chart storming

here's a word from the great john hartford...

...and through all this fiddling it starts to be clear 

why we'll never be top of the charts.

but it's all just as well that it all stays just so

or we might have to share it with folks we don't know

from places we know we would not want to go

and in ways that would just break our hearts.

a while ago we put a song forward for what looked like a really interetsing project. some guys on facebook had decided that they would pick 40 artists making music of merit and orgainse an all-at-once co-ordinated song buying week which would result in said artists standing a good chance of charting in the UK top 40. they called it 'storm the charts'.

it was very well organised. they did their research. they took their time and waited until enough people had registered interest for the project to stand a chance of working. they divided up the people into smaller, more manageable groups and gave them artists to vote on. they probably did loads of other clever stuff after that, too, but that will remain a mystery to me.

in fact, it got so complicated that i forgot to pay attention ("oh, this requires some real attention from me - i'll do it later") and solicit votes for our song at the crucial moment, so you'll not be seeing us in charts any time soon.

do not dismay though. our good friend steven finn, who you may remember opened up the launch show for 'no.5' back in february, wasn't so distrait. you can buy his song - 'hail to the theif' - any time between july 01st and july 03rd and leave your mark on the UK top 40.

i must say it's very encouraging that so many people (over 31,000 at the time of writing) seem to care enough to sign up for this, an attempt to prove to the big machine that we still care about real music. hurray for all of those people, and hurray for the people who organised this project.

and boooo to us for not being organised enough to get involved properly.

here's steve - have a listen. buy his song. thanks.

http://www.kirstymcgee.com


http://www.facebook.com/kirstymcgeemusic


http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com


http://www.hobopop.com

do we really love indie music?

a few people have been speaking out recently in blogs and the like on the current position of the working artist. here's a considered response, with appropriate links...

we don't like to complain. we have a great life. we get to play the music we write to people who like to listen (most of the time), travel all over the place, meet great folk who become good friends and generally do what we love. we're lucky. it would be a mistake though to think that for that reason we don't have a hell of a time making it happen. it's hard work doing this.

not that it isn't worth it - and, for that matter, not that it shouldn't be hard work. it makes sense that you should have to earn the priviledge. except that sometimes it's hard to work out what you're supposed to do to keep your way of life sustainable. talking to a few people about what we do always throws up some interesting contradictions that continue to puzzle a lot of musicians.

the argument that i often raise - that doing this is 'self-indulgent' and that we musicians shouldn't expect to be supported to do what we want to do - is invariably dismissed by people who argue that providing music is an important job, that people require it, and that it is important to make sure it continues. that's an encouraging thing to hear, but these same people will easily agree that there is too much music out there, and will happily admit to acquiring their music without parting with any cash, be it legally or illegally. 

the democratisation of musicianship can only be a good thing. the fact that now anyone who wants to can record and disseminate their work is a great thing, at least on paper. most are agreed that we don't want to return to a world of music that is dominated by the major labels' ditcatorship, but somehow the genuine differences between this model and the support of independents at the point of delivery haven't become clear yet. indie really is a healthy place for a band to be and it certainly has helped us and made us happy to be at the helm of our own ship, but it changes some things quite radically.

wasn't interesting independent music exactly what we all wanted when we said we were tired of the major labels? what we haven't yet realised is that these musicians who have been 'freed from the tyranny of EMI' (or whatever) can't do what they're doing without our engagement. the irony of it is that while people are delighted to see their money go directly to artists instead of to steve jobs or a major label, they are more reluctant to spend it in those circumstances.

i just read an excellent blog post written by a friend of mine. it ends with a simple sentence:

"there’s some fantastic folk music out there; it just needs your support."

because, amazingly, we seem still to be behaving as if the old model was current. my friend's blog expresses frustration at the fact that people are still only aware of the bands with the commercial support and the big publicity machines. with fewer people paying for recorded music in the first place, and concert attendances down (recent tweets and news stories from imogen heap make for a sobering read), there is no way that artists can pay for the cynical publicity machine that still seems to be required. the capital simply isn't there.


here's a tweet that was posted recently by another excellent blogger:

"shall we all chip in and pay for a national marketing campaign for a band who really deserves it? seems to be all it takes for chart success." 

it's sad to think that these guys might be right - that you can pretty much buy record sales. that seems to defeat the object a little though... and it doesn't fix a problem that runs much deeper than that.

we are so used to buying into certainties that investing in a band you like just because you like them is hard to come to terms with now. what if they aren't cool? what if the zeitgeist disagrees with you? we end up then with the problem outlined in the blog i linked to above - that only those bands with the big PR budgets can galvanise the support they need. sadly, what those PR budgets generally mean for the artists is a choice between huge debt or major label involvement. this results not so much in us supporting indie music and turning our backs on the big machine, as buying into the impression that that's what we're doing without taking on the 'danger' of actually making an individual statement of taste. i suspect that even the bands who are managing to maintain a solvent profile would appreciate not having to, so they could actually have a go at living off the resulting sales.


we really do love what we do - we, and countless others like us, will surely always find a way of carrying on with it and avoiding the world of the 'proper job'. it's therefore surely dangerous and unhealthy to see these complications as anything more than a small part of our situation. i do think it's our own responsibility as artists to create a sustainable model and keep it going. my friend is right about one thing though, and that is that if people want the results of the indie scene to still be available to them we will have to find some way of supporting the musicians (who often engage and inspire those who then go on to channel the mainstream) - and it would be nice to do that before they died, for a change...

finally, we coudn't recommend more highly this article, which adds to this debate in a much more concise and literate manner.  please have a read... 



http://www.kirstymcgee.com
 
http://www.facebook.com/kirstymcgeemusic
 
http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com
 
http://www.hobopop.com

a new song and the hobopod-cast

the hobopodcast by hobopop

here is a link to the hobopod-cast, which we've been running since last autumn through the itunes store. we started posting things like rough recordings of new songs and copies of radio sessions we had permissions for during the run-up to the 'no.5' recording, and we've been enjoying getting email feedback on the new material from our subscribers.

we've had a few technical issues - you can still see the podcast at the itunes store but you can't subscribe to it. all the episodes appear to have gone. we're working on that in the hope that we can restore it, but in the meantime we've uploaded the podcast to soundcloud and to our hoboshop. we'll carry on doing that in future, too, so that you can get it from your preferred source. the hoboshop offers an RSS feed that will tell you every time we upload a new track, too.

if you haven't already heard the podcasts we've put up over the last six months then please have a flick through - you'll find early versions of songs like 'omaha', 'stonefruit' (this latter has a whole verse that was cut later on), and 'the last to understand' with gabe minnikin on mandolin, from the rehearsals for 'No.5'. the recordings (at least the ones we didn't make in the RTE studios in dublin) are pretty raw - you can hear the traffic outside and the magpies lauging at us through the window - but the songs are all there...

this sudden activity on the podcasting front is due to a new episode finally being ready. we tried to upload it recently and that was when we discovered that the itunes thing had stopped working. the new song is called 'hummingbird', and it's at the top of the list above. It's a very rough recording but the performance seems right to us. please tell us what you think.

http://www.kirstymcgee.com


http://www.facebook.com/kirstymcgeemusic


http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com


http://www.hobopop.com

welcome to the hoboblog

we've changed the name and address of this blog. it was a tough call. if you were following in an RSS reader you may be somewhat annoyed with us right now, and we are sorry. in fact, our heads are hung already, so don't shout. we hope you'll have found us again from all those links on our website and on the social media bits (in fact if you're reading this that's a pretty safe bet), and you'll consider asking your google reader or whatever to subscribe to this one instead.

the reason for moving on (apart from it being the hobo way, naturally)?

well, things are moving on. you know how it is. until now we've been blogging news of the last album and how wonderful it is, blah, blah, but it's been out for a while now - we're still touring it and selling it and all the rest of it but we're also getting down to some new things and even thinking about the next project already, albeit in an 'early stages' sort of way.

we wanted to be able to blog about that kind of thing, too, and generally talk about whatever we felt like talking about, so the 'no.5' blog was beginning to feel a bit limited. welcome, therefore, to the hoboblog, which we hope will be more entertaining, informative and representative of day-to-day hoboland. tell us what you want to see here, why don't you...

we'll start soon. promise. we leave for the continent in a few weeks, where we'll be playing a handful of festival dates and a few indoor shows, too, in advance of our tour in october. the summer dates, and those of our scottish tour are up online already by the way - come and see us if you can. in the meantime we'll try and think of clever things to say here, and keep you posted about what we're up to.

did you know, by the way, that kirsty keeps a photo diary? there's interesting fact number one for the new blog. she's got a great eye for portraits and details - she posts one photo a day, often with commenatry, which you can subscribe to in a reader if you're so inclined. we often post extra shots to our twitter account, too. we're actually playing with the idea of expanding the flickr account we set up to host our web gallery to incorporate these pictures, too. if you're a flickr user and you know how we might do that well, why don't you give us a shout?

http://www.kirstymcgee.com


http://www.facebook.com/kirstymcgeemusic


http://kirstymcgee.bandcamp.com


http://www.hobopop.com