kickstarters, passion, love, slavery & heartaches in a world where music is free...
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that music is a
fool’s career choice. But that doesn’t stop me from aspiring to be a fool.
Music, for those of us who choose to follow it, is an
addiction – sometimes close to a religion and at the very least an unshakeable
passion. It is also the best friend and companion it’s possible to have because
it very, very rarely leaves your side.
I experienced a brief period without music a few years ago
when I had a breakdown following a massive life change and those few weeks
reminded me of how vital music has always been to keeping me together, body,
mind and soul. Looking back, despite all of my other losses – a partner, a home
environment, a business model and a musical ally - losing music was perhaps the
biggest torment I had to face at a time when I needed it most.
When I started to recover, the music came too. It’s
difficult to sing through grief but it’s possible to make sounds by other means
and gradually the music creeps back in because when you’ve spent your whole
life with music it’s as much a part of you as breathing.
I don’t mind sharing this with you even though sharing a
passion or a weakness can be difficult and can make us vulnerable. In fact I
want to share it because I am beginning to believe that it’s this very
vulnerability that allows the music industry to function in the way that it
currently does, exploiting this addiction and passionate connection between
artists and their work to justify low-pay, no-pay, ‘exposure’ gigs, free
downloads and a whole host of other things that essentially force the artist
into a state of what can only be described as ‘slavery’.
A few years ago, Gillian Welch brought up the subject in her
song Everything is Free on her album Time the Revelator. My own The Last to
Understand from No.5 also explores the issue.
“Everything is free
now / that’s what they say / Everything I ever done / Gotta give it away /
Someone hit the big score / they figured it out / that we’re gonna do it anyway
/ even if it doesn’t pay” (Gillian Welch)
“Our labor has no value! Content is our name! We are nothing
but material fed into a machine to feed the Masters of the Internet!” (Marc Ribot)
I’m not moaning. Not really. Well, not much anyway…After
all, I’m English. Stiff upper lip and all that…But I am concerned that the
longer we allow this state of affairs to continue, the more we will drive down
the quality of not only live music (forcing professionals to get ‘straight
jobs’), but the other music that is available for us to consume. And I love
music and want it to be as good as it can be!
Sure, the internet and the amazing democratisation of the
recording process – garageband and the like – has made it possible for anyone
to make passable recordings, for nothing, at home, and to release them into the
wider world at the click of a mouse. This is a Good Thing. We can film bands on
our mobile phones & post the videos onto Youtube with as much ease as we
can lean across the bar to buy a drink. This is a Good Thing too…
I’m no luddite – in fact I think it’s bloody brilliant that
the internet is so full of beautiful, available music! But the downside of it,
as we all know, is that the internet is so full of smiling cats, sumo wrestlers
playing snap etc etc that we’re essentially having to wade through ‘space junk’
to reach anything that is meaningful or capable of touching our souls in a
positive and nurturing way.
At the risk of sounding high and mighty, it’s the search for
meaning and authenticity that drives some of us to make music in the first
place and it gets tiring to wade through space junk after a while...
With the ‘death of the album’ and the shortened attention
span that goes with it, comes the saddening truth that most musicians who
aspire to be professional can’t afford the luxury of professional studios and
end up playing for friends as favours, for the love of it or for the odd hit of
only-just-possible cash.
Let’s face it: living hand to mouth isn’t an option if you
have a family to feed – or indeed if you yourself need to eat. And if you
choose to live hand to mouth for the love of the music? I won’t lie to you –
it’s stressful & I’ve seen many musician and artist friends suffering from
depression and other mental and physical health problems as a result of the
continuous pressure to carry on working and the frustration of having to work
for nothing.
The industry knows that it’s onto a good thing. That we will
all work for the love and to feed our passion for music until we all fall over…but
who would expect a plumber to come and mend their pipes because it’s a job he
likes doing – or a banker to get up and go to work 5 days a week with no pay…and
there would be an uproar and strikes if members of any other profession were
paid as little for their ‘services’ as the majority of musicians. We are
‘bullied’, however, in some part because we ‘choose’ or allow ourselves to be
bullied…
All of the ‘old’ stuff we consume – the Bob Dylans, the
Leonard Cohens and all of the consummate writers who currently hold such high
standing amongst those of us who are passionate about songwriting – were able
to explore music in a way that enabled them the time to make mistakes, explore
their skills and to become masters of an art form that is capable of moving us.
We’re lucky to have these writers to look up to and to learn from.
But whilst we’re willing to go out and pay hundreds of
pounds to see these legends playing at this or that festival, the £3 to see a
local band or the £8 to download an album doesn’t seem to be something we’re
willing to reach into our pockets for anymore…
I don’t want to have to remind you of this, but there will
come a time when these heroes – the likes of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and
other ‘stadium songwriters’ are no longer with us. And where will the new
heroes come from if new artists aren’t allowed to develop their skills, to make
mistakes and to ripen for longer than the scope the industry allows them – a
timespan dictated by the amount of time their beauty lasts or until they are
considered ‘too old’ to be eye candy anymore?
There’s a character on the cover of my new album I’ve
invented called Rita. She has the head of a doe, the body of a pinup girl and
the wings of a sparrow. She’s a distant relative of a creature in Native
American folklore called the deer lady: a mythical being who lures men in with
her charms only to trample them with her hooves. If we continue to be attracted
to beauty over substance we’ll be in danger of a good trampling.
I’ve been making music now for 12 years and am about to
release my seventh album – a full band album called Those Old Demons with my
band The Hobopop Collective. I tried to record this album ‘properly’, at a
great studio (Valley Wood in Leeds) and with
incredible (and poorly paid) musicians whose credits include Richard Hawley,
Homelife, The Pretty Things, James and Gogo Penguin.
I used some of the money generated by the lucky accident of
my song Sandman being featured in Danny
Boyle’s film Trance last
year to pay for the studio time and to hire in one of my all time musical
heroes Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) to play for me on the album. I
made the album like this because I wanted to make it in this way, even though I
realise it’s possible that this album will disappear without a trace. Having
been independent since 2007, I know that DIY bands who refuse to conform to
genre can struggle to make an impact in a crowded marketplace with minimal PR
budget!... But I can happily stand by this record and be proud of the ‘dream
team’ I assembled and the great recordings that are certainly the best work
I’ve ever produced.
Three weeks ago I started a Kickstarter
campaign to raise money for the release of Those
Old Demons. This is the second time that I have made an album through
crowdfunding and I’m hugely grateful that there are people out there who
believe in my music enough to back my projects. I was reluctant however to
start the second kickstarter and I’ll admit the last few weeks have been a real
rollercoaster ride for me & those around me.
I don’t like asking for cash – nobody does – and you need
elephant skin not to feel embarrassed to be repeatedly pushing supporters and
followers to back your idea. Even with an unshakeable conviction in the
project. For anyone who struggles, like me, with self-doubt, it can be a really
stressful process. You lose sleep and the relief when the campaign ends is
incredible.
I’m delighted that the kickstarter has raised almost all of
my £5.5k goal – there are less than sixty hours to go and there’s less than 10%
left to raise.
This may sound like a lot of money, I know. Especially as
the recordings are already made & paid for and considering the release is
realistically unlikely to find a big enough audience to repay the production
costs. I find myself going over the budget in my head and wondering if I’m
being reasonable or if there’s anything I could strike off…but the crowdfunding
site takes 12-15% of the total money raised and the rest will go into pressing
CDs, vinyl, artwork, promotion etc.
It makes me ashamed when I think that all of these services
are being paid for and yet most of the musicians on the recordings were being
paid just £50 a day plus expenses to work on the record. It’s true that this
was their choice. It’s also true that we’re all really, really proud of the
results and a huge amount of love, care, passion and time went into making this
album special…but the economic truth is that I have had to join in with the exploitation
of musicians in order to produce this music. And that’s a state of affairs that
makes me uneasy and ashamed.
Whilst I realise that nothing in this article will be new to
anyone, I feel as though as a ‘conscious’ participant in the exploitation of
artists I need to explore what it is that is going on right now that has led to
the situation that we are in. Wise friends and colleagues speak of a ‘sea
change’ and of a ‘revolution’ yet to come in the arts…but although we can hope
for a Brave New World where there is the opportunity to be paid fairly for our
work, none of us has yet come up with an answer to the problems we’re facing.
That’s okay. For now. But keeping open the debate and
remaining honest about the process & the difficulty of music as a
profession to folks outside of music will go some way towards spreading the
word that, if we want to continue to be moved by music, we need to start to
buck the system and support the ‘lesser’ artists caught up in this groundswell
by backing small-scale live music, buying CDs, paying for downloads (it’s a
start) and being patient when artists bug you to support yet another
crowdfunding campaign.
Believe me, none of us want to bug you! We just want to
work!
There’s no talk of a musician walk-out…yet…although it’s
joked about after hours in dark bars over cheap whisky. Let’s hope we’re all
fool enough to carry on making music in spite of the parasitic and soul-sapping
industry we’re all fool enough to work in.
It is our choice to make music, after all!
***********
Kirsty McGee is a singer-songwriter and member of
Manchester’s Hobopop Collective. Her new album Those Old Demons, funded by kickstarter,
will be released on her own label, distributed by Shellshock, in October 2014.
Her video for the song Sandman
by independent film maker Dan Ruiz, has had 87,387 views since its release last
March.The Hobopop Collective kickstarter campaign currently has 139 backers
with 56 hours to go.
www.kirstymcgee.com
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