Down the Block -
A New Music Renaissance
I live in Nashville, the Music City. If you walk into any coffee shop, bar, or restaurant, you’ll find musicians and songwriters hanging out and talking about the business. Lots of Horatio Alger dreaming here, combined with full court creative push, because people are serious about trying to make things happen. There’s also a lot of mid-morning, afternoon, and
late-night bull sessions, where conversation will be peppered with “analysis” of the current state of affairs in the biz. No matter what goes down, all through the food chain, everyone wants to be one tier higher.
One of the reality checks I’ve noticed of late is the Economy. A lot of my friends have been saying things have been slow this year, due to the price of gas – less artists going on the road, less people driving long distances to gigs, clubs hurting. I’ve noticed it myself, it seems this year my “take” has remained the same, while my expenses, in food, gas, and lodging, has risen.
1Like everyone, I’m adjusting my game, but you know, it’s funny – I’m not worried. Every negative can be turned into a positive, or every negative naturally turns into a positive, depending on how you look at it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Anyway, if guys like me or bands like you were previously only barely making enough to scrape by after gas and hotel costs, maybe we all need to take a deep breath and refocus. Perhaps artists will use this recession and “pull back” to the woodshed, write, demo, and record more, creating a new wave (skinny ties excepted) of music. Maybe it will cause people to collaborate with a wider variety of folks in their hometown, and go outside of their musical comfort zone as a result. Out of this dynamic, there is sure to be some unexpected surprises, experimentation, magical meeting of the minds. In this fashion, higher gas prices could lead to another John and Paul, Mick and Keith, or Groucho, Harpo, and Chico.
Clubs are going to hurt, in the short term, and some may fall by the wayside. My guess is there will be a survival of the fittest dynamic, and creative venues will hang on and strengthen. Artists will also be forced to be a bit choosy about gigs out of town, in terms of quality and quantity, which could provide a little necessary length between gigs in certain markets, to make shows a bit more special. It’s just like dating, for all the single folks out there – a bit of absence can make the heart grow fonder. Regardless, playing music is somewhat addictive, so bands aren’t going to stop. If not on the road, musicians are going to want to play live more often locally or regionally, so if it doesn’t happen in clubs it’ll happen in living rooms and community halls.
And, when local scenes start prospering again, there will be new local media to cover those scenes, followed by new low-band or Internet radio to do what radio did back in the day – serve the community. I’ve already seen a resurgence of good independent record stores, in the wake of the major chains going under or cutting inventory.
So, the reality of our current Economy could be the best thing to happen to music in a long time. After all, music, like any business or communication form, is connected to historical and economic trends beyond our little world, and so we see parallel versions of what’s going down in the growth of farmer’s markets, community shopping, and local politics.
Lately, I've been all over a book called Deep Economy, by Bill McKibben, an illustrious thinker and essayist for more than 20 years. Move over Deepak, Eckhart, and my pal Noam Chomsky, this book is something. It's all about the battle between more and better which for many of us have become almost opposites.
McKibben puts forward a new way to think about the things we buy, food we eat, energy we use, and the money that pays for it all. Our purchases, he says, need not be at odds with the things we truly value. McKibben's animating idea is that we need to move beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursue prosperity in a more local direction, with cities, suburbs, and regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even nurturing more of their own culture and entertainment.
He shows this concept blossoming around the world with striking results, from the burgeoning economies of India and China to the more mature societies of Europe and New England. For those who worry about environmental threats, he offers a route out of the worst of those problems; for those who wonder if there isn't something more to life than buying, he provides the insight to think about one's life “as an individual and as a member of a larger community."
This return to local economics is necessary for our survival. It’ll also improve many aspects of modern life, from our current energy problems to the rampant growth of factory farming to the state of the music industry (artistically and financially).
Since this is a music article, here’s McKibben’s paradigm extended into our CD-selling, live-show-playing world. Because of the propensity of “more” in the music business, we've seen the erosion of the pioneering musical spirit that takes root in the local, the immediate, and the intimate.
So, yeah, while we may whine during late nite bull sessions about the fact that we're not all becoming millionaires, like back in the 60s, the truth is music making is about making music and historically the financial rewards have been on a much smaller scale than the ‘record amounts’ of the past 30 years or so.
Let’s step back and look at the recent history that extends beyond our short lives. The advent of recorded sound enabled music to be commodified like crazy, inadvertently transferring control of the end product from musicians to record companies and giving the consumer lots of more, but not necessarily "better."
Sure, some major talents like the Beatles, et. al, benefited, became millionaires and reached untold scores of listeners. Sure, it's cool to have easy access to artists from Africa and Brazil and France and such, to broaden our sense of the world. And, I don't blame any modern artists for taking advantage of this development, doing great work within the parameters of what they were given.
I often wonder though, why we're so complicit in allowing the corporate structure to own our stories, own our music, own our souls.
Today, I’m faced with a choice – I can download 2 songs from 25 artists and watch them disappear into the ethers of my computer where they may or may not be retained -- or I can choose to buy 10 CDs from 5 artists I truly connect with, can absorb, come back to, and stick with over time.
If you go back 100 years, before phonograph records, communities were “alive with the sound of music”. Families had at least a couple people who played an instrument or sang a bit at home and musicians shared their tunes at local shindigs, county fairs, whatever. People passed songs to one another that reflected the experiences and emotions of that locale, which makes perfect sense (I must say, the very best artists today do recreate this…).
The record industry was new and there were lots of great regional scenes, based around jazz, blues, folk idioms and more. Soul music sounded a little bit different, dependent on whether it came from Chicago, Philly, New York, Detroit, Memphis, or New Orleans, for example. Radio was weirdly diverse and reflected the communities where the artists lived and made their music.
As more and more money changed hands, things tightened up, via the consolidation and monopolization of labels, radio, print media, and record store chains. The standard became a more homogenous music that could be pumped into generic ears, from coast to coast, even internationally. Sure, regional scenes like Stax or Motown went national or international back in the day. But, the difference is, the music grew out of the communities and then was shared with the world – as opposed to being created from the get-go with some sort of nebulous global market in mind.
Somewhere along the line the definition of a great show became paying a large sum of money to sit in a hockey arena to watch an artist who was flown/driven in from hundreds or thousands of miles away to sing about generic experiences – or worse yet, experiences that are purported to be "universal". There are a lot of push-button songs these days, lyrically and musically. But these songs, increasingly, steer clear of deeply reflecting the reality of the listener and their community, while propagating the myth that artists with mass exposure in the global marketplace are inherently better - that “more” is “better."
Many communities are now implementing sustainable development plans that will make cities more livable while consuming less energy. Some of these new ways are old ways – trolleys, bike lanes, corner groceries and people are already moving back to the cities from the suburbs.
Re-generated neighborhoods filled with local businesses and community oriented entertainment options would enable artists to get back to a more ‘localized’ scene that connects directly to the people. That’s a powerful thing - it cuts out the middleman and you’re not competing with Django, Elvis, Miles, and everyone else who ever recorded, when you’re standing two feet away from your audience. This is the totality of what art with a sane dose of commerce can be, instead of some faux universality.
Bands will get hip to the fact that it is extremely difficult to literally compete with millions of songs around the globe (from the limitless back catalogues, as well as new releases) on a seemingly but not really level playing field such as that prescribed by digital downloads. So, the way to sustain one’s self as an artist, will increasingly rely on taking it directly to the people.
The language and the rhythms of the community will become more relevant again, as artists literally riff off each other in ways they never imagined, because they will be staying a little closer to home, collaborating.
Once people aren’t driving thirty miles to see a movie or vacationing eight states away, they’ll discover local talent, and forge more meaningful relationships with artists that they see up close, interact with, buy their music, etc. – a true renaissance vs. a virtual connection. Think Paris in 50s. New York in the 60s. Kingston in the 70s. Only better, because it’ll be just down the block from you, within walking distance, no matter where you live.
Feel free to shoot me a question – doughoekstra@yahoo.com. You can also visit www.doughoekstra.com or www.myspace.com/doughoekstra.
Doug Hoekstra’s music has garnered years of praise from critics, djs, and fans throughout the US & Europe. In addition to live discs, eps, and other oddities, he’s released six full-length works, earning him Nashville Music Award, Independent Music Award, and NARAS nominations. His short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, and he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for his tale “The Blarney Stone” (2006). Hoekstra's first-full length collection of prose, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, was published in 2006 to rave reviews and earned a Bronze Medal for Best Short Fiction in the 2007 Independent Publisher Awards (IPPYs).
