James Vincent McMorrow is a platinum-selling, billions-streaming singer-songwriter who has released records independently and via labels such as Nettwork and Columbia, work with Paul Epworth, Kenny Beats, Lil Silva, had his vocals featured on songs by Drake, and Kygo, in Game of Thrones, and numerous festivals. He also took 7 years off from touring to be with his growing family and recalibrate his relationship with the industry, which we talk about here at length, as well as an industry without stats, long shelf life for your creations, building something that matters, defining your own targets, having the space to fail, and much more.
James Vincent McMorrow is a platinum-selling, billions-streaming singer-songwriter who has released records independently and via labels such as Nettwork and Columbia, work with Paul Epworth, Kenny Beats, Lil Silva, had his vocals featured on songs by Drake, and Kygo, in Game of Thrones, and numerous festivals. He also took 7 years off from touring to be with his growing family and recalibrate his relationship with the industry, which we talk about here at length, as well as an industry without stats, long shelf life for your creations, building something that matters, defining your own targets, having the space to fail, and much more.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
Hey, and welcome to this week's episode of the other 22 hours podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:12] Michaela: And I'm your other host, Michaela Anne, and we are nearing the end of our second year, no sign of stopping, really happy to still be here. And thank you for still listening.
[00:00:21] Aaron: Yeah, if you are returning listener, we have a few quick asks before we jump into today's episode, they equate to subscribing and sharing.
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And lastly, if you have found the show really helpful, it takes a lot of resources to produce even a small show like ours. And so with that, we've started a Patreon and it's a ever evolving, ever living, breathing organism. And we charge just one price cost of like a really fancy Dunkin Donuts coffee every month to get everything that we offer, everything that we will offer in the future.
There's a lot of things going on there. So if you're interested, there's a link below in the show notes.
[00:01:33] Michaela: And one of the things we really pride ourselves on about this podcast is that we are not music journalists. We are musicians ourselves. So instead of thinking of these as interviews, where we talk about how did you record your recent record?
What do you do on tour? It's like we're sitting around the kitchen table late at night, sharing the really honest realities of what it is to build a career around your art,
[00:01:53] Aaron: which is a crazy thing to do. Another thing that we talk a lot about in this episode. with that, we like to focus on the things that are in our control.
our mindsets, our headspace, the different things that we do to stay sane and inspired while we are hanging our livelihood on our art. And we've boiled that down to the underlying question for the whole show, which is What do you do to create sustainability in your life so that you can sustain your creativity? And today we got to ask that question of James Vincent McMora.
[00:02:22] Michaela: James is an Irish musician and has a really incredible story. He's platinum selling hundreds of millions of streams
has had a really extensive career. He's worked with all sorts of people like Paul Epworth and Kenny Beats, Lil Silva, Patrick Wimberly. He's performed at Coachella, Electric Picnic, Edmonton Folk Festival, appeared on Later with Jules Holland. but he has a really interesting story because he stopped touring for a solid seven years and is now back at it for the first time.
[00:02:51] Aaron: He went through a realignment. He felt like he wasn't grateful for this like ability to have a career just based on art. if you follow him on social media, he's been a little crusade lately to. Let people know newer artists, younger artists, and also just the general public that the industry didn't used to be this wild and based on gatekeepers being an algorithm and things being behind a paywall and it being very flashy.
if I was to sum an hour and 15 minute conversation up into one thing it's,his approach has become a lot more holistic and it's a lot more community based and it's very in line with what our show is and the purpose here.
And So without further ado, here is our conversation with James Vincent McMorrow.
[00:03:32] Michaela: Thanks for taking time to chat with us
[00:03:34] James: No worries. Where am I speaking to you from? Where are you guys?
[00:03:37] Aaron: We're in Nashville.
[00:03:38] James: Oh, right on. Okay.
[00:03:39] Aaron: How about you?
[00:03:40] James: I'm in a place called Greystones just outside Dublin.
Nice. Amazing.
[00:03:44] Michaela: And it looks sunny.
[00:03:45] James: It's freezing cold.
I've been away for the last month touring and it has been insanely warm.
Like I was in Nashville four weeks ago and it was
crazy hot.
[00:03:52] Aaron: Yeah.
[00:03:53] James: it's definitely like a dose of reality. I came from Mexico City where it
[00:03:56] Michaela: Oh my 30 degrees to here where it's zero degrees. So yeah.
[00:04:01] Aaron: we were over there last summer, Mikayla's planned shows and it was end of May, beginning of June. And, you know, we started in Glasgow and we packed like sweatshirts and you know, we're like, Oh, it'll be chilly. And it was like sunny and hot.
it was like the one month of the summer or like the three weeks of the summer that it was just beautiful and hot. everyone was blissed out because they were like, you don't understand. It's not like this usually. And same with, we went to Oslo, Norway and it was hot.
[00:04:28] Michaela: We were in shorts and tank tops and people were like, it's not like this. And we're like, wow. It was not, prepared.
[00:04:35] James: We, yeah,
[00:04:36] Michaela: in heat,
[00:04:37] James: yeah, we're not, and it's been very strange. Like the weather is very unpredictable here. It was like crazy warm when I was leaving when it should have been freezing. So makes sense anymore.
[00:04:46] Michaela: Yeah, that's the same here. It'slike high of 70, which I know our Fahrenheit and Celsius I still can't do the conversion, but it's
[00:04:54] James: Neither can I, I think that's the right 20. Yeah it's, warm.
Yeah.
[00:05:00] Michaela: I know I, you know, I randomly DMD you on Instagram and was
all motivated by Your post about the state of the music industry,
but as I started researching you more. You're kind of Like a dream guest because you seem very open about just the human experience of this rather than just becoming a robot who puts out records and goes on tours endlessly and uh, should never complain or, recognize that anything is hard because you have a dream job.
Type of thing.
[00:05:31] James: I think there's a delineation that exists, isn't there? There should exist. Openness is key, I think.
[00:05:35] Michaela: a starting point your post that went viral or whatever was the state of how different the music industry is. what compelled you to share in that way has that always been your kind of mo with your fans and the way that you share or was that kind of like a new stepping out and what did that feel like?
[00:05:54] James: I have a very kind of mixed relationship as most musicians do regardless of like where you are in your career with the internet and with social media in general. I think I've gone through various stages of interaction of deleting everything and starting from scratch as some sort of like cleanser for my brain.
And like I put out my first record in 2011 and. internet was wholesome. It's weird to say
because, think that that's something that doesn't necessarily enter the conversation very often that it's that sort of three foot rule, right?
Like what's in front of us, what's behind us can be quite myopic and narrow. So we accept what we're given. we all have a tendency to do that. I certainly had, where you just kind of go, okay, this is the reality. I have to deal with it. I have to work within it, but I found it more and more frustrating.
And I was like well, that's just my experience. I'm just one person. And then as I was working in the studio with a lot of newer artists, people that you would expect, because this is what the industry tells you they need to do, that they would be grateful for the opportunity to have to constantly be online, constantly be creating, constantly have to make content as well as the music that they make.
And it was just like, talking to depressed people over and over again, people that just didn't want to do it,
were just shell shocked at how intense it was, how little time in their day, they had to actually be the type of creative that they wanted to be a musician. So that, was sort of like a jump off point in my mind.
I was like I've tried to be honest while also having a very, like I said, guarded interaction with the internet, but, I think it's probably. On people like me in positions of a decent amount of privilege. Haven't had a good career for 10, 12 years to let those people coming through. No, that actually there was a version of it that was.
holistic. I don't mean that it was wholly holistic. Like I don't want anyone to think I'm naive to the realities, but there were versions of it where like you could put your music out, it was supported. You had access to your audience in a quite linear real time way before pay walls were put up before, like the algorithm really kicked in and started feeding you stuff that you didn't follow, that you didn't want, that like some.
Passive algorithm was telling you, this is what we think you want because you watched one video by Paul Meskel. Here's a thousand videos of Paul Meskel or that's just how it goes. so that was the beginning of the thought was just like, I think it can be useful for people to at least know wasn't offering any net solutions necessarily.
I was just saying, I think that there was a version of this and I don't want to exist in it. musical landscape where we keep careening closer and closer to the cliff edge because that is what it feels like quite a lot
[00:08:21] Aaron: Yeah, it feels the same here. You
know, and the thing that
I hear from a lot of these conversations we have, it's like, the algorithm is very skilled at what it does creating the content that is successful within that algorithm, there's a lot of creativity to that.
Unfortunately, it's not the creativity that us as musicians have spent our lives. and developing,
It's very easy for us to equate the response from social media and the algorithm and the reach and all of that as a direct reflection of our art and the quality of our art.
And it's not that, you
know, when,
something goes viral, it means that you're good at the algorithm,
not necessarily that your music is good,
[00:08:58] James: the word viral it's
a such a problematic word to me because
a song isn't necessarily successful anymore. It's viral or not viral. And just think how horrible that is the reason I felt compelled to speak was because I'm not a kid coming through.
Having to be in meetings, talk about those words and feel feeling of pressure of the weight of stats I think I said it in my post that like, I think my first song came out on iTunes in 2009, 2010. It probably was like 150 downloads, maybe say something like that.
And that was world changing for me. Because those were 150 people I didn't know that took the time to spend a euro on a song. And the idea that now I talk to people and they're like, My first song only got 2. 5 million streams, I'm doomed. And I'm like, Oh, That's
heartbreaking.
But because stats became such a, prevailing conversation and I would go in meetings with labels where they were pitching me artists to work with, and they'd be like, they've got this, that they've got this. And I was like, yeah, but the music's not good. So there's a dissonance here where like you're, very canny at working the algorithm.
I don't want anybody listening to this to think that I'm knocking that necessarily. I'm not, there has to be two distinct industries here. And I think that's the prevalent notion of the conversation I have is that like the industry of songwriting in a holistic way that like the occupation, the vocation of it.
is a very specific thing. These are people that are gonna be doing it until they're put in the grave, they wake up, they need to write songs, they need to be around this. It is a creative output not just for creativity, for mental health, for all various reasons. Those people have to be supported.
If there are people that want to make a bag in a short term, fine, it's the music industry. It's a cynic. Industry so it's not about saying fuck those people.
the worst. It's like If that exists, that's fine. But also lumping everybody that comes through into that,latter column of people that need to work the algorithm that need to figure out a way to go viral in some lateral way. Like
if I could just sing enough covers on Tik TOK and then maybe if one goes here, here, here's my song. That's horrible. What a horrible thing. because
if people don't like your song and they're going like, no, stick to the covers, what does that do to someone psychologically? That's just starting out. Like they might never get a chance to be as brilliant as they could be. I kept thinking about it.
I keep thinking about it.
And I'm trying to talk about it as much as possible because
[00:11:14] Michaela: All of these people in the other 22 hours, like I had this one kid come into my house work and he was like, do you mind if I like dip off for a minute?
[00:11:21] James: I have to record a bunch of videos. that's what he's doing in
his 22 hours.
I don't mind if he spends an hour doing it, but he was consumed by it in such a negative way and my heart broke for him.
[00:11:31] Michaela: Yeah, and the amount of brain capacity that it takes in the moment of creating or recording or, writing a song or practicing a song, always thinking like, Oh, we have to document this.
And then we have to edit it. what I do is I think either like, wow, if you're doing that all yourself, the amount of time that it's taking you, which is so much.
Yeah.Or if you have the resources to have people in your team to do it for you, then I just think the amount of money,
so much money for this stuff and the words that we use the metrics like going viral and followers, their definitions are negative,
like viral is literally
a contagion,
that's going to harm you
and it was, pointed out, I think on our last episode the only other time we use the word followers is in a cult.
it's this big disconnect, you know, you said you started realizing it as well when you started working with younger artists and realizing you were talking to a bunch of depressed people. Cool. That's kind of like why we started this podcast because we met in music school.
We lived in New York City for 10 years and then have been in Nashville for 10 years. our entire adult lives, we've been in musical communities and younger. as we started becoming adults, and then the pandemic hit, we were having all these conversations with musicians who were like, whispering like, I kind of feel relieved that I don't have to go on tour relentlessly, or I don't feel FOMO because I can enjoy life at home,
and I'm not opening my phone and seeing everybody else out there achieving and I'm left behind. And Then it started to come back and it was like a slingshot and everybody went back at it hardcore and trying to make up income and lost time and all that stuff. And then we'd start having conversations when we'd hang out with friends and we'd hear how hard it was. that everything cost more,
uh, the reach was different, the impact was different the fan base was different there was all this stuff that we were like, there's this big disconnect that I think is harming us emotionally, spiritually, and the way that we're living and what we think we have to put forth, what we're consuming constantly, and then what our personal truths are that we're keeping from each other.
[00:13:46] James: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Michaela: So that's why we were like, what if we brought these conversations to light and I think someone like you or anybody who has, visible, what we perceive as success also coming forth and saying Hey, I feel these changes too. I feel discord. And, you know, it's not just you, because I think a lot of people can then be like, like James Blake coming forth
and talking about,
That stuff.
It's massive because you're like, wait, or who is the,
[00:14:14] Aaron: Justin Traynor.
[00:14:15] Michaela: Justin and also the, woman who has a band and she canceled her tour and wrote a big op ed piece, I
think, in Rolling Stone, about the cost.
[00:14:24] James: there's another band called the armed that also canceled their tour in the US and
I'm trying to remember who it is you're talking about. read it like, oh, sugar. It's gone from
[00:14:31] Michaela: Yeah, she was like on Atlantic, I'm blanking on her name.
She also has like three kids and seen as very successful and was just like, the numbers don't work right now. .
[00:14:40] James: they don't make sense, they haven't made sense for a while for a lot of people,
could tell you that tours dating back to like, 2010, 2011 for me in the U S in North America, especially as an ambitious musician, we're always lost leaders.
You know, I would bring a band
of five or six people. I bring a couple of crew. I would probably lose 15, 20 grand on it, but it was something I could be very philosophical about because. A, I knew I would make it up in other territories, and B, it felt like it was a means to an end, and it was. I built my career very slowly, very steadily.
It was never based on idle stats, or it was never based on social media followings. It was just me, in a car, Then in a van, then in a tour bus. I was in Mexico city the other day and friend of mine, musician called a city in color who's a Canadian musician, I just was hanging out with Dallas after we performed and we were just talking about this and I don't want to include him in the conversation without his consent, but I think he'd be fine with me saying it, we were just talking about the idea of he gave me one of my first shots at a really great show.
He played the Royal Albert Hall in London, and he asked me to come over and support. Cause he really liked a song of mine off my first record. And it was like a light bulb moment for me when things started to click. And there were people that come to shows of mine 12 years later, that still can identify that show, that moment as being.
The inflection point them with my music and that they have stuck with me for 13 14 years I didn't tour for seven years and I just went back and played a tour and All these people still show up because we built it the right way I took it for granted at the time because it felt like part of a thing playing
those tours losing that money But being worthwhile all the way up to 2016 2017.
I feel like that was really there Since then I think it's changed because all manner of things, as you just said, the cost of it is so much more expensive now. Streaming was such a boon, like you talked about during the pandemic. It's such an interesting time because we all defaulted to the internet because we had to.
So streams skyrocketed, which meant I made money during it. not touring was okay. but the inherent, fallout from it, I think is people's attention spans shortened. And also,
as you said, once everybody got back to touring in the post pandemic world, there was a malaise that kicked in
combined with the inflation thing where people are like, okay, I want to go see shows, but do I want to see 40 shows?
I'm not throwing bombs at anybody here, but in my personal experience, we were playing shows that were likebig bands. Very click heavy and what I found was crowds were disconnected because they were like, I could just be home listening to basically the album version of it.
For this tour in this year, we binned off all click track, we went from ear monitors back to floor monitors we went from a six piece to a four piece. And it was very much building stuff from the ground up that it was like watching crowds lock back in again. I think there's no coincidence to all those things there was that steady rise up to 2016, 2017, where there was symmetry between touring, streaming.
Then it became very stat heavy and I would have conversations with people at labels and they would be like, Oh,this musician doesn't need to tour because they've got, songs with billions of streams. They're making so much money. we're making so much money. They're making a little bit of money, so they don't need to do it.
So it all seemed like you'd be an idiot if you pitched the idea that you should go sell some tickets or you should try and do it in an analog way. But now, the rubber's met the road where the stats have fallen off. And the malaise that's kicked in and the inflation and all these different things.
And it's just a perfect storm for people where even if you want to get out on the road. Now there's a lot of musicians that don't even know how to do it because it's not been part of their journey. If you were putting out your first music in 2019, 2020, You never had to touch the road. You don't even know what it looks
like.
And you got away with it because the internet was very good to you. And now the internet is less forgiving, less offering Instagram, all these people put all your, fans that you spent years building behind a paywall. Again, it's the heartbreaking nature of it where like, I can speak to musicians, my peers, and we can talk about those good times.
Like it was a thousand years ago, even though it was seven, eight years ago.
Because it seems like a thousand years ago that that was Unexpected thing you put on a tour you lost a little bit of money You made money elsewhere your music streamed your music sold it all had this sort of like symmetry to it And now there's just zero symmetry Yeah, in my head hearing all of this is talking about in essence having a live show is human, kicking away the tracks, clicking away the click, and it's human, and fresh, and it's in that room. the beauty of the art form that is.
[00:19:06] Aaron: Live music. It's right there in that moment between the, audience, the intaker of the art and the people that are making it, that is so unique to live music. And that's an experience that I think people feel viscerally you can analyze it in your head.
You can be like, wow, that was an amazing show and all that, but it's something that, you feel and it sticks with you. To me, that makes long time fans. That equals to me, longevity. which is, essential to having a career that you can measure in decades rather than like singles no matter how Viral your song or video on tiktok can go the end of the day, it's somebody on their couch or in the bathroom
watching your video And that's that and how deep is that connection with that fan?You know, are they gonna just jump on the next tom petty cover that they see that
shocks their day or
[00:19:50] James: Yeah, it's an inherently passive interaction that's what it was designed to be by tech companies
[00:19:55] Aaron: Mm hmm. Exactly.
[00:19:56] James: tech is like a flow through. everything that they do is designed to keep you locked to your phone, but in a very like,brief way. we talk about doom scrolling.
Doom scrolling now kind of applies to music a little bit as well because it's been subsumed into it, but
that's never what music was. There was an intentionality to it. I say it on tour resonates with people. And that's the reason I've been talking about is because when I do shows, I say to the audience, I'm like, I've never been anti people filming because my whole career has existed on the internet.
So like, it's just a very
specific version of the internet. Like I put out music when I was in college on my space and I got a publishing deal. Off of my space that I'm still on today because people reached out and spoke to me. so my interaction with it has been very deep and very real, but the intentionality was different.
So the thing I tend to say is you are filming, Just send it to someone. I don't even know what that means, but I'm just like, just send a video to a friend. Like I never send stuff to people. I'm never like, Oh, I'm at this show. Look what I just, I throw it up on Instagram. I throw it on Tik Tok, whatever.
And it exists and it's gone, but I feel like I've done something. I've marked my time. That's where I was, but I, I feel like there's more worth than a value in a thing if you send it to one person or send it to
two people and say, Hey here's a song that I think you would like, here's an artist that I was at a show.
I think it's good. Maybe you'll like it because that intentionality is key and I think that it's on people like me that are out there playing shows and I still have an audience after, 10, 12 years of doing it, that I'm able to say to them, if you like band, you like a piece of music or come see the support act.
I had this guy, young Jesus opening the shows on this last tour. His album is probably my favorite record of the year. Not enough people know about it. And I was like, come here, watch him. I would go up and play with them during his set because that would mean more cameras came out, more people filmed it and it's better for him.
And because again, opening slots were my lifeblood. You probably had similar experience where like you opening slots were free shot at an audience. That's again, not as prevalent as it used to be because promoters go on stats, they go on different things. So intentionality is the word.
Yeah.
[00:21:56] Michaela: And intentionality, like you said, building of community because openings, for example, can be so incredibly helpful.
But it's also like, what is the vibe and the intention of the headliner of choosing their openers? I've done a ton of opening tours and can see such a difference when the headliner is so, Supportive of the opener like Joe pug brought me out for his encore and played one of my songs
Because he's like, you know, if you guys missed the opening set like I want to in that's like such a gracious Unnecessary, but really, really helpful way to build community and help each other and that intentionality and not just hope you saw the opener,
but like and you can also have that intentionality.
On the internet, I think, it's hard to gauge what the reach is, but we see that even with this podcast, when we have guests who have hundreds of thousands of followers, if, they just reshare a story of the episode or something, we don't see much of an imprint of that.
But if we have a guest who even has much following and like shares it with intentionality of Hey, I had this conversation and I really appreciate this and I hope you'll go give it a listen.
we see that impact on the data side and it's, interesting to me because it reinforces like we've been trained to think bigger numbers are always better.
And I think we're learning. that's not true, another like annoying word is like the engagement, but it's really about the connection.
[00:23:23] James: and you said at the start of that you said the wordCommunity has migrated into the word followers
and I think there's a very different
connotation with both of those terms You said followers is it's got culty connotations and it does
and there's an intentionality to that There was like a, we are together. Look at us. We're in this together. And that was a lovely idea, but all it did was sort of likeweaponize people and then audiences turned a little bit where they were like, don't change, don't do anything. So became inherently toxic because of the language around it.
Whereas when it was a community, it was a lot more wholesome. It was a lot moresimple. It was just like, you like this music. I like playing this music. Here you go. And it worked. And you talk about the opening slots again, like I have such fond memories and similar experiences. one of my first big breaks in the U S was opening for a band called the civil wars.
and the reason that we came together was because. I put out my album, same time they put out their record their manager heard a song, reached out, we had a bunch of conversations, sight unseen. They didn't know me. I was in Ireland. but they, were like, here, we're doing 30 shows in the U.
S.And as we did the shows every night, they would, they would, Talk about me in their set, as you said, they would include my name. They did a cover of Billie Jean and they would replace the words Billie Jean with my name. And it was just
the funniest thing in the, but it was so sweet. It was so sweet.
And this
was right. As they were starting to really take off. It was wild watching it because we were playing rooms that were likesmall, like three, 400 caps. And as it was going. We would have free days. They're like, we'll put on a show in the L ray in LA and it would sell it infive seconds, because that was just that moment where it started to click for them.
there was definitely radio play. There were things happening. You could feel it at South by Southwest that year. But what was beautiful, it was just this organic thing where people were like, listen to this album, look at these two people, listen to how they sing.
It's like blood harmony. It was wild. And it was this beautiful band of people on the road together where we just followed each other around and just played. AndI couldn't print enough copies of my records to sell because everybody that came to the show wanted to support, because, I thought I was doing a good job.
I was working really hard to put on a good show and then they would talk about me in such nice terms. So there was no stats, there was no nothing. It was just like a simple binary exchange and it was beautiful. I feel ridiculous talking about it in meetings sometimes, because I really feel like there's so much merit and value to that because a stat will trip you up,
I've had conversations with people.
I remember doing a session somewhere once and a guy came in and he was on his phone Looking at the instagram accounts of everybody that was in the room And I don't have good instagram stats because i've deleted my instagram account four times Because I don't like it i'm a bit of a belligerent fucker sometimes he was like, okay this guy has 300 000 some okay, and he was very much Portioning out his time and effort in the room based
on this, which didn't, bother me.
I just thought it was funny,
but then the next day went home and looked at Spotify and then he came back and was like Okay. I need to talk to me because my Spotify stats were really good. And I was like,
that's crazy.
you should just go in a room and just talk to people. and that was the first inclination I had.
That was around 2018 that I was like, Oh, this is shifting. we're now very much basing our. ideas ahead of time based on a number, and I do it too, I go on Spotify and
I'll inherently go to the most popular song on someone's top
five and it's stupid. You want to think you'll go deep dive on something, but you won't.
That's okay. I'm not judging that it's just nature of life, right? it's the getting deeper thing that's been lost and that I'm very taken on how do we get it back? How do we get back to that simple notion of music being this important thing in people's lives and not a passive thing?
[00:26:53] Aaron: a double edged sword on numbers and
data, right? Like,
it can be so
helpful because it's emotionless. A number is a
number and it's a set thing you know, it is what it is. It's very objective. But then, it can also just like you were saying, you can subconsciously or consciously change your attention, change your perception, change your viewpoint.
For instance, I came across your music. don't use Spotify. I use it when people send me playlists to learn if I'm playing show with people. But I use Apple music, so there's no numbers, you know, there's the top songs and all that. And I came across your music on.
Apple music. I was like, this is great. I love it. I loved your songs. I love the way they sounded. They were recorded all of that. And I was talking to a friend and they were using Spotify and I looked at him like, Oh, a lot of people know about his music. Okay. I had no idea, you know, because I didn't have like the visual numbers and that's happened to me with a ton of bands.
I'm like, Oh, you know about this band. Cool. I had no, you know, I can't tell if they're like, it's their only record and they made it in their basement
and nobody knows about them. It's, It's,
you know,
It allows me to just hear the music. Okay. For what it is,
[00:27:49] Michaela: And that's the challenge though, is like you said, Aaron says this all the time, like numbers don't have emotion.
But we've attached emotion to
[00:27:56] James: Yeah,
[00:27:57] Michaela: So that's the problem. There's this great documentary that came out, I feel like it was during the pandemic called Fake Famous, a New Yorker journalist made it and basically was like researching the tech social media world and like,can we create famous influencers basically by buying followers?
and they did.
And It's a fascinating because there's a whole industry built on fake numbers.
So that's the other thing of we attach this emotion when really like It's not what we think it is.
I think the challenge is, you said, like, how does it get better?
I think it really is an intangible cultural shift and it's
having conversations like this and it's, people trying to. Spread the word of
like, wait, is this really how we want to live? But it takes so much conscious energy to change your mindset when these apps drive our industry.
So it makes us feel like this is how we survive. This is how we get to do what we want to do. This is how we convince people that we're worthy of investment because it's not really based on, can I write and play a pretty song? Because. There's tons of people doing that,
and it's really trying to go back to basics of valuing like, okay, if I play a show, even to 15 people, 100 people, 500 people, whatever, am I connecting with those people and building long term relationships with them
and
not undervaluing what 15 people supporting you for 10 years can be like.
[00:29:26] James: I think you've basically hit the nail on the head that like 15 people is valuable if every one of those people is active
multiply that by a thousand and make a small percentage of those active. And it's infinitely less valuable, even though it is technically more people, because it's within this huge glut of people, you might not even be able to get to them because again, an algorithm might be blocking you from them.
So like, the one thing that I think about is this is an industry. It's a cynical industry. I see the industry shifting and pivoting because it has to, because the business model is failing. The business model that they have built towards, which is stat based, is failing. And I know this because All of those meetings that I was in two, three years ago, even whereI was talking to people about these artists and saying, are they playing shows?
And they would laugh at me. They'd be like, no, they're not playing shows. Like we're in the studio. We've spent 800, 000 on studio sessions and we've got one song that's got 150 million streams. Why would we play shows? Now I'm in meetings with those exact same people and they're talking to me about shows.
They're talking to me about, Oh yeah, we've got this artist. His stats aren't great, but he can play to, a thousand people in London. So a lot of these people are not the, Brightest and best that we've got to offer. If I'm being really honest, these people, they now have to pivot because their model doesn't work
anymore and they want to stay in a job.
What I want is for musicians to thrive based on that reality. I want musicians to be not as cynical, but appreciate the cynicism exists and that those people are going to now try and co opt this because streams are going to be hard to come by. There are infinite examples now. you look at. There's a band called Lancombe, a great Irish folk band that if you looked at their numbers, they don't have great numbers because they're not a massively prolific streaming band, but they sell out every venue they play. When we were in Brooklyn the other night, I was doing two nights in town.
They were doing two nights across the road from me and these are big numbers, big tickets that they're selling. But their stats wouldn't reflect that. So
if you were someone that was incredibly superficial and stat based and you looked at it, there's so much more depth to it now. And even there's things like, look at McGee, seconds can't sell enough tickets, and his stats are great.
If you were like looking at it, you're like, these are great, but They don't line up with the tickets that are being sold
and people are starting to catch
that like industry people are starting to catch that That they're like, oh you can have a million streams on a song and you can sell 1, 500 tickets in New York they're gonna try and figure out how to weaponize this and make it valuable to them because
they need to keep their jobs
what I want is for musicians to own that to keep that and to appreciate that if I could just get a song to 300, 000 streams and I could do it the right way.
Yes You I might not make a lot of money on that song, but if I can make the music at the right price, which again, it's an industry, we have to talk about these things that if you're spending 10, 15 grand making a song and it does a million streams and you've made foreground off it, if your next song costs the same amount, The label are chucking all that money onto the second song, the third song, the fourth song, before you know it, your
song has to do a hundred million streams to even come close to a breakeven.
That's a crazy model. I keep pitching this idea of like proportionality where like, you know, make a song for like nothing, make it on your, laptop, learn how to do it yourself. Like I did. My first album cost me zero euros because I didn't have
anything. And that first album sold in the end, like
200, 300, 000 copies on an independent label.
But it took four years for us to do it because we just kept going and kept grinding and kept waiting for those moments of inflection. But because the album didn't cost anything, a thousand albums was life changing to me. Like I was living off selling a thousand records. I was happy.
trying to get back to that idea that like even in the modern context, even with streaming being so snappy and the attention spans being low and everybody in the industry saying like, maybe make your intro four seconds rather than eight seconds because people's attention spans stop accounting for that.
Stop moving your music, your creativity to wherever the industry says the prevalent model is because it's failing. Make your intro 40 seconds long. If it's the best goddamn intro you can come up with. Stand by it. Believe in it. you'll find those 15 people, And if you could play a show in front of those people and you can print vinyl, or you can do whatever, or even just go and just, I used to do shows for free and I would just sell merch. t shirts. I went to Germany and did a tour where I was living on people's floors in the worst, squats and crazy stuff.
But I was playing shows to like 80 people a night. And. Probably half the crowd would buy something off me. So I came back and I made some money and it was valuable and it felt worthwhile. And seeking the worth and the value in those tangible things, I think is going to be the game changer for people.
That's, just my feeling, talking to people and my sense because of the 14, 15 years I've been doing this, that those things that I thought were valuable became value less because the industry told me they were valueless. They were like, they don't matter. The first day I signed to Columbia records the first time I had a big meeting with them was the day my back catalog passed a billion streams, which was a life changing moment for me.
I went in a meeting with them and they were like, yeah, we have songs that have a billion streams. You're like, okay, I think that that's ridiculous that I could get to a point like that. And I want to appreciate it. And they told me basically that it wasn't valuable and I believed it. And it make some music that I just didn't love because I was like completely consumed by what they told me I need to be consumed by.
I regret that. think mistakes are required. You need to go, okay, I absolutely fucked up there by being taken in by this idea. Because it's all fallacy. And it's all based on this, a year ahead, a year behind thing. There's no forethought, but musicians have forethought. They're going to be doing it until the day they die.
you've said that. I've said that likethey're going to do it. that's all that's required. And I just want to keep hammering home that idea that an audience can be small, as long as it's active, it's worthwhile.
And then you take it from there. It's no more or less complex than that to me.
[00:35:13] Aaron: those two things together are what I try to impress upon all the artists I work with. Cause I'm mostly working in the studio and produce records now. the value in a record is longevity. cause you have people that are writing, for playlists, writing to chase this thing, chase that thing.
And it's like the shelf life on those is going to be so short. So I really just try to push people, like lean into what is you, there is an audience for your voice, your unique ideas and lean into that as clearly and as wholly as possible. And that will inherently, 20 years from now, you'll still be proud of this record.
It won't sound dated, it'll sound like you in that moment. And the more you lean into that, it will find an audience.
[00:35:49] Michaela: And the other thing you said was, that the scale changes. your back catalog reaching a billion streams is extraordinary. But you go into this big corporate company that then tells you, That's nothing to us.
And it changes your feeling of your worth of your music and your accomplishment. And again, it's so much personal, individual energy to shift our own thinking and not allow their scale to be our scale
and. I've been on indie labels for the past 10 years and my career has like, is very small, but I've been through a whole process in the last few years of really working to Value that
it's like, I could play shows to
30 to 100 people for the rest of my life and have figured out a way that I make a living off of that, and those are superfans.
And I just got out of my label deal and Released my first song on my own on Friday and was like doing all the back end business stuff for the first time in 10 years And I was telling Aaron I was like, it's so interesting this mental gymnastics. I'm doing because on one hand like it's pretty extraordinary that I can put out a song and get a thousand streams within the first several hours, whatever You that should just be like, this is remarkable that there's anybody out there who's like waiting and cares about this,
[00:37:13] James: Absolutely,
[00:37:14] Michaela: but the outside voices are like, but are you going to reach a million streams?
Because also that's only like a dollar.
[00:37:20] James: Yeah. Yeah. it's a complex set of emotions that come with it. I'm aware as I'm having this conversation that like anyone listening and me saying there's something a little bit maybe oxymoronic about the way I'm speaking because I'm saying don't value stats and then I'm throwing out stats of my own as if they're valuable I wanted to be clear that in case anyone's listening and being like, he's dropping a lot of stats.
it's not a flex or in any way. I didn't set out to achieve those things. I woke up in the morning and I thought about making music. And when things started to get shit for me, in terms of my mental health, how I perceived myself within the industry, when I made decisions that I take back a million times over in terms of the people I align myself in the work we did is when stats and when the notion of, what do I need to do?
Where is the industry? Where's the zeitgeist? How do I chase it? What do I do? That was when I made all my mistakes. So I know for sure that When I achieved those numbers that I've thrown out in a passive way, there was nothing passive about it. It was chasing music. those songs were not written to succeed on any other level than a creative level.
I wasn't sitting in my house. When I made my first album thinking, okay, yeah this song is good. But like, should I pare down the intro or does it have enough choruses? And I had fights when my record did end up on a label, when I licensed it, I had a radio plugger and he was like, we need to chop it up.
We need to do this. I was like, fuck off. Like just leave it, leave it be. And he was right. Those songs did not get played on the radio. But I was right because those songs are the songs that ended up being the ones that have lived with me for 14 years since that album came out. So chasing a very linear, very in the moment thing. And I was chasing songs and I was unwilling to compromise those songs. I was unwilling to chop them up and have anyone hear a version of it. That wasn't what I wrote and what I intended. So the intentionality was key for me. So when I talk about those stats, what I'm saying is that I got to those.
Not through chasing it
[00:39:15] Aaron: Oh
[00:39:20] James: one of those stats, butThe nature of how you achieved it might be inherently frivolous or passive, which means that you're going to have to work so hard to then try and make a career out of it, which is just going to up your stress factor.
You're going to go play shows where like, you might catch a little wave where you might sell some tickets, but then the wave will ebb very quickly. and I've stayed this out of experience. I've been in rooms with musicians telling me these things where they've had these viral moments and they've been like, Oh, six months later, they're like, I hear crickets, what's happening?
And it's because they didn't get a chance to build it the right way. They built it based on stats. They built it based on waking up in the morning and chasing the zeitgeist. And once it happened, they had no clue what to do. They couldn't go on the road. They didn't know what to do with their hands.
It's just all of the parts of being a musician that I don't know your, guys musical history, but I sense that you're people that Learn how to write songs in a very like linear fashion. Learn how to play them. Probably got on stage. I had terrible shows. I suffer from pretty serious anxiety, especially when I was starting.
And I'm so grateful that in like the late 2000s, It was just like my first year putting out music was the first year people had iPhones, but they held like, 10 megabytes. So no
one was fucking filming me, which was great
because these were some dog shit shows.
I. Was nervous. I couldn't play guitar and sing together. I would stop playing guitar and I'd be like, Oh Jesus, I'm singing, but I'm not playing anymore. And it was, horrible, but it was,
I got to, yeah. And I got to make those mistakes in private. in the privacy of, opening for like someone that had a few hundred people in a room.
But there was like a, okay, I'm going to live in that moment, but the moment's gone and now I get to learn from it. And now people fuck up and they make a mistake and everybody's there to witness it, how are they going to, it sounds very grand to be like, I think these conversations are about the survival of the music industry.
But I,think that they are because if one person listening to this is like, okay, I'm going to change my thinking, And in the wake of those posts that were the inception point for this conversation, I couldn't tell you the amount of people that were reaching out to me just to say, I'm going to do it differently now, because I never even considered the notion that there was.
An alternative to what's being forced in my throat. There was one person that said something that
lot of these things really broke my heart but was just talking about The anxiety of waking up every morning knowing that he needed to engage with social media And that a day two days could go by and he wouldn't make any music because he was having to be like, okay How do I keep this train moving?
[00:41:39] Michaela: Mmmhmm. the train wasn't a musical train. It was like a content train So knowing that they don't have to do that Is super important to me.
[00:41:46] James: And I think because the model doesn't hold for it anymore, I think there's a window of opportunity for people to pivot back to the important stuff, because if the model was still making sense, then people will be listening to this going, We're just going to keep doing it like This is a gold rush. The
gold rush is over. The gold rush is
over. Like all these labels. Yeah. There's still songs that stream and the people make arguments. They go, Oh, look at something like Chapel Rowan. And I'm like, there should be, 20 Chapel Rowans,
there should be 20 musicians at the minimum that make a great piece of music.
They put it out and for a year, people don't pay attention. And after a year, it starts to build. that used to be not the norm, but it was definitely way more prevalent. And people don't know that. And I think they need to know it because it helps to know
[00:42:26] Michaela: you stopped touring intentionally for seven years.
Can you share a little bit about why and also what you've done personally behind the scenes to help yourself evolve with your mindset when you said you have been influenced by these other factors and made decisions?
I'm always the three part question. And
then the last, the last partis I've read, you know, that becoming a father was a part of this for you. And we have a three and a half year old daughter I'm due with a boy in January. So like parenthood and how it changes our approach to our career creativity is also something we're always curious about.
So I don't even remember the three questions I just asked you.
[00:43:04] James: That's all good. I think I have a, I think they're all kind of connected anyway. So like I,
stopped touring in 2017 because My wife was pregnant my daughter was born in 2018 and I had been basically touring relentlessly for seven, eight years. depending on how familiar with my backstory, likeI made a lot of music in a very short space of time because my first album, took four years to fulfill it's potential might've been at the time. And then I'd made a second record while it was doing its thing, put that out and then made two records in quick succession. So it was very likecyclical, but intense. And then I just didn't feel like I was a very well rounded person. Especially the touring life. It kind of infantilizes you.
LikeI basically have people that I pay to guide me through the world and get me to a show, put me on a tour bus, I fall asleep, I wake up. I was lacking a lot of the things that I think normal people have. The ability to go to the shop and, buy milk or know what to do. Like, I just wasn't very well structured in my life.
So when my daughter was born, I just thought it was animportant opportunity. To step back. And There was a,overlap of the Venn diagram there, where I was at homewanting to be a very present parent.
And then I was out of my, deal, which had been on for my first four records. was a part of me that wanted to see what the big show felt like. And, these labels that wouldn't have looked at me in the beginning, all of a sudden sort of came calling. So I made some decisions to kind of like, see what that looked like.
And that took up a couple of years of my life. Then obviously the pandemic kicks in. So all during that period, the time flew by in an instant. It wasn't like when I say I took seven years off from the road, I knew I wanted it to stop and then my daughter was born and I was very excited because the idea of wanting to be a whole person and find that sort of sense of finding these parts of myself nothing Kicks you into gear more than, screaming child at four in the morning and you just having to deal with that reality and all pretense and all bullshit of being a musician, all that infantilizing nonsense who gives a shit? my daughter didn't care. She needed to be taken care of.We had no clue what we were doing. It was chaotic and I didn't make music or do anything for six, seven months. And then I signed with Columbia and was making music in that period. but it all felt like a bit of a drift.
was definitely a moment where I kind of thought maybe I just will stay home, because the industry was shifting. Because I had sort of made some music that I just didn't feel very locked into because I was just listening to the wrong voices in my head.
So period of 2020 to 2022 was a lot of like self reflection, like everybody the planet, really. Right. Like I was hardly alone in it where I just sat and considered what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it. And then the last couple of years, I've been slowly rebuilding of myself I don't think I appreciated a lot of the stuff that happened in those first six or seven years and to try and get to a point of actually appreciating in real time because again, like you said at the start of this that like a big part of this is like people read these stories of musicians going.
Oh, it's hard and they go fuck off. Like you get to do the thing that you want to do and I do aware of that. We all do we get to do it. Whatever degree or level we get to do it at musicians find contentment in it. In a total way, not Oh, if only it was like 50 percent more successful, I'd feel more no, we do it because we love music and the fact that we get to wake up and do it.
I don't think I was grateful for that. I felt like it would be incredibly smug of me to go through the rest of my life and not feel a sense of pride in real time. So I've been trying to find a version of myself that. Go on the road and play shows and actually enjoy it and be happy and not constantly thinking about, Oh, cool.
You know, We played that venue, but now we got to go play this venue because that's the conversations. That's the way it goes. The industry is, a vicious thing and it just, eats you up when you, you get caught in that. That's basically been my seven years of just trying to rebuild myself a little bit.
It
sounds very dramatic when I say it rebuild myself, you know
what I mean? But
[00:46:49] Aaron: it's it's a, yeah, a realignment,
[00:46:51] James: yeah, for sure.
[00:46:52] Aaron:
how, does it feel now that you're back on the road and back kind of in the churn of everything?
[00:46:56] James: the reason I can go on a podcast like this. And the reason I can have these conversations is because I can stand behind the reality that it is a better version of it now than it has ever been for me. I didn't know what to expect. I am not someone that exists in a universe where I think I can go away for seven or almost eight years and come back and just pick up where I left off.
So I was very prepared to just go and play to like a hundred people, and the fact that. a lot more people that showed up it showed me that actually the theory that I have about how you can build something in a way that matters holds true because people show up and care. were just heavier and all the right ways and more electric and all the right ways than they ever were before. And I think that's maybe because of the way I've been talking about stuff to a degree. not everyone sees that, but maybe it's just in the water. I think musicians and creative, you'd like to think you have like a certain bellwether for culture and, that you can kind of, you're flying kites, right?
You're just, I think this is how people feel. Maybe it is. Let me go test the theory. So I feel like people want intentionality. They want a show that is singular, that they know the show that happens tomorrow, isn't going to sound like this because everything is related to the room.
Everything is related to the audience, the energy they give, I give back. So all of that stuff was making the shows just really, really quite special. Yeah.
[00:48:19] Michaela: of like, okay, if you quote unquote go away for seven years,
it'll just be trying to grab the fans that were there before you left or the fraction of the fans that might still be paying attention and not really realizing you evolve, you've grown. This new version of yourself is also going to attract new people that you're not just like trying to.
salvage what you had this is an example. Like I wasn't familiar with your work and then Aaron sent me your post. obviously, because we want to do on the podcast, but then it's like, Opened me up to listening to your music and becoming a fan.
not just because your music is good, but because of what you're presenting and sharing with the world.
[00:48:59] James: Oh, interesting. Yeah.
[00:49:00] Michaela: I know not everybody is like that. That's definitely my MO of my fandom of like, I connect
deeper with people's music when I feel like I resonate with. the messages that they're trying to share, whether that's through the songs themselves what they share on social media or in interviews.
so, you know, It's just like an interesting thing to think about of we can often think what we had is what we're trying to get back or a fraction of it rather than, oh, this is also a new beginning in a lot of ways.
[00:49:29] James: music It's an inherently ridiculous prospect. Like, you know, Everything about being a musician, everything about this job and calling it a job to a lot of people is ludicrous. I didn't sing until I was like out of school because I was incredibly shy. And so I would say to people like, I'm going to be a musician. And they'd be like, okay, play me something. I was like no, I don't have anything to play you. It's just in my head. I think that this is going to work.
So everything about this is just a vaguely ridiculous premise.
We're all like, shooting for the stars in a very real way. trying to bring that
[00:50:02] Aaron: Mm
[00:50:03] James: and that, Feeling to it. shocked at myself that it took me that long to figure out that's
[00:50:10] Aaron: Yep.
[00:50:11] James: from the songs, the best tools that I have are transparency and honesty.
It doesn't nothing to devalue the music. I think that I was very obsessed with the idea of building a world or a lore around myself like that, but I was never very good at it, which means I never really wanted to do it. So like my first year is coming out like you talked about James Blake earlier.
His first album was out that year. I think seeing James's post and chatting to him about these things that There was moments where everybody's in the same bracket because, he's someone that I looked at. I remember seeing him in South by Southwest in 2011 and being in awe of this incredibly poised, beautiful, spectral, elusive show.
I looked at my peers, like Mumford Sons Flea Foxes, Bon Iver, all these people like, that came out in those same years. everyone was really trying to build like, a very, Specific world because the lore is important and will forever be important.
But Never stuck for me because I just i'm like, I just want to make fucking songs I don't want to be spending all my time and now I see everyone it has to build lore has to build these energies and it's in place of the music. All those people made incredible albums and they built the lore alongside it.
Then the lore, the energy became like, you put the card ahead of the horse where you're like, okay, we'll build a lore and we'll reverse engineer it into tunes and we'll figure it out. And that's become such a huge part of it. I just realized in that period of being at home where I was like, I don't give a shit about any of this.
I don't care about the lore. I just want to make songs. And I was happy to just do it in a very kind of like removed way. But then we did these two shows in Ireland when I made my last record, basically I wanted to play the songs before I recorded them. They were half finished.
So I put together a band. We did it in the National Concert Hall in Dublin. We did two nights. We made everyone put their phones in those pouches. It was just this moment where a light bulb went on where I was like, people just want what you just said. They want those.
Connections. They want to feel like they're seeing something that they're getting value for their money. They're getting value for their time. And if someone on stage or someone on a post says something that resonates. That it will have an impact and I realized actually maybe that's been my thing this whole time Is like not trying to build lores and worlds and oh, I made an album in the woods Whatever fucking that's shit.
That was that's a huge like, you know Like again, you you only came across my music recently like when I put my first album out like Every interview I did for like two, three years was just you made an album in the woods and I'm like did, it was in the woods, but I wasn't like out shopping wood.
I was, I, it was just the houseby the beach. And then they're like, Oh, it was by the beach. Even better. Were you in the sea every day? And you're like, yeah, I was cleansing myself before I wrote my songs. And you go along with it. because environment plays a part.
Like I wouldn't have made that album if I was anywhere else in the world and it was beautiful and it was serene and it was lovely, but the lore that builds up around it can be like an absolute, like weight around
[00:52:57] Michaela: Oh, yeah.
[00:52:58] James: you're just like, Oh
Jesus Christ, I have to live up to this shit now.
[00:53:01] Aaron: Yeah. And
[00:53:02] Michaela: this,
the story that press perpetuates, the listeners and the audience all consume, you know, like, Bon Iver, it was
like,
He was sad and went to the woods in winter in Wisconsin, it was this whole thing, and
I worked, at Nonsuch Records when I was right out of college, and I remember like, I was young and so it was like early on of pulling the curtain back of like Knowing the lore the press story that was created around a band like they went to this desolate they wear like ragged clothes and like you find out they're like Trestvon Ivy League kids who were like staying in their parents mansion I was like wait This is so different Oh, this is music business.
Okay. yeah, and it is, and it works and I don't want to ruin the lore for people. those things were a valuable part of the industry. because the music was amazing too. that's the key point. Let's like,if I could find that now, if I could find someone that was like, here's a beautiful depth of lore, and also the music is like phenomenal.
[00:53:57] James: They still exist, they're just not as prevalent. It's now Story and lore over music,
whereas you talk, if you want to use like Justin as an example of an unbelievable body of work, an unbelievable album that was made after 10 years of no success. It didn't come out of nowhere. He didn't just wander into the woods and make a record.
He spent 10 years in various bands trying to make music that worked. And then he went and did something. That probably people around him were like, I don't know if you should be singing this high, man. Like, you know what I mean? Like, cause like he wasn't singing that high on those earlier records. So like he just had a vision.
He went and made an unbelievably landmark body of work. That was just a humble thing. And then the world adds this lore and it's done in a very holistic way. And that's a beautiful version of it. But where it gets a little bit awry is I don't want to talk too much about various people within the industry, but like someone pitched me on a band recently to work with.
And they were like, it's like Fleetwood Mac. And I was like, you got to stop with that. Like you can't, youcannot say that about these people. It could be Fleetwood Mac. But as far as I'm aware, there are no married couples in this band. They are not going to write a divorce album for the ages.
It's not going to happen. Like they're going to write something incredible potentially, but they might need 10 years to do it. Let's give them the runway to do that and to build out lore in a way that when the music meets the moment they're ready. And that's the thing so like me being honest, me being transparent now is because I want those people to have their lore.
I want them to have their moment. I want them to be like me where I struggled for 10 years, made an album in the first year. It sold a thousand copies and I was like, Oh baby, we did it. And then the second year it sold more in the third year. And then it built.And I got to make those choices where I got to choose in 2017 to stop touring.
what a grateful, ridiculous position to be in that I could just stop. And then I could come back in 2024 and play the same rooms I played in seven, eight years ago. That's crazy. That shouldn't happen.It does, because this is a ridiculous premise of a career, but it works when it's built on the back of the songs, on the back of the music, on the back of the work being. all important. if anyone listening to this kind of stuff takes anything away from it, it's that, that you can build on the back of the songs. Like,
it can be small, and it can feel unimportant, but it it is important. And I want people to just know that it is important build small.
[00:56:16] Aaron: the lore will be built around you
[00:56:18] James: Yeah, those things like my favorite songwriter of all time is Neil Young. but at the time, if you read reviews of those records from like the 60s, they're just like, Boy band nonsense. That's what they thought of those early Crosby stills. national young records, the first Neil young records, they weren't loved.
the lore wasn't there. People were just like, this is just frivolous West coast stuff. He's not even from the West coast. He's from Canada. Like all the reviews were scathing. Those albums are life changing. I came to those records with no notion of. The lore of anything of the reviews because I wasn't on the internet seeking out like Rolling Stone's snarky review from 1967
of some record.
I was just like, this music is incredible. I want to know more. And when I heard on the beach, my life changed forever.
Andthose are beautiful, blissful moments that unfortunately won't exist for anyone coming through now because you can't. not seek the stuff out. It's so easy.
I do it all the time. So I don't want to sound like I'm being an ass about it. It's just that, lore gets added through time and distance. You know, It can take 10 years. It can take 20. There's songs now that are more successful than they were when these people put their music out
because people find it.
And that's a lovely thing. Like, We talk about the internet. I don't want it to seem super negative all the time. Like There's beauty to it. There's a band called Duster that I love
that had no footprint as a band when they made music and now their album is huge and they toured to infinitely more people than they did when they put out the record because all these kids coming through are like, I love this.
This is amazing. And yes, it fits whatever aesthetic they're looking for, but it works and they love it. And they show up to the shows, which means they actually care about the music. And you look at slow core and shoegaze and the moment it's having. I was obsessed with Deftones when I was a kid and Deftones are one of the biggest bands on the planet now but not the songs that I love, cause I was a metal kid and all these kids coming through are like into slow core and they love the slow core version of Deftones.
And that's unbelievable.
this is why it can work. I really feel quite bullish about these things. The music industry can work for people. Deftones are a bunch of dudes in their likeearly 50s that had their moment in the early 2000s but now they're having a moment again because they made something true and honest that has moved through generations and That's a thing.
They weren't sitting in rooms going Ooh, I think in 25 years time, these shoegaze versions of us are going to be like super popping on the internet. this because we love the
[00:58:33] Michaela: on Tik Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:35] James: it happens, but now I go in rooms with people and they're like, Oh Yeah. let me play you this deftone song as a reference.
And I'm like,
[00:58:41] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:44] James: when I say that, I don't mean the artists. I mean,
Like label or management people going like, this is like Deftones and I'm like, This is not like Deftones because Deftones got. infinite runway to make music and to get better and to be a band and to tour in a van and have all those ridiculous experiences.
I'm grateful I got to do something similar and I want people to have something similar going forward.
[00:59:04] Aaron: space to fail.
[00:59:05] James: Exactly.
Yeah.
Beautiful way to put it.
[00:59:07] Michaela: I don't know, I feel very strongly about this stuff. I sense you guys do too.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:59:13] James: kind of responsibility or sense of responsibility towards music or the industry or anyone that has an experience that feels sustainable.
Should. Be having similar conversations. we can take the opportunities. I'm grateful for my opportunities that have existed because of the internet and because of streaming, because of social
media, none of that is discounted because I'm having those conversations. It's just. there is a version of this that can be better for people. I know there can be, and it's not even that big a change. and I do feel like I said earlier that it's shifting in the right direction, but it's not shifting because musicians are making it shift. It's shifting because the model is failing.
And I worry that. The shiftier elements in the industry are going to now figure out how to weaponize the shift. And I don't want that. I want people to own their touring. I want them to like, be able to sustainably tour, sustainably release music and build it to a point where they can be Fleetwood Mac.
Cause why not? why couldn't that band that someone pitched be Fleetwood Mac? They could be, I don't know. I
just worry that they won't ever get to the point where they'll be able to.
[01:00:16] Aaron: And I'd be remiss to not point out that it's the internet that brought us together for this conversation.
[01:00:20] James: Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:21] Aaron: to be able to share back, we're aware because of the data that like, the majority of people that listen to this show are artists and
are musicians. And that's our whole thing. It's we want to share these conversations back with our community, because why not share ideas, a rising tide raises all ships.
[01:00:35] Michaela: I think it's also really caring about other artists and musicians. you know, we're in our late thirties been doing this our entire lives and we love.
Our musician community. We love musicians. We love creative people. We love all these quirky weirdos,
but we also have seen firsthand in our own lives and others how this business looking for affirmation and success can really harm us. So I feel like that's a bigger part of this conversation that we haven't overtly said is just like really wanting to love and look out for each other and help take care of each other when we're all fighting against some things that emotionally and psychologically can bring out the worst in us and
that sucks.
it's so true. And it is a weird job because whether knowingly or unknowingly, it's competitive sport an individual sport where like, we're all in it together, we should be, but also like, if you're eating, I'm not eating, that can be kind of we feel, because I came up in Ireland and, at a time when there was beautiful music being made and I have a lot of great friendships and relationships, but there was also that thing where you're like, Oh, that person's doing really well. But what was lovely about it is that it wasn't like, I need to co opt that person's sound so I can succeed.
[01:01:49] James: It
was just an admiration at the success
where I was just like, Oh, wow, that person's doing really well. That's amazing. Because this is a really hard industry to get into. So was still like, again, I've used the word holistic quite a bit. It's what you were kind of alluding to was still like a, we're competitive.
We are individuals, but also I'm taking the right things from this. I'm taking the right things from this competitiveness. This feels positive. I can channel it into working harder in the right ways. it stopped me from sitting at home, seeing other people succeed, meant that I had actionable sort of stuff on my plate where I was like, okay, I'll just go play shows because they're playing shows or, they're making music that is doing well.
That shows that people are paying attention to where we are. You're in Nashville. Like it's know, one of the homes of music. It's a place where, you know, I'm sure it's shifted a lot in the 10 years you've been there, but in my experience working in London, LA and Nashville, Nashville is still the closest thing to like the singer in the song being at the forefront of a conversation.
I think that is, bit of a lost art in some other places. So there is that, I'm sure that competitive just down there, but there is still that like, people are writing really good songs. I need to go write really good songs too. And that brings out the best in us.
there is things about it. Like we should take care of each other. We should understand where the competition is or how it should be focused. It should be focused in the right ways. And it shouldn't just be about trying to like, short circuit the industry as it appears right now.
[01:03:11] Michaela: Right.
[01:03:11] James: Achieve some small, in the moment success.
[01:03:14] Aaron: Yeah.
Exactly. It's,
When you see friends or peers succeeding, playing bigger shows, getting this opportunity or that, We like to shine the light on like it's not that they're taking the only door they're showing you that there are doors here that we can
[01:03:26] James: Yeah.
[01:03:26] Aaron: there's no wrong way to go about this.
Like with such a changing shifting industry who knows what's gonna work
it could be this and it could be that it's all just the alchemy of all these different things working together that Can turn out and the possibility is there?
[01:03:39] James: For sure.
[01:03:40] Michaela: I feel like we could probably talk for 10 hours.
[01:03:42] James: We should wrap this up. But really lovely to get to chat with you and meet you. Thank you so much for being willing to come on and share so much.No
[01:03:53] Michaela: hopefully next time you're in Nashville, we'll get to make it out to one of your shows and meet you.
[01:03:57] James: Absolutely. I look so moody as well. I
love how like spectral and like intense I look. It's all like, it's very Halloween y over here. So it's giving absolute Halloween. it was really lovely to, speak to you both. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Hopefully I meet in person
[01:04:10] Michaela: Yes. We'll keep in touch. All right.
[01:04:13] James: All right,
[01:04:14] Aaron: Thank you so much, man. It's great
[01:04:15] James: Take care.
Bye. Bye.
[01:04:16] Aaron: ya.
[01:04:16] James: Bye
[01:04:17] Aaron: