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Posted via web from Clang & Chime

We would have such a very good time – Such a fine time; such a happy time…

It’s official:

I have played only 3 solo shows in the second half of this year.

For me, that is UNHEARD of.  My schedule hasn’t been this sparse since…  half a decade ago?  No… probably longer.  I mean, even back at the top of 2007 when I was near death and hospitalized twice, I had a more densely booked performance schedule in a shorter span of time.

This is VERY different for me.

So what’s going on?

I’ve been saying for a long while now that I’m going to play where people want to listen to me.  Pretty simple philosophy.

So I let it be known months ago that I was booking house concerts to support the release of *Clang & Chime*…    and I got six emails from interested parties.  Before long, I had five all-but-booked.

Two got cold feet along the way, but three confirmed, and I just got back from performing at the last of those three about a week ago.

It worked out that they were spaced out about a month apart from each other; I did one in Central New York at the end of August while I was in the area finishing the album mix at The Belfry.  The second worked out at the end of September in Castle Rock, Colorado, and the third one was here in Nevada… though at the opposite end of the state, down in Las Vegas.  With all the behind-the-scenes action that went into getting *Clang & Chime* ready for release, I wasn’t too upset about the sparse schedule…  and it worked out that I released the album on the internet as soon as I returned from Vegas.

To help get rid of the mystery surrounding house concerts, I’m doing a little round-up of my (great) experiences here…  enjoy!

AUGUST – CENTRAL NY

I won’t mention any more specific info about this location, as the hosts had asked that this be a private show.  In fact, I never even listed this on my calendar for that reason.  House concerts can be an awesome way to meet other folks in your area who like the same music… there’s a definite bond that forms between people who share an interest in independent music, and it makes for great community…   but comfort in one’s own home supersedes all else, and if the hosts want it to be “friends only”, it absolutely remains so. 

The couple that hosted this show have been hardcore Horanimals for years… I think they first saw me perform a college show back in 2002.  Now they’re out in the real world, married, and recently moved into their own place…  and what better way to enjoy one’s new house than by hosting one’s very first house concert?

It was a win-win…  the hosts got to share something with their friends that they’d only been able to describe in words for a long time, and I got to reach out to a whole new group of people.  The hosts also got to hear a bunch of the new record before it was even sent off to the mastering lab!

Overheard from wife-host to husband-host:   “We should do this all the time.”

SEPTEMBER – CASTLE ROCK, CO

(taken from the nosebleed seats... look how far away I am! )

This was a different animal.  Charlene and Greg Johnson have been hosting house concerts for years now… they even have a name for their series (“Music on the Mesa”), and they get listed in local papers.  They take it very seriously, and being an ace musical duo themselves, they know how to pull off every aspect of the evening. From seating to sound to invitations to food & drinks to sectioning off a somewhat distant “KIDS ROOM”, there was nothing they hadn’t thought of.  It was brilliant.  They really transform their home into a venue for a night.

Having a track record like that isn’t just good for the performer; it’s great for the audience.  Many of the regular attendees at Mesa concerts are friends of the Johnsons… but they became friends because they showed up to so many house concerts on account of the consistently great shows.  The night I performed they had a packed house….  FIFTY people.

I met so many great people here, to say nothing of the Johnsons themselves, who are an amazing family.  They went far and above the call of duty with their hospitality.  One example out of a hundred: they heard what a coffee-snob I am, and so they went and got a coffee maker and a pound of gourmet beans…  just to make me comfortable.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg; I could go on all day, and I’m still trying hard to think of what I did to rack up enough karma points to receive this experience and these people in my life.  It was just awesome.

OCTOBER – LAS VEGAS, NV

(You can't see the people hiding beind the plants...

This show was put on by another couple trying it for the first time, but their instincts proved to be right on-the-mark.  Marla and Andy made sure everything went off without a hitch, and if I hadn’t known that it was their first time trying to host, I’d think they did this all the time.

The atmosphere was fantastic, and packed, again.   Let me clarify about what it means to be “packed”…   in a club that holds hundreds of people, twenty-five attendees won’t feel like a lot… to the performer, or to those people themselves.  The seating can be spread out into “pockets” around the room, and the energy dissipates before it can ever really build up.

 But in your LIVING ROOM, twenty-five people (clarification: twenty-five MATURE people) all giving their attention to the same thing can be positively electric.  The space gets FULL, of both people and energy, and it just creates an amazing environment for music.  Marla and Andy’s living room was packed with that many people, and we just kept passing energy back and forth to each other for a couple hours.  It was a great time.

I was beyond flattered when I saw the feedback Marla collected from her guests after the show…  I was, actually, honored:

_______________________________________________________________________

* I have to admit having never been to a house concert and not really knowing what I was in for I was under the impression we were on our way to see “Yawnie” and instead I got to see one of the most ELECTRIC performers I have gotten to see play live since I saw the very first U2 concert in Los Angeles =)

* I admit whole heartedly that I was mesmerized by the entire performance … intelligent lyrics and rock your socks off music!

* We go to community concerts and shows all the time and have never seen anything as good as this!

* You talked him up pretty good so I was a bit skeptical. Turns out I was right and you were wrong. He was better than you said he was. Great show!

* I had a really rough week and this concert was the perfect thing to make it all go away. Seth was amazing!

* I had no idea what to expect. This exceeded everything I thought it might be like. Good stuff!

* What an absolute rockin out concert and Seth Horan was funky too!

* Great concert! We had a great time!

* We had a great time. And drove home listening to Seth’s new CD that we bought after the concert and continued the groove all the way home. Thanks!

* I had never heard of Seth before. But I’m sure glad I know who he is now. He was GREAT! Thanks for the invite!!!

* It was an absolutely wonderful evening … we talked about politics, we talked about community service, we talked about upcoming events and then the music started and all we could talk about was Seth Horan.

______________________________________________________________________

Sin City, you humble me. 

Anyway, like I was saying: even though it may seem like I’m “not doing anything” right now, I assure you…  this is the first spare moment I’ve had to take notice!

So, the album is finally out, and I’m not out doing a fall tour…  what AM I doing now?

Why, I’m booking the SPRING tour.

At this point, I’ll nip-in-the-bud the next question that always seems to arise when I make a statement like that.

Invariably, someone always asks:  “When are you going to play in MY town?”

If that question is forming in your mind, I can answer it with another question:

When am I playing at your place?

Let me know.  Thanks for reading.

Be well,
Seth

(sethhoran@yahoo.com)

The truth about “Clang & Chime”

So you might have heard by now that I’m about to release this new album…

(…well, maybe you haven’t.  I have, after all, been pretty low key about the whole thing. 

The name of this big new piece of stuff I’m about to put out into the world is “Clang & Chime”.  I’ve gotten a number of different reactions to this name from a number of different people; some who are total strangers; some who are close friends and family members whose opinions I either can’t escape, totally respect, or both.

Most people respond well to it.  Of all the titles I’ve given to things I’ve made, this one has the best “score” coming out of the gate.  It seems to prompt people to ask for more information about it as soon as they hear it.  Friends in marketing tell me that’s a good thing… that it’s the equivalent of a book or magazine having a cool cover, and that more people will be inclined to listen to it because they like the name of the record.

As much as I hope they’re right, I can’t say that it has anything to do with why the record is called what it’s called.  “Clang & Chime” means a quite a few different things to ME… let’s start there before we get to anyone else’s interpretation!

There’s the completely literal sense to start with.  Over the years I’ve spent traveling and performing, I’ve played in just about every situation you can imagine, and wherever I go, I only sound as good as the sound engineer makes me.  The great thing about using an acoustic guitar is that everyone knows what it’s supposed to sound like in the hands of a solo songwriter.  But nobody, professional sound engineers with years of experience included, has a frigging CLUE what I’m up to with a bass in my hands.

Looking back on the past decade, I can count the number of sound engineers who have known innately what I’m going for on one hand.  For the rest of them, brows furrowed and faces frowning as they pushed buttons and twisted dials on their mixing consoles, I started using a descriptive phrase that seemed to help more times than not:  “When you get it right, it should clang and chime”.  This became my mantra for years, and helped define the sound that has helped to define me as an artist.

I like it: “Clang” describes a sound that is abrupt and harsh, but still resonant — “Chime” describes a resonant sound that is more pure and agreeable; and this brings up the idea of Consonance vs. Dissonance.

Lyrically, these songs deal with recognizing human fallibility — within our relationships, and within ourselves — and with how we reconcile those flaws.  Bringing the idea of resonance a step further:  Eastern spirituality deals with the idea of Chakras, or energy centers in the body that resonate along with certain frequencies, and react badly to other frequencies.  Everything we experience is in some way or another affecting the way our own energy is flowing; consequentially enhancing or disrupting our lives.   Human experience is, in fact, a constant push and pull between these states.

So while my playing may evoke the literal sense of “Clang & Chime”, the lyrics of these songs are meant to evoke the sense of that fallibility as dissonance, and of that reconciliation as consonance.

Call it whatever feels appropriate:  Tension and Release.  Cacophony and Harmony.  Yin and Yang.  Sorrow and Joy.

I call it Clang & Chime.

I hope you’ll spend some time with it as soon as it’s released.
______________________________________________________________________

(until the stroke of midnight that starts September 14th, you can pre-order the limited special editions of Clang & Chime by going to http://sethhoran.blogspot.com)

The Shockingly Unjust & Hideous Death of the Cafe Au Lait. =(

I had a moment of clarity the other night while doing something I rarely do anymore:  I went and hung out in a Borders store, browsed through the books, the albums, the magazines, got a cup of coffee, and sat down to take in some culture.

I noticed some jarring changes.  Most obvious was that the CD section had been reduced to a quarter of its previous size.  I mean: SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the CD bins had been removed.  I went to take stock of the carnage.

It seemed that most of what had been removed were “catalog” titles… they’d nixed the “old” music in favor of new artists and new releases by established acts, and most of the acts I could see at a glance I would call “peripheral” or “emerging” artists.

It was a bit astonishing to realize the number of artists who had albums on display that I have had some kind of contact with.  These artists are… my peers, really.  In many cases there are completely arbitrary factors that have dictated that their albums are still available in a nationwide chain store, while mine have not been on those shelves since 2005.

I had just taken all this in when I walked over to the cafe counter and placed my coffee order.  I was present, but mildly distracted, so the counter dude’s response to my request surprised me more than it should have:

“A cafe au lait!  Wow; most people don’t know what that even IS!”

What??

This, of course, is not true.  Plenty of people know what a cafe au lait is.

Err…          …don’t they?

Well, shit.  Maybe they don’t?   I pondered this as I went to sit down.

“Cafe Au Lait” is French for “coffee with milk”.  It’s been a staple on cafe menus all over the world, regardless of language, for as long as I can remember.  At least until Starbucks came along.

Starbucks capitalized on a major idea: they convinced the public that “ESPRESSO IS MORE VALUABLE THAN COFFEE”.  The idea is nonsense, of course — espresso IS coffee.  It’s simply prepared differently.  There is no practical reason to charge twice as much for it.  Sure; it requires a different grind and a separate machine, but grinders are adjustable, and espresso machines are standard overhead in cafes.

Besides that, it has become commonplace for a 2 ounce shot of espresso to cost the same as a 12 ounce cup of drip coffee.   Um…  hello?

People were already used to paying close to 2 bucks for a cup full of drip coffee.  By convincing people that espresso is exotic and valuable and different, Starbucks made the world believe that the same sized cup with espresso in it was easily worth twice as much.  Even though most of what is in the cup is actually MILK; not espresso.

The problem for Starbucks was this:  if people equate a full cup of coffee with “two dollars”, and if you have to give people milk for free on the condiment stand, you can’t charge a whole lot more just for dumping out half the coffee and replacing it with HOT milk.  True; a Cafe Au Lait usually doesn’t cost more than 25 to 50 cents more than a standard coffee.

Well if the maximum price for a cup of half coffee and half milk is $2.50, how are you supposed to convince people to spend $4 on a cup that has only 2 ounces of coffee and is MOSTLY milk?

You take the better deal off the menu.

People will forget.  Those that don’t won’t want to speak up.

That’s what Starbucks bet on.  They were right.

There is NO “Cafe Au Lait” menu option at any Starbucks, anywhere.  If you ask for one, you’ll be told that it’s not on the menu.  They can tell you that, because they’re not lying; “Cafe Au Lait” is NOT on their menu.

Because they changed it’s name.  Starbucks calls a cup of half coffee/half milk a “Misto”.   The Misto does not appear anywhere on the menu, either, but if you ask for one, they have to make it for you, and you’ll pay…  (drumroll)   about $2.50.

But people don’t ask for it.  Because they either can’t remember it when they’re staring at the menu, or they don’t want to “be a problem” or draw unnecessary attention to themselves by asking for it.

This explanation is long, but the realization came to me in the second following the barista’s declaration:

I’m a Cafe Au Lait.

I’m a great deal, dammit.  I cost less than most of the other stuff out there, and I taste better than most of it…  or at least AS good!

I’m just not on the menu.

Whenever any listeners or fans discovered me, I was “on the menu” in their world.  I was playing on stage; my music became a common experience for everyone who heard me. After I sold CDs to these folks, they played them for their friends, and then my music was in the common cultural vocabulary they shared.

But over the years, those people grew apart, moved, met new friends who weren’t already familiar with my music.  Suddenly my songs lost their “common touchstone” status, and I was “not on the menu” anymore.  And just like the Cafe Au Lait, people forgot that I was an option, or didn’t want to be judged by suggesting something that wasn’t already in their new friends’ pool of common experience.

Once this mindset took hold, some people just erased me from their own cultural vocabulary, and even though they heard from me through email, by the time my next album came out, they couldn’t reconcile adding me back to their mental playlist.  Instead of getting excited about listening to my new music, they actually withdrew from it.

SO.  Check it out:

I am releasing my first full-length album in FIVE YEARS this fall**.  It is, by far, the best thing I’ve ever made, and no matter if you have listened to every note I’ve recorded over the past decade or if the last thing you heard from me was the last note of “Something Pretty” back in 2002, I would be honored if you would at least give it a chance.

We, the independent artists of today, don’t have media PR machines to change your minds, influence your friends, and direct your attention for you.

We have YOU, and we’re counting on you to remember us, talk about us, suggest us, explain us to those who don’t know.

We need you to put us back on the menu.

We need you to NOT take the path of least resistance.

We need you to order a Cafe Au Lait.

Thanks for listening.

-Seth
**If you’re not already on my email list, sign up HERE and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Sharing… really DOES mean caring.

In my recent emails to my mailing list, I shared a plan that I thought would be a great “win-win” scenario for everyone.

The plan was this:

Current fans would encourage their friends who also listen to/like my music to sign up on my email list…

…once those new folks signed up, they would write me a quick note telling me who their friend was that referred them…

…and then BOTH the pre-existing fan and the new mailing list member would receive an MP3 with a sneak peek at the upcoming album (being released this fall).

I think this is a pretty good system, and there’s a small fail-safe in place:  I’m willing to bet that anyone who isn’t TRULY interested in being on the email list won’t take the time to write me personally.

Why don’t we automatically sign up for “free gifts” when the catch is that we have to give our email address to the company making the offer?  I mean, if we’re interested in that company and their products, it’s no big deal. But if we’re not truly interested, we don’t really want to be bothered in our inboxes.

Putting that requirement in there was my way of filtering out the people who don’t care.

Of course, the incentive of getting some free, exclusive music lit a fire under quite a few people, and some folks definitely put a lot of effort into trying to recruit others to the cause.

A lot of pre-existing mailing list members tried these things:

-they forwarded my email to everyone they knew.  No attached note of explanation; they just dumped my email in their friends’ inboxes and assumed someone would understand why or take the time to read it.

-they sent out a message of explanation…  as a mass “CC” email, or sent cut-and-paste comments to friends.

-they didn’t write any friends at all… but they wrote to ME to tell me the story of how they joined my mailing list (in some cases, over a year ago), and so they felt like they deserved the free sneak-peek.

-some people just wrote to me and said, point blank, that they hadn’t tried to get anyone else interested, but they’d still LOVE to hear the new material!! (exclamation exclamation smiley face smiley face exclamation smiley dreck dreck dreck gurgle vomit…).

Not surprisingly, hardly anyone who tried these methods got the free sneak-peek, because their friends either:

-ignored their messages entirely

-read the message, crinkled their brow, said “Seriously?…”, scoffed, and pressed “delete”

-didn’t read the details, signed up on my list, and promptly forgot about it (never sending me a note)

-or…. what I’d bet on is that some people DID read the whole thing, signed up on the list, and then…

…something kicked in… they tried writing to me but didn’t know what they’d say… it just felt… dishonest.

I have some friends who, if they mention that they enjoyed a particular record, will cause me to go buy that record strictly because of their suggestion.  I know these people care about music the way I do, and when they are obviously moved by something, I know there is a high likelihood that it is something of quality.  This rarely backfires.

I have discovered most of the new artists I’ve listened to over the past decade from the spoken recommendations of these people whose tastes I admire and respect.  Usually, these recommendations have come along with a loaned CD, or from a cherished listening session in someone’s car or living room.
I assume that phenomenon occurs outside of my little world…  and I was hoping that by encouraging my listeners to share, that a small percentage of their efforts would result in new folks discovering the music I make.
My intention was to reward those who cared enough to take action.  I see now that there was confusion about the action I assumed would be taken.

See, hardly ever have I been inclined to oblige the suggestions of people who don’t seem genuine about why they’re making a recommendation…  “CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME BAND” is something that was never cool, even on Myspace.

So… it stands to reason that blanket-bombing one’s entire address book with an impersonal plea to “JOIN THIS MAILING LIST SO I CAN GET SOME FREE STUFF” is a total turn-off.  Hardly anybody who got a request like that responded to it.

Some of my listeners who tried unsuccessfully to get people on board seemed hurt by this…  but they weren’t upset with themselves, or with their friends… quite a few of them wrote to ME.

“I KNOW at least two of my friends signed up, and they said they would write to you!  Did you send out the preview yet?!!?”    …I got messages like this for 10 days straight.  More than a few, really.

I wrote back to everyone personally and gave them the bad news:  though they had the best intentions, it seemed that something was stopping their friends from joining the ranks of People Who Care…

…and that is the fact that they don’t really care.  Some bit of integrity kicked in and wouldn’t let them send me a note.

Incidentally, I HAVE sent out the album preview.  To twelve people.  Seven new mailing list members and the five people who turned them on to my music…

…the old-fasioned way.

By PLAYING it for them.

In person.

Face to face.

Sharing, the way it works best. 

All I wish is to be alone… Stay away; don’t you invade my home.

Let’s talk about House Concerts.

Aha! I just lost 80% of you right there, didn’t I?

I know… But by acknowledging that, I probably just piqued the interest of some who were about to stop reading.

I have been thinking about this, on and off, for a long time now; long enough that I think I can finally put my thoughts down in a way that makes a fair amount of sense.  Here goes.

House Concerts are something I bring up every time I book a tour, which has usually been once or twice a year, every year now since 2002.  I always get a decent number of responses each time I sound the call, but I would say that only one out of every five or six of those responses actually turns into a reality.

Now why is that?

There are lots of psychological barriers to get in the way of a house concert.  Most people are naturally anxious about letting groups of people into their home, and some people are very anxious about being in unfamiliar environments; more so when the place is someone else’s private property.

These feelings are completely understandable, and they’re completely easy to get over as long as you keep one very important thing in mind:

House Concerts aren’t supposed to be for everyone.
They’re not even supposed to be big.
They’re for the People Who Care About The Music.

A life-changing article for me was written by Kevin Kelly, and it’s called “One Thousand True Fans”.  He puts forth the premise that a person who means to live by creating (artists, musicians, etc) need not kill themselves in the pursuit of “Having a Hit” — that a decent living can be achieved if you have 1,000 true fans; people who enjoy what you make enough to buy it from you every time you make it.  He clarifies this to suggest that because of the decreasing price of compact discs, that musicians in particular should consider both their albums and their CONCERTS under the heading of “what they make”.

The idea here is that a musician like me shouldn’t get caught up in the game of “How many people can I pack into the club?”, because if I concentrate my effort on that instead of on giving an incredible performance, it won’t matter how many people show up…  if I suck, they’re not going to become long-term fans; in fact, they might leave before I’m finished playing.

The idea is that the new breed of musician should have the goal to play to a “Quality Audience”; not a “quantity” audience.  Having done this enough times to gauge it, I wholeheartedly endorse this mindset.  I would much rather play an intimate show to twenty people who are feeding off my music and sending their own energy back to me than play to a noisy, moderately attentive group of 50 to 100 people, some of whom are there because they want to be, some of whom aren’t interested at all…  the energy in THAT room is a mess, and doesn’t make for a good experience for anyone.

Using the idea of a thousand true fans, it seems that those twenty quality listeners are going to be at the show anyway — it doesn’t matter if the ticket price is $5 or $15, and it doesn’t matter if there are 80 extra bodies in the room or not — so if that is true, why not improve life for everyone, raise the ticket price slightly and just play a better show to better people?

…because the Live Music BUSINESS doesn’t work that way.  A venue owner WANTS a hundred people at a singer-songwriter show.  To the venue owner, that’s a “good night”, and the quality of the music or the experience is absolutely secondary to the number of dollars made. You can’t be mad at a venue owner for wanting to do more business though; you just have to acknowledge that you’re not working towards a common goal, and consider alternate venues.

And that’s where House Concerts come in, because someone throwing a house concert isn’t trying to make money, and they don’t want a hundred half-interested people showing up, either.

Many first-time hosts have thought they should apologize to me because they “only” had a dozen to two dozen people show up.  What it takes awhile for them to realize is that it’s not embarrassing at all — and small crowds often have the best experiences.  The sound isn’t muddy or too loud, the vibe is comfortable, the audience members don’t gather in cliques; they sit in a group and get to know each other over drinks or snacks, and I get to meet and have genuine interactions with most people there during or after the show.  Even the larger house concert series I’ve played have always created great performances, great energy, and great friendships.

All it takes is the right kind of person to host a house concert:  The Person Who Cares.

This isn’t someone who says, “Oh, music would be cool, and um, whatever else and stuff… Just like, show up and I’m sure it’ll be fun!”   No; that person is not ready.

The Person Who Cares thinks, “I love this music…  but there’s no place in town that hosts this.  It would be amazing if I could just bring the show to my house and invite over other people who are into it for a night.”

This person acts like a host: they handle invitations, and sometimes even allow strangers to attend if they’re fans of the performer; they take RSVPs and hold the money for the performer, they coordinate drinks and a potluck spread if they want.  When people show up, they greet them, and when it’s time for the show, they address the audience and remind them to be respectful, and they introduce the artist.  This person doesn’t invite “everyone they know”, because they realize that not everyone they know would enjoy the music, but they invite other People Who Care, and that’s what makes for an easy-going, enjoyable evening.  These people get some of the greatest concerts they will ever see and hear right in their own living rooms, and they develop a group of friends that they know appreciates the same things they do, which is rewarding unto itself.

If any of this has sparked your curiosity and gotten you thinking past your initial anxiety about “PEOPLE IN MY HOUSE!”…  drop me a line and we can talk more about it.  I’m going to be playing wherever people will have me once this album comes out; it’s just a matter of saying you’ll have me. 

Thanks for reading.

Be well,

Seth

We don’t need no water, let the….

There has been a fair amount of confusion regarding my whereabouts recently.  And with good reason.  There has been an equal amount of confusion on my end as well.  But here is the long and short of it:

I was living in Reno.

For the past two weeks or so, there has been a serious campaign on the part of my wife and I to relocate to Santa Barbara. 

A couple days ago, just as things were starting to fall into place for us, a strange thing happened.

Santa Barbara caught on fire. 

A good chunk of the city has been evacuated, and at least a dozen big homes have burned down.  A State of Emergency has been declared, the sky has been unusually orange with bits of ash floating everywhere, you can hear the helicopters constantly flying overhead, and wherever you go, it smells like a campground.

The past 48+ hours have seen the steady erosion of the inroads we’ve made towards stability.

So we’re re-thinking, re-grouping, re-evaluating, and once again, re-locating…

to re-

-no.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

This would really suck if I had developed some attachment to this place, but honestly (and I know I’m going to take some flak for this), I think most of the populace here could stand to have its pulse quickened.  There is a general vibe here that has been rubbing me the wrong way, and I’ve been trying to put my finger on what it is, exactly, that irks me.

I’m going to “think out loud” for a second, here…   in my experience, cities with great cultural communities are NOT always the big metroplexes.  It’s a misconception that a city’s size determines how vibrant the arts/music/cultural scene is.  I think it has much more to do with the general emotional tone of the people, and I think it depends on that tone being relatively turbulent.  The more people that are preoccupied emotionally, the more that sets the stage for the artistic minds to feel the need to release tension, and the more evident that need is, the more likely it is that various venues will appear to provide outlets for that tension.

Think about it: “clean”, “safe”, “upbeat” communites are almost NEVER the places you will find the live music, the poetry slams, the theatre troupes, the coffeehouse open mics, the community pubs that a city has to offer… the clean places are where you find megaplex cinemas, yoga studios, and trinket shops. 

Well Santa Barbara doesn’t have a “wrong” side of town.  It’s ALL yoga and trinkets.  The people exhibit so little tension or turbulence, even in the face of a city-threatening fire, than one wonders just what percentage of the people are medicated, and what the hell they’re ON.  The place is so “upscale” it’s… uncomfortable. 

I submit my cases-in-point:  I gauge a city’s music scene by its open mics, and here, there’s not much to gauge.  Last time I was here I checked out Dargan’s Irish Pub; it had a great stage with lights and a decent sound system…  but there was nobody driving the bus.  The host was a meek guy who looked like a bank teller who would really have rather melted into the floor than look anyone in the eye, and he was grossly ineffective: when I signed up on the list, he informed me that “we really don’t go in an order; we just sort of, y’know, do it how it comes.”  When I asked why it wouldn’t just “come” in the order that people signed up, he repeated, “we really don’t go in an order.  Don’t worry; everyone plays.”  This guy never got on stage to address the people in the room; never made an attempt to get anyone’s attention; never let people know that it was an event of any kind…  he sort of shuffled around the room in a shady way and tapped people on the shoulder when it was their “turn” to play.  This created a strange apathy in the crowd, and people huddled together in bunches, basically ignoring everyone who got on stage to play.  In turn, everyone who got on stage pretty much ignored the crowd, and played long, repetitive, tedious renditions of cover songs.  It was awful.  After being ignored for an hour and watching people who came in after me get up on stage, I left.  This is how NOT to build a music scene.

Just this past week I played the open mic at the Live Culture Lounge.  This is a fairly new venue in Santa Barbara; it’s an interesting place; it’s shaped like an upside-down letter “L”. The front is split between a frozen yogurt bar and an espresso bar, and the long part is a wine and tapas bar.  At the back wall the restrooms are built out into the area, and the roof of the restrooms has been made into a stage, so performers stand high above the audience.  This could potentially be really great, both visually and sound-wise, but at present, it’s abyssmal.  All the stage lights are behind the performer, so all anyone can see of the figure atop the restrooms is a shadowy silhouette, and the acoustics of the place are such that the sound bounces around the space above the audience and sounds muddy and boomy to everyone below.  The venue has a dedicated music manager (Chad-wicked cool guy, actually), who is making the best of what he’s got to work with, and who gets on stage to introduce each act and encourage attention and applause, but…      he’s not the host.   At least, not in title.  The night is “run” by a girl who sits in the audience, largely ignoring the acts and chatting at the top of her lungs at a table with her friends, enjoying wine and tapas.  Anyone who walks into the open mic usually gravitates immediately towards Chad, who anyone can see is actually working to make things happen.  He has to point out the girl in the audience who people must sign in with.  The girl’s designation as “host” apparently stems from the fact that she sits next to a clipboard.  When she occasionally notices that it’s time for the next performer (on many occasions this happened because it finally occurred to her that the music had stopped and there was no-one on stage), she looks hurriedly around the room for the next name on the list (which looked tough for her, as she forgot my name immediately all three times I told it to her), rushes up to them, and says “um, it’s like, time for your turn”.  The vibe here is far better than at Dargan’s, but they’ll need to put up some sound-absorbers and lights and get Chad to full-on host the thing before it realizes its potential.

Sadly, that is about all SB has to offer.  I attempted to check out two other open mics I’d read about that supposedly happen on Tuesday nights, but both of them, I was told when I called, have been cancelled indefinitely.

There is, actually, a very well known listening room here.  It’s called “SoHo”, and they bring in a lot of big names and rising stars.  I had looked forward to playing their open mic and enjoying the scene there, but…   they don’t have one.  It seems Santa Barbara’s flagship music venue, with music seven nights a week, doesn’t see fit to ever host an open mic; not even once a month. 

So it’s not really with a heavy heart that I hastily retreat from this place.  I’ll spare you that cliche about the grass being greener, as it’s not entirely appropriate now that a lot of that grass has been replaced with blackened patches of earth, but there’s that other cliche about where the road that’s paved with good intentions leads, and from the view outside this cafe window, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that there is very little chance of it freezing over any time soon.

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“Change… is good, because Change… is CHANGE.”

…that is from an episode of Season 3 of the show “Weeds”. Matthew Modine plays a charming real estate bigwig with a lot of charisma and questionable ethics, and he delivers that line to an enthusiastic mass of people just before his hysterical humiliation. I love that show… can’t wait for Season 4 to come out on DVD.

There is certainly change afoot in just about every area of existence these days… my life is in a particularly intense state of flux, and though there is uncertainty, I’d have to say I’m much more excited than I am stressed. I’m recording again, and I am HUGELY excited about it.

The last time I recorded a record was at the end of 2006. It was a small production, and it became the “Happenstance” EP.  Everything on the album was either my voice or my bass, so I was the only person being recorded, and the process was mostly done on a pretty small scale; Kent Miura and David Peters both actually came to my house in Reno to record me. I had been hearing from my listeners for years that they wanted me to make an album that was just like my live show, with no other musicians or slick production, and so I set out to make everyone happy.

But the vast majority of them didn’t like it as much as my records that have a band on them, and for awhile I chanted along with the musical elitists, saying, “Don’t listen to the people; they have no idea what they really want, and they’ll complain no matter what.” After I thought about it for awhile though, I realized that I wasn’t taking enough into consideration. It’s not enough to say, “People like my solo concerts, therefore they will like my records if I make them the same way”. The enjoyment of a live concert comes from all five senses, and from the general experience of the show. To take only the music from a live concert and expect to get the same reaction is not necessarily wise.  A record album is a LISTENING experience, and needs to be produced with that in mind, so this time, I decided to find out what my listeners wanted from their listening experience. But what’s the best way to do that?

Let them help produce it.

Last summer, I opened up the album production process to my entire mailing list. The model was simple: anyone who invested in the album got to hear and provide feedback on the songs as I created them, one song each week, for twenty weeks. At the end of the process, these producers voted to narrow down those twenty songs to ten for inclusion on the final album. While I was sure this process wouldn’t appease any individual 100%, I was also sure that these outside opinions would provide me with valuable objectivity, and help me create a record that would appeal to the widest cross-section of listeners.

“Fie on that”, said critics of the process… “they’ll water down your essence and stifle your artistic expression!”

Not true.  Though I occasionally needed to crack the whip and remind my producers what we were doing, I am absolutely indebted to them on a number of key matters of judgement… I definitely would have made a few bad calls without their voices in the back of my head. Sometimes what a musician feels is their ‘artistic expression’ comes across to listeners as overly indulgent, melodramatic, or both. I’d like to think I was held back from both of those pitfalls by listening to my listeners, and I appreciate their help.

So, back to the present:  I just spent five days in Upstate New York in The Belfry, a church that has been converted into a state-of-the-art recording studio, and began the process of creating the final album versions of the songs that made the cut. The Belfry was created by my friends Timothy Daniel (a stellar singer/songwriter in his own right), and the mega-songwriter engineer himself, David Peters. They have created an awesome creative space with awesome equipment for capturing awesome sounds, and I am freaking out over how awesome these songs are sounding now.

...nary a razor touched my face during my time at the Belfry...

Joining me in the studio was New York City drummer Ryan Cavan. I’ve known Ryan for seventeen years, since I was graduating 12th grade and he was graduating 8th. He was a startlingly fantastic drummer even as a young kid, and his parents will probably never forgive me for dragging him off to bars around Buffalo the summer before his freshman year of high school in two of my bands. Since those days, he’s one of the only people I know who went on to become a full time professional musician — and though we’ve talked about playing together dozens of times over the years, it’s been nearly impossible because his schedule is so packed… he very nearly couldn’t make it to the studio this time because he was on tour in Europe.

Don't let the angelic lighting fool you... Ryan is a bad, bad boy.

See?

I brought Ryan in to play on seven songs, and secretly hoped that we’d get them all done in four days instead of five so that I’d have an extra day to mess around with David’s studio toys. At the end of Day Three, Ryan had nailed all seven songs plus an eighth he had never even heard before… and I got to spend the final two days laying down massive-sounding bass parts, and even a few vocal takes, on all those tunes. Looking back on it, we worked at an incredible pace, but it didn’t feel like it while we were there. It was even… FUN. What a great time.

I think what I'm thinking right here is best summed up as, "unh".

Now I’ll spend the next month re-organizing — I’m doing an impromptu Midwest mini-tour (check my tour schedule for details) on my way back out west, where relocation is in my future: by May, I will most likely be a California resident again. I’ll be accepting new students once I’m there, so if you or anyone you know in Central CA might be looking for private music instruction this summer, drop me a line at sethhoran@yahoo.com ! Also, I’ve been asked an awful lot recently if I’m still working with Warwick. While I am still playing my Warwick basses, I am not employed by the company. I was not invited to this past January’s NAMM show by Warwick, but that’s okay, because the good folks at Gallien-Kruger bass amplification wanted me around. The most exciting development that has stemmed from this free-agent status is currently underway… very soon, I will be receiving my first custom instrument from JC BASSES, based out of Auburn, California. For those who love this sort of thing, you can see the progress of the bass as it is built over at the JC Basses Progress Blog: http://www.jcbasses.com/sethhoran5.html

There is no bad blood between Warwick and I; it was a combination of factors with the company’s distribution and the World economy that ended our relationship, and I won’t be putting tape over the “W” logo on the instruments I already play anytime soon. :]

Once I settle into California, I will be tracking down Ed Sheets to come put some of his six-string deliciousness on a few of the new songs, and will start to plan for this new album’s imminent release. I figure we should plan some CD release parties before CDs become extinct! ;]

And of course, I’ll post more updates as things continue to change…

…because change…

is CHANGE.

Bully for you… Chilly for me…

I’m in a situation at present that makes me smile… or more correctly; makes me smirk:  I have been asked by a handful of aspiring singer-songwriters (separately; not as a group) for advice about how to “get famous”.  I am not making this up.  While it is flattering to be asked such a question, one must understand that it is somewhat akin to being asked by a young child:  “I wanna be tall like YOU!  How’d you get so TALL??”

The answer to each of these inquiries, more now than ever, is very similar.  I could answer each by saying, “Well just keep doing what you’re doing, and there’s a pretty good chance that when you’re my age, you’ll be about where I am.”

My point is that even if you’re below-average adult height, you still look huge to the kid.

I am **certainly** not “famous”.  Well, not any more or less “famous” than any of my peers in the nebulous soup of indie singer/songwriters out there.  We are the late-gen-x/early-gen-y-group of musicians that never “made it” because our timing sucked.  That’s not to say we’re bad at what we do…  we simply got to the point in our artistic development where we were “ready” just as the record industry we’d been preparing ourselves for began to collapse.  Those of us on the older side of the group did one of two things: 1.) give up in despair, forevermore grumbling about how “it wasn’t fair”, or 2.) detour into artist management, venue management, publishing, work for an instrument manufacturer, or go into web design.  Those of us on the younger side had seen the changes coming, and were ready to adapt… we were on Myspace on Day One, and some of us were even on Friendster before there WAS a Myspace (…wow… remember those days?…).

I was in the middle…  not only did I major in “Music Industry” during that stint I did in college, learning all about the traditional record industry models, but I had actually gotten a “ticket to the show” younger than most from the stint I did with Vertical Horizon, and had listened carefully to all the old-school experts I encountered… most of whom would lose their jobs en-masse just a few years later.  Basically, by the time the new-media revolution was kicking into high-gear, I had just started feeling ready to take on the OLD-media establishment.

There were hundreds of very talented musicians in nearly the exact same situation, many of whom are my friends and acquaintances.  Most of us had watched, learned, and adapted to the introduction of the internet only a few steps behind our younger peers and were keeping step with them in most ways, but the realization dawned slowly-but-surely:  We weren’t going to get the record deals we’d once dreamed about… not because we had ‘missed the deadline’, but because NOBODY was going to get them anymore.

Once this realization set in, those of us who weren’t too discouraged to continue had to decide how we were going to cultivate a grass-roots following, because there was no denying it — anyone who didn’t wasn’t going anywhere.  The conventional wisdom still seemed to dictate that an artist should try to become “big” in one major location, and then expand their touring out from there in a gradual manner.  Most of my indie musician peers did this. Most of them also got discouraged and burnt out doing this, and “retired” in some fashion after a couple years with a mailing list of a few hundred fans who were bummed to hear the news.

I eschewed this strategy completely, and most of my peers thought I was making a big mistake.  I have to admit, what I did was comparatively radical:  I put my personal belongings into storage and lived on the road with no physical address for nearly three and a half years.  From March 2002 until June 2005 I did not remain in one municipality for longer than 2 weeks, and in many cases I would hop from host-to-host during my longer stays in one area.  I criss-crossed the United States from East-to-West or West-to-East (sometimes diagonally) eighteen times during that period, with smaller trips in there as well.

That whole experience is a story for another time (MANY “other times”, actually…), but the point is this:  while it was happening, it didn’t look like I was making decent strides towards building a lasting grass-roots fan base in comparison to my peers who had decided to stay put.  I was adding an average of about 30 people to my email list every week (sometimes that number was a hundred… sometimes it was three), and in a number of cases, these names were added in towns I haven’t returned to in years.

Fast forward to the present:  I am now, more or less, settled in a fixed location, from which I hop to other locations for touring stints.  I like to think that in each of those places I was playing years ago, I planted some seeds (for the pervs that are taking that analogy in a sexual manner, stop it right now…), and though I haven’t been back in many-a-day, there are quite a few places where those seeds have flourished, and others where people have picked up those seeds and carried them to new cities.  College fans graduated and took jobs in new towns… they made new friends… they turned their new friends on to my music…  suddenly I had new seeds planted in places I’ve never been to before.  The popularity of social networking websites has fed this fire in a massive way, and now there are pockets of fans in places around the country (and in other countries) who may never have seen me play in-person, but who have bought the songs off iTunes and who have ordered the DVD to get the next-best-thing.  This is the same principle that allowed me to gain a big enough following in the United Kingdom to book that tour I just returned from.

But plenty of artists are on the social networking sites, and even artists who don’t have DVDs can put videos up on YouTube.  Why would this work any better for me?

Reason One:  Personal connections — it’s much easier to inspire someone to help spread the word about your new song download or YouTube video if that someone has had the experience of seeing what you do on a stage, as opposed to that someone just “hearing about you”.  By playing in as many different places as I did, I established personal connections with a much broader base of people.

Reason Two:  Absence makes the heart grow fonder.  If a known performer comes to town for the first time in ten years, you can bet that the show will sell out.  But if that same performer plays every Tuesday night at the same club for months on end, you will probably see a sharp drop-off in attendance after a few weeks.  By staying on the move constantly, I was able to always leave on a high note, and I would come back every three or four months… just long enough for the thought of another show to be an exciting prospect — an EVENT.  By doing this over and over again for a number of years, I developed a kind of loyalty amongst people in a number of cities, and these are the folks who helped me “plant the seeds”.

Another factor, I’ve realized, is that my act is somewhat memorable. It really floors me just how often people remember me… the emails I still get to this day from folks who just saw me perform once, maybe only for one song at an open-mic, maybe at an outdoor gig where they just happened to be passing by…  one day they enter enough info into Google to find me (not too many solo bassist/singers out there…), and we pick up right where we left off.  I have had the good fortune to see a return on even the smallest investments of time and energy from my life on the road, and that return has been in the form of LONG-TERM LISTENERS.  From my many conversations with my peers who have generally stayed in one place, I cannot say that the same holds true for most of them on the same level.  That’s certainly not an attempt to elevate my status above anyone else’s; it just seems to be the cold, hard truth.

So I guess I’m saying that the crux of any success I’ve experienced comes from my years on the road.  However, this whole combination of factors makes for very odd self-analysis….  Accounting for the “overlap” of fans on Myspace, Facebook, and my email list, I can boast a fan-count of just over 3,000 people.  By the “industry model” for seeing if an act is ready for a record-deal, that would ideally break down to be about 300 people in each of ten different cities.

The reality is that it’s more like 30 people in each of a hundred different cities around the planet, and while that gives me a cool amount of notoriety in a microcosmically global way, that alone is not enough to book a tour anymore….  I stopped living on the road just as gas prices were escalating to their lofty heights of the past three years.  I’ve crunched a few numbers, and it’s clear: I could NOT live on the road the way I used to in Today’s economy.  Small guarantees from coffeehouses and clubs, money from CD sales, and a handful of college gigs every semester used to be enough to get by on.  But the coffeehouses have mostly gone out of business, the clubs are much more frugal, CDs have depreciated in perceived value to the consumer, and competition in the college market has increased tenfold over the past decade.  So while the price of gas coming back down is encouraging, the rest of the equation is still out of balance.

The fact is that I’m always looking for new methods for getting the music (and myself) out there, and that it’s a life of constant hustling, but above all, one must realize that if you want to make music for a living, it necessitates that you make music that other people will want in their lives…  music that they want to hear enough that they want to support YOU; the one who makes it.  

If you can’t deal with the idea of depending on some level of mass-agreement that you are worth paying money for, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make music…  but it does mean you shouldn’t attempt to make ORIGINAL music for a LIVING.  A surprising number of both aspiring and professional music-makers do not get this concept.  I am not saying those taboo words (“Sell Out”); I am saying that every time I embrace the concept I just described, I experience some degree of success.  The most recent example of this would be the project I’m currently engaged in where I am producing my next album with the assistance of my fans….  it’s been controversial, but it’s working (and I have to emphasize, it’s working WELL!)

So… what the hell do I tell someone who wants to use my career as a role-model?  On the one hand, I’m proud of the amount of forward-motion I’ve been able to keep going to keep myself in business…  I think, looking back on things, that for all the bad timing I had in trying to “make it”, I was doing the exact right thing at the exact right time when I lived on the road. 

On the other hand, I wouldn’t suggest that course of action to anyone who doesn’t feel that it’s something they HAVE to do.  If it’s something you could “take or leave”, then do yourself a favor and leave it before you do yourself any damage.

But if you take it…   if you’ll take bad living, odd hours, bad hygiene, malnutrition, car trouble, sensitivity to the middle-class means and standards of those you meet, far too much coffee, sugar, and alcohol in your diet (because it’s usually FREE), doomed relationships, and the need to perpetually book yourself 3 months ahead so that you can continue to survive… if you decide that’s for you…

…well, then I sincerely wish you all the best, kid.  You’ve been warned.  Go get ‘em.