Happy New Year

Happy 2009!

Great music happened live and in the studio throughout 2008 and we can't wait to see what 2009 brings to our ears.

We received several pieces of good news to close out the year:

Frogs Gone Fishin' was ranked one of Denver's most interesting local bands of 2008 by MetroMix. Peep the article here.

Our first show in New Orleans will be the day we get there, February 20th, opening for Russell Batiste and Friends with George Porter Jr. and Jason Neville. Russell is a friend of mine, always crazy to hang out with around New Orleans and consistent partner of George Porter Jr., a legend in his own right after founding The Meters four decades ago.

As a final New Year's present, I got to see Widespread Panic at the Pepsi Center last night. I had never seen a Panic show before and was greatly impressed by the lights and overall production quality of the jam band's set-up. It certainly psyched me up to play tonight.

Have a safe and happy new year!

Play It Out pt. I

Lay It Out So You Can Play It Out
pt. 1 Booking Gigs

The New Year is upon us and many aspiring musicians are making plans and resolutions about how to get their act together this year.

I am by no means a veteran at this whole music business thang, not by a long shot. I do feel I can share some of the advice that I've learned, in large part by trial and error, which might make these posts a little more useful than your generic "How to Succeed in the Music Business For Dummies" book. Rather than start at the very beginning (tuning your guitar...), or jump to the advanced stuff like copyright law, I'll begin my Lay It Out So You Can Play It Out series with what most musicians want to do badly, but have the most trouble accomplishing: booking gigs.

Obtaining successful gigs at clubs will depend largely on your definition of a successful gig. If you want to pay rent and build a fan-base through a regular gigging schedule, it will require much more work than if you seek to play only a couple gigs for the experience and fun of it all. For this article, we’ll assume you’re trying to make music your living. Weekend warriors will still find this information helpful, but I’ll try to outline a complete, step-by-step strategy for booking and playing gigs at clubs around your town.

Research.
How you research your potential gigging market depends on what genre of music you’ll be playing. In the jazz scene, there will only be a few clubs around town that specialize in hosting jazz music. Even between those clubs, some might prefer traditional acoustic jazz, while other joints might book electric avant-garde groups. It’s important to know if the music you want to play live will mesh with the vibe/preferences of the club you’re trying to book.
In the early days of booking my band, I’d sometimes alter the description of our music to suit what the club owner wanted to hear. This can be dangerous ground, but advocating your “jazz-influenced” rock sound can be more advantageous than the “Black Sabbath-influenced” elements of your playing.

Cold calls.
This means either calling or literally calling on the club for the first time. Unless you have a friendly connection, chances are you don’t know the bar owner from a barstool. Your first contact with this needs to be professional, but not sterile, and will focus on asking them some key questions. Try not to be too drunk or stoned and inquire about the following information:
What nights of the week do you have live music?
Do you have any open nights between these dates (insert dates here)? Most club owners like booking their schedules at least two months in advance.

At this point the club owner will either blindly give you a gig (not really a good sign) or inquire about your act. More than likely they will want to see a website, Myspace, or physical press kit before they will discuss further.

Booking.
After the club has seen your immaculate website and heard your stupendous tunes, you will still have to be persistent in calling them back to book the gig. This time when you ask if they have any open dates, and they say “sure, Feb. 24th sounds great”, you ask:
What time is load-in and sound check?
How long will we be playing and for what set-lengths?
How will we be compensated? Cash? Check? Beer? Make sure and agree to this before you set foot in the door.

Some clubs even require that their acts fill out contracts and 1099’s for tax purposes. If you are making enough dough for these formalities, congratulations!

Playing the gig.
So you got the gig... way to go. A big factor in whether you can come back next time is how you perform (both musically and otherwise) while you’re at the club. Again, try to not show up drunk or stoned. A good policy is never drink more than you think your audience is drinking. This keeps your head in a place that’s congruent with the energy in the room. Play good songs (a healthy mix of covers and originals), keep time between songs short, talk to your audience but don’t ramble or preach and overall, smile and have fun.

This advice will obviously differ between genres. There will be heavier drinking for heavy metal music at biker bars, more covers in a jazz set, more time between songs for singer/songwriters, more preaching in praise music and less smiling in emo music.

There is one thing all musicians of all genres can agree on, however, and that is getting paid for your performance. While artistic in nature, playing music is a job like any other and should be seen as such. Everyone gets stiffed at some point in their career. But, contracts or verbal agreements about payment before the gig go a long way toward avoiding this situation. If you do get a club owner who ducks out before you’re done packing up and leaves his waitstaff to explain to you that you are getting exactly zilch for schlepping your gear around and playing an awesome show, you can only do a couple things short of damaging property. You can do everything in your power to get back in touch with the club owner and get the coin, or simply tell every musician you ever meet to never play at the shady establishment. It goes something like this:

“Never play at the Absinthe Lounge in Dallas, because they stiff musicians.”

See? Just like that.

In the end, persistence is the key to booking gigs. Oftentimes it takes many calls over a period of weeks to make that initial club contact. After that, it takes one phone call or email to that club to book a date. So get out there, research, and lay it out so you can play it out! Happy gigging everyone.

Happy Kwanzaa

First off, I hope everyone is having an awesome holiday season spending time with friends and family. Kwanzaa starts today and I wanted to mention this often overlooked celebration. Kwanzaa is a seven day event with the typical candle-lighting, feasting and gift giving aspects we find at most holiday gatherings. Kwanzaa is a pan-African celebration and promotes ideals such as unity, cooperation, purpose and creativity. These are ideas I personally agree with and acknowledge, especially when listening to the heavily spiritual music that has come from Africa to shape music in America, much as Kwanzaa is a purely American holiday with strong roots in Africa.

The music I play owes a lot, directly and indirectly, to musical traditions which originated in Africa.

To sum up a semester's worth of ethno-musicology in one broad statement, you might say that music in Europe came about by written tradition, whereas African music centers largely around improvisation and group creativity. Given that fact, what we do in Frogs Gone Fishin' exists in a much more African, rather than European, context.

Beyond relying on group improvisation to make music, several of the genres and musical devices we employ come from Africa. Afro-beat, the blues, jazz, reggae, New Orleans, call-and-response melodies, syncopated rhythms, "dirty" sonic textures... all have their roots planted on the African continent.

So happy Kwanzaa everyone. I personally recommend going out and getting a Fela Kuti record to celebrate.

My next post will be the first in a series about starting a career in the music business and everything that might mean to you. Whether you'd like to perform, promote or sit in your bedroom and write songs for money, there will be a post for you sometime in the new year.

Pirates

Not of the Somali variety.

No, these pirates headquarter out of their basements and bedrooms, planning and hording with hard drives and bitTorrents. They are musical pirates and they have been running amok, plaguing the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) since the Captain himself, Shawn Fanning, launched Napster in 1999.

This week it was announced that several nations, including China and Iran, will bypass any potential legal options and attack the pirates at their source, off the coast of Somalia. It was also announced that the RIAA will take a similar approach to combating online music piracy. Lawyers for the group said that rather than taking offenders to court, they will work directly with internet access providers to shut off access to websites that direct traffic to places where illegally pirated music is available. These websites are not yet illegal because they only direct traffic, not host any content themselves.

Pretty tricky, these pirates.

I'm not really sure how the international community will fair against the Somalian marauders, but I think what the RIAA is doing is a fair step against only the largest perpetrators of online music piracy. I'm sure if the RIAA had means of prosecuting each and every pirate perp out there, they would. But the problem is simply too massive. After all, online content is some of the only free content (or free anything) people get these days.

That is where I would draw the line and help the pirates out. Not because I think people should get free stuff, but because the MAJORITY of musicians out there benefit greatly from the uninhibited file-sharing of their music. Remember that in most genres, musicians make vastly more money off of touring revenues than recording revenues. The Frogs pay rent and buy groceries every month by playing two to four shows a week, every week. (I'm staying in CO while my family travels to TX for Christmas because have a show on the 26th and flying back the day after x-mas is a movie I've seen too many times...)

By comparison I would estimate we sell 10-20 CD's a week, revenue which is still flowing directly to our independent record label, Oh/Ya Records, in the form of recoupable funds.

Another form of band revenue is merchandise. Our shirts are really cool looking and once we have the design ready for some FGF action figures, we can expand the product line.

I truly hope that pirates, musical and maritime, will have some heart this time of year and stop capturing massive amounts of illegal music and large groups of sailors, respectively.


Everyone here at Frogs Gone Fishin', Trevor Jones Music, Oh/Ya Records and For/Sure Productions, hopes everyone out there in the blogosphere and real world have a safe and happy holiday season.

Cabin Fever

The real problem is how cold it has been in Denver so far this winter. Beyond the fact that I've spent the last four years in Louisiana softening like a powdered beignet, the temperature has officially reached record lows this year. The other night it was -19F at the airport, just a few miles up the road from our house. As I was trying to remove the guitars and drums from our trailer in the middle of the night to keep them from freezing, my hand froze solid to the metal lock. I don't really know what Shakespeare meant by "Now is the winter of our discontent...", but I think it had something to do with the thin layer of flesh peeling off my palm as I disconnected the lock from my hand.

There are several good activities for musicians to pursue during the winter. During an intense spout of boredom I found this video of slap-bass originator Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone, "thumpin' and pluckin" away on a song called "POW". Nothing warms the soul like some funk from the height of the period. Take special note of Graham's wildly fringed costume, adding to his already exuberant stage presence.

While I'm on the computer observing those funky forefathers who came before us, I also like to lay down some funk of my own on GarageBand, that ubiquitous but functional recording software that comes standard on Mac's these days.

While many will make the arguement that GarageBand has turned legions of wanna-be deejay bush leaguers into undeserving recording artists, I personally believe there is an art to using such a simple program in a creatively fufilling way. And nothing kills time better than indulging every musical whim with nothing more than a computer, mic, guitar and keyboard.

Perhaps the one task I am consumed with out of excitement (and not boredom) is that of running For/Sure Productions LLC. We are happy to announce the first official artists confirmed for Mountainside Mardi Gras 2009: Papa Grows Funk and Johnny Sketch and The Dirty Notes, two solid funk bands from New Olreans, naturally. Contracts, budgets, artwork and publicity are just a couple aspects of running a huge festival that I avoid thinking about while trying to fall asleep at night, and try and focus on during the day.

Using this ultra-new, crazy concept called the "internet" will be key in promoting the event. Soon we will launch a Facebook group for those who'd like to get involved with the festival in exchange for tickets and the experience of "day of" operations (backstage at a Lil' Wayne concert is where I consider to have earned my promoting merit-badge).

The internet can do lots of things, even help us book shows in New Orleans for our move in February. But the World Wide Web won't keep you warm in the winter...

Music helps a little.

I recommend doing what we did in college on the rare occasion it got cold in New Orleans. Hang blankets over the doorways to your living room, blast the space heater, cuddle up with your browser and write a blog. I'm feeling warmer already...

Ivan Neville and Dumpstaphunk

New Orleans has been serving up a steaming heap of funky gumbo ever since The Meters strutted on the scene in 1969. Even as The Funk progressed from P-Funk to Prince, Run DMC to Red Hot Chili Peppers, the New Orleans scene has stayed true to the ideals of it’s funky forefathers. Those ideals can be heard most any night of the week, spouted out in smoky clubs all over the city by those who have a penchant for deep grooves, hot horns and incorporating the word “funk” into their nomenclature. Bands like Papa Grows Funk, Big Sam’s Funky Nation and The Funky Meters all rule their respective rhythmic territories on funk street. But the newest rising star in both the funk and jam band scenes comes not from the street, but straight from the dumpster itself.

Since their inception in 2002, Ivan Neville and his Dumpstaphunk have dropped the proverbial dumpster on the notion that they would become just another formulaic funk band with a cliche way of incorporating “ph” into their group’s name (Phish had the idea back in ‘85).

The wall of syncopated sound created by the double bass attack of Nick Daniels (The Neville Brothers) and Tony Hall (Dave Matthews and Friends) is nothing less than thunderous. Driven by drummer Raymond Weber (Trey Anastasio Band), the Dumpstaphunk package is rounded out by cousins Ivan (organ, vocals) and Ian Neville (guitar). The resulting musical outcome puts any phonetic criticism regarding the band’s name immediately to rest.

The most surprising aspect of Dumpstaphunk’s history is their quick ascent from hypothesis to headliner in 4 short years. By 2006, Ivan’s band was traveling cross country to play and headline festivals like Bonnarroo and High Sierra.

I caught up with Ivan Neville in New Orleans via phone as the band took a break from recording new Dumpstaphunk material in the studio:

TJ: What does “Dumpstaphunk” mean?
Ivan Neville: Laughs... The name is from a song I was working on right around when the band was getting together. The guys were playing so nasty and dirty, we figured there is nothing funkier than a dumpster.

TJ: You’ve both played and sat in at a lot of festivals over the past year. What have some of the
highlights of this scene been?
IN: We played a festival in Florida recently, Bear Creek, where a lot of cats sat in... Derek Trucks (Allman Bros. Band) and Eric Krasno (Soulive) and a bunch of other guys. It was a great festival, lots of great funk bands. I also remember this one festival we did, what’s it called... Earth Dance!
Yeah, that one was good.

TJ: Where is that festival held?
IN: I don’t even remember, but... yeah that festival is a good one.

TJ: Some people have said that Dumpstaphunk is leading somewhat of a funk revolution in New Orleans right now. Do you think you guys are doing something new and revolutionary, or continuing a tradition that has been around for a while?
IN: We like to think that we are doing something new. We come from good stock. Of course, we are influenced by The Meters, the quintessential New Orleans funk band. We take from a lot of other musicians, try to mix it up, and make it new.

TJ: Thanks for taking time out of the studio to talk to me today. What are you guys working on and what can Dumpstaphunk fans expect in the near future?
IN: We are working on new Dumpstaphunk tunes... a lot of stuff. We are hoping to put a new special guest on the album. We are just trying to get the funk out there, really. We need to get over to Europe and Japan and spread the funk on an international level.

---- ----

The “good stock” Ivan refers to are his immediate ancestors, the founding fathers of the funk. Both Ivan and Ian’s fathers were instrumental in creating the music of The Meters and The Neville Brothers, bands whose legacy in the funk scene can never be overstated. When talking to Ivan, it’s clear that he enjoys both the tradition he came from and the direction Dumpstaphunk is taking.

However, it is neither family nor future that defines Dumpstaphunk, but the funk fans themselves. “Bear Creek was Dumpstaphunk’s festival,” one festival-goer related to me. “The highlight of the festival, they straight up brought the funk”.

Dumpstaphunk’s music can be heard at http://www.dumpstaphunk.com.

Winter Update

Singing some songwriting in Nashville.

Apologies for neglecting the blogosphere for the past month! Life in Colorado has been so busy, yet strangely comfortable, that maybe I haven't felt the need to relate the woes of tour life to the public. I wanted to highlight some things that Frogs Gone Fishin', For/Sure Productions and myself will be up to in the coming months, so I can get back to more esoteric musings about that crazy thing called the music business.

I've been in Nashville since Monday; Portwood (guitar, FGF) and I had a hellish time spending 12 hours in the Tourmobile trying to make it back to Denver after a two-day mountain run, followed by a 6am flight to Tennessee for an acoustic gig at the venerable 3rd and Lindsley.

After all the smack I've talked about this town in previous posts, you are probably wondering why I would forgo three precious days (out of only two months) in Colorado to head back out on the road (to Cashville of all places...). We do have some very good friends here. But, the real answer lies in an ongoing strategy to try and promote our music in every way possible, outside of the two or three shows a week FGF plays. Portwood and I played acoustic versions of around 15 Frogs songs on Monday night and closed for a well know band, popular in the 90's, called Blessid Union of Souls. You will certainly remember hearing this song from pop radio, circa 1996. The Blessid guys seemed in good spirits, despite a notable decline in their popularity since the 90's: a good example of the absurdity of radio and record label inflation in the 80's/90's.

Promoting our music also means doing interviews and making sure our album is available to the public in as many ways as possible, a task mostly undertaken by Oh/Ya Records.

In the promotion company realm, For/Sure Productions is very busy contracting bands and artwork for Mountainside Mardi Gras which will be officially announced sometime in January or February next year. I'm learning a lot about artwork and design by interacting with our artists at Right On studios in New York. They are doing a lot to aid me with my visually based inadequacies.

In my personal pursuit of writing more (the recent lack of blog postings excepted), I've applied to write about the CO music scene at a hip publication based in Denver. I'd love to expand my writing scope in this way. Blogging is great and a great way to let your community know what is happening in your life and work. Assignments coming down from an editor at a magazine would be a different challenge altogether and probably limit some of the more jaded opinions I have about the industry from coming out. I would be focusing on bands and their music instead, which is really all that should matter to me from an artistic perspective.

I use that perspective to keep perspective on my life as a musician, promoter and (hopefully) writer. Or as Kenny Rogers put it:

"I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In"

Next post, an interview with Ivan Neville of Dumpstaphunk.

Good Press

Frogs Gone Fishin' received some nice press this weekend by the good people at The Steamboat Pilot. You can read the article and interview HERE.

We really appreciate when interviewers make us sound more intelligent than we really are and don't attempt to blow us up as "the next big thing", but rather report about how hard we work and tour!

Back at Home

The band has settled down and will take respite from tour life for the next three months until making a long anticipated move to New Orleans. Until then FGF will play shows around Colorado most every weekend, building a fan base and capital to pay rent at our sublet in North Denver which has turned out to be a perfect fit, replete with kitchen, office, rehearsal space, living room for watching Broncos wins, and an extra bedroom for hosting company.

Needless to say, band life is pretty cushy as compared to our frenetic two-month fall tour. We even had this thing called the "internet" hooked up yesterday.

Just because we've found some regularity and even fruit and vegetables in our daily lives these days, doesn't mean we don't face challenges at our job constantly. Although we've worked hard enough to build a local gig schedule that will support costs like living in a house, such an intensive schedule can have its downsides. So many gigs cause a band to walk to the fine line between exposure and over-saturation in a given market. This phenomena really comes down to supply and demand economics.

The "demand" for a given musical act in a geographic region is static at any time. As soon as the supply of live shows by this artist surpasses the demand, attendance at shows will drop.

Most successful bands I've had experience with know this rule. They will play only once every four months to once every couple years in a market depending on their overall popularity, size of the market and size of venues available. This packs out the shows they do play, giving the appearance that the artist would be a sell out every time!

This may seem a sterile, non-artistic way to look at growing a fan base. But realizing the economics of the situation can help a band realize they need to make every show special from the minute it is booked, through promotion to the last note and final curtain.

And I don't mean special to the musicians on-stage. Some bands (Phish, The Allman Bros.) have seemingly defied these laws of music market economics and are capable of holding weekend-long festivals with no support acts, or 15-night runs at theaters, all because they forge a unique experience out of every show. This requires much forethought, rehearsal and many, many songs in the band's catalog. Not to mention musicianship that is as broad as it is deep.

It is this breadth and depth of material which our substanial gig schedule does allow for. We get to hone our skills in many different genres and styles, even if we are playing for ourselves sometimes...

We do get the opportunity to make some shows special in their own way. We took the stage minutes after Barack Obama made history on Nov. 4, playing to an ecstatic crowd at the Fox Theater in Boulder who had four years of optimism on their minds. For our scheduled NYE show in Denver at The Wash Park Grille, we plan on playing the psychedelic soundtrack to a late 90's cult film classic, corresponding costumes and all.

The bottom line is that we are a very young band and it would be impossible at this point to prize quality of production and promotion over quantity of gigs necessary to support ourselves.

A quote by someone who should be an inspiration to everyone in the music industry can help sum up what I mean:

"Now... what ya'll wanna do?
Wanna be Ballers? Shot-callers?
Brawlers -- who be dippin in the benz wit the spoilers
On the low from the jake in the taurus
Tryin to get my hands on some grants like horace
Yeah livin the raw deal, three course meals
Spaghetti, fettucini, and veal
But still, everything's real in the field.."

-Puff Daddy, "It's All About the Benjamins"

Tour Visuals

This is what tour looks like...

Cheers everybody! Frogs Gone Fishin' Tour '08.

Portwood sometimes wears a flag on-stage, to show his patriotism.

Playing music makes me smile.

Oftentimes tour is a blur; it's not so black and white.

The Mustache Dance.

Frogs in Minneapolis, MN.

Colorful attire keeps things spicy at work. Photo by Sari Blum.

A nap can help keep you refreshed...

...and ready for the next show!

Tour... Check!

Frogs Gone Fishin' rolled into Denver on Saturday, weary and tired from 50 days on the road. The mountains have never looked so good. Traveling west on I-70, you don't see the distant purple outline of the Front Range until you are well inside Colorado, a beacon for your arrival in Denver.

The final driving leg of tour was particularly grueling, 23 hours and 1,141 miles in the car after our last gig in Asheville, NC. We stopped for a Halloween get-together with our friends Kinetix, another Denver-based band, in Columbia, MO. Switching off in the driver's seat every three to four hours, I drove the 6 30am shift through that less-than-scenic neighbor state, Kansas. The sunrise over the cornfields was pink and inviting as we approached the Colorado border.

We've had a short break from music since Saturday, but rehearsed yesterday in preparation for our homecoming gig in Boulder tonight at The Fox Theater. This will be our biggest show in Colorado to date, and we couldn't be more excited. We'll have more of an extended break from touring through the winter, as we plan on playing shows within Colorado until we depart for New Orleans for another semi-permanent stay in February.

Some highlights of tour included:

- Making it to Flagstaff for the first gig of tour, after our car failed to start in New Mexico.
- Discovering Bar PM in Lubbock, TX. They treated us well and the kids at Tech know how to get down.
- Austin City Limits (I scored a free ticket!).
- Helping people in Houston feel some sense of normalcy after Hurricane Gustav wreaked havoc on their city. (After going through Katrina in NOLA, I could relate).
- Discovering Lake Charles, LA.
- Everything in New Orleans, always. See the post here for a more complete write-up.
- Playing for the debate watch party in Nashville. For a town as conservative as Nashville, the Democrats really know how to party and get behind their candidate.
- The surprisingly chill atmosphere and creative energy of Dubuque, Iowa.
- Carbondale and Normal, Illinois. Cool people all over Illinois.
- Staying at Carl the sound guy's house in Minneapolis. This house is filled with musicians, sound-guys, light-guys, creativity and energy. A house like this would benefit the music scene in any city.
- Too many car-bombs at the Irish pub show in Milwaukee.
- Thanksgiving dinner, prepared for us in Green Bay.
- Going to sleep back in Nashville after driving straight from Green Bay.
- Collaborating with our friends DJ Bowls and The Green Horns in Tennessee.
- The hotel room in Kentucky, a luxury so late in tour.
- Discovering North Carolina and Asheville, a heady town in a beautiful state.
- The first glimpse of our beautiful home under the mountains, Denver.

To distill all the events and faces of tour down to such a simple list would betray tour itself. In private we will thank everyone that fed, housed, helped, handled, handed-down, and tolerated us for their hospitality.

It takes me several days to adjust to life at home after tour. Sleeping in a bed, eating regular meals and interacting with the same set of people everyday outside of the band all feel awkward. Driving a car less than 30 feet long feels like driving a go-kart. The show tomorrow night at The Fox will help ease us back into the routine... We get to see all our friends at once.

A Tour Poem

---

My posts have grown long,
Tour nears the beginning's end,
A haiku for you.


---

Nashville Collaborations

Nashville is a microcosm. The city is surprisingly similar to New York and L.A., though much smaller in population. In Nashville, artists "break" and are glorified as if they were nationally known celebrities, despite the fact that their presence is nary felt worldwide, as an artist "breaking" out of L.A. or NYC would surely enjoy. In New York there are enough people, both music industry people and music fans who support the industry, to provide a scene where the interests of fans dictate the industry. Artists become popular because lots of people want to see their shows and buy their records.

In Nashville, a large portion of the population are music industry people themselves. They must serve the dual purpose of music industry person and music fan alike. This creates a huge cyclical process involving songwriters, publishers, performers, record labels, management companies, marketing agencies, distributors and unfortunately, you and me as music listeners, who are subject to the whim of much higher forces before our taste in music is accounted for. In Nashville, this process has created a town totally interdependent on itself where the process cannot be escaped.

For example, the morning after our show in Nashville I was patronizing my favorite corporate coffee shop with a green logo (don't say the S word, hipsters might attack). I'm standing in line and out of nowhere comes a guy, obviously more caffeinated than I at this point, who is annoyingly interested in why I'm wearing sweatpants and a headband, looking tired at 10am on a Thursday morning. Telling him about the show the night before was my first and last mistake. My new acquaintance launches into a rehearsed spiel about his various "involvements" with the music industry here in town. This is curious, as upon receiving his business card I silently notice the Heating/Plumbing Specialist title below Joe the Plumber's name. By this time I had coffee in hand but, before I could reach the door, Joe was already introducing me to another "music industry" friend of his. At least this second dude recognized Frogs Gone Fishin' (always a nice surprise), and wasn't trying to immediately pedal his imaginary musical wares on me.

This story illustrates an interaction that goes down thousands of times a day in Nashville, between thousands of people who have something to do with music which most likely has nothing to do with actually playing music itself. This may not be the case for long. A simple comparison might illustrate why.

If I, Trevor Jones, wanted to write a song and make it available for public consumption, I would:
1. Sit in my room with acoustic guitar, write something I think people will connect with.
2. Record the song for free with band (they realize shared profit potential and record for free), on free software that came with my computer. Little gadget to make the mics sound good cost $100.
3. Mix and place the song on Myspace, ReverbNation, iTunes, or any of the thousands of online music distributors. Leave the consumption part up to popular opinion and keep all the profit and recognition for a mammoth one-time recording cost of a hundred clams.

If Travis Jones, the aspiring Nashville-star in the making, wants to write a song and make it available for public consumption the traditional Nashville way, he would:
1. Select a song written by a songwriter, through a publisher. In doing so, he has already given away any profit potential for the song (a 50/50 split, songwriter/publisher).
2. Get an advance from the record label (Travis is now in debt) for a good studio (no respectable country album is recorded at home!), and a band (who he must pay because, just like him, the band only profits one time from the recording session). Most likely it's a completely different band than the one which he will pay to play the songs live on the road.
3. The record label will then spend even more money (also recoupable from Travis) to target-market and distribute the album in physical record stores, along with commercials and physical ads. Consumption is left up to known market factors (14 year olds who the suits know will buy records and almost certainly disregard the same artist by the time they are in college). While Travis will receive recognition for his efforts, he will be left in debt to a controlling record label.

If I seem biased against Nashville, it is really a bias against the outdated way many talented, but misguided musicians continue to willfully participate in their own demise. If any aspiring musicians are reading this, please: BOOK YOUR OWN SHOWS, WRITE YOUR OWN MUSIC, OWN YOUR OWN COPYRIGHTS!

But, if these concepts seem so axiomatic to me, why does Nashville continue to be a bastion of the old-world way? The answer lies in the above comparison. It takes me several hundred dollars and five people to make and distribute a song. It takes Travis in Nashville many thousands of dollars and dozens of people with interests other than his own to make same said, sad song.

It is the hubris of these same thousands of dollars and masses of people employed by the music industry which has kept Nashville antiquated. In fact, the downfall of this whole scenario is sitting in your lap or on your desk right now.

When CD's came out, the industry made millions just because people had to replace their cassettes, just as they had to replace 8-tracks and vinyl before that. Now that it is hard to imagine anything more convenient than an Mp3, the record industry is struggling to find a way to make money on such an intangible medium.

I suppose writing this post has made me feel better about Nashville. I'll admit there is a wealth of creativity and talent here, even if it is segmented and calcified within this evil industry process we've been talking about.

Frogs Gone Fishin' was lucky enough to have our friends DJ Bowls and the Green Horns horn section at our Nashville show. These collaborations help take our live show to the next level.

While this emerging, "new-world" music industry does have lots of benefits for independent artists like Frogs Gone Fishin', it has downsides and uncertainties, as well. More about that next time....

Music For A Change (Obama-Groove)

The musical community has spoken and Barack Obama is the clear choice for today's pop musician. I did a quick survey of some music sites and blogs, just to see where some the world's most popular musicians stand on the upcoming election.

The results:

On the GOP side of the aisle: John Mellencamp, Boston, Van Halen, Foo Fighters and Bon Jovi have all requested that their songs be removed from the opening music of several prominent Republican campaigns, including John McCain's and Sarah Palin's.

For the Democrats: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Jay-Z, The Dead, The Allman Bros. and James Taylor have all played concerts supporting Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

It seems clear Barack and the Dems have your average, world-famous artist in an electoral lock-box. I think this makes sense for several reasons if you look at the above bands. Even the most famous of musicians don't make close to what many prominent Republican party constituents earn, salary-wise (think Big Oil). Jay-Z is an exception and certainly makes more than the $250,000+ Barack Obama has set for his business-tax threshhold. But he is still holding concerts for the candidate. This points to the fact that many artists are inherently social Democrats, even if they should be fiscal Republicans. If your art involves writing about the human condition (yes, Jay-Z writes about the human condition) you'd be more likely to affiliate yourself with a party aligned with helping the middle-class or poor, not with the economic trickle-down politics of the right.

But the political tides of this election season have trickled down far deeper than the current-day artists we've been talking about. A friend recently hipped me to a genius song written by Meter's drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, called Obama Groove. Please listen to this song for your musical health and political informedness.

Whoever you decide to vote for in three weeks, remember, 9 out of 10 musicians support Barack Obama. The tenth musician is Ted Nugent. And if you like Ted Nugent, please don't shoot any of your firearms at me.

Phans Rejoice

Phish is getting back together. No group performing today has the emotional potency and musical impact that Phish had throughout the 90's and into the new millennium. If you are unfamiliar, a quick history:

Phish is a four-piece (guitar, bass, drums and keys) formed in the mid-80's while the founding members were still in college. Their musical style can only be called eclectic because they do not fit into any one definable genre (except the "jam-band*" label many have stamped on the music). Phish played hundreds of songs influenced by rock, bluegrass, funk, reggae, folk, classical, and jazz. Their oftentimes extended improvisations led to the jam-band label and popular recognition as inheritors of the Grateful Dead legacy. Going from small clubs to theaters to some of the biggest musical festivals ever held, Phish carved out a unique niche market for themselves in a time of MTV and 90's pop-rock radio prevalence. In 2004, Phish broke up and are now reuniting in 2009.

In 2001, I was an angst-driven Rage Against The Machine fan and had yet to discover the life-changing, musical world of Phish. Now, RATM is a fantastic group but it was only so long before my comfortable existence in life would clash with the violent socialist ideals of such a politically weighty group. Phish's music encompassed much more than any political opinion for me. In fact, the music was apolitical and seemed to encompass life itself. With over 620 original compositions, Phish music is literally a microcosmic world in and of itself. Trey Anastasio's guitar playing had (and still has) an enormous influence on me, as did the band's composition and live strategy. Without Phish, there is no way I'd be sitting in this Minneapolis coffee shop, enjoying a day off from tour with my band, analyzing last night's show on headphones.

Given the fact that Phish is an integral part of my musical life, you will be surprised to hear that their reunion is bittersweet for me. This is for a number of reasons. First, a large part of our band's fledgling fan base are Phishheads and will depart for Phish tour at the drop of a hat. What's more, I want to go to, too! On the For/Sure Productions side of things, Phish tour prevents us from bidding on one of our planned acts for Mountainside Mardi Gras: Porter, Batiste, Stoltz with Page McConnell (of Phish), on keys. It is both satisfying and scary to realize how intertwined my existence is with the super-group.

Ultimately, Phish's reunion will force me and the rest of the band to step away from the shadow of some of our favorite musicians and find a unique musical voice. I certainly don't want people shouting "Trey" at me for the rest of my life every time I pick up a guitar. True, there are worse guitar players to be compared to, but I'd like to think that my musical vision is more comprehensive than that...

But, it doesn't mean I won't see you in the parking lot when Phish comes to Colorado....

*A note about the "jam-band" label and associated contexts. I wrote recently about a review we received in a Denver paper. In it, FGF was labelled as "hippie music", as if that was a definable genre of music. Simon and Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles would all be considered "hippie music" by some people, despite how different these bands were. This prompted at least one insightful letter to the editor by an apparently attractive female reader named Whitters, and my decreased respect for Westword as a publication in general. Their reviewers should remember that the word "music" is half of the useless title "music critic".

Buddha Mind

Just since yesterday, after writing my last post, I've received many comments and mostly questions about how we stay sane on the road. These are really good questions and I wanted to address everyone's thoughts.

If you have been following my blog at all, you probably think I am somewhat jaded by my education in psychology. While it is true that I haven't so much as mentioned a word about spirituality or religion in 44 posts or so, please don't think I rely solely on psychology or science to "keep myself sane". In fact, stringent atheists bug the hell out of me. How can you live in this infinitely wondrous world and not acknowledge a force we cannot perceive? Music has shown me that this force exists and while I also have my parents to thank for being a spiritual person, I no longer follow the Episcopalian path they had probably intended for me.

Rather, I follow a worldview and outlook that more closely resembles Buddhism than any other organized sect. At a young age I read the Tao Te Ching. While the book is part of Taoist (not Buddhist) doctrine, it pointed my spiritual interest firmly East where it has stayed until this day.

It should be noted that Buddhism is not a religion, only a set of ideas and philosophies. Although I have no way to participate in the Sangha (the Buddhist community), and find it difficult to meditate on tour, I can still label myself a Buddhist by following several key principles which have been laid out to me by my experience with teachers and my readings. Most importantly, I try and maintain a calm, meditative state while carrying out a frenetic daily life. When asked while walking down the road whether he was God, Spirit or Man, the Buddha himself simply replied "I am awake".

It is that type of simplicity and pragmatism which makes Buddhism an attractive way to carry out my existence. Below I will list some key tenets of Buddhism that help "keep me sane on the road", and try to leave the psychology out of it.

-Compassion should be the fundamental, outward characteristic of the Buddha-mind. Buddha himself was not a god or prophet, he was simply a man who understood the condition of human suffering and came up with a comprehensive way of dealing with it inter-personally. Compassion does not mean dropping what you are doing and moving to Africa to help solve world hunger. Buddhism recognizes most people cannot and will not uproot their own lives, which involve suffering, to help others who suffer. However it makes the pragmatic suggestion to be aware of this suffering, while doing all you can to radiate peace to others.

-The Middle Way. As I said, Buddhism is very practical. It is true that the Buddha spent many week and months meditating, near starvation in the wilderness. After he came to his conclusions about human suffering however, he advocated against this type of harsh asceticism. This is known as the Middle Way or Middle Path. Starvation or excess don't help anyone, but taking what you need in life helps place your existence in the flow of natural order in the world. I find this point particularly potent in this time of American obesity, greed (leading to the current economic downfall), and as I try to maintain some semblance of a healthy lifestyle on the road.

-Radiate Mental Peace. Most times, we cannot directly change another person's attitude or outlook. Only the greatest teachers in the world can do this. For the rest of us, we can only radiate an air of inner peace, calm confidence which hopefully can help others find their way. This is part of silent compassion.

-Pratitya Samutpada. Also known as the Wheel of Becoming, this part of the Dharma (teaching) is the metaphsycial account of how us human animals perceive the world and thus, why we suffer. Laid out in a wheel shape with 10-12 points, depending on who you ask, the process describes how we are born into free will, develop ego and ignorance from this free will, develop attachments to the physical world because of our senses, suffer for these attachments, and later die and are reborn back into the circular process. I don't know about the whole rebirth thing yet, but this is a surprisingly accurate account of human perception when taking psychology into account. I know I said I'd leave psyc out of this, but the idea that the world is not objectively perceived, but is totally subject to our senses, which in turn leads to behaviors (attachements), is spot-on with current thinking in sensory psychology. A blue flower is only a blue flower because your mind interprets it as such (start the philosophical comments now...)

-Avoid Attachments. If there is one thing Buddhist are not down with, it's attachment to our physical world. This is where the word Karma is greatly misunderstood in the West. Karma is typically thought of as negative energy. For Buddhists, Karma is a positive or negative force which comes about through attaching oneself to the physical world. For example, you might think you are being compassionate to another by giving him or her a gift. If the person truly needed the gift, they will feel little responsibilty to pay you back. However, if you have now created a situation where a less fortunate person feels the need to return the favor, you have increased your attachment to this world and your Karma has actually been increased.

-Zen/Meditation. Recently someone close to me attacked my Buddhist ideals and asked me "if I even knew one Buddhist text...!?". After citing the Pratitya Samutpada above, I realized that this harsh inquisition reflects something basic people in the West think about knowledge: that it has to come from a book. Those of us brought up in Western academia have an addiction to the knowledge that those who lived before us have obtained. This is natural, as it is of course easier to believe Einstein than discover E=MC2 yourself... But this dependence on outside texts also leads to a lack of inter-personal knowledge, knowledge that only oneself can discover. This is when meditation and Zen come into play. Zen Buddhism is a sect of Japanese Mahayana Buddhism, and focuses on meditation and self-knowledge over the study of the Dharma. One who can meditate and discover truths from within will be infinitely happy and can free themselves from the burdening attachments of our modern world.

-Four Noble Truths/Eightfold Path. Simply the Buddhist account of human suffering (Four Truths) and how one should live to avoid attachments and sufferings (Eightfold Path). Without listing these, any Buddhist scholar would have immediatly retorted this post and put me in my place.

Please remember this represents my conception of Buddhism and mine alone. Ardent scholars will certainly take offense to such a limited description, where the Japanese Zen school would applaud me for internalizing the philosophy and making it my own.

These are tenets of Buddhism I strive to carry out. I fail constantly. I do know, however, that if I can remain compassionate, meditative, avoid attachments and follow the Middle Path, I will not only lead a happy tour life, but a happy life in general while plodding through his physical world of ours.

Tonight a gig in Madison, WI, and on to Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Green Bay during the course of the week.

A Month Long Dream

Right before we went on stage last night in Dubuque, IA, we realized Frogs Gone Fishin' have been on tour for exactly one month. The scarily awesome part is that we have another three weeks to go before we can return to that winter motherland, Colorado.

Being the psychology nerd that I am, I'm constantly analyzing how the passage of time on tour is perceived. Thinking about how my band-mates experience their time on the road helps me stay tolerant and calm whenever anyone has their inevitable but minor, I've-been-away-from-any-normalcy-for-months freak out session. On the other hand, it's hard to say how thinking about my own perceptions alter my perceptions. Sound redundant? It's called meta-cognition in the textbooks, thinking about your thinking. I would hope that it allows me to put a realistic grasp on my mental/physical health, the group dynamic and how well I keep up with friends and family. For example, not calling a close friend for a week might seem totally OK to me while on tour. But, for that person, an entire week of living in the same place with no challenges about how to get around this super-sized country of ours, a week could be an insultingly long time not to hear from someone.

This alteration in the perception of time is by no means unique to traveling musicians. I have no doubt that anyone who travels and/or works hours outside of the generally accepted 9-5 work day experiences this same dream-like transgression from day-to-day. You know those nights when you can't decide when you are dreaming and when you weren't and everything seems blended and vaguely foggy? Welcome to tour life.

This phenomena is made worse by sleeping in the car. Our journey north from New Orleans has seen stops in Tennessee, Illinois, Iowa and now to the roof of the Midwest in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Waking up groggily, driving through the cool deciduous forests of Tennessee, you might as well wake up on an alien planet compared to the dank, humid heat of the Louisiana swamps when you fell asleep. If you manage to stay awake, you are rewarded with a more permanent sense of place. Irregardless, one develops a solid mental conception of how our vast country is laid out geographically, and confidence about the ability to conquer such an area (with your music, of course).

And so we go... go on to MN, WI, back to TN and IL, KY, NC and then back across the vastness in one fell swoop to what should be an exciting homecoming. We have multiple live-radio broadcasts to do and what will hopefully be our biggest show yet in Colorado at The Fox Theater in Boulder. For/Sure Productions is going swimmingly as we have decided on Austin Shaw, the talented designer of the Tell Me True album cover, for our artwork. Nothing has made me feel better about Mountainside Mardi Gras recently than hearing Austin talk about his ideas and skill in design because with that kind of stuff, I am roughly a mental midget.

Down the road in January, we are planning on recording a follow-up to Tell Me True: an album we decided will focus on the art of rock and roll music.

A Week of New Orleans Love

New Orleans is all-consuming. I have no apologies about my lack of posts this past week (it has taken me until today, Wednesday to finish this post) and can only hope to mentally wade through the events of the past days to relate what life is like for me when I come to the tropical mecca of music and mojo.

Sunday Oct. 28 - The Tourmobile rolls into New Orleans at 5:30am, three hours after leaving a brief but fun gig in Lake Charles, LA. Provided at least two of us aren't tired, driving overnight is oftentimes more efficient than during the day because there is much less traffic. Combined with our excitement about heading to NOLA, nothing stood in our way of screaming across the dark bayou-night, cutting through the salty thick air of the gulf shore fog. Five months is a long time to be away from New Orleans and I felt overwhelmed as we first glimpsed the dull-yellow beacon lights dotting the massive Crescent City Connection through the haze (a bridge spanning the wide Mississippi, connecting NOLA with the West Bank, where William Burroughs spent his later years). We crash immediately upon arrival at my old apartment, where kindred souls still reside, and spend the rest of Sunday resting and catching up with our most anticipated acquaintances. At night we see the first of much music we would absorb over the course of the week. The famed Maple Leaf club became somewhat of our musical second-home in NOLA, and I caught up with my always entertaining friend and funky mentor Russell Batiste (Funky Meters, Vida Blue). Russell had just come back from a run on the East Coast with George Porter Jr. (who I’ve also had the incredibly fortunate chance to play with) and Page McConnell of Phish who is reuniting with his band next year. Phish is my favorite band, and in a later post I’ll discuss why their reunion is very bittersweet for us...

Monday- We walk around Uptown sweating, putting up posters and promoting the shows scheduled for later in the week. Our efforts serve a dual purpose for me, as I try to reacquaint my senses with the fragrant tropical paradise that is the average Uptown avenue. Blue, purple, pink, white, red, yellow and any combination of bright colors line the streets and neutral grounds of New Orleans in the form of flowers, jungle greenery, and other plants which are not readily identified by us non-botanists. Parrots, lizards, FROGS (!) and alien insect populate these lush areas. Most impressive of all the life overtaking New Orleans are the trees: magical, old, knowledgeable trees who disregard human affairs and even our ultimately futile attempt to populate a city several feet below sea-level. Despite my utter distraction by this environment, so different from the arid Arizona/Texas moonscapes we've been traveling previously, we get good promo work done and word begins to spread about the shows on Thursday and Saturday. Again we see live music at The Leaf for the night, this time the NOLA funk staple Papa Grows Funk. For/Sure Productions is hiring PGF to play Mountainside Mardi Gras next August (an update on FSP in my next post) and as always, the band was more than happy to meet the rest of the Frogs and have a drink until the wee hours with us.

Tuesday: Jack, our record label manager, put Tell Me True on-sale in The Mushroom, a locally run record shop (very hip) in our ongoing effort to take care of all the little things that really make bands successful in the long run. Tuesday was spent booking gigs and firming up our November-January stay in Colorado. We have some very exciting shows coming up for Winter, including Nov. 4th at the sublime Fox Theater in Boulder, several live-radio broadcasts, and a new album to start work on.

Wednesday: Resting for the next day’s show in New Orleans involves mimosas and barefoot frisbee in Audubon Park, named such for the colorful birds of all hues who flit about every tree in the vast park.

Thursday: An early gig on Tulane’s campus,12pm early to be precise: earlier than Frogs have played since jamming a tail-gate on Vanderbilt’s campus four years ago. Playing at Tulane is an interesting animal. Those students who choose to go to school in New Orleans solely to party will largely ignore music and walk coldly by an on-campus concert on their way to the frat house for some warm keg-beer. Those who come for the potentially rich cultural experience (which ironically includes drinking anyway), will not only watch but appreciate a gem of musicality happening on campus... Thursday night, the band went to The Maple Leaf (shocking!) and saw members of Galactic sitting in with Ivan Neville, Russell Batiste and George Porter Jr.

Friday: Woke up to a beautiful sunny day, not unlike those listed above and below and promptly decided to try and play a pick-up gig. While at happy hour, sitting outside that classy Tulane campus bar “The Boot”, I mentioned to a gentleman who was hauling large quantities of liquor that we’d be happy to play at whatever function he was obviously stocking up for. “Of course”, he replied, and we proceeded to jam the Sig Ep fraternity parent get-together for exactly the price of as many beers as we could drink. Our payment properly adjusted our collective mindset for what we were to experience next. Sauntering over to campus after packing it up, we decided to meander toward the Funky Meters concert taking place. While walking near the gates behind the stage, Ivan Neville questioned as to why I was on the wrong side of the fence and quickly got 3 backstage passes thrown our way. As star-struck as I probably should have been talking to Art Neville backstage, my calling as musician and vocation as promoter forces me to be as reserved as I can around such funk-gods as this. Mark (drums, FGF) and Portwood (guitar/vox) each made their rounds, chatting with the Neville, Porter, or Batiste of their choice as I consulted Ivan on some things we are doing right and wrong with regard to Mountainside Mardi Gras. Insightful Wisdom from the Masters. The band crashes early: no more to be done on such an evening, and work to do tomorrow.

Saturday: Coffee on the trip down to WWOZ (90.7 FM) for an interview about the night’s show. WWOZ is the flagship radio station of New Orleans music and culture. Commercial free, community-funded and accessible to every demographic imaginable, WWOZ is like no other conventional radio station in the country. To obtain a promotional spot we had to take the dire steps of a) driving to the French Quarter broadcast station (next to the bustling french market) and b) calling upstairs to the on-duty DJ, who was more than happy to let us on air to talk about Frogs Gone Fishin' opening for Rebirth Brass Band at the Howlin’ Wolf, all despite the fact that it was a Latin-music format on-air at the time. During our down time between the radio spot and sound check, we put down a hip-hop track with members of my former group, The Keep Movin' Project. The track has a very heavy groove and you can listen to it here, under "Keep it Movin". We recorded the tune in under four hours with producer and beat-maker Felix Miles and rapper Ben Brubaker. The show at the Howlin' Wolf that night was an hour of pure energy and a great crowd (as usual, before Rebirth Brass Band plays). The benefit concert was for a great cause (the Peace Corps.) and a fantastic way to wrap up our stay in the Big Easy.

Sunday we said our goodbyes to the proud city that I love so much. Our time there convinced the band that living in New Orleans from Mardi Gras to JazzFest next year (March-April) should be our plan of action. I cannot wait to go back.

Last night we played a short set for a crowd of rowdy debate watchers and politicos at the official Tennessee Democratic Party's after-party. It felt great to openly endorse Obama on stage and play songs like "We the People", songs I've written over the past 8 years of political corruption and an unhappy population waiting for change. I really think that change is coming and places like New Orleans will be better for it.

Notes from Austin City Limits

Writing this weekend from Austin during the famed Austin City Limits festival. This is our last night in Texas after making a solid interstate loop (Lubbock, Austin, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, back to Austin). I came upon a free ticket by luck and/or karma today and had a great time dancing to Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, among some other artists I got the chance to check out. N.E.R.D was energetic hip-hop (a little generic for me) and the always inventive Mars Volta could only be described as loud. Our group joked that we had actually found the loudest spot in the entire festival.

Austin is a fantastic setting for a festival in the fall, and a good scene for people-watching year 'round. When we come down on tour, we stay with some good friends near the UT campus. UT is filled with a state university's typical mix of frat/sorority types, athletes and intellectuals. But for me, the most interesting archetype walking around this town are the hipsters. Characterized by their tight t-shirts, even tighter jeans, over-sized sunglasses and the occasional lack of hygiene (not to be confused with hippies), they make up in ardent apathy what they miss in shower time. A hipster's favorite pastimes include passing judgment on others, shopping for ironic t-shirts at the local vintage shop, and passing judgment on people who are wearing less ironic t-shirts than they are at said shop.

The term hipster has not always applied to the unshaven dude staring at you under his aviators while you stand in line for your morning java. In the 40's, many people referred to what would become known as the "beat generation", as hipsters. Jack Kerouac, one of my literary heroes, used the term to describe the beat youth he saw around him, hopped up on benzedrine and bebop, anxiously rushing around the country during the newly born atomic era. I would like to research how a label that Kerouac used for people separate from the mainstream has come to represent what the dictionary lists as "a person who follows the latest fashions and trends". Vintage t-shirts are vintage for a reason, they are hardly the latest fashion! Or are they? I guess I just can't figure out whether all the hipsters I see around Austin are following a trend, or creating one by their complete apathy toward any given fashion...

There is an irony that I don't even think the hipsters would understand as I watch them pump their fists in the air to driving hip-hop beats at Austin City Limits.

Maybe I'm just bitter because Frogs Gone Fishin' received our very first short, mediocre album review this week, deep in a Denver paper. You can check it out here: Westword Review. Our reviewer wrote in a style which people tell me we can get used to from critics. While not overtly harsh, his comments were over-generalized and insidious towards hippies and jam fans in Colorado (I happen to enjoy twisting like "over-cooked vermicelli" at shows). But it's alright, the guy is probably just angry he has to sit in an office all day and can only write about people who have fun traveling around the country playing music.

And maybe my above description of the hipsters seemed harsh. I really do appreciate their individual, artistic approach to life. I will not be unfair to them, as the Westword critic was to hippies. It would be better if we had a hipster attitude about what the critic said about hippies... who cares!

I also wanted to take a hot-minute and answer some good questions a reader asked about songwriting in my last post.

-When I write songs, I typically start with a rhythm or simple melody. Rhythm forms the skeleton of music and the most basic element of music that humans perceive (after all, the first thing you hear in life is your mother's heartbeat).
-You never know if someone will enjoy a song or not until you perform it. But chances are, if you think you wrote a bad-ass tune and believe in your efforts, other people probably will, too. You might continue playing a tune you don't enjoy, if your audience digs it... but you will probably modify it in some way so it is bearable to play night after night. A song is never done/complete.
-As for this question: "Do you hear a song and then create it? Or, do you create a song first in order to hear it?"... Good question! You are asking the musical equivalent of "If a tree falls in the forest..." and I'm not sure I can answer such an esoteric query. Many musicians think they are merely channeling musical elements from an outside force and create songs so they can hear it later. I like to think I'm channeling human issues and need to listen hard for what the world is saying before I can produce a song, to then create for my listening.

Tomorrow we travel to Lake Charles, LA to play a pub-crawl, and then on to one of the most beautiful places in the world, New Orleans.

* Photo by the superb Sari Blum. Frogs Gone Fishin' @ Herman's Hideaway in Denver, CO 8/27/08. The shirt I am wearing was bought for $7 at a vintage shop where no hipsters were present. No hipsters were harmed in the making of this blog. Copyright Trevor Jones Music 2008.

Songwriting

Songwriting is something I think about a lot. I think about it way more than I actually do it, which is indicative of how complex the process actually is (or how lazy I am?). We've had a couple days off the road in Houston, before heading to Dallas tomorrow, to relax and think about new music. Just like a lot of art, songwriting is a universe of dualisms and unless one can free their mind of these competing concepts, songwriting can be very difficult.

The main dualism has to do with who, or what, the art is being created for. Most artists will agree that they produce their product from within, for themselves. Then again, if the artist is the only individual who enjoys the result, the artist will die of starvation and certainly not make any more art. However, if an artist focuses solely on what her audience might want, she will become disconnected with her art form, eventually disillusioned enough such that she ceases to create altogether. Quite the conundrum, no? This equation is the source of terms like "tortured artist" or, more applicable to music: "starving artist".

I cannot really speak to how other art forms are created (my drawing skills operate around a 3rd grade level and any attempt to write something longer than a blog looks like a diagnostic test for A.D.D.). But, I can say with some level of certainty that most of the music in the world is created without any outside influence on a conscious level. It is simply too hard to visualize a crowd of people and ascertain what they would theoretically want to hear. Such knowledge can only come after the fact, after playing lots of music in front of lots of people, lots of times.

This isn't to say that no outside influence is present in songwriting. Whether they like it or not, songwriters will always operate in the framework of the collective human music consciousness, even if their goal is to write something completely new. Nothing new can be written without first having a complete sense of what has been done already in human music history.

Of course, these are all aqueous, esoteric concepts; probably more useful for you to ponder yourself than to read my blabbering. So, I'll close with a poem about our hitchhiking buddy and his dog, who I wrote about last post.

Turquoise necklace and orange energy vest
A dog and a backpack, on a mission
For herbs in the Ozark heights
Deep in the mountains, a moon-cycle of medicine
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night
No human thinking, don't think too much
Discover the dog light
Miss Wilbur, Shaman of the Night

Miss Wilbur

The last few days of tour have been more enjoyable since we discovered the solution to our ongoing Tourmobile saga. If the starter won’t turn over, one simply must lie on their back under the car’s engine and tap on the starter box while another turns the ignition. It’s a dirty and loud way to start a car, but it's fine because the electric shock from the starter only makes its way up the hammer to your highly conductive fore-arm about 1/3 of the time! Nothing wrong with a little shock under the belly of your Suburban in the morning to start the day's drive off right...

In a much less electric Tourmobile scenario, we had a great experience picking up a hitchhiker on our way out of Santa Fe, going toward Lubbock, TX (where we had a raging show with the Red Raiders Thursday night). Mom, I know what you are thinking and trust me, we don’t normally pick people up from the side of the road. But the minute we saw Aaron standing in the hot desert sun with a turquoise peace-sign necklace and his trusty sidekick, Ms. Wilbur, on a leash by his side, we determined he didn’t exactly fit the description of those psycho-killer-axe-murdering types you'd like to avoid on the interstate.

Helping Aaron make his way down the road turned out to be a truly enlightening experience for the band. The energy we had observed about him as he stood patiently in the sun manifested itself in conversation after he ran to catch up with our waiting vehicle. He began by telling us that he had been on the road for around 7 years, “not really being a apart of anything”. Many would paint someone as a bum or hobo after hearing a statement like that. However, just because our new passenger was on the road and sleeping outside, sun-infused wrinkles on his face, didn’t mean he was unemployed or lazy by any means. At a gas stop, Aaron actually bought us a gallon of milk to go along with some delicious [and economically efficient] PB&J sandwiches.

It turned out that he and Ms. Wilbur (one of the friendliest dog-souls I have ever encountered), travel from Oregon to the Ozark mountains in Arkansas every year to help create all-natural creams and tinctures, organic medicines for sale (www.healin-hollers.com) .

Aaron rightfully stole Ms. Wilbur from an abusive owner, taking her into the woods for “two moon-cycles” (months), without laying a human hand on the dog. I could sense an energy of relief and love for Aaron in the animal, as she slept for the whole ride to Lubbock with her head on my lap.

As we talked, I marveled at how composed and articulate Aaron was, despite the transient and uncertain nature of his existence. At least uncertain in contrast to my admittedly protected suburban upbringing.

But as a musician on the road, I cannot have anything but respect for a man that attaches himself to very few material objects (a key tenet of Buddhism), and is just as organized and content as anyone operating in what most of us would call, “the real world”. The absence of materialism in his life seems especially appropriate this week as we are watching the demise of financial markets in the US, brought about by greed and overzealous borrowing for material objects.

As we said goodbye to Aaron and left him on one of the hundreds of highways he will travel in his life, we observed an elevated mood in the Tourmobile. The dude was truly a kindred soul, and had a wonderful nomadic, warm presence surrounding him. He wished us Frogs the world in our travels and we agreed that we hope to see him again, somewhere down the line.

Trouble in the Desert

After opening for the NOLA-funk of Big Sam's Funky Nation on Thursday in Denver, Frogs Gone Fishin' headed out on the road yesterday. The band woke up around 6:30a and shook off a great night jamming with the band from New Orleans, and headed out. Tour never stands still, and nothing was proof like our adventures in getting to Flagstaff for our first gig last night.

Everything was going smoothly on our 11-hour journey south, cruising at 65 mph, the plains and mountains rushing by on either side of the Tourmobile. Everything gets flatter as one heads into New Mexico from Colorado, and by the time we reached the Arizona border, we were confident about making the night's gig.

Shortly after crossing the AZ border, we stopped at Exit 333 (1/2 of 666, the devil's digits), so Mark (drums) and I could switch places. Jumping in the driver's seat, I turned the key of the Suburban... and nothing happened. The ignition wouldn't turn. We were stranded 130 miles from our gig, 4 hours before it was to begin.

The band jumped into action. After calling AAA we grabbed only the necessary items, the bare essentials to play the show and replaced the back seat in the car with our equipment. Leaving the trailer locked and out of sight, we commenced a cramped two-hour ride with our tow truck driver, Mike, and marvelled at his overpowering and wholly unnecessary use of A/C.

We emerged freezing, but somehow on-time in Flagstaff and played to one of the more enthusiastic audiences we've had since our last tour ended a couple weeks ago. Flagstaff is really an awesome scene and town, and the boys in FGF sincerely thank The Green Room for their hospitality and accommodating staff, especially in our time of hunger and stress about our ongoing transportation dilemma that is Leslie, the '94 Suburban.

Today we travel back to the devil's exit, to rescue our trailer.

Music and Personality

I recently stumbled upon an article while reading BBC News, claiming that a psychology professor in Scotland has linked a person's musical taste (by genre) to aspects of their personality.

Unfortunately for this prof, I play a lot of music, like a lot of different music, have a psychology degree, and immediately see multiple problems with his work. Before I drop some scientific method in your face, let's take a look at Professor Adrian North's weighty claim.

The study in question consisted of surveying 36,000 individuals with 104 questions about different types of music and aspects of their personality. The results state, among other things, that classical music fans are introverts, while jazz listeners are outgoing; reggae audiences are gentle, while those who listen to dance music are not gentle; hard rock fans have low self-esteem, while those who enjoy Top 40 Pop have high self esteem. Pretty interesting stuff which makes sense, initially. I do have to hand it to professor North; 36,000 participants in a pysc test is a very large number, and should provide a high level of reliability in the study. But for those of us who think critically about psychology, reliability is not the same as validity. In other words, a study can be very reliable, and wrong. Reliably wrong.

The first problem with our study here, is that over-generalized claims are being made, without any specific data to support them. This may be a bigger problem with the media than with science, but it is incorrect to say that "If you like heavy metal, you have low-self esteem". One could claim that 96.8% of heavy metal fans have low self esteem, but blatant over-generalizations are bad for science and people's perceptions alike.

Second, the personality aspect of the study is relying on self-report data. If I am taking a survey the day after getting fired, losing my mortgage, and finding out that my wife wants a divorce: of course I will self-report that I have low self-esteem! Similarly, on a normal day, most people want to portray themselves as outgoing and positive, regardless of the study's implications. A participant will either make themselves look good, or find reasons to make themselves look bad, very rarely being objective and honest about their condition. This is known as participant bias, or the demand characteristics of a test.

Third and most importantly, no correlative direction can be assumed in any study such as this. In a statement that probably urged me to write this post, prof. North says:

"If you know a person's music preference, you can tell what kind of person they are, who to sell to."

This is simply outrageous. To "prove" that a person likes a certain type of music because of their personality, or that they have certain personality traits because of the music they listen to, is preposterous. As scientists, all we can say is that X percentage of rap fans are X personality, and refine our hypothesis for the next study. That is the scientific method itself. The fact that North then brings in music marketing, claiming record labels could use his questionable claims to target consumers, leaves me stunned and slightly sickened.

Psychology aside, North's results don't make much musical sense, either. I know plenty of people who like jazz and classical, but according to North, these reflect opposite personality types. If reggae fans are gentle, dance fans not gentle, then what personality traits are present in fans of "dance-hall", a music that combines reggae and dance influences? Top 40 fans apparently have high self esteem, heavy metal fans low self-esteem... but I know plenty of hard rock songs that make it to the Top 40 charts!!!

The problem is, I want to agree with professor North. In all areas of life, it is much easier to come up with stereotypes because it helps us define and navigate the world we live in without really thinking about it. In reality, all music fans are individually different and while we can come close to generalizing, we must provide statistics based on unbiased data. Until Mr. North can do that, I suggest he take a hard look at the science he is distributing to the media for popular release.

I'll close with some unrelated statistics, and unlike North, let you interpret the results:

We depend on wind and solar research to show us how to break away from our "addiction to oil". Congress has voted 8 times this year to keep giving tax subsidies to the companies involved with this research. Barack Obama showed up and voted yes, 3 of these 8 times. John McCain showed up exactly zero times, including one occasion where he was in Washington, and the motion failed, by a count of exactly 1 vote...

What kind of music do you think John McCain listens to???

Cool Websites or The Evil Witch of the Right

I've discovered several new websites which could serve as major tools or resources for music marketing. And by discovered, I mean I just found out about some cool websites, only after a couple million people before me. I'll list these sites below, along with some helpful examples of how they might be employed.

www.stumbleaudio.com
This site is an even more eccentric version of Pandora Radio, which has already introduced me to dozens of artists I've never heard of.

www.twitter.com
Twitter operates on the same concept as a blog, although posts are limited to 140 characters and designed for mobile consumption. For example, if I text "Show tonight @ The Go-Go bar... a benefit concert for the Sarah Palin Is The Craziest Gun-Wielding Wench in Politics Foundation" to my Twitter account, then everyone who has set their account to follow mine will receive the update. They can all come to the show, see my band, and support the above cause!

www.mashable.com
Mashable is not a social networking site like Myspace or Facebook, but a news service that is dedicated to coverage of sites like these. I understand how geeked-out this sounds at the outset, but part of music marketing, or any marketing for that matter, is staying on top of the breadth of options to promote your product.

www.playinghere.com
One thing that impresses me about Playing Here, versus other online concert listings, is that Frogs Gone Fishin' shows up at every major venue we are playing at, without anyone in FGF updating or submitting anything. I especially like the tour map that pops up, so even I can know where we are going to be in 3 weeks... Props to the people at Playing Here for making musician's and fan's lives easier!

ping.fm
This is a site that I don't even understand how to use yet, but it looks to be the cat's pajamas of social networking. Apparently, ping.fm lets you update all of the sites you have an account with, without visiting each site individually. So if I post, "It is appalling that the GOP would choose a candidate who is completely unqualified to be the VP, yet perfectly suited to capture the vote of the religious right..", then the comment will appear on my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Blogger pages. If anyone out there has some instructions as to what to do with the beta code ping.fm gave me... please help!

You can see that I am by no means competent with (most) online sources. I do know that overlooking these newer sites or old staples like Facebook/Myspace, would be musical marketing suicide. Internet usage will only be going skyward in coming decades, so those of us entrenched in the archaic poster/handbill/word-of-mouth way of doing things might as well embrace what's coming. Then again, nothing will ever replace the impact that word-of-mouth has. Like when words come out of Sarah Palin's mouth, the impact is truly nauseating.

I'm excited to play music at Wash Park Grill in Denver tonight. The gig will keep me away from one more minute of vomitous politics and keep me around what matters: funky music and funky people.