Inside Music is a podcast about the lives of professionals in the music business. Each week, host James Shotwell chats with an artist or industry tastemaker to learn how anyone can navigate the world of entertainment.
On this episode of INSIDE MUSIC, host James Shotwell chats with Lou Miceli of Palisades about his band’s forthcoming album, Erase The Pain. Palisades has been steadily building a fervent following in alternative music over the last half-decade, but the group appears poised for far more significant things in 2019 thanks in part to this upcoming release. Lou tells James about the band’s approach to songwriting, partnering with Howard Benson, and what followers can expect in the new year.
In other news, Inside Music is now available on YouTube! Click here to stream the latest episode on our official channel. You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, as well as any other podcast streaming service.
If you’re anything like me, you probably started the day by recognizing that the start of a new work week had indeed arrived and then immediately began shaking your fists at the sky in anger. Monday is rarely anyone’s favorite day, and from what I have seen firsthand it feels safe to say it’s the one day of the week some people outright hate. I guess to them the arrival of the work week symbolizes the end of their quote/unquote freedom, and as a result they head into the office/factory/restaurant/store with a negative outlook already on their mind. This leads to bad attitudes, which only makes the experience of being at work worse, and for some reason it also seems to make time slow to a crawl. We’re not about that life, and we hope this post can do the same you that the song contained within it did for us.
As I’ve grown older in music I have come to understand that every generation has one or two artists that parents both conservative and liberal label as being demonic, satanic, or otherwise bad for their children. These are artists that, despite whatever imagery accompanies their work, find a path to mainstream exposure that infuriates small town minds and inspires throngs of church-going citizens to plan some form of midwest protest in response. For my grandparents, this figure was Elvis and his unstoppable hips. For my parents, it was Kiss and the rise of rap in mainstream culture. For me, and probably for everyone else born just before the 1990s, it was Rob Zombie.
To be completely fair, Rob Zombie is not someone people of my generation discovered in the classic sense. Zombie, born Robert Bartleh Cummings, had already proven his rock pedigree as a member of White Zombie before he started a solo career, but none of his success with that group could prepare him or anyone else for what would come when he was untethered from the rest of the rock community. Hellbilly Deluxe, Zombie’s first solo album, was a veritable smorgasbord of rock goodness and horror movie sensibilities. Zombie created a visual component to his musical art that was, and remains, unmatched in the greater hard rock community. His videos were essentially short horror movies, and his songs were like horror audiobooks set to the kind of electric orchestration one might expect to here accompanying the arrival of satan on Earth. In one album, Zombie usurped Marilyn Manson as the king of shock, and through doing so claimed a throne in the world of music that put him in the crosshairs of every conservative music fan on the planet.
I was 11 when Hellbilly Deluxe came out. You could say I was too young to appreciate everything Zombie was trying to convey through his music and imagery, but everything I did understand won me over in no time at all. The first time I heard “Dragula” was also the first time I recognized that I was listening to something my parents would never approve of me enjoying, and I knew right away that I had to stand my ground. This, I soon found out, was far easier said than done. I had no money of my own, and I couldn’t buy anything without first making my parents aware of the the thing I wanted, so to make my goal of enjoying Rob Zombie regularly a part of my life I had to convince several friends to burn me copies of his album on blank CD-R discs that I would later label as something else entirely just in case mom and dad looked at my music collection. There was more than one occasion where my plan was uncovered, and such happenings were almost always followed by me being grounded for a week or more, but part of me didn’t care. Rob Zombie had given me an excuse to rebel, and I had fallen in love with the notion I was doing something others might find weird or wrong.
As time carried on and Zombie continued to release music, my fascination with his world of horrors only grew, and when he transitioned into the world of filmmaking I followed suit. Horror was always my favorite genre, though as a young teen I had admittedly not seen much of it, so once again I followed Zombie where he chose to lead. House Of 1000 Corpses was the kind of film the kids at my school talked about as if it were the holy grail of things we were not meant to see. Anyone with parents absent enough to let them attend such a feature did so two or three times over during the film’s short run in theaters just because it was the most violent, absurd, and altogether original thing any of us had ever seen. The notion such horrific things could not only be created, but distributed on a global scale, opened our collective minds to a world of possibilities none of us had ever really considered. It was as if we had spent our entire lives blindly assuming all mainstream art, be it film or music, was so easily available because it was intended to entertain as many people as possible. With Rob Zombie, this was not the case, not was it ever what he desired for his career to be. Zombie made things for people like him, and for many people in my generation that included us, or at least we thought it did in that moment.
Almost two decades have passed since Hellbilly Deluxe cracked open my skull to expose my curious mind to the possibilities of self-expression without restraint, and to this day Zombie continues to define himself by his own standards. The quality of his work can and will be debated for the rest of time, but at the end of the day there is no one who walks away from something Rob Zombie has created feeling as if he had to change his original vision or idea in the slightest. His new album, The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser, is proof of this being true. Zombie creates for himself, just as he always has, and through being honest about who he is he inspires others to do the same. The people who enjoy Rob Zombie’s art do so because it makes them feel something they cannot find in anything else because it’s something that can only be achieved by Zombie himself. They recognize that, be it in music or film, Zombie is constantly trying to deconstruct what makes him tick and showcase those things to the world. The kind of unflinching honest is rare, but when it is found it attracts swarms of followers that no amount of catchy songs or epic movies can match. It’s the same power possessed by Beyonce, Prince, and David Bowie, and it’s something we are forever needing more of in entertainment.
What I mean to say is, regardless of whether or not Rob Zombie creates the kind of art you typically enjoy, there is no way you can see what he makes and feel it comes from anywhere other than some place true. The authenticity of his work is never questioned because anyone who experiences his work recognizes that it could only come from his mind. That kind of work is what we should all inspire to create in our day to day lives, and in my experience there are few better ways to inspire that level of authenticity than through exposure to others whose work reflects that. We don’t need another Rob Zombie, but we do need more free spirits like him to share their unique perspectives on the world around us, and that could easily include you as long as you’re willing to work at it.
The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser hits stores this Friday, April 29.
James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Manager for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
On this episode of INSIDE MUSIC, host James Shotwell celebrates fifty podcasts by calling someone who knew him when he was just starting out. Matthew Baird is the founder and lead singer of recent Artery Recordings signee Spoken, whose new album Breathe Again comes out this Friday (12/11), and he has spent the better part of two decades touring the world to chase his rock and roll dreams. Matt and James discuss their history in the business, the new album from Spoken, and where they each hope to be in the future.
The music you hear in this episode is pulled directly from Spoken’s new album, Breathe Again, which will hit stores through Artery Recordings on December 11.
You may already know this, but ‘Inside Music’ is now available on iTunes! Click here to subscribe.
Now that the Haulix blog has reached two years of existence we at HQ felt the time had come to add a few fresh ideas to the blog. We love helping writers, artists, and aspiring professionals, but we also love to talk about the amazing clients we work with and the incredible releases they put out week after week. Our Music Monday series has given us a chance to experiment with discussing the music we love to play around the office, and now we’re taking those efforts one step further with New Music Tuesday (soon to be New Music Friday). We know it would take far too long to highlight every client’s new release each week, so we’re going to choose a few select titles each week that we feel everyone should support. These are albums we will be buying ourselves, and we hope at the very least you give them a proper spin before deciding to purchase something else. James may write the column, but everyone at Haulix will have a say in who gets chosen.
With six solid or even great albums already under their belt, High On Fire have nothing left to prove with their new record, Luminiferous. Still, the California natives do their best to raise the bar for all modern heavy metal bands around the world with this nine-track opus. We have probably spent a month spinning the album on a near daily basis, and there are still times where we have to push back from our monitors, look to the stereo in disbelief, and quietly utter words like “wow” or “holy shit” while certain tracks play. “Carcosa,” for example, sounds like the soundtrack to a road trip through the same barren, war torn futuristic land where the latest Mad Max film took place. It pummels you into a state of metal-induced awe, and that’s before you realize it’s only the second track on the album. There’s nearly another hour to go, and it only gets better from there.
If you listen to our podcast, Inside Music, then you already know that The Ongoing Concept went above and beyond the call of DIY rock when they decided to begin work on their new album Handmade. The band literally built their instruments from scratch, and by scratch I mean a tree they themselves cut down. They built their instruments, wrote an incredible follow-up to their critically-acclaimed debut, and then began making videos on their own to promote the record. One might think these added responsibilities distracted the group from focusing on the quality of their material, but that could not be further from the truth. Handmade swings from anthemic rock tracks, to emotionally-devastating moments of alternative beauty, and back again with seamless perfection. I have no idea why Saloon did not put them on everyone’s radar, but it seems hard to believe anyone will be able to ignore the awesome power of this record. Do not sleep on it.
James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records. Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him onTwitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.
On this episode of INSIDE MUSIC, host James Shotwell calls Veil Of Maya guitarist Marc Obuko to discuss his band’s new album ‘Matriarch,’ as well as the realities of working in metal music today. Marc tells James about the lessons learned during this decade-plus career with VOM, as well as the crazy tale of how the group found their latest vocalist and what he brings to the band that may catch some fans off guard. We also listen to a bit of the new record because, to be honest, it slays.
The music you hear in the intro to ‘Inside Music’ this week is “Leeloo” from Veil Of Maya. You can learn more about that song, as well as the album it hails from, on the band’s official website.
You may already know this, but ‘Inside Music’ is now available on iTunes! Click here to subscribe.
Inside Music is also on Twitter. Follow us for show updates and clues to who will be our next guest!
If you’re anything like me, you probably started the day by recognizing the start of a new work week had indeed arrived and then immediately began shaking your fists at the sky in anger. Monday is rarely anyone’s favorite day, and from what I have seen firsthand it feels safe to say it’s the one day of the week some people outright hate. I guess to them the arrival of the work week symbolizes the end of their quote/unquote freedom, and as a result they head into the office/factory/restaurant/store with a negative outlook already on their mind. This leads to bad attitudes, which only makes the experience of being at work worse, and for some reason it also seems to make time slow to a crawl. We’re not about that life, and we hope this post can do the same you that the song contained within it did for us.
When I finally got out of bed, just after 6AM EST, the first thought on my mind was music. I need a good soundtrack in order to have a good day, and I’ve tried very hard to force myself to check out new music as a way easing into the unpredictability of the week ahead. Today, the one new record I kept coming back to again and again was Matriach, the latest record from Sumerian Records’ metal band Veil Of Maya. It’s the fifth album in the band’s critically-acclaimed catalog, and it arrives in stores nationwide tomorrow morning, May 12. You can stream the lead single, “Teleute,” above.
There is something about chaotic metal like that performed by Veil Of Maya that aides me in gathering my thoughts and focusing on the tasks that must be accomplished in my immediate future. I think that occurrence is the direct result of hearing how well the band manages to channel its numerous ideas and influences into a coherent piece of art, but it could just be the fact I feel so energized when this record plays that I feel like chasing King Kong through Peter Jackson’s dinosaur-filled version of Skull Island. Either way, it moves me, and that impact is a positive one.
If you want to learn more about Veil Of Maya, or if you want to be a good music fan and purchase Matriarch, you can do so on the band’s official Facebook page. Comment below and let us know what soundtrack is helping you start the new work week.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first Advice column of the week. These posts usually involves lists or input from guest contributors, but today we are offering an editorial about lessons learned while watching on of the greatest living rock bands perform in West Michigan for the very last time. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
I traveled halfway across the country a few weeks back to see a concert I could have very easily witnessed in my home city of Boston. It was the opening night of Motley Crue’s final tour, however, and I could not miss the opportunity to be present for the beginning of the end for one of America’s most iconic and outrageous bands. The show was incredible, spanning more than two hours and featuring songs from across their 33-year career, but it was not a night without fault. In fact, there were so many flaws that many people in the arena started to leave. I learned a lot though, including why so many people respect a band that has prided themselves on debauchery for over three decades.
The night started out with an hour-long set from Alice Cooper that flew by without fault or failure. Cooper stuck to the hits, which worked out just fine considering he has a few dozen to choose from. Fans cheered, chants occurred, but it was all an appetizer to wet attendees’ palettes for the main event.
Shortly after nine at night the light in Grand Rapids’ Van Andel Arena dropped. A short musical interlude played in the dark and then, accompanied by a burst of light and sound, Motley Crue appeared on the stage. Their first three songs went off without a hitch, and during their runtime the group introduced go-go dancers, pyrotechnics, and a lighting rig meant to resemble a giant pentagram. It was everything you could hope for in a Motley Crue show for almost fifteen solid minutes, but things quickly began to fall apart from there.
Just before the fourth song of the evening began, drummer Tommy Lee commented to Vince Neil that he believed he may have broken his drum kit. Fans laughed at first, but a minute later the band was still waiting for Lee to figure out what was wrong with his kit. Nikki Sixx left the stage a few minutes later, followed by Vince Neil, and the people manning the boards decided to turn on a few of the arena lights. Mick Mars stuck around for a few minutes to entertain the crowd with a guitar solo, but as his efforts neared the five minute mark he too gave up and disappeared back stage. The show had come to a screeching halt less than twenty minutes after it had begun, and the crowd of thousands who had spent the previous two hours drinking themselves into a rock and roll fit were not happy about the delays.
An additional twenty minutes passed before the band was ready to perform again. When they hit the stage, however, things quickly fell back into place and began to go off without a hitch…For about two songs.
Within fifteen minutes of starting the show a second time, guitarist Mick Mars had difficulties with his gear that required immediate, show-stopping attention. The band apologized, claimed everyone was witnessing ‘typical first night problems,’ and spent another ten minutes backstage while a sold out arena sat in silence, waiting to see if the men behind “Girls, Girls, Girls” would ever make it through their set.
The third time the show resumed I could have sworn it was going to be the last time Vince Neil would be forced to apologize for bumbling the last chance the crowd in front of him would have to watch Motley Crue perform. One song into their performance, however, Lee’s kit had a second technical setback. It was not a complete show-stopper, but the news that there would be yet another short delay sent waves of groans and drunken complaints rippling throughout the crowd. After 33 years of rocking crowds to worldwide acclaim it seemed like the members Motley Crue had never even thought to run through their farewell tour stage production before hitting the stage.
Things were so delayed by the time the show resumed a fourth time that the group was forced to shorten their set list to work with a performance curfew enforced by the host city. They did not mention this outright, of course, but instead would stop between each and every song for up to a minute of dead silence while they reset the stage (and themselves) for whatever classic track would follow next. There was no flow or consistency anywhere to be found. Eventually, after all the hits that could fit in a show with more than forty-five minutes of delays had been played, the show came to a close and people filed into the streets with a story to tell.
I’ll be the first to admit that I left Van Andel Arena after the opening night of Motley Crue’s tour ready to throw a fistful of dirt on the band’s grave. Having paid nearly $100 per ticket to witness what could best be described as half a performance I was ready to write off the “Dr. Feelgood” creators once and for all. As things tend to go, however, a few days later I began to see the events of that evening in a whole new light. Hell, I even began to respect Motley Crue for sticking it out the way they did in spite of everything that was going wrong around them, and you want to know why? It’s simple: They gave it their all.
Life is filled with unexpected events, and that goes double for anything you attempt to create and share with others on a large scale. You can practice and plan all you want, but there are some things that happen in this universe that cannot be prevented or otherwise stopped. They can, however, stop you if you are not prepared to take the blows life throws out of the blue.
Motley Crue may not have put on the best show of their lives that night in Grand Rapids, but they did pour everything they had into entertaining fans when the equipment they were working with would allow them do so. Vince Neil belted his lungs out, Tommy pounded the drums, Mick worked the guitar like it was an extension of himself, and Nikki attached a flamethrower to his bass so that he could shoot fireballs into the sky every time the crowded chanted during “Shout At The Devil.” If you could remove all the delays and downtime you would have witnessed a thrilling, albeit surprisingly short headline set from one of the greatest arena rock bands of all time. That may be harder for some to understand than others, but it’s the truth. Motley Crue gave their all and hopefully in time those who left the venue disappointed that night will realize that fact in the days and months to come.
Your band may not have the kind of elaborate stage production Motley Crue is currently taking with them on the road, but that does not mean your live show is without risk of random setbacks. It’s kind of amazing that more shows do not end in disaster. There are almost always people moving around, sweat dripping from ceiling fixtures, wires and equipment scattered across the ground, and a general ‘who gives a crap’ vibe in the air that theoretically could spell disaster at every turn. You can do your best to prepare for the worst, but the truth of the matter is that there will come many days and moments that catch you completely off guard. The best thing you can do is clench your teeth and fight through whatever troubles come your way. Play as well as you can, sing as loud as possible, and don’t walk off the stage until you have given your audience everything you have inside. The show may still be far from perfect, but they will respect your hustle. Sometimes, that means more.
Hello and welcome to the first interview of the week. We have talked a lot in recent weeks about the one year anniversary of our blog, and now that we’re in the early days of year two we are going to begin rolling out a few new features that we believe allow us to offer a more complete view of the current music industry. If you have any questions about the content of the blog, or if you would like more information regarding the distributional services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
If you have been following the blog for more than a few months you will no doubt recall a string of artist centric interviews we ran near the end of 2013. Those features were fun, but we ultimately walked away feeling like we could have done a better job of promoting the artists’ work while still finding ways to touch on topics like advice and piracy. After much deliberation we decided to shelve the feature until we felt we had a better grasp on what we wanted to gain from each interview.
Today we are resurrecting our Artist Interview series with a little help from the metal outfit known as Tombs. Their new album has served as the in-house soundtrack to many long days over the last month at Haulix HQ, which lead to several conversations about the band’s lasting authority in the world of hard rock. Savage Gold will only be the group’s third album, but already they are one of the most beloved and furiously defended groups in the metal community.
After reaching out to PR, we had the opportunity to speak with Tombs founder and bassist Mike Hill about the new record’s creation, his thoughts on the state of metal today, and what advice he would offer dreamers who believe they are destined for a career in music. You can read thoughts on all of this, as well as topics like piracy and the group’s plans for the future, below.
Savage Gold arrives in stores next Tuesday, June 10, via Relapse Records. You can access an advance stream of the album right now on Pitchfork. We understand metal is not a style everyone can enjoy, but if there is one heavy album you absolutely need to hear this month it is this one. Take a chance on something you may or may not be familiar with and give the full 57-minute experience an opportunity to entertain. You will not be disappointed.
H: Hello! before we dive in, please introduce yourself:
M: Hi, I’m Mike Hill.
H: your third album, Savage Gold, arrives in stores this month. What has changed in the three years since Path Of Totality came out in 2011?
M: We added a guitarist and acquired a new bassist.
H: I don’t want talk about the last record too much, but i can remember the wave of positive press that followed the album’s release. do you concern yourself much with reviews and what critics say? If so, did you feel any pressure when approaching this record because of the response to path?
M: I don’t pay a lot of attention to what is written about the band either positive or negative. I don’t want anything to skew my energy in any particular direction. I’ve read a fair amount of positive and negative reviews…It’s all subjective so i can’t really put too much stock in any of it.
The only real pressure is our own expectation on improving our creative output.
H: Totality found you focusing a lot on death and the end of various things. While i find the new album to be more extreme from a musical perspective, i also found it interesting how much the focus of the songs themselves seem to have changed as well. What influences and ideas were you channeling when working on the lyrics for this record
M: I think death, in a very real, immediate way has influenced the record. The whole record is a meditation on death and infinity and how we have absolutely no idea about how the universe works.
H: I read in another interview that you hope to make a great impact with the lyrics on this record than your previous releases. What types of messages and ideas do you hope people take away from the album?
M: I don’t recall saying that anywhere. I always want to make an impact with my lyrics. I always want people to think and not limit themselves but i don’t have any kind of agenda that i’m pushing.
H: You originally entered the studio to begin work on Savage Gold back in november with Erik Rutan. Having produced the last record yourselves, what inspired you to seek out Rutan for this album?
M: Rutan is a great producer/engineer. I think his production style fit the goals that we had for this record. basically, we wanted to move away from the murkiness on our first few records in order to hear all of the details. I feel like Rutan is a specialist in producing a clean recording.
H: What was the creative process like with Rutan in the mix? How do you think he impacted the record?
M: Rutan isn’t part of the creative process. all of the writing and creative activity has been completed months before we arrive in the studio. Rutan captured and help mold the sound of the record. he made the listening experience more powerful.
H: When it comes to creating new music as a group, where do you begin? Does one member take lead writing duties, or does everyone bring ideas together and you build from there?
M: The writing isn’t really a group effort. I write all of the riffs and lyrics. The band helps arrange the material and everyone develops their parts in response to the riffs that I wrote.
H: There is a great mix of metal and thrashy post-punk throughout the new record. Are there any specific bands or albums you feel influenced your work on Savage Gold?
M: A ton of bands have influenced us, but i’ll name a few that have taken more of a primary role as inspiration. I think Godflesh, Swans, Fields of The Nephilim, Slayer, Dissection, Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost and Black Flag are all bands that have been part of the consciousness of the record.
H: The metal genre is a curious place in the music industry. Where many areas of music appears to have a constant need for artists to be delivering new material, metal fans seem willing to wait, thus allowing for their favorite bands time to create. You, for example, have been able to take 3 years to get this record out, and fans appear to be as excited as ever for its release. Do you have any thoughts on why dedication and support from fans is so strong in the metal community?
M: I think in general metal fans are more concerned with quality. It sort of goes back to the 70’s heavy rock world where bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath put out a large body of work. Metal and hard rock fans are interested in a band and their long term statement. In that way it differs with other scenes that have a flavor of the month. Hardcore and punk fall prey to the flavor of the month syndrome.
H: We focus a lot of our efforts on helping young artist understand the realities of life in the music industry and what it takes to become a full time professional. When aspiring musicians approach you about make a career in metal, what advice do you offer?
M: I think that the career aspect should be thought of more as a long-term, lifestyle choice. If there is any money, it usually takes a long time to come. I like to look at is as a “creative lifestyle” where writing and performing is part of the natural flow of my life, not a job where i clock in and get a regular paycheck. In that way, it’s similar to learning jiu jitsu; you go to the mat everyday and slowly you will achieve your goals, improve, change the way you see the world. you can’t rush it.
Perseverance is key. Follow the things that make you happy and ignore trends.
H: The focus our day-to-day business is music protection. we do our best to fight piracy at every turn and make people aware of its impact on musicians’ lives. Tombs more or less came up at a time when piracy was rampant, so i am curious as to how view its impact on your career. some say piracy helps get the word out, while others claim it only takes money out of their pockets. where do you stand?
M: That’s an interesting question because I can see both sides of the coin, but ultimately I think piracy hurts the artist. All of this stuff takes time, resources, blood, sweat and tears. It’s not easy. I just want things to be fair. I don’t want music fans to have to pay an unreasonable amount of money for a record, but I also don’t think that it should be free.
H: I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Savage Gold is a fantastic record and we are thrilled to help promote its release. We will likely include a song stream with this post, so what is your favorite track off the new album?
M: I thin seance is one of my favorites.
H: Before I let you go, do you have any final thoughts that you wish to share?
Hello and welcome to the ninth installment of Eric Morgan’s How To Kill Your Band. This column offers advice to up and coming artists from the perspective of a professional musician who has thrived with and without label support over the last decade. If you have any questions regarding the content of this blog, or if you would like to learn more information about the services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.
An Introduction:
I’ve been in the music industry as an artist for nearly 10 years now. In that decade I’ve achieved nearly all of my childhood music dreams, but I’ve also made just as many mistakes that run over my mind before I fall asleep each night. A wonderment of how a few different decisions, rerunning in hindsight, would work out in some alternate universe. This ever creeping determinism is a fallacy I’m quite aware of but one that I will never completely shake, though it’s these experiences I’ve learned the most valuable lessons. These are the things I’d like to share in a series of mini-blogs I call How To Kill Your Band.
Part 8 – A Conversation With Hopesfall’s Adam Morgan (Part 1)
This week on the HTKYB, I will be sharing part 1 of my interview with Hopesfall founding drummer Adam Morgan. Hopesfall was founded in 1998 and quickly developed from a regional favorite to a national force that blurred the lines between metal and hardcore with unconventional song structures and spacey melodic soundscapes. The group dealt with the entire spectrum of band troubles ranging from a multitude of member changes to publicized confrontations with their label all while their music continued to grow and become a pillar of the hardcore scene. Adam was kind enough to take part a series of back and forth emails over the past weeks where we discussed his experiences in the band and shed light on the lessons he had learned during his time in the industry.
E: For those who may not be familiar with you, let’s start by stating your name and position:
A: My name is Adam Morgan, and I played drums for Hopesfall from 1998-2003.
E: Hopesfall formed in 1998 and found success as one of the cornerstones of a budding hardcore scene. Can you tell me a bit about how the band came to be and what the local music scene was like as you were first getting involved?
A: Hopesfall started out as just a bunch of friends playing music together. We were always a tight-knit group of friends, in which music played a huge part in our lives. We were all at that point in our lives where we were discovering and sharing our newest musical findings. The further we got from the radio, the more we were learning about the underground punk, emo, and hardcore scene, and it was an exciting time. We were all so hungry for new, cool music. Eventually, we just kind of decided to make our own music.
At the time, I thought the local scene was great. There seemed to always be a good show going on at Tremont Music Hall [Charlotte, NC], and especially in Winston Salem and Chapel Hill.
Bands like Prayer For Cleansing, Undying, Learning, Aria, and Codeseven were amongst our good friends, and we were constantly playing incredible shows together.
E: That same year you recorded your debut album, The Frailty of Words. Can you tell me about the writing and recording process for that album? Was it your first time in the recording studio?
A: Well I was still in high school at the time, while everyone else was either in college or working.
As far as writing the album goes, I don’t think we ever had that in mind. We would all just get together every single chance we had. I think I can speak for everyone when I say, there was nothing more we’d rather be doing. We just wanted to play, write, and create music together.
Eventually, we had just written enough songs to make a record.
The studio where we recorded our first album was just a small building, behind someone’s house, in Columbia, SC. If I recall correctly, we would leave our gear down there and drive down on the weekends until it was finished. For the most part, it was our first time in a studio. We were young and severely limited with what we had to work with. I don’t think we realized that at the time, but looking back now, it was somewhat of a guerrilla approach at recording an album. Nonetheless, we were having the time of our lives.
E: That debut album was released in 1999, was it a situation where you guys started touring as soon as you graduated? Did the others have to chose to leave college to tour full time? What was the decision like for you between choosing to do music full time vs applying for college or starting a non-musical career?
A: We didn’t really start touring full time until later down the road. In 1999, up to around 2002, we were mainly playing weekends around Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, and the Carolinas. During “summer break” we’d play longer stints and get further away from home. Mostly east coast and a little Midwest stuff. No one really had to compromise their schooling, or career at that time, but eventually, as we started entertaining the idea of taking on more shows and signing with a new label, we did end up losing our singer, due to choosing to pursue his non-musical career path.
For me, personally, I never really had college on mind. Even before I was involved with a band – which I regret.
I started working, right out of high school, which was when our first album came out. I ended up having to quit that job shortly after, due to tour scheduling conflicts, and ended up getting a new job that allowed me to take off whenever I needed to, for however long I needed to. After that, I never had to choose work or tour. I was lucky enough to have job security while hitting the road.
E: Musicians, even within the same band, seem to have drastically different personal feelings towards tour. What was being on the road like for you initially? How did it compare to your expectations?
A: Initially, I thought it was great. It was an incredible feeling of freedom, adventure, and sense of “living the dream”. I would often think about all my other friends and co-workers back at home, while riding around in the van, heading to a new city, and think to myself “This is incredible. Everyone back at home is heading to work right now, or making the same drive down I-77, toward school, and I am lucky enough to be on the road, playing music, meeting new people, seeing new skylines, all while hanging out with my best friends.”
It wasn’t by any means a feeling of superiority, just more so a feeling of gratefulness, and pride.
I’d say the only thing you really can’t prepare for though is learning how to live with four other guys in very close quarters. No matter how long you’ve been in a band, or have been friends with the people in your band, up until the point you all pile in the van together, you are use to doing things your way, on your schedule.
All of that changes immediately once you enter that van. That can be difficult to adjust to. So the more flexible you can be, the more easy going you can be, and the faster you can come to terms with not being in control, then touring will get easier.
E: I would have to agree that living in a van with even the best friends can redefine your relationship and really opens you up to vulnerabilities that are hard to hide in a 10’ by 5’ metal box. It’s hard to give up absolute control over your daily decisions, but like you said, the ability to be flexible makes things a whole lot easier for all parties.
It sounds like you were playing a lot of weekend and DIY type tours up until your EP No Wings to Speak Of was released in 2001. Takehold Records initially put that record out, what was the process like working with that label? How did they approach the band?
A: Prior to meeting Chad Johnson, (Takehold Records owner) we had played with a lot of the bands that were on his label. Bands like Underoath, Tantrum Of A Muse, Few Left Standing, Two Thirty-Eight, etc. So after our first album had been out for awhile, we had already met him a few times. Eventually, we were sitting on four new songs and Chad offered to send us to the studio and put out the EP for us. I don’t even remember signing anything. He was always such a great dude and the timing just kind of worked out. Other than just being friends with him, we never really had to deal with any “business” with him. We were never under any contract with him.
E: In 2002, Trustkill Records re-released the EP. Was that partly a consequence of Takehold being absorbed into Tooth & Nail Records? It looks like this lines up to when you said you guys started touring full time, was getting the Trustkill deal the catalyst that turned this into a full time band?
A: I’m not sure if that really had anything to do with Trustkill re-releasing the EP. That was all pretty much between Trustkill and Takehold. I guess it was just in Trustkill’s best interest to purchase the rights to that record.
Signing with Trustkill was definitely a time in the band’s career where we decided to start touring full time. Being on a label with Poison The Well and Eighteen Visions, and seeing how much they toured was sort of an eye-opening thing. It just clicked at that point. “This is what you need to do to market yourselves and get your name out there.” So that’s what we decided to do.
E: Around this time, things for Hopesfall started to spark and get national attention. At what point did you realize you were doing something incredibly special?
A: I think it really started to click when we went out to the west coast for the first time. At the time, a lot of our shows were sold out, and the kids were singing along to all our songs, and going crazy. Keep in mind, this was all before Facebook and Youtube. It was much harder to get a gauge on your fan base, other than weekly SoundScan reports.
E: That’s a great point, it’s probably impossible for today’s bands to think about developing at a time when there wasn’t Facebook, YouTube, or even MySpace – now these services let artist know instantly how far their music has spread and even how many people will be at a show weeks ahead of time. I imagine that it would of been a bit liberating to play music without having to worry about posting statuses everyday, maintaining twitter accounts, etc.
Would you have preferred to have this tools available when Hopesfall was born? Do you think it would of helped or hurt the band’s development? In your eyes, has this state of constant connectivity been positive or negative for the music scene in general?
A: Honestly, I could go both ways. I think if we had all the social networking tools that bands have now, it could have definitely helped us. Being able to broadcast new songs, tour schedules, links to ticket vendors, merch sites etc, would have helped tremendously.
Even now, if it wasn’t for Facebook, I might have easily missed out on an opportunity to catch my favorite band while they were in town. Even music streaming sites like bandcamp and SoundCloud have been great resources for helping me discover new bands.
The days of taking a blind chance at buying a band’s album, because you saw their name in your favorite band’s “thank you” list, in their CD liner notes, are over. I think the only problem I have with social networking within the music industry is that it makes it too easy to sell a bullshit image, and diverts the attention from the most important thing; the actual music.
Hello and welcome to a new week of music industry insight and advice here on the official blog of Haulix. We have a lot of content planned for the days ahead, and we could not be more thrilled than to kick things off with a look at the origins of two of the most entertainment hard rock/metal outlets of the last decade. If you have any questions about the content of the blog, or if you would like more information regarding the distributional services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
As many of you know, this blog exists to promote the future of the music industry and the people who will one day run it, but truth be told we are not always sure what the future will hold. We do our best to ask everyone we speak with about their thoughts on where the industry is headed, but by and large people have no real idea what this business will look like five or ten years from now. The best we can do is ask as many questions as possible and plan for the worst, and though we may be hesitant to the idea we must accept the fact things are going to change.
I’m not sure Seth Werkheiser knew where he ultimately wanted to end up in music when he launched Buzzgrinder in 2001, but I am willing to wager everything in my possession that he never could have guessed the path to success he would blaze in this often turbulent business. From life as a regular joe, blogging about the music that interested him, Seth began a career that eventually landed him a paying gig with AOL. He worked his way through the ranks and in 2009 helped the company launch Noisecreep, which quickly became one of the top online hard rock hubs. After a few years, however, things at the company began to change, and Seth was faced with the decision of sticking with his baby or exploring new horizons outside the site he had built from the ground up.
He chose the latter.
In the years since leaving Noisecreep, Seth has gone on to find new ways of reaching music fans, including the launch of his increasingly popular Skull Toaster email chain. He’s still writing, but he now has more freedom than ever before. Somewhere along the way he realized that there will always be new peaks to reach and challenges to meet, which he welcomes with open arms. In our interview below we get a glimpse at not only how he reached this realization, but at the journey that created the influential voice in music that he has become.
If you would like to learn more about Seth Werkheiser and his efforts to further the music industry, please make it a point to follow Seth on Twitter and subscribe to Skull Toaster. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.
H: Before we begin, would you please introduce yourself to our readers:
S: Ahoy! I’m Seth Werkheiser. I started Buzzgrinder in 2001, and Noise Creep in 2009 for AOL Music. Since 2011 I’ve been biking, couch surfing, and writing metal trivia.
H: Thank you for joining us, Seth. You have had a number of roles in the industry that I want to touch upon, but I want to say right off the top that your current project – Skulltoaster – is unlike anything we have featured before. Would you please tell everyone a bit about your current writing effort?
S: Well, after doing the “blog thing” from 2001 to 2011, jumping back into more blogging wasn’t something I wanted to do. Without a writer budget, and because I didn’t feel like writing 500 word posts anymore, I figured Tweeting nerdy metal trivia would be easier. I could research and write five questions a week, schedule them, reply when people answer, and see where it went.
I also felt way back in 2011 that – wow – lots of people are staring at their phones, aren’t they? Maybe there’s something to this whole “mobile thing.“ I wanted to make something right where the reader was – looking at a Tweet. They didn’t have to click to read more, they could just reply, and I loved that thought.
H: We’ll get back to the origin and day-to-day in a moment, but I want to take a few steps back in your story and learn about your early interactions with music. Were you always determined to be a professional in the music/writing industry?
S: I wouldn’t say determined, I think I was wired for it. People have been telling me in recent years that maybe I should “get out of music,” and that just doesn’t even compute. My grandmother and grandfather played country music and called square dances in the Poconos back in the day. My mom played bass and sang in that band. My one uncle was a shredder with an Ibanez guitar and a bunch of effects pedals. My other uncle was in a band, Daddy Licks, and they self released a record in 80 or 81. And my dad plays guitar, too.
So of course I started playing in bands in high school. I played bass in alt-rock bands, funk bands, Primus-y thrash bands. Of course I was going to be a rock star!
And since I was going to be a rock star, I passed through high school with all D’s. I spent a lot of time in high school writing in notebooks. Just stories and nonsense. Then halfway through my senior year we do this creative writing project in English class and my teacher, Mrs. Vainger, she’s like, “wow, Seth! You can really write! You should go to school for this!” It was then I thought of writing, but writing about music wasn’t my first thought, it was more newspapers. Those actually existed and did well back then! But yea, the writing part came later.
H: Can you recall the first album you purchased with your own money? Bonus points for the format of said release and the story behind how you discovered the band/artist. Keep in mind, this is like ‘Who’s Line,’ so the points are made up and never really matter.
S: It may have been Poison ‘Open up and Say Ahhh!’ at Fay’s Drug Store, but I don’t know if that was with my own money or not, since I was 12. I knew them through MTV, of course. I can say for sure the first CD I bought with my first credit card was Into Another’s ‘Ignaurus,’ in 1994. My friend took me to see them playing with Life of Agony, I think, and I loved them. Bought their CD the next day at the mall. Still love that band and album.
The first time I skipped school was with some band mates and we drove in the rain to buy Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion I and II. That was my freshman year of high school, so 1991. That band is why I started playing music in the first place. I wanted to play guitar like Slash, but I wasn’t any good, so I picked up my mom’s bass and got to play in bands. Moms are the best.
But I don’t know the first album! I bombed this question!
H: How about your first concert experience?
S: Probably when I was a little kid and my dad playing in country rock bands at ski resorts in the Poconos. That was like, as normal as seeing your dad watching TV these days, to me. After that, I remember maybe Spin Doctors with like, Cracker. My scene points are disappearing by the word with this interview.
H: What came first, your desire to work in music or your desire to be a professional writer?
S: Work in music. I played in bands, booked shows for a small time, wrote zines, made websites for local bands on Geocities. The writing thing didn’t come until later, after I finally stopped playing shows in 2001.
H: Buzzgrinder, the first site you launched (as far as my research can find), hit the net in 2001. What initially sparked your desire to have your own corner of the internet?
S: I had an office job with internet access and lots of downtime. At the time I was really into the Decapolis message board, around 2000, mostly their music thread. I thought, why not move the message board “thing” to the front page? I didn’t even know about music blogging, or Absolute Punk and all them. I just knew I liked a handful of bands, and I wanted to write about them. I wanted to see the thing that I wanted to read – something that updated often, like a message board, about the bands I liked.
H: What was the blogging world like at that time? Did you have a lot of competition for coverage? As someone who started working around the time of the social media boom it’s hard for me to imagine how someone even went about marketing a new music site in 2001.
S: Well, there were still magazines to pitch, so it wasn’t the maddening PR and marketing flood that it is today. Sure, I got emails, but lordy, not like in the last few years of doing the music blog thing, which I stepped away from in 2011. Back then you had to make something that people would come back to on their own accord. They’d bookmark it. They’d come back because they knew you’d always have something new. That was hard work, since you couldn’t Tweet your most recent headline every hour on the hour, constantly begging people to read your latest post.
H: From what I’ve found, your next career move was to join the AOL team in 2006. Did you do any freelance writing before joining that organization, or was Buzzgrinder your main focus? Did the site generate income?
S: Buzzgrinder was the thing I did until 1AM each night, scheduling posts to run while I was at my day job. I did that for five years, and one day thought to put it on my resume on Monster.com, and that landed me a three month contract working with AOL Music, doing HTML and some music writing. I wore a suit to the interview. I was new to the city! But I got the gig. Some of the people working there knew of Buzzgrinder because it showed up in their traffic referrer logs. But it was just doing the site, no freelance writing, no college degree, no bullshit unpaid internships – it was just something I made and built and that landed me the gig.
And yea, Buzzgrinder made money. Those were the days, in 2005, when the site started doing well. But there weren’t the million music blogs back then, either. Heck, when I started at AOL Music they didn’t have the Spinner music blog – they were JUST opening up their “walled garden.” Metalsucks started in late 2006, I think, too.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there were some great music sites going. Chromewaves, Tiny Mix Tapes, Pitchfork. But we were all doing our own little thing. I don’t even remember ever looking at other sites and being, “wow, I can’t believe we didn’t get that premiere!” or anything like that. We all had our own audience. It was different, because today everyone is competing for the same eyeballs with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and it’s just so much louder today. You never saw the headlines from other sites unless you actually went to the site. Now everyone is RT’ing everything and you see 9,000 headlines an hour.
H: You did a lot while working at AOL, but for the purposes of this interview I’d like to focus on the origin of Noisecreep. What can you tell us about the pitch to launch the site and those initial months of development?
S: They pitched me. I got talking to the VP of Music there, the incredible Bill Crandall who, let me tell you, is the one of the smartest music heads ever, but also one of the most humble and kind hearted people out there. I approached him about Buzzgrinder, because another “buzz” site was interested in it – this is back in 2008, when a certain “buzz” site was talking to a bunch of music blog folks. I got talking to him about it, but it turned into, “do you want to start a metal blog for us?” They saw the traffic potential from a Slipknot gallery they did on Spinner, and they already had a country blog, a hip hop blog, and Spinner, so why not metal?
I started work on that in November of 2008, and launched in March of 2009 I think. It was a lot of building a roster of great writers, figuring out the tone and direction, and the name. Oh, the name. Since it was AOL, everything had to be legit and tidy, so trademark checks and stuff. A fellow I worked with, we spent weeks putting metal sounding words on a white board, and trying to match them up. Noise and Creep were there. So were Crank and Pit, which I’m glad we didn’t go with.
H: You were at AOL for a while, but ultimately left the company and Noisecreep behind at a time when the site was one of the more recognizable hard rock outlets in existence. Is it alright if I ask what changed or otherwise occurred to let you know it was time for your exit?
S: Simple; my writer budget was cut in half and my hourly rate was less than when I was just doing HTML coding for them in 2006. For me, the writing was on the wall. The tides of blogging were shifting; I could assign a writer with 15+ years of music writing experience to interview Ozzy, James Hetfield, and Lemmy in the same room, but an unpaid college intern could write a post about Lady Gaga’s shoes and it’d get more traffic because it’d get linked on the AOL Homepage and get clicked on by 80 million moms across the country.
So it was a un-winnable battle. Less budget, my work day had to end at 5pm – what music blogger editor stops checking email at 5pm EST? – and we had to do less exclusive, original content and more press release re-writes and top 10 lists. It was time to leave.
H: Having brought Noisecreep from literally nothing to one of the more influential music sites in existence, it had to be incredibly hard to let go. Did you ever worry that you had peaked as a professional? I ask that because I caught a few tweets from you recently that mentioned a professional outlook that included ‘new peaks.’
S: Peaked at doing a music blog to attract eyeballs to sell ads? Oh, shit yes. I peaked. I won’t go into actual numbers, but we did well. But at a certain number, where else is there to go? When you hit a million, next is two million. Even then, what, next you want four million? No thanks.
It was like driving up a mountain road that never ends – you know how a cars engine starts to strain after awhile? Well, then there’s two bosses in the back seat telling you to drive faster. It’s never enough, and it never ends. So I hit that peak, sure. Let someone else work 16 hour days and embed Tweets for some TMZ-style gossip post and infect every new social media network with “updates.“ That’s not a peak I want to summit anymore.
But new peaks? Oh, there’s plenty of those! Labels still need eyeballs. Bands still need to reach fans. Venues, music equipment companies, record stores – there are plenty of peaks still yet available in those areas, and most don’t even have a fucking email list! In 2014! So there’s still plenty of work to be done. I’m excited about that.
H: Not long after your departure from AOL in 2011 you launched Skull Toaster, which you already described briefly at the beginning of this interview. Where did the idea initially come from?
S: It came from quiet time. Hiking in Georgia. Couch surfing my way to New Mexico. Walking along rivers in Kentucky. I saved some money and got away from a computer, the inbox filled with press releases. I was actually back in Brooklyn when the idea came to me; post a metal trivia question, and maybe people will answer. I had no idea if it’d work, but I’m still doing it almost three years later.
A big part of it for me was, and this sounds like hipster talk, but I wanted it to be sustainable. Checking email around the clock, monitoring Twitter feeds, setting up keyword alerts in Google – I did all that. But what could I do next where I didn’t have to be paying attention around the clock? I didn’t need to be bound by release schedules or seek access to artists via publicists, I could do this all on my own time. I became a couch-surfing, hiking in the mountains hippie that really likes Twitter, so it all came together!
H: How did you initially get the word out about Skull Toaster, and what was the early response?
S: I think I just Tweeted about it from my @sethw Twitter account a few times, and that was it. I mean, it helps that I’ve been on Twitter since 2006, and a number of followers have been following what I’ve been doing since Buzzgrinder. It wasn’t a huge response at first, but I wasn’t very good at writing metal trivia questions, either! But a handful of people stuck around, and it was fun! A good amount of those early followers are still answering metal trivia questions today.
H: What are the biggest challenges you have faced with growing Skull Toaster?
S: Actually, I’ve deliberately tried to not grow by traditional means. I used to @mention bands in some questions, but I don’t anymore. I don’t use hashtags anymore. I never asked a music blog friend to feature me on their metal site. I’ve done give-aways with labels and bands, and they RT my give-away Tweets, but that doesn’t lead to a lot of growth, either.
I didn’t want to grow for the sake of growing, I just wanted to find the right audience, and I’ve got a damn smart audience these days that I’m proud of. Most of my followers come from other followers. They #FF me on Fridays. I just have real conversations with people on Twitter, and that leads to other like-minded people following. There goes my “growth hacker” title, but whatever!
H: I’ve noticed there is an option on the site for people to support your efforts in they so desire. How has the response been?
S: Incredible. Donations from all over the world. I sell stickers, and a few donations come in here and there. And it’s all from, “hanging out on Twitter.” I mean, I have some blog posts, and a nightly email, but ultimately everything comes from conversations on Twitter. I now know a lot of great people from doing this. I don’t say that in a, “wow, I’m so cool” kind of way. But for someone who has run a site with lots of traffic, I mean, it was just traffic. Traffic doesn’t sound fun!
But meeting people all over the world and talking about hair metal? Or their cool kids? Or good coffee? I met someone recently in Philadelphia, PA at a friends house. As we were being introduced we had one of those, “yea, I think I know you from… Twitter??!” It was surreal, but that happens because I don’t treat my audience like a click machine. I don’t blast automated Tweets every 30 minutes. I just get to know people, learn stuff, and we talk about cassettes and how bad the Oakland Raiders will be this year.
H: Have you been freelancing and working on more conventional projects while developing Skulltoaster?
S: I’ve taken lessons I’ve learned over the past decade and applied them to freelance and consulting gigs. Email marketing, social media, content marketing, audience development – those sorts of things. I mean, the SEO, write 18 blog posts a day thing, there’s enough experts and “experts” in that field. I’m doing my best to show the relationship side of all this internet stuff. You can follow all the SEO tricks and use all the right hashtags and keep talking about “viral wins,” but for me I want to know my audience. I try to instill that idea with clients. Can you name your 10 best customers? What city they live in? Have you had conversations with them? Swapped emails? Met them for coffee? That’s what matters to me, and I pass that onto the clients I work with.
H: What can you tell us about Cred.FM and your role there?
S: They do music playlists. We had smart writers who would curate playlists from YouTube. Some were artist specific, some were based around festivals, events, genres. It was pretty neat. I was brought on as Managing Editor, to sort of guide that ship, and bring more eyeballs to the site. I worked with labels and bands to build playlists around their projects, and would put them on our home page, and in turn they’d Tweet about it and such.
Also, I honed our social media methods. Got an editorial calendar going, Tweeted playlist links when an artist had a birthday, or an album had a special anniversary. It was fun.
H: Looking forward to the remainder of 2014, how would you like to see your work develop (for Skulltoaster or otherwise)?
S: I’m trying to do more stuff I’ve never done before. I mentioned stickers earlier. That’s design, file prep, finding a printer. Then finding a site to sell through. Then shipping orders. And how do you get the word out without looking like the typical band on Twitter; “HEY, BUY MY STICKERS!”
Next is a poster series: I’ve been working with some designers and photographers, and an art director. I’ve done a series of posters exactly zero times. I’m stoked to say I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but I’m doing it and going to do my best to make it work. I want to see artists and photographers and art directors get paid, ultimately. If somehow Skull Toaster can help make that happen, I’d be stoked.
H: Speaking a bit more big picture, what are your current career goals? How have they changed since, say, the time spent at AOL?
S: My goal hasn’t changed: I want to help bands sell music. I will sleep on couches, eat peanut butter sandwiches, travel by bus, whatever to make that happen. I’m not just saying that – I’m living it. I’ve been on the road since 2010 making this work. I want albums to listen to for the next 40 or so years of my life if I’m lucky, and there’s a generation coming up now that deserves the same.
H: What advice would you offer those reading this who may be considering trying their luck at becoming a professional music writer/critic?
S: Build something for yourself. Put into the world what you’d love to see, no matter how weird it may seem. I’d stress doing that for yourself, for free, before writing for an established outlet for “exposure.“ Yea, clips are nice in established outlets, but when you build something that you own, you get to build your audience. I mean, writing for a big outlet, sure, lots of eyeballs. And it’s faster! But the site owns those eyeballs. They own the stats and the ad impressions. When you write something of your own, or do your own photo features, or book shows in some unusual venue, there’s value in that, and now you have an audience. I’ve learned that it’s nice to have an audience a decade down the road. The work you’re doing today, it’s all foundational. Build something, keep doing it, and hopefully a decade down the road you can still be doing it.
H: There have been a lot of professional entertainment writers in recent years who have spoken out against writing for publications who are unwilling to pay their contributors, regardless of your skill level. Do you feel this is a good outlook for young writers to have?
S: If a site sells ads, if people are getting paid, don’t write for free. The idea used to be you’d do that for the clips, then you can work your way up to bigger outlets. Well, what bigger outlets? AOL Music was the number one music site on the internet back in 2008 or so. Today, just six years later, it’s gone. Doesn’t even matter today. I mean, do what you want. The tried and trusted, "pitch editors, get gigs, chase late invoices, write link bait posts” – yea, I’m obviously I’m a bit jaded here.
Or you can create your own damn thing. You can still write about music even if it doesn’t end up in Rolling Stone. If you only have 20 fans, maybe you’ll have 40 the next year. The lean years ain’t fun, otherwise everyone would be a “music writer.” People bolt when they don’t get page views, can’t sell ads, can’t interview big names… but you can tell who toughs it out. I see a few of those young writers doing that now. Those are the people who are gonna be running media outlets – in whatever form – a decade down the road.
H: When it comes to receiving music for review/feature consideration, which digital distribution platforms do you prefer and why?
S: Haulix for sure. One, the press release, band photo, and music are all right there. Two, that “My Promos” link in the upper right? Brilliant. It’s hard to keep track of everything I’ve been sent, and that link is priceless.
H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?
S: End unpaid internships. There are plenty of bright kids who don’t have the means, the privilege, to live in major cities and work for free, and we’re worse off for it. Cut your banner ad budget and pay people for the work they perform. Yea, album sales ain’t what they used to be, but paying people zero dollars per hour ain’t helping.
H: Beyond paychecks and steady employment, how do you measure your personal level of success as a writer?
S: If I helped someone fall in love with a band, then that’s success. If any of my metal trivia, and the nightly email newsletter I send out, helps someone gain a sliver more appreciation for the music, I’m good. If my Twitter rants, or a blog post inspires someone to step out and do something on their own, then we all win.
H: I believe that covers everything. Do you have any final thoughts or observations you would like to share with our readers?
S: Just that I think the move to mobile is going to disrupt everything so much more than we’re prepared for. As screens get smaller, so do the display ads. Those dumb background ads go away, too. Stuff like that is going to rattle a lot of freelance budgets, especially when – not if – mobile internet traffic surpasses desktop traffic. That, to me, is both frightening and awesome at the same time. I’m excited to see how we progress past the current “get traffic, sell ads, get more traffic” model. It’s disruptive, but hey, so was Napster. We adapt or die, and I think great music writing will find a way to exist.
Thanks for the interview! This was fun. If you can link up sethw.com that’d be awesome, and skulltoaster.com as you see fit, that’d be awesome, too.
