JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Brian Austin Whitney Blog Monday, April 9th, 2007

Brian, a few thoughts. I read the article, and it was fascinating. I'm not sure I agree with some of the conclusions. What the exercise underscored for me, as a former professional marketing person, is the importance of *context* in selling anything these days. It's not (in my opinion) lack of interest--it's lack of *time*. Everything moves *so* fast, and we are *so* busy, that we've erected rather substantial blinders to tune out distraction, much like the blinders they used to put on hansom-cab horses 100 years ago to prevent the beasts from getting freaked out by traffic--and just as effective. Most of the folks who passed Violin Dude by simply did not see him, because they weren't expecting him to be there. The reason Violin Dude got a different reaction from the kids is they don't have blinders yet.

Wherewith, a War Story. Some years back, our Friday Night Group got tapped to play at the "Moograss" Bluegrass Festival in Tillamook (OR). It was the first time the "Moograss" folks had ever recognized there might be such a thing as "local talent," and we were determined to do 'em the best job we could--we knew if we could pull it off, other local folks would be able to follow in our hoofprints. We spent a lot of time discussing what exactly "bluegrass music" was, because we wanted to make sure that was what we played. (We're an awfully eclectic bunch of musicians.)

We finally concluded if we just had a banjo on stage, people might assume we were going to play bluegrass music no matter what we actually played. That begged the question whether anyone actually had to *play* the banjo, because none of us could. (We did have that remedied by the following year.) So what we did was put the banjo prominently in a guitar stand on stage, and nobody touched it for the two hours that we played. And afterwards, people complimented us onm our "bluegrass music."

I wouldn't say context is everything, but it counts for a lot. If you give people what they think they're expecting, they'll think they got what they expected. (I think Queen Victoria said that.)

One of the facets of modern society one has to deal with (because I don't think we can change it) is the demise of the Donna Reed Family. That's what has produced the lack of time we all have. We are prone to having more gadgets (we call them "time-saving" devices, remember?), and we can use the gadgetry to accomodate people's lack of time, we will potentially be successful. The other thing we need to do (my opinion, again) is raise the priority of us (or whatever we believe "us" represents) in people's consciousness. We want as many as possible of them to be like the guy in the article who had three extra minutes so he stopped to listen to Violin Dude.

How do we get there? I don't know--I'm not an expert at this stuff. A couple of ideas, though, based on things I've seen discussed here:

I think filming each Roadtrip venue, no matter how small, is a real good idea. (I am assuming you're already doing an audio recording.) Have somebody with film expertise edit each one down to a professionally-looking 2-hour show. Sell DVDs. Let artists featured in the show get DVDs at a deep discount and sell 'em themselves.

Also give each artist a DVD of just their performance. That's something they can make copies of and give to venues they're soliciting gigs from. There's one open mike out here where the venue videotapes the evening's session, and I have started asking for copies for the reason above. That accomodates the *venue*'s shortage of time; they don't have time to do auditions any more, but they do want to know what a performance by you is like. So give 'em the DVD and tell 'em to watch it when they have time.

And of course, the CDs. I don't know if you're producing a CD of each Roadtrip, because I haven't gone to one yet (have I said "lack of time"?), but if not, I'd highly recommend it. The CD could even be the soundtrack from the DVD. One song, probably, from each artist, and then let the artist purchase 'em at deep discount to market to their friends, contacts, &c. Would I sell a professionally-done CD that just had me on it for one song? Sure, I would.

There's three ideas that might drag people who don't have a whole lot of time to one of your Roadtrip shows.

I wouldn't worry about the Roadtrips being big productions--might actually help in some cases if the venue and show were small. I'd suggest including a few "house concerts" on the tour, just to see what it's like; you haven't done it (a lot of us haven't), but some pundits are saying this is the wave of the future for independent-music entertainment, and a lot of us, I think, would appreciate your perspective on it.

Yes, it all ties into "guerilla marketing" of a sort. I myself don't see a lot of mileage in trying to attract record-company A&R types, &c.; sure, I'd tell 'em it was happening, but otherwise, I'd be inclined to just ignore 'em, saying in effect, "If those guys had any conception of talent, they'd have noticed you before now." Bypassing the system, in other words, until the system is forced to take notice.

I'll probably have more thoughts later.

The Artist Formerly Known as Moonless Joe