Originally published on the MASTERLIZER Blog on 30.09.2016.

Since its debut in 2006, the Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg, Germany, has grown to become one of the most important meeting places for the music industry worldwide, and it boasts a broad spectrum of emerging artists.

This year TuneCore invited MASTERLIZER to the Reeperbahn Festival. We accepted with pleasure and had a legendary road-trip Vienna-Prague-Dresden-Berlin-Hamburg and back.

In Hamburg we finally met the TuneCore team. There is this thing with online companies: since everything seems to happen on a screen and on remote servers, one tends to forget there are real people behind it. It is always a little magical to finally meet in person the faces that have always been on video conferences or even just names on a computer screen.

We also met Scott Ackerman, CEO of TuneCore. He’s quite the customer care guru and in the past years he brought start-ups like eHarmony and Orbitz to success. At TuneCore he oversaw the growth in digital store partnerships and started the Artist Services marketplace as well as an Innovation Lab with a focus on product development. During his tenure, TuneCore has also opened new offices in Nashville and Boston and launched TuneCore Japan, TuneCore Canada and TuneCore Germany.

While chatting someone asked him if he’s a musician. To our surprise he answered a dry no. I was immediately intrigued, since I’m not a musician myself. I actually entered this business one year ago with a pretty naïve attitude and was under the impression to be an absolute rarity. I asked him for a few minutes of his time to ask him a couple of questions about this topic for the MASTERLIZER blog.

See, we normally focus more on artists and on music production, but I couldn’t miss the chance to investigate this aspect of the music business. What qualities does one need in order to work in it? Is it really necessary to be able to play any instruments? To have a deep understanding of music history? To know the music industry as deeply as their own pockets?

We met the next morning in The Reeperbahn Festival Lounge, a chic affaire full of super modern furniture, a lot of pomp and a little dark. Outside it was a beautiful fall morning, a tad windy, crisp air, sunny – one of those days it would simply be a pity not to sit outside. We wrapped ourselves in our coats and sat down to enjoy the possibly last sunrays of the season.

(In the picture above, fltr: Melita Balaski, Creative Director MASTERLIZER; Monica Mel, Editor MASTERLIZER; Maximilian Kamenar, CEO/Founder MASTERLIZER; Marie-Anne Robert, Vice President of International TuneCore; Ronny Steibl, New Business Development MASTERLIZER; Scott Ackerman, CEO TuneCore; Stine Mühle, Brand Manager Germany TuneCore)

I’ve heard you’re not a musician and that you don’t come from the music industry…

That’s correct! I didn’t originally, but I’ve been in it for 6 years now!

So you are now?!

But you’re not a musician?

No.

Do you play any instrument?

No.

Well, when I was a kid I played the trombone in the school band… and that was the beginning and the end of it!

Do you listen to a lot of music?

Oh yes! I have a passion for music, all genres.

All genres? Most people stick to a few artists and bands, maybe to one or two genres. Having a broad music interest is not that common…

Well, that’s our TuneCore core-team too. We have all genres, creators of all types of music.

Did you develop a taste for music after joining TuneCore?

No, I’ve always had a taste… when I was younger I did like Progressive music, bands like Genesis, Peter Gabriel. When I grew older I started to like Classical, New Age… then working for TuneCore and hearing all the new Indie bands – it’s great music, it’s fun to listen to!

The music industry is a place where many people try to turn their passion into a job… and it’s the same with other passions, or hobbies. I, for example, love to cook and I like to make my own clothes – I could try to monetize those! Ever tried the same with your passions/hobbies?

My hobbies today are… listening to music! And I do like to sail. But there’s not a career in that for me!

When I grew up my father was in aeronautics so I got to travel a lot – and I loved it. I even started my career in aeronautics, at American Airlines. And I really enjoyed it. Then I started to network for start-up companies, e-commerce companies, and I enjoyed that too.

I think for me, all the companies I’ve been working for are companies focusing on helping people. At TuneCore, we’re giving every independent artist a chance, everybody deserves an opportunity. We’re not sitting here deciding who’s good or who’s gonna be famous. That’s up to the artist. They give us their content, we give them tools to be creative. That’s exciting.

We’re looking for people who can bring in new ideas and look at things from different angles.

In the music industry most people either are musicians or come from the music industry. Is it possible for everybody to enter it transversally?

I don’t know if anybody could, but before TuneCore, in the airline industry, I learned a lot about operations and finance. And those pieces are all important in any business.

While every business focuses on different topics – music, travel – or dating! – the core pieces of running operations are always the same. Once you’ve learned the core of finance and business operations, I think you can get into any type of business. And I think that it’s easier to learn the business than the principles of finance or of operations.

Are there roles at TuneCore that must be covered by musicians or music experts?

As soon as you look more into managing resources, of course. Certain pieces of the industry need someone who shares the same path and feeling, of making music and trying to be successful, and having a side-job to make a living. Like A/R for example, it needs the knowledge of somebody that really understands – when they’re listening to music – how to be creative and help those artists become more successful. It’s a talent that you can’t just learn.

We have a mix of people, not everybody at TuneCore is from the music industry. And that helps, because we’re doing a lot of new things. If you come from the music industry and know how it works, you tend to repeat that. We’re not looking for that. We’re looking for people who can bring in new ideas and look at things from different angles.

Some roles, like finance – even marketing – you can have people from traditional industries, such as insurance and health-care. That’s what we’ve done. We have people from the music industry, people from the e-commerce world, people who have grown businesses, regardless of the industry.

Advantages and disadvantages of entering a business without knowing it by heart?

Advantages… you think differently! You don’t come with the same flaws of how you got used to doing it.

Disadvantages… [laughs] learning the industry! For me it was learning about how artists puts their content together, their metadata and how they deliver it to us… but those are all things you can learn over time.

Bringing in people with new ideas, outsiders of the industry, is a good thing. But you need people from the industry too. Because they have to tell you how it really works. It’s a great balance and it’s been very successful for us at TuneCore.

That’s the important piece, the passion.

Sometimes I have really great ideas because of my strange outsider angle, and sometimes, because of the same reason, I say stupid things too! I fall in the classic traps with both feet. Ever happened to you? Any anecdote?

Nothing specific, but for me the thing that I find challenging is when I’m sitting around with people that have been in the industry a long time… they like to name-drop…

Hey, do you know so-and-so? And so-and-so-and-so?!

…and I don’t know some of those people!

How do you react? Personally, sometimes, I simply pretend…

That’s not my personality, I don’t pretend! I just say

No, I don’t know those people.

(But some I do! [Laughs])

But seriously, I listen. There are some great people from the music industry who I can learn from. Any opportunity I can get to talk to them is rewarding for me.

We’re doing really well at TuneCore, I’m really happy with the staff that we have and I think we’ve proven that you don’t need everyone from the music industry.

Again, I think every industry has learned some good things, so if you can bring people in from different industries and learn their best practices it can only help you as a business.

At MASTERLIZER it’s the same! Our CTO, for example, is not from the music industry and his only music experience was playing the flute during elementary school. He had to learn a lot about signal processing, a little about music production, then he took off!

I think for us, everyone at TuneCore has a deep passion for music – we all love it! That is very helpful. I don’t know how happy I’d be as an employee of TuneCore if I didn’t like music.

Our team, I can tell, while they’re working they’re always listening to music. We play a lot of music, we invite our artists to come in and play in front of the team, share their successes…that’s very rewarding.

That’s the important piece, the passion.

Well, thank you for your time!

Thank you!

Epilogue:

Then we both look down at my smart-phone on the table as I switch off the recorder. At that exact moment a giant truck drives by and makes a huge noise. I thoughtlessly go

This recording will be a task, with all the wind and traffic noise!

I don’t know if he feels a tad guilty because he suggested we sit outside, or if he’s just nice like that, but he answers

Oh, if it doesn’t work call me, we can do it again!

Oh, don’t worry, we’re MASTERLIZER!!

Haha!

TuneCore Masterlizer Reeperbahn Festival 2016 TuneCore meet and greet at the Reeperbahn Festival 2016, fltr: Ronny Steibl (oh well, at least his ear), New Business Development MASTERLIZER; Scott Ackerman (back to the camera), TuneCore; Melita Balaski, Creative Director MASTERLIZER; Maximilian Kamenar, CEO/Founder MASTERLIZER, Stine Mühle, Brand Manager Germany TuneCore
(c) Marius Drews/TuneCore

Originally published on the Global Rockstar Magazine on 01.04.2016 and if you don’t know Sick of it All click here and you may remember.

(Attention! It is self-explanatory that an interview with a punk band will contain a few dirty words.)

Before meeting Sick of it All I listened to a lot of their music, watched many music videos, some interviews and read almost everything about them available online. An image of the band’s people slowly started to form in my mind. I was expecting four middle-aged gentlemen (I’m only slightly younger than they are, after all), covered in head to toe tattoos, one (Pete Koller’s) dyed punk crest and a lot of black t-shirts. I was not disappointed.

Indeed, when I was introduced to the backstage area of Arena right before their Viennese concert, I found the four band members (plus a couple of unidentified tour crew members) sitting around a couch table looking exactly like I imagined, black t-shirts, tattoos, smiles and all. They all waved back at me over-enthusiastically. I was told I had to wait a couple of minutes since they had something to finish, then I could hijack front man Lou Koller for my interview.

Fun fact: How is it that musicians always have so much to do, but it always looks like they’re just hanging around and chilling?! 😛

While waiting I reflected on how Sick of it All is probably the punk-est band name I’ve ever heard. Really, for a subculture that is generally against any established industry and anything remotely mainstream, it can’t get any better than that. Will the people act accordingly?

Sick Of It All is an American hardcore band formed in 1986 in Queens, New York, USA. Brothers Lou and Pete Koller (vocals and lead guitar), Craig Setari (bass guitar) and Armand Majidi (drums) were all already involved in the New York hardcore scene of the 80s and 90s and proceeded to be a major part of it for the next thirty years. Up to today, actually.
Their major label debut in 1994 – Scratch the Surface – was received with critical acclaim, as well as the following Built to Last. In the next twenty years Sick of It All changed labels a couple of times and released a total of twelve studio albums, two live recordings, two compilations, two EPs, six singles and one documentary film.
Their last album – Last Act of Defiance – was released on September 2014. We’re waiting to see what they’ve prepared for the 30-year anniversary… 🙂

Sick of It All was never about good musicians getting together. We were friends that grew up together, and loved the same music.

We sat down in a tiny room, a couple of tables against the walls and two chairs in the middle, exactly the kind of setting one would expect in Arena: shabby shabby without any chic. We briefly joked that we were lucky to have, at least, one chair each!

Lou Koller: What was your name, Monica?

Monica, yes.

Lou.

(This is sooo cute! He’s introducing himself like I didn’t recognize him and didn’t come with the specific purpose of meeting him! <3 C’mon Monica – concentrate on the tattoos, this guy is an angry punk musician, not an old friend of yours!!)

Sorry for the freezing hands, I’m always freezing! 

I am from Global Rockstar, and most of the artists on our platform are either beginners or musicians that are already famous in their area or in their country, and are trying to do the jump internationally over the platform.

Yeah.

We do a number of activities but basically my point of view is always the career path. How did it happen and can we learn something to duplicate the path to success? I’m gonna ask a lot in this direction.

Ok!

And, I mean …

(Outside of the room we are sitting alone, people start chatting, shouting and, judging by the noise, moving around big pieces of furniture. We both turn to the door but Lou is quicker than me. He stands up and reaches for the door, which is actually closed. He opens it…)

Can you guys talk somewhere else?

(Lou closes the door again and realizes it’s not a real door, it’s more a saloon-like-affair, wide open at the top and at the bottom. He looks at me, puzzled)

The door is closed!!

It’s like in a high-school toilet!

(We both laugh)

I’m really amazed… founded 1986 and now we have 2016… it’s thirty years!!

Oh, yeah!

I think it’s fantastic!

So do we!

Did you imagine it when you started?

No, no. When we started it was just for fun. We were always into heavy rock and roll and stuff like that. And then we got into punk music and we found out there was a scene in New York City. And we started going to CBGBs. (NB if you don’t know CBGB, famous and infamous at the same time, click here and learn how legendary it was! Besides, it will make a lot more sense further on :-))

Our dream was

Ah, I just want to play CBGBs one day!

And that’s why we formed the band! To be part of the scene, and play…

And it was also the right place for that kind of music, right?

Yeah, it was the right place, right time, and it just started snowballing from there.

The first thing that I did when I heard that I’m going to meet Sick of It All was going on Wikipedia…

(Lou laughs… but, frankly, I don’t understand why. I love Wikipedia!!)

I noticed that, if there is enough history, Wikipedia makes small chapters out of it. For the Sick of It All entry it was first The beginnings – this one lasts up to Scratch the Surface. And then comes The Fat Wreck Records years and so on…

And I thought, in my head I do the same with my life! School, university, moving someplace. My chapters are before and after graduating, before and after Vienna, working corporate…

How do you look back at a thirty year career? You must have milestones. Like before and after this, before and after that. What are your chapters?

There’s so many! There was the very beginning. And then we finally made a demo tape and all that. And when we finally got to play CBGBs – we opened up for a couple of friends’ bands and we had a great reaction!

That was the first milestone?

Yeah. I think the biggest milestone then was when we headlined CBGBs! We finally were going to headline and we were like, wow!

I remember coming over the bridge from Queens to Manhattan in a friend’s car, with all our equipment piled in the car, going like

Man, I hope people show up.

And we turned the corner, and there’s a line of people down the street waiting to get in!! And this was never heard of back then. Nobody lined up to see a punk show or a hardcore matinee!

And we were like Oh my God and we got in, we did sound check and it was amazing! It was the first big milestone, you know?

Ha! So cute! It was the same route that you probably went back and forth many times. And this one time…

Yeah, we used to just go see shows there, it was so amazing!

And then… it was ‘92, the next big milestone. We had already had two albums out, I think – no! one album was out – and our label, that we were on in the United States, was bought by a big corporation, Sony.

They put out an EP with a bunch of live tracks here in Europe. And we got a call from Mark M.A.D. We never knew him, really, we met him once or twice at CBGBs when he came over. And he was

I want to bring you to Europe!

And we were like

Yeah, you want to bring us to Europe. Okaaay! Sure, sure, set up a tour, we’ll come.

(Mimes a dismissive gesture with his hand, like we’re never going to believe that!)

And we thought

This guy’s never going to do anything.

And then we got our tickets in the mail!! And we’re like

Oh! I guess we’re going to Europe!!

And that was the next big milestone, the first European tour. It really set us off on wanting to stay playing in a band. I mean – we loved it, we didn’t want to leave it, but we had jobs at home. And in the United States we could, like, play on the weekends…

You still had jobs at the time?! :-O

Oh yeah. All the way up until the… I’d say the late nineties, we all still had jobs. But that first European tour – we didn’t make money, but it was just… to come here and see people from different walks of life on the other side of the ocean that loved our music… whoa!

This is funny, because mostly I hear European bands that want to go to the U.S. – Oh, we’re going to tour in the U.S., it’s finally happening! It works also the other way around, then!

It’s the other way, yeah.

And then, that same year, we were the very first New York hardcore band to go to Japan!

And it was funny. A friend of ours brought us over, and we played this tiny club that held two hundred people for three nights. And they stuffed four hundred people in there every night and we were like

What is going on? This is insane!

That was the next big milestone that just made us keep playing.

That was worldwide then.

Yeah. It was fun. Then it kept going like that.

The next one was when we got signed to a major label. And everybody was like

Oh, they’re going to sell out, they’re on a major label!

Green Day was big at the time, and everyone was like Bleah!

And we just wrote probably the hardest record we ever could write, the heaviest record at the time. And that’s another milestone. Scratch the Surface was another milestone.

And… it’s just like that. You have these highs and lows.

Oh, tell me about the lows.

There was a lot of lows. It’s weird, again going back to the States, the climate changed. Like, we were touring, we did Scratch the Surface and it was very successful. Not hugely successful, but we did really good.

But there was this whole… coming from the punk, especially the hardcore scene, there was always this thing of you did it for the art, you didn’t want to make money at it.

And we got a lot of flack from people in our hometown for touring and making money. We’d go around the United States. If you didn’t play the squat and you played a club, half the crowd didn’t go.

So we were at a weird position. Those were the low points. You’d go to a town like in Kansas, where we would sell out, usually go play the squat and you have, like five hundred people there. And then the squat’s gone.

So we thought

Oh, we’re going to play Kansas, well there’s this bar down the street that has all ages shows, let’s go there!

(But) they won’t go. Because it’s in a bar. But there’s no other place to play, you know? It was just weird.

You kind of feel bad, because we still thought we were getting out the message and the attitude that we wanted, but some of the fans were thinking

Oh, no, you just want to be rock stars.

But it’s weird. Do I just play to the same people who know the message that we’re putting out? Or should we try to bring it to other people? I mean, we did it, we were the first hardcore band to go on full tours with metal bands. We would go with Exodus and we did some with…

Sepultura? 🙂

Sepultura! That was a great one! That was a funny story… Pete was working in the mailroom of Sepultura’s record label. And when they found out that the guy from Sick of It All was in the mailroom, they came in, Igor and Max (NB Igor and Max Cavalera, founders of Sepultura) and all the guys came in

We want to meet Pete, oh we love Sick of It All! We love you guys so much!!

They’re shaking Pete’s hand, and Pete goes

If you love us so much, take us on tour.

Then he turns around and goes back to work!

And then a month later

Hey, we want to take Sick of It All on tour!

It’s interesting this conflict with the fans, with some of your fans. I imagine it a very difficult balance.

Oh yeah, and it’s funny, because some of our hardcore fans that have that attitude will go and pay large amounts of money to see a metal band, or somebody else.

All these people I know, who are the most underground punk, go

Oh you shouldn’t charge twenty bucks for a T-shirt, even though it costs you fifteen dollars to make it!
But when King Diamond started touring again last year, they go to a show and pay thirty dollars for a shirt, thirty dollars for a ticket.

A friend of mine went to see that band Ghost, and she was like

Oh, and I got caught up in it, they were so good, I bought this Ghost rosary beads!

And I was like

How much did you pay for that?

Forty bucks.

Would you pay forty bucks for anything that said Sick of It All on it?

She goes

Oh, no way!!

Because we’re punk! Because you can’t do that! It’s such a double-edged sword.

It’s really the most difficult genre when it comes to that point of view.

Yeah. It sucks!!

(We both laugh)

And the thing is, we’ve always, always tried to keep it fair. From the beginning, if we made a T-shirt for five bucks we only sold it for ten. You know, we didn’t sell it for twenty-five or whatever. But that’s the problem with being in the hardcore punk scene…

…you have the hardcore fans!!

Hehe!

I saw an interview where you talked about how your fan base is mostly your generation, and it’s kind of difficult to grab the younger ones…

Oh, the younger audience, yeah.

Why?

I’m not sure. It’s weird for me, I don’t know if it’s the scene we come from, where it’s very generational. Because when I grew up and we started going to hardcore and punk shows, we all researched where it came from. And when we saw older bands were coming to town we were all like

Oh my God, we’ve got to go see these guys, they’re legendary!!

But it seems that as the years going on, the younger kids just wanted bands their age.

We played a show once in Virginia, and there were bands that sounded exactly like us. And they even said that Sick of It All was their main influence, and they were so proud to be on the same stage with us.

But when they finished playing their fans just left. They didn’t give a crap that we influenced all these bands and that we were their heroes…

They didn’t want to listen to the real stuff?!

Yeah, they didn’t care. Either that or they had to go home because it was their bedtime! I don’t know, they were so young. 😛

(Again I have to pinch me in the arm to stay focused… Sick of it All! Punk! Angry! Against everything! Bad, bad people!! Look at all those tattoos!)

I am curious because… I don’t buy a hundred percent this theory that they want to see only artists that are their age. Because when I was younger, I didn’t stick to teenager bands or twenty years old. But then again, when I was young, the way I consumed music was very different from today. I’m talking about attention span here. Like, I discovered Pink Floyd when I was thirteen…

Wow.

I would listened to something, discover a band, and what I would do next was go to a record store and  (I mime flipping through records with the tip of my fingers)…

Exactly!

And buy some of them, you know, blank! I didn’t know…

…how it was going to sound!

Exactly. I would go home and listen to them, and it was almost a religious thing. I would sit there and listen to them front and back, many times, and it took me months to digest that stuff.

I remember chewing the old Syd Barrett psychedelic stuff, and (I do an overwhelmed/disgusted face) it took me a very long time. And today’s kids, they hear something and they decide if they like it or not in twenty seconds!

I know! It’s crazy!

And if they like it, it lands on a playlist for a couple of weeks and then disappears.

They don’t have any physical attachment to it, they don’t have the experience of hunting it, you know. And like you said, half of the things they listen to

Oh, I can just get it as a ringtone!

Or whatever they do now. When my godson was younger, him and his friends, whatever the popular song was – bang! – they all had it as a ringtone on their phone. And then the next week he had another ringtone. And I go

What happened to the song from last week?

I don’t know, I like this one this week.

I understand liking different songs, but they don’t fall in love with the music. And I think, the pop that sells millions and millions of copies, it’s not going to stand the test of time.

The classic rock, or whatever you want to call it, you can put a Pink Floyd record on, and it’ll stand the test of time. Because it takes you somewhere. It says something to you. You know?

Do you think it’s possible to reverse this pattern?

I think it has to do a lot with the music industry. Just like everything, they just want to make money now. Instead of developing an artist or making art, they want to make money. And that’s why the music industry is failing. It’s the whole climate.

And again, I can only speak from the American perspective, but that’s the climate in America. They don’t care about – talking about the election (NB The US presidential elections) – nobody really cares about the issues, they just want to be backed, they’re all backed by these corporations that just want to keep the money machine going.

Can you tell me more about the thirty year anniversary? What’s coming up?

Oh, well, we recorded five brand new songs and we’re doing an EP. We’re putting together a photographic history, so we’re trying to make it as a book that comes with an EP, to have vinyl and digital download.

It was fun, we also brought our original bass player (NB Rich Cipriano, the very first bass player of the band) – ‘cause Craig joined in 1993, we’ve all grown up together, but Craig was in other bands at the time. And he wrote songs with us on the first album, so…

He’s joining back again?

No, no Craig is the one who’s playing with us now. The original guy, Richie, he left. But for the EP that we did we brought him in, and he played guitar, he’s a really good guitar. So it was all five of us in the studio playing together again.

I always like to ask about line-up changes… sometimes crazy stories are hidden there…

It’s funny…

Was it growing pains, or…?

No, it was weird, we had it right away! (NB the line-up)

We did one show where we had a different drummer and bass player, this kid Dave, and Mark on bass, they’re guys from the hardcore scene. They did one show and then they quit.

But Pete and me wanted to keep playing, so we got our friends Richie and Armand, and we clicked right away because we all grew up loving the same music. And that line-up was great up until about the end of 1992. Richie didn’t want to tour a lot, because he was having trouble with his girlfriend when he would leave for tour…

Hehe!

So he left the band, and Craig, who grew up with us too – he was in Agnostic Front, and Agnostic Front was splitting up at the time. So it was natural for him to just join us. He did the last Agnostic Front tour, had three days at home, and went right out on tour with Sick of It All!

It was the perfect match, we just gelled. And we’ve been together since.

Not even a tiny shake?

It’s funny… Armand left for a while! He only left for a tiny bit because he wanted to try…

I want a regular job and to do life like that!

And he ended up working at a record label, and that’s how… Mark M.A.D had called our record label and spoke to Armand, and Armand was like

Hey, this guy from Europe wants Sick of It All to go over there.

And I go

Cool!!

And he was like

Can I join the band again?

Only if you write the new record with us!!

OK!!

And that was it, he’s back in the band since.

Hahaha!

So it was great, yeah. The other guys we had, were guys from the scene. There’s an EP out called We Stand Alone and it has pictures of Pete, Armand, me and Richie. And then pictures with me, Pete, and there was a drummer named E.K. and a bass player named Eric. And that was the only thing we’ve ever done with those two guys. We did a couple of shows with them, they were nice guys and they were great musicians, but we didn’t gel.

Sick of It All was never about good musicians getting together. We were just friends that grew up together, and we loved the same kind of stuff, the same kind of music. We all met in high school because we were the only four people in high school that liked Motorhead. Nobody liked Motorhead.

You naturally bonded…

Metallica had just started then… I had a Metallica shirt, you know the old ones that said Metal Up Your Ass, just white lettering on a black shirt? People would look at me like it was fucking weird! And it was just the four of us. We were like

Oh shit, he likes Motorhead, these guys like Metallica!! Oh, bang!

Nobody knew those bands then.

So… let’s form a band?!!

Yeah! And then we started going to hardcore shows. And we all had long hair, and that was cool about going to hardcore back then – I think it’s back to it now – where you could come in looking however you want. You didn’t have to look a certain way.

We used to go to shows back there, we all had really long hair, there would be Goth kids, there would be skinheads, there would be punks – and everybody would be singing to Agnostic Front. It was great.
But then, after a while, that changed. Hardcore had an image and everybody tried to look like it. And they still do to a certain extent, everybody’s got to be covered in tattoos and shaved heads or whatever, I don’t know.

How much time of the last thirty years did you spend on tour?

Out of the thirty years, I’d say three quarters of it were a good amount of touring.

But when we all started having children – Armand had kids first, his kids are already teenagers going into their last year of high school and their first year of college. That was the first time it ever affected the band, where we were offered this really big tour, I remember. I forget what year it was, but No Effects (NB NOFX) was going to tour Europe and they wanted to do it with us.

We want Sick of It All, the biggest hardcore band at the time, and No Effects, the biggest punk band, and we’re going to tour together in Europe!

And then, all of a sudden, Armand goes

I can’t. My wife’s going to give birth to our baby at that time.

So we had to cancel that. That was the first time it affected us.

But then, as we got older, we don’t tour as many times. The thirty-year anniversary tour is when we’re doing a lot of touring this year.

(Again, I must stare at Lou’s tattooed arms and wonder… if he’d wear a long-sleeved shirt, I’d assume he’s some over-polite social worker instead of the front man of the angriest-sounding punk band ever!)

You’re on a tight schedule?

Yep, this is a three week run, then we go home for a week, then we go to California for almost two weeks of the west coast, and then we get home for a week, and then we fly home…

Home is still New York?

Yeah.

Queens?

No, I had to move. I actually moved to New Jersey. Craig still lives in Queens. But I moved to New Jersey because my wife’s job is in New Jersey and I could do what I do from wherever. But for her I moved to New Jersey. She owes me big time – leave Queens to move to New Jersey!!

Haha!

I’m just kidding.

The touring this year is going to be a lot. And we’re still booking stuff now. We were just talking about coming back and doing club shows in Belgium and Holland, which we haven’t done in a long time.
We’ve always done the Persistence Tour and then just big festivals, so we’re going to go back to do clubs.

That’s the main thing about this thirty anniversary, playing clubs. And a lot smaller clubs! It doesn’t always work, because we book ourselves in a small club and it sells out so fast they want us… like tonight…

They move you to a bigger venue?

Like to a bigger room, yeah.

Well, the Arena is perfect for you and your most hardcore fans!

Oh yeah, I like it

I don’t want my daughter to grow up in that kind of a society.

I’m about to say something a bit insolent… I don’t know if you’re going to like it…

Ok…

A hardcore punk band successful since thirty years… it’s a bit of a contradiction in itself! Like liquid ice or independent colony.

Yeah…

Because there is always a strong, protest message. How do you keep that spirit alive?

As you grow, there’s still a lot of things that haven’t changed. And even when you do get changed, you know the way society is, especially in the States. It goes from left to right every time. And there’s always somebody that is behind it all. It irks you, you know?

The protest part is that, when we see something wrong, we have to have a release for it. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Either when it’s personal or it’s something we see in society, that’s what keeps the energy and the anger going.

You give voice to something that you see happening?

Yes. Definitely.

Last summer, I was at the #RefugeesWelcome concert here in Vienna, for the refugees from Syria, and Toten Hosen played there. You know Toten Hosen?

Oh yeah!

Listening to them I realized that when they began, their message, their protest, was more like the voice of a specific social class…

Yeah, like…

…and now their message is somehow…

More general?

I don’t want to say general because that sounds a bit like superficial, but it’s more… world peace and refugees… at a higher level.

And I was wondering, is it because their point of view has changed? I mean, you meet different people now than thirty years ago…

Obviously.

…your environment is different.

Yeah.

Is it because of the point of view that you have now? You’re shooting higher?

Or is the world sicker now?

(Boy! I sound like my grandma!!)

It’s weird. When I was younger I thought the world was terrible. We had Reagan, we had all this stuff. But now, speaking from seeing what’s going on with the Syrian refugees here, and the protests that happen about it in the United States, and the climate in the United States… just look at the presidential candidates, they’re all crazy!

I think the world is sicker now, you know?!

Really? That easy!

It’s scary because I have a five-year-old daughter, I don’t want her to grow up in a sick place like that – where a man who’s spouting racial hatred as the cause of America’s problems (is a presidential candidate). Like

Oh, it’s because this race is coming into our country that America is not great anymore!

And at this rate, it’s not. I don’t want my daughter to grow up in that kind of a society.

After meeting Lou Koller I have only one question left in my mind… why is it that rockers, punk and heavy metal musicians are always so nice? Really, it looks like they’ve found an inner balance that many of us – including pop-musicians – can only dream of. My personal theory is, they channel all negativity into their music, shouting out all their anger and discontent on stage. And this has left them in a much calmer state of mind in everyday life, like after a big fight one always feels a tad exhausted but much better than before.

I presented my theory to Lou and he smiled a vague agreement. Maybe he was just implicitly responding to my implicit compliment. Who knows?

Originally published on the Global Rockstar Magazine on 17.03.2016 and if you don’t know Tricky click here and you may remember.

(Attention! A bit heavy on the four-words-side!)

I’m not a musician. Actually, I’m very untalented when it comes to music. This is probably the reason why I’m never much impressed when I meet famous artists, I do not compare their career to some imaginary future I could have had. What I’m interested in, is the person that hides behind the success.

Because somewhere, behind the lime lights, the charts, the headlines and the screaming fans, there is always going to be a person that gets up in the morning, has coffee, works, meets friends, eats dinner and goes to bed eventually.

Still, how does one prepare to interview someone who is simply legendary? Someone who’s been in the music business for 30 years, who’s defined a music genre, forged it almost from scratch? Imagine this someone is also known for not liking media exposure and for occasionally kicking out journalists after a few questions…

Tricky (born Adrian Nicholas Matthews Thaws) is the English record producer, vocalist, director, actor and musician that pioneered the trip hop style that rose to prominence in the UK during the 90s.

He began his career as a collaborator of Massive Attack before releasing his solo debut album, Maxinquaye, in 1995. He would proceed to release 11 more solo albums including the self-titled Adrian Thaws in 2014 and his latest Skilled Mechanics, released in January 2016.

He has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including Martina Topley-Bird, Terry Hall, Björk, Gravediggaz, Grace Jones, Massive Attack and PJ Harvey.

If you call yourself a master of something, you stop learning.

I met Tricky about ten days ago, in the backstage area of WUK, right before his Viennese show.

I arrived at the venue late afternoon and was immediately picked up by Tricky’s tour manager who escorted me upstairs to the backstage area. And when I say upstairs I really mean it: the backstage at the WUK is like five flights of very high stairs above stage level! The tour manager complained a lot about it while we went up together.

I managed to trip twice climbing those stairs. Both times he got me mid-air and saved me from falling. So when I finally arrived at the top and was instantaneously introduced to Tricky, I was still a bit embarrassed from all the tripping. And quite out of breath.

We sat down in the kitchen, in front of each other across a table with a plastic cover. Now, Tricky is a tiny person, not short but with a light frame. He also has an ageless appearance – he smiled at me very friendly and when he does this he almost looks like a child. Sitting in front of him, with the table between us, I had this strange feeling I was not interviewing him, but examinating him! Like a teacher! I quietly changed seats so that we would be around the corner from each other. Muuuch better.

You live in Berlin? (pant-pant)

Tricky: Yeah. I moved there about eight months ago now.

It’s a short time. (pant)

Yeah, short but I really like it though.

Why Berlin? Because of the label, or… (I could finally breath normally again)

No, it’s not because the label, it’s just… the pace is good. It’s slow. My manager is actually German and he lives in Berlin – but I rarely… I don’t know anybody there. I got no friends there, nobody, but I’m all right like that.

I tried to move back to London, I lasted about six months. I just didn’t like it anymore.

I must confess, I love London – my best friend lives in London, so I go there every now and then. I’m always so happy when I go to London, and I’m always so happy when I come back…

Yeah, yeah. It’s a bit stressful, right?

Everything is… there is nothing you can do easily!

No, no. It’s all very difficult.

And Vienna is very cozy, so…

It’s beautiful, is what!

… the comparison with London is shocking.

It’s very nice that we came here after Prague. Because Prague is a party city. This is like… chilled out. It’s nice.

It’s just the surface. There is a lot of party here, but you have to know where.

No, I don’t mean there ain’t no party here. But it’s a more chilled vibe here than Prague’s – like, even in the daytime, it’s manic!

(Somewhere, outside of the kitchen, somebody starts making big noises. Tricky stands up and closes the door so that the noise won’t disturb my recording. This is the moment I start questioning the whole difficult-Tricky-thing in my head.)

You were born in Bristol, and…

Bristol, yeah.

And you were sucked into this Bristol-Sound-thing…

Yeah, my friend Whitley… like the song Boy (NB from the newest album Skilled Mechanics) – that’s like my life in three minutes. And that guy I’m talking about – Whitley – he’s in the video. That’s a guy I used to hustle with. We used to survive together, whether it was get a shit job or sell some shit weed, we always hustled together, me and Whitley.

Um, Bristol. Who influenced you? I mean, do you make the music that you make because of your beginnings, or…

No, see, this Bristol thing is bullshit, right? Bristol’s like any other city, there’s going to be good musicians there. It’s like Manchester in a way, a few artists blew up…

I actually asked Róisín Murphy about this, and she agreed that Madchester influenced the music she makes…

Portishead are not from Bristol! So that’s one that kills one myth of the Bristol scene, right? I made my first album Maxinquaye in London, I’d been living in London for a year and a half. So that kills that myth!

And Trip Hop… that’s another stupid name. It’s just a name, it’s a myth.

How do you define your music?

Um… work in progress! Work in progress – yeah, I’m still learning.

So you don’t allow any kind of label to stick to your music?

I’ve had the word genius used a lot with me, right? No. I’m still learning, I really am still learning.

That’s why I love it even more now than (when) I first started. To sit back. You can sit back at a keyboard and play anything. You just go miles away, and then you sample that and you play something else. Before you know it, you have a piece of music, and a lot of the times you can’t even remember how you did it.

It’s just… such a beautiful thing to be able to do. I don’t know what a genius is, but say a genius is someone who writes what’s in his head tonight and then goes and put it down in a few minutes… I don’t do that.

I’m playing like a child, like a child writes and draws. You know how a child draws? Sometimes I might start with just a kick drum (taps the table with his finger – just one finger). Look that up. Then, I try a bass note (some more one-finger tapping). All one fingered, all playing around. So I’m a work in progress. I’m a child.

What do you mean? If you put a tag, a description, on your music, then you limit yourself from the beginning?

A Tai Chi teacher told me years ago… I did Tai Chi for seven years with a guy called Master Cheng. He’s like a legend. He was seventy then, healthier than me, he could fight better than me!

I asked him once about black belts. I’m like…

Do you have belts?

And he said

Belts just hold up your trousers.

And I said

How long have you been a master?

He goes

No no no, I’m still learning.

And he is a master, right? And he still learns every time he teaches.

If you call yourself a master of something, you stop learning. So if I think I know (everything) and I stop learning, my music is not going to go anywhere.

I’ve did… I can’t even remember how many albums I’ve did!

(NB I’ve done my homework: it’s 12 studio albums over 21 years.)

I was going out with a girl in New York, after about my fourth album. We sat there, and she was listening to my music on headphones. She wasn’t a fan, she was my girlfriend, and she was just listening. And she goes…

It’s weird, all your albums could have been done by someone else. None of them sound the same.

I didn’t realize…

It’s a compliment!

I think it’s wicked. Because artists can’t do that.

Well, maybe only geniuses can do that! 😛

Yeah, that’s what they said, that’s right. But I didn’t try to do that. I didn’t even realize until she told me, I had no idea.

And I think that’s how I go through life. With no idea. And I just make it up as I go along.

I believe you have more freedom now, with your label…

Yeah. And more fun!

Which is the most important thing, probably! 🙂

I always have this funny feeling that artists are super happy when they first get signed, and after a couple of years they get equally super happy when they can finally drop the label…

Do you know what? I’ve been lucky! I was on Island (NB Island Records), right? My trouble was when he sold. The thing is, when people hear me complain about corporate companies… that’s now. Back in the days… Virgin was great back then…

What do you mean by back in the days? Early nineties?

Back when… I caught just that tail end of the music industry. So I was lucky enough, after me it ended.

Back then, when Polly Harvey (NB better known as PJ Harvey) used to release an album, you used to feel it before…

(whispers) Oh, Polly’s album…

You could feel the energy, you knew something was coming. It wasn’t just a business then.

Now it’s just totally about making money. Obviously, back then, they wanted to make money too, but you did it through… for instance, Chris Blackwell (NB founder of Island Records), Tom Waits, Bob Marley, U2… they never sold much on their first albums. Chris would wait two, three albums. Now, if you don’t have a hit single, you’re dropped!

On Island, I was very happy. But when he sold Island, and the dudes who took over it were on some corporate stuff. And then I ran away.

The underground scene, in my opinion, doesn’t exist anymore…

No, it’s over. That’s finished.

Nowadays, with the online market, as soon as one has a track ready they put it out on fifty platforms, immediately. It’s everywhere!

Yeah, there’s no such thing as underground now.

Do you think something like that could happen again? And where? Because now it’s not in the clubs, it’s not online, it’s not…

I’ll tell you what, right? With False Idols, for instance, I’m dropping an EP this summer, with underground artists. They really are underground because they can’t get nothing going from them. They’re just in certain situations.

So I think you can get a feel of it… this EP I’m doing to drop is fucking ridiculous. I got a band called Kiko King & creativemaze, it’s just ridiculous! And then I got another guy from Bristol who’s a rapper. He comes from my area. Then I got this guy called Cas, he’s a London artist.

And this Cas is very interesting, he’s quite a big artist but I met him through… he sent a tweet! I don’t tweet, but someone sent a tweet saying

Do you know this dude? He’s saying he’s coming to Bristol to do a show and he wants to hook up with you.

So I sent a message and the guy said to me

I thought I’d become the next Tricky.

Now that’s some big balls, right?

He told you to your face?! 🙂

Yeah, and I loved it. I loved it!

He’s a big artist now, and he’s never done an interview in his life. Never done one interview. And he’s so honest and pure.

He says things like… I say

That’s a wicked track I just heard of yours.

And he goes

With no Tricky there’s no Cas!

But then he’d also say

I’m the next Tricky.

It’s nice to see there are some artists who are thinking good, like Cas. He’s never done any interview, and he’s a big artist, never done one press. No one’s ever sat down and talked to him!

What do you mean, interviews are bad? 😛

No, no, I like interviews, personally! What I’m trying to say to you, for a young guy – and he’s in the urban scene – for a young guy to have that attitude is super smart. Because people don’t think like that anymore.

I go

I hate all this social media shit sometimes.

He goes

It’s fucked. When I was a kid and I listened to you, I couldn’t get in touch with you. I couldn’t send you a message. That’s fucked. People are too attainable now.

So he thinks in a very smart way.

There could be some underground, but it’s not underground as in it’s really underground. It’s more in the way you’re thinking.

A mentality?

Yeah. I think there won’t be really underground, but there will be guys like him, who think underground.

And like this EP I’m bringing out, it’s got an underground attitude.

But, as an underground artist, you have to find new paths, new ways to come out.

Yeah. Right, it’s your music. So underground used to be a way you put out your music, but now you have to make your music underground.

See what Cas does, even if it sold a million records you’d still have to call it underground. Because it’s different. And he’s not playing by any rules. What Kiko King & creativemaze do, they’re doing their own thing. So, in a way, it is underground.

Artists got a terrible habit – young artists of today got a terrible habit of following others. Second-hand emotions. You see these urban artists, when they’re doing all this… (mimes fake Hip Hop moves showing exaggerated sadness and pain). They did that for real, they went through that for real. She went through stuff!

These people see stuff, and they recreate second-hand emotions. But there are some people out there, like Kiko and creativemaze, and this Cas dude, and this guy from Bristol, who are, just… two of them are struggling. I mean struggling. All they know is music. They’re the real deal.

So there will be some underground, but not the way you put it out. What will make it underground is the sound of the music.

I have the feeling that there are two sides of your personality, two sides that are kind of fighting each other… the musician, performer and producer vs. the shy private person who doesn’t what to be exploited by the media…

So… (I take a deep breath before I say what I’m about to say…) I think you have the wrong job!!

(Tricky, who was fumbling with something in his hands and looking down in his lap, suddenly lifts his head and looks me in the eyes. I can tell he’s surprised. I don’t know yet if he’s surprised at my bravery or at my stupidity. He doesn’t answers immediately, pondering my words first)

…

I’ll tell you what… I’ve never seen it like this but you’re right! I do have the wrong job – I’m a very shy guy, very shy…

Do you remember the first time you went onstage? How did you feel?

Fucking scared! I was almost paralyzed.

There was this big concert, my first big big one, I played before PJ Harvey, it was a huge thing. I asked for all the lights to be switched off and had the show in complete darkness… and everybody went…

Genius!! Tricky’s such a genius, a show in the darkness!!

And I did it because I was scared. So what’s important is, you don’t tell them why…

Haha! This story is so cute!

I’m so naïve! After the concert I went back to my wardrobe and I was sitting there in the twilight (mimes sitting bored, with his hands hanging from his knees) wondering…

Is this what it’s all about?

(Mimes rocking his chair until it leans against the wall and his feet hang a bit from the seat, then looks around so that he seems even more lost and bored than before)

Then PJ Harvey came in and…

What the heck are you doing here, alone in the dark?

And I go

I don’t know what to do!

And she goes

Get out! Have a beer! Light up a joint! Chase some girls!!

(Mimes his face lightening with realization and quickly getting up from the chair!)

So you’re a bit naïve?!

Very naïve, yeah.

My grandmother said a really weird thing to me once, when I was about fifteen. I came out of my grandmother’s house, and she always used to watch me walk up the road. She would stand on the gate, in her apron, and she’d smoke a cigarette.

And she used to do a thing – she wouldn’t use an ashtray (he mimes grandmother ashing her cigarette in her hand) and then tuh (mimes Grandma spitting in her palm).

You know what your problem is, right?

and I go

What?

and she goes

You have a problem dealing with reality.

That was such a weird thing to say…

What did she mean?

That’s it! I never knew it!!

I don’t know what she means, but if I have a problem with reality, it goes into my music. I could be quite pessimistic, but my music is very hopeful. Because I feel like I have no boundaries on my music. I can make anything happen.

Hmm.

Yeah, I’ve always wondered what she meant. Freaked me out!

Would you like to know when I play your music at home?

Hmm…

When I clean the house!

Most people have sex to it. I always meet people who have babies or have sex to it. It’s weird. Maybe it’s people who have children (who) share this. Cleaning the house is easier.

(I realize now, this is much funnier in my head than in his head. Sigh.)

When I told people I’m going to meet Tricky tomorrow, many said Oh, poor you, it’ll be so difficult!

Oh, everybody says that.

Why do you have this reputation? Was I lucky today, or what?

I’ve got a bad reputation, totally. But really not deserved. I don’t care, it don’t matter to me, it means nothing.

For instance, I just did a press thing in Berlin. It was really weird, I didn’t know this guy, he comes in, and he was just a dick. Some artists will just go through it because it was a really big magazine. Some artists will go through it because they don’t want to have a bad relation, because it’s good business or whatever.

I just said to the guy from K7 (NB Tricky’s label)

Tell that fucking idiot to get out of here!

Not very diplomatic!

No. I’m not very good at being diplomatic!

I won’t even talk to him – and he can hear me, he’s standing there… then my manager talked to the press guy and he said

He’s known to be arrogant!

Why I get a bad rep is, if you’re a dick with me, instead of sitting through it, I fuck you off. I will just say…

Leave! I won’t talk to you!

That’s the reputation that goes around, it’s not the ones when I’m nice! The only time I’m difficult is if someone’s difficult with me. That’s it.

If you’re nice to me, I’m a super nice guy. I’m very chilled out. But everybody thinks I’m going to be… and my music as well! Everybody thinks I’m going to be all dark. And I’m really quite silly. I’m clumsy, I’m always joking around, I like getting into the maddest crazy things. There’s nothing dark and mysterious, I’m a very normal dude.

Do you know what I mean? I don’t go out, I don’t go out to clubs. I go for walks. I’ve got a mountain bike…

But you used to go to clubs?

Yeah, I used to. I go to clubs sometimes now, when I’m on tour, but I live a very boring life. People have a vision about how artists live…

Not boring, for sure!

People would think an artist lives a certain way. But I go to bed at eleven o’clock at night! I’m in bed at ten, watching fucking Netflix, YouTube, listening to music or whatever. Very simple. I like cooking, I like going to the supermarket, buying ingredients, walking around, choosing my food, cooking, and going to sleep. I’m a very normal person. Very.

A little bit crazy though. I can be a little bit crazy, yeah.

I even had a little statement prepared – just in case you were a dick to me! I have it written here…

What were you going to say?

(I pompously read from my scrap of paper) “You once said, about live shows, that it is supposed to be a two-way thing, so if the audience doesn’t give anything back, then the show can’t be good”.

And I wanted to say It is the same for interviews! Two-way!!

That would have been a good point!!

On some strange level I’m a bit pissed that I couldn’t use it. So thank you for letting me read it.

Then my time is over and Tricky asks if I’m happy with the material I have. I thoughtlessly go Umm… so he gives me his telephone number to follow up the next day while he will be sitting in a bus travelling to Italy.

Then we hugged good-bye. Yes, I hugged Tricky!!

So much for the difficult interview!! <3

Epilogue:

I was left with one little question mark in my head… why was Tricky pissed at Prague? After the interview I had a long chat with Tricky’s tour manager and understood better.

He told me that the concert in Prague, the day before Vienna, was packed. But the crowd was somehow lost in their artificial mood and more interested in partying by themselves than interacting with the show on stage. This is the reason why Tricky was a bit annoyed.

Funny, how we always think that the audience is the only one that reviews the show and marks it with a good or bad note. I realized that artists do the same, and maybe a concert that was outstanding for the spectators, was not thrilling at all for the artist. Or the other way around.

Well, Vienna was packed too, sold out! And the crowd was fantastic – two-way!!

Originally published on the Global Rockstar Magazine on 11.03.2016 and if you don’t know The Chainsmokers click here and you may remember.

(Attention! Some mild language here – just a dash.)

There is this thing with interviewing famous people. I mean, to arrange the meeting I interact via email with the management. Then I show up at the venue – usually in the backstage area the few hours before the concert – and proceed until I stand in front of a locked door.

This is the moment when I call the tour manager and she/he picks me up from behind said closed door. Then I wait a bit and maybe chat with whoever may be around. Besides the tour manager, all the others could be anybody. The ones that talk in a deep Viennese accent are probably employees of the venue, the others could be really anything – stage hands, tour crew members, even band members themselves in a good disguise!

Point is, until the moment the tour manager calls me and introduces me to the artist, I have only seen pictures of them. Even if I’ve seen them play live once or twice… I have the memory of a 200 meter view! If I’m not the very first one to interview them, I will probably be escorted to a room, and when I enter the room I meet the artist in person for the very first time.

Imagine you enter the interview room to meet The Chainsmokers, and three guys are standing there! It takes one or two seconds to decipher the faces and connect them to the pics you’ve seen on your computer screen. An embarrassing one to two seconds, sigh.

The Chainsmokers are an American DJ duo consisting of Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall.
Their 2014 single #Selfie reached No. 16 on the US charts and No. 11 on the UK charts while their 2015 single Roses reached No. 6 on the US charts.
On October 23, 2015, The Chainsmokers released their first EP titled Bouquet. The first single from their debut album, Don’t Let Me Down, was released on February 5, 2016. It features singer Daya.

(I was still in the doorframe, standing like a pumpkin, looking around – one, two, three… – wondering how this would go…)

Alex: I love your glasses!

(There they are! This is going great!!)

Thank you! What a cool way to start an interview – compliment the interviewer!!

(All laugh, maybe also because my glasses are bigger than Alex’s.)

I’m from Global Rockstar and our point of view is the up-and-coming artists, who are trying to make it…

Alex Pall: That’s cool.

(I fumble with my smartphone and start the recorder)

Drew Taggart: Do you want me to hold that? It might be better.

(Err… I’d feel better if my smartphone was laying safe on the table but, obviously, if Drew Taggart offers to hold your phone while being interviewed, you hand it over. I handed it over.)

Drew: Exactly.

Why music? Why, when, how did you decide that you want to make music for a living?!

Alex: I don’t want to speak for Drew, but I know we’re both involved in music our whole lives in different capacities. But I don’t think it was a clear occupation choice for either of us till four or five years ago, maybe… less for me.

It was always a passion, but it never really seemed like a viable career option. Like for real, you just go through life and you think that it’s not an option to do this, do those sort of things. And it got to a point where I was working a job that I wasn’t really passionate about, and the thing that I really enjoyed doing was DJing, and the music stuff side of that all.

I was lucky to meet Drew, who was working on the production side – he can tell you more about that in a minute – and we just decided that we would give it our all and not try to half-ass it and really focus and do everything we can…

CRASH!

(Drew dropped my smartphone on the floor. No kidding, it fell flat on the screen! Alex immediately bursts into laughter. Drew quickly picks it up and checks – the glass was intact – before allowing himself to laugh too. Only then did I join in. Without comment, I took my phone from Drew’s hands and put it flat on the table next to us. I didn’t really see myself telling my boss the story of how The Chainsmokers broke my phone and you should really pay for a new one…)

Alex: Yeah, and you know, it was just a… it was a great lucky time and I feel like if I’d waited one more year, or even earlier, it wouldn’t have gone the same way.

So for me, I’m lucky that I’m doing music now, but it was never like a viable option growing up.

Drew: Same. I mean, I went to school for music business and thought I wanted to be an agent. And then I thought I wanted to be a manager. But I would do extra-curricular things, like DJ, and I was promoting parties, and doing things that were kind of involved in the world that we’re in now.

And then I bought Ableton, the production program. After I went to Argentina, in high school, and heard David Guetta and Daft Punk, and all these artists that weren’t getting played in the United States at the time. And I was just so fascinated by the sounds and the music that I just bought the program!

And any free second I got I was on YouTube, trying to figure out how to make all those sounds that I was hearing. And I solely just did, I never thought it would be a career option until when I was finishing school, and my friends started to hear my music and were like…

This is actually good!

I was putting it on the Internet, and blogs were writing about it, but nothing like huge or anything.

Then I did an internship at Interscope Records – which is a big record label under Universal in Los Angeles – and they heard my music and were like…

Yo, we want you to be a management client!

And they would give me pop records to remix and work on.

And it just didn’t… feel right. But it definitely inspired me to not get another job, I was like…

I think there’s something here, with this music thing.

I remember I got paid three thousand dollars for a song I made, or something like that. And that was enough for me to decide…

OK, I’m going to give this two months of work.

And in those two months I met Alex!

Hey, I’ve got all these DJ shows in New York City, why don’t you come down here and we try to build this thing?!

At the time Chainsmokers didn’t have any music, they just were club DJs. I didn’t have any gigs, and my music really wasn’t that good. But it was something.

And between both of us, when we started working together, every day we just tried to get better and better and better. And find new sounds, and become better producers, and market our music differently. And that was about three and a half years ago.

A match made in heaven!

D: Honestly? Yeah!

The turning point was meeting each other?

D: Pretty much. And our manager as well, but… he doesn’t need to know that

(FYI the manager, Alan Alpert, was the third guy in the room, the one that took me two seconds to distinguish from Drew and Alex. We all turned to him, sitting in a corner, and he quietly waved back.)

It’s interesting, when you said you were putting your stuff online, because… coming from this platform for up-and-coming musicians, we hear endless complaining about the new digital era, and the revenues for the artists have vanished and blah blah…

But EDM is the revenge of the digital era! Would it have been different ten years ago? Twenty years ago?

Drew: Yeah – I think about this all the time! There’s a huge technological impact in that, you know? An impact that changes the game for everybody. So everyone complains that there’s no money in music… well, there’s money in music, trust me!

Where is it?

Drew: It has to be good music and artists have always had to write the best songs, have always had to figure out ways to get their stuff out there, get signed and be ambitious. And not be lazy about one aspect of it.

Or if they are going to be lazy about the marketing and promotion, hire someone that is really truly invested in it!

I think with today’s technology, between me buying Ableton and figuring out how to do everything – that you’d need a full studio to do ten years ago what you can do today just on my laptop! In my dorm room at college! This definitely says a lot… and now we’re touring around the world, talking to you in Vienna! Off of those songs!

It is nice to hear this freshness! That the digital era is an opportunity and not only an obstacle…

D: Yeah, we had a really clever marketing strategy in the beginning.

A: Yeah, we luckily… there’s a site called Hype Machine – is it German? Or Austrian?

D: It’s German. Must be German or Swedish…

A: But uh…

I’ll check that.

(Fun fact: Hype Machine is from Brooklyn, NY, USA!!)

Alex: Yeah. It’s a really great site to discover new artists and new music and stuff. We would go on there and look up other artists and songs that we liked, from lesser…

D: There’s a chart!

A: Yeah, through the chart. It’s a blog aggregator, they validated all of these blogs that they considered to be the best blogs on the Internet. And then they aggregate all the songs that those blogs are posting, and then based on how many blogs are posting one song, it goes into a chart. So the song’s trending.

D: We would pick ones that trended well – we always tend to like them, but generally the ones we like are always doing moderately, pretty well – and we would remix them.

The dance music was becoming so mainstream, kind of… not cheesy but it was very much, like… dull. And we figured out that, if we take these great, lesser-known indie artists that have really authentic vocals and stuff, and remix them in a Chainsmoker-y way… we would create our own lane – and kind of that’s what happened.

It was great, because you can’t… when you’re starting out… getting good vocals, getting the confidence and all that stuff is really hard. So we started by getting good vocals from these indie artists, and then the songs did really well… we kind of started building a repertoire.

And that was how it all started, really.

A: (Talks to Drew) We’ve got to do a how-we-made-it video! That would crush!!

D: (Answers Alex) Yeah, that’s a good blog, actually!!

(Realizing they’re ignoring me) Sorry – good idea!

Hehe. Nowadays glam rockers are almost extinct creatures… somehow DJs are the new rock stars. Do you agree? Do you feel a bit like rock stars?

A: There were for a second – I feel like hip-hop is now back at the forefront and there are some great bands out that are… and pop stars that are doing well! DJs as pop icons has never been a thing until now. But it is hard, you know, there are very few that have really crossed over now.

D: Yeah, there’s great giant DJs in Europe, you guys have the Axwell’s and Esco’s and guys like that are gigantic here. But in the U.S., I don’t know if people would freak out if they saw Axwell or Ingrosso on the street. Here they’re really celebrities.

But the same thing in the U.S. There are big DJs in the U.S. … like us!! (Both laugh) Like we’re really big in the U.S. and we’re trying to build an audience…

You get recognized a lot, I assume.

D: Yeah, more in the U.S., but here we’re building that audience. There’s only a few guys that have really transcended across the borders between continents. Calvin Harris, who is probably the biggest of everyone, dating the biggest pop stars with more successful records than anybody. But I think there’s a lot more failures than there are the Calvin Harris’s. We’ll see what happens.

I mean, for us, we’re becoming more performance than DJ, and I think that will help change the profile of how DJs at least were conceived. Because you always want to stand out, that’s the idea.

The fans and fame and getting recognized… is that what it’s all about, or is that the dark side of success? Do you enjoy it a hundred percent?

D: It’s, like, nice and awkward at the same time. Because…

Why awkward?

D: It’s just weird when you’re walking through a public place and… someone’s making a spectacle of you. Before you’d just be able to go somewhere, and now… I feel kind of uncomfortable with everyone else that’s staring at you, that doesn’t know who you are. I think that’s… weird?

But it is nice to be recognized, you know? And recognized for something that you do, that is your passion, that you do well enough that someone knows what you look like! That’s a good thing.

A: We don’t do it to be recognized, but it’s great when you are recognized for what you do.
Like a validation of your work?

A: Yeah, it’s nice to see that people are excited about the music that you make, and they’re really pumped to meet you.

D: When I was in college I would just listen to Kid Cudi, I would just listen to Pheonix. And these bands that I was just obsessed with. And then Avicii came along, and I would wait for Avicii to put out another song… I couldn’t wait for that!

I guess when someone come up and takes a picture of your, or tells you they love your music, that’s the only time I get the sense that…

Holy crap, maybe we’re that person for somebody else!

That they’re just waiting for another Chainsmokers song… which is crazy to think about! But that’s like my main motivation.

On your website there is an interesting sentence on you bio: They find the parts of things that people actually give a shit about. This is supposed to be your talent! How do you discover a talent like that?

A: Oh, bios!!  Bios are always really weird. I always wanted to delete it – how are we supposed to explain ourselves and our vision and what we’ve done and what we want to do in, like, a little couple (of) sentences?

But I think we have a really funny way of looking at the world, and we’re always questioning things and re-evaluating what we’re doing, and really pushing ourselves.

And we love pop culture! We don’t shy away from pop culture, or think that if you’re a pop star you’re lame. That’s all really interesting. We try to digest all of that and figure out a way to make it cool and put the Chainsmokers spin on it. Make it personal to us.

I don’t know if that really makes sense in that sentence that you read – how readily it applies – but we know that we don’t want to get caught up in the hype. We’re trying figure out our own lane, that people will be excited about.

Your first album is coming out this year?

A: Maybe. We don’t know. We did that EP, Bouquet, that just came out, and that wasn’t even necessarily planned. That was like…

Oh! We have five songs done…

Let’s put them together!

A: Let’s put them together! And I think that if you can make an album that people really are excited about, and want to listen to, and can take the time to enjoy each song… that’s amazing. That’s the type of artist we’ve been working towards since day one.

It’s just about the time of it. We’re not going to just make an album because you should make an album, because that’s what musicians do. We want people to pay attention to each song, we want the album to tell a story, and that’s what we’re working towards.

But we don’t know when that will necessarily be. I certainly feel like we’re getting closer to it everyday, and I think we have some songs that I would love to be a part of that.

But it’s just about when it feels right, not because the label wants it. Or that’s such an artist thing to say,

Oh, we’re working on our album…

Why? We don’t care, no one wants to hear an album from you!

(Drew laughs)

We want people to be pumped, you know what I mean? And be like…

Holy shit, we’re going to get twelve Chainsmokers songs!! This is going to be incredible and it’s all going to feel coming from the same place. And when I’m done listening to it, I want to feel like I know what these guys tried to accomplish with that.

So, we’ll see.

Listen, my time is over and I’m more or less happy… you know what happens now?!

D: What, a selfie?!

(We all laugh)

Shall we take a selfie together? I know it’s a bit tacky but I really do this with each interview… really!! How sick are you of people coming up to you …let me take a selfie?!

A: We don’t care, it’s only the people that genuinely believe that #Selfie was like a… a selfie thing! Because those are the people that really don’t give a shit about anything we’re trying to do. We’re just in front of them because we’ve been placed there, and they’re there for the same reason, so they don’t understand that… you know what I mean?

(I believe I understand what Alex means, people completely missing the satirical side of #Selfie…)

And then they make it awkward – it’s just like, you just didn’t listen!! You just don’t know what we’re trying to do at all!! Just take a fucking selfie and we’ll get out of your life.

Hehe, I’m about to get out of your life, let’s take the selfie!!

Both: Hahaha! No, no!

(Then we take the selfie you see above, Alex had the longest arms so he held the phone.)

Alex: Are you coming to the show?

Err… maybe I’m a bit past that age…

(We met mid afternoon at their hotel, so I don’t say this loud, but the show begins past midnight, I’m older than I look and my back doesn’t allow me to stand still for hours anymore… I’d probably be crushed before they even begin!)

Alex: What?! I’m already 30, if I can play the show you can certainly come! What are you? 25 top?!

(He pushed two VIP-tickets in my hands and I was already a bit gaga because of his 25 years guess, which is an underestimation by more than a decade…)

Oh, thank you!

(This, luckily, worked well both for the tickets and the compliment.)

Then we hugged good-bye and I left the room.

Epilogue:

On the tram on my way home I admired the tickets. They had a Willy-Wonka-quality, heavy and matte with a gold shimmer… definitely the most beautiful tickets I’ve ever held in my hands.

I called the only 18-years-old friend that I have. He’s also a musician, a guitarist, albeit more on the singer-songwriter side, all cerebral and jazzy and stuff. He happily took the tickets and went to the show with his girlfriend. The next morning he sent me the pic you see as cover and this:

“I’m not such a fan of EDM music, but The Chainsmokers did an awesome job. With their energy and their performance they captured me from the first song on. The crowd was crazy and everyone danced! I had a great night and I am a little fan of them now. Such cool guys!!”

Originally published on the Global Rockstar Magazine on 07.03.2016 and if you don’t know Black Stone Cherry click here and you may remember.

I met Black Stone Cherry mid February at the Ottakringer Brauerei before their Viennese concert. The backstage area at the Ottakringer Brauerei is probably the classiest backstage area in Vienna, for sure the chicest one I’ve ever seen. The furniture pieces are clean and match, the fridges against the wall are all new and shiny, filled with the newest brands of organic lemonade, the coffee maker in the corner is so clean I suspect nobody ever dares to touch it. I didn’t, for sure.

Given that rockers will be rockers, no matter how fancy the place is, it was a strange picture — people hanging around in oversized black t-shirts and work-jeans, their feet hanging from the armrests of the couches, slurping from designer bottles… even before knowing how nice Black Stone Cherry are in person, this picture alone made my day

Black Stone Cherry is an American Hard Rock band founded in Edmond, Kentucky, in 2001. Teenagers Chris Robertson (lead vocals, lead guitar) and John Fred Young (vocals, drums) started to play music together and were soon joined by Ben Wells (vocals, rhythm guitar) and Jon Lawhorn (vocals, bass guitar). They began playing clubs and shows in the area and soon gathered a large following of people of all ages.

After their first demo CD (Rock N’ Roll Tape), in 2006 the band released their debut album – Black Stone Cherry. It was followed by three studio albums, three EPs, one live album and three compilations. They have charted eight singles in the US Mainstream Rock Tracks charts.

Black Stone Cherry’s fifth album, Kentucky, will be released on April 1st. You can pre-order it here 🙂

We kind of write (songs) wherever we can. So we can keep the ball rolling. Because the more down time you spend, the less time you are in the public eye, the faster people can forget about you. So we try to keep as busy as possible.
– Jon Lawhon

I sat down, fancy chairs, fancy drinks and all, with two members of Black Stone Cherry, guitarist Ben Wells and bassist Jon Lawhorn.

How did you fall in love with music? Why did you decide you wanted to become a musician?

Ben: For me, I love Elvis Presley, and that’s what made me want to get into music. Music, entertaining… the whole deal. I’ll thank Elvis for that.

When did you start playing?

Ben: When I was really little – elementary school, probably around 6 years old – I got a guitar and I played on it for a little bit. I guess I took it more seriously as I got a little older. I don’t know, I guess I thought the guitar was a cool instrument, you know? It’s instantly gratifying too, cuz you can learn something… you can literally take a guitar, learn something new and play a song…

Grrr, you can, I can’t! I’ve been struggling with my ukulele for years!

Jon: HAHAHA!

Gratifying is really not the word that jumps to my mind…

Ben: Patience?!

Ehh, maybe! (I turn to Jon) And you? How did it start?

Jon: For me… my uncle was a drummer, it’s kind of been a family trait. I was just a kid and I remember just listening to Ted Nugent and AC/DC with my dad and I was always like… I wanna do something like that, play music.

And then MTV and all that… you get to see all these different artists and musicians, these music videos and everything. As a kid it was very intriguing, so it was just always kind of in the path for me.

Love at first sight?

Jon: Pretty much, yeah…

The four of you play together since your teenage years, this is the Black Stone Cherry original line up, right?

Jon: Yeah…

Ben: Yes m’aam!!

(NB I jumped on my chair at this yes m’aam! What am I? The queen of England?! I mean, I know that I am good ten years older than Ben, but I’m sitting here in my scruffy jeans and old Dr. Martens… that yes m’aam made me feel ancient!)

This is interesting because it’s not very common…

Ben: It’s unfortunate (NB that it’s not more common). For us, we’re friends, we were friends with each other before we were an actual band. We always keep that mentally.

We’re in it for the right reasons. Nobody has any form of ego and everything is split equally, everybody has a vote and say. A lot of bands, you might have one guy that calls all the shots, or writes all the songs. For us, it’s the four of us. That has a lot do with why it’s still the four of us!

It’s pretty incredible. There are bands that grow a bit together, and then one of the members cannot keep the pace – technically, maybe…

Jon: We always look at each other as our own personal driving force. Me personally, when we’re playing a show, if I look over and see Ben and he’s killing it – which he usually does – that drives me to do better and try to play harder and be more of a showman. Every night. And we take that not only from the show standpoint, but as far as our playing ability.

When somebody comes up with something… like if Chris comes up with something that I find difficult to play, I work on it until I can play it. We just all keep that mentality. We are all trying to grow and excel as best as we can.

Our music and our lyrics have always been honest, and very vulnerable, and we don’t hold up anything. There’s nothing between us and the fans.
– Ben Wells

It still amazes me, the same lineup from the beginning… is a beautiful thing.

Ben: Thank you.

So you’re also friends in real life.

Jon: Oh yeah!!

Do you also hang out if it doesn’t have to do with music? Or is it I can’t see these people anymore…

Ben: No, when we go home after a tour, you have a few days of decompression, you spend time with your family and what not… If somebody’s having a get together at their house, or a buddy’s having people over, we always see each other there. We all live close to each other, so we might see somebody at the same restaurant, it’s not like we all live far away from each other.

How’s your writing process?

Jon: We’ll write songs at the practice house in Kentucky where we’ve always written (NB Black Stone Cherry took over the practice house that had been used by The Kentucky Headhunters since 1968. In fact John Fred Young is the son of The Kentucky Headhunters’ rhythm guitarist Richard Joung). We always return to the practice house either way to finish the ideas.

We’ll write some on the road, we kind of write wherever we can. So we can keep the ball rolling. Because the more down time you spend, the less time you are in the public eye, the faster people can forget about you. So we try to keep as busy as possible.

If we’re touring and we have some downtime while on the road, we’ll try to write some stuff and start getting a few songs or ideas under our belt. And then we’ll return to the practice house and reconvene, and get all of our ideas and everything finalized there.

Was there a moment when you thought, it’s working! We make a living out of this, this is it!

Ben: We’ve never really sat back and thought we’ve made it. Cuz we don’t want to get comfortable and complacent and jaded to what we’re doing…

Tell me the truth… you don’t feel you’ve made it, or you don’t allow yourself to like sit down and think I’ve made it?

Ben: No, we don’t allow ourselves… we know we’ve gotten to do some incredible things and we’re very grateful. We know that we’re very luck and a lot of hard work has paid off. We do recognize that 🙂

Sometimes you have to pinch yourself and think…

Man! I can’t believe we’re playing these shows and these people from different countries are coming to watch us play!

This is incredible, but we haven’t sat back and thought ok, we’re good to go now. Cuz there’s still so much more stuff that we wanna do, more places that we want to go to… there’s more fans to be made. So that’s kind of the mentality we always have.

Any specific moment or concert that had a symbolic value?

Jon: (breathes out whooo then says) Whoa…

Ben: You know, playing shows in different places, different states, different countries and having people come out, is definitely a feeling of this is starting to work. Because we still get excited about stuff like that!

When people come out and see us, especially on a tour that we’re not even promoting… we don’t even have a new album out now! And people are still coming out to watch us play, is pretty incredible! So, that makes us feel really good.

The first couple of years you preformed in the local area, and you built up a huge fan base, locally. And this was basically the key to getting big…

Jon: I think with any band, ultimately, record labels want to see that you can draw people. So, rule of thumb, you want to pick where your central base is and get yourself a 500 mile radius in that region, play in that area and keep building fans. If somebody were to come out from a record label to come see you, you’re going to have a packed house.

You have to build that area. I definitely wouldn’t suggest for a new band to, all of a sudden, decide to sink a ton of money into it and try to do a world tour! Because you’re not going to be playing in front of anybody, you’re just gonna be playing in front of the 5 people that might happen to show up every night. And that’s all it’s going to be. It’s gonna take a much longer time to build up.

If you play your home region, like with us in America, we have the States… so if you play your home State quite a bit, maybe a trickle down to the nearest states. If you play like that then you have a better opportunity of building that core fan base, where a record label or somebody might show interest.

Here (NB in Europe) everything’s more… the countries are smaller than what we have over there (NB in America) so it’s more countries versus states. Stick to your country, play to your people, play to your audience and keep building that up. And somebody will eventually take notice.

Up and coming artists should put their energy in… what? What’s the best strategy?

Ben: I don’t have the best advice, I can just tell you what we did. We took every show we could get, we didn’t worry about how much we were getting paid… a lot of new bands are like how much are we getting paid? That should be the last question on your mind

At the very beginning, you mean?

Ben: Yeah, for us we played restaurants, we played high school gyms, we played parties, we played anything just to be able to get the exposure, and play, and try, and gain more and more people.

And then we would look at a city that was close to us, and if there was a big band coming in to town we would call the venue, ask if we could be on the show, to open the show for free, just to gain more exposure.

That’s kind of the way we did it. Just slow, we kinda did it by the ground, just doing our own thing and letting word of mouth take over.

What skills does an artist need in order to be a success?

Jon: (In) today’s market you gotta be able to do everything in house as much as possible. Like even with us, we’re in our second deal right now with Mascot Label – we were with Roadrunner for a number of years – this is our 5th album we are putting out. And we produced the new record by ourselves. We did all the artwork ourselves, we’ve done a bunch of video assets for it…

The more you can do by yourself, the more money you can save in the backend. And the faster you’re actually going to be able to earn an income.

Not to mention the fact that so many of these secondary items, like artwork for your record, or a documentary based from the studio, or things like that, you’ll pay an atrocious amount of money to somebody to build these assets.

Album art for example: our artwork is an 8 panel poster on one side and another 8 panels on the opposite side, with all the text and thank you’s and other images from the recording process. That artwork, if we were to go to somebody that does artwork all day long for money, we would have paid anywhere from 8 to 10 thousand dollars to get that done…

How many singles would you have to sell to get that back…

Jon: Exactly! So we did it ourselves! So, that already puts us 8 to 10 thousand dollars in the good towards recouping what it costs to record the record.

The more you can do on your own, the better off you are. Just make sure you’re not doing it on your own in a lesser quality, since the quality still has to be good. You still have to be able to contend with everything else that’s out there. But don’t pay 8-10 thousand dollars for artwork, don’t pay 40 thousand dollars for somebody to film the studio process. Just get a buddy that’s got a camera, that’s good at it, you know?

It’s cost savings but is it also controlling the whole thing…

Jon: Absolutely. When you do it yourself you have total control over what’s being put out.

So it’s never a situation like if you have somebody come in, and film a bunch of stuff, and then they cut it together and put it out, you see it and you’re…

Well, that makes us look like crap! :-O

You don’t have that problem because if you do it yourself you’re putting out only what you want the public to see. It really keeps you in control of your own destiny.

According to Wikipedia, the music you make can be catalogued as Hard Rock, Alternative, Metal and Southern Rock. Can we focus on the Southern Rock for a sec?

(Both laugh)

Because I am European, and it’s kind of difficult for me to grasp what it means… each culture has its own fantasies, idols and idiosyncrasies. And all I know about The South comes from movies! Like I’m watching Nashville…

Ben: I love that show!

But this is how much I know about it! It’s all very foreign to me. Can you explain Southern Rock to a European girl?

Ben: I think it’s more of about a way of life versus a certain sound of music.

Then explain me the way of life! 🙂

Ben: We’re from a small town in the middle of Kentucky, so for us it’s about slow pace, very simple. Most people… it’s an everybody-knows-everybody type of town. It’s about having respect and manners, and yes m’aam, no m’aam…

(NB Ahhh!! Finally, I understand! I’m not the queen of England after all!)

Ben: …those things, we were brought up like that. To me, it encompasses what Southern Rock as a genre is. It’s honest, it’s real it’s very prideful and respectful, and I think that’s why people have linked us to that. Because our music and our lyrics have always been honest, and very vulnerable, and we don’t try to… we don’t hold up anything. There’s nothing between us and the fans.

You know, we are very open and very personal. And that is just a little bit of southern hospitality that I think comes off on us. Coupled with the way Chris sings – he has a very southern accent when he sings, compared to most other rock n’ roll singers. Those elements are just in our music, whether we want them to be there or not. They’re always going to be there.

When you’re home everybody knows you. When you’re touring, do you get recognized on the street?

Jon: Sometimes, it really all just depends. If we’re close to the venue of course it’s gonna be easier for somebody, because they’re coming to the show. And they might bump into us or whatever. It happens sometimes and…

The hardcore Rock fans, though, are the same worldwide. It doesn’t matter where you go. If they’re a hardcore Rock fan, they’re gonna seek you out, they’re gonna find you, they’re gonna dig into your music.
– Jon Lawhon

Do you like it?

Jon: It’s ok, yeah…

Hehe, it’s ok is the little brother of I hate it!

Jon: I mean, we’re not glory hounds or anything. We’re not running around, Hey notice me, pay attention to me! It’s kinda not our thing.

Ben: We don’t expect it

Is it flattering…

Jon: Oh sure!

… or is it intruding?

Jon: No, it’s flattering!

Ben: We’re not like that at all, we’ll talk to fans. If we’re eating at a restaurant and somebody comes up… I mean they’re the whole reason that we’re doing it! We don’t have any kind of problem with anybody coming up to us, anytime.

Should I believe you? You’re almost too nice to be true!

Ben: Where we’re from… we’re just humble, our upbringing, we don’t expect to be noticed. But when we are, it’s very neat. It is flattering, you feel respected, and it’s like this is cool. People… they want to come up and talk to you and take a photo with you.

You used the word respected, which I didn’t expect in this context. It has to do with this southern culture, I guess?

Ben: I think respect is everywhere.

I can hear a dash of Country in Black Stone Cherry’s music…

Ben: A little bit! We’re influenced by all types of music… Hard Rock, Metal, Blues, Motown, Country and many other things were influences to us. So they just come out naturally in our songs.

Your first album was self titled, the next one will be called Kentucky. Is this some sort of going back to the beginning, to your roots? Is there a kind of circle?

Jon: We parted ways with Roadrunner January of last year. When that happened we were free agents at that point. So we started discussing what our next step was going to be and we were like – like I was saying earlier about spending all this money on stuff you don’t need to spend money on…

Ok, why do we want to spend $200,000 on some big fancy studio when we can get the same sounds at a cheaper studio? Somewhere that makes more sense for us?

So we started thinking about different ideas and concepts, ways and directions we would go in. We decided to go back to the very first guy we ever worked with, his name is David Barrick, he engineered the new record and he also engineered and helped produce the first record.

We decided we were going to do that, so we started working on all the songs, getting all the songs together for it. Then Mascot came along, while we were in mid-process. We were gonna record a record with or without a label – but they came along and we all just hit it off, and everything worked really well. We struck up a license deal with them, so we get to maintain our masters and all that… we get to own everything.

We are at a point in our career where we understand how to control it, at least to the degree where we can (chuckles). So we opted for that, we self-produced it and we did it in Kentucky. We all live in Kentucky, three of the guys are from Kentucky – I’m not! I moved up when I was a teenager, though. So I’ve been in Kentucky longer than I’ve been anywhere else.

You belong there.

Jon: I belong there now. Yes.

We had some horn players, some background singers, there’s a guy in Bowling Green, Kentucky, who put together some strings on a song called The Rambler. Everybody that is in addition to us on the record, is all from Kentucky. It all just kind of made sense for us to truly bring that rejuvenation of roots to the forefront.

And musically? Also going back to something?

Ben: Kind of. In a way, because we were left alone to do the album the way we wanted to. This was naturally just how we sound when we’re just being ourselves.

This album was a lot heavier than our other albums, but I think that’s just what we were doing. We love big guitar riffs, heavy bass and drums… we didn’t have anybody looking over our shoulders saying… well maybe don’t do that.

We weren’t writing for commercial success. Like a lot of rock bands might write just for radio, so their songs are certain lengths, they have certain types of sounds… for us it was just about making a great Rock album, that we knew we would be proud of, and our fans could be proud of.

In turn it’s the truest representation of the band to date, because we were just able to do it by ourselves. Call all the shots.

How is it to tour in Europe compared to the US?

Jon: It’s very different markets.

In America, it’s very radio driven. You almost have to have this specific radio sound to be able to truly fit the market well enough, to where radio will show you love and really push your song on their format. Which helps to notify the people in the area… listen to this band they’re cool!

In Europe, it’s more put the band name and the poster out, people see it and they wanna research it. They wanna learn about it and decide for themselves whether or not they like it. So it’s very different when it comes to that.

The hardcore Rock fans, though, are the same worldwide. It doesn’t matter where you go. If they’re a hardcore Rock fan, they’re gonna seek you out, they’re gonna find you, they’re gonna dig into your music. If they like it, they’re gonna love it, they’ll always be there.

It’s just all about never giving up, and always playing as much as we can. Our whole mentality, since day one, has been win it on the ground. Play shows. Playing concerts is the way that we’ve always won our audience.

Being on stage, that’s what it’s all about?

Jon: Absolutely.

Ben: Sure, that’s what we do. That’s our whole thing.

Jon: Even when we’re in the studio, we’re constantly saying, what’s this going to be like at any of the festivals that we play in America or in Europe? What’s it gonna be like when there’s a mass of people there? What are they gonna want to sing? When are they gonna want to jump? What are they gonna want to move to? All that.

PS Did you notice? No dirty words in this interview, not even a hint. I think I’m slowly starting to grasp this whole southern culture thing…

Originally published on the Global Rockstar Magazine on 01.04.2016 and if you don’t know Kodaline click here and you may remember.

(Attention! Some mild language here.)

I met Kodaline in the backstage area before their Viennese concert at Gasometer. When I arrived I was told I had to wait for them to take a pic with somebody, then I could have band founder, songwriter and guitar player Mark Prendergast all for myself.

The four band members were spread around the backstage and the tour manager was trying to gather them together for said picture. I realized how some things are universal… getting four musicians on the same spot at the same time, and getting three children simultaneously ready for kindergarten, for example.

‘A pack of cats!’ were the immortal words of the tour manager.

(I’m exaggerating a bit, of course, the four guys are super-professional and they got ready for the pic in less than two minutes)

While waiting we all chatted casually, and somebody asked if this was their first time in Vienna. Jason Boland recalled that they already played here – last year at the Arena. Do you remember the legendary under-underground venue? Well, apparently Kodaline are used to smoother locations, like the Gasometer, and still remember the Viennese Arena as a fantastic and shockingly shabby place!

Kodaline is an Irish rock band originally known as 21 Demands. Childhood friends Steve Garrigan and Mark Prendergast started playing together during high school and they were soon joined by Vinny May. In 2012 their friend and bass player Jason Boland was recruited and the name changed to Kodaline.

In 2007, still as 21 Demands, they participated in the Irish TV talent show You’re a Star, finishing as series’ runners-up. The same year they made chart history when their single Give Me a Minute topped the Irish Single Charts, the first independently released track to do so.

In 2012 Kodaline released their debut extended play – The Kodaline EP. All I Want was licensed for Grey’s Anatomy and used in the Google 2012: Year in Review video.

In June 2013 Kodaline released their first studio album – In a Perfect World.

A new album was announced in December 2014 and the track Honest was published on YouTube. Coming Up for Air was released in February 2015 and entered the UK Album Charts at #4. Both singles Honest and The One reached Top 40 in the UK Single Charts.

Kodaline is currently touring Europe.

That’s the most magical moment of being a musician, when you play to a room full of people and you get that connection when everyone is on the same page.

Mark Prendergast: Are you from Vienna?

I’m Italian, actually!

You look Italian!

Really? Hehe, it’s the first time I hear it…

I have a fantasy in my mind about how indie rock bands get famous: first you start by playing a thousand times at the same pub in your neighborhood, then probably a battle of the bands, then maybe opening for some other band, then the A&R comes, the signing with a label, the first album…

(good, Mark is nodding…)

When I read the story of Kodaline, it somehow begins like that, then takes a different turn…

Yeah.

It is very fresh, very new… you did the TV show, the licensing of the music – like Grey’s Anatomy – and the Google video! Now that the record industry is more or less dead and the money is somewhere else, how do you navigate the music industry?

I think that every single band’s journey is completely independent of every other band; every band gets signed or discovered in a different way.

The label deal… I can’t remember, I think our producer – who produced our first record – sent some songs, years ago, to some friends of his, our now record label. They were coming over to see us for like two years, two or three years…

Like regularly checking?

Yeah, they kept coming back – you get a little bit better…

And then we wrote a batch of songs and they signed us.

You mean Give me a Minute?

No, that was 8 years ago, actually, we were offered the record deal back then (NB at the time of Give Me a Minute, 2007), which we turned down because it was the wrong… it was too early.

Fast forward like four to five years later, and we wrote a whole new batch of songs and they kept coming over. Because they kept coming over to see us, it kind of inspired us to get better, we were all working jobs, or college, but we were…

We don’t want this, we just wanna do music!

So we got a record deal, and we got a record deal before we even had a bass player, before we’d done any shows…

2012?

Yeah. It was a gamble for the record label, as well for us, because we didn’t know if we could play live!

We went there and we started touring. We released an EP at this time and pretty much since then we’ve been doing our own shows. We’re supporting people sometimes but…

You skipped the supporting thing?!

Yes! Some bands will do it for a year and a half, we went straight into doing our own shows. We wanted to do that.

We’re lucky because radios picked upon us in the UK and in Ireland…

And that’s what gave you the push?

That was the platform, yeah, and then we started doing festivals and those festivals are an amazing place! Instead of playing to a thousand people you play like fifteen thousand people! It just means walking over there to that stage…

Festivals are accelerators?

Yes. Festivals were a huge thing for us.

And then, like you said, our songs keep getting picked for movies and TV shows, for ads…

How did the Google thing happen?

The Google thing?! Crazy!! We didn’t actually do much, I think they heard the song in Grey’s Anatomy – no! They came to the show in LA, and told us we’re going to use the song for the Google end of the year ad. And we were like oook… (mimes a I-don’t-believe-you face)

We weren’t sure if they would use our song because there was also someone else who could get that… and then they posted the ad on the Internet and it was like WHOHA!!

You discovered it live?

Yeah! Because when you get picked for a film, you’re not sure if you’re gonna get it until the end. Anything can change at the last minute.

And the Oscar goes to…

Hahaha! Exactly!

We were watching the video with images of war and everything (NB it was Google’s 2012 Year in Review video), like Barack Obama, all the big things that happened in the world… they put it up on the Google page and 6 million, 7 million people saw it on the first day, which was just WHOHA!! (This time he also mimes an explosion with his hands!)

Our Twitter and our Facebook went crazy and it happened at the right time. Our album didn’t happen yet…

Right! You had released only EPs to this point!

Yes, we were incredibly lucky, that was a huge platform for us, a worldwide ad! Yeah, it was just crazy.

In America we don’t get played on the radio a lot, it’s more TV shows and people Shazam – who are they?! – that’s how we grow…

So yeah, every band has a different journey and that’s ours.

Shall we talk about Kodaline’s videos?

Yes, of course!

Many of your videos have this incredible storytelling and the band is not even in the video – btw I love those videos…

Oh, thank you!

What do you think, do fans stick longer in front of these videos before they click away, or do they want to see the band? How do you decide?

It wasn’t a big sit-down decision, it was very straight, this guy came to us – I have an idea for a video… we’re not one of these bands that sit down and overthink decisions, we just play by letting things happen naturally.

Well, you have to steer a little bit otherwise you’re not in control anymore…

Hmm… there are some video that we’ve made, that we don’t like much…

Oh! Would you name one?

Like the video for Honest, we don’t really like that video, it doesn’t tell a story, it doesn’t do anything… that’s us rocking in, on the street. People don’t want to see that shit!

People want to see things coming to life. This guy, Stevie Russel, made the video for All I Want and for High Hopes. He came to us – I want to make a video, I won’t have you in the video, I want the whole 5 minutes of the sound to be dedicated to telling a story, and suck people in.

We were actually in the video of All I Want, briefly, in the office scene. We were extras, no main characters!

(Indeed! I’ve spotted Steve at the copying machine!)

I think if you can tell a story that happens in 3 to 5 minutes, why not do that? He brought it over to the studio and showed us the finished product, and I was just like oh-my-god! We loved it! And the fact that we loved it so much… when we put it online, it was (snaps his fingers) straight away!

Well, it’s difficult not to like that one!

Yeah! Right?!! (We both laugh)

People who still see that video for the first time go oh-my-god! People keep discovering us online because of that video, it’s amazing!

For some bands it works great being in the video, but we didn’t want to be in the first two.

It’s also, probably, a brave decision. Especially at the beginning, you want to get recognized – this is the band name and these are the faces that go with it…

We’re not really interested in celebrity culture, or fame, you know… it sound cheesy but there’s more to getting music to people. I like this band because the music is good!

Do you get recognized on the street?

In Dublin, yeah, a lot!

The four of you or just Steve?!

Hehe, Steve gets recognized a lot – he’s the singer! But we get recognized sometimes, it’s nice in Dublin, because people are proud – You’re doing really good! Keep going!

It’s nice, we don’t get any abuse – not to our face, anyways!! It’s at a comfortable level. If you were One Direction, you can’t walk down the street, people run to chase after you. It’s kind of (mimes people waving a salute or elbowing each other and pointing when they recognize them).

I had a question for Steve… I’m gonna ask it anyways, let’s see what you can say!

Just by reading YouTube comments, Steve has a little sex-symbol status between young girls… that’s what it’s all about or is it the dark side of being a pretty musician?

I don’t know… I don’t think he fully embraces it, it’s just by accident. He always looked like he looks, he has always acted like he’s acting, he’s always been himself, so… he hasn’t changed.

He hasn’t thought of the sex-symbol for young girls… he’s never been that kind of guy, so… I don’t really know… it must be strange for him, obviously!

Especially because it’s such young girls!! Hehe!

It’s funny on Twitter, when he sees some kind of comments… a bit crazy!

Next one is a tough one. We, as Global Rockstar, don’t do music critic…

Oh, you don’t?!

Err… no. Our claim is “we believe in music” and for us this means that if you are an artist and put your music out there, and people like your music, pay sound money to buy your music, then the music is good enough. All the rest are the artist’s decisions, not for us to question.

Having said that I read some criticism about your music, that you’re too commercial, that you try too hard to cater for your target group and lose some creativity on the way… what do you say?

Maybe it’s our production that has that kind of effect? Because the last album is a very pop production.

We genuinely write music for ourselves, like if I show a song to Steve or if Steve shows a song to me, it’s coming from somewhere inside, a personal thing. We never try to write songs to try to impress other people.

Could it be that people think if the bulk of your fans are very young then the music is necessarily not much?

Maybe… I don’t know. This is a tough question!

I can sit here and watch you think for as long as you want, don’t worry!!

Hahaha!

We never tried to write commercial music, it’s probably because we’re in a world of commercial music, and that’s just the pop mentality that we have, maybe… I don’t know, it’s really a tough question to answer. I’m trying to answer, I really am!

Hehe! Take your time!

Hehe! We don’t mind being called commercial!

A healthy attitude!

We wouldn’t sit down and say let’s try to write a song that is going to be on the radio. We write songs as they come.

And it’s your face on it, so you have to stand right for you music.

Oh yeah! We’re proud of everything! Anything we put out, we’re happy with it.

You look like a happy person.

Happy? I’m very happy!

Hehe, like you’re enjoying it…

Oh, big time! Yes I love it!! We’re in Vienna! We get to travel the world, play sound, people care… if we had gone down the road of trying to write commercial songs for other people… I’d hate that!

We get to go on stage and play how we feel, and people have the same feeling as well… that’s the most magical moment of being a musician, when you play to a room full of people and you get that connection when everyone is on the same page… everyone singing at the same time…

That’s probably why I look happy!

How much time do you tour on average?

We’ve been touring for the last, I think, three and a half years, and we spent about 80%, 85% of the year away.

What comes next?

This year… we’re on a six week tour at the moment, non-stop, and we love it! But we’re taking a break after this tour. When I say a break, we take three months. Most bands would take a year, and go write the next album.

We’re just gonna take three months, go back to the studio, play a few festivals. We have a big show in Dublin, a big homecoming show, so everything is kind of being channeled towards that – It’s huge! It’s like 35 thousand people in total. …sooo scary. (NB the concert is on July 8 at Marlay Park, Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland)

But we kind of take time off, like we had January off… and I got so bored!!

Hahaha!!

I just got a house, I live in this house with my friend and it’s only plants and woods… and I start writing songs! So I was like, let’s go to the studio! Let’s go on tour, you know?!

And you’re in Milan tomorrow, right? At the Alcatraz!

Is that where you come from?

I’m from Rome, actually, but when I was young I remember going to Milan for concerts at the Alcatraz…

It is awesome…

Right? I was like only 29 more sleeps!

Hahaha! The crowd there is fucking exceptional, really! We played the Alcatraz before, but it was too soon and it didn’t sell out, but tomorrow… I think it’s pretty much sold out and it’s gonna be packed!

Spain, Italy and Portugal… the crowds are just insane there!

(Then he makes an embarrassed face) I know you don’t like being associated with Spanish people…

Hää?! Not really. Actually the whole Mediterranean area feels like one culture when it comes to party… we’re loud… we’re…

The crowds there are mental! We don’t go there often, you know, we’ve probably played in Italy three times, whilst the UK, we play three-four times a year. So it’s nice to get down there… people just go crazy! You know? It’s awesome.

So, I think my time is over! (Why? Why on earth do I keep doing this?!)

Oh, don’t worry…

Ha, cool! Then I’ll I ask about the lineup change…

What do you mean?

Between 21 Demands and Kodaline you changed the bass player…

Well, 21 Demand was the band that was on the TV show, like eight years ago, and then we went into a studio to record, with the producer. And it became apparent that the bass player that we had at the time just didn’t have… what it took to actually play on that… ehm…

The technique?

Yeah, the technique was not where we kind of wanted it to be. And… it was ruthless… he was my best friend, and we don’t talk anymore.

Because of that?

Hmm.

I didn’t go to college, I had no career, I was claiming money from the government, and I was writing songs… it’s very hard to get into the music industry, we’ve got very lucky.

I had this opportunity with the label we want to sign the band but… your bass player…

And I got it. So we had to kick him out. And it was the toughest thing ever. We sat down…

Look, we’re carrying on the band, but actually…

I was just like… (makes the saddest face I’ve ever seen during an interview).

I still see him occasionally in my hometown, when I go home. And it cuts me up – fuck. I used to be at his place every night, drinking, hanging out with his parents, having dinner with them…

Ohh… my heart is shrinking…

As tough as it was for me, God only knows what it was like for him. That’s how ruthless the music industry is, if we hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here, I’d still… but we wouldn’t be the band that we are if that didn’t happen.

When we started playing with Jay (NB Jason Boland, bass guitar and back vocals of Kodaline since 2012) there was an instant marriage, I just went oh-my-god, this is marvelous! We can write any kind of sound, we can play live!

It was tough. Like telling your best friend we can’t be friend anymore. I haven’t spoken to him since and we will probably never speak again.

Is he still in music?

I don’t think so, no.

When you’re put in that kind of situation you have to ask yourself where do I see myself? I want to be a musician, I can’t give up this opportunity. It’s probably the only opportunity I’m gonna have.

You’ll go to hell for this.

Oh, I’m going to hell!! Haha! And have a great time there!!

Thank you for telling me this story and sorry for bringing up the bad memories!

Oh, it’s ok, it’s good to talk about it.

Thank you!

Epilogue:

When we came out of the interview room, a little white dog was waiting behind the door wagging his tail, and Mark got quite excited. While he was petting the dog I asked

Is this a band dog?

Mark dismissed my question as vacuous

We’re touring!

Well, end of January I interviewed The Darkness…

(Suddenly I got Mark’s 100% attention, so I guess he’s a fan)

…and I met Bonnie, Justin Hawkins’ dog. She tours with them in the UK and in Europe!

Mark’s face broadened with a smile, he turned to the other band members, who were chatting in the hallway, and shouted

Guys! We should get a dog! Or a cat!!

Note: After this there was a poll “What should Kodaline get as band and tour-pet? A cat or a dog?” The dog won. 🙁

Idan Raichel was waiting for me in the lobby.

He mysteriously recognized me and greeted me with a friendly wave that I immediately forgot my makeup, the cold and the running nose. He shook my freezing hand with a smile and never mentioned the mascara-panda-eyes. Idan Raichel is a gentleman.

Idan Raichel talks smooth, and I mean it literally – he talks slowly and accurately. He stops mid-sentence if he feels the story isn’t coming out as he meant, then, quietly, starts over again with a smile. He underlines what he says not by an increase in the volume of his voice – like everybody else I know. When he wants to stress something he simply says it a tiny little bit faster. I could listen to the hypnotic tone of his voice forever.

In a world where it is acceptable to check your smartphone during a conversation and attention has long gone down the drain but we can’t hear the flush because of our headphones, Idan Raichel stands out. Like when at a party everybody suddenly stops talking and you find yourself shouting. He is very aware of where he is and of what he is doing. He notices what is happening around him – the hotel employees, his cup of coffee, the child jumping in a corner, me fumbling with my voice-recorder – without being distracted. Awareness is the word that jumps to my mind.

Also, Idan Raichel is the first artist that I interview who seems to be genuinely interested in knowing the person who’s firing questions at him. How old I am, where I come from, what foreign languages I speak, do I have brothers and sisters… all this attention got me a little confused, almost to the point when I forgot that I was conducting an interview and not casually chatting with some interesting guy I just met. Strange. In a very good way, don’t get me wrong, but strange.

Idan Raichel, still standing in the lobby, immediately started apologizing for the early hour…

Once you have kids nine o’clock is the middle of the day!

Haha, it’s ok, don’t worry! How old are your children?

I have two daughters, 2 years old and 6 months. Both of them are Viennese!

I actually met my lady exactly in this area…

Oh, tell me the story, please!

First of all I met her father, around seven years ago. He was a music teacher here in Vienna, he heard about my music and came to my concert at the Konzerthaus. After the concert he came backstage with his two daughters, and while I was talking to him one of my band members invited his daughters to dinner. I met them there.

Since then I’m telling her father You don’t bring your daughter backstage!

It sounds like a classic romantic comedy!

Hehe! So I met her here, at the Konzerthaus. Then Damaris – my lady – came back and forth to Tel Aviv many times. The past three years we’ve been living in Tel Aviv.

I’m totally in love with Vienna because it’s an amazing place. My lady lived in different districts – like in the 16^th, very Turkish oriented, in the 1^st, very touristy, in the 3rd district… now we’re staying in the 16^thand will be back to Israel like in a month. What district do you live in?

The 7th, but I also moved around a lot, I had five different apartments in Vienna in the past ten years and each time I thought Oh, this is the perfect district! I’ll never move away! Then I move and Oh!! Now, THIS is the perfect district… so basically it’s the city.

Yeah, the city is beautiful…

And still, you live in Tel-Aviv!

There are many artists that it doesn’t really matter where they are from. For example Leonard Cohen, it doesn’t matter that he’s Canadian, right?

He could come from anywhere.

Right. Or Pet Shop Boys… they are from the UK but it doesn’t matter.

But there are singers that hold inside them the identity of the place. For example Mercedes Sosa for Argentina, or Edith Piaf for France… if you heard that Edith Piaf moved to Norway because she loved it… no! It doesn’t sound reasonable, right?! It’s Edith Piaf and she lives in France! You know what I mean?

Yes. If you move away from Israel, either you change the music you make or make entirely something else?

I think it would change the identity of what I do, yeah.

Well, who knows, maybe eventually you’ll be ready for such a change!

Yes, maybe! But not for now…

I want to tell you a story… this summer Global Rockstar made the Monopoly version of the Idan Raichel Project… it is called Global Rockstar United: We invited six artists from six continents, six handpicked artists that participated to Global Rockstar 2014.

We locked them in a recording studio here in Vienna…

(Suddenly there is excitement in Idan’s voice) Shut up!!

They emerged four days later with two songs…

Wow…

The last two days we shot the video and then everybody left.

Wow! Here in Vienna?

Yes! I will show you the video afterwards!

Being there – I spent the whole time with them – was amazing. In four days they wrote a song from scratch, the music, the lyrics, the arrangement… we came out four days later with a rough mix. What amazed us was how well everybody understood each other, even if not everybody was proficient in English and one needed a translator…

It’s amazing! It’s a dream, it’s one of my dreams to be able to bring artists together and to shoot a documentary. I always thought of making it but I never had the platform.

I always wanted to bring artists together – like six to eight artists, ten days – maybe in a big hangar, a recording studio and rehearsal too, four walls and them sitting in a circle in the middle… and also cameras shooting it, as a documentary.

My dream was that this six to eight people would come from conflict areas, a guy from Israel, a guy from Syria, a guy from the conflict areas in Mali… To see how artists in conflict area are managing. And enough time to write songs, around ten days, probably…

Yes, definitely. We had four days for songwriting and the pressure the last 24 hours was almost unbearable!

Still, after four days we were best friends. The music – To the Moon – is amazing, but what really amazes me is what happened at a personal level. They were complete strangers with a task – music. The only thing they had in common was music… and they hit it off!

I just did a project with pianists around the world – United Pianos – we took the theme of Peter and the Wolf, very simple. It was naive, just to make it easy for everyone as a test case. Then I took many pianists from around the world and each one of them recorded this theme and we edited it… it’s really cool.

Do you see the same thing happen with the Idan Raichel Project? When all else is different, bond on music?

Hmm… because I play with musicians that live… one of the craziest thing that I did, I played with a musician that lived 45 minutes from my house. But I cannot meet him in Israel. There is a border and I cannot cross. And he cannot cross. So we met in New York. It’s crazy! We live a 45 minutes drive from each other’s house and we cannot cross the border.

And also Syria, I can drive to Syria in two hours. But I cannot cross the border. I’ve never been able. Also my parents have never been able. So I thought Wow! It would be amazing to meet somewhere in Europe, all these musicians from conflict areas…

At the past years, when I started the Idan Raichel Project – I started it around 12 years ago – and my intention was just to make music. I didn’t have the intention of bringing people together or crossing cultures and stuff. I just wanted to make music.

The way that we live in Israel, that is, in every block, in every neighborhood, there are many immigrants from many parts of the world. For me, it never looked special, because this is the way that we live. Your neighbor from next door is from Africa, this one is from North Africa, this one is from Germany… that’s how it is. And it’s not like in New York, that there is Chinatown or Little Italy… for us, we live together.

Before my first album, I was very young, 21-22 years old, I was a counselor in a boarding school. I realized that the youngsters who came from different parts of the world to live in Israel were losing their identity very fast. Their mission, their target, is to be Israelis. To learn the language, to be assimilated, just to be Israelis (snaps his fingers) fast.

And I thought, Why don’t you keep your own traditions? Why don’t be Israelis but keep your own language? Be Israeli but keep your own name? A lot of people in the African community in Israel adopt cool names, like Afro-American names or Jamaican names – like hip-hop nicknames. Why don’t you keep your native, African village, names? Or why don’t the former USSR immigrants keep the tradition of the opera alive? Or the ballet? Or whatever, just be Israeli but keep your own tradition!

It was important to me that in the studio we would record each one of the artist, we would record his own traditional instrument, or at least his own traditional way of playing. Even if you play guitar just have some phrases that remind of your background. And if you’re singing, sing in your own native language.

We had over 35 musicians and singers that participated in the first album. The idea of the Idan Raichel Project is that in every song there is a different lead singer and different musicians.

When we finished the album and I brought it to the record company, they immediately put it under the genre of world music. Because it’s not in English and it’s not in our local official language, Hebrew. They were not Hebrew pop-songs. But we sent it to deejays and they started playing it on mainstream radios. And very fast it became Israeli mainstream music.

It was the first time that songs on the mainstream Israelis radios were not in our official language – and it was like number one hits!

Now, it made huge news in Israel. Why? Because, imagine that in New York, in Manhattan, you’ll take a group of musicians from Little Italy, from Korea Town, from Chinatown… and the lead singer is from China, singing in Cantonese. Can you imagine that this band – the singer singing in Cantonese, in Chinese – this would be the number one hit and it will leave behind Beyoncé, or Adele, or Madonna?

It’s incred… it’s unreal! You would think it will be a hit on a world music station, but not on the mainstream.

I personally have a little problem with the definition of world music as a genre…

Hmm…

It’s not a genre, for me it’s a definition as good as all others…

Exactly!

Music genres per se are always cut with a big, big knife… this is jazz, this is rock… but there is a lot in between and you can call it whatever you want. But world music is especially bad!

First of all there are two ways of meaning world music. One is contemporary world music, the other one is traditional world music.

Traditional world music is always something very, very simple, like…

I understand that! That each country has its own roots, its own traditions…

Exactly, it can be tarantella music from Italy, it can be a tribe playing in Africa, it can be a Chinese violin playing whatever.

But the contemporary world music is exactly as you said, actually all the others… foreigners… for us Israelis Ornella Vanoni is world music, because it’s Italian and we don’t know what it is! You know what I mean?

I do!

Everything can actually be world music!

I think that there are musicians that are doing world music who are crossing over. Edith Piaf is world music from France that crossed over all over! Bob Marley is world music for all over.

So for us, my band, I think my definition is Israeli music, or world music from Israel. But when I played with Alicia Keys or when I played with Andreas Scholl at the opera… if you want to call it world music, call it world music! Call it whatever you want!

Sometimes I’m a bit lost with your music. Sometimes the influences are so strong that I have a feeling the piece is talking… a foreigner language?

Yesterday, for example, I was listening to A Quarter to Six (Idan Raichel Project’s album released 2013) when Ana Moura’s fado came up. I suddenly realized I was more at ease! I don’t understand Portuguese, I was not even listening to the words, but the feeling was I know myself. This is the verse, this is the refrain… I could navigate.

Well, sometimes I cannot navigate your music! I’m a bit embarrassed that I said this out loud… What do you think about it?

When I write the music my goal is to write it as free as possible. As free as possible.

I see every song as a scene from a movie: my role is to be the director. The kind of director that I am is… the kind of the director that Woody Allen is, or Spike Lee! The kind of director that, sometimes, writes the script. Or is involved in writing the script. And sometimes he is playing one of the roles, and sometimes not.

Every scene, after I write it, is a little story. But the story can be about… kind of a sequence, the person goes from here, across here, across here and reaches here at the end of the scene. But sometimes the scene is just atmosphere.

In an atmosphere (scene), if you just look at this place, even this lobby, it doesn’t have a beginning or an end. You can look at this life (NB very appropriately, exactly at this moment a waiter lets his tray fall on the floor making a huge noise), or you can look at this painting. On the way of arranging it, you can get focused on different things. It’s a different approach of arrangement.

For example there is a song, Chalomot Shel Acherim, and there is a motif – (Idan hums the tune) DAN DAN DONG DO DO DONG – and there is this violin, Azerbaijan violin – A-NANA-NA-NA-AHH – and the singer is singing – (Idan sings a few lines tapping the rhythm on his thigh) Shanim kulam borchim, shanim kulam chozrim, Rodfim achrei hashemesh, Shvuim betoch ma’agalim… – now you can call it a song, but for me, the way I arranged it, even if you mute the vocals…

…it works!

It works. Why? Because this is a scene. You can listen for five minute like this – DAN DAN DONG DO DO DONG… The way that I arranged the film… err, the music!, is always, I mute the vocals and see if the song still works.

If it doesn’t work… it’s not good. It has to be arranged like in a classical orchestra, symphonic orchestra, if you mute one (instrument) it still… there is a lot of music, the violins are playing something, and there is something that will catch you.

There are songs that – like Sabe Deus that I composed for Anna Mura from Lisbon – the song is very clear… (hums a little) Sabe Deus, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA… it’s because I’m coming from folk music. I used to play accordion, which is the un-coolest instrument ever! While all my friends played guitar…

Oh well, maybe back then when you learned it as a child, nowadays the accordion is pretty cool…

Hehe, maybe today it’s a bit cooler! But when I played most of my friends… (shakes his head as if he’s pushing back the bad/funny memories…)

There are songs that are very in a form… with A, B, chorus, B, C part… you know, like this. But a lot of my songs are songs that are pure atmosphere.

This is why I have many fans around the world, they don’t speak the language – even me I don’t speak all the languages, it’s many languages, Amharic, German…

But I think you can feel related to this because of the scene. The scene is more important than the song, it’s the atmosphere.

So I’m telling you I can’t navigate your music and you’re saying I don’t want you to navigate, enjoy!

You don’t need to, just play it, you know?! Just play it and listen to it, and just see where it takes you. Just see where it takes you.

The Idan Raichel Project’s last album, A Quarter To Six, was released also on iTunes and you can also find an instrumental version. You can buy it without the vocals. And also the album that I just released on January 22^nd 2016 – At the Edge of the Beginning – you can buy it without the vocals.

I didn’t know!

Because I believe in this so much, that it’s all about the scene.

Tell me more about the new album At the Edge of the Beginning…

I always perform with a very big band, there are between seven and fifteen people on stage, and a month ago (NB November 2015) I decided to be brave and to go alone, with a piano, for the first time.

It was important for me because I always stated it’s the ultimate way of an artist. I saw Caetano Veloso, Jilberto Jil… even Dave Matthews, playing alone. I saw an actor, a theater actor that I loved to see in big theater sets, he went on stage and gave a monologue for like 90 minutes – alone – and I thought Wow, I have to try to do it.

So a month ago I started to play. When I play piano solo the songs are going closer to the song-writing and not to the scenes. Because I go to the essence as naked as possible. So it’s a different approach, yes.

I’ve read you mean it as a step back…

…from the big production!

Yeah, away from the razzle-dazzle and towards private life – I read about your daughters and everything. There is one quote from you that struck me

“I’m not here just for myself anymore, I’m here for my daughters.”

To me, it sounds like “this man feels responsible now!”. I was wondering… responsibility is everywhere. You are responsible for your children, for your parents, your country, the environment… the planet!

Of course, one cannot feel responsible for everything, you have to channel. To pick your fights. How do you pick your fights?

It is very interesting the way that you see it!

There is a song of Bob Dylan from the album Slow Train Coming, that (says) you have to serve somebody. It says, no matter what you’ll do, you’re gonna serve somebody! You can be this, but you’re gonna serve somebody! La-la-la… you’re gonna serve somebody!

(NB This is the first verse of Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody, 1979)

You may be an ambassador to England or France
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.)

To serve somebody is the responsibility. Google about it, Bob Dylan… first of all it’s an amazing album, Slow Train Coming…

I have it at home!

Hehe, Gotta serve somebody, it’s an amazing one!

The thing is, for me as an artist, I always felt totally spontaneous and free. And I didn’t feel that someone was paying a price for me being free.

For example, I got an offer to tour in Japan, three weeks. I take a flight and tour in Japan. I got an offer from a singer from Portugal to come to record. I buy a ticket (snaps his fingers), six hours, boom! I’m not here, I’m in Portugal.

Now I feel that they will pay the price.

Your family, staying home alone without you?

Yes. It is a price. I was touring – a year ago – and I was in a performing art center in the USA. One hour before the concert I opened Skype and I was talking to the family. I try to talk to my daughter, she’s very young so she doesn’t have a lot of patience… when I finished the conversation the head of the performing art center came to me and said

Was it Skype?

Yeah.

You’re talking to your family on Skype?

Yes. 

You know that it’s not worth anything?

What do you mean?

It’s bullshit! You’re not there!

What do you mean?

You can talk to your daughter 20 hours a day on Skype, and you will still not know anything about her. If you want to be a father, be a father! If you want to be an artist, be an artist! I don’t tell you what is good, but just for you to know, that when you’re abroad, you’re not at home. It’s better for you not to talk on Skype, to miss her, and she will miss you, and when you’re at home be 24/7 a father. And when you’re on the road, be on the road.

I don’t know if I agree with him.

I don’t! Of course if you’re not there, you’re not there, but… my family lives far from here and I talk to them every couple of days, once a week at least. It’s clear that it would be better if I were there, but it’s still better than if we don’t talk at all!

Exactly. But, still you have a very strong bond of many years, roots, and foundation, big, strong foundation, with your family. It’s not early times. Now you don’t need the touch of your mother anymore, you don’t need the kiss… you know how…

I think I understand what you mean, like you can maintain a long distance relationship but you cannot build up one if you’re not physically close…

Right. And you know how to summarize your day to a ten minutes conversation, which a baby cannot do! A baby is here and now.

Are you going to slow down with touring?

No! I’m not. When I talk about the responsibility, it’s this feeling… I know that if I stay at home the whole time, I’ll not be a good father…

You’ll be frustrated?

I’ll be frustrated, yes, that I’m not fulfilling myself. I feel that there is a balance, that when I’m there I’ll be fully there… and even when I’m there, there are times…

I think that the responsibility… at the back of your mind, every decision you’re taking, other people are being affected by this. This is the responsibility.

With the decisions that I took before, people were also affected. For example, I can decide I don’t want to tour for three months: it affects a lot of people from my band that won’t have a job. Or if the Global Rockstar’s staff decided I want to take a year off!… it will affect a lot of artists that are enjoying the platform!

Of course.

So you have to think this, but when you see the person that you are responsible (for) every day, then it jumps up from the back of your mind.

There is a musician, name Ömer Faruk Tekbilek – a very interesting Turkish musician – when his baby was born, he stopped touring for seventeen years!

Bwah! His father put his life on hold until the kid left for college?! That’s a lot of pressure for a child!

(This is the moment when I realize we’ve been chatting for almost an hour while I was told I had 30 minutes. So, being the stupid person I am, I warned Idan Are you not running late for your Konzerthaus appointment? and he went Ah, it’s all right, I’m having fun!)

His decision was a very brave move. He took a day job in a factory and had concerts only around his area, in a way that he would not need to travel for weeks or months. In order to wake up every day with his family and to go to sleep with his family.

There is never one answer. Maybe this decision made him a better human being, maybe a better musician! Maybe it was good for the child, because his father was there all the time. Maybe it was bad, some negative vibes, or maybe he was frustrated by this. I don’t know Ömer Faruk Tekbilek in person, therefore I cannot say if it was good or bad. I think that for any decision that you’re taking the results can take to one side or another.

Back to Bob Dylan. Who do you serve? And who serves you?

Bob Dylan’s Gotta Serve Somebody is very good food for thought. I think that every day we are serving someone and someone serves us. On a daily basis, I’m serving my daughters, I’m bringing food to the table for my family, even serving the audience sometimes, when someone writes me that he wants me to play this or that song. And even people that are working as employees, in the system of the Idan Raichel Project, or the Helycon Records (NB Idan’s label).

The secret is always to understand that the hierarchy is changing all the time. Sometimes you are the artist who is leading the audience, sometimes you are being led by the audience. Sometimes you are leading the record company, sometimes the record company is asking you to do some activities, or media, or press, or to pay attention to some musical choices…

I think that the secret is always to accept the fact that the hierarchy in each system is constantly changing. Changing and evolving.

It is the first time that I’ve approached musicians with such a high glam-ratio so I said to myself: This is my chance to learn about the rock star life. Is all that glitters glam?

I arrived 20 minutes early, mostly because I love the Arena – the most iconic underground location in Vienna. I always like to stroll around the venue, admire the spray paint art and breath in the carefully arranged chaos.

I called the tour manager just to let him know I was there. Instead of letting me wait at the bar next to the stage, as I was expecting, he invited me upstairs to the backstage area. It was almost 4pm and according to the schedule pinned on the wall, The Darkness had sound check at 5, dinner at 6 and the concert starting at 9pm.

First of all I met Bonnie, Justin’s dog, a honey colored almost-Yorkshire terrier wearing a purple angora sweater with golden jewel-buttons. My grandma would have dubbed as a bit out-of-date, but who am I to question Bonnie’s fashion choices? Also, Bonnie likes cheese biscuits.

While I waited, The Darkness’ band members were looking around the backstage for props to make some jokes on stage. One involved rock and roll and they chose a broken brick for the rock and a bread bun for the roll. Then they stopped for a second wondering about the roll – these people are no beginners. They looked around for a German mother-tongue person to ask. I happened to be the only one in the room that didn’t belong to the tour-crew. (Little did they know that I’m not German mother-tongue but Italian! I didn’t say anything.)

Dan: Do you think people in the audience will understand the bread for roll?

The bread he chose was a Semmel, the round bread roll that is very much a synonym for Austrian breakfasts. People in the audience would probably go Semmel-Semmel-Semmel in their head, like Pavlov’s dogs.

Now, I had to be careful: I really enjoyed being the center of attention and I wanted to talk for the longest time possible, but I also wanted to avoid being interrupted or losing their attention midsentence – that would be too humiliating!

Me: Hmm, I’m not sure about the roll… I think not many Austrians understand the word roll for bread. The rock is safe, though.

Dan: Should I get toilet paper from the loo, then?

Me: Oh yes, much better!

Dan: Thank you so much!

Me: Err… that was really an important contribution…

Dan: No, no, it was important!!

Me: My parents will be so proud!

Fun-fact: I told my parents, indeed, but they weren’t as proud as I expected. Actually, they weren’t proud at all. Bloody bourgeois!!

Dan Hawkins, with his well-brushed longish hair and sober spectacle frames, looks like a cross between the new sexy math teacher all girls will fall in love with and a rock star in disguise. It turns out the hair and the glasses are indeed a disguise.

Do you get recognized on the street?

Dan: I just cut my hair and I wear glasses, so I’m pretty much going under the radar, but when my hair is longer I tend to get recognized for Justin as well… People on the street shout

Justin! Justin!

And when I don’t react

Is that Justin? Are you Justin? Or are you the other one?!

Rufus: Oh my god, nooo!! The other one!!

Dan: So many fucking times!!

Oh my! And what do you answer? ‘Cos you have to be nice to fans!!

Dan: Ha, this is a misperception! I don’t have to be nice to anyone!

(Both laugh, a loud and evil mwhahaha!!)

Dan: If someone is rude to you, you can be rude back, I think.

(In a low voice) That was not very Christian of me, but I’m not Christian! Hehe!

Rufus Taylor looks like he really should: a young guy who’s living his dream. Right now. He has a light in his eyes, an infective energy. Maybe it is also so evident because he is 24, younger than the other band members who are all fortyish.

What are the best moments of the rock star life? When you think YES! I love this job!?

Rufus: (folds his hands in his lap, crosses his legs like a professor at an exam, and talks with a straight face) Being single and on tour is a great thing.

Hehe! Would you like to elaborate on that?!

Rufus: Err… I shouldn’t!!

(While Rufus talks, Dan is looking at him, Cheshire-Cat smile, and giving an enigmatic hmm… every couple of seconds)

When you’re single on tour that’s one of the best parts that I’ve experienced, people are just so willing to give you a party or take you to a party! Everyone is willing to give… everyone is just up for a good time! It’s so much easier than… err… hehe…

…than organizing all those parties yourself?!

Hahaha! Anything that happens to be on your mind is very easily possible when you’re on tour.

And the worst part of the rock star life?

Rufus: The worst? The worst is… whohoho…

Dan: It’s difficult to answer that one, isn’t it? Because the worst can be really, really bad. The most common thing that people find difficult with touring at a high level is the sheer amount of time you’re away from home. It’s very hard to…

Rufus: And having a good crew as well!

Dan: Oh, yes, that’s…

Rufus: …vital! If you’re on tour with a bad crew of people you don’t like, it becomes very tedious very quickly.

Dan: Because everyone is living together and everyone is on the same level, we literally live the same life. On the bus I sleep here, Rufus is there, someone else is below there and everyone is together, and shares everything…

We’ve got a fantastic crew at the moment, really, it couldn’t be better. But it’s not always like that… sometimes it’s very much like Animal Farm…

Anything else?

Dan: I think a lot of people wouldn’t be able to handle the smell of a tour bus at three in the morning.

Rufus: Yap! True!

I’ve never be on a tour bus, how does it smell?

Dan: There’s this myth, they say that when they open the door of an airplane after a long flight, apparently the smell is enough to knock you out… methane…

(I’m not English mother tongue and this is definitely a word I’ve always seen in written form but never heard pronounced)

Sorry, I didn’t get that?

Dan: Me-tha-ne.

(I turn my head on the side a little)

Hu?

Rufus: Do you understand flatulence?

(But before I can confirm that I, indeed, understand the word flatulence…)

Dan: FARTING!

(And I made a face exactly like this: °______°)

Well, it’s a small environment!

Rufus: Yes, maybe that’s the worst!

Dan: That and champagne hangovers! They’re quite bad, nothing beats a champagne hangover.

(I’ll have to trust them on this one too. I’ve never been on a tour bus and I’ve never had enough champagne at disposal to get drunk on it. I’m starting to wonder if I have the right job at all!)

Rufus: Maybe a hangover and then a long sound check! That’s really horrible.

Dan: Bwah! Back in the days The Darkness was, how can I say… really serious on booze… until a point where we didn’t sound check for a year and a half. Even at arena level.

Rufus: (his eyes widen with a hint of admiration) What?!

Dan: Yeah, we would basically sleep, stay sleeping in our hotels, and we’d come to the venue half an hour before the show…

And? Did it work well?

Dan: No. We were shit!!

(NB During this Rufus has been laughing his ass off)

Hehe, when I say Rock and Roll is also a lifestyle I’m not necessarily thinking sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, I’m not interested in this things…

Dan & Rufus: (interrupt me almost affronted) Why not?!

(We all laugh)

Oh, I’ve already read so much about it!

I think each person lives in his own parallel universe, or time zone if you will, made of the kind of life that one lives… and this very much influences your life, the things you do, the people you hang out with, the places you visit…

Dan: Everyone in the band is different. But my lifestyle, when I’m not touring, is very much up at half six, kids to school by nine, then some very mundane stuff to do, pick them up and going to bed by eleven. And then you go on tour and you wake up at eleven…

Which is normal, I guess? How can you get up at 8 if you go to bed at 4 in the morning? There is no other way to do it!

Dan: Yeah. The whole thing shifts, and it’s very personal. About the whole experience of being “rock stars”… a lot of those things are by necessity, you know? Some people in the real world – when I leave the real world and I go on tour – they can’t believe that the first contact I make with them is 2pm, when I’ve just woken up. And they go…

Oh bloody rock stars! Lazy bastards, you’re living the dream!

Rufus: Yeah…

Dan: What they don’t realize is that I’ve been in affliction to sleeping in a tour bus. When the tour bus is moving I can’t sleep – right? – so when the bus finally finishes moving, around nine in the morning and we get to our destination, that’s when I get to bed. That’s not a very nice existence, you know? It’s very personal, and I think there are a lot of myths about what it’s like to be a touring musician.

The tour is probably when it becomes more apparent, this living in the tour-bubble is a world by itself, that you bring with you… do you really notice if you’re in Vienna or Prague? I mean, besides that all the writings are in German?

Rufus: Oh, you know where your next gig is going to be, so most of the time you know where you wake up! (giggles) But there are occasions when you look out of the window and you wonder where are we again?!

But I think, as far as it goes… when you get back from the tour and people get surprised when you still call them at two in the afternoon… It’s just a combination of every single day, you get more and more tired, you lose more and more sleep, so by the end of the tour you’re completely shattered! Most people will end up knocked down in two days!

Dan: And we all get ill!

Rufus: Yeah, everyone gets ill!

Dan: Every single time! After the last gig…

Rufus: …your immune system’s dead!

After the last gig. Before you were probably kept together by nerves?

Rufus: Yeah, it’s the time when you relax, your brain is telling you ok, this is it, now you can fall down! And your immune system just disappears.

And when you’re not on tour can you really have the life that you want? You, Dan, said you have this “classic” life, with kids and school…

Dan: Yeah, I do!

You’re much younger, Rufus, what about you? Do you?

Rufus: No!! Hehe, not yet!

Dan: He’s on tour-modus all the time!!

(All laugh)

Dan: It depends, though, family and home time… that’s quite a small time, generally. Because, you’ve got to remember, we write music together, we co-op music, and we generally go away from our homes to do that.

Like a retreat?

Dan: Yeah, we tend to go all over… a lot of places, Spain, Ireland, Ibiza…

Rufus: Yeah, somewhere with no interruptions…

Dan: …by people! (Turns to Rufus) How many weeks of last year have you been at home?

Rufus: Oh, not at all…

Dan: Like, three weeks?

Rufus: Hardly!

Dan, I imagine that you and your brother Justin became musicians “the normal way”, a passion that develops into a career. It is no secret that you, Rufus, are the son of Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor, so you were born into a completely different setting. Many people think, if you come from a family like yours, that…

Rufus: That is easy?

Easy? Well, that’s not what I had in mind, but in a way it must also be a bit easier…

Dan: I imagine it a lot harder, because the whole thing about being a musician is getting people to take you seriously. It’s always difficult and musicians are very prejudiced about musician’s offspring and very snooty…

Many think that if your parents are famous, you becoming famous is just circumstantial and has nothing to do with actual talent. But I know people in the same situation – following their parent’s steps in the applied arts – and in my opinion the biggest advantage they have is that their parents and their environment value that kind of talent. Nurture that talent.

Had I told my parents I want to sing for a living I’d still be grounded in my room 20 years later!

Dan: Yeah, like that is never gonna work!

Exactly, they don’t take it seriously! You have to fight on two fronts, the struggle to set foot in the industry, but also internally in your family. I imagine this to be the biggest privilege that comes with a famous musician parent. More than the connections and everything…

Rufus: Hmmm…

Am I wrong thinking this?

Rufus: No, no! It’s kind of difficult to explain…

My father is the reason why I enjoy playing drums, because drums were always in the house. From my earliest memories, I always remember seeing and hitting drums – and enjoying it. That was obviously the first thing that got me interested. And while most people develop different interests growing up, I just stayed on the drums, purely… I just loved it!

Dan: Mine and Justin’s parents were very much like that, they thought they were normal choices we were making. When we were younger my dad always said to us…

If someone else is doing something, if they can do that job, so could you. All you need to do is work hard and you can do it.

So because he had that attitude, we had that attitude, and when we had the talk at the end of high school

What are you going to do?

I’m not doing anything!

(Rufus and I jump on our chairs and laugh)

What?! Is this really what you told your father after graduating?! :-O

Dan: Hehe, more or less! I told him…

I’m not gonna waste my time doing A-levels (NB a school leaving qualification test that students in the UK must pass if they want to access university) and getting a degree.

I was pretty much a straight A student, as Justin was – but I just thought This is a fucking massive waste of time, why do I need to do this?!

My plan was more…

Somehow get to London, join the right band and I’ll be a professional musician!

And he was…

Yeah, go for it, son!

Rufus: Good parents!

Dan: Great parents!!

Rufus: I forgot that point earlier, but just like Dan and Justin’s parents, my parents never looked down at the decision I made. Do what you love and what you believe in.

Dan: I equally think, being a parent myself, I’d never push my kids into music. I’ve got quite a few musician friends who are basically force-feeding music to their kids, and you just know it’s gonna go the other way…

Rufus: Right!

Dan: Whatever my kids wanna do, I’ll be right behind them, if they want to be a plumber… whatever! Anything other than… hmm… ok, next question!

(Both laugh)

I’ve noticed this not only with musicians… if you enjoy your job, you’ll probably be more flexible with your children in terms of allowing them exotic choices. While if you’re struggling with your job you’ll probably want them to study something valuable. Do you agree?

Rufus: Yeah, absolutely! There’s no proof to either one, what’s better…

Dan: No, it’s true, it’s pretty fucking random anyways, isn’t it? It’s terrifying.

Rufus: Yeah, my brothers and sisters also do different things. One of them is a doctor, one’s in advertising, stand-up comedy, one writes books… there’s no telling what your kids are going to do.

Well, Rufus, all of you do something very creative!

Dan: I hope my sister doesn’t get too creative at being a doctor, because that could end up really dangerous!

Haha! Right, with the one exception of the doctor-sister!

(We all laugh)

The lineup of The Darkness changed over time, people left and came back, it’s sort of a troubled story. Rufus joined in April 2015, less than a year ago. Speaking of line up changes, there are bands that focus almost exclusively on the friendship factor, while others put all the attention on the technical skills. How does it work for you?

Dan: When I joined – (NB to Dan) which was ten months ago? – it was almost instantaneous. We got on from the get-go, it was apparent very early that working and touring together was enjoyable and fun.

But it’s also about being able to play with each other, because, you know, you can like someone…

…and then it doesn’t work, musically?

Rufus: Yeah, sometimes it doesn’t really happen and then you have to make a decision… but thankfully it’s been great from the get-go.

Dan and I worked very closely learning the songs, we went through that very quickly. We instantly felt that we play together very well…

So it worked on both the personal and the musical level?

Rufus: Yeah, you can hear it when you don’t even have to look at the person and you know where they are going.

Dan: Sometimes you just can’t get that connection, it’s quite rare, it’s really rare. I certainly didn’t have it with Ed!! (NB Ed Graham, the original drummer of The Darkness who left end of 2014).

Rufus: Hahaha!

Dan: Not even for a fucking moment! Haha!

Rufus, when you join a band that has been active for a long time, is there a phase, at the beginning, where you feel like a guest?

Rufus: At the beginning I was nervous, because I wanted to get it absolutely right, as best and as fast as I could. Because I know the guys have been doing this longer than I… they’re a proper band and I don’t want to fuck it up.

So yes, at the beginning, the first few times we went in and out of Europe, the first few gigs I did…

Dan: It was tough, wasn’t it?

Rufus: It was tough but I was trying to keep my energy up, making it as energetic and strong as I could, to help drill it into my brain, basically – it’s the best way for me to learn. I think the guys picked up on the energy, definitely, and ultimately it got easier and I didn’t have to think about what song is next and what do I have to do in the next part…

And how is it for the rest of the band to have a new member?

Dan: We’re so lucky, like you were saying before – the friendship thing is so important and being on the same page, being part of the gang, is much more important than being able to play or not.

To find someone who can really play and fits in perfectly… I’d say the chances are very very small. And I do think…

Rufus: I want to say, it’s the other way around as well! It’s relative because of my age, but I have spent many years looking exactly for this kind of band and music to be playing for, so…

Dan: There aren’t many of us around anymore…

Rufus: No, there aren’t.

Dan: It’s certainly important to have him, we are just very lucky.

Rufus’ first gigs were basically just festival appearances, we had a shit-crew at the time as well, and loads of things were going wrong, it must have been so stressful! We were all so desperate for the summer to end so that we could actually go on a proper tour. Like rock stars!!

(Both laugh)

We’re still young enough to make a difference. I think, we kind of lost our way a bit on the second record (NB One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back, 2005) and we’ve finally found our mojo, so… we have high ambitions still.

So you’ve got your mojo back with this album Last of Our Kind, what are your plans for the future?

Dan: Ahm… well…

Are there plans?

Dan: Yeah! Basically we’ve written about twenty-odd songs for the next record already, with Rufus…

Rufus: In two days!

Dan: Yeah.

The new record is in the drawer?

Dan: No, no!

Rufus: There’s still polishing off to do.

Dan: Yeah.

Rufus: But there’s definitely some potential ideas.

Dan: It’s very exciting, we’re trying to work out how our year will look like, touring-wise. If we wanted to go for 2016, we could get an album out and tour the UK… but I think we’re going to be more realistic and focus on making it, then release next year.

So, a new album, hopefully early 2017; we’ll be touring America again, it’s building well for us, every time we get back it’s getting bigger and bigger; we’d like to do maybe a concept album and write musicals as well…

Musicals!

Dan: I really think we should write a musical. Not about us!! About some completely random topic…

Oh, whatever it is, do that, please!

Since then he has recorded six studio albums, and his songs have been used in numerous films and TV series. His latest album, Onward and Sideways, was released in 2015.

“I played in Vienna 10 years ago, it was my first tour, I opened for Tory Amos! I got to see Vienna and had some Schnitzel, it was lovely! Over the years I got a lot of emails from people asking to come back to Vienna.”

…and here he is!

Coming Saturday, January 30, 2016
Joshua Radin – 8pm in Chaya Fuera, Vienna!
Tickets and info here.

The music industry has changed, true, and we think of these changes inevitably in a negative way. Focusing on what is missing compared to the good old (pre-internet) days.

Now think of this: In the good old days the labels were in control. Nowadays the artist is in control. In the good old days there were strict rules regulating what could be published and how. Nowadays one can release whatever material in whatever quality they like. If you can find enough people that like your music and buy your music, in whatever form possible, you can build a career. In a sense, also, music fans are more in control of the music market than ever before.

Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of all the ludicrous revenue streams they had back in the good old days, with record stores on every corner, radio hits and the major labels. Joshua’s positive attitude made me realize that maybe it is time to stop talking about the good old days at all but to focus on the brand new digital era that lies at our feet, full of new possibilities.

Hi Joshua! Thank you for your time during the weekend!

Hi! Of course, no problem!

There is somehow a gospel about you that goes

“Joshua Radin picked up the guitar by chance. He wrote Winter for fun. He happened to be two degrees of Kevin Bacon from the big licensing boom of the early 2000s …and he took off!”

Well, sort of! In a nutshell! But you’re right, I didn’t plan on being a musician, I didn’t grow up studying music and playing an instrument or anything like that.

No singing in the shower?

Oh, I was singing in the shower!

At the beginning of your career you were really a beginner, I mean at the guitar! What was the feeling?

Scared!! I learned my first few chords and then I was on stage playing in front of an audience. Most people have their whole life to practice, I kind of got thrown into it. I had to learn by doing!

What was more difficult, the big crowd or the small intimate crowd?

It was always tougher when I knew musicians would be in the crowd!

But the smaller audience is always more difficult. Because you can see everybody from the stage, while the big crowd, with light and everything, it’s not as intimate. You don’t see the reaction of every single person!

Like you have a sort of screen in between?

Yeah. For instance over Christmas I was at my girlfriend’s parents’ house and her mother was like

Hey, would you pick up your guitar and play a couple of songs for our guests?

There were maybe 20 people and… that’s the toughest thing to do!

Hahaha!

It’s tougher than playing in front of thousands of people, because if you play in front of a thousand people you’re on stage and there are lights…

… kind of a barrier?

Yeah! But you and your guitar in a kitchen in front of 20 people that don’t know you… and you see everyone and their reactions, there’s nowhere to hide!

That’s the most difficult, I think.

Most musicians actually wait much longer for success to come, reading your story it feels almost like you were born a musician but nobody noticed until you could finally blossom!

(Laughs)

Does it feel like that or more like a phase in your life? Now you do music but maybe if something happens you could do… I don’t know, poetry? Paintings?

I always felt I was a creative person. I was interested in many different kinds of media, screenwriting for example, anything that would express what’s going on in my head. I was interested in doing that.

Music was one thing… I never thought I could do it, it seemed like a magic trick! But once I tried, it clicked!

Actually that’s how music feels to me, I tried a lot but it never clicked! I’m amazed.

It’s like when you’re a kid and you pick up a pencil, you draw something and either you like what you’re drawing or not. I think when I picked up the guitar, I thought It’s the song coming out of me and either people are gonna like hearing that or people are not gonna like hearing that. Luckily for me, they liked hearing it! So I kept doing it! It feels good.

But whether it’s a guitar, a paint brush, a laptop, whatever, I just knew I wanted to be creative – it doesn’t really matter what form the expression takes.

So it doesn’t feel like you finally discovered your hidden vocation but more you’ve found a channel to let all the creativity out?

Yeah, I guess. Some people say they were born to be a musician…

Exactly!

I don’t know about that for me. I think I was born to try to create things and express myself. Maybe five years from now I won’t be making music, maybe I’ll find something that interests me more, that I can be creative in a way…

I love music – don’t get me wrong! It gives me the possibility to travel around, meet a lot of people, and have a great life so far! Maybe I’ll be playing music and writing albums for the rest of my life, I don’t know. I don’t want to be locked into doing it.

Your story also sounds like you were the right guy in the right place, although you were not physically in LA. You moved from New York to LA for your music, right?

Yes, exactly.

This is very interesting for beginners: how important is the geography?

It wasn’t the geography, but in a sense it was… I moved to LA because I’ve found a community of songwriters and performers all around one venue, one little tiny club. It was the community that I’ve never been part of and all of a sudden I had all these friends – I was talking to people about songwriting and being inspired by people and watching their concerts and picking up tips…

From New York you had the feeling you were too far from it?

New York didn’t have that scene at that time, LA had that scene. A lot of my music has been used in films and television and that all happens in Los Angeles, all that is done here.

(This is the moment when Josh – who was driving in in his car and talking to me over the speakers – parked and got home. His voice suddenly came out of my phone so clear that I jumped and looked over my shoulder to check if he maybe physically entered the room!)

Also, when you’re starting doing something you’ve never done before, it’s scary. It is nice to hang around people you can talk to, who are like-minded, it is inspiring.

You seem to navigate the online market quite well and I believe you do it yourself…

Yeah, basically it’s just me and my manager, I don’t have a record label or anything like that.

You’re the first famous artist I talked to that does it himself!

Well, it’s nice having a bunch of control over your own career!

Do you think there is a right strategy online?

I don’t know, if I have any advice to give it’s just… sometimes I see artists trying to be something that they are not. Having their life and then a separated stage life.

For me what’s been easiest is, I never have to worry about getting caught because I’m always just being myself!

At my performances I don’t dress up in some costume, I wear just whatever I’m wearing that day – that’s what I’m wearing on stage that night. I never think about that sort of thing, I just focus on the writing of the songs! And playing them!

Speaking of social media, if I post a picture on Instagram or Facebook, of me on vacation… it’s just me on vacation! I think I share my pictures with my fans as if it was my family.

Ultimately, as a musician today, where is the money? Online sales, radio play, soundtracks, live concerts…

Ah, there’s so many places! What people just have to realize is, the record business is dead – no one buys records anymore. The music business is not dead, the record business is!

I make money in many different ways, just … not as much as it used to be!

(We both laugh)

Hehe, artists need to save their money! Any minute it can all go away!

It’s going back to what it used to be – singles! Like before the LP was invented, there was an A-side and a B-side of a small 45 rpm record… and also radio play, everything is about singles!

I was talking to my manager the other day about these new songs I have… but it’s not a full album, in the sense that it’s 11-12 songs. I was wondering

Do you think I can release an album that’s 8 songs?

And she was like

Yeah, why not?!

There’s no rule, there are no rules anymore! It used to be you have to have this many songs on the album and this few singles and this… like formulas for success. Nowadays, just because of the Internet, you can do what you want.

There is a lot of freedom with it!

They are currently touring Europe with Karacho and I had the chance to meet the DONOTS shortly before Christmas, backstage before their concert in the Viennese Arena.

I told them a bit about Global Rockstar, who we are and what we do, and I mentioned that Global Rockstar 2015 – the third edition of the world’s largest online music contest – just ended and the winner is Methedras, a thrash-metal band from Milan…

DONOTS: Yes!!

Not only! Second place is Ani Lozanova, a heavy metal singer from Germany…

YEAH!!

The ballade is just third…

Haha! If thrash-metal is number one then the world is not so fucked up! (All laugh)

Whenever I have the chance to meet someone so successful in the music industry I love to ask about their own experience in regard to their career path…

All right!

Let me begin with the usual question: why did you become musicians and what would have become of you, if not music?

I think we became musicians out of boredom! We were bored teenagers looking for something we could do together. None of us could even play any instruments. We started at the youth center in Ibbenbüren, our hometown.

It was 1994 and somehow we liked the same music… we listened to Bad Religion, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana – of course, back then nobody could avoid them – and we started covering these bands in order to get along with each other. We also started quite early to write our own songs… and they were not good! Not good at all!

There is this video of our first concert – awful! Once we played tennis against Die Tote Hosen at an MTV charity. Die Tote Hosen’s stake was an Echo Award, ours was this video, should we have lost they would have got it – and immediately published! Thank God it was a tie, we had to interrupt the game because of the darkness.

Where is the video now? Buried in the garden?

Hehe, yes, yes!

At the beginning it was very important to have this youth center, Scheune, that housed us. We had a rehearsal room at disposal and we feel like we played only there for the first ten years. There were music exchanges – with people from Holland or with other German cities… but the most important thing at the beginning is that you play! That you gather experience on stage and that the people can see you, live.

This is incredibly important, you can record as many albums or upload as many songs to the internet as you want … what must happen is that the people see you live. Because it is touching. It is something you cannot download for free, you must see it… this is exactly what we did at the beginning – like stupid – we played always in the same club!

You mean at the beginning one should focus all the energy and connections to play live?

Of course! We should also mention that our beginning was at a time where there was no internet. I made the booking for the band myself, I spent whole afternoons sitting around and flicking through British magazines. I looked for the biggest possible international band playing the smallest possible club. This was always the point at which a young band had a chance. For example: Lagwagon will play at a tiny youth center… I looked in the phone book or called the operator and asked for a fax or telephone number. Then I sent a fax, or called the venue and tried to get the person in charge on the phone

Hello! We are a young band and we would love to open for Lagwagon, you don’t have to pay us, Spritgeld (a token barely covering gasoline) would be nice, if not it’s ok… we would simply love to play!

Did it work?

Not often! But yes, sometimes it did!

It is always a statistics thing!

These were also the shows where we could reach new people in the different regions we were visiting – and I mean a lot of new people! Then we could afford to come alone next time and fill the small venue by ourselves!

Nowadays it is not comparable anymore, every band and every club have an online presence … if I were the owner of a club today I would just puke at the gazillion of e-mails saying Hey! We‘re the newest and coolest band!

To be successful as a band, of course, one needs talent…

Damn! That was it… (all laugh)

…what kind of character qualities make one suitable for a career in the music industry?

Endurance! Endurance is extremely important. And you must find your own path and stay true to that. If you make music like a flag-in-the-wind… people will notice! If you go what is hot at the moment? Ha, that’s exactly what we’ll do!… it just won’t work. You must find your path and then you must follow it.

You are always at your best when you do what you can do best. If you have to hide behind a crazy hairdo ‘cos you can’t put a song together, or if you spend more time in front of the mirror in the backstage that in rehearsing room… something is completely wrong! This is not how it works, it can cause a little stir for a while but will bring to nothing in the long term.

This is also something I always loved about the punk rock subculture: if you want to reach something, do it yourself. DIY spirit!

If you just sit around in your rehearsal room and wait, like in Wayne’s World, for Frankie Sharp of Sharp Records to pass by in his stretch-limo, accidentally the window is open and Oh, cool! A band is rehearsing! Let me see, I’ll give them a recording contract!… that’s not how it will work 

We produced the first couple of records ourselves, we did the booking ourselves, and even today we’re quite the control freaks. It is not easy to work with us, even if everybody says that we’re a nice band. We are nice people and we’re easy-going but when it comes to our music we’re very focused and we want to know exactly what is going to happen with it.

Another important character quality is, one should never take oneself too seriously! You must take seriously what you do, never yourself.

Founded in 1994, first tour in 1998, the real breakthrough in 2001 with Pocketrock. In the meantime seven years have gone by. When was the moment you thought to yourself, I’ve made it!?

I hope it comes soon!! (All laugh)

I find this expression quite strange… what did one make?

Hmm… I don’t know how you phrase this concept in your head, but eventually the moment comes when one can say I am a musician! I make a living out of it!

I’d say – speaking for myself – I am not a musician… we are – however by chance – a band… but first we’re friends! Then we’re a band.

There was a moment, anyhow, when we had to choose between studying at university and keeping making music with the band. Both were too time consuming, with mandatory classes and all. We thought

Listen, we are very young, let’s put university on ice, it won’t hurt anybody, let’s try it for a couple of years, if it works it works, if not we’ll go back to school.

…and it worked well since!

Young bands ask us very often How can one become successful? and I always think What kind of weird question is this? My personal definition of success is the fact that we are five people that, after 20 years, can still be creative together and that have so much fun making music together!

Often young bands want to know How do I sell a lot of records? How do I get a chart-position? If these are the topics at the top of your list, as a newcomer, I’d say that you’ve started at the wrong end! First get out and play!!

If success comes, that’s a nice side effect, but it can’t be the aim of a band. Otherwise you’re one of those bands that – when a label signs you but says: play this music and wear this clothes – becomes a toy of the industry. And nobody wants to be that.

Last year, during Global Rockstar 2014, it came totally by chance to our knowledge that the winners of the Austrian pre-selection Laurin&Nico, due to attention generated by the contest – were in the charts in Japan! I believe you were successful in Japan without knowing too. How do you handle something like this?

It was the same for us! We learned about it by chance.

We were in New York, 2003, at the CMJ – a fair – and we wanted to check-in at the hotel. We had all our guitars with us and in the lobby a Japanese man approached us. He asked if we were participating in the fair, where we came from, what’s our name…

DONOTS?! Wicked! In Japan you’re famous! All the kids listen to your music, you’re on the radio!

Everything was in a broken English and after he left we commented to each other Did we get that right? What was that? Gibberish, it can’t be real!

Shortly after Ingo came to us Actually, I’ve been receiving mails from Japan recently – it was the beginning of e-mails and such – it looks like something is going on…

And, as a matter of fact, in June we toured Japan for the first time and found that we were really in the charts with imported CDs. The radios were playing us and we even had a little hit, all without our knowledge!

Then Amplify the Good Times was released and it jumped from zero to #2 in the international charts, it was so strange… Whitney Huston was one position behind us! Totally weird!!

A smasher. I don’t know how to push something like that, though… but we made good use of it…

How?

We founded our own music label, Solitary Man Records…

To better pursue the market?

Actually, to release bands that were not officially imported to Japan.

Each time we were in Japan we searched record stores and realized that many bands were not officially released. Cool bands, like the Beatstakes, or Dover from Spain, they were always in the import drawer. At horrible prices!

We thought we could open a label in Japan to officially release bands that were otherwise only available through import. We have very short channels, we can talk directly to many bands. We released bands like Dropkick Murphys, Boysetsfire… all possible big bands up to Placebo. It was really cool!

For your 20^th anniversary you released a single in German – your mother tongue – for the first time. A year later Karacho, your first album completely in German. Here in Austria, for the last couple of years, we have a kind of revitalization of Austrian music…

Bilderbuch, Wanda…

Exactly! Why wait 20 years and then sing in German? Is it Zeitgeist? The spirit of the time? German is in the air? Or is it you personal spirit?

We started making music in English because we all listened to Californian punk rock and at the beginning it was clear to us that we sing in English. It was natural.

It was also the spirit, back then, many punk rock bands from Germany sang in English. That’s how the scene was and we didn’t question it. Even if we had a lot of music in German in our records collections at home and we covered German-singing bands, Die Kassierer, Die Toten Hosen, Die Ärzte…

After 20 years we thought, let us try something else!

Something new?

Yes, so that is stays exciting for us, as a band.

I am Italian and a very common comment I get is how musical my mother tongue is. I personally think that different languages are best suited for different music genres…

Yes, definitely!

We noticed that the German language is more direct, and consequently the whole record is more direct. German also has more polysyllabic words, this means you have more staccato, you can be faster with your vocals. I’d say the record is more aggressive than usual, more of a punch in the face.What happens to the music when you sing in another language?

We also recorded Karacho in English, for Japan and the USA. When recording the vocals it was freaky: the same song, with the same lyrics only translated, had two completely different settings in two languages! Some songs work better in German, some I’d even say in English. Some are not completely satisfying and it is really freaky, ‘cos it’s the same lyrics, only the language is different. Nevertheless it is a different approach!

English flows a little more, a bit like Italian which always sounds like one’s singing. And German sounds like someone is ranting at you! German bands, even when they sing about love, always sound very brutal. But for a punk band it is so right! You always have a latent feeling the music is spitting at you.

The pronunciation in German can almost be too direct, somehow it also sounds a bit stupid: if you sing too fast everything gets quickly packed and convoluted. One hides behind their mother tongue.

Could it be that the directness lies in the fact that German is your mother tongue and if you write or sing in English you always have a kind of filter in-between?

Definitely! In German you can’t fool yourself! You understand every word. It happened that the lyrics worked well on paper, then you begin to sing and it sounds like crap. There’s not much you can do, you must change it. But afterwards the meaning is not completely correct anymore… because in German it is more evident that the sense changed slightly. Your own mother tongue is less forgiving.

To go back to the question why German? It also simply happened. For our anniversary we actually wanted to release one or two songs and we wanted it to be something special. So we thought to do it in German. We went into the studio and the beginning was bumpy. In the end it was with the first track on the album – Ich mach nicht mehr mit – also the first one we finished, that we felt the breakthrough. Now we knew where we wanted to go.

Thank you, boys, it was a pleasure!

For us too!