As many of you know, drumming is an important part of my life, and something I thoroughly enjoy. In addition to Greenfoot and playing at my church, I’ve also joined the Wiseacres Jazz Band. Jazz drumming has been a challenge, but it’s also been a blast. Between these three groups there are numerous gigging opportunities, so I’ll make an effort to consolidate and list them on a new page on my blog called “Drum Calendar“. There’s a link for it on the top of the blog as well. Feel free to check it and see if I’ll be playing close to where you live. I’d love to see you make it out!
Archive for the ‘Drumming’ Category
-
A drumming week
I’ve been a bit scarce this week because I’ve been drumming pretty much every night. On Monday night I had rehearsal for an one-time “Barnyard Band”, where we’re doing old-school country songs. On Tuesday I had Greenfoot practice, as we have our “we’re back” show on Thursday and ended up drumming for almost 4 hours that night. I came home absolutely exhausted. I got a bit of a break from drumming on Wednesday, but tonight I’m preparing for a full night of drumming. First I have the “Barnyard” gig, then I’m off to Denver for the Greenfoot gig If you happen to be in the Broomfield/Arvada area and would be intersted, we’ll be at the Sweetwater Station around 10pm.
More to come on drumming…
-
Jerk musician emails
Last week turned out to be a busy one for Greenfoot. Fresh off of playing a show last weekend, we had another one scheduled for Thursday night at The D Note, one of our favorite venues. As with all shows, we have different avenues of promotion: the fliers at and surrounding the venue, posting on our web site and RSS feed, sending out a message to our mailing list, posting on MySpace and our newest method – posting on Craigslist.
Late Wednesday night I posted the following ad for our Thursday show: Come see great band @ one of Denver’s best live music venues – TONIGHT. On Saturday I got an email from a musician through the ad (didn’t even leave a name), basically chastising us for any reason he could find. I know that people just have a random ax to grind, and I’m not going to dignify his email with a response – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have any thoughts about it.
First off, I don’t understand why musicians feel the need to make playing music some kind of pissing contest. In the shows we’ve played around in Denver, we’ve seen some really good bands and we’ve seen some not-so-good bands. We’re all entitled to our personal opinions, but we keep those within our band – we don’t speak negatively about the band to other musicians, and we surely don’t rip on the bands directly. We’ve put our music out there and have received some constructive criticism – and welcome that. I don’t see how someone takes pleasure in ripping on other bands – maybe it makes their ego feel better about their band. Whatever.
I do want to react to a few things he wrote in his email though:
[The subject was "Govt Mule meets Led Zeppelin????"] seriously?? Do you really think your band compares even one microshed to these two powerhouse legends? You need some humble pie and an honest assessment of your band from another working local musician. Good intentions are here – believe me.
If you look in the original ad, I never said that we were the next Led Zeppelin or Gov’t Mule. I specifically wrote “[our sound] been comparatively described as ‘Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin’.“ This guy is reading into this line a little too much. This is music marketing 101 (and credited to the Musician’s Cooler podcast): Instead of saying “our band has a very unique sound”, try to think of some of your major influences (specifically ones most people would know) and use those influences as descriptive’s. That way, when someone reads that and says “I like those two bands, I’ll give it a listen”. Every musician has influences, it’s not an insult to use those influences when you describe your music. In the case of this guy, it worked – he just took it the wrong way.
I checked out your YouTube videos. Gov’t Mule meets Led Zeppelin? Hardly. More like “High School Garage Band Rehearsal” meets “Really Bad Jam Session.”
Good intentions are here – believe me.
As a fellow local musician, I REALLY recommend some more woodshedding before you put your name out there on YouTube, Craigslist, etc. First impression is a lasting one.. I for one will never come see your band because of the first impression I had after seeing your YouTube videos.
This makes absolutely no sense to me. YouTube and Craigslist are great publicity tools, but we’re not talking about sending a CD to Rolling Stone or a video to MTV. I’m not supposed to use these web sites to promote our band’s music, but somehow we’re supposed to expect people to magically come to our shows without any promotion.
Secondly, first impressions are important, and I’m proud of the work that we’ve put our on our web site and on our videos. Does it have room to grow? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t use it as a promotional tool. In the case of the YouTube video: it was put out by the venue we played at, we can either pretend it doesn’t exist or embrace it. It’s a great performance so we were happy to put it out on our web site. As we grow as a band we’ll make better recordings and better videos. That said, we don’t expect everyone to like our music. Everyone has different tastes and that’s fine. Frankly, if this guy treats fellow musicians this way, then we don’t want him at our shows.
Do NOT EVER compare yourself to bands like LZ and Mule unless you can back it up. It really leaves a disappointment when I read that part of your ad, hit your site, and find the very elementary and mediocre work you guys are doing. Booking managers will feel the same as me TRUST ME.
Ok, calm down. We used some comparative descriptions, we didn’t shoot your dog. I’m not going to re-hash my argument from above, but just that this guy shouldn’t take this so personally. We put ads on Craigslist for people to come check out our site and hear our music. We hope people will like it, but if you don’t then that’s fine. I’m sorry this guy felt like we wasted his time, but apparently his time isn’t so valuable that he can’t compose a diatribe about how he hates our band.
And booking managers will feel the same? Some may and that’s fine, but we’ve had a steady schedule and played at a lot of great places this summer and met most of our goals. We’ve worked hard and it’s paid off, but I guess booking managers feel the same as this guy.
I do between 60 to 80 gigs a year with my bands and I book 95% of our gigs. You really need to think of a different way to market yourself besides the LZep/Mule thing. What a disappointment.
Ok, so this guy can pee further than we can. I’m glad his head grew as he wrote that sentence. This guy is comparing apples to oranges. When you want to make it big in music then it’s probably your full-time job and probably do need to play 80+ gigs per year. That not our band’s goal. We’ve all got our own careers, families and other priorities. The music is simply a release for us, we’re happy with playing 3-4 shows per month. We work hard and welcome any success, but our livelihood isn’t dependant on playing 80 shows per year.
And with his 95% of 60-80 gigs booking experience, the best advice he can offer us is “don’t say Led Zep and you guys suck”. Thanks for the substantive advice! I really appreciate all this guy is doing to support his fellow musicians, nothing like tearing other people down to help think better about yourself. But good intentions are here – believe me.
Technorati tags: musicians, musicianship -
Publicity on the ASCAP Issue
I came across this story and it just reminds me how infuriating this royalties issue is to me. It’s great to see that an organization set up to protect the songwriters is really screwing up other song-writers and artists. This goes back to what I blogged about last month, and how important covers are to establishing bands. Greenfoot is lucky that we have enough original music to be able to keep us afloat, but I know there are going to be times where we’re going to be burned by not being able to play covers.
This article does a really good job highlighting the issues with trying to keep in compliance with these policies, and how companies like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for smaller venues looking to support live music. They don’t really make any apologies about it either.
I agree with one of the bar owners when he says, “It’s extortion, it’s intimidating. It’s such a scam.”
-
ASCAP <= RIAA and the other evil empires, hurting musicians
I ran across something tonight that really struck a chord with me, and learned a lot about ASCAP - an organization that uses tactics that should land it on the “evil organizations” list.
The Greenfoot booking machine is running on all cylinders right now, and part of that is because we’re trying a lot of new things. In mid-July we’re scheduled to play at Pizza Hut of all places. I realize that “Pizza Hut” isn’t synonymous with live music, but it’s a great concept that we’re really excited about. As a local musician, I appreciate any way a business tries to outreach to the local music community, and as a band we’re excited to appeal to a different demographic of fans.
Tonight I got an email from the gal that is coordinating the shows, stating that ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) have made their presence known, threatening to take action if any of the band makes unlawful usage of someone else’s music - in the form of cover songs. They’ve made the Pizza Hut manager aware that they will be on-hand to monitor the shows and make sure no one violates the rules.
I read this and was floored. I’ve heard bands do cover songs all the time it was under the impression that as long as a band didn’t record or sell a recording of the song – they were fine. I got on and did some research and found out just how wrong I’ve been. (Note – I’m not a lawyer and my research consisted of about 30 minutes on Google, so I still have a lot to learn).
First off, a royalty fee needs to be played for every cover song that you do. Here is where things get crazy – it’s not on the band to pay the fee, but actually on the club owner or promoter to pay the BMI, ASAP, SESAC (this is what I got from MusicBizAdvice.com). The logic here is that the club owner has the most to gain from you playing that song, which is why they should pay the fee.
I was little surprised to go to the DrummerWorld discussion forum and find that most musicians had little sympathy for the bar owners. On one hand, I can see how this can make sense, and I can also understand that this is common knowledge and not a big deal to the bar owner that has live bands playing every night. Where I take issue is that ASCAP is harassing a smaller place (and yes I know I’m talking about Pizza Hut) that is trying to do what it can to support local music, and has this “take no prisoners” approach. I read a story about how a bar in Oregon was going to have to close down because a band played a cover song at their bar. In the end they’re hurting musicians in the name of helping musicians.
I realize Pizza Hut (under Pepsi Co.) is a huge corporation with deep pockets, but this idea to bring in live music isn’t coming from a board room – it’s a locally grown idea started by the team that works at that location, in an attempt to partner with and support the local music scene. These intimidation tactics are only going to result in businesses being discouraged to venture into efforts like these, and abandon it all together. I hope that the bands scheduled with PIzza Hut draw a good crowd this year, because I wouldn’t blame the owner/managers deciding that ASCAP breathing down their necks is more trouble than it’s worth for next summer.
As band that plays original music – that hurts us. There aren’t an abundance of venues for original-music bands, and the last thing we need is for places to get shut down in the name of protecting musicians.
This also hurts us on a musical level as well. Although Greenfoot is original-music, we’re starting to look to playing some cover songs to help us fill out needed time slots, as well as find ways to appeal to new fans. How many times do you sit in a live-music bar and hear a familiar song that you like, which encourages you to listen and opens your ears for the band’s original material. The last thing I want to do is watch song-writers get robbed – and if a band is an exclusive cover band making money off other people’s music then they probably should pay – but what ASCAP is doing in cases like ours is simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.
What’s worse, this introduces an entire gray area for our band. We’ve been asked to play at some company picnics this summer. Naturally this is great exposure for our original music, but the picnickers want to hear songs they also know. If we play covers, who pays ASCAP? The company sponsoring the picnic? The musicians being hired to play? My girlfriend’s was going to encourage her company to have us play at their grand opening, but with this fee confusion they may just be persuaded to go with a cover band that has a blanket fee established – thanks ASCAP for screwing original-music artists.
This is just another demonstration for the need of copyright reform, and companies employing their archaic business models to cannibalize their own industry. Do you remember how in the movies when people in a bar randomly break out in song? I hope if that ever happens to me in real life, no one from ASCAP is sitting at the table next to me (especially if I own that bar).
Romey's Latest Pics
