I was contacted by a journalist recently who was putting together a radio piece on exploitation of musicians.
As well as reaching out to agencies, he wanted to hear how weāre doing things differently and fighting for a fairer industry at Encore.
Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, he didnāt receive a single response from any of the agencies he contacted, so the piece has become a podcast instead of a national radio piece, featuring interviews with pro musicians, Alex Mann from the Musicians Union and myself.
You can hear my segment about Encore from 08:20 until the end. The only
inaccuracy is the description of Encore as an āagencyā, which we are not.
Within the first 90 seconds, issues of late payments, minimum rates and transparency around commission are all flagged as serious cancers of the music industry.
These are all issues that simply do not exist on the Encore platform:
Late Payments no longer exist thanks to Encore Pay. Customers pay before the event, Encore pays out automatically 48hours afterwards.
The payout is
seamless, requires no manual effort from any of the Encore team, and the transfer is initiated exactly 48 hours after your gig starts. If youāre booked for a 7.15pm gig on a Monday, your transfer will be initiated at 7.15pm on the
Wednesday.
We are now enforcing minimum rates when customers request quotes from musicians. It is impossible for musicians to quote below these rates and undercut others, and weāre currently working on some pricing visualisations and infographics to help customers understand what they should be paying for live music. The general public is largely misinformed about the cost of live music, and Encore is in a great position to change that.
Musicians always pay a service fee (ācommissionā) of 15% on gigs booked through Encore, which is 100% transparent throughout the booking process. Unlike
an agency, this percentage does not fluctuate based on the customerās budget, and we always show full breakdowns to musicians when theyāre being booked of how much they will earn and how much we will earn.
This post is only the beginning of a series I plan to write on the state of the music industry and how weāre tackling it head-on, and Iām looking for opportunities to speak about this publicly, either at events or in the press.
Being at the UK premiere of Family Dinner 2 felt a lot like being at the midnight screening of the latest Star Wars, only with fewer toy lightsabers and far more thick-rimmed glasses.
Thereās something incredibly exciting about being sat in front of a massive screen with very little idea of what youāre about to experience, which gave the room at the Prince Charles Cinema (my new favourite in London) a real buzz. Around 9pm, Michael League took to the stage and was met with rapturous applause. This man is a rockstar of the mainstream jazz scene right now. Imagine Harrison Ford had given a speech before you saw The Force Awakens.
We were about to witness a showcase of Snarkyās favourite musical friends, backed up by the mighty firepower of their famed ensemble. They had flown in musicians from across the world and spent a āutopianā week recording fresh new arrangements of the musiciansā own songs. We were about to experience something special.
A photo posted by ĪαĻιĪĻĻα (@mariettamvr) on
The film intersperses interviews with the guests and beautifully shot recordings of their songs in front of a live audience in an incredibly entertaining format. The interviews are hilarious, touching, and insightful all at once, and by the end of the screening, it really did feel like we had sat down at a dinner table and gotten to know these wonderful human beings.
I’m not going to give a track-by-track review for two reasons:
I was utterly absorbed by the cinematic experience and didn’t take notes throughout the album, which I definitely would have done otherwise.
I don’t want to give much away and ruin the surprise for anyone who plans to sit down and discover the songs for themselves. (Granted, this embargo on spoilers is much less serious than the galaxy far far away equivalent)
I will, however, talk about a few of my highlights.
The second track features a wonderful Afro-Peruvian singer called Susana Baca who brims with energy and life. Watch her face as she sings the closing note of her song, Molino Molero.
Jacob Collier’s track is as fantastic as you would expect from the young prodigy, hailed by the Guardian as “the Messiah of Jazz”, and Knower’s track had me dancing in my seat. I don’t dance.
Laura Mvula’s song, “Song to the Moon”, has a haunting beauty to it, and was one of the songs stuck in my head as I left the theatre. This version is a lot more minimal than the original recording, and Lauraās performance is captivating.
This isn’t to say that the album is without faults, though. Michael League managed to amass a small army of obscenely talented musicians for this album, each incredible in their own right. However, there are moments when the texture is simply too dense (having a second drummer alongside Louis Cole in his track of the album felt like overkill) and as my concert-going-partner-in-crime, Jonny, put it: “There were very few moments when the musicians had a chance to really explore the music or develop any ideas”
It’s understandable that the band couldn’t push boundaries as much as usual given their size and the number of collaborators, but some members did feel slightly under-utilised. (If I remember correctly, Cory Henry didn’t have a single solo, which is an absolute crime!)
Overall, the album is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, with only one or two weak tracks out of fifteen. The interviews and spontaneous performances between tracks turned what I thought might just be a series of back-to-back music videos into an entertaining piece of film that never got dull.
My recommendation? Buy the DVD, get some friends round, then sit down, get comfy and enjoy it together. If you’re anything like me, you’ll finish it with a new appreciation of Snarky and everything they do, a list of new artists to explore, and a fresh dose of musical inspiration. Who could ask for anything more?
Q&A
I didn’t start recording until about ten minutes into the interview, so the first paragraph starts midway through an answer. Enjoy.
A photo posted by Fresh Like Dexie (@freshlikedexieuk) on
“You have to be excited about your music first. You canāt expect people to like your thing if you donāt like your thing. If you like it, then you ask the question. ‘Is it derivative, is it fresh?‘
Sometimes with Bill, weāve played something and itās BAD-ASS and heās like
āNo way man, that sounds like something Iāve heardā,
and me and Sput are like
āNo, youāre wrong, and thatās going on your record.ā
Maybe to him heās heard it before because itās so him, but yāall havenāt heard that and nobody else has, heās just heard it. Maybe an addendum to that is that itās good to be around very stubborn friends. Pushy, bossy, stubborn friends.”
āCould you talk a little bit about the process you went through when you were arranging the set weāve just seen?”
āThe quick explanation is we invited a bunch of artists, eight of them said yes. I went through their catalogues and tried to find songs that would gel well with both the band and the guest instrumentalists.
I picked the tune, asked the band, and then we did a thing called The Jam Cruise, which is like a music festival on a boat, which is insane. While the rest of the boat was raging, I was in my little cabin trying to do arrangements among the noise. I’d do them in Logic, send them to the artist, and hope the artist would say yes.
The understanding with these albums is that all the songs we do are written by the artists performing them; we didnāt write any of these tunes. But the premise is, if you agree to do a Family Dinner record, you release the song to us, and whatever may happen may happen. If you really hate it then you tell us, as the artist, and thatās how it goes. But they were all cool with it. We rehearsed for a few days before they showed up, and then we rehearsed an hour and a half per day for two days with each artist. Only about three hours of rehearsal, and then we recorded.
I did the arrangements for all the tunes except the third one, ‘Liquid Love’, the one with Chris Turner, which Sput did because I did a really, really shit arrangement. We were listening to it and everybody was like āyeah, this is cool⦓
I was like āGuys, this is not happening. Letās sleep on it and see what happensā.
Sput comes up to me and heās like āHey man, wanna give me a shot?ā
The last time he said that to me was Lalah Hathawayās song āSomethingā so Iām like āI dunno⦠Didnāt go too well last timeā
So he arranged it with Shaun and Cory and my help. I did the arrangements for the other songs, but it’s always the same with Snarky Puppy: once we start playing, shit changes. Always. No human being in our band is capable of playing what theyāve been given, and thank God theyāre all sensitive musicians because it always sounds way better than the arrangement.
Iāve started writing arrangements with that in mind. Now I give them the absolute bare bones stuff so thereās a lot of space for them to try different things out. So during the rehearsal process people would be like āCan we do this? Can we do that?ā Thatās why every song says āarranged by SPā because itās a collective process.”
[Bill] āTo add to that, in terms of how we learn the material, weād get sent two songs. Mike would send the original song and then he would send his own demo arrangement with the vocal line being played by a Rhodes or something so we could contextualise it. We were all expected to learn every part within that arrangement so that when we get to the rehearsal – same as before we record SP songs – itās a very quick process of swapping round. Say the melody sounds better on a synth than it does on a trumpet. We can just switch ’em straight away. Everybody knowing all the parts is very key to doing that. From there, as Mike says, weāll work the arrangement as a band in the room and see what feels best.”
āWhat are your plans for this year and next year for SP, but also, when are you next planning on touring the UK?”
āYou donāt wanna hear when weāre in Belarus?”
āPreferably here”
āOur managerās here. Do you knowā¦? We donāt know.”
[quick discussion with the manager]
“Weāre on tour May, June, July. This album (Family Dinner Volume 2) comes out February 12th (itās my duty to say), then we have that studio record we mentioned earlier coming out first week of June, so weāll be touring those songs.
Weāve been playing Shofukan for three years. Itās fun, itās so fun, weāre not faking it, but itās also fun to play things that you havenāt played 3000 times.
Thereās a lot happening. All these guys have solo projects. Billās releasing three albums this year which is totally crazy: a two-part solo piano record and a live record at Union Chapel. Iām starting a new band, but Iām also producing Crosby and Salifās next records. Weāre touring the middle of the year, and I think Iām buying a recording studio in Brooklyn which Iām really excited about. We have this label GroundUP music with Banda Magda and Funky Knuckles and Michelle Willis, and Crosbyās also doing a record on GroundUP.
We just went fully independent this year and weāve got a distribution deal with Universal, so the creative side is 100% creative, and the business side is 100% with the people who can do that, not me. Artists donāt have to worry about any kind of interference, and the music gets to you guys a little faster and cleaner hopefully. So thatās a big thing, the labelās a really big thing. Thatās why I said at the beginning of this screening āCheck these artists outā because they make incredible music, and all that needs to happen for them to be able to do that for the rest of their lives is for you to buy their stuff. Thatās it. Really, thatās all that needs to happen. They donāt need record labels, they donāt need managers, they just need you to buy things. Itās a simple one to explain, but making it happen is super hard.”
āWhatās your favourite chord?”
āMy favourite chord!? Iām a bass player, I only play single notes. Whatās your favourite chord, Bill?”
āUmm, shit. Yeah, itāsā¦ehā¦Iām a big fan of a minor triad with a major seven at the minute. I canāt seem to get away from that right now. Thatās the chord right now”
āWhat are some artists that you would like for SP to collaborate with in the future?”
āThe credits at the beginning said the records support a musical charity. Could you tell us a little more about that and how this record relates to their work?”
āSo Family Dinner records are expensive. Like very very expensive. 10x more expensive than non-FD records. Or fifty times, as my manager just clarified. Thatās without paying the artists because of all the flights and hotels and the gear, and we have the whole band and all that stuff. So if we invited David Crosby and Salif and gave them what they were worth, we wouldnāt be able to make the record.
The first record benefitted an education charity for kids in Roanoke, this oneās the same thing but in New Orleans. They put musical instruments in inner-city schools. They form marching bands with kids who are at risk of joining gangs and preserve the musical culture of New Orleans with little kids, itās a super deep organisation.
We hit up the artist and we’re like,
āLook, this moneyās going to little kids. If you wanna be part of this and make music and keep kids off the streets in New Orleans, then great. If you wanna charge $20,000 then we canāt afford it, so what you gonna do?ā
So we just guilt them into it.
All jokes aside, thatās true, but thatās not why we do it as a charity thing. We do it as a charity thing because itās part of what we do as a band. Weāre always working with schools, weāve workshopped with five or six schools in London. It changes the vibe in the studio; you know youāre doing it to help. Itās easy – so easy – to get caught up in our little ego bubbles. Play a gig, people come up to you like āSounds greatā even if they donāt mean it. Itās easy to just think youāre a star. Slightly harder for us because we play weird instrumental shit.”
āI just wanted to ask you if I could come down and shake your hand? And also I wanna know why you didnāt play Lingus last year in the Roundhouse.”
āIf we play that every night we get sick of it!”
āItās not every night I travel 3,000 miles to see you play!”
[On-stage handshake happens, laughter dies down]
āMichael, I was lucky enough to be at New Orleans, was the most incredible experience of my life.”
āThank you, man. Is that Tony?”
āAha yeah. I was lucky enough to share some time with David Crosby, and he said you guys play like God on a good day.”
āWell David Crosby is a professional bullshitter, could you not tell from that film?”
āWhat was the African experience like? Especially working with Salif, seeing that heās probably sold more records than Sinatra.”
āOoh. Thatās a long story. The short version of it is that it was a whirlwind. I was there for three days. I almost died. Mali is the fifth poorest country in the world, itās a very difficult place to be, I was jetlagged and we werenāt really eating because thereās no food. I was very sick.
Itās so poor, so poor. That shot of those four kids was literally the only shot I could find where the kids werenāt naked. Theyāre so happy, though, and thereās music everywhere. Like Crosby was saying, music is the thing we do when we walk down the road, thatās what it is there. Everywhere you go thereās music.
Thereās a crazy thing happening in Mali right now. Of course you know about the terrorist attack at the Radisson Blu, but the Islamic Fundamentalists are also banning music nationwide. I donāt know if you know, but Mali is basically the single richest musical country in the world in terms of the number of different styles it has, for a relatively little country. It’s a third of the size of Texas. Thereās a great film called Timbuktu, about when the van with extremists rolled into Timbuktu and shut down all art and culture.
Itās a strange scene there. Music is a part of life, and people are trying to shut it out and crush the culture with fear and violence. I wasnāt even supposed to be here today, I was supposed to be in Mali right now recording Salifās next record, but the terrorist attack provoked a bunch of things, so weāre waiting ’til April to see if itās safe then.
It’s a beautiful place, there’s normally music everywhere. And things just happens when they happen. You say youāre gonna be there at 1pm, people show up at 9pm⦠the next night. I’m in the studio at 1pm on Wednesday and the backing singers and Salifi showed up at 9pm on Thursday! They sang, and it was unbelievable.
Unless youāve lived there, you canāt know what it’s like. Especially coming from a music school experience, itās probably about as opposite as you can get.”
āI remember when we found out that Salif couldnāt make the session, there was this huge despondence in the band. We were all really gutted coz we all wanted to work with him and meet him and perform with him, and when we found out he wasnāt coming it was a real disappointment. But actually seeing the song for the first time tonight, I realised the fact that you did have to go there almost emphasises and rearticulates how international this project was. The fact we could still actually do it, and the music was still all there, we were just recording it in different countries. It was still valid, and I found that debatably more powerful that we ended up doing it separately.”
āDo you feel itās as easy to tell a story across an album with a Family Dinner record as it appeared to be with Sylva, for example. I couldnāt listen to a single track on its own in Sylva”
āYeah, itās a one-piece, right? With Family Dinner you run the risk of it being a little too disparate because itās so many different artists from so many different places, but thereās unifying factors. Itās the same players, more or less, in our band, the same sounds, the same kind of instruments, the same mentality. We were all there together in the same week. Itās an energy that kind of consumes the space.
It felt like a weird little Utopia. We were all pinching ourselves every day thinking āthis is crazy!ā. The artists too, Crosby would do his rehearsal and weād be like āAlright you can go back to the hotelā and three hours later Iād go to get a glass of water and heād be in the kitchen jamming with Jacob in the suite. āCrosby, youāre 74, go to bed! Whatās wrong with you dude?ā
It was like that the whole week. Susannah was teaching Moz how to afro dance. It was a cool vibe, and to me, that unifies the music. The spirit, the intangible thing.
Before we split, I just wanna give a huge thanks. England is a big part of what we do, and especially some people that live here. I want to give a shout, of course, to Bill Laurance, but weāve also got our manager Mike Chadwick here, our assistant producer for the film and our tour manager, Rosanna Freeman. Camilo Salazar, whoās our assistant engineer. [I couldn’t hear this name in the recording] who did the artwork, and a load of good friends that have always supported us, taken care of us, housed us, fed us and treated us right. You’ve made us feel welcome. I wanna say a thanks to all you guys, and to you guys being here tonight. I hope you enjoyed the film, I hope you check out all these artists. Thank you.”