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Dr. Neil Ratner’s New Book Roc Doc Takes Us On A Rock N Pop Romp

By: Rick Landers

Images courtesy: Dr. Neil Ratner

In many ways, Dr. Neil Ratner‘s life reflects that long and winding road, leading to one heart. Like many, as a young man he dreamed the dream of a life immersed in rock ‘n’ roll, a music that grabs us, pulling us in…sometimes to its very soul.la

For some it’s a need or desire of fame and fortune; or sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but for many it’s simply, a love of “the beat”.

At heart, Ratner’s a drummer, or maybe more pointedly, a percussionist, with an interest in instruments one taps, beats or bangs, many from from different cultures.

After a life working with such greats as Edgar Winter and White Trash, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Three Dog Night and Michael Jackson, Neil’s heart still surges to the beat of his collection of international gear. Whether it’s a djembe, a snare, a tambourine or a big bass drum, Neil still thumps away in the quiet haunts of Woodstock, New York.

A drummer, a roadie, a tour manager, sometimes intertwined, Neil found himself working the backline of the world of rock and roll, but with some of the best, if not the top musicians in the world. But, in an emotional twist of fate he was found himself driven  to leave the music business behind. He would find himself in Mexico, studying to become Dr. Neil Ratner, eventually specializing in anesthesiology.

It was a significant pivot, yet he was able to create a life that returned him to work alongside those who could get lighters and later, cellphones lit, fists pumping and thousands of fans swaying to the music or simply singing along with legendary hit songs.

Ratner learned the ropes of rock ‘n’ roll logistics and sound systems early on and showed an aptitude that reflected a precision and attention to detail that would serve him well. Yet, his life would also carry him to a point where he floundered in darker scenarios, where he lost his way and found himself staring at four prison walls, with time to reconsider his life and the need to draw his own perimeter lines, where his core values could thrive and where he could, and would, do better and help others.

Dr. Ratner’s new book, Rock Doc is a romp, taking us to the inner world of rock and pop, the thrills and the spills, as well as the vagaries of fate, where the highs live alongside the lows, where juggling and balancing life oftentimes leads to destruction.  Rock Doc navigates through all of that and more, yet in the end, it’s about redemption and love where two hearts beat, as one.

Today, Neil lives a life in the town of Woodstock where he serves on its Ethics Board, and reaches half-way around the world to support and promote charitable causes in Africa and elsewhere. And he remains a devoted husband to his wife, Leann, the love of his life. And, of course, you can’t take the beat out of the drummer, so he drums.

I rarely use the word enchanted, and interviews are rarely that….they can certainly be fun, interesting, and intriguing. I expect you’ll find Neil candid and informative, entertaining and cleverly self-effacing, genuine and a hoot. He laughs about his foibles, and properly tones it down when serious matters warrant it, and in the end he’s philosophical and reverent about his good fortune, given his ability and capabilty to help many of the poorest, disenfranchised people of the world. Enchanted, I am.

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Rick Landers: I found your book not only interesting and informative, but also entertaining. You’re really a good writer and I found that, rather than it being like a typical pedestrian autobiography, it was more of a romp of a story, if that makes sense. Although, there were some heavy downsides or low points, obviously.

Neil Ratner: I never really attempted to write anything before, and as such, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be any good at it or not. I’m pleasantly surprised when I hear comments like yours. [Laughs]

Rick: It’s a fun read. From your early days, your dream was to be a career professional drummer, but at a certain point you were inspired to shift to a career in medicine. I know you talked about this in your book.

But this is an unusual circumstance. A lot of really good musicians find themselves at some pivot point, where they need to make that kind of decision. How about telling us about your first dream of being a drummer, the change that took place, and looking back, how you feel about becoming a doctor, rather than making the decision to become a professional rock drummer?

Dr. Ratner at medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Neil Ratner: Basically, you’re right. As a kid, especially growing up – I’m going to be 70 – in the ’50s and ’60s, you know, rock and roll was just happening and it was such an exciting time. And I was drawn to the drums at a very early age for reasons unbeknownst to me.

I guess I always had rhythms going on in my head. So, it always appealed to me to be a drummer and, as I say in the book, I started out in the high school band and orchestra. Then I had my little bands on the side and as time went on, it seemed more and more possible that that might happen.

But, as fate would have it and you know the music business, Rick. It’s not an easy business. It was not an easy business then. It’s not an easy business to get into now, although now with the Internet, the ability of people to do things on their own, I guess it is somewhat easier, although I don’t think it’s easier to reach those plateaus.

Those plateaus of stardom are still way off in the distance for everybody, quite honestly. At any rate, I got to a point at the end of high school where I had a really good band and it looked like we were going to get some offers. We made some demos – you know how it goes. 

Rick: Yep.

Neil Ratner: Shit happens. I had this other dream as a kid, again for reasons unbeknownst to me of becoming a doctor, and coming from kind of an upper middle-class background, certainly my parents were much more geared towards me going to college and becoming a physician than becoming a rock and roll drummer! 

Rick: Sure, of course [Laughs].

Neil Ratner: I had to make the switch and say, “Okay, for the moment, I’ll give up being a drummer, although I’m not going to give up the drums. Let me go to college and be pre-med and start to study and see what develops. And what developed was, of course, I immediately got into a band. I started playing at various functions and clubs and whatever. After a time, my interest in school was kind of waning [Both laugh] with my interest in music being rekindled in a really big way.

And then an interesting thing happened to me. In the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I took a sublet apartment in New York City and I got into a training program where, within the two months, I could get a license as an operating room technician.

Back in the day and even today getting into medical schools was and is not an easy thing. I felt that maybe that would give me an advantage. Although I still wanted to be a rock and roll drummer.

I was seriously looking at, how am I going to go to medical school? And how am I going to pursue that dream of becoming a doctor? So, I took an apartment. It was the summer of 1969. The apartment was on 13th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues in New York City.

Anybody who knows New York City knows that that’s the East Village. The East Village back in those days was quite the place with the Fillmore down the street, Oh Calcutta at the Anderson theater, the electric Circus you know, hippies all over, the smell of pot everywhere [Both chuckle]. It was a very conducive atmosphere for music. 

Rick: Well, I’ve got to tell you I used to go to the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, which is similar to the Fillmore.

Neil Ratner: Oh, absolutely! The Grande was one of the early venues of rock and roll. 

So anyway, I take this apartment and very shortly after I started living there, I hear music coming from an upstairs apartment. Being a musician, it interests me. I hear guys practicing on guitars. I can’t tell. So I walk upstairs and knock on the door and I introduced myself. Lo and behold, it’s the apartment of Liz and Rick Derringer.

Rick and I became instant friends and, of course, living next door was his brother Randy, and next door to that was Randy Hobbs. 

Rick: Oh really? 

Neil Ratner: These guys had all been in the McCoys. 

Rick: Yeah, “Hang on, Sloopy.”

Rock legend, Rick Derringer, and Dr. Neil Ratner

Neil Ratner: Yes, but at the time when I met them, the McCoys were finished, and Rick had started to work with Johnny Winter. So there was Rick, and Randy Hobbs, and Rick’s brother, Randy, who didn’t make it very long.

They became Johnny Winters’ band and they were called Johnny Winter And. So Rick and I became friendly. I was in a little band that summer of friends from home in Long Island, and I had Rick come to a gig and he saw me play and he realized that I could play the drums.

We became fast friends, hung out a lot during that summer, and when it was time for me to go back to school, I said, “Rick, man, you saw I could play drums. Get me a gig as a drummer [Both laugh]. 

Lo and behold, he called me six months to a year later, not with a gig as a drummer, but by that point, he was well established with Johnny Winter. Of course, Johnny had a brother named Edgar. 

Rick: Of course, yeah. 

Neil Ratner: He had just formed his first real band to go out there and try and make it. It was made up of a bunch of friends and it was called, Edgar Winter’s White Trash, featuring Jerry LaCroix.

Rick: Yeah, White Trash, I saw them. 

Neil Ratner: With another friend of his, Jerry Lacroix. 

Rick: Yeah, I know White Trash. “Dying to Live” is a great song.

Neil Ratner: “Dying to Live” is a fabulous song. I love that song: so filled with paradox, you know what I mean?

Rick: Yeah! [Both laugh]

Neil Ratner: And that’s what the world is. You can’t appreciate sadness without joy, etcetera. At any rate, Edgar had just formed a band and I was sure Rick was going to ask me to be the drummer. But of course, he asked me to be the road manager, which was not something I really wanted to be.

But you know, he said, “Come on, Neil. You’ll get in the business. You’ll meet people. You never know, So, that was the beginning of my foray into the rock and roll business. 

Dr. Neil Ratner and Edgar Winter.

Rick: And then you decided to become a doctor. What was the driving force besides wanting to be one? Was there a point where something happened and you went, “I really need to change and focus on the doctor thing.”

Neil Ratner: Yeah, absolutely. I spent five to six years working in the business side of the business, starting out as road manager, then a tour manager, then a special assistant to a major manager.

Eventually, I had an all-in-one production company. We did, sound, lighting, everything a band needed on the road.. I did Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon tour. I did the LP Brain Salad Surgery tour and various other things. I was starting to get tired mentally and beat up physically.

Rick: I bet. The logistics side of it must have been horrific – pulling everything together. 

Neil Ratner: Try and imagine the Dark Side of the Moon tour – all of that equipment and special effects and everything in a time when there are no cell phones. There are no computers. Going on the road with lots of people and lots of equipment was quite a trip back in those days.

Rick: Yeah. Did you ever get in the studio with Pink Floyd? 

Neil Ratner: You know, the only time that I was actually invited to go into the studio with Pink Floyd – it’s kind of a funny story.

The way that I got involved with Pink Floyd is I became real good friends with Peter Watts. He was their chief sound technician and really an incredible genius when it came to sound technology. Peter and I were good friends and he had helped me create my company. He knew some technical people in London that had a company that was splitting apart.

The one guy who was going to keep all the equipment was looking for a new partner. His name was Jim Morris, and he and I eventually formed Circus Talents, which Peter helped put together. Then, of course, when the Dark Side of the Moon tour came about, they tried to do it themselves and found they didn’t have enough equipment.

Their production wasn’t quite what they wanted it to be. So, as Peter developed a bigger production, he said, “Come on. You guys are coming along with me and you’ll co-produce the tour and we’ll use your equipment and we’ll see how it goes.”

Rick: What a great band. 

Neil Ratner: Yeah, it was a great band. At any rate, the only time I got into the studio with them was prior to that when they were recording the Dark Side of the Moon album. I was good friends with Peter, and his wife Puddie who, had been a college girlfriend of mine, which is how I met Peter in the first place.

They said, “Why don’t you come down to the studio? The Floyd is finishing up this new album called Dark Side of the Moon. Roger Waters has these flashcards and he’s going to get people to read answers to the questions that he has on the cards, and maybe it’ll make the album. We don’t know, but it should be a fun time.”

So, I was really psyched to go and I ended up in a London hospital with kidney stones.

Rick: Oh! As fate would have it.

Neil Ratner: As fate would have it, of course, if people listen to the Dark Side of the Moon album, they’ll hear Peter’s hysterical laughing, Puddie’s comments, “Cruisin’ for a bruisin'” and all kinds of other things. That was the one time I was invited to the studio, and I never quite got there. 

Rick: In ’74, they were working on a different album. I was at Abbey Road with Roy Harper, if you know Roy Harper.

Neil Ratner:  Oh, yeah. Sure. 

Rick: Pink Floyd were next door in studio 2. I think we were in 3. Then we all went downstairs and ate in the galley. Pink Floyd were behind us having Chinese takeout and champagne. 

Neil Ratner: No kidding [Both laugh]. Great combination!

Rick: It was hilarious. And Harper was a pretty amazing folk singer.

Neil Ratner: Yeah, he was a great singer that a lot of people don’t know about, actually. 

Rick: Yeah, I know, and I lived in England and worked for Virgin Records at the time. But I knew of John Martyn and saw him a couple times and a number of others. What I didn’t realize is that Nick Drake lived in the same county I did, if you knew Nick Drake.

Neil Ratner: Sure, yeah. Did you get friendly with Nick Drake?

Rick: Not with Nick Drake. I didn’t even know he was there. I didn’t actually hear about him until about three years ago.

Neil Ratner: So, getting back to your question. I had done all this stuff including all these big productions.

I was getting intellectually bored and physically beat up from all the drugs and the lifestyle and whatever, and I ended up again with another bout of kidney stones. I don’t know. I was watching TV. It was late at night and a movie came on. It was this old American movie called “Not as a Stranger.” It’s a movie about interns and residents and how they, become doctors and strive and I don’t know. I don’t know if it was the drugs or my mental state or whatever [Both laugh].

Neil Ratner’s and associates Circle Talents Ltd. production set for Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

It just hit me, and I started crying and I started to re-evaluate my life and every aspect of it and I said, “You know what? I’m done. I’m not going to be the drummer. I’ve done everything that I really set out to do and accomplish in the business end of the business. Now it’s time to go back and fulfill my other dream.” 

I was a big believer in the fact that you could do many things in life if you truly believed in yourself and you were willing to work hard enough for it. So, I knew it would be an incredibly long road. I had to go back to college. I didn’t have very many college credits. And colleges didn’t want to take me in their pre-med programs.

They didn’t think I was serious. My education was too strange for them. There were all kinds of things going on in my mind, but I was determined when I came back. I was fortunate: got into a university but I did not get into an American medical school. 

Rick: Yeah, Mexico, right?

Neil Ratner: There were foreign medical schools. I took the long road and 10 years later, hung up a shingle.

Rick: Any regrets?

Neil Ratner: No. Rick, I’ve had this incredible life, man! I wrote a book. I wanted to share all these great stories and experiences. Over the years, I’ve become the “Rock Doc”. 

Rick: I saw the picture on your book. You’re there with a snare drum and I think a cymbal in your seat. Do you have this drum kit now? 

Neil Ratner: No, I don’t have a drum kit, but I do have a house full of drums [Rick laughs]. When I moved up here to Woodstock about 15 years ago, my wife had been a professional dancer. She’s got a story too playboy bunny, Vegas showgirl. But, she was into African dancing, so I’m very into African drumming. And I’m a player of sorts. I’ve got a whole collection here of djembes and dunduns and other African drums.

Rick: Cool, you know, I love Mali music. 

Neil Ratner: Mali music: I learned in the Guinea tradition. 

I’m not sure if it’s the same. But, I’ve got to tell you, man, I was a drummer. I was sure it couldn’t be that difficult. And it was unbelievably difficult.  The rhythms were just so off and so unlike anything I had ever done. It was a real trip and it was great. It expanded my drumming knowledge, but that’s about all the drumming I do.

Rick: Yeah, I’m supposed to interview Jack Ashford from the Funk Brothers. Are you familiar? 

Neil Ratner: Nice! Yeah. 

Rick: Yeah. He’s like the tambourine guy and I didn’t know tambourine was so complex.

Neil Ratner: You watch a good tambourine player like Elton John’s ‘percussionist. Ray Cooper and watch how he plays the tambourine and you realize it’s a serious art. It’s a special instrument. 

Rick: After reading about it, I went and I got a bunch of antique tambourines from like the 1920s. 

Neil Ratner: No kidding [Both laugh]!

Rick: Yeah, kinda funny, but I collect vintage guitars. I guess I don’t just collect them. I play guitar, so I’ve got about 14 old guitars from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s – Gibsons and Martins and stuff. So, let’s see where we were…you moved into a world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (or pop, I suppose, with Michael Jackson) and it’s often on the fulcrum or the edge of risk.

And sometimes you teetered over to the wrong side, obviously, as you state in your book in a couple places. Do you find a life in music and a life in medicine both fueled by the same kind of cauldron of emotional needs? 

Neil Ratner: That’s an interesting question. 

In many ways, the pressure was similar in terms of getting a band on the stage every night and putting a patient to sleep and waking a patient up. Don’t forget, I was an anesthesiologist. I think in terms of your question, it would probably be answered differently depending on the type of physician. 

An anesthesiologist lives in a world full of pressure, we’re kind of like airplane pilots where it was very intense during takeoff and landing. In other words, I think I say in the book, ” “Hours of boredom with moments of Terror,” [Both laugh]

Rick: Were you in stressful situations? I would assume your medical work is and certain situations that I saw in the book. Did you eventually become sort of the eye of the storm where you’re the calm person and just handling stuff?

Neil Ratner: Yes, no question about it. I mean, to a certain extent, if you’re on the road and your company is in charge of everything, you better keep your cool because if you start to freak out at every little thing that happens, then you’re not going to be very good at your gig.

So yes, that was something that I had to learn to do. Same thing in the operating room – during times of crisis you better be calm, because bad things happen quickly in anesthesia. And if you’re not quick to correct them, they can go downhill extremely fast.

At a rock and roll show, it’s the same thing. I remember one Emerson, Lake & Palmer gig. I think we were running all kinds of phase linear amplifiers. That was our power. And we had some sort of a crazy power surge that blew like 10 of them, which is all we had. Then to do the gig, we had to get a generator.

You know – high-pressure situations happen, I suppose in every kind of field, but yes, there were similarities there between trying to run a tour on the road and trying to create a successful anesthetic experience during an operation. 

Rick: Yeah. It’s interesting. A friend of mine teaches and talks about fear and anger. He said what happens when people get really excited and angry, what happens is the blood from their brain goes to their limbs, so you don’t think as well. So, it sounds to me like you kind of recognized that and you were able to stay calm.

Neil Ratner: Interesting. It’s something that I did have to learn, and I did have to teach myself. There was one other time in my life where I certainly had to use that same experience of staying calm.

As you said, I’ve had good and bad things happen to me, and I did spend a little bit of time as a guest of the federal government.

Long story, had to do with my fertility practice. People will have to read about it. I’m not going to go into it, but believe me; when you’re dropped in a federal prison [Laughs], you better stay calm.

You better use those same talents, [Both laugh] because you’re in a very interesting, unusual situation that you need to be very aware of your surroundings. 

Rick: When you were with ELP and Edgar Winter’s White Trash, what were some of the toughest challenges besides what you say in your book: getting the money and making sure the sound system was right? [

Neil Ratner:  Well, one of the toughest challenges of being a road manager or a tour manager, you know, with these groups, is dealing with the emotional problems [Both laugh] and situations that each of the band members may or may not have.

Rick: So, you’re a facilitator/mediator? [Both laugh]

Neil Ratner: Certainly, a facilitator, a psychologist. Now this is not meant to be sexist in any way, shape, form or manner, but many times the other thing that you had to deal with, which got to be very difficult, were the wives and the girlfriends. 

Particularly in the situation with a band like Emerson, Lake & Palmer where you had three stars. 

If the wife or the girlfriend and their husband or boyfriend isn’t getting the attention he deserves, you’re gonna hear about it. It’s going to be your job to make sure they don’t rile up their husband or boyfriend and create a terrible problem within the band.

That was important, and then just the interpersonal relationships among band members. That can be difficult to deal with oh, you know. You’ve dealt with musicians your whole life [Laughs].

Rick:  We’re an interesting breed. 

Neil Ratner: Yeah, interesting breed and you get strange combinations! 

Peter Watts, sound engineer for Pink Floyd, and Neil Ratner.

Rick:  But there’s an old joke that guitar players say that the reason they have a drummer is because that’s the guy who goes and gets the beer.

So, as a drummer/doctor, the joke takes on kind of an interesting twist when you get to the medical needs of Michael. I would think that – and I don’t want delve into this too much – I just want to ask.

I think there was not only a balancing act between prescribing medicine to tend to your patient because that’s what he ultimately was, as well as a friend over time, while at the same time working not to enable him.

So, did you find that there’s always a balancing act with that and did you find yourself reflecting on where you needed to draw the line between those two?  Where did you need to draw the line between those two? 

Neil Ratner: One hundred percent it was a balancing act. It was a difficult line to draw.

Rick: I bet. Yeah.

Neil Ratner: But, as far as I was concerned, I was the doctor. I was the expert. Therefore, I had to control whatever situation I put myself in medically, with any patient, be it Michael or anyone else.

You take the Hippocratic Oath. That’s a serious thing – a serious part of medical school. And one of the most important parts of it is, “I will do no harm.”

So, you’re always thinking about that balancing act of, “Well, how am I going to help him and am I going to harm him in any way by doing this. It was a difficult situation to me, because he was a friend. He was obviously in trouble and it was very obvious to me that other doctors were not thinking out-of-the-box. 

Rick: I think I found that the key to why you stayed as long as you did was to protect him from others. 

Neil Ratner: Well, to protect him from others and to protect him from himself. 

He was his own worst enemy. He created his own problems, yeah. He had lots of facilitators who jumped in on the magic, so to speak. That’s another thing. A lot of times when you get around stars, especially a really big star, you get so caught up in their magic that you lose your ethical, moral, every other consideration that you would make if you weren’t in a situation like that.

Rick: Yeah, you lose your grounding, I would think. 

Neil Ratner: Totally. Totally. It’s very important that you stay grounded and you treat that person like anybody else.

Rick: I’d think you’d also want to always keep in mind, “If I need to walk away, I need to walk away.” 

Neil Ratner: I would have walked away at any point where I felt anything untoward was happening or if I felt I was harming him in any way, or if I saw anything that I was uncomfortable with.

I didn’t need to be there other than to try and help a friend and do a good job at what I was trying to do. I had been in the rock and roll business. I was not taken out by that magic, you know, and that’s why I controlled the treatments. I controlled when, where, how, fully monitored, totally under my control and not Michael’s, and if he didn’t like it, too bad. Then I’ll leave. You can go get somebody else. I don’t care. I’m trying to help you here. 

Rick: Yeah, and I would think the most frustrating is a patient – and I don’t mean him – but a patient in general, where there are some things you don’t control, when they don’t comply with what you want them to do, and they’re not in your sight 24 hours a day. 

Neil Ratner: No, they’re not and you could only do what you can do when you’re with them. That’s for sure. In the end though, I’ll say this. I felt I did the best I could under the circumstances.

I created a one-of-a-kind treatment for a one-of-a-kind individual and for the eight years and maybe 25 times that I did it with him, I think it was successful for what we were trying to accomplish. 

Leann Ratner, Michael Jackson and Dr. Neil Ratner.

Rick: I want to get into is your charity work in Africa, and I want to talk about the sustainability concept that you talked about in your book. There are a number of other things and it all has to do with, good solid grounded values that we’ve talked about and looking back on your life and what’s your biggest blessing and I’m sure you’re going to say your wife, but I want to get that in there, and then how you feel now.

Neil Ratner: She’ll appreciate that one.

Rick: We were talking about the idea of tending to your patient, at least in the sense with Michael Jackson, while at the same time trying not to enable your patient. And I think I was asking, did you find yourself reflecting on where that line needed to be drawn by you? I recall that you said almost on a daily basis, right?

Neil Ratner: Well, not necessarily on a daily basis, but basically, Michael was my friend. I was his doctor – one of his doctors – obviously, he had many doctors.

I just tried to give him the best possible advice that I could, but again, the kind of treatments that I was giving him were very serious business,. I was an expert as you know from the book.  I started focusing on anesthesiology when Propofol didn’t exist. When it first was approved for use in the US, I was one of the first to grab it. I used it extensively for years and years and years through thousands of cases before I ever met Michael. So I knew what I was doing.

As I said to you before, it was somewhat out-of-the-box, and because of that, I had to be in total control. I don’t give a shit if he was Michael Jackson or fucking Donald Trump or the Pope. It doesn’t really matter, and I made that clear to him: “Listen, this is serious business. This is not a joke. I’ll do it because I think it can help you temporarily.” I was always looking for a way to transition him.

If you remember in the book, at one point I got him a Chinese herbalist. We tried that. These treatments were never meant to be a permanent or daily thing.

For me, it was just when it was absolutely necessary to get him on stage, That’s why over the eight years, it was infrequent, not frequent. When I had to care for him in that way, it was under my terms, period. If he didn’t like it, tough shit. Walk away. I don’t care.

That’s how I drew the line. I used my expertise to decide what I felt I was comfortable with and that’s where I drew the line. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else.  You need me more than I need you, man. I don’t give a shit that you’re Michael Jackson. This is something different.

Rick: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know when you were doing this, but there was a study in 1987 – and I don’t know how good or how extensive the study was – by the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians. It found that 27% of those interviewed admitted that they used beta blockers, and that’s what that is, right?

Neil Ratner: No.

Rick: It’s not? Wow. Let me see what this says here.

Neil Ratner: No, no, I believe the story about beta blockers. I’ll explain it to you.

Rick: But, it says beta blockers such as propanolol for musical…

Neil Ratner: Propanolol not Propofol

Rick: Okay.

Neil Ratner: You know why they use beta blockers? Do you know the theory behind that or medicine behind that? I’ll tell you very quickly.

We have a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system. They are complementary to each other, fight or flight. The sympathetic nervous system is adrenaline. So, when you get excited, your heart goes faster, your blood pressure goes up, and the parasympathetic system is the opposite. When people have to perform or go for public speaking, a lot of times they get very nervous.

So, you can take a small dose of a beta blocker. There are alpha and beta receptors in the nervous system. The beta receptors are what make you nervous feeling and your heart go fast and all that shit. So, you can take a mild beta blocker before you have to go out and perform. It will keep you where you need to be without affecting anything else.

Rick: Ah, okay.

Neil Ratner: That’s what beta blockers do. What I’m talking about it’s something totally different. I’m talking about sleep therapy that I did for Michael.

And that was Propofol.

Rick: Okay, because the other medicine actually causes insomnia.

Neil Ratner: It can.  It could also cause a little bit of impotence and various other things, but not in very small doses just for performance anxiety. Great drug for performance anxiety.

Rick: That was my mistake, but thank you.

Neil Ratner: No problem [Both laugh]. I like to educate, you know?

Rick: Good, good. 

Neil Ratner: And I think it’s important for people to know that I’m a real doctor,.

Rick: Exactly, that’s good. I suppose there’s also the dynamic of how much do you do as a doctor, or how much you should do to manage your patients since patients have a certain responsibility that you can’t control, right? Do you use the carrot or the stick approach or both approaches? How do you know what to use to try to motivate a patient to be compliant?

Neil Ratner: You know, as an anesthesiologist, you’re not really in that world.

Rick: That’s true.

Neil Ratner: Because you’re taking control of that patient. What you need to do is make that patient comfortable with the fact that you’re now going to be in control for whatever length of time the operation, the treatment.

It’s a whole different kind of medicine, a whole different kind of doctor. It’s interesting when you think about it. As an anesthesiologist, I didn’t treat disease in the course of my job. My job was to facilitate what the surgeon did. I had a very unique perspective on it, because my perspective was – Okay, I had been in the rock and roll business, right?

Rick: Right.

Neil Ratner: I had done my share of drugs. I was in the rehab, the whole deal. And I was very knowledgeable on all of those kinds of street drugs. I knew by personal experience: sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Rick: Sure.

Neil Ratner: I say this as a joke to people, but it’s not really a joke Anesthesiologist’s were afraid to go alone into a doctor’s office because the drugs that were available back in those days were not really conducive to office anesthesia, but I had had much more personal experience with most of those drugs then than many of these other guys had.

I knew the drugs available to me as an anesthesiologist would be similar or could produce similar effects. My theory was that if I used the right drugs and I mixed them correctly, why can’t I give a patient a unique experience in the operating room apart from whatever the surgeon is doing?

Rick: Sure, sure.

Neil Ratner: The other thing I introduced that was new at the time – I brought a Sony Walkman in and would play spiritually uplifting, non-worded music. The entire time of the operation, the patient would have the headphones on. I would bring them in with a creative visualization, where I’d speak to them the night before and explain to them: pick a special place, blah blah blah.

I would work that whole thing to create a set and setting: the right environment, the right feeling, so that, again, the anesthetic experience was more than just drugs that made you nauseous and allowed the surgeon to work. I was very successful in doing it that way. My approach was very unique, very different.

Rick: So the music – was that chosen by you or your patients? Was it something like Enya?

Neil Ratner: You know, it was interesting, I would usually choose the music unless the patient had a special request. But I had certain requirements for the music. Again, non-worded, spiritually uplifting. New Age kind of stuff before New Age existed: certain classical pieces, certain rock pieces, but they had to be of a certain type. Words get in the way.

I wanted things that helped to produce positive emotions. I didn’t want patients to listen to the words. I wanted them to feel the music. And, of course, they’re only feeling it until they go to sleep.

But, a lot of these procedures were under what’s called conscious sedation, which meant that they weren’t really unconscious. They were in this sort of in-between space. Again, although they might not consciously remember the music, there’s some part of the unconscious brain that’s recording the experience. if it’s a pleasant experience, it’s better for you [Both laugh].

Rick: I used to call that ‘dreality’ – partial dream, partial reality.

Neil Ratner: ‘Dreality’: I like that! [Both laugh] I may use that.

Rick: That was back in the ’70s I came up with that.

Neil Ratner: I like it!

Rick: Use it! Use it [Both laugh]! That brings up an interesting point about the music, because I know you talked about Michael Jackson and his song “Smile.” You knew that was originally Charlie Chaplin?

Neil Ratner: I knew that was the Charlie Chaplin song, and Michael and I had talked about it because he used it. I think when we first talked about it, when I first went on tour – on the History tour. It was shortly after Princess Diana had died. And you know I’ve got that chapter in the book about Michael and Princess Di, although they only met once…

Rick: They talked a lot, yeah.

Neil Ratner: They had late-night phone conversations and all that stuff. Before the first show, Michael said to me, “Make sure you’re out in front,” like in the audience, “because I want you to see how it starts.” He didn’t tell me what it was. It started with a tribute to Princess Di, and I think that was the first song. So afterward, Michael and I talked about it. He loved Charlie Chaplin. That happened to be one of his favorite songs and he related it to Di, and so he used it that way.

Rick: When I was digging into that song, I didn’t realize. I thought Charlie Chaplin wrote the lyrics, as well, but he made the melody. In 1954, two guys added words to it, apparently.

Neil Ratner: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that. That’s very interesting. But, I’ll tell you something that I’ll never forget. You know Charlie Chaplin was shunned by the Academy for his Communist leanings and what not?

Rick: Yes.

Neil Ratner: But then, I don’t remember when it was – maybe it was in the ’60s or something – they invited him back. He was very, very old. They invited him back. I’ll never forget watching that because he came out to that song. It’s like burned in my mind: that, and the Michael time, being every night there on tour for awhile.

Rick: He was brilliant.

Neil Ratner: Oh, yeah. Was he ever.

Rick: Let’s move a little bit, or a lot, to what I find to be very commendable work that you’ve done in Africa. You mentioned the word ‘sustainable’ with the work. I think somebody brought up the question, “Was your work sustainable?” and from there it gave you the idea that it should be sustainable, right?

Neil Ratner: Correct, that’s exactly right. Basically, what happened was in the ’90s, my wife and I decided to go to Africa. She had had this dream of going on safari from the Tarzan movies when she was a kid or whatever. We booked a small safari with one of these companies.

I had some experiences previously. I had been in rehab. I’m sure I talked about this somewhere along the way. When I got out of rehab, I met a man who I started working with who’s sort of like a modern-day shaman. Charles Lawrence is his name. I’ve mentioned him in various parts of the book. He turned me on to Native American culture, indigenous culture. I became a pipe carrier.

Rick: Hmm, wow!

Neil Ratner: I studied ritual and ceremony, just learned to fill that space – you know how they say you’ve got to fill the space that the drugs took, the emptiness and whatever. At any rate, I got really into all of that. So, when we went to Africa, I had the desire to go to a real village, an indigenous village, not one of these tourist villages – a real village.

There were about 10 or 15 of us on the safari. I spoke to the guide. She said, “I know one, but you’ve got to convince the other people,” blah blah blah. I convinced everybody we should go. We had to drive. It was hours from the camp. It was in Samburu land, in the northeastern portion of Kenya, near the Somali border.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve been to Kenya.

Neil Ratner: She took us to this incredible native village. It was like being in National Geographic: primitive with huts made of mud and dung. Among other things, they showed us how they shot the arrow in the calf and used blood as their main food source. They had 25 different ways of preparing it,

So we’re getting ready to leave. We got in the vans and I saw the chief carrying this kid and having a conversation with the guide. It looked like they were arguing. I had made the arrangements. I felt like I needed to get involved.

Long story short: the kid was sick. They knew I was a doctor, because that’s the only way they allowed us to come, because the guide had said, “Famous New York doctor. Don’t bother him. Maybe he’ll come back and help the village. Don’t bother him.”

But, of course, there was a sick kid and I was a doctor. Basically, he wanted me to look at the kid. Without thinking, I agreed, not realizing that I had no tools. I’m just standing there in the middle of the desert in Northern Africa. But having gone to medical school in Mexico, I learned about the tools of my body: my eyes, my ears, my hands. I realized maybe, maybe I could make some kind of a diagnosis. Fortunately, I could.

We go back and I had all these antibiotics. I took out all the antibiotics that I brought, made a huge pile of powder, figured out milligrams per kilogram, what the kid weighed. My wife sat there and we portioned out doses in little packs of paper. Went back the next day. I gave him the medicine and I that told them what I thought the diagnosis was and hoped for the best. Six months later, the chief sent me his spear, which was a huge, big deal.

That’s really what started me on the charity route although I’ve sort of taken a break right now while I’m working on the book.

But, it’s not over. It’s something that is my intention to actively go back to and use whatever celebrity I can get as a jumping-off point to create something even bigger and more sustainable and more important.

At any rate, I had a friend in the city: a very famous infectious disease doctor named Kevin Cahill, I had to go to him and tell him the story. I was really proud of the story. He’s a tough Irish guy – he’s treated Popes and Presidents and everything else. And he just looks at me and says, “Ahh, what do you think you did? If you went back there tomorrow, did you change anything? The kid’s probably sick again! Did you do anything sustainable? Without sustainability, these things never last!”

I split from his office with my tail between my legs thinking, “Oh, shit. Was that just a vanity project? Did I make myself feel good?”

Rick: Yes and no: you did what you thought was right.

Neil Ratner: I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time. But, he made me aware that there was more that I could do, and maybe that I should do.

Rick: He planted the seed.

Neil Ratner: Totally. Then I said, “You know what? We’re going back. We’re going to see if we can create something sustainable out of what I did there.”

And we did. We went back and on my own dime, we were successful: Got a government nurse involved. There’s a picture there of me treating kids in the little schoolhouse.

Rick: Right, I saw that.

Neil Ratner: So, we were successful, and that started me. I got to know a lot of people in Kenya and we love Kenya. I tell this story in the book. I come home one day and can I see my wife watching TV. What is she watching? The rubble of the American Embassy in Nairobi. I’m shocked and horrified. It wasn’t long before the phone rang and some very famous friends of ours, Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton – check them out. They’re incredible people.

Rick: Okay, will do.

Neil Ratner: Iain Douglas-Hamilton, was a doctoral student at Oxford studying elephants in the ’60s. He realized if we don’t know their migration routes, we’ll never save them. So, he was the first guy to start collaring elephants. He’s like the grandfather of the elephant conservation movement. He’s still alive, probably in his late 70s or early 80s.

At any rate, they became good friends. They called, “You must help.” They hooked me up with an African charity. I helped put together a mission of mercy: I got the anesthesiologists. They got international reconstructive surgeons. We went back a couple of months later. The acute injuries had been taken care of, but over 300 people had injuries that were not properly taken care of – injuries that can really hurt people emotionally.

Rick: Like the boy with the jaw n your book, right?

Neil Ratner: The boy with the jaw, right. Or how about the guy with the ear?

Rick: Oh, yeah! That’s pretty amazing! He just wanted to put his glasses on, right?

Neil Ratner: Right, right. Just the incredible stuff like that that never got fixed: that was our mission, to go and fix it. It was really the first al-Qaeda situation.

We operated on 300 people in the course of two weeks. It was an amazing experience. We donated a quarter million dollars worth of equipment because we brought everything. I solicited everybody. I jumped up people’s asses like you wouldn’t believe [Both laugh], try to make them feel as guilty and bad as possible.

Rick: Hey, it worked.

Neil Ratner: Yes, it did.

Rick: This reminds me of my next door neighbor. He’s with a foundation called the Numi Foundation. They build water infrastructure systems so people have clean water.

He says they don’t parachute in and leave. They make sure the water supply is clean and sustainable and they train people who are indigenous to the country. Now I think they’re working in a village in India. The whole idea of having clean water, which we don’t think about here in the states, but apparently is horrendous.

Neil Ratner: It’s the world’s biggest problem. Much disease is caused by dirty water. You wouldn’t believe the statistics. It’s funny you should mention that, because in recent years I’ve been looking at various things and I do a fair amount of travel. My wife and I went to Peru. We did Machu Picchu for a week. We did a week on the Amazon on a boat.

Rick: Nice.

Neil:Ratner Which was even cooler, quite honestly.

Rick: A friend of mine did that. She said she was almost attacked by a monkey. She was afraid she was going to have her face torn off.

Neil Ratner: Monkeys can be vicious. Trust me [Both laugh]. I was looking to see if there was something I could get involved in. One of the things that I looked into was water. I looked into all of that and know a lot about it. It never happened, but it’s a huge problem and there are some really nice solutions and organizations like your friend’s. It’s a huge problem that the world is going to have to address whether they want to or not.

But getting back to my charity story. I moved to Woodstock, New York, after I was in jail and stopped being a doctor and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I read an article in the local paper about a local baker who had been to South Africa and was very moved by the HIV crisis and wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what to do. By that point, I had spent an enormous amount of time in South Africa.

After Kenya, my wife and I became safari junkies and we just wanted to go on safari wherever we could. We started to go to Botswana and Zimbabwe. Then we found South Africa, and South Africa has a lot to offer. When I started going on the road with Michael, I met more people in South Africa, including Nelson Mandela.

Neil meets Nelson “Madiba” Mandela.

I first went to South Africa on tour with Michael during the History tour, and I said to him, “Mandela’s one of my heroes. Can you just make sure I at least get a picture or shake his hand?” [In Michael’s voice] “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll get it.”

Sure enough,he was president when we were down there. Mandela and his entourage came in to the dressing room after the show and when the president stopped to shake my hand he said “Oh, I didn’t know Michael had a doctor!” [Both laugh ] Later on Michael called me down to take the photos with him. So that was like unbelievable to begin with, then a couple of years later after we had done the charity tour, partly for the Mandela Children’s Fund, as a birthday present.

Michael called me and said, “Man, I got a present for you!” “What do you mean?” “No, I’ve got a present for you.” “Don’t give me no birthday present, Michael.” “No, no, man. I’ve got to give you a birthday present. I got a birthday present.” For Michael to say that – don’t forget, when I met him, he was a Jehovah’s Witness.

He didn’t celebrate birthdays. I talked about it in the book. I got on his ass about that, particularly when he had kids.

Rick: That’s right. You talked about Christmas.

Neil Ratner: ” You’ve got kids now Christmas and Birthdays are important.” And I talked to Michael like I’m talking to you.

Rick: Uh huh, that’s funny.

Neil Ratner: He was my friend. I didn’t really care. He hated when I cursed, coming from a family with a father who started in the trucking business. I have a truck driver’s mouth.

Two years later I got to go back and really spend time with Mandela. That’s the pictures you see. That was when we went back on the charity tour. He heard about what I did in Kenya and he said to me, “Come back and do something here.”

Fast forward to two years later, and I meet this guy and he wants to do something in South Africa. I’m itching to get back into the charity world, so we decide to do something, not knowing really what to do. We never had started a charity.

I had done all my stuff very independently. We started to research. At first we thought we would make some better bread. And we thought that was ridiculous: we should create bakeries, little micro-bakeries. We came up with a plan. We heard about a contest that the Dutch government was running called Business and Development: Make Poverty Your Business. What a great slogan, right?

Rick: Yeah.

Neil Ratner: Make Poverty Your Business. Because the whole point here is in the charity world, there ain’t enough to go around. Everybody’s got their hand out. There is not enough to go around, so the best thing you can do is to teach people to be self-sufficient in some kind of a significant way.

Rick: Yeah, teach them how to fish. The old adage.

Neil with freshly baked bread from the bakery in Nkosis village.

Neil Ratner: We co-opted that. “Give them a loaf of bread, you feed them for a week. Teach them how to bake the bread and you feed the village forever.”

Rick: Exactly.

Neil Ratner: That was our plan. I worked my ass off coming up with five-year projections and all the forms for the Dutch government. Lo and behold, we were the only American company that entered the contest. We took second place.

Rick: Wow!

Neil Ratner: We went to Holland and we got a little notoriety, and more importantly we got a little money. We got a little money we raised a little money. We still didn’t have enough money. I thought we could raise some money in South Africa.

I called my friend there who is like Mandela’s adopted son. I wanted him to get involved and help us. He called me back a couple of days later and said, “I spoke to the old man for you.” “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

I knew who he was talking about. “I want to help you. I’m going to send you five of his books for a fundraiser. He’ll endorse them any way you want. He likes what you’re doing and wants to help you.” And we did. We ran a fundraiser. We had the Mandela books and we raised enough money to create the first bakery.

Rick: Wow, terrific! 

Neil Ratner: We did, and we decided to put the first bakery in the craziest place ever. When my partner had gone to South Africa, getting back to HIV, he had gone to a program for single moms with HIV and their kids. That’s where he baked bread. It was a famous program called Nkosi’s Haven. There’s a whole story about it in a book called We Are All the Same, written by an ABC TV correspondent and it was actually nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

It’s the story of this white woman who adopts a black, township, HIV kid. It’s about her struggles and their struggles and the fact that she, almost single-handedly, fought the South African school system to get him into school.

Up until that point, HIV kids couldn’t go to school. She was successful. When he died, she created a program in his honor; that’s where my partner had baked bread. We ended up giving them the first bakery as the first sustainable business. 

Rick: Good for you.

Neil Ratner: Then we went on to do two more bakeries. We did one in the townships around Cape Town, which was crazy. But the most difficult one I did alone. I split from him and then I did one in, arguably, the most dangerous neighborhood in the Western Hemisphere, which was right outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Rick: Really?

Neil Ratner: Yes, with no sanitation, no running water, essentially no electricity, and we came up with solutions. Then I got involved in the book and that’s where charity stands with me at the moment.

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY BAKERIES

Rick: Okay, good stuff. Let’s circle back a bit. Having been a performer or manager for some legendary rock and blues groups, managing International tours, overcoming addiction, and working with and being a friend to one of the greatest performers of all time, you find yourself in federal prison. How did that experience change you, and were there any revelations? Or did you find that you just needed to get back to the basics – good, solid, grounded values? Did you find that you had lost the idea that you needed to draw the line maybe firmer than you had in the past?

Neil Ratner: Certainly the first thing I would say about it is the experience humbled me and the experience took me off my high horse. The experience made me realize that I was no different or more special than anyone else.

So, it took me back to basic human values, ethics, morals. Absolutely should have drawn the line. Absolutely. Knew what I was doing was wrong. Did it anyway, figured everybody did it so that it wouldn’t be my problem, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. It gave me a chance to reflect. It gave me a chance to read.

When do you have the time to just sit and read books? I was working too, because I was in a work camp, but I still had a lot of time to read, and a lot of time to be reflective.

Rather than isolate myself, I interacted with the people around me. Let me say this: I was in the minority. This was not a prison filled with white-collar criminals. The majority of the people were black and Hispanic. It was a sad situation because many, many of them should never have been there.

If they were white, if they had had a couple of bucks, they never would have been there. They just got caught in this ridiculous situation of what their lives were. The only way out was the way that they felt that they had to choose. Some of them, you’re talking about a couple of joints or something: five years, 10 years. How shall I put it? – it gave me pause to think about a lot of things, to think about what our society is like, that we put all these people in jail.

Rick: That reminds me. Do you remember John Sinclair?

Neil Ratner: Yes, I do.

Rick: He got 10 years for giving two joints to two undercover cops.

Neil Ratner: Oh, I know. Terrible.

Rick: I went to the John Sinclair concert where John Lennon played back in ’71.

Neil Ratner: Was that in Toronto?

Rick: No, that was at the University of Michigan.

Neil Ratner: Right, right. “Free John Sinclair.”

So prison was kind of a trip. I had a couple of experiences in prison that blew my mind: getting to play the drums.

Rick: Really?

Neil Ratner: So, I finally get to the work camp. I’m freaked out because I think I’m going to this low-security place and when I pull up, it’s a real prison with big towers. It looks like something out of a James Cagney movie.

Rick: Not the country club.

Neil Ratner: No, not the country club. I didn’t realize you had to go through a medium-security prison to get down to the low-security camp. Everybody goes through that. But eventually I got to the camp. One night, I’m sitting around and I hear music. It’s going to be one of those ‘I hear music’ stories.

Rick: [Laughs] It wasn’t Rick Derringer, was it? 

Neil Ratner: It wasn’t Rick Derringer, but I’m following the sound, and I get to this door that says ‘Authorized Inmates Only’.

I hear there’s a band inside, so I say, “Screw this. I’m authorized. I’m going in.” I get in and it’s a little room and there’s a big Latin band in there. There are a couple of guitar players, a bass player, a drummer, a couple of percussion players:

I couldn’t believe it! The place was packed and the guys can play! I’m sitting there and there’s a cowbell or some shit on the floor, so I pick it up and start playing [Both laugh]. I decide, I’ve got to be a part of this. I waited until the room cleared out and I see this one guy who seems to be the leader. I start talking to him, and one thing leads to another. He says to come back next week, and then he realizes – I let him know – I can speak Spanish from my time in Mexico.

One thing led to another and I was in the band. We did a gig for the prison population on Labor Day, so I got my ultimate dream of being in a band playing in front of the public [Both laugh]. That was one prison experience.

The other one: I was in the camp for a while and a friend comes up to me. He says, “You know there’s a sweat lodge here.”

Rick: A sweat lodge?

Neil Ratner: I said, “What are you talking about? It’s fucking jail, man!” He says, “No, no. I’m telling you there’s a native religious group here. There’s a sweat lodge. I want to go talk to the chief. Do you want to do it with me?”

Rick: Wow.

Neil Ratner: I said, “Are you kidding?” I told you I had been involved with my friend Charles in all kinds of Native American stuff and spirituality, but I never did sweat lodge. Sure enough, he talks to the chief and there is a Native American group there. And the reason there is that … I don’t know when it is. I talk about it in the book. Some year, in prison, religious freedom was treated as a privilege. It was challenged and they won the challenge. I think the Supreme Court ruled that religious freedom is a right in a prison.

Rick: Yes.

Neil Ratner: No matter what your religion is, you’re allowed to practice it if you’re sincere and you’re really a part of that religion.

Rick: What if you’re a Rastafarian?

Neil Ratner: [Both laugh] That’s a good question! I’m sure they let you practice without the weed. At any rate, they have this little area, and on Saturdays – Very authentic. The Inipi and the fires and whole deal. I did it for 10 weeks and it was unbelievable. To go to prison and to get that experience was just beyond the beyond, between that and playing in the band.

I’m not saying anybody should go to prison, but I was able to make it into something that was important and significant for me that had lasting effects.

Rick: That’s good. Something that’s sustainable.

Neil Ratner: Something that’s sustainable, that’s right [Both laugh].

Rick: This next question, you better get right. Are you ready? When you look back on your life oh, what has been the biggest blessing and why? You better talk about your wife [Laughs].

Neil Ratner: I was going to say, truthfully, the 42 years with Leann.

Rick: You’re a smart man.

Neil Ratner: Finding a soulmate, having somebody that you can share your life with. Life is only fun if you can share these experiences with somebody else. If you can sit at night and talk about them and laugh about them and remember them with somebody. To be able to find that person early on and be able to spend so much time and so much of your life and have so many of the experiences together is truly a blessing.

Dr. Neil Ratner

Rick: Yeah. I told a friend of mine a few weeks ago, “You don’t remember days a lot, but you do remember moments and you remember special moments.” So, I hope you got a lot of special moments that you and your wife remember together.

Neil Ratner: There are a lot of special moments in the book. One of the most special moments that I’ll tell you about relative to my wife and I: my wife grew up very poor. She left home when she was 16 years old from Cleveland, Ohio. She had a shitty childhood, a crazy mother, real father left, stepfather was nice but she grew up in Little Italy in Cleveland. At 16, she took the Greyhound bus to New York City and started working for Arthur Murray. (Dance Studio)

Rick: Wow.

Neil Ratner: She lifted herself up. She became a Playboy Bunny in New Orleans. Was Bunny Mother of the New York Bunny Club, a Vegas showgirl, and all this stuff. She gets to meet Nelson Mandela when we go back to South Africa, when Michael’s giving me the birthday present. We went back and got to spend the afternoon with Mandela, his wife, Michael, the kids: that’s where those pictures in the book all came from. And, she’s just blown away.

We go back to the room and she’s crying. I say, “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?” She said, “I felt like Cinderella. I never thought my life could turn out this way. I never thought that I could have an experience like this, know people like this, be like this.”

Rick: That’s sweet.

Neil Ratner: And, you know, that was one of those moments.

Rick: That’s touching.

Neil Ratner: Yeah, that was one of those moments. We’ve been very fortunate and blessed to have quite a few of them.

Rick: Good for you, good for you. (Pauses) Michael passed away almost 10 years ago.

Neil Ratner: June 25.

Rick: That’s right. July 25th is your anniversary.

Neil Ratner: That’s correct

Rick: I paid attention! So he passed away nearly 10 years ago: what special moments light up those memories making them so special for you? Or are there just too many of them?

Neil Ratner: Yes, there are too many of them to mention, but I’ll mention a few.

Being with Michael in Africa. Michael loved Africa. Michael wanted to live in Africa. He was a different person when we were in Africa. I got to spend time with him both on tour and when he went back privately to give Mandela the money and stuff like that. It was special to be with Michael in Africa. People may not consider him a black man, but if you saw him in Africa, you’d know he was a black man.

Rick: He wanted to build a house on the hill right in South Africa.

Neil Ratner: Right behind Sun City, yep. Absolutely. And I think he would have. I honestly think he would have. So, that was a special time.

Another special time – you might remember this one from the book – this was a trip, man. We go out to California, the Beverly Hills Hotel. He’s supposed to do some shoots and stuff. I said I’d hang with him and work with him a little bit. All the shoots get canceled. It’s right after 9/11 and he says, “Let’s go to Neverland for the weekend.”

I was with Leann and she hadn’t been to Neverland. I had already been there a couple of times. She hadn’t been so it was like the greatest thing ever. Again, that was another special moment for Leann, going to Neverland. Just Michael, Leann, me and the kids: the whole weekend.

So he had to go in the studio. We were there Thursday night and he had to go in the studio on Friday. We’ll go to Neverland on Saturday, but he says we’re going to dinner on Friday night. He said to be ready and get dressed nice. 

Michael never told me to get dressed nice, so what do you mean, get dressed nice? Typical Michael, we’re in the Beverly Hills Hotel and he’s late. He might have said 6:00 and it’s now 7:00, 7:30. I’m calling security. They say they’re hung up, but will be there.

I get disgusted and we take off the nice clothes and are getting ready to leave, and security calls to meet us downstairs. We meet him actually in the hall. We go on a special elevator and the Beverly Hills Hotel has a special garage a couple of floors under the normal garage. And there are two of the most unbelievable Daimler limousines – Mercedes Daimlers like the Queen uses.

He says, “Rat, you and Leann, that one’s for you.” “That’s great. Where are we going?” “Uh-uh.” He runs to the other one with the kids. We get in the car. I ask the driver, who’s an ex-cop, one of his security, where we’re going.

“I don’t know where we’re going. Just following,” he says.

We’re driving behind the Beverly Hills Hotel in the Hollywood Hills and we pull up to a nondescript house – a nice house, but no big deal. I don’t know where we are. Nobody knows where we are. He pulls up like two minutes before. I see him and the kids run in the house and we’re just walking to the door.

The doors open and we can see a blonde lady standing at the door waiting to greet us. Still, don’t know where the hell we are. We walk up to this lady and she looks very familiar; now that I’m close to her. She puts out her hand and says, “Hi, I’m Angie Dickinson.”

Rick: Oh, really?

Rick: Was she married to Burt Bacharach?

Neil Ratner: No, not at that time. This was in 2000 and something, 2001 maybe.

Yeah, because it was right after 9/11, so it was 2001. We go in the house and it’s a nice house. I see pictures on the wall and I see Michael talking to this tall guy who I do recognize and then I realize where we are We’re in Gregory Peck’s house. Michael’s talking to Gregory Peck.

Rick: Amazing [Both laugh].

Neil Ratner: Needless to say, it was an unbelievable dinner, very down-home. Unbelievable conversation. What I didn’t know until after the fact was that Gregory was like a father to Michael.

Rick: Oh, really?

Neil Ratner: Yeah, they had this very special relationship. Michael would go to him for advice. Before we left that night, he and Gregory went into a bedroom together alone. But, I’m telling you, sitting across from Atticus Finch…

Rick: Yeah, To Kill a Mockingbird! Cool.

Neil Ratner: Or Captain Ahab or whatever!

Rick: Oh, yeah!

Neil Ratner: So, that was another very special Michael moment. Just some of the time that I spent with him like the first time I went to Neverland. He said, “No, I want to give you the tour.” He took me on a private tour of Neverland.

Rick: That’s amazing. It’s special.

Neil Ratner: That kind of stuff. And just, I miss his friendship. And his “hee hee hee hee” voice. He was a cool guy. I liked him. We had fun together.

Rick: So he called you ‘Rat’ and you mentioned that you weren’t particularly fond of that at first. Over the years and looking back at it, do you find it endearing now?

Neil Ratner: I’m cool [Both laugh]. I’m cool. Of course, it’s an endearing name. Let me say this: part of my discomfort with that name came a little bit later after the whole prison thing.

Rick: Okay. [Both laugh]. Of course!

Neil Ratner: Because I turned state’s witness, I was a rat. It had different connotations for me later on. When I think of Michael calling me that, it’s fine.

Rick: Yeah, it’s just an abbreviation.

Neil Ratner: I’m cool with it, but like I said, he never used first names. You were either your last name or he came up with a nickname for you.

Rick: Now that the book is done, what is there to do in Woodstock? I understand that Dylan lives there. I think Marshall Crenshaw. Do you know Elliott Landy, by chance, the guy who’s image of Dylan is on the Nashville Skyline album cover?

Neil Ratner: Actually, I have met Elliott Landy a few times.

What is there to do? Woodstock is the most famous little town in America. You can go anywhere in the world and tell people we’re from Woodstock, they’ll know what you’re talking about.

Rick: You don’t want too many people to know it’s a nice place, right? Otherwise you’ll get a horde of people moving there.

Neil Ratner: And, of course, the festival wasn’t here anyway.

Rick: Yeah, that’s right. Yasgur’s farm, right?

Neil Ratner: Yasgur’s farm which is Bethel Woods now, which is a good 45-50 miles from here, the Catskills. We benefited from it, so that’s okay. I’m sure the town will benefit this summer. A lot of people will come here because it’s the 50th anniversary. But you know what there is to do here?

Rick: What?

Neil Ratner: There are music venues like you’re in New York City.

On almost any night, you can see some reasonably good talent. on the weekends, you can see big-name, major talent. There’s Levon Helm’s old place. I’ve seen Graham Nash there. I’ve seen various people, all kinds of people. There are a couple of other iconic clubs that also run great entertainment.

We’ve got a great radio station. I ski and my work is on a computer behind the desk in a beautiful office overlooking the country, so what could be bad?

Rick: That’s nice. Do you have many buskers in town or is that even legal in town?

Neil Ratner: Yeah, sort of. Not that many. But there are a couple [Both laugh].

I’ll tell you one last funny story about Woodstock.

A number of years ago, once I finished my probation in New York state, although I’m a convicted felon, I can still vote. I registered as an Independent. My wife is a registered Democrat and periodically, one of the Democratic town board members would come to get signatures or whatever. That’s what happens in small towns.

One day the guy shows up and I’m in my office, and I hear him say to my wife, “Where’s Neil Ratner?” And I figured, what the hell does this guy want? [Laughs]

So, I go talk to him. He says, “You’re registered Independent, aren’t you?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You know we have a position on the Woodstock Ethics Board. Would you be interested?”

So, I thought to myself, “This guy doesn’t know shit about me.” [Both laugh] How could he possibly ask me that question? So I said, “Yeah, sure. I’ll be on the Ethics Board.” He said, “Oh, great! I’ll send you an application.” 

Then I felt bad about it after he left and thought maybe I should have said something.

Rick: Yeah, but you might be the perfect guy to be on the Ethics Board, too.

Neil Ratner: You’re exactly right, Rick. When I thought about it, I told myself, “You know what? I’m either the perfect guy or the worst guy. I’m going to go through with this.”

So, I decided to go through with it. I filled out the application. They called me for an interview. It was between me and some other guy. I go down and I have to interview in front of the mayor and the whole town Council. And the mayor starts off, blah blah blah, bullshit. “You’re an anesthesiologist?” Right. He said, “What do you know about Propofol?”

And I said, “Aw, fuck. They did their research.” Now they know who I am. He must have seen me turn white or something because he looked at me and said, “No, no. I’ve had Propofol a couple of times and now my hair’s falling out!” [Both laugh] So, I gave him an answer. They asked me a couple of questions. I stopped them and said, “Wait a second. Does anybody know who I am? Did anybody Google my name? Did anybody look me up?”

And they all looked dumbfounded with their fingers up their ass. So, I told them my story. They appreciated it, including the charity stuff that I had done. And, of course, they knew my partner who had the local bakery here that was well known. Lo and behold, two days later, they call me up, “You’ve been unanimously selected,” and I’ve been on the Ethics Board ever since.

Rick: That ties things together very nicely. I was a Program Manager for the Ethics Program for the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General.

Neil Ratner: You know, I saw that actually because I looked you up [Both laugh]!

I really appreciate giving back to the town. It’s a real town where people care about each other. And I feel very good about that

So, rock and roll, that’s what I do in Woodstock [Both laugh].

[ulyssessklein]

Don Felder Goes Back to Basics on American Rock ‘N’ Roll

Press Release

Source: ABC PR

Don Felder – Image by Michael Helms (c) 2019

Legendary singer-songwriter, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, best-selling author, and former guitarist of the Eagles, and true American rock and roll guitar hero Don Felder is bringing more of his timeless music to adoring fans not only in America, but worldwide with today’s release of his second solo album, American Rock “n” Roll , on BMG. Fans can pick up the album on all digital formats here.

With this highly anticipated new album, he’s very much looking forward to building upon his rich legacy in 2019 as one of the most innovative riff-generating songwriters of the modern rock era while continuing his growth as a featured touring and recording solo artist.

Rock “n” Roll covers the gamut of the man’s artistic talents, consisting of 11 high-energy rockers mixed with touching, thoughtful ballads. From the state of the guitar-rock union salute to “American Rock ‘N’ Roll” to the funky crunch of “Hearts on Fire” to the fierce, unrelenting declaration of “Rock You” to the mutual heartfelt honesty of “Falling in Love” and “You’re My World,” Don Felder has once again tapped into the current music zeitgeist to emerge with an album that represents the peak of his creative prowess.

The album also boasts an impressive guest list of contributors who comprise a veritable who’s who of modern rock music, including Sammy Hagar (vocals on “Rock You”), Slash (a wicked guitar solo on the title track), Richie Sambora and Orianthi (dual guitar soloists on “Limelight”), Peter Frampton (Telecaster-blasting and background vocals on “The Way Things Have to Be”), Joe Satriani (a blistering, lightning-fast solo on “Rock You”), Mick Fleetwood and Chad Smith (trading off drumming duties on the title track), Bob Weir (background vocals on “Rock You”), David Paich (keyboards on “Hearts on Fire,” piano on “The Way Things Have to Be”), Steve Porcaro (keyboards on “Falling in Love”), Alex Lifeson (acoustic and electric guitar accents on “Charmed”), and many, many more.

This time around,  Felder felt he wanted to share the fretboard wealth and cut heads with as many of his peers on  American Rock “n” Roll as he could gather. “On my last solo album, I had only one guest on guitar–Steve Lukather (Toto)–and I played every other guitar part on every other song,” he points out. “I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted to have people come in and light it up. My goal was to play with them and have a good time. It was a ball!”

American Rock “n” Roll is the follow-up to Felder’s debut solo album, Road to Forever which was released October 9, 2012 and debuted on Billboard’s “Heatseekers” chart at #27.  “Girls In Black,” the album’s first single, reached the Top 30 on the Mediabase Rock chart, while “Wash Away” reached #4 on the Mediabase Classic Rock chart.  It was co-written by Felder and Styx’s Tommy Shaw, which also features Shaw’s signature vocal sound. 

Rolling Stone (France) called Road to Forever “one of those timeless albums, cut to ride on highways, which we love to know still exist.”  While Musicradar.com hailed:  “The album’s 12 cuts are heartfelt and direct, a catchy and soulful musical autobiography that steers clear of mawkish self-indulgence. And Felder’s guitar playing – rendered with but a fraction of his nearly 300 instruments! – is as stirring as ever.”  And Premier Guitar praised:  “Felder is back with his trademark guitar choirs and hooky riffs.”

Not only is Felder a proud, longstanding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having been inducted with the Eagles back in 1998, he was also inaugurated into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2016 and the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2017. Fact is, Felder spent 27 years with the Eagles, who own the fine distinction of recording the top-selling album of all time–Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which has sold over 38 million copies (and counting). “I’m blessed enough to have contributed to and been a part of a very talented mixture of voices, writing, guitar parts, and production. I’m very proud of that,” he says of the group.

Meanwhile, his legendary double-neck Les Paul guitar is on display as part of the “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll,” exhibit presented by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which opens April 8 and closes October 1. Felder was in attendance along with Jimmy Page, Steve Miller and Tina Weymouth to celebrate the opening of the vast collection of some of Rock’s most celebrated instruments, including Jimi Hendrix’s guitar that he played at Woodstock and Ringo Starr’s drum kit that he played on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

It’s the first major exhibition in an art museum dedicated entirely to the iconic instruments of Rock & Roll. Through more than 130 instruments dating from 1939 to 2017—played by artists such as Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Don Felder, Kim Gordon, Jimi Hendrix, James Hetfield, Wanda Jackson, Joan Jett, Lady Gaga, Steve Miller, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Page, Kate Pierson, Elvis Presley, Prince, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, St. Vincent, Tina Weymouth, Nancy Wilson, and others—“Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” will explore one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century and the objects that made the music possible.

Don Felder recently launched his 2019 headlining tour, which will continue through the end of the year. Check him out at any of the following stops, with more dates to be posted on his official website as they’re confirmed:

DATE CITY VENUE

Sat 4/6 Atlantic City, NJ Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

Mon 4/8 New York, NY The Cutting Room

Sat 4/20 Concord, CA Concord Pavilion

Sat 4/27 Dubuque, IA Diamond Jo Casino

Sun 5/5 Orlando, FL Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Mon 5/6 Orlando, FL Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Tue 5/7 Orlando, FL Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Sat 6/22 Murphys, CA Ironstone Amphitheatre

Sat 7/6 Ellicottville, NY The Summer Music Festival

Fri 7/12 Burnsville, MN Buck Hill Ski & Snowboard Arena

Fri 8/9 Reno, NV Nugget Event Center

www.donfelder.com

www.facebook.com/donfeldermusic

www.twitter.com/donfelder

www.instagram.com/donfeldermusic

[ulyssessklein]

How an indie hip-hop artist charted on Billboard and iTunes

The direct marketing strategy that helped me chart at #3 on iTunes and #50 on Billboard.

It was all a dream: “I believe I can chart on Billboard with this album!”

I convinced my producer, engineer, mentor, and—most importantly—my wife to buy into the dream.

The odds of charting Billboard were clearly stacked against me. No major label budget. No national, regional, or even local publicity campaign. I also work more than the typical “40-hour workweek” at a big tech company in Silicon Valley. The list goes on.

Nonetheless, my belief was strong. It was late October 2018, and I had just spent the past couple weeks writing, what would soon become my latest album, Airplane Mode. I had the music. Now I just needed to crystallize the narrative, develop a marketing strategy, and reach out to my fans.

Five months later, Airplane Mode debuted at #3 on the iTunes Top 40 US Hip-Hop Album Chart as well as at #50 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Album Sales Chart. Mission accomplished. Simple, right?

In the midst of people congratulating me on this huge accomplishment, many have also asked, “So, how did you actually make it happen…?”

Establishing the Airplane Mode album narrative

Airplane Mode developed in a very unplanned and visceral way. In mid-October 2018, my aunt— the one who nurtured my love for hip-hop at an early age—passed away unexpectedly in my hometown, Bridgeport, Connecticut (about 3,000 miles from where I currently live).

Days before, my friend and producer, J-Dot Music, had coincidentally sent me a collection of beats. We weren’t thinking about an album then. I just wanted to hear the new sounds he had been working on. After hearing about my aunt though, I needed to artistically grieve. I remembered the beat pack, sifted through until I found the beat that most plucked my heart, and wrote the song, “Hope You Hear Me.” All within the same hour I received the news.

I spent the next two weeks devouring each beat J-Dot sent me. Within each song, I explored concepts and tackled issues I wasn’t even ready to express out loud yet. The writing was nonstop. On the bus. At the gym. During my walks in between work meetings. On my flight from San Francisco to see my family. By the time we buried my aunt, I had the foundation for a new project, which I decided to call Airplane Mode.

The term “Airplane Mode” symbolized three main things for me:

My mindstate: I was in a daze. At the same time, by feeling so disconnected, I was able to tap into my creativity without restraint, allowing me to be and remain “in the zone.”

My lifestyle: combined, my wife and I have visited over 100 international cities across 50 countries. We’re both multilingual and children of immigrants coming from an impoverished background. As such, I have developed a global, cross-cultural outlook on life, which is a core part of my brand.

My music career: two months before I wrote Airplane Mode, I had just booked and headlined my third Bay Area show in 2018. My career growth was feeling even more tangible, so in a self-fulfilling prophecy type of way, I claimed that this new album would elevate my platform even further, as each project had done before.

Why do I share all of this with you? Because for me, the album narrative—replete with passion and vulnerability—was imperative for my entire marketing campaign. I interweaved this narrative throughout my entire go-to-market strategy, from the album cover to the song content to audience communications pre, during, and post-release.

Setting the foundation for the Airplane Mode marketing campaign

Around the same time I completed my album, I also learned about the Nielsen and Billboard charting successes of fellow independent artists, Shannon Curtis and Tyke T via the DIY Musician Blog. With more research on the process plus assumptions of my current fanbase, I resolved to set an ambitious goal of selling 1,000 albums within the first week of release.

Pre-sales seemed to be the predominant way that I would hit this goal. Learning that the pre-sales period may be a minimum of one-week and a maximum of six months gave me the time I needed to mobilize my fanbase.

Because my album had 12 tracks, I was also eligible to set up an instant gratification (grat) track via CD Baby. I chose “Hope You Hear Me” as my track because, not only did an instant grat track give extra incentive for core fans when purchasing, this particular track also gave listeners a deeper, weightier connection to the album narrative, which furthered the word-of-mouth evangelism.

The majority of my fans do not purchase physical albums anymore. Combined with my limited budget, I decided upfront that Airplane Mode would be 100% digital. This decision helped me streamline my preorder process in the long-run. For instance, I only had one UPC to register in Nielsen’s database.

Lastly, I knew that over 60% of my fanbase had iOS devices, so iTunes was very essential to my campaign. That said, I did not want to exclude the other 40% of my fanbase from helping me achieve this monumental goal (that’s a lot of fans!). So, I focused on three sales channels: iTunes, Bandcamp, and my online store (which also had Airplane Mode merch for sale).

5 key tactics to enable the Airplane Mode marketing campaign

With a two-month preorder window, I executed several marketing activations. However, there were five that I felt truly moved the needle:

Empowering my brand ambassadors: my “High Grade Society” – my exclusive group of core fans – were critical because not only did they immediately preorder Airplane Mode with enthusiasm but they also encouraged their circles of influence to do the same.

Asking fans to purchase directly: just about every day, I shared the album narrative and sought out support from my fans directly via in-person or direct messaging. With every proof of purchase, I would repost and thank them publicly.

Paying for digital advertising: social media ads are a cheap way to build brand awareness amongst your target audience and fight through organic noise. While I was not depending on ads to generate the bulk of the sales, I did end my campaign with a 3% conversion rate (better than 0%!).

Promoting organically via weekly content production: In December 2018, I started a weekly freestyle series called “Casual Fridays” – a tongue-in-cheek for my fans who know that I juggle both a music career and a white-collar corporate day job. What started as a simple addition to my “Call Me Ace portfolio” soon became another avenue for organic album promotion once I gained traction.

Coordinating a pre-album release party: the Airplane Mode party occurred one week before the album dropped, with an optional “free entry” ticket for those that already preordered. With a full crowd gathered for an exclusive listen to my album, I also garnished the night with additional special touch points to ensure that everyone felt even more connected to the album narrative once they left. Here’s the Airplane Mode release party recap video if you’re curious!

Airplane Mode immediately jumped up to #3 on the iTunes Top 40 US Hip-Hop Album Chart after releasing on Friday, March 22, 2019. This news served as another big social proof point that galvanized more people to organically share and encourage others to listen. Even with the option to stream available, some people still purchased Airplane Mode as a sign of true support.

To top it all off, fans were directly sharing immensely positive feedback with me on the album content. With their permission I would repost, recognize publicly, and use to encourage even more feedback from other listeners.

These additional touchpoints helped push Airplane Mode to the final goal of the campaign: charting on Billboard.

5 challenges during the Airplane Mode marketing campaign

While I’m ecstatic that Airplane Mode hit the Billboard chart, the effort did come with its challenges:

Apple does not provide real-time presales data. Not being able to track my preorder sales on iTunes, where most of my fans purchased my album, forced my total sales count to be more of a calculated guess than a sure fact. I had to assume, for example, that trending at #3 in iTunes Hip-Hop albums to pre-order list was a good sign…right?

Apple is (not-so) secretly phasing out iTunes. Strike two, Apple. Apple automatically reroutes all iTunes links to the “Apple Music” iPhone app. This created unnecessary confusion and frustration, especially for potential supporters that didn’t even remember that the “iTunes Store” was a separate app, probably somewhere in the back of their phones. This definitely impacted final sales.

There were too many clicks at point-of-sale. Although I created a superlink to streamline the preordering process, it still took at best 7 clicks before actually preordering the album. Still, this was a better trade-off than having three separate preorder links to promote…

Not everyone has money to preorder. I naively assumed that all my fans had at least $9.99 of disposable income. However, while there were many cases where supporters spent way beyond $9.99 on Bandcamp to purchase the album, for some would-be supporters, $9.99 was too costly.

Some people just don’t believe in purchasing music. This last challenge wasn’t an issue for my true fans and supporters that understood the larger goal I was hoping to achieve. This was more so a challenge with casual or potential fans that interpreted the ask within the context of their preferred music listening preferences. The reality is that streaming currently dominates music consumption in the US, where over 90% of my fanbase exists. I knew my request wouldn’t be an easy one from the beginning; this challenge only confirmed that I had to rely on my core base in order to reach my Billboard goal under my aforementioned constraints.

And there you have it! If any of what I shared resonates with you, please let me know in the comments below. And of course, if you have any thoughts on the Airplane Mode album itself, I would love to hear your feedback on that too

The post How an indie hip-hop artist charted on Billboard and iTunes appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

[ulyssessklein]

Grow your email list and make a profit by GIVING AWAY your albums for free

How to build your audience (and NOT lose money) by giving away free CDs.

Last year I started doing something kinda unusual.

I offered to mail fans a FREE signed CD of my album The Great Make Believer if they’d help me cover the shipping and handling.

Even after factoring in advertising costs to share the offer on Facebook and Instagram, I ended up making a profit and adding a bunch of people to my email list.

In this article, I’ll tell you how.

What is a “Free + Shipping & Handling” offer?

I said this kind of campaign is unusual, but only within the music business. “Free Plus Shipping and Handling” deals (F+S&H) are common in other industries.

An author might offer a book for free in hopes you’ll want to attend their conference or sign up for an online course.

A company sends you a free knife in hopes you’ll buy the whole set.

You pay the shipping, plus a little extra to cover the cost of mailing materials and the time it takes them to handle the order fulfillment.

They send you something for free while simultaneously:

demonstrating the value of their product

increasing their potential for later revenue

boosting brand loyalty

building their audience

offering an upsell during the “checkout” process

Now let’s translate that for musicians, and assume YOU are the one running the campaign.

What do you get in return for giving away your merch?

You build your audience and grow your list

You deepen your connection with listeners

You turn casual fans into CUSTOMERS (or something close to customers, since they’re providing credit card information for the shipping costs)

You re-energize existing fans by revisiting older material in a creative way

You potentially generate a profit

Our friends at Indepreneur offer some great guidance about Free + Shipping campaigns, so a shoutout to them for the idea in the first place. If you want a super deep dive into the nuts and bolts of this kind of thing, check out their course. If you want the key pointers for success, as well as some common mistakes to avoid, listen to Episode #229 of the DIY Musician Podcast: “How to build your list and make a profit giving away your music.” 

Or read on…

When is the right time to launch a Free + Shipping & Handling offer?

Every album has a rhythm for sales and engagement. Inevitably, interest dwindles. At that point, if you have large quantities of underperforming merch still lying around, put it to use!

What is the right merch item to give away during a Free + Shipping campaign?

You don’t want to LOSE a bunch of money on this. So it’s best to give away low-cost, high-margin items — things that are cheap to manufacture relative to the price you’d normally sell them for — like posters, stickers, buttons, CDs, etc.

Think about CUSTOMER ACQUISITION COST

It takes a lot of effort, time, and advertising money to grow your fan base the typical way. Many new businesses draw up their 5-year plans assuming they will LOSE money for years in order to gain customers and brand advocates. Hopefully, EVENTUALLY, they turn a profit. 

A Free + Shipping offer helps you skip a few of those steps with way less financial risk. You need to get fans into the game, even if you have to give them something to get their butts off the bench. At worst, you lose a little money to make it happen (again, customer acquisition costs). At best, it pays. 

WARNINGS! A few things you should know first:

Embrace mass failure. A Free + Shipping campaign is (or is a part of) a marketing funnel. You’ll get the message in front of many people, and many WILL NOT ACT upon the offer. Some folks will be indifferent. Some don’t want to pay the shipping. Some are too busy. Some people who see your ads hate your music. Don’t worry. This is normal. Beyoncé has millions of fans, but she probably has millions of haters too. It’s all a numbers game. In fact, success often looks like failure if you only look at the surface stats. The point is to find the percentage of people who WILL act, and take them from point A to Z. 

Don’t assume this offer will appeal to strangers. This kind of campaign, as I mentioned earlier, is for getting lukewarm audiences off the fence and into your inner circle. Did I just mix metaphors? I did. 

Don’t bitch about giving things away. See above: consider customer acquisition costs. Prove that your music is worth something. Once you have, they’ll be way more likely to BUY from you later on.

Don’t factor the cost of recording and manufacturing your CD into whether or not your F+S&H campaign is profitable. Think of these merch items as things you’ve already paid for. It’s oil in the barrel, not in the ground.

Similarly, don’t factor in previous marketing and advertising costs for building the audiences to whom you’re now offering your free item. Both the merch item and the audiences you’ve built will serve you beyond just THIS campaign.

The keys to profiting are your “order bump” and your “upsell” (two additional products you offer at a discount during checkout), so you should choose the tools that allow you to most easily display those “extras” AFTER the person has entered their payment info. If those options appear before payment, or if they’re offered upfront as bundles on the landing page, you are introducing obstacles to the person actually paying for shipping and getting the main offer. The more upfront choices they have, the lower your conversion rate.

You’re not gonna get rich. Again, the point of this campaign is primarily to build your list and convert lukewarm fans into loyal listeners. I made a small profit after covering my ad costs, but I would’ve been happy even if I’d lost a little bit of money towards the same ends.

The tools and the costs of running a Free Plus Shipping and Handling campaign.

At first glance, it looks expensive (for the DIY budget), at least if you go the route recommended by music marketers, which requires a ClickFunnels subscription. But check it out…

ClickFunnels

This is a service that helps you:

create a squeeze page for the campaign (a landing page where the only thing a visitor can do is take action or back out; there’s no navigation, no options, no distractions) 

set different shipping rates based on location

offer order bumps and upsells

Here’s the downside. It’s $99/month (unless you get a special ShareFunnels rate for $19/month, which also limits the number of campaigns you can run at one time).

Could you split an account with with five other bands? Maybe. I’m not sure what ClickFunnels frowns upon.

Also, lots of artists get a weird feeling about ClickFunnels because it doesn’t look as sleek as something like Squarespace or Bandcamp or whatever (at least not by default) and it’s also used by all your average BroBillionaires promising to unlock your ideal future/job/body/funnel/party. So the company itself can come off as… not the typical DIY artist thing.

[Note: If you are a wiz with WordPress, there are some fancy eCommerce plugins that allow you to have a similar bump/upsell functionality, so explore your options there.]

You COULD create a squeeze page on your own website, but the big benefit of ClickFunnels is it also provides you with a “simple” solution for offering order bumps and upsells AFTER the fan’s payment and contact info has been entered.

As I said above, people are more likely to add extra items to their shopping carts AFTER they’ve gotten over the initial hurdle of providing payment info. 

I say “simple” because… it’s not. I mean, it’s not stupid simple. I had to do a bit of troubleshooting to make it all work properly. But once it was set, it ran smoothly, and it was easily integrated with…

Mailchimp

There are other email marketing services, of course, but Mailchimp is an obvious choice for musicians who don’t have huge lists, and who need some basic automation tools. Plus Mailchimp is easily integrated with ClickFunnels, and can be integrated with almost any app via Zapier.

If you do a Free + Shipping campaign, you’re going to want to send a bunch of emails along the way, and you don’t want to send them manually!

Mailchimp is a good solution for sending triggered emails, including:

the confirmation email

the “Did you get the CD?” email

the “Please leave a review or post a pic” email

the “Now that you’ve got a copy of the CD, lemme tell you all kinds of crazy things about the album” emails

the “Hey, I noticed you left your contact info, but never paid for shipping” email

Mailchimp also gives you an easy way to tag and segment subscribers, so you can send all the emails mentioned above to the appropriate people at the appropriate time.

Stripe

Stripe is a payment system, and it’s pretty much free to use. If you’re setting up a F+S campaign on your own site without ClickFunnels, you might be able to set something up via PayPal too.

ShipStation

If you were shipping hundreds of CDs a day, I’d recommend something like ShipStation that helps you manage your orders, print shipping labels, etc. But it also costs a monthly fee to use, so I ended up cancelling my subscription because my order volume didn’t require it. I could access all the customer info I needed from within ClickFunnels and copy-and-paste from there (you could probably set up a Zapier automation to handle the same tasks).

The keys to success with a Free CD offer

The “order bump”

If I haven’t stressed it enough, it’s ALL about the order bump. This is what helps you break even or make a profit.

In my case, after the customer has entered their payment info to cover the shipping costs for the FREE CD, an offer appears for my previous album Ghosts’ Menagerie at a significant discount.

  More than 50% of the people claiming the free CD of The Great Make Believer ALSO ordered Ghosts’ Menagerie. To drive the point home, THIS is the reason why I didn’t lose money. 

The “upsell”

After they select whether or not they want the order bump, they’re taken to another page with an offer for an upsell. In my case, a t-shirt. At a discount, today, and today only.

At some point I ran out of t-shirts and shut this upsell off, but up until then I believe somewhere between 15-20% of the people who got the free CD also bought a t-shirt.

Time limits and scarcity

I ended up leaving this offer running, but (do as I say and not as I do) I believe messaging like “Only 100 CDs left” or “For the next two weeks” can go a long way towards creating urgency and getting fans to act now.

Use easily-identified visual reference points

If you’re putting this offer on social feeds, you need to cut through the noise. Which means your pictures or videos should have something that grabs people’s attention in the first few seconds.

I knew I had fairly big custom audience on Facebook who’d watched at least 75% of my “Anonymous” music video, where I lip-synced backwards, so when the video is flipped it looks like everything is defying gravity.

Because that was going to be my first audience to test the offer, I thought my video explaining the offer should have a similar look, just to remind people who I was without them even needing to have the sound on (see my offer video towards the top of this page).

For your offer video, think of some familiar visual queues you can include that your audience will quickly respond to (color schemes, a logo, references to past videos, etc.)

Use “inner circle” talk

Play up the fact that this FREE CD offer is for your BEST followers, your TRUE fans, and it’s a THANK YOU. That show of intimacy and appreciation will help with conversion.

Repeat the message

Peeps need to hear things many times before they act. So keep sharing this offer on social and email throughout the life of the campaign. Segment out those who HAVE converted so you’re not bugging them, repeat the message a dozen times to everyone else, and try a few different creative approaches (video, text, still images).

Paid ads are your friend

Well, a friend you pay for. Which I guess isn’t a friend. But you know what I mean. You’re gonna depend on paid ads or boosted posts to spread awareness of the offer, and repeat the message enough to give those interested fans a chance to claim their free CD. And on that topic…

It’s already THEIRS

As you explain the offer, don’t treat it like a purchase. Tell your fans the signed CD is already theirs. They just have to claim it. This kind of language will reduce the friction for paying the shipping.

Lean on your list

As much as you may want to convert your Facebook engagement audiences into email subscribers, your existing email list will inevitably yield the best results for the lowest (no-est) cost. That’s fine.

Yes, they’re already on your list, who who cares? You’re helping those existing subscribers dive deeper into your music, and maybe selling some of those extra merch items too.

Segment

I said it above: Segment your lists and audiences, and communicate accordingly. If you’re worried that previous customers who purchased the CD will be offended you’re now offering it for free, segment out those customers by using Mailchimp tags, CD Baby sales info, CSV files from PledgeMusic, KickStarter, Bandcamp, and so forth.

That being said, I don’t think a true fan will care if they paid for something three years ago that you’re now offering for free. We get how the real world works, right?

Popups, announcement bars, headers, YouTube channel trailers…

Use whatever marketing real estate you have on your website and social profiles to spread the word.

LAST CHANCE messaging!

Create some urgency as your campaign comes to a close; be sure to tell folks when they only have a week left, a day left, an hour left, to claim their signed CD for FREE.

I’d planned to do this, but then decided to leave my campaign running. That being said, whenever we run a sale at CD Baby, it’s almost always the case that we see a big spike in the final day or two before the deal expires.

GIVE more than you GET

Impress the people who care about your music. Include extra goodies, notes, etc.

At first, my free CD came with an easily digestible behind-the-scenes essay about the album, printed on a fancy piece of paper, and autographed. Later I found a couple boxes of some older posters  and started throwing those in the packages for free as well. I don’t mention these in the offer video; they’re just surprises that come with the free CD.

Deploy your welcome sequence

Auto-add both leads and customers to your email list. Then trigger a welcome sequence that brings them closer to your music. In these emails, don’t ASK anything from them. They just took a leap of faith getting your CD. Give them a chance to breathe. 

Your automated follow-up helps you AND them

Write an automated follow-up email that goes out about two weeks after they claim their CD, asking if they got it.

Do they like it? If so, ask them to please share pics on social, or leave a review, or tell a friend about the deal, or add their favorite track to a playlist.

This email also keeps YOU on your toes, because you’ve GOT to ship things NOW if you know an automated email will be triggered two week from now.

It’s exciting to watch the orders come in, but it takes TIME to actually sit down, sign, pack, and mail all these orders. Don’t procrastinate. 

[Just to give some visual reference, this was one day’s trip to the post office.]

Retarget non-conversions

As I mentioned above, if someone provided contact info but didn’t pay for shipping, they’re considered “leads” in ClickFunnels. You still get their email address. An equivalent audience would be someone who you’ve tracked onto the offer landing page via a Facebook pixel, but the person didn’t arrive at the next page, whether it be an upsell, confirmation, or thank-you page. 

Gather those leads, and see if you can get them interested in the offer again. Maybe they backed out because they were busy and there’s a better time for them to finish completing the process.

Syndicate your fans’ excitement to FB, IG, IG Stories, Twitter, and beyond

“Syndicate!”

I just wanted to use that word. But seriously, if someone gets their free signed CD in the mail and shares a picture on social — re-gram, retweet, share away. That way you get to broadcast or replay the excitement without having to be the author of the message.

Have a plan for what’s next

A F+S&H campaign is a lot of work to create and manage, so make sure you have your next step in mind.

Are you building your list to prepare for a new album? To stir interest in an upcoming tour?

When you pull the plug on this free CD offer, you don’t want to wait TOO long to replace it with some new kind of campaign, whether it be releasing the next album, launching a video, or selling new merch. 

Don’t disappear. Build.

I hope this article gives you an idea for how to put some old merch to work for you again, build your list, get some fans off the fence, and make some money while you’re at it. It’s a bit of work to set it all up, but for me it’s been worth it — and fun!

If you want a deeper look at the nuts and bolts of a Free Plus Shipping and Handling campaign, check out Indepreneur’s course HERE.

And hey, if you’re interested in hearing my music, I’d be honored! Claim your free signed copy of my album The Great Make Believer.

The post Grow your email list and make a profit by GIVING AWAY your albums for free appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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Why nobody is noticing your music

Why can’t I get any recognition for my music?

Why do other bands get the gigs when we’re clearly better musicians? Why can’t we book more gigs? We should be famous by now!

These are just a few of the things I hear on an almost daily basis.

It’s almost like a broken record.

I get it. It’s hard to get win new fans without really grinding and hustling every day.

It’s even harder if you aren’t playing live shows on a consistent basis.

What it takes to ‘make it’ in music

Most artists that seem like overnight sensations have actually been grinding it out for years. Maybe even decades.

Take Van Halen for example. Eddie and Alex formed their first band in the fourth grade calling themselves The Broken Combs.

Hear that? The fourth grade! By the time they released their first major label album they’d already been playing together, including live shows, for over 10 years! Granted it wasn’t all the same members, but the core, Eddie and Alex, had been putting in their time.

So what if you’re like me and didn’t start playing until you were 15 or 16 or maybe even later?

That’s completely fine. You just have to remember that it takes time to perfect your craft.

Maybe not ten years, but it takes time. And work.

So, let’s get started.

How to fix your band’s “SUCK SYNDROME”

At the beginning of the 2017-2018 NHL hockey season, Alex Ovechkin, the Russian born captain of the Washington Capitals, made the statement, “We’re not going to be suck this year.”

Capitals fans embraced his promise. Finally, for the first time in 44 years, and after a grueling season and winning several nail-biting playoff games, a Stanley Cup Championship trophy was won.

Washington and Ovechkin delivered on not being “suck” anymore.

If Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals can turn around a 44-year losing streak then you can certainly fix your band’s suck syndrome.

The thing that can help you most out of the gate is to take a good look at your “product.”

What is the product?

Your music is only part of your product.

Your product is the complete package:

Your artist image

Your artist biography

Your music

Your skills – playing

Your business skills

Your dedication to investing in your career

How you interact with fans/potential fans/promoters

Let’s dig into a simple but often overlooked item, your artist image.

Your artist image

How can you be sure you your “image” is best represented in your artist photos and press shots?

You may have written the song of the century. Your skills may be more polished than Bon Jovi or U2 or some other band that has sold millions of records.

Burt if your promo pictures are bad you probably won’t even get your foot in the door.

Your artist picture doesn’t have to look like a glamour shot (and I hope it doesn’t); it just has to represent WHO YOU ARE.

If you’re a folk singer that sings about cornfields and country roads then get that scenery in your your pictures. Take a picture in an old pickup truck on a country road in front of a cornfield. Simple.

Are you an inspiring hip-hop artist? Be creative. Instead of taking a selfie on your cell phone in your bedroom (I’ve seen this more times than I care to mention!) take a picture in a setting that makes your intended audience want to invest in your brand.

At the same time, YOU should be the focal point, not the background. The background is there to support you, provide context, and emphasize your aesthetic.

Make it interesting so people want to know more about you.

Ask yourself these questions:

Does this picture really represent me well? In other words, does this picture add to the story of who I am as an artist?

Does this picture make me look like an amateur, or does it show who I really want to be?

Will this picture make people want to learn more about my music?

Do I look the same in real life as I do in the picture? Keep your promo picture current. Did you grow your hair? Lose weight? Start working out? Change band members? If so, it’s time to update your picture.

In conclusion

If you want to get noticed and create a buzz you need to fix these things. Take time and look at each item without bias.

If your artist image is bad you won’t get listens. Sad but true. People judge books by their covers.

If your biography is lacking it can give the impression that you’re unprofessional.

Venues, record labels, and press want you to make their job easy. They want a complete package.

Unsure of the best way to improve? I put together a checklist of what to do next.

It’s not theory. It’s based on thousands of pitches. These are the secret ingredients to booking more gigs and getting more exposure.

Download the Best Band Profile Checklist HERE.

The post Why nobody is noticing your music appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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“Bachman: Special Edition” coming to Blu-ray and DVD on May 10th

Press Release

Source: MVD Entertainment Group

As a member of The Guess Who, Randy Bachman was part of the first ever No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 by a Canadian band with “American Woman / No Sugar Tonight,” and then topped the Hot 100 again in 1974 with another band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, with “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”

“That’s  a pretty rare thing for a recording artist who gets two No. 1s with two different bands,” notes John Einarson,” biographer and music historian, at the start of the new documentary, Bachman, chronicling the life of this 74 year old who is still regularly making music and performing.

The film follows Bachman as he looks to the past for inspiration from rarely seen footage, pictures and documents that have been stored at the National Archives in Ottawa for decades.

Among the other hits Bachman has written or co-written are “These Eyes,” “No Time,” “New Mother Nature,” “Takin’ Care of Business,” “Let It Ride,” and “Roll On Down The Highway.”

“He was like my biggest influence when I was a kid,” says Neil Young in the film. “Watching him play guitar, he had an amazing sense about the way he played. And the feeling that you got when you listened to him. It was more than just chops.”

Young, who has known Bachman for about 55 years, added, “I hear Randy – when I see him, I hear him, and I feel him.”

The documentary made its world premiere in Toronto at Hot Docs 2018 before a festival run, and eventual airing in Canada on CBC’s Documentary Channel. Incorporating numerous present-day interviews with family, management, and fellow musicians, director John Barnard (2012’s The Sheepdogs Have At It) touches on everything from Bachman’s childhood to his various rock bands — The Guess Who, Brave Belt, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Bachman-Turner — and solo work.

Pre-order: HERE! 

Bonus Materials

Neil Young on Winnipeg

Randy’s Crazy Horse

Building a Reprise ‘Here Comes the Sun’

On Chords

Songwriting ‘When No One Knows’

Theatrical Trailer

1 Surround, Stereo

English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired

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Ad-supported streaming is contagious, and coming to your smart home device soon!

Free streaming tiers available to owners of two popular home devices.

Amazon announced plans to make Amazon Music available for free — with ads — to Echo owners.

Now Google has made YouTube Music available for free — with ads — to people who use Google Home smart speakers and Google Assistant-powered speakers (in select regions, including North America and Europe).

How will two new ad-supported streaming services alter the industry?

There’s a good article about what Amazon’s ad-supported strategy might mean not JUST for Google, who’s already responded in kind, but to Spotify and Facebook as well.

I personally don’t see Apple straying from the course it’s set for the HomePod and Apple Music, but it will be interesting to watch if and how this ad-supported streaming trend spreads to other home devices.

Got a home device? Will you suffer through some ads to save a few bucks? Or — ya know — is music, like, worth PAYING for? ; )

The post Ad-supported streaming is contagious, and coming to your smart home device soon! appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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Get EVERYTHING you need to properly distribute, monetize, and promote your album online!

CD Baby’s Total Monetization Package (distribution + publishing + monetization) is just $49 — including a free UPC barcode.

Do you have a new album that’s ready to meet the world?

Don’t fret over a-la-carte monetization options, weird platform delivery fees, or the prospect of an annual bill that grows every time you put out new music. You have more important things to worry about when you’re trying to reach listeners and grow an audience. CD Baby’s Total Monetization Package gets you EVERYTHING YOUR ALBUM NEEDS — minus the headaches and hidden fees — at our lowest price ever. 

GET STARTED

Now through May 8th, CD Baby is offering album distribution + publishing + monetization + marketing tools (and a free UPC barcode) for just $49.

There’s so much more to distribution and monetization than pushing a digital music file from point A to Z.

CD Baby is the ONLY distributor to have top-preferred status with both Apple Music and Spotify, thanks to our robust metadata and rights management, as well as our detailed, accurate, and timely accounting (we’ve paid artists EVERY week for more than 20 years).

We also know it’s really important for you to be able to earn money from your recordings and compositions beyond streaming, downloads, and CD/vinyl sales, so we don’t nickel-and-dime you for the “extras.” It’s included, with NO ANNUAL FEES and NO per-platform delivery fees.

We want to partner with you, not only when your music is new, but as you build a career and catalog over the long-term. That’s why you get it all.

And through May 8th, you get it all at a super-low price (just $49, including a free UPC barcode).

You should be as prepared as possible to make an impact NOW with your album, but also have the best tools and the least stress when it comes to managing the ONGOING distribution, monetization, and promotion of your music.

The Total Monetization Package includes:

Worldwide digital distribution to get your music on 150+ digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and more

Physical distribution for your CD or vinyl, where we’ll warehouse your album, process the orders, and ship the music to your fans

Global music publishing administration to make sure you’re collecting ALL your publishing royalties, including mechanical royalties that are not collected by ASCAP or BMI, and that are almost impossible to collect on your own

Social video monetization that employs Content ID across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, and more — so you can make money when your music appears in any video on those platforms

Sync licensing to get your songs placed in films, TV shows, commercials, video games, and more

Your music in Instagram Stories, so your fans can add your songs to their stories

Instant artist verification on Spotify, so you can quickly claim your Spotify for Artists profile

A free UPC barcode, which is required in order to make your music available for streaming and download sales

Pro-level music marketing tools used by labels like Universal, Concord, and Nettwerk (they pay to use them; you get them for free!) to run Spotify pre-saves, list-building campaigns, YouTube premieres, and more

You have until May 8th to get everything your album needs for just $49 (free UPC barcode included).

And we didn’t even talk about simplicity yet; you control all of this distribution, monetization, and publishing from ONE account!

GET STARTED

  The post Get EVERYTHING you need to properly distribute, monetize, and promote your album online! appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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Santana Takes Listeners On An Unforgettable Adventure On New Album ‘Africa Speaks

Press Release

Source: Jensen Communications

Carlos Santana and Buika – Photo by Maryanne Bilham.

Throughout his storied career, music legend Carlos Santana has amassed an iconic body of work by pioneering a unique fusion of rock, Latin and jazz. On his upcoming album, Africa Speaks, to be released June 7, 2019 on Concord Records, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist goes deeper and further than ever before.

Inspired by the sounds and rhythms of Africa, the virtuoso musician has created a truly memorable and powerful experience that also promises to be one of his most groundbreaking albums yet.

Listen here as Santana shares “Breaking Down The Door,” the first single from his highly anticipated new album. To watch the video for the track, click here.

For Santana, the inspiration for Africa Speaks holds a special significance. “This is music that I hold so dearly, and it’s not a stranger to me,” he says. “The rhythms, grooves and melodies from Africa have always inspired me. It’s in my DNA. If you take your inspiration from many, it’s called research. I researched this beautiful music from the African continent. They have a frequency that’s all their own. It’s funny, because when I play in Africa, people say, ‘How do you know our music?’ And I say, ‘How can I not know what I love?’”

To fully realize the breadth of the music on Africa Speaks, Santana knew that he needed to work with another outside-the-box thinker, and he enlisted iconoclastic producer Rick Rubin. “Before I even shook hands with Rick, I said, ‘This is going to blow his mind,’” Santana recalls. “I knew he’d never done anything like this.” When Rubin listened to the demos, his reaction was immediate and effusive: “He called me and said, ‘These songs are like gateways to people’s consciousness,’” Santana says.

The master guitarist and his eight-piece band (which also includes Santana’s wife, Cindy Blackman Santana, on drums), convened at Rubin’s Shangri La Studios in Malibu, and in a joyous and stimulating 10-day period they recorded an astonishing number of tracks, many of them in one take. “I’m not bragging or boasting,” Santana says, “but we recorded 49 songs in 10 days – killer, vibrant, dynamic, exuberant African songs that moved and inspired me. If Miles Davis or John Coltrane were in the room and they watched this music go down, they would be like, ‘Damn! How did you do that?’”

On working with Rubin, Santana raves, “He was very gentle and unobtrusive. His spirit was never an imposition. He trusted the process and how I wanted people to dance and feel in a way that’s totally different.”

Another dramatic element in the creation of Africa Speaks came in the form of Spanish singer Buika, whose heavenly lead vocals cast a magical spell throughout the album.

“People are going to be blown away when they hear her,” says Santana. “She’s got Nina Simone, Etta James, Tina Turner, Aretha and more rolled into one.” The guitarist was so taken with the Latin Grammy Award winner that he asked her to write lyrics to his new compositions.

Santana recalls, “Buika told me, ‘I wrote lyrics and melodies I’ve never done before. I was crying and laughing. The music possessed me to create something outside of the realm that I know.’ I said, ‘Yeah! If that’s what it does to you, imagine what it’ll do to the listener.’”

Africa Speaks is a beautifully sustained, blissful experience that opens with the fully immersive title cut, a righteous celebration that features Santana’s savage, yet shimmering guitar lines engaged in a joyful dance with congas, piano and a rousing choir of vocals.

On the fast-paced “Batonga,” Santana locks into a wicked free-form jam with David K. Mathews’ Hammond B3 that recalls the band’s early days. “This song means business – it’s got war paint,” says Santana. “It heals laziness, complacency, the doldrums that people feel. It revs up your enthusiasm to make you roll up your sleeves and invite other people to create heaven on earth together.”

“Oye Este Mi Canto” starts out seductive and sinuous, with Buika’s magical vocals playing off Benny Rietveld’s playful bass lines. As its deep funk groove deepens, Santana ignites a veritable bonfire of guitar voodoo. “This isn’t Hollywood or Palo Alto,” Santana notes. “This is African music. This is what Jerry Garcia or Michael Bloomfield would have heard and said, ‘I want some of that in my music!’ Well, you have it in you.”

All of the songs have a coliseum essence to them,” Santana observes. “Whether it’s ‘We Will Rock You’ or Start Me Up,’ there’s certain songs that do that.” Which is a perfect way of describing “Yo Me Lo Merezco,” a crushing tour de force that sees Buika in sensational stadium-quaking form.

Matching the singer’s fervor is Santana himself, dispatching three spine-tingling minutes of six-string splendor. The guitarist could also be talking about “Breaking Down the Door,” a sexy and frisky musical carnival that is bound to be a concert staple for years to come. With Santana’s slinky soloing doing pirouettes to Mathews’ transporting accordion textures, stirring horns converge with rhapsodic percussion and vocals to produce the ultimate feel-good sensation. The track also features Carlos’ son and Grammy Award-winning composer Salvador Santana on keyboards.

As the album unfolds, more treasures are revealed: “Blue Skies,” which features the sumptuous background vocals of UK singer Laura Mvula, is an all-hands-on-deck jazz-rock masterwork that segues majestically into the super-funky “Paraisos Quemados” – highlighting the impeccable band interplay are Rietveld’s lively bass and Santana’s velvety guitar lines.

The guitarist’s otherworldly, wah-driven solos take flight on the stomping groove of “Los Invisibles” and the breezy, highly danceable “Luna Hechicera,” the latter of which features spitfire drumming by Cindy Blackman Santana along with the crisp percussion work of Karl Perazzo. This mesmerizing rhythmic excellence is on full display on the high-energy “Bembele.”

Carlos Santana – Photo by Maryanne Bilham.

Africa Speaks culminates with the cowbell-driven, epic marvel called “Candombe Cumbele.” As Cindy Blackman Santana works wonders around her drum kit and Buika leads an exultant vocal chorus, the man on guitar plays with time and space, exploring every inch of his instrument’s sonic spectrum. It’s a thrilling finale to a one-of-a-kind journey.

“This song captivates and freezes the moment of being in a total spell,” Santana says. “Certain artists like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan become a force of nature when they play. It’s like witnessing a tornado that’s coming at you. That’s what this music is about, capturing the metaphysical with the physical, and to do that you have to not be afraid to cast a spell.”

Distilling the 49 dazzling tracks that the band recorded in an unbroken, breathless 10-day period into an 11-cut album was no mean feat, but Santana, now 50 years into his remarkable career, succeeded in creating Africa Speaks as a compelling and uplifting vision that will rank as one of his most important and memorable works.

Carlos Santana and Buika – Photo by Maryanne Bilham.

“This record was meant to be,” he says. “It was like a gift that came from heaven that we received and were meant to give to the masses. We validate people’s existence and touch on so many emotions – there’s humor, beauty, grace and the human existence. We look forward to touring this album over the next year.”

Pre-order Africa Speaks here.

Africa Speaks track listing:

Africa Speaks (4:47)

Batonga (5:43)

Oye Este Mi Canto (5:58)

Yo Me Lo Merezco (6:12)

Blue Skies (9:08)

Paraísos Quemados (5:59)

Breaking Down The Door (4:30)

Los Invisibles (5:54)

Luna Hechicera (4:47)

Bembele (5:51)

Candombe Cumbele (5:36)

Santana on the web: 

Official Site: www.santana.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/carlossantana

Instagram: www.instagram.com/carlossantana

Twitter: www.twitter.com/santanacarlos

YouTube: www.youtube.com/santanaofficial

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How to deal with stage fright without booze or drugs

The healthy way to confront stage fright as a performing musician.

Beta blockers. A shot of booze. A couple beers.

Sure, those can all have some effect when battling stage fright.

But they all have their downsides. Those downsides are well-documented, so we don’t need to get into them here.

Instead, let’s check out…

Ellis Paul’s method for moving through discomfort and anxiety on stage.

To some degree all performers suffer “stage fright” — nerves, butterflies, the sweats, a dry throat, a shaky voice.

Those are the milder effects of our fight or flight response. At its worst though, stage fright can prevent you from stepping on stage at all.

Singer-songwriter Ellis Paul has a method to confront that natural (and sometimes unconscious) fear and lessen its effects.

He’s outlined that approach for his students on the Song Factory Channel at TrueFire.com. Ellis also uploaded the video to YouTube so I could share it with you here:

Preparedness. Visualization. No naked audience members!

What works for you? Let me know in the comments below.

Also, if you’d like to check out more advice from this well-respected songwriter, Ellis Paul has many more instructional videos on his Song Factory Channel, an interactive site for songwriters that features writing prompts and exercises, classes on lyric writing, metaphor, melody, interviews with special guests, and lessons from guest instructors.

The post How to deal with stage fright without booze or drugs appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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5 ways you don’t understand your fans (and that’s why they’re tuning you out)

Do you really “know” your fans online?

I don’t mean, like, having a clear picture of your target demographic or creating some fan avatar. I mean YOUR ACTUAL FANS. Are you communicating in a way that shows you know who they are, what they want, and what they’ve done?

Your fans want to be seen as individuals.

The larger your audience, the harder it is to keep track of your fans individually, but there are a few fairly simple things you can do online to treat your fans like individuals, and not a faceless mob.

You might be turning off your audience by not matching the message to the individual.

Many musicians just don’t treat this as a priority. I’ve been guilty too. But the more you understand your fans, the better able you’ll be to communicate with them, and the more likely they’ll be to subscribe, buy something, come to a show, etc.

Sure, they’ll know on an intellectual level that you’re not personalizing every single email, ad, or post by hand. But putting the right message in front of the right audience has a psychological effect; you’re demonstrating respect for each individual fan.

And again, the more you know about your fans, the better the chance that respect will be reciprocated.

Here are five things you might not know about your fans, but SHOULD:

1. You don’t know what she’s bought

It’s important to know when and how your fans have given you money.

No sense in advertising your last album to people who’ve already purchased it.

Conversely, who’s most likely to buy your next album? The people who bought your last one.

So be sure to tag email subscribers with information about their purchase history, and segment your list or ad audiences based on that information.

Where to start? You might already have customer records waiting (in the form of spreadsheets) within your CD Baby, Bandcamp, Kickstarter, or PledgeMusic accounts.

Understand where their dollars have gone. Keep track. Talk to them like individuals.

2. You don’t know what platform he’s on

Creating a Spotify pre-save campaign? You might not want to spend money advertising to fans you know are on Apple Music or Pandora. Want someone to create a Pandora station from your music? How about “suppressing” (not sending to) the people on your email list who’ve previously clicked a Spotify link.

Track those email clicks. Tag people accordingly. Then stop bugging them with social posts and emails that don’t apply to them!

3. You don’t know what their interest level is

Is this person a casual fan who might only want quarterly updates? Are they a loyal follower who wants bi-weekly reminders about every livestream and tour diary?

Again, tag them accordingly. Send the deep dives to the diehards. Send the big news to everyone.

4. You don’t know where he lives

I don’t mean you should keep track of everyone’s home address. That’d be creepster. But know their general location: city, zip, region, country.

I can’t tell you how many email announcements I get from musicians playing gigs thousands of miles from where I live. Delete.

If you didn’t get a person’s geographic information when they signed up for your list, at least geo-target your emails. And on social, target by location if it’s a regionally specific message.

5. You don’t know her name

Yeah, we know Amazon didn’t manually write our name in the subject line, or at the top of the email. It’s a trick, right?

But it still works. A neuroscientist could probably tell you why. I’ll just repeat the findings: It works.

Personalize your communications.

To you it’s a simple merge-field. To them, it’s WHO THEY ARE.

It’s important to show you have an understanding of each individual listener.

As I said, musicians don’t often track fan behavior. So we send blanket messages that don’t apply to half the recipients. Then they learn to tune us out.

We can do better. We have to stop treating our fans like a faceless mass, and instead view them as a collection of individuals.

Let’s tag our email contacts, segment our social audiences, and use all this information to make our fans feel like we see them, know them, and APPRECIATE them.

The post 5 ways you don’t understand your fans (and that’s why they’re tuning you out) appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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How a songwriter in his 60s broke back into the music industry

Independent musician Daniel Antopolsky started building a music career in his 60s.

I’ve written before about age in the music industry.

In many respects, age isn’t an asset: the big and little music machines are obsessed with youth and newness.

And yet regardless of your age, your genre, your location, there are more opportunities today, more tools, more connection points, meaning you’re never too old to find success — provided you have the right mix of talent, smarts, persistence, and luck.

A music manager named Jason Ressler reached out to me a while ago with a story about his client Daniel Antopolsky, a singer-songwriter who long ago missed his chance to “make it,” or more accurately, walked away from a business and life he couldn’t stomach, only to return to it many decades later with a catalog of hundreds of unreleased songs.

There’s a lot to explore in Daniel’s story…

In his twenties, he was affiliated with Townes Van Zandt, and he actually saved Townes’ life once.

He then lived most of his adult life farming, and keeping his songwriting passion to himself.

In his sixties he shifted gears, started recording, gigging, and building a fanbase.

And in the face of an industry that is biased against older musicians, Jason Ressler has been helping Daniel share that trove of songs and the story behind the music.

I interviewed Jason about all this stuff: the years, the obstacles, the insecurities, the PR tricks that helped get traction for Daniel’s music in the press, the ins-and-outs of managing an older independent artist, a few scandalous secrets from the music biz of yesteryear, and more. Jason gave honest, interesting, and thorough answers. Thanks to him for his time.

An interview with Jason Ressler — about how Daniel Antopolsky is building an audience in his 60s and 70s

Tell me about the unique challenges managing an older musician who was largely unknown?

Let me start with my motto: fuck everyone.

But I don’t mean this in the exact way it sounds. I mean it like the monk on the mountain who tells the world to fuck off and focuses on his little place that’s beautiful and important to him. I think everyone who’s coming from the outside of the center of this business, or anyone trying to do something new while in the center of it, has similar challenges. It’s all hard, even if you’re trying to be a new pop princess (and I’d like Daniel to be a new pop princess but he refuses to dress like one). So you have to focus on what’s important to you and try to ignore the noise. But that’s easy to say and hard to do, because you don’t always know whether or not the noise is important to your aspirations.

Almost everyone told me I was crazy to try and promote an unknown old guy’s music; but I didn’t care and kept going… Because for me Daniel’s as beautiful a songwriter and storyteller as there is, as great as playing with the English language in his own way as Eminem is in his. So I went for it and didn’t listen to the naysayers. I think it helped that I had no experience in music management and didn’t know how hard it would be, and I certainly know why every manager I practically begged in the beginning to take Daniel on said no. Yet now, as far as I can see, Daniel is the first American artist to ever be breaking out in his 70s and I wouldn’t give my job to anyone.

But that doesn’t mean it was or is an easy process or fun for me most of the time, though I try to make it so for Daniel. For if you go down the road of getting music out, you’ve got to decide what it’s worth to you –  whether you are the musician or a representative – in terms of your effort and energy, but just as important as to how much ugliness you’re willing to deal with to get something beautiful into the world. And when we do something great, as has been happening more and more lately, it’s heaven.

I’ve known U2’s former manager, Paul McGuinness, for a while and still when he was managing the band. I love U2 and though we haven’t met, Bono always seems like a sweet angelic kind of guy to me. When I first met Paul it was because he had heard some of my ideas on the issue of music piracy and I showed up at our lunch meeting expecting him to be like Bono somehow. Instead, what I met with was a cold and charming shark, like one of those characters in a Disney movie that laughs with his pals before they try to eat you. At first I was surprised, but what should I have expected? The guy took a bunch of Irish teenagers to the top of the world and has had to fight with every bastard out there who didn’t believe in them – probably just because they were Irish at that time – and to get through it he hired similar hard asses (like lawyer Allen Grubman) to build them up and protect them. Bono and the rest of the band gets to behave like angels because they’ve got others making sure they’re not getting screwed. On reflection, I bet Mahatma Gandhi had some tough guys on staff. (Let me just add that I like Paul, though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care about me one way or the other).

If Daniel knew about half the things I do to get him out there he’d cringe; I know this because he even cringes at the little I tell him and I only tell him the good stuff. Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War are good books for music managers and public relations teams who are trying to do the right thing: a key lesson is you can’t win a battle by fighting in a weaker way than those you are battling; but another key lesson that has taken me longer to learn is to avoid battles you can’t win immediately and plan strategically for the long term. The problem is that you can’t always tell whether you can win a battle, but the nice thing is that in this business no one’s actually going to kill you and we all get to fight another day after our ego bruising.

I fight age bias on a daily basis for Daniel and only rarely has his age been a positive thing. I can’t tell you how many people in the US industry have admitted to me that Daniel’s too old for them to take a shot on or do a piece on, from Billboard Magazine, to labels, etc., and those are the ones being nice to me, telling me the truth so I don’t waste my time. But it’s changing, partially because I’ve realized it’s a unique problem to the American industry and so instead of focusing on battling in the USA I focus on places where they don’t have the same biases in their industries. There’s also the knowledge that the US industry isn’t biased enough to ignore Daniel as he becomes more successful, and it just means he’s not going to get the breaks a 25-year old with even one album’s worth of great songs would get, let alone all the music Daniel has. But I didn’t know all of this when I started and it was hard to constantly fail because you don’t know if you’ll ever succeed.

So I feel like among the most important advice I can give to artist teams out there is to go with whatever strengths you have (which for me personally was a film background and a big mouth), make friends and allies, and get people to help with anything you’re weak on if you can, and be patient if you can’t. Low hanging fruit is what you should be looking for as it will give you the strength to climb the tree later for the more difficult fruit. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make great aspirational efforts often, but if you truly can’t solve a problem at a given moment after trying your best, forget it until your position has changed. As I told Daniel the other day: inside the music business the world is small, but from outside the world is big… You need to figure out where your inside is and how to get there, and it may not be the same as everyone else’s.

Why did Daniel leave the “music industry” in the 1970s?

Well, Daniel was never in the industry. He was a young songwriter hanging out with great young songwriters, the most prominent of which was his friend Townes Van Zandt. They both are described now as part of the “Outlaw Country” era, but that’s a historian’s view and historians like to generalize, so there are a lot of misconceptions about them. I didn’t know Townes, though I do know some of his friends and have read accounts of others, yet I know Daniel well. And what I see aren’t two guys who were trying to rebel against the system, but two people who couldn’t deal with the music industry in the depths of their souls and just wanted to write and perform great songs.

None of this means that Daniel and Townes didn’t want acceptance from the same music industry that rejected them or that they felt they had to reject. He and Townes desired an audience and, like everyone, would have liked industry support for their music, but they weren’t willing to compromise their music and maybe more importantly their way of being for that support. But trying to buck the industry and succeed in an artistically pure way is a hard gig. Those who seem to have done it were lucky enough to have inside support; or there are those like Willie Nelson, who was able to toe the line long enough to gain the experience and power he needed to reject the confines of Nashville and set himself up in an entirely different way in Austin.

Townes has a well-documented history of complexity in terms of the decisions he made in the music business, yet he stayed on the road, performing and recording, reaching his audience. He has gotten popular in recent years, but until fairly recently Townes was only admired by a small group of fans and prominent musicians like Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle and others, many of whom recorded his songs and got more famous off them than he did.

In Daniel’s case, you’re dealing with an incredibly sweet person who has no cunning in him and shies away from conflict and darkness. Bill Hedgepeth, a journalist who’s an incredible archivist and last month helped release an album of 11 lost songs of Townes called “Sky Blue” is in the film we’re making on Daniel called The Sheriff of Mars.

In it, Bill describes how Daniel went to see producers in Nashville when he was paling around with Townes, but was too far out there for them with his crazy ways and wild music. Daniel told me that later in the 1980s and 1990s he continued to try and get recorded, sending out tapes of his music to labels and never hearing back.

After Daniel saved Townes’s life from an overdose in 1972, I think it was a final realization for Daniel that he couldn’t be a part of that world anymore and, as he says, he wanted to “find something more spiritual.” And so he went on this infamous road trip in the 1970s with his friend “Crazy” Albert Low throughout America, Asia, and Europe that lasted many years and inspired him to write a lot of great music that wasn’t recorded until we released the first album of it at the end of 2017. There’s a wonderful article in B-sides & Badlands that describes it and that time.

I think the amazing thing is that Daniel has never stopped writing songs. He just wrote them and put them away, hoping and dreaming one day somehow they’d be recorded and shared. It was a hope that must have slipped a lot by the time I first heard his music in 2012 on his Bordeaux farm when he was 64-years old, but he was still prolific, writing and playing his music mostly to himself late at night, occasionally to his family, and certainly to his pet chickens and cat named Bingo.

What’s changed — either about the industry, or in Daniel — that made it a healthy decision to try to get these songs out now?

As Daniel was never in the industry, had never recorded his music, the decision to finally get into it was based on his dreams and my foolish optimism (which I still hold to). And who was I? A broke fuck-up somehow travelling around the world with no experience in managing anything. Pretty much who I am now except I’ve learned a few things in music during the past few years.

But the key to why all this is working now is simple: modern technology.

Daniel was 64 and wasn’t famous when we started and therefore the industry’s response almost in its entire collective sigh was to tell us to fuck off; I’d like to say that’s okay, but I’m not trite: it sucks. But then you have to realize that it’s the case for almost everyone. Now the music industry – especially the American one – is as shallow and illusory as it gets, so they see Ariana Grande doing well and are looking for the next version of her. But then think of how many talented young girls similar to Ariana are out there struggling, because there’s only so much room available for the small group that controls the most powerful side of the industry. So Daniel’s not the only artist with challenges, though his have some unique aspects.

I’ll break a story here, not only because it’s illustrative, but also because it’s sensationalistic enough to get wider attention to this article, and therefore also illustrative of what I want to tell the reader in terms of being opportunistic: The Beatles success in America was financed by the mob. I’m not sure if even they know that. But all the facts I’ll put below are well-documented and can be found online; it’s just that no one has realized what they added up to.

I grew up as a kind of adopted son of legendary music promoter Sid Bernstein, who brought the Beatles to America along with the rest of the British invasion. His son was my best friend and I often lived in their apartments. I directed a documentary on him called Sid Bernstein Presents… which didn’t get released but did expose me to many of the top people in the music industry.

Sid was as kind a man as there ever was, a dreamer, irresponsible, a guy who loved to take long shots on talent and believed in people and was also grandiose and thought he could succeed where others failed. And he often did. My film has the last interview with James Brown who described how Sid was as important to race relations in America as Martin Luther King and the Kennedys… And there was plenty more. Sid never cared about money, and when he had some he’d blow it quickly, and certainly his family suffered from the poverty of many of his aspirations. But anyone who knew Sid, including some of those who’ve criticized his choices, ever thought Sid was anything but one of the kindest human beings they’d ever met.

And yet Sid’s best friend since childhood was Abe Margolies, who was part of the who’s who of New York, best known for being in the jewelry and restaurant businesses, but was quietly a feared mobster and top advisor to the most important mafia family in New York at the time, doing all the things you can imagine a guy in his position does. In that sense, he couldn’t have been more opposite from his friend Sid. But Abe was complex and generous and always helped Sid with anything he needed.

When Sid wanted to bring the Beatles over he was working at the talent agency GAC, who thought it was a crazy idea to bring a British band to the USA as they thought Americans wouldn’t like British accents. (Idiocy in this business is nothing new.) But Sid was stubborn and decided to do it anyway, yet he wasn’t allowed to officially promote the show as a working agent. So while you will see that his later posters all say “Sid Bernstein Presents” when he presented a concert, if you look at the Beatles at Carnegie Hall poster from their arrival in 1964 it is promoted by “Theater Three Productions” so Sid could remain anonymous. The “Three” were Sid, Abe (who gave Sid the money for the concert) and Billy Fields, who Sid also used as a frontman to bring the Rolling Stones to America a short time later.

Abe funded Sid for many of his concerts and plays as you can see online, and he never wanted the money back from his dreamer friend. And since the mob was all over the music business, Abe also saved Sid once when some mobsters tried to muscle in on one of his concerts (I believe at the Brooklyn Paramount). So what’s my point? Sid was the kindest man in the world, a pacifist, and I think he couldn’t even acknowledge to himself who his friend was. But Sid made his compromises to get things done. Would we have been better off without the racial revolution he helped create in music? Without the British invasion? Without so much more?

That story seems like an aberration, but the music business has always been controlled and always had corruption, whether from the mob or the corporations who still run so much of it now. When I was prepping for my documentary on Sid, my co-director Evan Strome and I went to meet a well-known music lawyer named Freddie Gershon, who was a friend of Sid’s and giving us some background on him. This was around 2000, when music piracy was a big new thing. Freddie told us that actually music piracy was nothing new and described how a gangster in the business named Morris Levy (on whom there’s plenty written about) used to make pirate copies of records and force the record stores to take them; Freddie said that he thought roughly 10% of all records sold were pirate copies and this was well before the digital era. I haven’t told this story until now as Freddie asked us to keep it to ourselves at the time, even though Levy had died almost a decade earlier, since many of those mob tied guys were still around and involved with things.

So while the mob world started dying and was less in the business by the 2000s, the corporations were able to keep the same leverage and systems in place while cleaning up their acts by staying just on the right side of the law, having the money to lobby politicians to write laws in their favor, or when they decide to violate the laws they can’t write (which still happens all the time) the fines they receive are already factored in as the cost of doing business.

But the new world of music and film distribution isn’t coming entirely from the corporate music world, but from the technology world that makes their money by giving individual artists platforms and freedom; so it’s a new world, though not as beautiful as it should be yet. But we can see the incredible improvement in the availability of music, and another example is the revolutionary improvement in television programming in many quarters.

Without these vast changes in the industry, from something as simple as email to file sharing, YouTube, Spotify, etc., Daniel’s music would have been forever lost. No label would ever take a crack at an unknown old guy’s music, and our ability to collaborate online and distribute our own music has been a Godsend as it has been for so many people, whether they are “succeeding” or not. We haven’t made money yet, but we will.

Yet I also think we’re revolutionizing the model for what older people can do, showing that you can still get out there and reinvent yourself at a late age. This is based on how younger independent musicians are doing it, but also on Daniel’s eclectic nature, where he really has little interest in leaving his farm in France too often. But no one in Daniel’s age group had done this before, in no small part because those in Daniel’s age group mostly don’t discover music the way younger people do. We’ve had a lot of trial and error to figure out what can work, and what has come to pass is that we have found that Daniel’s pretty much equally popular among young and old, but they find his music in different ways.

In terms of breaking the mold, Daniel’s first album Sweet Lovin’ Music was produced by Grammy veterans Gary Gold and John Capek in Nashville and it wasn’t easy for Daniel, being away from what inspires him in nature and animals, having to commit to structure and time frames. He’s not a guy who can fit in a box in any way, and that’s not easy on his producers either, as the metronome doesn’t exist for him. So we’re talking about someone you just have to follow. There are some wonderful songs on that album, but some of it didn’t come out how Daniel would have liked, largely because of his own discomfort, and much of which had to do with his lack of conventionality.

Gary and I picked up on that and after Daniel played SXSW in 2016, Gary decided to come out to Daniel’s farm in France to produce Daniel’s Acoustic Outlaw albums where he just let Daniel play the way he wanted to, recording it all in Daniel’s dining room. In a way, we were just trying to get as many songs as we could recorded as we were afraid to lose them and Gary was under a lot of pressure. But it worked for Daniel and we’ve done it that way since then. Daniel gets to relax and check his chickens or go farm, all around his recording, and then he can just flow. Sometimes one of those damned roosters will come to the window and start singing and you’d think it would ruin the take but Daniel wants to leave it in the background of the song – he’s so crazy and funny, it makes me laugh just writing this! Everyone should be able to come to a recording session with Daniel.

Anyway, we’ve tried to do as much as we can that way so he can be happy and creative and now we record songs, film Daniel’s music videos, and try to have most of his interviews on his farm. Then the rest of the team handles whatever they have to from wherever we are. Here’s his crazy first ever music video “Fish Bait Blues.”

It was his idea and his wife, Sylvia, and I are in it. But his wife is one of the top gynecologists in Bordeaux… Thank God she’s got a fetish for odd American singers!  And importantly to prove the technology part: I shot that video on an iPhone 6 and Daniel’s daughter Hannah did some of the filming and French filmmaker Herve Morin (who also directs longer pieces on Daniel) edited it at home and it was up on YouTube finding an audience as quickly as we could… We never could have afforded even one video for Daniel 15 years ago and no one would have funded or distributed it either.

What was it like, emotionally, for Daniel to have been so productive for so long as a songwriter, but without a public outlet for those songs?

I can only speak to my observations, and Daniel may disagree with me in part, but from everything I saw it was terrible for him, despite being happy in the rest of his life. The author Maya Angelou once said “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you,” and that played out in Daniel.

When you make documentaries you start to see patterns in different ways, and as we went on I noticed that every single friend that he had lost touch with had something to do with his music days. I think he was carrying a great shame of being someone who didn’t live up to his potential in what he saw as his life’s purpose, and that came out in his relationships and even the way he played his music most of the time: quietly, alone at night in a little room away from everyone as they slept. I’m sure this feeling wasn’t helped by the fact that his wife is the main breadwinner, despite the enormous amount of work he puts in on his farm. When you’re ashamed of things it poisons the greater well. Notably, in the only performances he gave once a year at the July 4th celebrations at the US Consulate in Bordeaux, France, he only played covers of other musicians’ popular songs, not his own.

When we first went to Nashville for a kind of tryout in 2012 with his future album producers, he was naturally excited but nervous: his whole dream about to be put on the line. I’d like to say I had to drag him kicking and screaming, but that’s not the case: Daniel is sweet, but he isn’t a person you can tell what to do if he doesn’t want to.

So we went, but when we got there, picked up by our two Grammy-nominated producers driving us to the house where the studio was, Daniel and I were in the backseat and he looked at me and said in all seriousness “I don’t belong here” and I think he would have gone home then if it seemed at all reasonable. But then he played, did great, and we came back to make his first album in early 2013. During that process he realized he was really making an album and looked at me with tears in his eyes and said “you’ve really done a mitzvah.” “Mitzvah” is a Jewish word for good deed, but it has more weight than that. Hearing that has been one of my proudest moments in all of this.

So it’s funny to see him now – great of course – because he has become a professional in every way without realizing it and without compromising, proud of his achievements even if they haven’t monetized yet, great on film and radio and in concert and the studio. Each of these things took time. Fortunately, I have the documentary where we can see him before, nervous, ashamed, but more fortunately that’s all behind him and maybe the best part of all this is that all of his old music friends are back in his life after a 30-40 year absence. And Daniel’s still as modest as he’s always been.

Has there been a grand strategy here, or are you just figuring it out step-by-step?

There was a grand strategy and none of it worked!

Really, I started this as a new family friend to the Antopolskys with the simplest idea of getting one album recorded for Daniel’s family to have, and just wanted to get a song on the local Charleston radio where the family has a nearby summer home in order to make his daughters proud. I never had the idea that this would be anything bigger than some CDs on his shelf for his future grandkids, and I certainly never had any intention of becoming a music manager.

Then about a month before we’re going to make that first album in Nashville, we were at his farmhouse and he comes in the kitchen, looks at me, and says with no prompting “I can’t just make one album, I gotta make SEVEN!”

I looked at him like “What the fuck? I mean you’ve never made one album so what the hell are you talking about?” But I understood. He’s sitting on hundreds of songs he’s poured his soul into and he doesn’t see this album the way I saw it. He sees it at 64-years old as his elusive life’s dream to share his music coming true. He couldn’t choose between his songs and he wanted people to hear them all.

I told Gary Gold, the producer of his first album, what Daniel said and Gary understood too. Gary told me if we want to get his music out into the world, I would have to make a film on Daniel, as no one would care about an old guy unless we had a vehicle to show people why his music was worth it. Searching for Sugarman had just come out and Gary explained that it was getting Rodriguez’ music an audience. I hadn’t made a film in years, hadn’t seen “Sugarman,” but I said fuck it, I’ll see what I can do… Yet we’re weeks away and I’m broke.

So I called my old friend, Matthew Woolf, a British cameraman living in New York who was the only person I knew as crazy and impulsive as me (or at least that wasn’t in jail) and he agreed to jump on a plane on a few days’ notice and shoot the film, dragging along his producer wife, Kylie, to do sound. I believe neither of us got to watch “Sugarman” until the first part of the shoot was over, and I took Daniel’s family to see it in Bordeaux so they’d understand what we were aspiring to.

And I knew this whole thing was going to be much bigger.

But man was I wrong about how! I thought it was so logical, thought Daniel’s story and incredible music and place as a lost historical figure would be welcomed throughout the industry, the doors would open so wide they’d fly off the hinges, his songs would be all over, and all the rest you can imagine, none of which happened… I get as arrogant as they come, but enough humiliation quickly leads to humility!

So I spent a lot of time figuring it out – thinking I wasn’t figuring it out – miserable, failing, disappointed in myself and clearly disappointing others, including Daniel’s family. And I’ve been reacting to my own misestimations constantly, yet the worst part of all of this is that you’re not necessarily wrong just because you fail in this business at a given time. Anything can have caused that failure, even if your strategy is totally sound, as people and business constantly change. So you have to have multiple strategies, and just keep pushing along until you figure out how to make some things work. And be opportunistic.

The best example I can give for this is how embraced Daniel has become in the UK. I’d have imagined that the USA was our natural audience, the American South for sure, and instead we’ve barely made a dent there. Why? Country music has become more like pop with a Southern twang, and radio is almost entirely controlled by the major labels who put that music out. So even some major artists don’t have an outlet. But that doesn’t mean the American South isn’t our major audience, it’s just that I don’t have an easy way to get in front of them without support.

Last year I noticed that almost every milestone in Daniel’s new career has been reached in the UK, from his first major press, first radio plays, first paid concert, and coming up his first paid major music festival at the Black Deer Festival this June. So I started focusing more there… Come to think of it, it was even a young British guy who compared Daniel to Mississippi John Hurt which seems apt, but maybe Josephine Baker is a good comparison too.

As I thought about why, it became clear to me that the UK just doesn’t have the same age and physical biases that are inherent in the American music industry (though not Americans themselves, fortunately); they care more about the music and the industry puts its money where its mouth is there. For example, I truly believe there’s no way Adele could have come out of the USA, for the simple reason that she doesn’t fit the stereotypical body-type of a pop star, though once she was popular in the UK, the US industry jumped onboard. I also think it’s no accident that Searching for Sugarman was a film largely funded in the UK. I can give countless examples of this and can only find few exceptions in the USA.

My point here is that you need to look elsewhere if things aren’t working. The world is a big place with a lot of differing attitudes and we’re lucky to be able to find an audience directly these days, even if that isn’t as easy as people make it sound sometimes. I was spending too much of my time being pissed off at the US industry and instead I’ve understood that I must find my spots and build up from there and eventually the US industry will pay attention.

And as it turns out I still haven’t gotten Daniel on the radio in the US, and I still haven’t gotten distribution on the film yet, but everything is going incredibly well and he’s out there on his own!

How have you managed PR for the recent independent release?

The press has been a strong part of our success to date, and I hope this is where I can advise musicians and managers most as it’s the area I understand best.

I’ve been lucky because I’ve been friends for a long time with one of the top people in American public relations, a woman named Lisa Dallos who heads High 10 Media and she always generously helps and advises me on my projects (and also kindly pays for most of our meals when we meet!). So I had some public relations knowledge going into this, and had some limited work doing PR in the past. Lisa’s the one who really taught me how to think of things reasonably, understand the interests of who I’m pitching, that reporters and editors are people who are busy, and that you have to build up things brick by brick. We sometimes disagree, because she’s dealing with the biggest people in the world and I’m dealing with guerilla PR for Daniel and I also have a horrible combination of liking the underdog and being grandiose at the same time. Plus, I have a temper. A sort of typical conversation between me and Lisa is, me: “Hey Lisa, I found this old new singer named Daniel who has great songs and it’s such a great story… he should be on the cover of Vanity Fair, how do I get him on there?” Lisa, shocked at what an idiot I am: “Uh, dude…” (not that Lisa would ever say “dude”) “he doesn’t even have a Facebook page and you haven’t even recorded one song and Vanity Fair would never cover this kind of story let alone put anyone but a young pop star on the cover…”. Me only hearing the “no” and being angry: “those corporate bastards!”.

But later when I actually calm down and listen to the logic, it’s a lesson on how to get things done. You need to analyze and build and deal with personalities. Press is a sales job and it’s always easiest to sell when you’re giving someone something they actually want, like having a local reporter cover your local concert. That doesn’t mean I’m not occasionally pulling off something Lisa didn’t think I could, yet I also often fail where Lisa and I agree I should succeed.

But the first thing I’d say is you need to know who you are. Now that sounds simple, but it’s not. It is usually reasonably simple to figure out what kind of artist you want to be regardless of your sound, even if you are happy to compromise that sound for commercial success. With Daniel it’s easy: I have this incredible musical story teller who’s as optimistic and pure-hearted in his songs as it gets. Daniel has never wanted to compromise or play the game, and all these things are the reasons I wanted to get his music into the world.

But while the question of who you are (or represent) as an artist may be solved, the question of “who you are” from a public relations and marketing perspective is a whole different ballgame. You need to think that through in tiny pieces and be both logical, thorough and often shameless in your approach (like I did with this interview, Chris, emailing you that I wanted you to interview me for CD Baby because I had something to share with people, but also because I’m promoting to our crowd here). Perseverance is also key, but that’s a word that’s bandied around a lot and makes you more depressed when you’re failing and so you have to deal with it in a realistic way.

You have to know that many things may not work, even if they’ve worked in the past, and you need to figure out why they’re not working and what lines you’re willing to cross to do better. Because marketing an artist is often a thoroughly degrading, disgusting, and compromised business (even more so for someone like me who comes from an artistic background and wasn’t used to it). You’re broke and desperate and need a quick… anything? Too bad; no one cares except maybe some of your friends and family, and they can’t really help you.

So you also need to learn to take care of yourself, make a plan to see if it works but also know when to stop working. I don’t always take my own advice, but these days I try to treat marketing and PR like I would a gym workout: I plan, do my sets and then I stop; as doing more just exhausts you and will ruin your next days just like overtraining would ruin your workout the next day. This is a long game. because anything you do will take at least weeks and more likely longer to come to fruition, and that’s with a lot of follow up. Nothing is worse than the exhaustion that comes from failure. And you will fail all day long.

But I’ve learned the hard way, and now Daniel has press all over the world.

Public relations and marketing require one of two things: (a) existing relationships and leverage if you need something fast or (b) a slow, kind seduction if you don’t have those things (and no matter where you start, you will never have leverage in all the areas you’ll need to cover, so you need to learn (b) regardless). And always you have to be calculating, but calculating isn’t a bad word, in PR the best scenario is where everyone gets what they want, which often happens when something happens because the equation is simple: a journalist wants to write an article on you and you want one written.

It’s getting to that point that’s the problem.

I’ve used any hook I could to get press for Daniel: whether it’s Daniel’s album being produced by “Grammy nominees”, the film The Sheriff of Mars being shot, Daniel’s association with the Outlaw Country era and Townes Van Zandt, the fact that Daniel is likely the inspiration for “Lefty” in Townes’ song “Pancho & Lefty,” his age, location or past locations, whatever I can think of that will interest a reporter…

Our first media coverage came during our Kickstarter campaign for Daniel’s documentary “The Sheriff of Mars” in 2014. I knew it was a great opportunity to build up press while we raised money and I made a plan to do so on launch, both to help the campaign and have a base for later. It’s a great lesson in logic and the failure of logic. And it’s important to note that I am coming from outside the music PR world and didn’t have relationships with most reporters. It’s also key to realize that I sent at least 1000 emails out in those 30 days and probably spent 100 hours on research and finding reporters’ emails before I did.

To start, I looked at it all the pieces I thought I had to target media and came up with a rough list that made sense to me:

Country Music (a huge and obvious market for us)

Indie Music

Film/Indie Film

Nashville (as Daniel is part of the local music history)

France (as that’s where Daniel lives)

Georgia (as Daniel is from Augusta, Georgia)

South Carolina (as Daniel’s American base is near Charleston)

Jewish (as Daniel is a Jewish guy, which is a rarity in Country Music)

Texas (as Daniel has a noted history there with Townes)

AARP (for older people)

I won’t break down everything we did here, but let me just say that after five years of consistent media, to my shock I’ve never had one article on Daniel in any mainstream Country Music outlet or out of Nashville or Texas. My guess as to why is that these are popular markets for Country Music where reporters are getting pitched a lot and they will either cover a more commercial sound, someone popular, or you need to be on a label or hire a music PR company that has the relationships to break through to them. Believe me, I wish we could have afforded to hire a pro.

It also turned out that “Indie” for musicians means nothing; there are many magazines with different niches I had to learn, so that came later, and most of them naturally skew young. With film, one Indie film blog picked up the story though I hadn’t pitched them – but great. In Georgia’s press, we made some headway, including at Daniel’s college newspaper, but I was so mad that that Daniel’s hometown paper, the Augusta Chronicle, wasn’t answering me that I copied the whole upper journalistic/editor staff to complain; the legendary writer there, Don Rhodes, wrote back calmly saying they don’t cover Kickstarters and he’d cover down the road. Which he later did and is a friend now. We also ended up with a big article that was put on the front page in the main Charleston paper, The Post & Courier; both the editor and the journalist were into our vibe. Yet the small Charleston papers have still never covered Daniel, and others from Georgia haven’t either, no matter how many times I’ve pitched. The lessons here were all great, some writers were interested, others weren’t, and to get an answer you had to keep asking.

But in the Jewish focused media, we were covered all over the world because it’s a very focused niche and the Jewish Community has many small newspapers, so there are many opportunities (though we still got turned down plenty). Daniel was a rare Jewish Country musician and a great story for them.

Also, to show you about relationships, one of the best pieces we’ve ever had came out then in the Jewish magazine Tablet. Although I hadn’t seen the writer, Danny Krieger, since high school, I was able to call him and talk to him as the old friends we were, so my “inside” relationship gave me the leverage to be listened to and have him meet Daniel. Having said that, there is no way Krieger would have done the piece if it hadn’t interested him, because I had no business leverage over him (and to explain what I mean simply, if a PR company represents major artists everyone wants to interview, then the journalists know they often must interview that company’s smaller artists when asked if they want the bigger interviews. Though it’s a bit more complex and layered than my simple description).

As for French press, I didn’t speak French well so it was a hard pitch to make and I got off it fairly quickly, though a friend got us a short article through a friend of his. And as I’ve learned about AARP, they were a hard get as they aren’t the niche media I’d thought, but major media that controls a permanently supplied niche as people keep getting old – including Bob Dylan and the Beatles – so we needed to be a bigger story, not an unknown Kickstarter project.

Overall it was a successful first round and I had some things to build off of.

But now let me fast forward 4 years to 2018 to give you an example of my attempts at press before Daniel’s first ever UK concert at London’s Bush Hall last year, which happened after a year of international press that included major papers around the world like the BBC and Rolling Stone and many others. Despite months of attempts in reaching out to UK media, I couldn’t get the “easiest” press I could think of – the UK Jewish press – to answer me. I’d pitched them early, but was getting no response. I found a connection to one paper, sent emails and left phone messages numerous times for the cultural editor of the paper, as well as had a colleague of the editor email on my behalf, but nothing. In the meantime, the top music columnist from the huge international paper The Guardian had agreed to write a major piece, so I tried that as leverage with the Jewish paper. Still nothing. And how many Jewish Country musicians come to London?! After giving up on the Jewish paper a week before the concert, I got so angry thinking about it that I called the cultural editor one last time. By luck, she picked up and I held my temper and calmly told her who I was and she asked me about the story for two sentences, said it sounded amazing and had a reporter write an article within a few days. It was clear that she’d known nothing about it, had likely never read the emails or realized what my messages were about.

I cannot tell you how many times this has happened or how many reporters have told me they can sometimes get 1000 emails a day. I will tell everyone: do not think you are being turned down until you actually are turned down. Keep calling unless you feel like you’ve exhausted your efforts. Nevertheless, manage your expectations, your own emotions, give reporters plenty of lead time, and find those who are writing about subjects similar to your artist.

This also goes to some great advice about deal-making I got once from Barbra Streisand’s manager, Marty Erlichman. He told me always be glad for a “no” rather than a “definite maybe.” I was too stupid to understand that at the time, but it’s the best advice out there. Get your NOs, because nothing fucks your head up more than hoping something will happen because someone says they’ll get back to you and you’re afraid of tipping the cart. Tip it, see what happens, and move on.

And you must know that even after you do everything right, even if you actually score your artist a major interview, it still may not work out. After Daniel’s SXSW appearance in 2016, CBS Sunday Morning had a reporter come and film a piece on Daniel which would have been a major coup for us, getting us in front of an audience of 6 million, attention from other media, all when we really needed it… It never aired. After two years of waiting I tried reaching the Executive Producer, Rand Morrison, to find out what was going on and he’s never answered. Maybe it will air down the road. But it’s not the only time it’s happened.

It’s incredibly disappointing, but you must realize it has nothing to do with you and it doesn’t make anyone a bad person, they just have their interests. It’s not only media; for instance no one at the Americana Music Association, a body theoretically set up for musicians like Daniel, has ever responded to an email or call in six years until their PR guy answered a question for me a month ago when no one else there would respond (this is again the opposite of a similar body in the UK called the AMAUK who have been super helpful). While I easily start hating people controlling organizations who don’t answer or help me, I always have to check myself and realize that doesn’t make them enemies; they’re potential allies who haven’t paid attention or just don’t think we’re important enough yet.

But very importantly, if you keep at it you will discover some incredible allies out there who help you beyond your imagination. There’s an online Country Music blog called “Saving Country Music” run by Kyle “Trigger” Coroneos, who loves what Daniel is doing and has written great pieces on him. Kyle is writing against a lot of the mainstream country industry and interested in authentic voices and sounds. I had no idea Daniel wasn’t mainstream Country Music when we started, as I was more apt to listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the Smiths or Hole or the Killers than any Country music except for Johnny Cash. But I learned and now I know there’s a whole world of Country Music out there that I like and also a lot I don’t. Another great ally has been a guy named Jeremy “Tep” Tepper, who heads 3 stations over at SiriusXM, including Willie Nelson’s. Tep has been one of the leaders in revitalizing Outlaw Country and gave Daniel his first national radio interview and helps us all the time behind the scenes. Agent Richard Arlook advises me, film editors Wataru Kitano and Herve Morin constantly work for free, and even prominent artist Romeo Alaeff has helped build and maintain Daniel’s website (he’s an old friend but undoubtedly has better things to do)… We’re lucky to say there are many others.

Finally, you need to respect the press and realize they are just people with all kinds of distractions and problems. Many PR people have cynically told me that press is lazy and will just print your release; but it’s never happened to me – well once, but it was a small journal, who told us they would do that as they wanted to help us but didn’t have time to write something up – so it was a kind gesture, not a lazy one. But every journalist I’ve gotten to cover us has been interested, thorough, clever… They occasionally get some facts wrong, but if you’ve ever heard Daniel talk, he’s nearly impossible to follow. Yet whenever I’ve called with a fact change, they’ve always done so happily.

To conclude, logic is nice, but experience is key as it will help you control your emotions when logic fails you and even causes you failure if you follow your best plans for too long. I think the most important lesson I can tell anyone is this: you have to understand what the needs of the people who are inclined to support you are and make it easy for them to help you in the ways they can and not the ways you think you need. And your positioning matters too. In a terrible metaphor: your cat can catch mice, but not type your emails; ask a music reporter for an article, not funding for your album.

Clearly Daniel’s backstory and connection to Townes is a huge advantage for press, but what are the dangers in too closely associating with that backstory?

This is a good follow up to what I was just describing, as I think the most important thing for anybody trying to make anything happen in this business is to take advantage of any advantage you can because you never know what’s going to stick or for how long. I think we’re led to believe there’s a kind of standard, because we read an interview or article causally, they often say similar things, and we really don’t look at it from the perspective of the journalist or magazine when we’re not experienced in the business.

So I don’t really care what I have to do for press, as long as I don’t blatantly violate any of Daniel’s morals with the result. I told Daniel the other day I wish that someone would discover that Taylor Swift is Daniel’s love child as that would be major press! He looked at me like I was an idiot…

But there are two perspectives here: Daniel’s as an authentic artist and a pure soul and me as someone promoting him and knowing to get his music out requires dealing with many people, companies, and systems who often have far less pure souls than Daniel does. That’s not a criticism in itself though, because marketing requires engaging with diverse business interests that need to be catered to in different ways, for as hard a time I have in getting the attention of reporters or music executives, they have an even harder time competing against each other to get the attention of their audiences.

Townes has gotten much more popular in the last few years, but the truth is seven years ago I didn’t even know who Townes was when I started down the road with Daniel’s music, and none of my friends in New York did either. But fortunately my producer friend in Nashville was wowed by it and it didn’t take me too long to realize what a great musician Townes was and what an asset it could be because everyone down South knows Townes. It was also incredibly interesting that every young British person I met did too, which further cements why a lot of the people who have helped us have been from the UK. So having that backstory has been a key for me getting Daniel out into the world and I’m not sure how I would have done so without it (though I would have found a way).

It was also necessary because Daniel’s personal music history is tied up with Townes, and it’s impossible to explain Daniel’s story without talking about the famous photo at Guy & Susanna Clark’s house, their infamous road trip, the hotel near Dallas where Daniel wrote “Sweet Lovin’ Music” and Townes wrote “Pancho & Lefty” during the same afternoon, and certainly Daniel saving Townes’ life because that last event led Daniel to flee even the small part of the music industry he was enjoying.

So I was incredibly happy to have had Daniel’s relationship to Townes as a hook to get attention to Daniel’s music for the first years, but I’m also incredibly happy that Daniel doesn’t read his own press because he has a pure love for Townes and wouldn’t want me exploiting him (not that I’ve ever misrepresented their relationship in any way). Nevertheless, last year someone wrote about Daniel and described the story of Daniel saving Townes’ life as an “oft-cited story,” and I was proud because no one knew that story when we started, just like no one knew it was Daniel in that iconic photo and he was always nameless in it, referred to as “unknown friend” or something similar, and now Daniel is named every time that picture is shown.

Yet I’m also very happy that we are now getting past the media hook with Townes, and with Daniel’s 5th album about to be released he’s getting press on his own merits. A couple of weeks back we had an article in a blog called SupaJam that I was pleased with for many reasons: it catered to the younger music crowd, only mentioned Townes in passing, referred to Daniel as a growing legend, and focused on his music and upcoming festival appearance. It’s short, perfect, and about Daniel.

But I didn’t show the article to Daniel; he’s simply too modest to know how to read about himself without being embarrassed.

You mentioned to me that you figured out a way to get around “how the music industry really works.”  What’s the secret?

The industry is a bunch of liars, snakes, and cheats, who will crush you with their complacency and the worst part is that most of them are nice and decent people!

We are at as low a point in terms of art in the mainstream of the American music industry as there has been in 20 years… because the majority of the music and media industries are as corrupt, biased, and formulaic bunch of fucks as there gets. While these things go in cycles, and while modern technology has allowed artists more opportunity to find audiences, you still have to realize that major parts of the industry are entirely closed off to you unless you can partner with the major labels or figure out a way around them. And you need to do one or the other or both, because they control most of the money that at the very least will allow you to continue to create and promote your music for the long term.

So while this is the best time in history to be an independent musician in terms of the ability to create, distribute, and promote music, and keep your rights to it, this doesn’t mean that you have a fair chance and that we’re past the era of corporate music control. It just means you have some alternatives to grow and take a better shot. I think many people get disappointed in how hard it still is – and I’ll put myself at the top of that list – because we think all of these tools should lead aspiring musicians to success, and what musicians need to realize is that they’re fighting a guerilla war against a complacent, corruptible, and sheepish music and media industry, but they’ve just been given some better weapons to do battle now.

I thought that breaking Daniel out would be easy because of his talent; but man was I wrong. You have to deal with power issues, bullshit, laziness, indifference, corruption and creeps, even in places you think should be your natural allies. And this isn’t the only problem, because you also have to deal with the fact that there are a lot of great people, companies, outlets, etc., that must adhere to their economic interests and standards and yet are overwhelmed, so you need to not only get their attention, but also get them to believe in you despite incredible callouses and biases that even the best have. I’ve had to come up with every angle I can to break Daniel through and I’m always looking for more.

So It’s important to know who your friends and enemies are (your enemies in this case don’t hate you, they just don’t care about you at all). And that your “enemies” in this business are not necessarily bad people, but they’re like bankers who dress cooler (sometimes). When those bankers are ripping you off for fees on your overdraft and are telling you “Sir, there’s nothing we can do” you want to fucking murder them with their formal smiles and manners, but when they tell you your loan is approved you’d be happy to buy them a beer. The big guys at the bank look at their numbers, the workers need their jobs: the music is incidental for most of those working in big radio and at the labels, even if they enjoy the music and the lifestyle.

Plus, the fix is in.

You only need to look at American radio which is still unofficially controlled by the music labels to see the problems.

Before he died, I used to be very friendly with Sy Kravitz, singer Lenny Kravitz’s dad, as I interviewed them for my documentary on Sid. Sy told me once about how for one of Lenny’s album releases, he didn’t go out to do all the free radio marketing junkets around the country and in response they didn’t play his album and sales tanked. It’s that simple and concentrated. And, by the way, I don’t blame them, because everyone has to make a living and be treated respectfully, if you can do so, and the radio stations and DJs and local press need the support. Where it bothers me is that with the consolidation that’s taken place there is little outlet for the up and coming musician in the local radio markets, and they don’t have the opportunities Lenny and others do with the big labels behind them. This wasn’t always the case, as there were plenty of smaller stations when I grew up that locals had access to; for example without WRKS (aka 98.7 Kiss FM in New York), Hip-Hop may not have become what it did.

You’d think this wouldn’t matter with all the tools we now have to compete and all the outlets playing music, but money is still the most important tool and the labels have most of it. Radio still has huge audiences, physical distribution is becoming important again and so you need investment and distribution dollars, PR and marketing to distinguish yourself, access to those who decide on playlists for the streaming services, and so on. So basically most of the industry is still an inside system, with the caveat that now new technological tools allow you to build yourself from the outside enough to appeal to that system.

I’ve tried to get Daniel on American radio and it’s been an impossible task to date because the labels control radio through (mostly) legalized bribery and we’re not on a major label and we don’t have the money to play the same game. Now it used to be direct bribery to the DJs and the stations until they got caught, and though that still happens occasionally, bribes largely take place through advertising, marketing events, sponsorships, paid “business” trips, outside consultants, etc., and it’s all out there for you to see. When radio gets caught going too far they pay the fine, as the fine is factored in and low enough to be considered as a cost of doing business.

I tried to start a public fight last year with a particular radio conglomerate (they’re all the same though) for issues that included what I saw as a de facto institutional bias given Daniel’s age. I wrote an email that was filled with all the drama I thought it would require to get some attention (I’m a promoter here after all! But I was telling the truth…). But no one cared about the issue easily and I’m not going to intimidate the lawyers at major corporations without digging into the wider public politics. Once I understood what it would take to make an issue of it, I knew it would be a distraction to our goals so I let it go. You have to pick your fights. And let me say, the lawyer who I was mostly trying to do battle with was an absolutely lovely guy who I’ll send this article to to tell him he won (though he knows that) and that I still want to buy him a drink when he visits Bordeaux.

But some of the worst part of this is that the biases at the top, which are theoretically based solely on profits, are almost entirely built on false pretenses and fly in the face of the very statistics the industry collects. You need only to look at the money the films Wonder Woman and Black Panther made last year to know that the industry is consistently biased, unless you believe that suddenly in 2018 people had an awakening for the first time and were willing to watch superhero films with female and black lead characters, and the industry in all its benevolence realized this in 2017 by analyzing statistics just before they shot those films.

The same is true towards older people; the industry won’t consider them in the ways they should. Statistically, older people are listening to radio more than younger ones and are also purchasing more music. And yet if you ask industry execs why they’re not being catered to except by playing and rereleasing the same old music, they say older people don’t like new music… And if you think about it, it’s like wait, what?

Have they tried to support new artists that have a similar sound to what the older market supposedly likes rather than EDM? You’re putting 90% of your marketing and promotional dollars towards a young pop sound even though that music is actually catered towards a likely more active but less financially sound audience and you’re surprised that music purchases are skewed? And is there any evidence that younger people don’t like older musicians? There are over 13 million spins on Spotify right now for the Rolling Stones; do they think that’s because of the grandmothers of America? If they do, then the industry should cater to them with new artists and if they don’t they should realize that they have a large young audience that doesn’t care about the age of the musicians they listen to. The reaction to Sixto Rodriguez in terms of sales and continued airplay after the release of Searching for Sugarman should be evidence enough, but the industry looks for every reason to treat it as an aberration because it doesn’t fit the narrative they’ve been taught, and musicians of all ages and stripes are suffering for it.

Also, by the way, the numbers of stats/views/spins are manipulated and faked far more often than people realize, and the industry knows it, participates in it and games it, because everyone is making money off it.

I have a friend, an old legend in the film and television business, whose office I went into a few years back and he said to me “There’s no way that Duck Dynasty is the #1 show on television…” when it was rated #1 at the time. He then explains to me how the Nielsen numbers are skewed and corrupted. He told me about 20 years earlier, Nielsen had been rating something of his that he knew had to be incorrect and so he had them investigated and found out the details, which I won’t get into here, and he also told me if you paid for their services they would skew their numbers in your favor.

But do you think he sued them? No… Instead he threatened to expose them and so they agreed on a multi-million dollar settlement: for free Nielsen services for many years in exchange for signing an NDA to keep quiet about all he knew! Why did he want that when he knew the numbers were lies? Because Nielsen stats were so important to his business and no one cares about the truth. With positive Nielsen numbers he was able to secure advertising dollars for his shows and without them he couldn’t… pure and simple and no way around it. But don’t the advertisers care? No, because the advertising firms are the ones placing ads and they’re charging companies based on the sale of the ad and a percentage of its cost, so what do they care if the stats are accurate, as long as it let’s them get paid. The companies paying for the ads have no other outlets and no true way to detect whether their ads are working, and anyway their ad executives’ jobs are based on the system staying in place, so the people who know best are certainly not going to protest. (And it’s best if the Nielsen team just ignores this interview or gives some form of “no comment” if asked about it, because if they challenge what I say here I’ll release the details of who/what/when.)

I tell the above story because it is exactly what you’re dealing with today as a musician in terms of YouTube and Facebook and other views/spins. If you don’t have numbers, you will have a hard time getting press, festivals, labels, etc., take you seriously. But the fix is in there too, for everyone knows the numbers are easily corrupted and no one cares because they have no other way of judging the game. The actual online platforms themselves are so safe in their corruption that they sell you it directly: you want more views on YouTube/Facebook? Pay for advertising. And guess what happens when you do get more views/spins that you’ve paid for? The algorithms take over, push your video even more to users, and your numbers get even better. Sound familiar? The record companies don’t mind paying the dollars to market into this system regardless of whether it’s true, because every spin makes them money, because the advertisers pay for advertising, those selling ads to their clients make money on the placing of ads, etc….

But let’s not forget going beyond paying the platforms and actually faking these numbers directly through automated services, which the major labels have been caught at and which almost no one really cares about for all the same reasons as above. Though this does screw some of the tech companies a bit, as certainly Spotify and similar companies don’t want to pay musicians/labels for fake spins, they can’t protest too much because their business relies on music licensing from the major music companies, so they combat it in the technical ways they can, but are certainly not going to go after the big dogs too loudly. Also, they are making money from the ads too…

[Editor’s note: Streaming services like Spotify have been known to remove music from their platforms if they detect fake streams from click farms.]

I’m in France often these days and I have a close friend who is very involved inside the French Hip-Hop scene, which is great and which I’d like to make a film about. There’s a long history there and many excellent rappers from MC Solaar to Booba, Lacrim, Sofiane, Aya Nakamura, OrelSan, etc. But if you look at some of the top singers/rappers they have numbers at the level of Beyonce, which of course is impossible despite having an audience in all French-speaking countries including those in Africa where they are very popular.

He’s told me how they fix the numbers all the time, from the street rapper to the major labels. Before it was paying cash to services in China where they had 10,000 phones set up on a wall, now it’s likely seamless online. I remember a couple of years ago he had a conversation with a popular rapper named Maître Gims about it, and Gims went online that night, speaking out against the practice. But even if Gims isn’t gaming the system himself, many are and actually need to just to compete.

I think you get the idea. And, despite all my ranting, I’d happily sign Daniel with a label if they shared our vision though I’ll happily not sign if they don’t. For no matter what I say, labels do get music to their audiences and most of the people there are trying to do their best and can’t do much against the system.

The game is the game.

Since Daniel now has experience in two very different music eras, what does he miss about “the old days?” Or what frustrates him the most about NOW?

I don’t think he misses the old days in the music industry as he experienced them. Daniel’s never fit in, was never embraced, and all his success has taken place in the last few years. He’s got a bunch of musicians in his life suddenly, some older but mostly young, and he’s having a grand ol’ time. While Daniel may not listen to a lot of new music except with his daughters and wife in the car, and he probably doesn’t know who Katy Perry is even though he’d recognize her hits, he’s not waxing nostalgic about the past either, except when introducing me to music I’ve never heard of. He loves many musicians I already appreciated like Mozart and Otis Redding and Lynyrd Skynyrd, but then he’ll lead me to groups like Goose Creek Symphony or songs like “Big Bad John” by Jimmy Dean or “Ode to the Little Brown Shack Out Back” by Billy Edd Wheeler… So many funny storytellers!

One of Daniel’s most important songs (to him) is “Sweet Lovin’ Music” which is about how there should be no competition in music. If he thought about it, I think he’d appreciate the fact that you don’t have to compete in the same way as the old days to get your music out. We had a poignant moment when we uploaded his first ever song and I told him people from Japan and Australia could listen to it immediately. How can the old days compete with that?

Of course like everyone he wishes he was younger and he certainly wishes he’d done some of this earlier. And though he did write a song against cell phones, he looks at his phone all day long…

What’s had the most impact for Daniel? A particular press piece, concert appearance, or song?

That’s a complex question, because this has been a process and has been built in pieces by so many people who have helped openly and even anonymously (like whoever chose Daniel to play at SXSW in 2016) and everything great led to the next great thing.

There are so many tricks – mostly tricks I didn’t mean to be tricks – that have helped. For instance, the film being made was a key to getting much of our press in the beginning as it added weight to the idea of who Daniel was by simply putting forth the idea that Daniel deserved a film on him. But it wasn’t a trick, because I thought the movie would be distributed years ago! (At least I get to update it).

Yet if I had to pick anything I’d say it was Daniel getting minor heart surgery during the summer of 2017 (a milder form of what Mick Jagger will have this month). It was such a low point: here I am loving this guy and his family and his music and I thought he could die and I would have failed him. It brought up so many issues for me, as I knew I had all the pieces to succeed despite Daniel’s age, because whenever people heard his music, story, or talked to him personally, they were almost always into him no matter what age they were. So it was clear to me that it was my failure; a failure that was part of a clear pattern of failures of mine and I was just angry – at myself and certainly at those in the media, film and music worlds.

So I made a decision: No one gets to ignore me anymore. You can say no to me, but I will fucking harass you bastards until you answer. And that’s what I did immediately; Daniel in the hospital and me not knowing if he’ll make it and hoping for another shot to make it all work. I had been surfing consistently for the first time in my life that year, enjoying it on the Atlantic Coast near Bordeaux. But since I started in on my new mission I unfortunately haven’t been back.

And what I discovered is that while there are certainly many bastards out there, there are so many people who want to help.

Yet the other night (March 27th, 2019) in Bordeaux was another huge turning point for us, where Daniel played his first ever French concert of his original music. It was an “underground” concert – outlaw if you will – at the apartment of young concert promoters Pierrick Falmon and Clementine Moncla and it was incredible. Mark Daumail and Paul Magne of the famous French band Cocoon joined Daniel, as did French troubadour Baptiste W. Hamon, as did Emilie Moutet, the lead singer of Willows. Go figure that Daniel’s first ever band was an all-star team of young French musicians. So many people showed up that they were stuck outside, on the stairs, in the rafters. Two things Daniel had always told me: young people won’t like his music and neither will French people. I’ve been seeing the opposite for years, as I’m younger than Daniel and have a lot of French friends who are younger than me and they always love Daniel’s music. He and his family were so happy to see and feel the reaction, and our Instagram – which I always neglect – was messaged with all kinds of wonderful videos people took, while so many people have reached out to me with praise and opportunities.

Fortunately, we filmed the concert and will also release a live album from it, because it was damned cool.

What’s next? What are you building towards?

That depends on if you ask me or Daniel. Daniel just wants to quietly write his music and play some smaller venues; I want my 71-year old friend to have world domination, action figures, portraits and golden statues in every city and town, all radio stations required to play his songs every 12 minutes, a float in the Macy’s Day Parade of his drawing of “The Sheriff of Mars”…

Okay, being serious (though that float of “The Sheriff of Mars” would be nice) there’s still so much to be done; we’re still not profitable and so we have to keep digging in and making choices. Daniel has 500 incredible songs and keeps writing more and I want it all out there, produced and recorded richly, widely distributed and supported by professionals so that people can conveniently listen, buy, and hear about Daniel’s new work. And that professionalization is important to me, as I miss so much, from radio distribution to simple stuff like getting Daniel’s lyrics up on lyric sites. Aside from this, I’d like to see “The Sheriff of Mars” doc and concert films we’ve shot released. Daniel certainly needs to tour more, and wants to play The Grand Ol’ Opry and Carnegie Hall (he says he’s joking about Carnegie, but I don’t think he is. Let’s see where we are when his film comes out and if he’s as popular as I think he will be).

But things are so going great right now, it’s hard for me to believe last week happened at all…

For I just heard an almost finished version of Daniel’s upcoming album that Paul Magne produced, “Ballad of the Stable Boy,” which will be something extraordinary for us; the name comes from a song about a heroic stable boy who makes a moral decision to save a girl and lose a race. It’s a concept album that will be musically rich as it follows the stable boy throughout his life using eleven of Daniel’s songs; all stories that clearly are parallels of Daniel’s life though he would deny this if I asked him. One of the most amazing songs on the album will be “Old Friend, Charlie,” which is Daniel’s English-language, Americana Music song that is a metaphor for the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in 2015 (Daniel’s daughter was in Paris for the later ones in November 2015, so it’s personal). I had no idea he’d even written “Old Friend, Charlie” until we started going over his pile of music.

I also want Daniel to work with other great artists of all ages, though that’s beginning to happen already. When we started this, no one I knew had heard of Outlaw Country music, and it certainly wasn’t getting any mainstream attention. Now you see all these great musicians like Jason Isbell, Nikki Lane, Whitey Morgan, Colter Wall, Kacey Musgraves, and others take things in different directions (not all of them are Outlaw musicians exactly, but neither is Daniel despite being a product of that era). I heard a folk singer last week named Michaela Anne who seems to share Daniel’s optimism and I’d enjoy getting on her radar. A young musician in France turned me onto Shakey Graves a few weeks back and he and Daniel would play great together. Charlie Paxton, The Rolling Stones, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Adele… There are so many amazing people out there and I hope they find us. And of course I’d love to see all those great folks like Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris who gave “Pancho & Lefty” fame, sing its sister song “Sweet Lovin’ Music.”

Daniel has never been on television, but now French TV has scheduled three appearances including a 14-minute piece on the making of his new album; plus two top young French artists told me they separately wish to record songs of Daniel’s. But too few in the USA know about Daniel right now, though I’m sure talk shows like Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Steven Colbert, and Jimmy Fallon will all love him if they hear about him, as he is not only a talented musician but all personality. Or I should say many Americans will love Daniel if they get to see him, just like the Brits do. In the UK, I hope Daniel gets on the Jools Holland and Graham Norton shows soon.

It’s shocking to me we don’t get invited to any American music festivals or gigs and I hope that changes. But fortunately there’s Daniel’s first European festival appearance at the Black Deer Festival this summer with great musicians ranging from The Staves to Roxanne de Bastion to Kris Kristofferson to Justin Townes Earle to Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton and so many more.

And I’d really like to have Daniel tour Australia and New Zealand as he’s written a song about Australia and had press down under and I know he’d be a hit in both countries.

Separately, Daniel should make a children’s album as his songs about animals are ripe for an amazing one and we have enough for three albums already. Not too far down the road I’d like to develop both a theatrical musical based on his songs, and a feature film on his life. There has also been some interest in a written biography on Daniel, which I would like to have happen as there is so much there beyond what I was able to capture in my documentary on him.

I’m ambitious obviously, but not too much about the money by itself.

But people’s help is the most important. Those who are reading this article may think they can’t help, but a follow on Spotify, a Tweet – really anything positive small or large – deeply matters, because it also helps us to know we’ve touched someone. It’s why the Instagram photos and videos that people posted of last week’s concert meant so much to me. While it’s hard now to get Daniel on playlists and get television appearances in the USA, along with all the rest I’ve already mentioned, it just takes someone noticing or hearing or having a friend who works at Deezer or Spotify or Netflix that this gets passed to. Just like all our press was impossibly hard and then sometimes easy.

For some final advice, I think the most important inspiration since we started was when Daniel was nervous, about to play for the first time with his producers before he recorded his first album in 2013, and producer Gary Gold just looked at Daniel and said “don’t worry, it’s just music.” I’ve kept that in mind when I find myself taking things too seriously…  Which doesn’t mean sometimes when it’s going bad I don’t want to shoot everyone, especially myself.

And a few weeks ago, before things got so great, Daniel was being a bit cynical about our prospects. He loves this Rabbi called Rebbe Nachman who wrote this book full of optimism Daniel likes to read called The Empty Chair and I joked with him that he should go read it. But the truth was I was feeling the same about everything too. A couple of hours later he felt better and texted me this about baseball player Roberto Clemente and Rebbe Nachman:

“…Pittsburg Pirates were out of contention; but the great Roberto Clemente made a crashing leap into the wall going after a deep drive. He couldn’t quite make the catch but came down all bruised. They asked him why he tried so hard, since they were out of contention anyway. He said he was not paid to win the pennant; but to catch the ball—that’s why he had tried so hard.” – Nachman Baseball

I thought that was about the greatest thing I could read and recovered immediately. My job – and yours too if you’re reading this – is to catch the ball. You have to be optimistic and cynical at the same time, but drive forward no matter what and try to get things out even if you fail 100 times a day to succeed once a month. Daniel has come out of nowhere and continues to grow from a small farm in France that he barely leaves.

But big trees come from small seeds. I think anyway, as I’m from New York and really know so little about agriculture and must go ask Daniel…

Keep up with Daniel Antopolsky at his website. 

The post How a songwriter in his 60s broke back into the music industry appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

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Songwriter Jimmy Webb Announces Release of New Album: SlipCover on May 17!

Press Release

Source: Hellman Communications

Grammy-winning American songwriter and arranger, composer/ singer JimmyWebb announces his new album SlipCover available on May 17 on S-Curve Records/BMG. “SlipCover” pays tribute to ten of Webb’s friends and fellow members of the pop pantheon including  Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and others.

The first track, a cover of Billy Joel’s “Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)” is available today.

Preorder and Listen here: http://jimmywebb.ffm.to/slipcover.

Using his own instrumental piano arrangements, Webb shows off the complex melodies that he says will “make you hear these musicians more as composers, than rock stars and songwriters.” His piano playing, in what he calls “this minimalist setting,” weaves together disparate influences. It draws on classical music, L.A. pop, and occasionally the fluid “slip note” style of Floyd Cramer, one of the key architects of the Nashville sound.

This is Webb’s first instrumental album and his first new album in five years. The idea behind the album began casually, when Webb was visiting his friend Randy Newman, sat down at the piano, and played Newman’s “Marie.” Newman suggested that Webb record an entire solo piano album, and that notion took hold.

This is a very personal album for Webb and that feeling extends onto the album cover which features a multi-media self-portrait. “For the album cover I chose to use my self-portrait, as an invitation to the audience to make this a personal experience; these are my interpretations of some of my favorites songs. You could listen as if you were hanging out in the living room with me, sharing music,” explains Webb. 

Jimmy Webb is best known for his numerous platinum-selling songs including “Up, Up and Away,””By the Time I Get to Phoenix,””Wichita Lineman,””Galveston,” “The Worst That Could Happen,” “All I Know,” and “MacArthur Park.” His songs have been recorded by Glen Campbell, Michael Feinstein, Linda Ronstadt, Donna Summer, The 5th Dimension, Art Garfunkel, Richard Harris and Frank Sinatra, among others.  

Tracklisting:

Moonlight Mile (Mick Jagger & Keith Richards)

God Only Knows (Brian Wilson)

Accidentally Like a Martyr (Warren Zevon)

Marie (Randy Newman)

Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel) (Billy Joel)

Al In Love Is Fair (Stevie Wonder)  

The Long And Winding Road(Paul McCartney)

A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Jimmy Webb)

Pretty Ballerina (Michael Brown)

Old Friends(Paul Simon)

For more information on Jimmy Webb please visit:

Website – www.JimmyWebb.com

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/JimmyWebbMusic/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/realjimmywebb?lang=en

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/jimmywebbmusic/?hl=en

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3krWZHIDGDkh9lxmxQzXLQ

UPCOMING 2019/2020 TOUR DATES – please check jimmywebb.com for the most up-to-date schedule

April 26 Mc Pherson Opera House – McPherson, KS

April 27 Woodstock Opera House – Woodstock, IL

May 5 Rye International Jazz & Blues Festival – Rye, England

May 10 Brauntex Performing Arts Theatre – New Braunfels, TX

May 11 Cailloux Theater, Kerrville,

May 15 City Winery – Boston, MA

May 21 City Winery -New York, NY

September 20 Franklin Theatre – Franklin, TN

September 21 Halloran Performing Arts Center – Memphis, TN

October 5 Soka Performing Arts Center – Aliso Viejo, CA

October 8/9 Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley – Seattle, WA

October 12 Pacific University Performing Arts Center – Forest Grove, OR

October 18/19 Nighttown –  Cleveland, OH

October 25 Greenich Odeum – Greenwich, RI

October 26 Daryl’s House – Pawling, NY

October 30 Blumenthal Performing Arts Center –  Charlotte, NC

November 1 City Winery – Atlanta, GA

November 29 My Father’s Place – Roslyn, NY

January 29 Kravis Center – Rinker Playhouse – West Palm, FL

February 15 Iowa Arts Center – Council Bluffs, IA

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National Treasure Jimmy Webb at The City Winery, D.C. Releasing SlipCover Album!

By: Rick Landers

Jimmy Webb – Image courtesy J.Webb

Few have cast a musical spell as far, as wide and as deep as the legendary singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. Since he was a teen, he has gifted the world with songs that resonate with a warmth rooted in the finest fusion of traditional American folk and pop, always lyrically eloquent and a style that is masterful in its melodic expression.

Sitting upfront at his recent show at The City Winery, in Washington, DC, Webb’s piano chops showed he’s not simply grounded in the complexities of his piano.

There are moments when he becomes one with the harmonics, as he moves  reverentially closer to the soft percussive sounds, as if something delicate, fragile will be lost if his touch, his phrasing cascades  in a manner that loses its grace.   These are precious intimate moments of perfection that, when shared, are deeply profound.

It’s clear that Jimmy Webb is a national treasure, our treasure, for the evening.

After an exquisite piano performance from Robin Spielberg, Jimmy nonchalantly walks on stage to greet his new friends, who’ve come from the D.C. area and beyond, as he eases himself on the bench of his grand piano.

Dressed in a business suit and grizzled with a peppered beard of black and gray, he shows up with no celebrity flash. There’s something regular, normal about him that belies the gravity of his name. This is “the” Jimmy Webb, the guy who wrote a string of hit songs that helped define American music – “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, “Galveston”, “MacArthur Park”, “Up, Up and Away” and more.

And our new friend, Jimmy Webb, offers them all to us this evening. We could be in his living room, sitting around a campfire…the room feels downright neighborly and his stories of friends like the great Glen Campbell, Frank Sinatra, David Crosby, Art Garfunkel, Graham Nash, Johnny Rivers, Richard Harris are filled with a genteel humor, clever spins, sandwiched between hit songs and insightful tidbits of his songwriting experiences. Webb make us laugh, swoon and sing along.

He carries us all along through the night, and one that ended far too soon.

“Wichita Lineman” opens the show and the woman next to me, an Irish singer-songwriter in her own right, Siobhan O’Brien, turns to me in tears, whispering to me that she’s never cried during a song in her life. It’s not just because the song is so damned good, it carries us back to our past, and emotions swell as we mouth the lyrics, trying not to sing so loudly that Jimmy hears us bursting out in song. “Lineman” is a song best defined by the late Glen Campbell, who not only gave Jimmy’s songs a perfect voice, but who also became a lifelong friend of the songwriter.

“MacArthur Park” was a tune notorious, meaningful or meaningless, profoundly befuddling, yet so interesting in its execution and melodically captivating that today it’s considered a classic, even a masterpiece. Jimmy revisited it with us, telling us how it was a hard sell, until Richard Harris, the contrarian, grabbed it and gave it life. And, as Jimmy played hard and came to the songs terminus, he was pounding and muscling the keys, reminding us of its majesty.

Then Webb tells another story about the song and Al Yankovic that you’ll need to find out by going to a Jimmy Webb show – no need to be a spoiler here.  And, Jimmy mentions Heironymous Bosch, gets a laugh and in a manner that makes clear that he works from an assumption that his audiences are well read and knowledgeable in the arts and can connect the dots.

Along the way, Jimmy planted a few well-known names in his storied banter that include his times with Johnny Rivers at the Monterey Pop Festival, greeting Crosby and Nash as they were leaving a session with “Artie” Garfunkel, and a bit about Campbell’s Wrecking Crew days that will remain “in wraps, until you get yourself to one of Jimmy’s gigs.

And, of course, a Jimmy Webb concert can’t be finished until he reaches into his bag of tricks to hand out a song first recorded by Johnny Rivers (1965), and what Frank Sinatra called the “greatest torch song ever recorded”, “By The Time I Get to Phoenix”. It’s a heaven send of a song, so simple, yet so decidedly perfect, we all are rapturous that we’re hearing the man, the voice that made it real.

Webb and his wife, Laura, had been up travelling many miles to get to D.C., still after the show ended, they stuck around while Jimmy greeted everyone personally, signed his book “The Cake and the Rain” and the two were most gracious to all, until the D.C. Winery closed shop and it was time to hit the road.

Jimmy Webb’s 2019 TOUR continues and while in route his latest release, Slipcover, is hitting the airwaves now, with instrumental covers of some of the finest performers of our time. If the master shows up anywhere near you, you owe it to yourself to grab a ticket and settle in to an evening of musical grace.

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AXS TV Presents A Weekend of Sammy Hagar & Eddie Money April 27

AXS TV proudly presents legendary rock star Eddie Money in his first concert special for the network, Eddie Money: The Real Money Concert , premiering Sunday, April 28 at 9pE.

The evening sets the stage for the season two premiere of the network’s popular reality series  Real Money —a fun and heartfelt look at the Money family’s life at home and on the road—on Sunday, May 5 at 8:30pE.

Filmed at the DTE Energy Music Theatre in Michigan, the unforgettable night captures Money as he opens up the venue’s summer concert series for the 27 TH consecutive year—a beloved tradition that the showman and his fans look forward to each season.

Rocking the packed house as only he can, Money puts his trademark humor on full display telling jokes and sharing anecdotes with the crowd, while blazing through a lively set of his most enduring hits, joined onstage by his children and fellow  Real Money stars  Jesse Money on backing vocals, and sons  Dez Money and  Julian Money on rhythm guitar and drums, respectively.

Highlights include Money performing his newest single, “It’s A Brand New Day,” and Dez performing his original song, “Tonight,” as well as fan-favorites such as “Baby Hold On To Me,” “Walk On Water,” “I Wanna Go Back,” “Think I’m In Love,” “Two Tickets To Paradise,” and “Shakin’,” among others.

Additionally, AXS TV puts the spotlight on some of the best moments from  Real Money and  Rock & Roll Road Trip With Sammy Hagar  in the  Real Money – Rock & Roll Road Trip – Binge-A-Thon  on Saturday, April 27, as the Network counts down to the new season premieres on May 5.

The  Binge-A-Thon opens with eight episodes of  Real Money at 1pE, followed by eight episodes of  Rock & Roll Road Trip at 5pE. The block is hosted by Jesse Money and  Andrew Hagar who will be on hand to introduce their favorite episodes from their fathers’ series—providing unique insight into the proceedings and explaining why these episodes mean so much to them.

The night concludes with  Red ‘Til I’m Dead: Sammy Hagar’s Rock-N-Roll Birthday Bash  at 9pE, a star-studded concert that finds The Red Rocker ringing in his 70 TH Birthday with a slate of performances from friends and fellow icons such as Eddie Money,  Toby Keith,  Darryl McDaniels,  Bob Weir, and many more.

Hosted by multi-talented musician Sammy Hagar,  Rock & Roll Road Trip takes viewers out on the road and across the Country, as The Red Rocker talks and rocks with some of the biggest names in music.

The upcoming season puts the spotlight on 12 all-new episodes, kicking off with a powerhouse premiere featuring a trip to The World’s Largest Honky Tonk—Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, TX—where Hagar takes in some local bull-riding action, before joining Country icon  Willie Nelson for a spirited conversation and an unforgettable impromptu jam session.  Rock & Roll Road Trip With Sammy Hagar airs every Sunday at 8pE/5pP, only on AXS TV.

Real Money  follows the daily lives of the Money family—which includes Eddie; Laurie, his wife of over 30 years; their five kids, Zach, Joe, Jesse, Dez, and Julian; and ten pets—as they live, laugh, bicker, and rock under one roof.

Season two finds them attending a Money family reunion with Eddie’s brothers and sisters in New York; hitting the lanes for a day of bowling; taking a family trip to South Dakota with the in-laws; and welcoming great dane puppy Bette to their growing pack of dogs.  Real Money  airs every Sunday at 8:30pE/5:30pP, only on AXS TV.

About AXS TV

Launched in 2012 by visionary entrepreneur CEO Mark Cuban in conjunction with AEG, Ryan Seacrest Media, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and CBS, AXS TV has established itself as the premier destination for music and entertainment programming. The network delivers an eclectic programming roster that includes original series such as The Big Interview With Dan Rather, Rock & Roll Road Trip With Sammy Hagar, and Real Money, as well as hard-hitting mixed martial arts events, and a slate of acclaimed documentaries and iconic concerts from some of music’s most influential artists. AXS TV is also the U.S. home of the popular New Japan Pro Wrestling and WOW-Women Of Wrestling promotions and Legacy Fighting Alliance (LFA).  AXS TV is currently available nationally in the United States and parts of Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. For a list of providers, visit axs.tv/subscribe. For more information, see www.axs.tv. Follow AXS TV on Facebook,Twitter @axstv; Instagram; and YouTube. Press information is available at axstvmediacenter.com.

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Sleep Walk Artist and Steel Hall of Famer Johnny Farina at The Cutting Room New York City April 20, 2019! (Videos)

Press Release

Source: J. and R. Farina

Johnny Farina of the legendary brother team, Santo and Johnny, is still going strong gifting the world with performances of not only the brothers’ 1959 number one hit “Sleep Walk”, but with scores of other superb songs that include: “And I Love Her”, “The Godfather” theme , “Tear Drops”, “Caravan” and many, many more.

During the course of their career together, Santo and Johnny released 40 albums! 

“Sleep Walk” hit the airwaves in 1959, and added a new sound to Rock “n” Roll, a steel guitar as the lead instrument, unheard of at that time, an instrument associated with country and hawaiian music used in the background.

“Sleep Walk” reached #1 on the charts and earned them a Gold Record. They did the Alan Freed shows in Brooklyn, and appeared on his TV show several times, along with Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, and The Perry Como Show.  

On Saturday, April 20, 2019, Johnny Farina will knock you out with a series of dreamy hits at The Cutting Room (Tele: 212-691-1900) in New York City (44 E. 32nd Street NY, NY 10016). Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and Johnny will hit the stage at 7:00 p.m.

“Sleep Walk” brought Santo and Johnny to Europe. They had their own TV show in Italy, covered all the James Bond movie music, were awarded a Gold Record for The Godfather Theme, and inducted into the Hall of Fame in Italy. “Sleep Walk” has been in over 28 movies, including La Bamba, the story of the legendary Ritchie Valens (1941 – 1959) rise to fame and “the day the music died”.

During 2019, ” Sleep Walk” celebrates it’s “60th Anniversary” and is stronger than ever, with it’s latest use being in the trailer of the movie, The Intruder, that features Dennis Quaid.  

Johnny continues to perform all over the world.

“Sleep Walk” was recorded by over 100 Artists.  Some are:

Brian Setzer                                   Al Caiola     

Jeff Beck                                        Diana Ross & the Supremes

Joe Satriani                                   Al Kooper

Chet Atkins                                   Deftones

Les Paul                                         James Burton

Eric Clapton                                  Modest Mouse

Larry Carlton                                The Lettermen

Danny Gatton                               Renee Olstead

The Ventures                                Carlos Santana

Some artists inspired by “Sleep Walk”:

John Lennon was inspired by “Sleep Walk” to write “Free As a Bird”.

Pete Green from Fleetwood Mac was inspired by “Sleep Walk” to write “Albatross”.  

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The Eagles Don Felder Releases Second Solo Album American Rock ‘N’ Roll

Press Release Source: ABC PR

Don Felder

Legendary singer-songwriter, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, best-selling author, and former guitarist of the Eagles, and true American rock and roll guitar hero Don Felder is bringing more of his timeless music to adoring fans not only in America, but worldwide with today’s release of his second solo album, American Rock ‘N’ Roll, on BMG. Fans can pick up the album on all digital formats here.

With this highly anticipated new album, he’s very much looking forward to building upon his rich legacy in 2019 as one of the most innovative riff-generating songwriters of the modern rock era while continuing his growth as a featured touring and recording solo artist.

American Rock ‘N’ Roll covers the gamut of the man’s artistic talents, consisting of 11 high-energy rockers mixed with touching, thoughtful ballads.

From the state of the guitar-rock union salute to American Rock ‘N’ Roll to the funky crunch of “Hearts on Fire” to the fierce, unrelenting declaration of “Rock You” to the mutual heartfelt honesty of “Falling in Love” and “You’re My World,” Don Felder has once again tapped into the current music zeitgeist to emerge with an album that represents the peak of his creative prowess.

The album also boasts an impressive guest list of contributors who comprise a veritable who’s who of modern rock music, including Sammy Hagar (vocals on “Rock You”), Slash (a wicked guitar solo on the title track), Richie Sambora and Orianthi (dual guitar soloists on “Limelight”), Peter Frampton (Telecaster-blasting and background vocals on “The Way Things Have to Be”), Joe Satriani (a blistering, lightning-fast solo on “Rock You”), Mick Fleetwood and Chad Smith (trading off drumming duties on the title track), Bob Weir (background vocals on “Rock You”), David Paich (keyboards on “Hearts on Fire,” piano on “The Way Things Have to Be”), Steve Porcaro (keyboards on “Falling in Love”), Alex Lifeson (acoustic and electric guitar accents on “Charmed”), and many, many more.

This time around, Felder felt he wanted to share the fretboard wealth and cut heads with as many of his peers on American Rock ‘N’ Roll as he could gather. “On my last solo album, I had only one guest on guitar–Steve Lukather (Toto)–and I played every other guitar part on every other song,” he points out. “I didn’t want to do that this time. I wanted to have people come in and light it up. My goal was to play with them and have a good time. It was a ball!”

American Rock ‘N’ Roll is the follow-up to Felder’s debut solo album, Road to Forever which was released October 9, 2012 and debuted on Billboard’s “Heatseekers” chart at #27.  “Girls In Black,” the album’s first single, reached the Top 30 on the Mediabase Rock chart, while “Wash Away” reached #4 on the Mediabase Classic Rock chart.  It was co-written by Felder and Styx’s Tommy Shaw, which also features Shaw’s signature vocal sound.

Rolling Stone (France) called Road to Forever “one of those timeless albums, cut to ride on highways, which we love to know still exist.”  While Musicradar.com hailed:  “The album’s 12 cuts are heartfelt and direct, a catchy and soulful musical autobiography that steers clear of mawkish self-indulgence. And Felder’s guitar playing – rendered with but a fraction of his nearly 300 instruments! – is as stirring as ever.”  And Premier Guitar praised:  “Felder is back with his trademark guitar choirs and hooky riffs.”

Not only is Felder a proud, longstanding member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having been inducted with the Eagles back in 1998, he was also inaugurated into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville in 2016 and the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2017.Fact is, Felder spent 27 years with the Eagles, who own the fine distinction of recording the top-selling album of all time–Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975), which has sold over 38 million copies (and counting). “I’m blessed enough to have contributed to and been a part of a very talented mixture of voices, writing, guitar parts, and production. I’m very proud of that,” he says of the group.

Meanwhile, his legendary double-neck Les Paul guitar is on display as part of the “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll,” exhibit presented by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which opens April 8 and closes October 1. Felder was in attendance along with Jimmy Page, Steve Miller and Tina Weymouth to celebrate the opening of the vast collection of some of Rock’s most celebrated instruments, including Jimi Hendrix’s guitar that he played at Woodstock and Ringo Starr’s drum kit that he played on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It’s the first major exhibition in an art museum dedicated entirely to the iconic instruments of Rock & Roll.

Through more than 130 instruments dating from 1939 to 2017—played by artists such as Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Don Felder, Kim Gordon, Jimi Hendrix, James Hetfield, Wanda Jackson, Joan Jett, Lady Gaga, Steve Miller, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Page, Kate Pierson, Elvis Presley, Prince, Keith Richards, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughan, St. Vincent, Tina Weymouth, Nancy Wilson, and others—“Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll” will explore one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century and the objects that made the music possible.

Don Felder recently launched his 2019 headlining tour, which will continue through the end of the year. Check him out at any of the following stops, with more dates to be posted on his official website as they’re confirmed:

DATE               CITY                                         VENUE

Sat 4/6              Atlantic City, NJ                       Hard Rock Hotel & Casino

Mon 4/8            New York, NY                           The Cutting Room

Sat 4/20            Concord, CA                              Concord Pavilion

Sat 4/27            Dubuque, IA                              Diamond Jo Casino

Sun 5/5             Orlando, FL                               Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Mon 5/6            Orlando, FL                               Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Tue 5/7             Orlando, FL                               Walt Disney World/Garden Rocks Concert Series

Sat 6/22            Murphys, CA                             Ironstone Amphitheatre

Sat 7/6              Ellicottville, NY                         The Summer Music Festival

Fri 7/12             Burnsville, MN                          Buck Hill Ski & Snowboard Arena

Fri 8/9               Reno, NV                                  Nugget Event Center

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