Austin Sound Check

The State of The Music Industry | Guest Post by Hoag of Full Service

by Ana Wolken on September 24th, 2008

Author’s Note: The guest post below is an essay by Hoag of Full Service. As one of the most successful truly independent bands in Austin, Full Service has funded numerous tours and albums all on their own. Read below to see what Hoag has to say about their experiences, the current state of the music industry and why a little anarchy is a good thing. For more information on Full Service visit their website or MySpace.

This past summer, my band Full Service embarked on its first ever Takeover Tour. Armed with 5,000 demo CD’s, a mailing list that we hoped to fill, a generator for power, and our instruments, we undertook our craziest stunt yet. Instead of playing normal club dates as we had in tours past, we followed around the 311/Snoop Dogg/Fiction Plane summer Tour—16 cities, from Boston to Austin—and played for the people in the parking lots before the big boys took the stage inside.

We didn’t have permission, but we had an idea that we were onto something.

There’s a scene in Batman: The Dark Knight, where the Joker pays a visit to the newly deranged Harvey Dent. An explosion has left Dent badly injured, leaving his body–and his psyche–ugly and disfigured. The Joker, in an attempt to recruit another player into his anarchist experiment, hands Dent a gun and says proudly…”Introduce a little anarchy”.

Now, the Joker’s particular brand of anarchy is obviously not cool. (See, “gun”, above). But it occurred to us during our recent Takeover Tour that what we were doing was really just as much an experiment in anarchy as it was a mission to spread our music and win new fans. We all seemed to get a certain satisfaction out of throwing twigs into the wheels of society’s smooth bicycle. Especially when that bicycle is the Live Nation concert promotion company.

Continue Reading Hoag’s Essay After the Jump

For those of you unfamiliar with Live Nation, here is what you need to know; it’s corporate. It’s huge. It’s an inaccessible, sterile giant that may soon become the music promoter in the country that makes the decisions about what concerts you will see and in what type of business-park-turned-music-venue you will see them. As we traveled from city to city during our takeover tour, we noticed the remarkable sameness of each venue. Whether it was The “Comcast Center,” The “Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre,” The “PNC Bank Center”, it was all the same. It all looked the same, it all operated the same, and it all lacked the same x-factor that a good concert-experience requires. It’s one thing for a huge corporation to own a venue; it’s another for that corporation to make you feel like you’re attending a concert at their corporate campus. Were all these fans about to attend a stockholder’s meeting, or were they about to get rocked?

Live Nation and the corporate venues it books have become too big and too streamlined. The concert-going experience has lost its flavor and has become watered down. With the Takeover Tour, we resolved to introduce that “little bit of anarchy.” Give the Big Guys something to respond to, something to deal with. Not quite like when the Joker and his henchmen—in the first, Michael Keeton Batman—punked the Gotham City Art Gallery by painting over all the artwork with green and purple paint, but sort of. For three weeks we slung our arrows at Godzilla, never bringing him down exactly, just annoying him, forcing him to do something about the little-band-that-could that was rocking in their parking lot.

Of course, the parking lot is the only place where that “x-factor” can still be found. Inside the “Time-Warner Center” they sell $5 Miller Lites and $9 Pizza Hut pizzas. In the parking lot you can find “Grilled Cheese Bobby” selling made-to-order sandwiches from underneath his canopy tent for 1$. You can find Lauren and Melissa trading one-of-a-kind original artwork for your demo CD. Almost everywhere we looked we saw other people doing their own Takeovers, contributing to the spirit of a pre-concert experience.

And what’s even more encouraging, we saw people buying those grilled cheeses, trading for that artwork, and signing the email list, dancing to the tunes. People all seemed to agree that the scene outside was way more exciting than the scene inside. When security told us to stop jamming (we were usually able to play about 8 songs before being told to stop), the chants of “Let—Them—Play!” reassured us that what we were doing was worthwhile and appreciated. Usually, the security guards themselves said they wished they didn’t have to shut us down. They enjoyed the music and respected our efforts, but unfortunately it wasn’t their call. Unless they can make a buck off it, Live Nation and the overpriced vendors inside the gates don’t want people enjoying themselves out in those pesky parking lots.

I shouldn’t say, though, that every amphitheatre was boring. And not all were owned by a cell-phone or cable company. We did run into one exciting venue. It was The Backyard in Austin, TX. A mom ‘n’ pop joint. Funky. Real. The Backyard not only let us do The Takeover, they invited us to come inside the gates and set up on a big grassy knoll near the main stage, prompting us to coin a new term in the Takeover lexicon; A “Surrender.” We couldn’t believe it…we were behind enemy lines.

But really it was less of a “surrender” and more of a “sponsorship.” And The Backyard was certainly not an “enemy”, but rather an “ally.” They recognized in us the progressive, anti-establishment spirit of Austin (resistance to corporate dominance and unwelcome gentrification), a spirit we shared with them. They gave us the royal treatment and seemed genuinely excited about helping us. Maybe it’s because The Backyard can sympathize. They themselves are being squeezed out of their current location by a giant shopping center/upscale boutique galleria, and so this locally owned concert venue, the one that built around the trees instead of cutting them down (there are holes in the perimeter fence to let the branches through), is being booted from the neighborhood.

As we ripped through a 30 minute set inside the Backyard, we couldn’t help but feel proud of our city, proud of the people at the Backyard who, as we thanked them for letting us come inside, acted as though a “thank you” was unnecessary, as though it was their duty to help out a young independent band. How refreshing that after so many weeks on the road, after getting hassled by so many AT&T Center/Live Nation employees, we could come home to the welcoming atmosphere of a place called “The Backyard.” (Is there a more appropriate name?) A few weeks later we ran into the owner of the Backyard at a local pizza place, and she was wearing our t-shirt. That was cool.

And what about 311, from whom the venue had to ask permission? They let us do our thing, proving they still remember what it was like being a “DIY” band. This is a group of guys that toured independently for years, doing it themselves, honing their “grassroots” approach and building a solid core of dedicated and loyal fans. When we spoke with Tim Mahoney, the lead guitarist, he told us about their early days traveling around in an old R.V. He also told us that lately the band had been kicking around the idea of having up-and-coming bands play outside their concerts in the parking lots before their shows. Serendipity, anyone?

We also shared stories about both our bands’ experience during this tour. (We were surprised to learn that they didn’t call it “The Takeover Tour”, they called it the “311 Summer Unity Tour”). We talked about the particularly bland, authoritarian scene at New Jersey’s “PNC Bank Center,” the long, long drives between cities (they had a driver and bunks for sleeping, we had a “who’s-driving-next?” schedule and benches for sitting,) and where we were touring next (We, to the east coast [U.S] and they, to the faaaar east coast [Japan].)

We ended the conversation with an exchange of emails and phone numbers, and Tim was kind enough to put us in touch with 311’s manager. Maybe, he said, we could set something up for next summer. They could sponsor the shows, get us permission to play, maybe hook us up with a little stage. We thought that would be great, but we’d have to somehow reconcile “permission” and “stage” with the concept of a “Takeover”.

Indeed, after we finished the Takeover Tour, it felt strange playing “real” shows, club shows. It felt like cheating. Permission, lights, stage, money-guarantees, an allotted set-time? Too easy! And aside from our discomfort with these many amenities, we realized that playing clubs is only fun when—duh—people are in the club. It’s easy for us to draw big crowds in places like Austin, Houston, Baton Rouge, Philadelphia, New York City, but when we’re going through a city for the first time, it’s very hard to get people into the club, even with heavy promotion and hand-billing. We started to question the logic of playing club shows in cities where we are trying to build a fan-base.

Think about it. You go to a new city on a Wednesday night, and even with heavy promotion, you might not be able to draw more than 30 people. But in the parking lot of a Weezer show, or a Foo Fighters show, or a Red Hot Chili Peppers show, you’re reaching hundreds and hundreds of people. Consider: For an average club date in a new city, I’d say we can pull in maybe 30 emails for our email list. The average email haul per show during the Takeover Tour was close to 100.

Money, of course, is an issue. Takeovers don’t pay. Or do they? There’s no guarantee, but consider: If you’re playing to hundreds of people instead of 30-50 people, the ceiling for merchandise sales is much, much higher. We sold more stuff doing takeovers then we ever did doing club dates. Even if we didn’t walk away from the Takeovers with much immediate profit, days later we would notice a spike in iTunes sales. More people were visiting our website and buying stuff from there. And we thought “I-totally-would-buy-something-but-I-don’t-have-enough-cash-on-me-dude” was just a convenient excuse. It’s true though. If people don’t buy now, they will go home and buy later.

The best strategy, I suppose, would be to augment club dates with takeovers. A two-pronged attack. Use the Takeovers to promote club dates. It seems like sound logic: You have a club that needs filling. You have people on college campuses, in concert parking-lots, at sporting events, etc. Why not go rock those people via a Takeover the day before, then fill the club with them the next night? That’s what we’re working on for the future.

Independent bands these days are having a tough go of it. Labels are doing less (Thank God. They never seemed to have the artists’ best interest in mind anyway). But in turn, booking agencies are doing more. Which is fine (without their organizational structure and access to resources there would be no music festivals) but we all know that big entities (governments, cell-phone companies, healthcare providers) are notoriously bureaucratic, almost impenetrable. When you call Sprint to talk about your cell-phone plan, you’ll find that—even though it’s their job—they really don’t want to talk about your cell phone plan. They’ll pass you off to someone else, who will pass you off to someone else, who will finally tell you that he or she can’t do anything for you. They pretend to be powerless, because in the end there’s someone way up at the top for whom they simply do the bidding. Okay, so how do you get in touch with that person? Often times, you can’t.

So if you’re a band and you want to play Lollapalooza, and you have a big draw in town and you work hard and you put out albums with your own money, and you tour with your own money and you just know that if you had the chance to play Lollapalooza that the people there would be glad you were on the bill, because you sing your heart out and play passionately and create honestly, then to hell with trying to go through the proper channels. Unless you have a machine behind you, the big booking agencies won’t pay attention to you. So you have to become the machine. Book yourselves at their event. Get in your van, go to Lollapalooza, set up outside the gates, and play for the people entering and leaving the festival. Remove the middle-man. Introduce a little anarchy.

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