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...