the
ZINE
Special WHATFest Features
We were so happy to be able to come up with twice the amount of content we normally print for the month of July, but it unfortunately meant some pieces couldn't be printed in their entirety. So we put them here!
Enjoy reading below!
JON GARDZELEWSKI:
WRITING AN ALBUM
I had a hard laugh at a recent Onion article “Rock Fans Outraged as Bob Dylan Goes Electronica. ”It’s not even recent, just a recent post from Rob Joyce, who doesn’t post much so I paid attention. I’m thinking about that Photoshopped image of Bob on the turntables as I’m coasting down the escalator at Heathrow Terminal 2, writing this in my head, smiling. Further down the steps there is a girl in front of me standing on the wrong side. One could start marching on the left until an awkward encounter where they’re right up behind her, wondering what to do next, waiting for her to notice that she’s in the way.But it’s exhausting to always tap these people on the shoulder when they’re doing everything right in their world. Americans. And the airport is nobody’s world, and this one was designed by a Spaniard under the influence of the London school...so this really is nobody’s. Or everybody’s. Sort of like American music, which is the only thing I’m eligible to write.
On the flight over, a guy from Toronto played for me some songs he’s composing and producing. His partner who was not on the flight has the good looks and the voice, and scored the record deal, but this guy writes the music and puts it all together on his computer. It’s a big contract, and they have the best producer in the world. The producer is someone I forget, which shows what I know, and who lives in London so this pair has to commute until they finish the record. It’s kind of like an R&B Coldplay, and I like it, but wouldn’t buy the album. I play him my music, still in fairly rough demos, and he says “it’s great” and suggests that I go for more Arcade Fire meets Tom Waits. He has no idea what he’s saying but can see I’m looking for feedback. I must come off as desperate. So then this guy passes along the same advice to me that the “world’s greatest” producer gave him on songwriting; “the 3 most important things to focus on are lyrics, melody, and vocal delivery. Production does not really matter.” I should ask him more about this para...lellogram, but I’m too busy thinking “what about harmonic progression?” I must be doing it all wrong. Me and Radiohead and Elliot Smith and now it seems the Punch Brothers. Did I just write that? Hell I should just compare myself to Beethoven.
Parallax
I listen to them though, and now I’m asking myself while coasting diagonally through space: “why did I ever listen to Bob Dylan?” When I buy music, I discard most of it and just listen to a few things on repeat, wanting to get swept away. I’m not looking for a story, my mind wants to dance! And one guy with a guitar and a harmonica doesn’t sweep me away. I want to be swept away, so I try to write music that will sweep other people away. Well I do now. Going down this path ultimately leads to a major fork in the road with how you make your sounds:
1. Computers and a keyboard
2. Rock band
But it didn’t start here, it started around a campfire jamming with acoustic instruments. The fire-jam route is the path of least resistance and most fun in strengthening your musical chops, if you can find musician friends who let you play along on the mandolin or fiddle or something. But beware; this course may lead you to bluegrass. Pause for laughter. Bluegrass is extremely rewarding as a performer, but troubling for songwriters interested in complex harmonic progressions (if you attempt prog bluegrass, your band will surely desert you). Strengthen your chops, then use that experience to add some America to your sound as you press on.
Now let’s talk more about the campfire. When you enter the world of passing the guitar around the circle, you learn that people don’t play songs that they like to listen to, or even songs they like to sing; they just play the songs that go over well in that community. You want easy chord progression, sing-alongs, mysterious ballads from the fringe of old country, old-old-old traditionals, the more haunting and/or Irish sounding the better. It’s really quite fun to play and hear these songs in an intimate and primitive setting, like the backyard of the Manor (a house where a bunch of musicians used to live that my grandmother happens to own).
After you gain experience and confidence around the fire, you want to play out, to get tight and get gigs. Playing solo is just tough, so you want to start out as a duo or small ensemble, because you’ll just sound better. But before long, if you’re like me, you want to write original music, and when you learn a song by John Prine or Towns you think “how amazing it would have been to have written that song.” So the next thing that you do is try to write that song. You write a song for a friend or some friends because it feels like you’re turning your little scene into a real culture. You write a song about a girl you’re just getting to know so that she feels special, and so you can be special to her. You write some songs about tragedy and love, because, well, you’re not sure which came first, that or the songwriting and now you’re stuck in a vicious cycle. Then you just keep writing songs because you can’t stop and you need to crack the code.
All these campfire influenced songs end up sounding like music on NPR—good music, but not actually the music you’ve ever bought and listened to in the first place...so in some unit of measure you’re still at zero. Once you compile all these songs and try to make a record, you step back and look at it all and realize that you no longer care whether your friends around the fire or in the bar will sing along. It’s not selfish, but it feels that way.
I like what I like. I like band music with lots of instruments, multiple voices, and a hearty rhythm that keeps you on your toes. Can a song about making a girl feel special become a song you would have wanted to listen to simply because you added drums and a bass? For me, not easily, and so most of those old songs need to be re-written. Why not just develop the groove, and write songs around that which you can do now with a band, and as you do it you will at times find this creative process more exhilarating than anything you’ve ever done musically. Then you ask “do I even want a band, or do I just want digital rhythms and textures that only exist in this world I’m inventing? Is a rock band simply a ‘bridge’ to a synthesizer band?” What are you listening to when you listen to music? Who do you listen to? Why?
On some later escalator, marching with a crowd of London bankers in suits, I finally realize that I never actually listened to Bob Dylan, I just analyzed him, smiled, and then forgot where I put those CDs. They’re somewhere. I listen to old school indie rock and the romantic composers and the Talking Heads. Some others, but the closest thing to Bob Dylan I listen to must be Ryan Adams, who I prefer with his band. Hell, really I just listen to Radiohead on repeat, and wish I could do that. The British always seem to win anymore.
But I can’t do what Radiohead does. I would have to start over all over again and learn computer programs and control stations with knobs and buttons. My own “world’s greatest producer” Ben, wouldn’t like that. For one, he wouldn’t be able to play blues guitar, and also I think he’s ready to finish this “bloody album.”
So now I better finish writing this bloody thing. I’m no longer writing songs for new crushes, so as to not jinx it. When you’re writing songs you start doubting your own emotions about friends, family, and death, and your own choices in love. If you’re doing it right, songwriting brings your best side to light and holds you accountable. But it can get you in trouble if you are in a young and volatile relationship where your better side wants to promise the moon as a noble gesture. Everyone should write songs. Skip the therapy. Speaking of which, there was a limerick contest at a wedding in Colorado, and I thought of one that almost works:
What happened to my home
I could not feel so alone
With a $5 cookie, you talk like a Wookie
Everybody just gets stoned
THE BAREFOOT BAND
(1) What do you consider the pros and cons of making music alone? Was there any sort of adaptation you had to go through to learn to do all the parts on your own?
The biggest pro I can think of is that going it alone musically was the right thing at the right time for me. I had just gone through the process of breaking up with the first band where I had fit in (and it breaking up with me). I wanted nothing more than to be up, playing live, I was learning a lot about how to even book and play out, and I was somewhat at a loss about what to do with all the music I wanted to play but thought it would take a band to make it sound good. I could hear a band playing the songs I was writing, playing along with me while I struggled with songwriting and performing, but had no realistic way of getting the band to appear in the flesh. If nothing else, musicians were scarce in Sheridan at the time, most already committed to better things than I was dreaming up, and I was barely sure I could play the songs myself, let alone direct others or find musicians who'd write in their own parts. This was problematic, even before considering all the other issues that might come up trying to get several people to move in the world, more or less in tandem, with a common purpose.
So it was great to learn I could beatbox along with my tunes, that I could substitute some scat nonsense for a guitar solo, and, much later, after I bought and fooled around with a loop pedal long enough it was a help and not a hindrance to my show, that I could use technology to actually play over my own music in a live setting. I could do all that and not have to worry about whether the band liked each other, getting everyone together for a rehearsal, or actually making the rehearsals I set up, or anything like that. That was a huge pro.
The most insistent con to being a solo act is pretty much the mirror image of this same thing. I had (and mostly still have) few, if any, collaborators and community members to help hold me up in the solo musical craft, and that can be a lot harder than one thinks when first starting out. I dream up the tunes and do the areangements. I make all the posters. If I'm late to a gig or get lost trying to find a venue, it's my fault.
I had to find people to listen to the act while it was still just an unweaned child, people who would be honest, like a bass player or drummer is when he or she says, "it's just not working, man." That was an interesting hurdle. It was a big enough problem that, at the same time I was trying to make the solo thing go, I joined up with a celtic band and a bluegrass jam band just to get my fix. I even still play with the bluegrass band and am currently writing an album with them.
As for adaptation, most of what I had to learn was internal: how to trust myself to make interesting music, to use technology to make the big noise that kept waking me up, nights. Once I was running fast enough to at least keep up with those personal ghosts, it was all just a lot of practice and trial and many, many errors. At least, though I was never late to rehearsal.
(2) I noticed you're a traveling musician (and fairly obviously if you're playing ol' Riverside come July), which makes me wonder- I've spoken to a lot of other musicians in this line of work, and one thing they always bring up is how impossible it would be to play music in other cities and states if they didn't have the financial help of their bandmates. But you do it anyway. So, I guess I'm curious to know if you've ever faced any challenges making it from place to place alone, or if you even find it easier to do so without others tagging along.
It was actually the geography of Wyoming that made me into a traveling musician. Even when I was a lowly cellist in High School orchestra, we'd all pack in a bus and head off into the wide open spaces bound for some town or another. I don't think I knew this at the time, but trips like that helped me understand there were people like me all over the place and it really only takes stepping out the door and looking around for people and opportunities wherever they might be. Once I picked up the guitar, though, I had to re-learn this lesson over and over, and this actually started when I was in a blues duo on the local scene in Laramie.
At first every little thing I did was hard - approaching venues, trying to record decent demo, managing to play a whole set (or two or three) - every step exposed how new the business of music was to me. At the same time, though, every step showed me how fortunate a musician can be. Whether it was the good nature of venue owners and staff, the kind words of other musicians, the one or two people who would come up to us after our set and chat for awhile, or even some actual payment for the gig, it became obvious, even locally, that, in this business, the returns don't always come in cash.
In 2011, I did the stupidest and smartest thing I'd ever done. The Barefoot Band was so young, I hadn't even recorded my first studio work, but I decided the best business decision at the time would be to go on a tour of the Western states. I set out trying to book gigs from Moab, through California, up through Oregon and Washington, and then on through Montana and back to my then-home of Sheridan. I managed to book enough gigs that it looked more like a tour and less like a prolonged road-trip with a few stops along the way for public guitaring, and, in July, I set out on the road. The road alone was incredible. I made my own rules, kept my own time, could camp without worrying that someone in the band would have rather splurged on a hotel and any number of other things that make it easy to be by yourself. It cost way too much, I slept on way too many roadsides, and I mostly played to roaring crowds of 10 people or fewer. In short, I fell into exactly the trap mentioned in the question: it was nearly impossible to do this with no financial support.
When I was trying my hand as a fiction writer in my early 20's, someone once told me that, if I was going to live up to the ethos of "write every day," I would have to find some privilege that would allow me to do that. So I think, as with a lot of art and artists, and especially as I couldn't think of any privilege that would let me do this immediately, I sought out that kind of privilege. It was hiding, all around me - in day jobs, in making good products, in being a productive and positive part of my own local music scene, in finding new friends across long distances, in re-discovering old friends in new places, in talking big and hoping I would live up to the talk. Most importantly, though, I think that I found that privilege in the people who come to listen to music. Any music. The people you find in any town or city who hear that some barefoot fool is plucking a guitar for tips at a dive bar, somewhere and will come out regardless. It is the amalgamation of all those privileges that keeps me going.
It is of note that being a solo act and going to places has its own difficulties, even above the financial ones. Venues of any size don't often book a solo act on the weekend, and, unless you're known or make yourself known to other bands in the area, the likelihood of opening for a band on the weekend is low. So I spend an awful lot of time looking for any opportunity, even if it is a round hole fit for my barefoot peg. It is also really hard to draw a crowd when you're just breaking into an area as a solo act (although I'm sure it's difficult with a band, as well) - you only have yourself to rely on in bringing a crowd. In addition to the people who come hear music, solo musicians have to rely a lot on other solo musicians to help them do the things that band members might otherwise take care of.
(3) So, based on what I could find on your bandcamp, reverbnation, facebook, and musical website, it looks like you're based in Seattle, started in Sheridan, and have a label in Missoula, Montana. Being so spanned out, how do you end up finding a label right in the middle of two hometowns? And how on earth do you find a place like WHATFest?
Well the label and the band were actually born in the same place at more or less the same time. Sheridan College has a remarkably good music professor, Dr. Chris Erickson, who started a certificate program in music production, and I knew one of the graduates, Kyle Davenport, because I'd played in some shows he had organized. Through another friend, I found out that Kyle did recordings, and though I never thought I'd be recognized, even by a, in his own words, "Little ol' dumb dumb DIY record label," I really needed some better recordings than I could do in my own living room. The 21st century has been pretty incredible, thus far, in providing the equipment for anyone to make great recordings, but the education part (unless you've got uncountable hours to learn by messing around), is light years behind.
Over several beers at the Black Tooth Brewing Co., Kyle and I hashed out the details of what became my first recording, and I've stuck with him, ever since. I think The Barefoot Band is one of two bands on the label, but I hope the label takes on more bands. In fact, I'm just going to leave the label's Facebook link here (https://www.facebook.com/jackrecordsMT) in case anyone wants to look into it. I will certainly never leave. For one, I'm way into loyalty - he believed in me and charged me very little while most other people did not (or wanted a heap of cash to do what I needed). The other reason I'll be with him forever is that he is a consummate live music fan, and that is the thing I love the most. In any crowd, Kyle will be the one guy at front and center nodding his head and loving every minute. That is a rare thing.
Speaking of rare things, I was a little thrown by the part of the question that wondered how I found the WHAT. See, I had always seen it the other way around, that it was pretty incredible that it noticed me and took me in. I heard about it from watching a Youtube video of the 2010 (I believe) black-and-white footage of the Jalan Crossland Band. I'd wanted to play the festival since then, and when I finally got up the courage to be considered, they offered me a deal I couldn't refuse: a chance to play there. I think this is my fourth year, too, so I'm glad I took that chance.