3 smokin’ sets. . .

Leroy Justice - Sloan, Jason, Josh, Bradley and Brendan

The weather couldn’t have been more gnarly on Saturday – but just as well. The rain outside kept us inside, focused on the task at hand – nailing Steve Miller’s greatest hits (or most of them anyway).

The rehearsal space in the Berkshires

Jason and Josh made a stellar dinner happen (pasta with beef and sausage tomato sauce, garlic-bread and salad – followed by Jason’s apple crumb dessert).

By the time Sunday AM concluded, we got back to it. Over the next 4 hours, we worked the set through a few more times and tweaked a few endings before the boys considered it ready to go.

Sadly, the time had come to pack up the gear, load up the van and Sloan’s truck and head back to NYC. Fortunately, the weather on Sunday was fantastic and the views through the rolling valleys of the Berkshires were spectacular – reds, yellows and oranges against a light blue sky. As Moose said “F*CK ME – that’s BEAUTIFUL!”.

A great way to wrap an excellent weekend of music making with excellent people.

– I loved closing out my family’s Christmas Eve by reading Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nick” (aka “T’was The Night Before Christmas”). Surely my brothers (all older then me – and much more experienced at the Christmas thing) would roll their eyes and let out heavy sighs when I announced that the time had come for me to do my reading, but my parents insisted that they dutifully participate.

But first, I need to give a shout out to my boys Bradley, Brendan and Sloan (Wegner, Cavanaugh and Marshall respectively) for jumping right in and bringing their considerable talents to bear on this year’s free mp3 Xmas goody.

(Didn’t get yours? Then click the Xmas tab at the top of this page.)

It’s difficult to express how great it feels to give someone a ring, say to them “Hey – listen – I know you’re busy. . . .but maybe you and the guys would like to come down to the studio and work on a song idea of mine” and then pause and wait for the “Well. . . .you know. . . .gee. . .um. . .I’m, um. . .”. BUT INSTEAD, each of them replied with a “Yeah, man – sounds cool. Let’s look at calendars and lock in the date”.

FANTASTIC!

Bradley, Brendan and Sloan (a KCJP regular) play together in a smokin’ group called Leroy Justice (you may recall their tasty Beatles cover for the “Christmas Sessions” release). Be sure you check them out when in their hometown of NYC (they play the Bitter End fairly regularly), or if you’re lucky enough to have them visit your city.

Thanks, boys – I enjoyed working with you in the studio and appreciate you bringing your A-game.

You can now click below to download your free mp3.

[drain file 5 show download]

ENJOY!

Please use the comment form on the right to let us know your comments, thoughts and how you found us.


Get the “Christmas Sessions from NYC” and “Xmas ‘05″ CDs & mp3s:

Give The Swimmers a listen at their website and their myspace page.

Be sure you get your chance to see them next time they’re in NYC – at the After The Jump Fest in Brooklyn, on the 21st of June. (And how cool is this? One of the sponsors of the Fest is WOXY, my old college radio station at Miami University and one of the greatest indie stations in the nation!).

It’s so nice when so many wonderful things come together.

It’s just after 5:30 in the morning as I begin to write this. I’m essentially working on no sleep (let’s call it a 30 minute “nap” from 3:30 to 4:00 AM, time I spend zoning out to an Atmospheric station on internet radio) – so my apologies in advance for a spelling errors or rambling, run on sentences.

Assuming I can successfully get to the west coast today without any sleep-deprived errors in judgment derailing the trip, it will have all been worth it.

Thanks to my partners in the recording studio, Dave Blacker and Peter Farrell, and a former partner in the studio, Mark Reynolds. All three of these guys were very supportive – often freeing up time in our busy studio schedule so that the Xmas projects could stay on track. But beyond that, they were generous in providing their gear (when what I needed wasn’t immediately available) and were always willing to lend an learned-ear to each project’s sound as it developed.

I must also offer a huge thanks to Kevin Lacy – he too was instrumental in helping pull together the needed gear for the rich, warm sounds you hear on the CD’s.

More to come. . .

Ok, ok – let me back up.

Saturday night was meant to be all about hanging out with some friends of mine in celebration of my friend Tom’s birthday. They’re not a huge sports-loving group, though. So? Well, you see, at the start of the day, Ohio State was ranked #3 – and would not be playing that day or any other day until their Bowl appearance. So, for them to make it to the BCS Championship game in New Orleans, alot of things would have to come together. Namely, to be confident, Missouri and West Virginia would both have to lose.

Anxious with anticipation, I hailed a cab and made my way to my buddy Tom’s brother’s apartment in the E. 30’s here in New York for a celebration of Tom’s birthday.

I was hardly surprised, upon my arrival, to find the crew playing Nintendo Wii – oblivious to what was going on in College Football Land. Fortunately, Marcus, Dave and Marcus’s buddy Fergle, rolled right in just a few minutes after me. Despite having growing up outside Indianapolis and otherwise being a fan of pretty much anything Indy-related, Marcus was born in Kettering, OH and is a die-hard OSU football fan. He immediately fired up the laptop and logged onto ESPN’s website, where we could see real-time updates of the games.

Pittsburgh and West Virginia are scoreless after the 1st Quarter? Whoa – that’s a bit of a surprise. (ok – back to the Beer + wii bowling)
WV is up only 7-3 at the half? Man – this game is going to be tighter than anyone would have guessed. . .And at the end of the 1st Qtr of the Oklahoma/Missouri game, Missou is only up by a field goal? Wow! (beer + wii golf)
Oh good lord! Pitt just got a touchdown in the 3rd? Oh man! Okla and Missou are tied at the half? What!?! (bourbon + back to wii bowling)
Pitt beat WV? What? Seriously? Woo hoo!!! And now Oklahoma is up by a touchdown? And now another one? Oh my lord – is this really happening (back to beer + wii boxing)
YES YES – it is! Oklahoma and Pittsburgh both won! The Buckeyes HAVE to be going to the BCS championship game!

I got my confirmation via a painfully long BCS “hype/announcement” show on Fox following that Sunday’s NFL coverage. The Ohio State Buckeyes and the Louisiana State Tigers for the BCS Championship.

Thanks, Hal – great apartment and excellent party! Happy b-day, Tom!

. . .and GO BUCKEYES!

My iPod, set to shuffle, was kicking out tunes through his his donut-style speakers while his roommate Natasha floated in and out to check in on our progress. (I must admit, those little JBL’s produce a pretty decent sound. . .but then again, it’s not like their kitchen has the seating capacity of Radio City Music Hall, either). Anyway – there we sat, enjoying Nut Brown Ales from an upstate brewery as we listened to Ella, Graham Parsons, Duke, Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright, The Beatles, P-Funk, Coltrane, Tribe, Hank III – whatever music the iPod deemed fit to serve up next.

As Eli dutifully tackled each task that I managed to dig up for him, he asked (perhaps hoping to slow me down a bit), “So, what do you think about the state of music?”

DANG! That’s a loaded question!

“Are we talking ‘the state of the art of music’ or ‘the state of the business of music’?”

As soon as those words came out of my mouth, though, I realized that the distinction doesn’t really matter so much – any discussion of one inevitably involves the other. Ever since Bob Caveman commented to Mark Caveman on how much he admired Mark’s cave-paintings, wondering if maybe Mark might do the same for him – perhaps for a few pelts? – art and commerce have been inseparable.

So – the state of music? Of course, it’s relative. . .it depends on where one stands on the “Music <-> Business” spectrum as well as how married one is to standard operating procedures. It could be argued that things are a disaster! “The old business model is quickly disintegrating. . .pirating is running rampant. . .cats and dogs sleeping together. . .mass hysteria!” But one could easily make the argument that things have never been better. “The power, more than ever, is in the hands of the people – the artists and consumers. . .the barriers to musicians getting heard, and consumer hearing what they want to hear, are falling. . .things are truly looking up!”

Me? Personally? I’m not too married to the industry’s SOP’s. . . .and quite frankly, I’m bored and disappointed with the way the biz tends to operate. I’m equally bored and disinterested in most of the products that it churns out – especially the majority of what is in the “pop” realm. I’m not going to say there isn’t an audience for Pop. And some of what charts under Pop I truly do enjoy. Of course, the folks in the music biz are charged with the task of maximizing sales, so if the masses don’t dig it, if they don’t go out and buy it, it’s time to cut your losses and move on. “Pop” is short for “popular”, after all – a.k.a. music for the masses. . . .multi-platinum sellers. . . .artists who appear on the intro to Sunday Night NFL Football. . .you dig? Beyond that, artists are typically not going to get the patience and support they need to “find their audience”. After all, there are quarterly financial statements to be delivered to the corporate parents – and, besides, the A&R guy that signed the artists, the guy that has been crusading for them at HQ, just got let go as part of the “re-org”. On top that, “Well, sorry lads, but the marketing department at the label can’t seem to figure you out. . . .and, well, no one that works here anymore much wants to be bothered with you.” (See – Sam Jones’s film doc about Wilco, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.)

Man! Why even go to a label?

After all, the “Big Label Deal”, the holy-grail for most every artist since the 40’s and 50’s, has always been in most ways a crappy deal for the artist. The artist spends years honing their art, improving their songwriting skills, driving around the nation, packed into funky, dirty busses/station-wagons/Econo-line vans, perfecting their chops at countless honky-tonks, juke-joints and downtown dive-bars in front of audiences in the single-digits (including the bar-staff). . . .with the hopes of a Columbia, Capital or Arista taking them on, plugging them into their massive marketing machine and making them Super Stars!

For all but maybe 2 or 3% of signed artists (don’t quote me on the exact stats), this Big Label Deal was a “loss-leader”. The artist is required to pay for all their own costs – the producer’s fee, studio time, the label’s administrative costs. . .any costs that the label could attribute to the artist. Sure, the label pays for these things upfront, but all these costs have to be re-couped by the label before the artist starts to see their fraction of a % of the music sales. AND, the artist would typically have to give some or all of the ownership of their music (the recordings and the publishing) over to the label.

So, why even go to a label? What’s a brutha to do? Labels have really been the only ones that have access to and can afford to put you in a state of the art recording facility. Labels have been the only ones that can get you heard by the people – get you on the radio, get you on TV, etc. Labels have been the only ones that can get your vinyl/reel-to-reel/8-track/cassette/CD on the store shelves.

So, the artists has had no choice. You HAD to sign with a label and not expect to make any money until, if all goes well, you get to sign that second contract with some serious leverage on your side.

So – how has the artists realistically expected to make any money from their art? Mainly though touring and merchandising.

But, technology is permitting the tables to turn.

Coming Soon: Hear Forward? – Part 2