Headed to dinner last night with the fam, this song comes on (Deep Waves I think?) and my oldest says “oh, this song”. Michelle, cutely, starts looking for something to like about it. I, predictably, do the opposite.

So here's the observation -

Basically all pop music these days is made exclusively on computers. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but what's missing is the accidental interactivity that happens when you have a group of people playing instruments and giving each other things to play off of. This, in my opinion, is partly why shit is so boring these days. Pull up a couple premade loops, add a bassline that's worked a hundred times for you before, add some trite lyrics and ship it. That's all that seems to get picked up these days, right?

The wonderful thing about playing music with people is that people are imperfect, and these imperfections are where the interesting bits come from. Everything out of a pop music computer is, by definition, predictable.

#music

I was listening to Taylor Swift yesterday – Everything Has Changed from her new version of the album. There's this bit in the bridge at about 2:30 where the backgrounds do this “haaaa, ahhhh, ahhhh” thing that's so wonderfully out of tune and everybody involved in the making of this album had the courage to leave it.

Nobody does that anymore. I started thinking about how auto-tune has really enabled the elimination of musical talent as a condition for creating music, and made it that much easier to just create pure product with no musical value at all.

Get off my lawn.

#music

So much to say, so much to say..

Some day I'll write a memoir, but that day is not this day my friends. The most outwardly memorable thing I've done so far this summer is fly out to Oregon to the String Summit to cover for Mike Devol of Greensky. Mike had a baby a few days before, and back in the winter he called me up to see if I might be interested in covering for him on some summer festival shows. Duh, yes.

So I had several months to prepare, but not prepare so much that I got actually excited about the gig because it quite likely might not happen. It was a strange mental exercise.

I can't even begin to recount the whole weekend here, though it was definitely worth thinking back on. Friday morning I got to judge the band contest and though they didn't win, this band deserved to win..

Something about the line “then I'll have my family band, make play the tunes that they don't really understand” hit the waterworks button and it got stuck. I was seriously sobbing for about 30 minutes or so, fortunately I'd bought aviators on the way to the airport.

The whole experience was just so intensely cathartic for me, it's not possible to express my thanks to those guys for letting me do it.

#life #music

And I wonder – will you miss your old friends once you've proven what you're worth? And I wonder – when you're a big star, will you miss the Earth?

I heard some news this weekend that really shook me up – that one of my old musician acquiantances and his wife of several years had recently split up.

He's a young dude and his band is killing it, and I know first-hand how rough that is on a relationship, so it was not suprising at all. Yet somehow it was also simultaneously shocking.

It's brought up a lot of emotions and thoughts that I didn't have time to jot down, but I had this weird feeling all weekend. This feeling like I had to get off a plane that all my friends were on, and that plane later went down.

---

Another buddy of mine just moved to a new town, stocked with tons of music and musicians. He's trying to make a run at it, and is out and about meeting musicians and going to shows. It's causing a little bit of strain on his relationship, since his girl is out there for work, not to socialize.

I empathize with both parties. Once the music bug bites you, and god forbid you find some success with it, it's almost impossible to find anything to do with yourself that feels as meaningful as that. Pursuing music and playing music is one of the highest callings I've ever felt. I think it's kind of a miracle that I didn't go completely off the deep end when I walked away, and another miracle that I've managed to find a work situation and a home life that together have surpassed music in terms of how much, I dunno, living I get out of life now.

But on the other hand, I don't talk to God nearly as much as I did when I was playing music full time.

---

So yeah, I heard that news and my reaction was both really sad for them and really glad it wasn't me, and I'm guessing that's kinda what they call “survivor's guilt”. In my opinion, it's basically impossible to be the kind of man you want to be for your family at the same time that you're being the kind of musician that you want to be for yourself, and for that higher calling. That's why it feels sort of like a curse to me.

#music #life

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• Episode 01 – Sharam_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 02 – Sultan_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 03 – Dean Coleman_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 04 – Cedric Gervais_ Mix.m4a
• Episode 05 – Prompt_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 06 – David Tort_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 07 – Miss Nine_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 08 – Ned Shepard_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 09 – D-Unity_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 10 – Pig & Dan_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 11 – DJ Simi_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 12 – 16 Bit Lolitas_ Mix.m4a
• Episode 13 – Kamisshake_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 14 – Cocodrills_ Mix.m4a
• Episode 15 – The Flash Brothers_ Mix.m4a
• Episode 16 – Andrew Bayer_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 17 – Namito_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 18 – Dimitri Andreas_ Mix.mp3
• Episode 19 – Prompt_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 20 – Boris M.D._s Mix.mp3
• Episode 21 – Spektre_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 22 – Alex Kenji_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 23 – Schadenfreude_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 25 – Timo Garcia_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 26 – Anton Pieete_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 27 – D-Formation_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 29 – Pig & Dan_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 30 – Solee_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 35 – D-Formation_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 36 – Matt Lange_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 38 – Coll Selini_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 39 – Solee_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 40 – Scalambrin & Sgarro_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 42 – Pig & Dan_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 44 – Ahmet Sendil_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 45 – Federico Epis_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 46 – Sinisa Tamamovic_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 47 – Koen Groeneveld_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 48 – Pig & Dan_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 49 – Quivver_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 50 – Tom Middleton_s Mix.m4a
• Episode 51 – Babicz_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 52 – Yoshitoshi Best of 2011.m4a
• Episode 53 – DBN_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 55 – Tom Novy_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 56 – Nicole Moudaber_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 57 – Ahmet Sendil Mix.mp3
• Episode 58 – Heren Mix.mp3
• Episode 59 – Sinisa Tamamovic Mix.mp3
• Episode 60 – Rene Kuppens Mix.mp3
• Episode 61 – Scalambrin & Sgarro_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 62 – Pirupa_s Mix.mp3
• Episode 63 – Darwin & Backwall Mix.mp3
• Episode 64 – Nicole Moudaber Mix.mp3
• Episode 65 – Stefano Noferini Mix.mp3
• Episode 66 – HEREN [Dirt Jugglerz] Guest Mix.mp3
• Episode 67 – Sharam Live at Sensation (Denmark).mp3
• Episode 68 – D-Unity Guest Mix.mp3
• Episode 69 – Sharam Live at Kool Beach BPM Festival.mp3
• Episode 70 – Sharam Live at BPM Festival (Part 0).mp3
• Episode 71 – Philipp Straub Guest Mix.mp3
• Episode 72 – El Mundo Guest Mix.mp3
• Episode 73 – Sisko Electrofanatik Guest Mix.mp3
• Episode 74 – Sharam Live at Space Ibiza Opening Fiesta 2013.mp3
• Episode 75 – Sharam 4th of July Edition.mp3
• Episode 76 – Mar-T Guest Mix.mp3

#music

Prologue

I have a lot of friends in successful working bands that all have one thing in common – a fairly useless website. Pretty much every band I know, with a very few exceptions, treats their website as a tour poster. Most of them have some kind of “store”, but frequently they're stocked with leftovers from last year's road merch. You often have to go through PayPal to checkout. I don't know of anyone short of Radiohead that actually lets you download digital goods directly from them.

Railscasts, Peepcode, Lullabot, and every other player in the digital goods space that caters to developers have had their act together on this for years now, but for some reason the real promise of the internet age hasn't paid a visit to the music business yet.

The promise

Perhaps I misunderstood, but the real promise of the internet age as it pertains to musicians was that the old, centralized means of distributing your music were going to be torn down and in it's place would be a democratic, no-barriers system for getting your music out instantly to the whole world. Services that have sprung up in the last 10 years – iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, and the like – have almost universally propped up this old, centralized system. Services like Distrokid are well intentioned and barking toward the right tree, but still miss the point.

The problem

The problem is that the music business was so profitable for so many decades, so many people got rich off the old label system that the world in general is clearly having a hard time letting go. Every single service that I've mentioned so far has some sort of “gatekeeper” mechanism in place, be it label affiliation or whatever, and profit motive for the business owners as a central tenet.

“How can I (or my investors) make money off the music business?”

What I haven't seen done

What I haven't seen done yet is for someone to come along and offer a service that has altruism toward the musicians that this whole business revolves around in the first place as a fundamental principle (distrokid partially excepted).

The solution

How about someone build an open source CMS for bands and musicians, ala Wordpress since every band I know is already on that and comfy with it, but built with commerce as the fundamental purpose of the site? Plug in a Stripe API key for credit card processing, an S3 key for storing their digital goods, and tada! – you can sell your own music through your own website and keep 100% of the net for yourself.

Obviously the simple features that every band wants – tour dates, photos, bios, etc – would be there, but instead of having the store be a page on the site, have the tour dates be a page in the store. I know they must be out there, but I literally don't know of a single band that approaches their online presence this way.

But, but, how do I make money off this?

I dunno. How about a hosted service, ala Wordpress.com for bands that don't want to deal with setting it up themselves? How about taking a percentage of fees for ticket sales if they want to activate that module? How about consulting fees for custom implementations? I think there are actually plenty of ways, but only if you start with the libre, open version at the core.

Postscript

There must be someone out there working on this idea – I had it years ago and it just seems too obvious at this point. I've been working on it off and on for most of this year. I've even got a guinea pig client lined up, but I'm that stereotypical musician that has kids, gets off the road, and is now so busy with my 9-5 and my 3 kids and trying to find contract work to fill in the financial gaps that I can't keep the momentum going to get it finished and launched. So...

If this idea is interesting to you and you feel like building it, call me. If you're already building it and want someone to help sell it, call me. The band I quit 4 years ago sold 9000 tickets at Red Rocks this summer. I'm now in a band with two guys from Leftover Salmon and a guy from String Cheese Incident. If you've never heard of these bands then you're not a hippy, but trust me – there is serious money to be made in this grassroots, live-music, no-label-affiliation sector of the music business if for no other reason than nobody is looking at this market at all, and the customer base in this market is extremely loyal. And I've got an iPhone stuffed full of potential clients.

All this product would have to do is show some real revenue increases for a couple of bands. Once that happens, the real promise of the internet as it pertains to the music business can start to be realized.

Postpostscript

I'm a developer now. I'm handy enough with the backend, and what I consider pretty good with the front end of things, especially as far as the technical needs of this project are concerned. Point is, I can contribute a lot – business, development, a laundry list of clients, implementation details (if you want em) – I just can't do it all myself. I've been holding on to this idea for so long, trying to build up the dev chops to execute that it's starting to eat me, especially since I now have the dev chops and no time.

So if you're reading this and it strokes a chord, drop me a line – therealjohnnygrubb@gmail.com

#music #business

I didn't remember mixing this but it must've been some time last year. This was the gig that Vince Herman opened up and Phil Lesh pulled up in his Ferrari out front and helped us level the joint for the second set. Strangely, there were no tapers present whatsoever, so no tapes showed up on the Archive. This was, however, one of the tours that we were taping for Elko, so we were running a 24 track rig that evening. I remember it being a challenge to get everyone down to 24 inputs, and being really glad that we figured it out later.

I remember listening to the little slice that we did put up on the Archive while I was doing this and being amazed how much reverb I put on it. Here's a drier version of the whole show.

2005-04-16SanFrancisco_CA.zip

#music

Did Telluride last year. 'Twas a blissfully awesome return, particularly since a year earlier I thought my music career was over.

So they pick all us rockstars up at the Montrose airport. I waited around for a bit because the other dude that was getting picked up (who turned out to be Michael Daves) got in about 30 minutes after I did. He showed up and I was getting ready to walk out of the airport when somebody called my name. I turned around to see an old neighbor of mine from Boone, who I hadn't seen since. Michael Jordan. That's right. MJ was my neighbor in Boone. Anyway.

Anyway, we're riding up, shooting the shit. Daves lives in Brooklyn, I live in Jersey. So he asks me, “where you from originally?” to which I replied “Atlanta”.

“Really? I'm from Atlanta. Which part?”

“Avondale. The next town over from Decatur.”

“Yeah, I'm from Decatur.”

So then it was where'd we go to school, and I went to Boone, so we knew a bunch of the same Atlanta born Boone musicians that used to go to a pick session at the Freight Room. This was before my time as far as bluegrass was concerned. My last paycheck cashing job, incidentally, was right around the corner 10 years later at the Raging Burrito. It didn't exist then, but it was pretty cool going back to the day. He went to Decatur High, right around the corner from my parents office. I bought my first several basses at Emile Barron in Decatur. Just found this old video of Bill – the man himself.

So after about 3 minutes or so he goes,

“So if you grew up in Avondale, you must've been on the Avondale swim team.”

Hell yes I was. Swim team and the Avondale pool was the best reason to live in Avondale, as far as I was concerned. God knows most of the other kids were fucking assholes just like their parents. I digress.

“Well, we must've swam against each other then because I was on the Decatur team.”

So anyway, that was cool. The I caught his set with Thile the next day and I've been a fan since. Definitely my favorite stuff from Thile.

#music #memories #bluegrass

It's a toy I've been wanting to build for a while. I stole the domain name from Book fair and square, and have been quietly honing the skills to actually build it.

What I'd ultimately like to have is a site that is basically a collection of all current, working bluegrass bands. When you come to the front page, you get a list of bluegrass shows happening in your area. It does this by roughly guessing via your IP address. It has a list of shows in the database that it scrapes from somewhere. I used to think Facebook would come in handy for this, but it seems to have fallen somewhat out of favor as a place that bands keep updated with their shows. I tried Artist Data after that, but they have the most nebulous docs imaginable for the their API, which I'm not even sure is open.

So that's the big trick. Everything else is basically – add band, enter facebook and twitter username. It then gets bio and whatever other profile info from Facebook, whose API is somewhat open, and tweets from Twitter, whose API is way open. Yay Twitter.

It basically an experiment in modern web scraping. My first. It's built on Sinatra, for those who care. the code lives here – https://github.com/JGrubb/sinatra-facebook

Anyway, the prototype – http://sobg.johnnygrubb.com/

It's easily breakable right now.

#music #bluegrass

I dunno. I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say yet, but I'll give it a whirl.

There's a really interesting conversation going on right now, initially spearheaded by Pandolfi, but now spilling out into the wider stream. The whole “what is bluegrass” conversation, and it's almost certain that it's always been going on but just never showed up on my radar.

I've been, in the most nominal sense, a bluegrass musician for close to 10 years now. Jeremy from the Dusters asked me the other night how long I'd been playing bluegrass. I wasn't sure what answer to give him. Less than a year? Almost 10 years?

Then yesterday I read that Devol interview and the part where he says that the Avetts brothers are “in NO way a bluegrass band” struck a chord. Pardon the pun.

Now here's a bass player that I love like a brother, in one of those bluegrass bands that gets routinely and deliberately ignored by the IBMA, the supposed torch-bearing organization of bluegrass music, succumbing to the same trap of bluegrass judgmentalism that drives musicians like us crazy. I, for one, happen to think the Avetts ARE bluegrass, whether they care to be considered that or not.

I think RRE and Cornmeal are bluegrass, even if they are loud as fuck and have drum kits and electric guitars. I think Avetts and Mumford are bluegrass, even if they're poppy and successful. I think the Stringdusters are bluegrass even if they sound increasingly like a really good jamband. I love bluegrass music, but honestly, the shit I can't listen to for much longer than an hour or so is that SPBGMA (pronounced Spig-ma) style that is arguably the “most” bluegrass of all these subgenres. I surely wouldn't stoop to calling any of it “not bluegrass”. It just seems hypocritical.

Is there a “problem” with bluegrass? By every available metric bluegrass and all it's dialects is doing better than ever. Is the problem just that it's gone beyond it's traditional borders and has a lot more people involved in the conversation and the scene than ever before?

Is that really a problem?

I could see how it would be if you were the organization that used to be the authoritative voice on the subject for the community that used to be easy to contain within defined borders. I don't know. The Church analogy still seems fitting. The gated community one, also.

I recently joined the IBMA to see if there's any interest of this conversation within that community, rather than being one of these folks sniping from the outside. I guess we'll see.

#music