list, and you’ve scored some national play, please drop me a note so that I can update the post. 


There are some interesting issues to consider: 

How did these guys score national airplay? 

In particular, what steps did each act take to bring their work to national exposure? 

There are a number of routes, but it’s heartening to note that national DJs are going out of their way to explore new music from the West Midlands. 


Now, this can’t be the whole picture, and it goes without saying that Kerrang, BBC Introducing at WM, CWR, Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire and Stoke are all playing their part, as are WCR-FM, Bridge FM, Scratch Radio and other community operations. And, as I have repeatedly suggested, judicious local plays for the right local artists can bring unique benefits to both station and artist.

Friends of the Stars and Misty’s Big Adventure: Two bands who take the long - very long - view

Grandmaster Gareth                     Craig Hamilton

Music-making for the joy of it first, and business second.  Running record companies. 

Wait a minute. Record companies?

The  20th century ways are well and truly gone. You don’t work in recording studios the same way  - see this post - you don’t promote the same way, you don’t get paid the same way - now, it’s even worse. Record labels are having a catastrophic time; sales have collapsed in the face of torrent sites.

And yet, and yet. There’s at least three bijou record labels operating out of Birmingham, two of them featured in this post,  that may just have escaped your notice.  The third – Spritely Records – has been known to issue a jar of chutney as a release, complete with Catalogue number – and another has issued packets of, er, fried chicken seasoning.

Commercially Inviable Records are the chicken seasoning merchants, and the album that goes with it – Faith’s Meat Kiosk – is due out at the end of April. Craig Hamilton runs the label and plays in Friends of the Stars… who are, of course, released on the label. 

You run a record label. And it’s 2012. Can I, politely, ask – what on earth possessed you to do this?

"We finished an album in 2007. Self-releasing and self-promotion on the internet had taken off in a big way. So I set up the label, in name only, to give that release a boost. I didn’t think any more about it than that, until people I know – and some who I didn’t know – got in touch with me, asking if the label would be interested in their material. James Summerfield, who’s a friend of mine, gave me his third album, and I put that out. Simon Fox did the same, and we released his album as World of Fox. By the end of the year, I’d put out about five albums."

Here's one of two tasters from the album: 'Railroad Towns': 


Tell me something about costs………?

"Initially I made the same mistake most small labels make – pressed up 1000 copies of Friends of the Stars, and another 1000 of James Summerfield’s album. I still have several copies of both albums at home… And I realised that wasn’t a sustainable way of doing things, having laid out the best part of £1500 for each album. The money does come back, but in a trickle…"

A trickle of bits and pieces, scruffy fivers at gigs….?

"Yes. And if it comes in in cash, it fritters away…"

How the hell do you keep track of all this stuff? Does it not take more time than it’s worth?

"Well, recently, I’ve reduced the size of the release. I now press and print the CDs myself. I’ve released more EPs, and they come in limited editions with hand-coloured sleeves. That makes the run more collectible.  I did a limited edition single release with Fields of Ypres – he’s a lovely folk guy from Wolverhampton. That sold out - 50 CDs at four pounds each - and actually turned a small profit after we split the proceeds. The artist has been paid, which is important to me, and the money that came back into the label paid for materials, and the funds are now sitting in the Commercially Inviable pot."

It’s lovely to turn a profit on a 50 EP sale, but… that means you’ve taken even more of the process in-house: the recording the publicising, and now the manufacturing…

"If I factored in my time, I would probably cry a little bit! But having done all this work, the next recording – the Friends Of The Stars album, 'Faith's Meat Kiosk' - will be the 23rd release on the label, and I’m now building up a catalogue of stuff. There’s about 150 or 160 songs on the label. And in terms of digital revenues, that’s starting to tick along on a monthly basis."

Does a physical release stimulate online sales?

"Yeah. I want the record, I’m that kind of person. Others like the downloads. It’s nice to be able to say that I’ve sold out, and getting a sell-out is good promotion." 

And here's another Faith's Meat Kiosk track - 'Wagons'



Craig, it must take as much time to manage a 100 unit run as a 1000 unit run. This can’t be cost-effective!

"It’s a labour of love. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t enjoy it. All of the artists – people I really like - have been really chuffed to have had a record released, even if it’s on a really small record label. .The other side of things is that as an artist, I’m really interested in the business side of things, how the nuts and bolts work…the other thing is that if an artist moves on to bigger and better things - and one of my artists may just be about to do that – that I’ll always be the label that first recorded that artists. And it will drive people back to my label." 

It's worth noting that, among those early artists who first had an outing on Commercially Inviable, you'll find the excellent Gurdan Thomas. 

Friends of the Stars go back a long, long way. Two John Peel sessions under their belt in previous incarnations.  Two name changes. Members rotating in and out… and the members now live in three separate cities. 

"We all still want to play together, we all still believe in what we’re doing. Over the last couple of years, we’ve worked out our way of recording. The second album is finished, and about to be released – but we’ve also completed material for the third, and we’re working on a fourth. The plan is to release a record a year." 

How does distance recording work?

"I’m in Birmingham, and Campbell is in Glasgow. Rachel, the bass player and the drummer are also in Birmingham, so the basic rhythm section is on one place.  The problem we’ve had in the past is - which is why it’s taken twelve years to release two records  - is that you wind up with something like a snare being very slightly late, and it’s very very tricky to fix and still make it sound like a live record.  

Folk For Free, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 2011

"Now, rather than record drums live, we use a digital midi signal, so when we do put everything else back on top, it’s a simple matter to move something if it’s not right. There’ll be a session in Birmingham; then it goes up to Campbell in Glasgow; then it comes back down, and so on. Everybody has an input, and we’ve all been working so long that we can be honest with each other."

What about the band – after twelve years? Are you going to step up a gear?

"Having put all this time and effort in… We’re doing it for the love of it, but we want something to show for it.  We’d be happy to do five or six gigs a year and to put out a record that appealed to between five hundred and five thousand people a year. We’ve be happy with that. And after that, as music fans, the beautiful thing about the internet is – once it’s out there, it’s out there. It’s now really important for us to compile and present our body of work." 

Moving across town: here's Misty's Big Adventure: 'I See A Cloud', from the new album, Family Amusement Centre:

Sitting in the sun in King’s Heath, Misty’s Grandmaster Gareth also takes the long, long, long view…

"There’s eight of us. Has been for ten or twelve years. We started as a three-piece when we were 15. I guess the biggest fuss was around 2006 when we put out ‘Fashion Parade’ as a single. It stumbles along in a non-directional form."

Gareth’s being too modest here – ‘Fashion Parade’ is a brilliant slice of great pop… if you haven’t listened, fire it up now. More videos follow further down the post; they're well worth exploring, just to get a taste of one of the country's more unique operations. And there's a new video in the pipeline, which you might wish to participate in - read on... 

"We were signed to Sunday Best, which is Rob Da Bank's label. After that we’ve been funding our records ourselves on our own label, Grumpy Fun."

And how does that work for you? 

"Not that well in my case….We had a manager from 2004 to 2008, Matt Priest, who drums with Dodgy. He’s gone back to playing with Dodgy, so that’s handed back to me now. But for a while that worked really well for us."

So after all this time, with all this intelligent appealing pop that you send out, I would have thought you’d have built a reasonably solid following. Is that the way it is? 

"Of sorts… but it’s very cult. A lot of it’s word of mouth. We can go to Manchester or London and do well. And we have followings via the internet. There’s people listening to us in places we’ve never been to." 

Misty’s have been touring as Misty’s Little Adventure, working as a three piece, while their trumpet player has been otherwise occupied with Birmingham Opera Company. Their album - Family Amusement Centre - is out, and videos are in production as you read this - scroll down to the bottom of this post. 

"The main problem is always recording. We want it to be as good as possible, and that involves pulling a million favours. So it took us three years. We used the Guillemots’ studio – for free – and one or two others… and then I worked on it on my own…  We managed to get a 100-piece choir on it. The father of (Band members and twin sisters) Lucy and Hannah runs the Birmingham Choral Union. We managed to persuade them to sing on the album. It’s a long process…."

"When I was a teenager, a lot of the local bands I liked were the post-rock bands like Novak, Broadcast and Pram. I met them as I got older. So we’ve done stuff with Pram and broadcast… I was really lucky to be a teenager when that was going on. It got me into a lot of ignored sixties music."  

So you were watching those bands as they were wrestling with the industry?.

"We did a tour with the Zutons, which was great – we got to confuse thousands of people on that tour. What was clear was the… rigmarole… of what they were dragged into. They’d hardly played any pub gigs before they got signed. Suddenly, they were on a tour bus playing academy venues.  It seemed such a soulless vacuous experience. You can see how the drugs, and the boredom and the arguments with the others come in. So the Zutons, even though they had Valerie, covered by Amy Winehouse, even though they got sent to LA to record their album by Sony, they still got dropped.  It’s just weird seeing that happen. Dave (of the Zutons) is a brilliant songwriter, but you feel like their (new) record company is holding them back, because he has to keep delivering what they want. And at the moment what they want is another ten ‘Valeries’ from him…"

"We’ve been friends for twelve years, and we’re better friends now than we’ve ever been, while a lot of other bands have split up.  When you’re younger you think that’s exactly what you want - to get signed, to get a big deal. As you get older, you start to realise that what we’ve got is a lot better, because you can still be creative, we’re still going, and each album is an improvement on the last."

Misty's want you for their video! Over the next couple of weeks, Misty's are shooting a new video for their song 'Aggression' with director Mark Locke, who shot the video for Fashion Parade (above). Here's the pitch from Misty's: 

"This looks like being the most ambitious yet. It's set on a typical Friday night and we need extras (or essentials) based near Birmingham to come and be townies on a night out. If you're interested, please email mistysmovie@live.co.uk for more information. The main night of shooting is going to be the 9th of April, but there are a few other evenings when we also need extras, including for a scene set in A & E. If you could ask friends too that would be amazing!

It's got the potential to be an incredible video, and if you think you could spare the time, we'd be really grateful."

Links
Friends Of The Stars
Commercially Inviable Records
Misty's Big Adventure Wikipedia page

Don’t you point that thing at me, pal. Snapper supreme Richard Shakespeare shares some thoughts.

Music Photographers: in the pit, hanging off the balcony, vilified by tour managers. A key part of the industry. 

I posted a year or so back (interviewing Bob Marley) about how useless and in the way a DJ is when he’s backstage at a gig. The only people who really should be backstage are those people who have a job to do. The rest is glory-hunting.

Photographers, for the most part, tread a delicate line. They may be have been invited to document the gig. They may be there to further their own careers. But sometimes they just need to go where they really shouldn’t, just to get that special shot. It calls for tact, diplomacy and sometimes a lot of brass neck.

Leominster-based Richard Shakespeare runs the wonderfully named Shakeypix, and has long and generously let me grab his work for this blog. I’ve watched him at work for the last two years or so. No spring chicken, he, but a great snapper. At gigs, he's everywhere - turning himself into a pretzel in the pit, upstage, downstage, in the balcony... smiling, deep in concentration, watching everyone and everything. I talked to him about the job. 

Why photography? 

"I’ve always had a love of image and form. I tend to see everything through a frame. My parents gave me a box brownie for Christmas. I was 8. Then I had a Prinz 110 from Dixons, bought with paper round money. It was nice and compact, but the quality was rather poor. At 15 I went on a course, one afternoon a week, at the local photography college. I picked up a 35mm SLR for the first time. I loved the old darkroom developing process. It went on from there." 

George Barnett and The Ninth Wave at the Yardbird, February 2012

The last time I watched Richard working, he was cheerfully squeezing himself through the crowd at a packed Birmingham boozer as his new charge George Barnett (of which more below) played a debut gig in the area. He was all smiles – a large, uninhibited, jovial presence, firing off shots of the crowd, the band, their friends and family. 

You don't make yourself invisible. Others do. What's your approach? 

"I see no point in being invisible. My clients tend to respond well to this. With a name like mine it's very hard not to be noticed. If a client wanted it otherwise I’d adapt."

When you went full-time, what kit did you buy? 

"It was in 2007. I decided to go with Canon or Nikon digital. The final decision was based on a pro snapper who used Nikon, but told me he wished he’d gone with Canon. So I soon found myself armed with 4 pro Canon DSLR's and a large selection of L lenses. For live work I travel light, packing all I need into a small sling style bag. A full blown shoot requires a serious number of bags, lenses, lights etc. This is where assistants come in – there’s always someone willing to give me a hand." 

Mendi Singh with Alternative Dubstep Orchestra, Mostly Jazz 2011

Studio work or live in the field?

"I don't have a studio. It’s too tame. And too costly. I’ve got all the kit I need to set up a studio anywhere, and locations are so much more interesting. Many bands send me their rough ideas and backdrops. I then go out and source locations to suit. Birmingham bands like to come here (Herefordshire) as it’s so different to the usual Digbeth/urban backdrop. Plus we all enjoy a meal and great banter in my kitchen afterwards." 

You shoot lots of stuff for the love of it. How can you make it pay? 

"Good question, it's not all about the money for me. I can work my prices to fit budgets. I used to do some live work for free to find new clients. That’s how I built up long term relationships. Being trusted is everything to me – that’s how you get the money shots that others miss.

Paul Murphy, Songwriters Cafe, Summer 2011

"! always look for the real person, not someone who’s aware of a camera in their space. I’ve been known to pull faces at someone onstage or dish out the odd insult when face to face in order to get a reaction. But I always follow it with a smile and a thank you." 

It’s a crowded field. Is there a sense of community or a sense of competition?

"It’s competitive, but I try not to enter that game. Each photographer will have their own style. Most UK music photographers have a lot of respect for each other. We share space and time: we’ll all chat before entering a pit, then whoever has the best spot will get their shots and move to give others a chance. I find that just a few London based snappers let the side down and fail to understand that mentality." 

Mark Magoo Robinson, Leftfoot 10th Anniversary Special

You have long-term relationships with bands like the Destroyers, the Misers and Goodnight Lenin. How does that work?

"There are many bands I’ve built up an understanding with. I’m rather lucky to have made so many musical friends.

"Goodnight Lenin came to me about 3 years ago. I was recommended by a mutual promoter friend. They were in the planning stages. The budget was tiny. I drove to Edgbaston and did an all-day shoot for the cost that just about covered the petrol. We all got on like a house on fire. About 3 months later they had their first live show, and I was invited along. At this point I had no idea what kind of sound they had. I loved the music and the rest is history. I have now become the band archivist and been at their sides for nearly every gig."

Goodnight Lenin on tour, March 2012

 "The snapper role was then combined with that of tour manager last year, which sadly has had to go. I love those boys like the sons I never had - I have two daughters. The deal is all about budget. As a band’s kitty grows then my fee will reflect their situation. This way we can grow and reach our goals together. To be taken on tour by a band opens lots of great opportunities to get exclusive one off’s. These days I would rather do that than shoot the actual show, although I do both." 

What about big contracts? 

"I’m not sure that I want large contracts. They can end up being a chain around your neck. I worked with Florence And The Machine, shooting a number of the early shows while they were on the rise. They have always been good to me, and I love them dearly, but now for me the machine is the industry, not the band, which saddens me."

"To be honest, when you’ve got to jump through hoops to get a photo pass, I just can’t be bothered. I’d rather just move on. But I have picked up some interesting work off the back of the music work. Last Summer I did a shoot for Echo Falls the wine company, who wanted product placement at the Isle Of Wight Festival. Life is never dull!" 

Can we talk about your health? Say no and I won't. But to me it's part of the story. 

"Sure. I have always been healthy. Last summer, with 16 festivals covered and two still to go, I got a life-changing shock. My age must have kicked in and sent my body a warning message. I had a stroke, which left me on a hospital ward for a week, followed by months of recovery and reflection. Many of my industry friends like Goodnight Lenin, The Misers, Jo Hamilton with Jon Cotton and fellow photographer Wayne Fox with Sara paid me regular hospital and home visits. My dear friend Tiffy B (she's worked with Lady Gaga and CeeLo Green) even dropped in after coming off tour with Tricky. So many people sent cards and Facebook messages. But it was clear that I’d have to change my working life." 

But you’re back. Now tell me why you decided to go manage a band. At your age and all.

"As I recovered from my illness, I was weak and rusty - I’d gone a month without picking up a camera. I couldn’t drive for 6 weeks. I was not well enough to travel far from Herefordshire; Birmingham was too far. I looked around for a local artist and offered a free shoot to keep my hand in.

"The artist I found was the then 17 year old George Barnett, a former Young Drummer Of The Year. George invited me to a gig at The Bull in Ludlow, not far from my home - my first gig in ages. Yes, it was a pub gig; yes, it was not the best venue, and, yes, there were not hundreds people there, but WOW … he blew me away." 

"A big talent, right under my nose. A week or so later we arranged a photo shoot with George and his band The Ninth Wave. The first set of photos were in the bag. After a few more meetings George asked me if I would consider being his manager. A couple of days of days later, I decided to take him up on his offer. Since that time my world has moved to its next phase. I still take photographs, and recently went around the UK with Goodnight Lenin with Beth Jeans Houghton as support. My tour managing is on hold, whilst I concentrate on my new role of developing a very special talent, and I’m sure in years to come he will be a National treasure. The debut George Barnett album 17 Days (here's the bandcamp link) was released on 12th March 2012." 

What about favourite shots and subjects? 

"So many! My most well known shot is a live one of Florence taken at Shepherds Bush Empire. The London tog’s were all squashed into the pit with not even room to pass each other.

I had snapped most of the tour and had sorted out with the lighting guy to give me more light in the first song, as we were only able to shoot the first 3 songs. Lighting on Flo had been very dark. Not wanting to enter the pit scrum I decided to sit on the side of the stage, and so took my shots from a different angle to the others. It wasn’t until I got home I realised that the money shot was in the bag. So that was a bit special.

"I have a lovely one of Carl Barat (Libertines/Dirty Pretty Things) taken in the green room after a London showcase that hangs in my home. Carl said he couldn’t see it being a good shot, but after looking at the result he soon changed his mind." 

"An early Tinie Tempah taken in his Rainbow dressing room is another favourite."

"I also love an unusual snap of Robert Plant (see this at the top of this post), taken backstage at the Mostly Jazz festival last summer.

"Robert had just flown in from the USA and was very tired, but he still had enough fun left in him to pick up a jug of flowers and hold it up whilst gesturing with one finger that there is only one Plant."  

"Roisin Murphy (ex Moloko) will always have wallspace in my home, but my favourite shot of her was taken on Moloko’s final tour, by my daughter Laura with a happy snaps camera and shows Roisin jumping on my back."

Links: 
Shakeypix
George Barnett website  

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BRMB Radio. Free to go... into the history books

BRMB’s owners are re-branding the station. Does it matter? Probably not. Does the fact that it probably doesn’t matter… matter? Yes, I think it does. 

Logos courtesy of Orion Media

Things change

KSAN-FM was a legendary late 60s West Coast Rock station. They rewrote the rules.  They defined the template for rock radio worldwide, and I wouldn’t be in a position to write this now if they hadn’t. 

KSAN flipped to Country in 1980. 

In the UK, the Home Service lasted 28 years before becoming Radio 4. The Light Programme ran for 22 before morphing into Radio 2.   

So is it really worth getting all worked up because Orion Media, BRMB’s owners, are dumping the BRMB name after 38 years? Well, yes... and no. 


No, because things come and go. Think 70s stuff: Walkmen. Video Discs. Think 70s and 80s music: can you really get excited about the Rubettes, cheesy Disco or Olivia Newton-John? Or, for that matter, the Bee Gees, the Eagles, or even the Rolling Stones? If you’re under 35, almost certainly not. 

Orion are repositioning BRMB (and sister stations Mercia, Beacon and Wyvern) into one new brand, Free, with central output and limited local programming from each town – no change from what they are doing now. It’s a business decision. They’re being heavily outgunned by national brands Capital and Heart, who have huge budgets and megastar TV campaigns to pump up their stations. The Orion boys can’t fight on that front.  If I was in their shoes, under the exact same conditions, I might do the same thing.    

There is of course, a debate to be had about how things got to this position, and I’ll come back to that. First, though, take a look at this gruesome audience graph, which you can find on the fascinating and useful Media UK site: 

This charts the station’s share of the local market from Late 1999 to end 2011. Like I say, gruesome. From 17% of the market to 4.7% in 12 years. Ouch. 

But let’s dig a bit deeper. I’m going to draw a line at around July 2009, when the current owners took over. And I'll also plot the previous owners over the period. Now look at where the damage took place. 

Frankly, the new owners haven’t done all that badly, relatively speaking. All the serious damage was done by the previous owners, firstly the then Capital Radio Group... who were swallowed up by a merger into GCap... who in turn were swallowed by Global Media. 

As concrete evidence of savvy management skills, it lacks a certain something. As evidence of sensitivity to regional markets when viewed from a metropolitan base, it's pretty typical.

The last change of ownership came about because Global had to divest themselves of some surplus properties; at one point they owned nearly all the stations in the market. So they flogged off BRMB, Mercia, Beacon and Wyvern to the new owners, re-tooled Heart as a national brand, and morphed the old Galaxy into the newly national Capital FM brand. 

This will have been some time in the planning… plenty of time, quite conceivably, to decide that if you were going to have to lose stations to local competition, you might as well let them flounder first. 

So, that, partly, is why I think it no longer really matters that Orion Media are now reworking their old properties. It doesn’t matter now, because the old BRMB, about which a lot of sentimental guff has been spouted, has long since gone. 

Now, here’s why it does matter. 

Sentimental guff notwithstanding, BRMB was an eccentric and very local operation which had its moments. Those moments may have been accidental, infuriating to some, and pure radio gold to others, but moments there were. It was a rough-edged station with oddball mixes of programming, built out of old-school ex-BBC and British Forces thinking, with passionate specialist DJs pinballing around in off-peak hours. A lot of stations operated the same way. Weird specialist programmes at night. Lots of local content. Local music.

That oddball mixture struck a lot of chords. There's a timely reminder of just how many from a podcast published last week by The Word Magazine, and I'm very grateful to them for letting me reproduce the clip here. 

Mark Billingham is a very popular and successful crime writer. He grew up in Birmingham. In this interview with the Word's Mark Ellen, he reminisces about growing up in Birmingham, its local scene, and the role that BRMB played. The whole thing is worth a listen, but his comments about BRMB - and me - start at about 10.30" 


On a personal note, it's a hell of a thing for a DJ to be remembered after over thirty years. DJs are the very essence of ephemeral... From BRMB's perspective, that deep and warm acceptance, evidence of just one listener's trust and affection, is something stations would kill for. And stations only get it by reaching out and engaging, on all sorts of fronts.

But, to today’s sharp-eared radio executive, that sort of operation was ripe for polishing and slicking up. And there’s no question, BRMB sounds really polished and smooth compared to some of the more eccentric personality-led programming of its heyday. The music is researched to the nth degree, there’s not a nanosecond of dead air, not a single commercial opportunity is missed. There's no rough edges. 

Here’s the thing. If you get too smooth and polished, things tend to slip past you. Rough edges are there for a reason. It’s like grit in an oyster.

Once stations started the inevitable move towards becoming corporate and branded, those rough edges were systematically filed away and smoothed down. Sadly, along with that smoothing went a whole lot of relevant content. But the big problem today’s commercial operations face is that there is always something bigger, flashier, and better promoted that’s going to park its tanks on your lawns. For BRMB/Free, that’s Capital and Heart. 

Ironically, the self-indulgent, wobbly, ego-driven and inconsistent station that BRMB used to be – of which I was a part – pulled in listening figures that the current operation would kill for.

Equally ironically, the biggest station in the country, the unmoveable beast that today’s commercial networks wish to kill off (and will not be able to unless the government helps them) keeps on growing. Slowly, steadily, inexorably. That’s BBC Radio 2. They have a LOT in common with the old commercial model. They just do it all a lot better, and with bigger budgets, deploying multi-formatted specialised evening shows, big personalities, and music-driven programming. 

The past four years have seen much of commercial radio move to a new corporate, branded approach, with national brands, regional conglomerates, and an awful lot of job losses. And in that time the BBC has marginally increased its overall share of the market.

Here's another graph. This is telling. It is, again, derived from data published on the Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research) website. The top line shows figures for All BBC Radio listening; the bottom, all Commercial Radio. The time span covers the last four years of  mergers, branding and and re-positioning, during which time all the consolidation and and consequent job losses has taken place. 

The absolute best you can say about the work of the past four years, and then only if you give Commercial Radio the benefit of the doubt by applying the usual margins of statistical error, is that all this re-branding activity has achieved... precisely nothing.  

I wish the team at Free all the success in the world. I really do. They’re going to need it, in a brutally competitive environment. At least they're broadcasting from the area they're meant to serve. I know this has been said before… but in the search for a USP to make their station stand out, I wonder, just wonder, if ticking a few old-style radio boxes might be worth a try?  

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