The Big Issue story: Sounds Of Our Town

Here’s my first story for The Big Issue, which is published fortnightly and distributed by a network of Australians experiencing homeless and/or long-term unemployment. Half its $5 cover price goes into the pocket of vendors, who sell the magazine in capital cities across the country. Coincidentally, this is issue #350 of the magazine [pictured right], which has been published since June 1996.

‘Sounds Of Our Town’ is about an initiative called Brisbane Sounds, whose goal is to promote my city’s best independent music on the world stage. It was founded in 2007 by 25 year-old Blair Hughes, who is travelling to music conferences SXSW in Austin, Texas (this month) and The Great Escape in Bristol, England (in May) to promote a compilation CD of the best two dozen tracks chosen among 140+ submissions.

I’m passionate about the Brisbane independent music scene, so it was a joy to describe Blair’s goals and ambitions to a national audience.  I look forward to many more stories for The Big Issue.

Click the image below for a preview of the story. Apologies for the low image quality; it’s a photograph. I’ll update with scanned copy on Wednesday.

If you live in an Australian city, I urge you to buy a copy of The Big Issue from vendors on a fortnightly basis. It’s filled with compelling stories of real Australians. It’s fast becoming a favourite publication of mine, and it’s an honour to be involved.

Filed under Published Writing | Tags: blair-hughes, brisbane-sounds, feature, feature-writing, Interview, Journalism, Music, Published Writing, sounds-of-our-town, the-big-issue | Comment (0)

A Conversation With Barry Hogan, All Tomorrow’s Parties founder

In late 2009, my girlfriend and I went to England for three weeks. All Tomorrow’s Parties was the main reason. It’s an independently-operated festival that celebrated its 10th anniversary with a weekend-long concert series held at Butlins holiday camp, in the town of Minehead near England’s west coast. We stayed on-site for 10 days all up - including the Nightmare Before Christmas weekend curated by My Bloody Valentine, the ‘in between days‘ series of weeknight shows, and the 10 Years Of ATP weekend - and saw a ridiculous amount of good music. Which was the intended outcome.

While on-site, I interviewed ATP founder Barry Hogan [pictured right] for a Rolling Stone story. [I also reviewed Dirty Three playing 'Horse Stories' to around 100 people, for Mess+Noise.] Late on the Sunday night of the 10 Years event - after sacrificing my barrier spot for The Mars Volta - we sat down in the production office to discuss the festival’s history and his motivations for creating what has become an internationally successful event.

Andrew: Barry, broadly speaking, what do you think has contributed to ATP’s success as a festival?

Barry: When ATP started 10 years ago, there weren’t any alternative festivals. It was only big corporate festivals and I think a lot of people who are into bands like Low, Will Oldham, and so on, the only place you could see them was at Reading Festival and that sort of thing, and they’d be kind of sandwiched in with piles of shit like Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and fuckin’ Chumbawumba. It just felt like you paid whatever it was at the time, £80-90 to go for the day, but you’d have to wait all day to see something [worthwhile].

I just thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could design something where you could have constant bands, all day long, you’re wanting to go and see things, like killing yourself that you’re missing something because something else is on that the same time,” and just do it in a more intimate environment. Glastonbury, for example, was one of the reasons why we wanted to hold it here in the [Butlins] holiday camp, because of the conditions there. I think the toilets in Guantanamo Bay are probably healthier than there. Glastonbury is an abomination. It’s like the way it’s designed is for too many people in too small a space, and I thought, “this isn’t fun”. But here, people have got their own apartments, their own space. Going back to your question; what’s contributed to it, is we’ve designed it so we want to treat people like we want to be treated, and we want people to be into really good music, have a good time, enjoy themselves, and feel like they got value for money.

I feel that because we’ve been true to the concept of keeping it sponsorship-free, and also keeping the idea of the curator and being sort of focused on that, I think that’s definitely one of the reasons why it’s remained as strong as it has over the years. We’ve just got a loyal fan base that continually comes back. It’s good.

Is it difficult to stay true to the concept, to keep focused?

It is if the curator doesn’t go mental with trying to suggest stupid bands. The thing is; it’s hard; it gets harder as you go on, to kind of get curators to make you kind of fresh each time. I think because it’s a different curator each time, in a way, it’s a different person’s interpretation of a mixtape. If you get similar artists doing it, then you’re going to get the same sort of bands. We’re always striving to look for new and different ways to present it, to get different curators. It does get harder as you go on, but we’ve been pretty fortunate to be able to present some great things over the last 10 years.

Did you expect to reach your 10th birthday?

No. I’ve been waiting for the call to get a real job for quite a while now. When we did Bowlie Weekender with Belle & Sebastian [in 1999], they called it the first annual Bowlie Weekender and the idea was to do it year in, and year out. I don’t know why but they felt they wanted to keep the event unique and I said with their blessing, could I continue it and rename it, All Tomorrow’s Parties. I never thought it would go this long.

I think we’ve been fortunate that it is still strong and people still want to go to it, but I think we spend so much time laboring over things like artwork design, the programs to present, and the lineup and where bands play. We’re conscious of what the fans want, as well. We’re trying to make people happy so that they keep coming back. So far, I think we’re doing a good job.

I saw in an interview you said, “The way forward for festivals is to keep it boutique.”

Yeah, totally. You get some festivals like Bestival and they have the audacity to call themselves boutique when they started at 10,000 [capacity]. That’s not boutique for starters, and also I don’t understand why Rob Da Bank puts “Curated by” on each event. If it’s the same person doing it, surely, isn’t he the festival booker and that’s his job? You don’t need to wear a badge and put it on the top of the poster.

You’re talking about British festivals here, which I’m not too familiar with…

Oh, sorry – okay. Talking about boutique festivals, there’s one here called Bestival. It’s run by a [BBC] Radio 1 DJ called Rob Da Bank. The thing is, a lot of these festivals start at 3,000-4,000 capacity and then they start expanding. Because it’s only one event, they get bigger and bigger. Most of them have gone from 5,000 up to 45,000 or 50,000. It loses its intimacy and it loses track of where it started and why it started.

I think with us, it’s that we are keeping it sort of personal to people. It’s not overcrowded and you can walk around between stages and see lots of really great bands. I’d rather do more ATPs and keep it small, than do one big one and do it once a year because I just feel like it will lose its charm.

So the events here at Butlins are capped?

Yeah, the place only holds just over 6,000 so we sell 5,500 and the rest is made up of guests and production. It’s capped because that’s the legal capacity.

I see. As I mentioned earlier, I also went to the Mount Buller event [the first Australian ATP event, curated by Nick Cave (pictured left) & The Bad Seeds].

Barry: That was really great. There was some view up there, wasn’t it?

Yeah. And I went to the Riverstage one in Brisbane, which is where I live, as well as one of the Brisbane Powerhouse shows.

Okay. Those were good events, Buller especially. In hindsight I think I would love to have just done Buller. Those other events that we did… They were All Tomorrow’s Parties in the mindset but they weren’t like the All Tomorrow’s Parties because it wasn’t like a residential thing where people stayed, hanging out like they did at Buller. They were good, but I think it was a bit misrepresented in a way.

Now that you mention it, it’s quite odd that you did those Sydney and Brisbane events because like you mentioned, there was no accommodation. Do you put on many of those here in Britain?

No, to be honest; we’ve talked about doing a sister event called ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, which is the b-side to The Velvet Undergrounds single ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. The idea is that it’s like a sister event to ATP. It has the concept of the curator and stuff, but it doesn’t have the holiday camp. The idea of it is that it’s not trying to compete with ATP, it’s kind of designed for people to see great music but at a lower price because they don’t have to pay for their accommodation. There are a lot of people that would love to come to this but can’t necessarily afford it. It’s not that we’re too expensive; we’re providing value for money, but it’s a rising cost because Butlins is not a cheap place to hire.

I can imagine. As well as the festival aspect of ATP, it’s also a label. Again, what factors do you think have contributed to the success of ATP as a brand?

Someone said to me the other day, “oh, Fuck Buttons must be doing really well because the festival is doing well”. It’s not like that. There are a lot of records that we put out, and they’re releases that don’t necessarily sell a great deal. They’re great records, but the festival helps in the way that we can showcase the bands as another outlet for people to discover them. But bands like Fuck Buttons have done really well because they’ve made great records. Whether it’s on ATP or another label, I don’t think it makes any difference.

We’ve got a brand, not in the sense of Coca Cola or McDonalds, but I think a kind of brand of quality. I wanted it to be where you used to buy Sub Pop singles and you didn’t know some of the bands but you bought them because – I’m not saying you, here - but when Sub Pop was in its Nirvana and Mudhoney heyday - not that it doesn’t put great records out now - but there was a period when Sub Pop was releasing something you’d buy it because it’s like “Fuck, it’s on Sub Pop.”

Or Def Jam [Recordings] There were all those great early hip hop records like LL Cool J and Public Enemy, and Beastie Boys, and Run DMC. You knew that Def Jam and Sub Pop put out great things so you kind of bought into that. I feel like ATP is getting a bit like that in a way that people are sort of willing to take a chance because they know we’re not going to put out Coldplay or Miley Cyrus records.

You like ripping on Coldplay.

There are worse bands than Coldplay. [laughs] They’ve got a couple of good songs. I don’t think they’re for me.

Neither me. An aspect of the festival that I really liked, and I’m sure you do too, is the discovery aspect. As you say, it’s associated with quality. You walk into a room and at least respect a band, if not find it really damn good and want to go and buy all their shit.

Yeah. The reason we say it’s like a mix tape is you know, if you’ve got a friend and - I don’t know if you’ve ever had friends who give you mixtapes - but you put it on and you’re like, “Jesus, what’s this? This is great.” You have to look up the track list and you go, “This is amazing” but because you’re here at the festival and you’ve bought your ticket for the weekend, you can go in and out of rooms; there’s going to be something on you’ve never heard of, or you’ve been curious to know what it’s about.

It forces you to go and check stuff out, and it opens you up to loads of stuff. I think bands like Deerhoof, their success in Europe has benefited from playing at ATP. They said this themselves; they’ve been playing at an event and people have never heard of them before just a few years ago, and then they’ll see them and go, “My God, they’re great.” They’ll want to keep going back and seeing them. They’ve discovered it in that mixtape fashion, where it’s like a pleasant surprise.

I saw in an interview that you mentioned Kevin Shields [of My Bloody Valentine, pictured right] is fond of ATP because you kind of sidestep the whole music industry game.

Kevin’s been very supportive of us, and I think it would be fair to say we’ve done things in a different way. It’s good having a curator because it means we have to pick the bands the curator wants instead of agents, magazines, and labels all going, “You must put this band on because they’re the hot new thing”. It bypasses all that and we’ve just done things on our own terms.

To have a festival with no sponsorship, there is another promoter who asked me about doing an event in a holiday camp, and he said, “How the fuck do you do it without sponsorship?” We know how to do it because we’ve fine-tuned it over the years. We know how much it costs, how much we spend on bands, and it does make money but probably not the sort of money that some of the people out there think it does. Anything we have done goes back into the business.

I just feel like I want to keep doing this sort of thing until we lose interest in it. When we do lose interest, I think that’s the time to stop and end it on a high rather than fizzle out. The music industry is changing constantly, and I think it would be fair to say we never really played the games that a lot of people do. I’m not into that, so we just do our own thing, really. I guess we have sidestepped a lot of it, which is good.

You began as a promoter at Dingwalls [in Camden], and you got tired of having to play the game. Did you find it difficult to step outside of that and say, “Fuck it, I’ll do my own thing”?

Yeah, it was really hard because in those days, if a band like Tortoise came along, it was once every 6 months or something and it was a real big deal. Nowadays, if you open up Time Out in London or anything else, it’s like there are 100 bands on par with Tortoise that are playing constantly. There wasn’t really an outlet for that type of music I wanted to work with.

I found it was really hard because you would take punts on shows and the attendance would be down. You’d lose money and then it would be ages before another band that was worth doing comes through. It was difficult and also, it was tempting to try and go outside of that and start playing the game, but we rode out the rough times and kept it true to the original thing.

I’m supposing a big part of that is having the connections you made through ATP, such as Sonic Youth and the credibility that having guys like that playing in your festival lends you as a promoter.

That’s definitely helped, but the thing with us is that the roster of bands that we do outside of the festival are all bands that we actually like. I’ve been offered some bands that are huge and I’m like “I can’t do that.” I got begged to do Snow Patrol in 2003, and I remember their agent at the time was like, “I really want you to do it. They’re going to be great. They’re going to be massive.” I was like, “There is no way they’re going to be massive,” but the thing is; I didn’t know they changed their sound from sounding like Sebadoh to Coldplay. I think it’s good that we haven’t sold out in that way.

How do you go about goal setting for ATP? When you began, did you imagine 5 years down the track, 10 years down the track?

No, I have to be honest with you; every time I do the next one, I’m thinking about how it has to be better than the last one. We have to finally think of a curator that no one else is going for, and I want each one to be better than the last one. Some of them are fantastic and some aren’t as good as the others and it can be a bit disappointing, but I think we’re always striving.

Someone said to me today, “Do you think you’ll get to 20 years?” I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe.” I don’t know if I can think that far ahead, but as I said to you; I want to keep doing this as long as it’s still fresh and exciting, and the minute it stops being that, that’s the time to pull the plug.

When’s the next Australian ATP event planned?

That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer to that. To be honest with you; I really loved the Mt. Buller event [pictured left]. It was really special, really great. The lineup that was up there and that setting, especially that second stage where you could see all the mountains behind it, through the stage. That was amazing, but it was just the spirit of people that were up there because I think a lot of people have gone to things like Big Day Out and Homebake and that. Those things are good for what they’re designed for. They seem like a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. That’s how ATP was when it started in England 10 years ago. People were like, “Fuck, great, we can go see 20 bands all at one weekend instead of having to wait all day for someone to come on at Reading, or something like that.”

ATP Australia – would it happen again? Yeah, we’d like to think so. We’re taking a step back because we’ve just got some venue issues and stuff. Once we resolve them we’d definitely like to pursue Buller again if we could.

Everyone I spoke to at Buller was just having a great time. Everything I read about it afterwards was extremely positive. Do you ever receive bad reports about ATP?

Yeah, for example I know some people came last weekend. We had My Bloody Valentine curating. Some people thought it was great but some felt the people there, the atmosphere wasn’t like it was at this one. I think each one changes by the crowd. There seemed to be quite a lot of middle-aged men last weekend, but there are lots of young girls at this one, which is always definitely more encouraging.

We do get some people who don’t think it’s – they’re not into it, but I think ATP – it’s what you make of it as well. You can be into the media but you’ve got to go there with a right mindset. You have to go there and want to enjoy yourself and let go and jump away from your job for 3 days and just embrace all the music and film, and the art, and hanging out with friends. It can be a really great thing to go to. Someone said to me, “Would you go to it yourself if you weren’t putting it on?” I’m like, “Yeah, I probably would.”

Probably?

Yeah, well I would, of course I would. I would. Sorry!

You mentioned events like Glastonbury and Reading and so forth, when comparing ATP. When was the last time you went to Reading and Glastonbury? Do you ever go to those events just to remind yourself?

I don’t compare ourselves. I use that as a reason why I started this. I went to Glastonbury in 2002. I will never go back to that thing. I just don’t understand how people could enjoy being there with too many people, too short of a space of time, and I’ve seen people – we were talking to Keith Cameron just now from Mojo. He was saying he saw someone get their head kicked in, in broad daylight there. There is a horrible vibe there, really.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to those; too busy running this. That was the only thing you could go to if you wanted to go see some of the bands. If the Pixies were over [playing shows], if you couldn’t see them in shows you went and saw them in Reading or Glastonbury and it was kind of like that was where you could see some of the rare bands you wanted to check out. It was more a case of using that as an example of where you would see that music and why we started this.

You mentioned that self control is important when booking bands, or when the curator asks to book bands. I’m taking it since the capacity is capped here, so is the budget for booking bands?

Yeah.

Is it difficult to manage?

If you gave me a wish list and you put AC/DC, Leonard Cohen, and Motorhead on there, then if you took one of those bands, it would just wipe out the budget. You need to kind of tailor the lineup to the size of the event. It’s always good to have a couple of big names and stuff, but I think the real beauty of ATP is having all those kind of midrange bands, the sort of ones that would fill up Center Stage and have – it’s better to have more of those midrange than all big hitters.

There have been a couple of events where we’ve had some really big names, and then it’s all been small bands, and it hasn’t felt balanced. You get lots of people at one show and then it’s kind of half empty at other ones. With the curators, I have to kind of say as much as we’d love to have Neil Young, as much as we’d love to have Bob Dylan, it’s probably unrealistic that we could afford it. We just kind of need to guide them, really. I try to give everyone as much freedom as possible. I’m just hoping no one puts Blur on their list. [laughs]

Is your favourite ATP still the Dirty Three-curated one?

Yes, definitely.

Do you thank [Dirty Three frontman, pictured right] Warren Ellis often for that?

All the time. He’s just been so amazing to work with over the years, so supportive. There are other curators as well. There are so many of them I think of that was as well, but their whole take on it and the way they approached it and the actual weekend itself was just magical; it really was. I just was walking around and everyone was having the time of their life. I also thought that ATP that Nick Cave did in Mt. Buller was one of my favorite ones as well. Definitely, that was a highlight.

This one might be difficult to answer, but when you think of the average ATP fan or concertgoer, what image do you have in mind?

Someone who is into music, who probably is the sort of person that when they buy records, they want to know where the band recorded it, what studio, and stuff like that. Someone said to me, “record nerd” but I think it’s people who actually give a shit about music. They don’t buy their CDs or vinyl in supermarkets, which seems to be one of the few places you can buy music these days like that. Most of the record shops are closing.

So you’d say it’s for the more discerning music enthusiast?

Definitely. It’s for people who went to see bands that blew their mind and wanted to even start a band or get into music, where music is really special to them and they listen to it all the time, checking out new stuff and they’ve got memories of old things. I think ATP appeals to them because it crosses a lot of those things, really.

Do you try to avoid associating ATP with indie rock, in particular?

I guess I’m an indie kid at heart. I guess we’ve been described as an indie festival, but indie is a bit of a weird term these days. You get some people who are on indie labels but they have the mindset of a corporate sort of thing. We have had a lot of indie guitar stuff over the course of time, but the curators we pick, it’s the music they’re into. Each one is different.

For example, that Mike Patton one we did with The Melvins, that was pretty eclectic because it had Taraf de Haidouks and then you had White Noise and Stockhausen and those sort of things, but you also had Mastodon and The Melvins. It was very different. I guess most of the best music around is coming from indie labels. That’s why we focus on it really, but we get criticized for having too many American bands. Someone said that but I just think a lot of the bands that come right out of England aren’t very good. There are some good ones, but on the whole, I think a lot of the best stuff around has been coming out of the States for a while.

What’s your favorite ATP festival moment, ever, stepping outside of the office and just walking around, watching the bands?

There are way too many to remember…

I know you’re a big fan of Lightning Bolt [pictured left].

I remember the first time that Lightning Bolt came and played ATP. There were a lot of people that didn’t know who they were and then when they played on the floor and the actual great thing was seeing the reaction on peoples’ faces. They were like, “What the fuck is this?” That was really good. There are so many.

I think some of the best things I’ve seen, music wise, is Sleep performed ‘Holy Mountain’ earlier this year. The Boredoms did ‘Boardrum’ in New York. That’s some of the best things I’ve ever seen at the festival but I think highlights for me are things like Slint, because ‘Spiderland’ is probably one of my favorite records of all time. Getting to see them perform that live was… I had to move a few mountains to get those guys back together.

I was saying to David Pajo today that when I met them, Slint had never been in a room together, the 4 of them, for 13 years. I’m a huge Slint fan and I said to them – we went to Britt [Walford]’s house for this meeting. I was so excited I was there and I said to them, “Can I go to the toilet?” They were like, “Yeah” and I was in there – I didn’t actually need to go to the toilet. I was in behind the toilet door going like this, “Yes!!!” just freaking out. I told David today and he’s like, “Really?” and I’m like “Yeah!” [laughs]

It meant the world to me. As I’ve said to some people, it’s like – the way [music magazine] Mojo think about The Beatles, I think about Slint. It was really special to see that and to see them perform because they were someone I always wanted to see and never thought I would because they weren’t together. That always sticks in my mind as a real special thing. I feel proud that we’ve done them, really.

The same kind of thing with My Bloody Valentine, too. You were kind of one of the forces behind them getting back together.

Yeah, they hadn’t been together for 16 years and the thing is; a lot of people have made them offers over the years, but it’s like trying to lift an old truck from a swamp, trying to get it back into motion. It was possible but it needed help. I think we were able to present them the setup they needed to do it. Kevin was really kind to trust us to do that. We did it. The shows were fantastic and it worked really well.

I just think we look at things in a different way. Some people promote like, “You’ll make this much money,” but you need to sort of show the artist what they’re going to get from it, not just the money. It’s got to be the actual performance and what benefit they get from it too. I think that’s important and that gets overlooked by some people. That’s probably why we’ve got to work with so many great artists over the years because of our attention to detail. We put care into it.

I saw them all three nights, last weekend. I’m so glad I did. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen.

Had you seen them before?

No. It was cool to see ‘You Made Me Realise‘ three times. [Notably, because the band end the song with a 15ish minute noise jam known as the 'holocaust section'. It's fucking intense.]

Did you have ear plugs in?

Of course.

I was going to say when the first show they did for us was a warm-up show at the ICA. I don’t know how they felt about the show. I don’t think they were too into it, but the first time seeing those tracks being played live for a long time was like, “Whoa, this is going to be a joke.” When they went into a bigger room like the Round House and had the full PA, it was like a jet plane taking off.

Last question - what’s next for ATP? How do you go about planning for the next couple of years?

I’m in the process, I’m still booking Pavement, which is next year, and [The Simpsons creator] Matt Groening in May. Then I’m pursuing two curators for Christmas next year. I can’t say who they are just yet, but once I get them in place I’ve kind of got an idea of – we’ve had at least talks and I’ve got an idea of who they would want. I think it will surprise people because if both of them come off it will be things that people won’t be expecting. Again, we want to make is special because it’s the 10th year and we want to do the year-long celebrations and stuff.

I just thought of another question. You had the ATP film for the 10th anniversary, which I saw in my chalet the other day. Any plans for a book?

There has been talk of it. We were talking about maybe doing a kind of book, incorporating the artwork and stuff. Yeah, we’ve been approached by people to do it, so you never know… “You bought the t-shirt, you watched the film, now read the book!”

I’m sure there’s a market for it. ATP fans are pretty hardcore.

They are, but the thing is they’re not stupid. I couldn’t just put on a crap lineup because then people won’t come. It needs to be quality and people actually sit on the fence saying, “I’m thinking of going to this one but if they announce a couple of more bands” and then they do, but my favorite thing is watching kids on message boards, and I’ll be looking at various things because it’s always good to see what people are up to or saying. They’re always like, “Why the fuck did they get them to curate? They’re going to pick a load of shit!” and I remember when they did that with Mars Volta and Explosions In The Sky and then the same people 6 months later were going, “This is the best lineup ever. I’m totally going.” During all this time it was like, have patience. You need to see it unravel itself and I think it’s kind of good doing that because we know what’s coming and seeing the reaction from people is good.

Do you also monitor the feedback and attendee reviews afterwards?

We do, we take things on board. If someone says I had a really shit time in this venue because of something like the lights might be wrong or the PA was in the wrong place, we don’t ignore that sort of thing. We take it on board and try and make each one better than the last one, like a new and improved formula each time we do it.

There are a few people here that haven’t been here since 2007 and the Pavilion Stage, which is the big room, we didn’t have those drapes down the side, and we didn’t have the star cloth. They make a massive difference to that room. We also changed the PA in the Center Stage where you were for My Bloody Valentine. Just lighting configurations and things like that but it’s all – we use feedback and we exploit it and make put it to use in a beneficial sense so that each time someone comes back they go, “Oh, this is fixed up.”

Better and better.

Yeah, if you rest on your laurels and go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got this great thing now and got the curator in, that’s it. You’ll fucking like it or lump it” then it won’t last another 10 years. Whether I’m still doing it in 10 years is another thing but I only want to keep doing it until I lose the fire inside me that started it. There are times when it goes out, but this weekend has definitely been a great one for us, just so many bands – they’re all old curators and people who have recorded for us, but also friends. Every time you walk around it’s like, “Hey, how are you doing?” The spirit here has been really good.

You went to last weekend. I didn’t feel that same atmosphere last weekend as I did at this one. Again, it’s like a different mix tape and a different interpretation. It was quite abrasive last weekend, the music and stuff. It was all that heavy guitar stuff. It was good, and it worked really well, but I think this one seemed to be a bit more eclectic.

Thanks for your time, Barry.

This interview was conducted for a story on behalf of Rolling Stone Australia, pictured left. Read that story here.

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A Conversation With Steve Milbourne and Phil Clandillon, Creative Directors of Sony Music London

This is the full transcript of the December 2009 conversation I had with Steve Milbourne and Phil Clandillon, Creative Directors of Sony Music London, in their Kensington office. I interviewed them on behalf of The Music Network; you can read the published story here. [Note: if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, the video embeds might not work. I don't know why. Click through and view it on my blog.]

Andrew: The main reason I’m aware of your work is because of the few campaigns you’ve been behind in the last year, like AC/DC, Kasabian, Editors, and Calvin Harris. Those are the ones I’m aware of, but before we go into those, I thought I’d ask you how you got into the music industry, and why.

Steve [pictured right]: The reason I got into the music industry is because I’ve always loved music. From my early twenties, what I wanted was to get into the business side of it. Then I kind of got into the whole creative thing. I went to work at an indie label after graduating from uni, called Kitchenware Records, which is based up in Newcastle. They’re sort of big old indie from the ‘80s. I had lots of success in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, and then they sort of reformed the label. It was a new entity in 2003.

I went to work for them in 2004 at the exact same time they signed a band called Editors, which you know of. I got interested in their situation of not having any money to do anything with, so it was like I was given a band to work with and then I’d have to do the artwork, make a music video, do stuff online, make websites, and all that sorts of stuff with zero pounds to work with, which is quite good. I might have spent a few years just sort of honing all these skills that crossed a wide range of areas, from web programming to production and film, so it all kind of came in handy when I came to Sony about two and a half years ago, and then Phil came in. They brought us in separately but then we got put together as a creative team and that’s it.

Phil [pictured below left]: I’ve basically spent the last ten years doing half my work in the music industry and half in advertising, in sort of digital agencies. I started off doing digital work around TV and then interactive TV. Then the dot-com crash happened and there weren’t any jobs, so I came to London. I got heavily into the club scene at the time, and met some people that were running nights and things like that. I ended up getting an office in an online radio station, which is in the Truman Brewery, and basically electronic artists were coming in to do shows and DJ on the station. I just ended up getting freelance work through that and I worked for years for an outfit called Sancho Panza, who are most famous for Notting Hill Carnival, for doing a big stage at Notting Hill Carnival. They also did warehouse parties and things like that.

From there I got offered a job at a record label, Sanctuary Records, which is now part of Universal. I started doing web stuff for them and after about three years there I got kind of fed up with the record industry as it was then and went back to advertising stuff. I worked at a digital ad agency and then a larger advertising group after that.

About two years ago I decided it was a good time to go back to music. Sony came knocking so I came and met Steve and decided I could probably work with him, and that’s that. We kind of kicked it off from there, essentially.

Is Creative Director a very common role within labels? I’ve not really heard of it before.

Steve: Not particularly. We’re quite unique in what we do, with regard to the type of work that we do in the music industry, I guess. Essentially we run almost a boutique agency in-house and our clients are with various labels within the Sony umbrella. I don’t think the other labels do that.

What it means is we essentially take on various groups from the big labels in here, which are Epic, Columbia, RCA, Syco, which is Simon Cowell’s label, and then some smaller labels, as well – Jive, and Deconstruction. What we do is get a brief of a band that Sony Music want to promote this band or this artist, then we come up with the creative and sort of service them as our clients.

Phil: We sort of created the advertising creative time type model inside of the record label, which is kind of unique. There really isn’t anyone else doing that. The reason we can do it is because we’ve spent years gaining these skills of design, programming, video production, music skills in Steve’s case as well. We don’t do tons and tons of that stuff, hands on, but if we have to we can. When we’re commissioning the work we know what to go and get. It makes it easier for us to run a complex project because we’ve done it all in the past and we know how to do it, essentially.

Steve: A lot of that stuff gets really complex at times. It’s quite weird; the sort of stuff we do is often experimental. You’re kind of always sitting on the edge; “is this going to work or not? Am I going to waste loads of money?”

Phil: We’re always sticking our necks out, I guess, and one of the reasons we can do that is because what we do is very cost effective. It’s not as expensive as traditional advertising so it means we can do things that reach more people without spending as much money. That gives us a little bit of freedom to experiment and do more exciting things. To be honest, it generally goes fairly well, but if you do make mistakes it’s not the end of the world because you’re only talking about relatively small amounts of money.

Steve: Yeah, we haven’t had any that haven’t worked out, yet.

Phil: We presented all our work at a creative review conference, last week. A lot of questions we had from the audience were all about “This seems very risky. How could I sell this to the client if I was at an agency?” On the one hand our answer was you need the experience to be able to pull stuff like this off. If you don’t have the experience it will go wrong. The other thing is a lot of the stuff we do is designed to be shared. We don’t buy media. We don’t pay for advertising space, and in a way, as long as you’re doing something with good intentions, the worst thing that’s going to happen is it’s going to languish in the corner of the Internet somewhere and no one is going to see it. It’s not like putting a really inappropriate advertising campaign across London on billboards or whatever. It’s a totally different proposition. That allows us to take a few more risks, I guess.

Steve: Going back to your question about our job title; I guess it depends on what you term as Creative Director. I think that’s slightly misleading. That’s what our titles are, and it’s in the context of what we do. I guess other labels have got creative directors, but probably do different things to us. I think what other labels – I’m not aware of any other labels who’ve got a creative team, in-house, who do this sort of work that Phil and I do. There are other creative directors in this building who look after different things, like artwork, or styling, and stuff like that. That’s just a title. It’s more about what we do, really.

I mentioned the four campaigns of yours that I’m aware of: Kasabian, AC/DC, Editors, and Calvin Harris. I’m interested in how you run these as online marketing campaigns. Say, for example Kasabian ['Football Hero' video embedded below]; could you talk me through how that idea started and how it came across through the production?

Steve: We work closely with a consumer insight team here. I guess part of what is loosely termed “briefing process” is that the consumer insight team, every time there is an artist with an album coming out, they do a lot of market research on that artist, on the audiences for that artist, and we have this thing called the ‘Segment Bible’, which is the UK music market split into 28 segments of consumer, based on age, interests, everything from what brands they buy, where they hang out, how much money they spend. It’s very in depth actually, so when we take on an act to do the online campaign for, we get told who the applicable segments are, and we get the opportunity to speak to people within that segment. They come in and we can talk to them. With Kasabian it was kind of – we already sort of know about Kasabian quite well because it’s their third album and –

Phil: But there were some pretty obvious things coming out. With Kasabian, we were looking at – we have this thing called an artist DNA, which is a document that sums up everything to do with the audiences for that audience, what matters to them about the band, and so there were really strong themes coming out of that to deal with football, gaming, and the way they hung out with them, what they actually did, what they’re into.

Steve: It’s interesting, that audience actually cares more about football and gaming than they do about music. Music is sort of a secondary thing in their lives.

Phil: It was kind of sensible to try and reach them through those channels so we basically said let’s come up with a piece of content that –

Steve: Kind of seems really obvious but I guess it wasn’t like a eureka moment but it was like – Kasabian is sort of synonymous with football, especially here in the UK.

Phil: If their music is used on the titles of the iTV football program and stuff like that and they’ve been on the Sony Bravia ad with Kaka, the Brazilian and AC Milan footballer. And also, the band are fans of football. They’re fans of Leicester City.

Steve: They are big football fans. We kind of started off on this idea of doing something with football and then I guess that kind of progressed. We were thinking about loads of different ideas and kind of progressed into gaming.

Phil: I guess quite a lot of that stuff involves music as well, so that kind of came around to trying to build a giant game of essentially a Guitar Hero type game that people could play with footballs. That was the pipe dream, and from then on it was trying to make it a reality. It was quite a lengthy process in the end!

Steve: I think that we were sitting downstairs there, when we finally got exactly what we wanted to do. Especially, we knew we wanted to get some really cool, freestyle footballers to do it as well. We don’t know any, so then we had the whole process of finding out how we could build it, who we could get to play it, where we could build it, and all that sort of stuff.

Phil: Again, we always work with fairly tight budgets and that was the case with this, as well. It had to be doable for a reasonably modest sum of money so that was a challenge as well. We used the hardware, and the software was all open source and it was pretty low cost, all that stuff. There was a very big production on the day but it was only for a day. The R&D process was relatively inexpensive. Then it was a case of building it and seeing how it would go, essentially, and spending a whole day building, and filming it.

Throughout the whole process is there the risk that the thing wouldn’t work or the footballers weren’t good enough to make it work?

Phil: Absolutely, yeah.

Steve: I think so, but –

Phil: We kind of knew that it would be okay.

Steve: Just the experience, you minimize all the risks, so –

Phil: The hardware, the actual game we built wasn’t technically complicated.

Steve: No, it was one of the least technical things that we’ve done, really.

Phil: That was okay. We knew that was going to be alright so it really came down to would the footballers have enough time to practice, because it was something that wasn’t going to be easy to play.

Steve: And, just the logistics of them playing it, balls bouncing everywhere, and all that sort of stuff.

Phil: And the camera gear, as well, to be honest; there was a lot of expensive gear on the shoot and the balls were just flying everywhere. I was sure we were just going to smash everything.

Steve: Yeah, it was like – you can see in the film, there are the five footballers and each one of them has got a ball boy who is feeding them balls. Then, behind them are literally about 20 people shielding all of the cameras –

Phil: And jumping in front of the balls, saving something.

Steve: The cameras, and the monitors, and all that sort of stuff.

Phil: Yeah, the directors and monitors did get hit in the screen at one point, and it didn’t break. Luckily!

Steve: The thing is, and this is kind of what all our work is about; it’s an experiment and we’re not aiming to do things that are going to be perfect. What we want to do is to tell a story about how we did it, what we’re trying to do, and gear that towards an audience that is interested in that. No one is ever going to believe it if we made this –

Phil: It would be easy to fake –

Steve: … came in and faked it, and all the footballers play and get 100% and everyone is really happy. That’s not believable. To us, what we try and do is to create stories that people want to talk about. I think one of the main things that came out of the Kasabian one was most people said, “I’d love to have a go on that. It looks really difficult. It’s obviously difficult but how much fun is that.”

Phil: It’s like during the shoot, every time we’d stop the take and the footballers went off to have a drink or whatever, the whole crew was playing the game and we were creating just as much carnage ourselves as they were.

Steve: Most people we’ve spoke to since are like, “Where is it?” [laughs] We had to take it down, which was a shame.

Phil: As Steve says, it’s all about telling the story of what we’re doing. It’s not – we’re all about taking on ambitious experiments, trying to make them work, and documenting the process, and telling people about it. The way that works is it becomes an interesting story for people. They pass it on to their friends and it travels around naturally like that.

Steve: More importantly it becomes an interesting story for the type of people who we have an insight that they sort of might like that particular artist. Then it’s targeted marketing, essentially.

Phil: But it’s not that we’re pushing a message at people. We’re letting them spread it. It’s up to them. We’re not even expecting people to do it. It’s just if we create a piece of content that is good enough and interesting enough to those people, then they’ll naturally spread it around. That’s how your message gets out.

The way you describe it to me now, you knew that Kasabian fans were into football and gaming. It seems obvious that it was going to be a winner. I looked at it this morning. It was up to 800,000 views.

Phil: That’s been out for about a month now, so I think it’s still growing quicker than the AC/DC one did. [The Excel-based 'Rock N Roll Train' AC/DC video embedded below.]

Steve: That’s because it’s not the same segment as AC/DC. We sort of have an idea of population numbers of people in those segments.

Phil: There’s about 5 million, isn’t there?

Steve: 1.5 million in the UK. Then obviously our stuff sort of spreads around the world, as well. You can kind of get a good idea of whether you’re hitting the right people or not, and the amount of people in each territory that are hitting, and you get a good percentage on that from what you’ve spent to do it against how effective it’s been.

Beyond the view count, what are the metrics you use to measure the effectiveness of these campaigns?

Steve: We look at – I guess you could say a lot of people write stuff about what we do, and blog about it, and that’s one of the aims – to get people to share.

Phil: It’s less about the view count, to be honest – actually, those view counts, on average 70% of those views come from embedded videos and articles, and blogs and things. It’s much more about securing coverage in the right channels, that we know that the targeted audience reads. If ‘Football Hero’ pops up in the tech channels, the gaming channels, and sports channels, it could be newspapers, blogs, or whatever, then we know that we’ve done the job.

Steve: That one – most of the stuff that we’ve done often spreads out into traditional press, TV, and stuff like that as well.

Which is the ultimate, in many ways, wouldn’t it be? Obviously, your work is online based, but making that leap across is quite the achievement.

Steve: It’s quite interesting the way that you see it. It all transcends through various audience groups. When you read a newspaper, you’re kind of always reading yesterday’s news online. It’s like you pick up today’s newspaper and apart from the breaking stories, you could have read about all this stuff yesterday on Twitter, or blogs or stuff like that. It is interesting when you see – we don’t really press release what we do so it’s nice when you see a journalist has obviously seen it, and picked it up, and then written about it in the newspaper. It’s kind of cool.

Phil: Yeah, that’s kind of that natural spread. That’s what we kind of aim for. What we try and do is to earn our own media so that’s really the magic – getting in the right media and in the right place. If we did, then fine, that’s the job done sort of thing.

Steve: We believe that you shouldn’t have to pay for media, especially not online, because banner ads are really ineffective, and companies still spend a lot of money putting these banner ads on various sites.

Phil: Yeah, they’re utterly ineffective. I think it’s fair enough; if you want to advertise outdoors, for whatever reason, then you’re going to have to pay to get billboards. It’s as simple as that. But, if you want to advertise online, then it makes much more sense to me to try and earn your own media, in the editorial of sites, and stuff, rather than trying to buy ad space where no-one’s looking. And in order to do that, there’s no shortcut to it. You have to create content that people care about, essentially.

And as well as the content, the relationships with those people who write the content, I assume.

Phil: Oh, not necessarily. You’d be surprised.

Steve: I don’t think that’s as important because even the way that we sort of go about launching a campaign, we kind of experiment with a lot. Pretty much, our launch plan is to send it to a couple of blogs and –

Phil: Yeah, so in a particular area there might be a fanatical blog about something to do with electronics, or football, or something like that. Then we’ll send it to one of them and say, “We’ve made this thing. Do you like it? Do you want to cover it?”

Steve: One thing that we’ve sort of found is that generally bloggers and journalists want to kind of write their own content. They want to write their opinion on things and I think when you press release stuff, and you sort of bombard them with the copy, you tend to get a fairly uniform story but there’s not going to be much passion in it.

Phil: There is not much variety, so you get the same story everywhere. What we try and do is don’t even press release.

Steve: We just let people pick up on it because I guess if it’s good, people will do that. If it’s compelling, people want to share it. That just happens.

Phil: They’ll come to you with questions if they have questions, and you can answer them.

Steve: But you get people who write in about it for real, and you get people saying, “I’ve just seen this in Wired and here’s my opinion on it.” I guess people will talk.

I saw AC/DC on Wired last year. I saw Editors on Creative Review ['Editors Hack Google Street View' video embedded below], and I’m not sure where I found the other two.

So you guys didn’t really coordinate those placements?

Phil: Well, Creative Review, we’ll tell them what we’re up to. They don’t have to cover it, but we’ll tell them.

Steve: We’ve got a bit of a relationship with Creative Review, just in terms of we speak at some of their conferences and stuff like that.

Have you given any presentations lately?

Steve: We did Click two weeks ago.

Phil: Which is like a London digital industry, digital advertising conference run by Creative Review. Inevitably, you end up making some contacts, so next time we go back to – do you know Make Magazine, which is like a – we’ve got a great contact at Make, a real nice guy who’s interested in the technical side of what we do. We’ll tell him about what projects we’re doing and he’ll go, “Oh, I like this one, and I’ll write about this one,” or whatever. He’ll ask us some questions.

Steve: Yeah, but it’s not a formal thing. It’s more like conversation, only it’s the work that we’re up to at the minute. I think that it also depends on the type of project that you do because Creative Review, I guess will cover our stuff; it’s more of an industry thing. It sort of – because the projects vary quite a bit, you’re looking at different target audiences for it. We might not always have stuff that Make are going to cover, or Wired or people like that. It’s more about allowing self discovery in the channels of that audience.

Phil: When it came to Kasabian, we didn’t really know anyone in the gaming channels at all, but we didn’t have to worry about it – or football, but we didn’t need to worry about that. It just came up in all the major gaming sites, major football sites. It’s much more about making good content. You need to get it out there, at the same time. Once it’s out there, small waves –

Steve: I guess our theory is that if it’s good, and it’s compelling for people to share, it will do it anyway. If it doesn’t, then your content’s not good.

It’s interesting to hear you say that, because it’s such a different way of thinking from the old way of spending on billboards, like you said earlier.

Steve: It’s like Phil said; instead of being a push model, it’s a pull model. Yeah, you’re exactly right; it’s completely different from just putting things in front of everyone’s faces. It’s allowing –

…the right faces, ones who will be interested in it, because it appears in those channels.

Phil: Yeah, so instead of pushing a message out and paying for media for it to be there, you are putting a piece of content out and hoping it will pull people to it, and that people will share it around. It’s totally about making the content compelling and tailoring it to the right audience. It would be difficult to be doing that without the targeting information.

Steve: We sort of talk about this a lot and talk about this with other people; I guess a lot of it is sort of digital creative agencies or creative agencies doing this type of content – I know a lot of people who do some really great work, and it’s really cool ideas, but I guess what we do which a lot of people don’t do is really think about who we’re targeting, rather than just having a cool idea. It’s having a cool idea for the right audience because it might be, sometimes, that we have to sell something to a bunch of 35-year old women, and it’s really easy to make assumptions and make mistakes when you’re making something that you think’s going to appeal to them. So having all this insight and artist DNA and stuff like that helps find something that you’ve got a good idea that they will be interested. They won’t feel like they’re being advertised to.

Phil: You’ve got to get out there and put yourself into their head essentially, and think, “Alright, if I was this type of person, what would I…” The actual people in the insight department will go as far to do this. They’ll spend a week in the life of a particular segment; they’ll consume the right media, go to the right things, so they’ll try to experience that person’s world so they understand it better.

A lot of people say, “That’s not very cool, targeting stuff, and consumer insight,” but what you’re doing is instead of filling the world with advertising which is generic, not aimed at anyone, and annoying for vast quantities of people, instead you’re trying to make something a certain type of person will be interested in. It will reach them naturally, through their friends, and the rest of them through channels they’ve been seeing, and the rest of the people just might see it. In a way, I would argue that type of advertising is more sensitive to end users than the current model of push advertising.

Steve: Yeah, and it’s interesting that it’s not really about numbers, either. It’s about quality of engagement and the people that you’re engaging.

Phil: Some of the segments have a very small active population so what we call the fanatical segments, which are really enthusiastic about music, and there’s not many of them. There might be 50,000 in the country.

Steve: If that’s who you’re aiming for, if that’s who you’re aiming a particular creative ad, in order to get something back out of it, then it’s not really about numbers; it’s about engaging those particular people.

Phil: So on the fanatics, we’ll look for smaller numbers, but engaging them for a longer period of time. The Editors project, that’s aimed at a fanatical segment, and that’s looking at smaller numbers. Something like 100,000.

Steve: But you’re looking at stupidly high engagement rates.

Phil: Yeah, like over 3 minutes per person, and an average of 4 tracks each across the application. That’s the opposite way of doing it. Some of the segments are, “Right, let’s go for a big audience, with low engagement.”

Steve: I guess it depends on the objectives of what you’re trying to do, and it really has to support the wider market and campaign for the ad, as well.

Phil: There will be other activity going on, posters and things like that, and events. Ideally, our activity will create a sort of buzz in the news at the same time as all that auxillary stuff is going around. Next time somebody’s buying some music, they’ll have it in their head that they’ve enjoyed this bit of content with that music in it.

You’ve had a few successes with these kinds of campaigns now. How do you think the label management view these kinds of campaigns? Are they starting to see more value, giving you guys a bigger budget to work with for these kinds of projects?

Steve: Kind of, I think it’s like anything; the music industry is very similar to the advertising industry as well. It sort of takes a long time to turn things around to new models, and to change the behaviors of old, in terms of something huge like advertising. Really, it’s about the way that people consume media, which is changing. Any big company that starts looking at new areas like that, it’s a bit like turning a super tanker. I guess it’s slowly but surely – we’ve kind of started rolling these campaigns out. We don’t spend enormous amounts of money, at all. In fact, anything but – it’s really modest sums, especially for the advertising world. It would be like pocket change.

I guess the labels and the company in general sort of do attach value to what we do because we’re kind of proving we don’t need to do media spend, that we get really good engagement rates, and that we’re making interesting content that people are interested in, that isn’t just a Kasabian album out now. I guess budgets are going up a bit, but then –

Phil: I think we may be seeing that over the last two years, they’ve gradually given us more freedom and more autonomy to do what we do. It isn’t directly giving us more money for our projects but they’ve made it gradually easier for us to do.

Steve: I think that’s like a trust. I think sometimes an artist or artist manager might kind of see on paper what we’ve proposed to do and kind of go, “Ew, that’s different,” and they’re very sensitive to how artists are perceived by the public and things like that. I guess when we do stuff they feel like they’re taking a bit of risk, as well, but I guess the more we do this stuff, the more people see that it actually works and we sort of do the artist good. I guess more freedom comes from having that trust.

Phil: I’d say that’s been the major change to the artists. It’s not like we’ve suddenly got tons of money to spend, but we do definitely have more freedom now and definitely have more trust from the managers and artists and people like that. That kind of comes back into the work, so that we can do better work next time around.

Steve: The other thing about budgets is sometimes having endless budgets stifles your creativity. I think it’s nice to be able to execute stuff within the budgets that we do, and execute it well. Often, it means that we are very hands on, but I guess that being hands on means we also sort of keep an element of control and ownership over what we do so we get it the way we want it. We don’t just have an idea, then pass it to someone else and say, “Go and make that.”

Phil: Under some extreme circumstances, we’ve actually been cleaning the floor after the shoot. If it has to be done, we’ll do it.

Steve: Exactly, and I think that’s good too, because you think, “What’s the best that I can achieve for this amount of money that I’ve got to spend, when I can’t actually just go in and pay for lots of people to go do it?”

Phil: It’s a bit like you’ll spend what you’re given, generally, so someone gives you fifty grand, you’ll spend fifty grand, but that doesn’t mean the work is going to be any better than if they’d given you twenty.

Steve: I guess one of the things, as well, is that because we’re kind like an internal agency, we’re not trying to make money out of anyone. We’re actually just spending what we need to spend to do the project. It might be sometimes that actually what we need to spend is half of the budget that we’ve been given, and in that case – brilliant. Often, it’s not. Often, we’re sort of sitting on the very edge of what we’ve got to spend because it’s often not very much, but –

Phil: Yeah, in theory, if we didn’t need the whole thing, we wouldn’t spend it, but in practice you’re talking about such small budgets that we do spend it all.

Steve: We’re working on a new project at the minute. It’s quite difficult. One of the guys that helped on the Calvin Harris project. ['Humanthesizer' video embedded below.]

Which other labels or teams in the industry are you aware of who do similar stuff to you guys? Do you think you’re unique?

Phil: There isn’t anybody doing what we do.

Steve: In the advertising industry, for sure.

Phil: There are some campaigns, like you might have seen the Oasis campaign –

The buskers?

Phil: Yeah, and that’s BBH in New York, an ad agency.

Steve: There are a lot of ad agencies that we really like the work of, and that we see doing really good work.

Phil: That’s who we see our peers as other people in the advertising industry, rather than –

Steve: Rather than the music industry. What we do is advertising for the music industry. That’s why we’ve got interesting projects to work with. We’re not trying to sell dog food. It kind of makes your job quite fun.

Phil: Less soul-destroying.

It does sound like a pretty awesome job, to get to be creative with artists’ work.

Steve: It is really cool, actually. We have a lot of fun.

Phil: Can’t complain.

Steve: We have loads of fun doing what we do. It sort of is cool to be able to have really creative ideas and then be able to execute them for products that you’re actually quite passionate about or even if not passionate about, just sort of is more interesting than something which people generally find mundane. I’m not hugely into commercial pop music, but when you’re doing something for a really commercial pop act, and you see the people that you’re engaging, they’re really passionate about it so it kind of makes what you do feel worthwhile, rather than sort of –

Phil: Trying to sell people something they don’t need.

Steve: Yeah, try to sell a product that people don’t have – don’t care about at all. It’s completely different and it does make the job sort of really worthwhile and really good fun to do.

Phil:  I guess the other side of it is we’re always seeing R&D on new ideas, new technologies, and new things that we might develop and we have the freedom to be able to do that alongside our normal work, so that’s really good fun. We’re always tinkering with something, making something new, or trying to investigate how to do something.

That’s what I really enjoy, just getting my teeth into something that looks impossible and trying to make it happen. We’ll be trolling through the Internet, looking at writing programs, and drawing things, and trying to work out if we can make something work. It’s another fun side of it, what’s coming next, what are we going to do next.

I’ll leave it there. I’m out of questions. Could I grab a photo of you two as you are now?

Steve: Sure.

View Phil Clandillon’s portfolio at: work.clandillon.com

Steve Milbourne on Twitter: twitter.com/stevemilbourne
Phil Clandillon on Twitter: twitter.com/philclandillon

This interview was conducted for a story that appeared in The Music Network issue 770, January 18 2010. Read it here.

Filed under Conversations | Tags: ac/dc, Advertising, andrew-mcmillen, calvin-harris, click-london, conversation, creative-directors, creative-review, editors, england, football-hero, industry, Interview, kasabian, kensington, london, Marketing, Music, music video, phil-clandillon, promotion, Published Writing, sony-music, steve-milbourne, the-music-network, video, Writing | Comment (1)

Discussing ‘Lonesome Highway’

Let me tell you about ‘Lonesome Highway‘, my first feature for The Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts + culture lift-out. The story - which you should read (or glance at) here before continuing - discusses the challenges faced by Australian country musicians in 2010.

I spent the week beginning Monday, 18 January 2010 playing the part of ‘freelance writer without work’. I was pitching stories every day, and none of them were sticking. By Friday - after alternating between liaising with editors, and catching up with some friends in the Brisbane music scene - all I had was an approval to interview a hip-hop act for an online publication.. who don’t pay for online content, as I learned soon thereafter.

Earlier that week, I’d sent a Dirty Three/Laughing Clowns tour-related pitch to the editor of the Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts and culture lift-out. I’d been email-introduced to her by a helpful fellow editor at The Australian a few months ago, when I was pitching the idea of a story around the Robert Forster book launch/conversation at Avid Reader. (That one didn’t stick either, obviously.)

Fevered as I was in my determination to get a story idea - any story idea! - accepted, I sent that D3/Clowns pitch and promptly forgot about it. I’d prefaced it with a reminder stating that I’m a writer for Rolling Stone, jmag, etc, and that we’d last emailed in November.

At 4pm on Friday, 22 January - generally despondent, after a week of work with few returns - the editor of ‘Review’ called me. That’s 5pm local time from her office in Sydney, owing to daylight savings.

“I’ve got a problem,” she began.

“Oh?” I replied, wondering a) what I might have done to cause a problem, and b) whether I could perhaps solve said problem.

“I need a story on Australian country music following the conclusion of this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival. My regular music writer’s just gone on leave. Would you feel comfortable taking on this story?”

I paused for several seconds. “…you know I’m mostly a rock writer, right? For Rolling Stone, and stuff?”

She confirmed, and reiterated the question. The story was due on Wednesday; as in, five days’ time. Word length unspecified; it could be 1,200, or it could be 2,000. I inhaled, and accepted the challenge.

Immediately I pictured myself frantically pushing a library ladder around towering bookshelves that represent the contact details of everyone I’ve ever met. “Which of these people knows something about country music?” I yelled, in my mind. I sure didn’t.

In a gesture that would be repeated throughout the time I spent researching, writing and editing the story, the editor took her time to provide me with some suggested paths of research, historical background, and narrative guidance.

As soon as I hung up, I emailed dozens of my contacts within the music industry, searching for anything resembling a lead with regard to country music-related interview subjects. I put the call out on to my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. And for the first time, I used a site called SourceBottle, which allows journalists to request sources within a wide range of industries and subject matters.

To my surprise, helpful responses began appearing in my inbox as fast as I could send out requests. My contacts introduced me to experts on the subject. My friends on social networks tipped me off to artists and their managers. And SourceBottle delivered some great offers from watchful PR professionals, who were keen to have their clients represented in a story.

So began a crash course in researching the current players in Australian country music. I read stories filed from the Tamworth festival by The Australian’s regular music writer, Iain Shedden, who I’d interviewed a few months earlier for One Movement Word. I wrote an outline of what I planned for the story to cover, and warmed up with some phone conversations over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone to country musicians, radio announcers, artist managers, alt-country artists, schoolteachers, historians and record label staff.

All told, I conducted 18 interviews, throughout which I scribbled notes in preparation of listening back to the recorded audio. Tuesday - the 26th, Australia Day - was spent shaping what I’d learned from the experts into a coherent story.

While interviewing, a frequently-recurring topic prompted me to pay more attention to the apparent dearth of  media opportunities available to country musicians. Ultimately, this would become the focal point of the story: what was imagined as a mere discussion on where the genre stands in 2010 morphed into a sympathetic piece highlighting the many challenges faced by country performers. As stated in the story, these are related to image, airplay opportunities, marketing, media attention, and even differences within the community.

I submitted my first draft at 4am the next morning. Upon review, my editor suggested that a couple of follow-up quotes were required from Troy Cassar-Daley to describe the genre in his own words. And somewhere between fact-checking and quote-verifying, I’d forgotten to tighten the narrative structure, so my editor reshaped the piece to improve its flow.

Upon confirming her final edit, the biggest story of my career was out of my hands. It wouldn’t appear in print for 10 days. (The cover from the February 6 issue of ‘Review’ is below right.)

It was the most exhilarating journalistic experience of my life. Five days focussed on researching and synthesising the story of a centuries-old art form into around 2,000 words. What a challenge. I’m so glad I accepted it. It even resulted in my first live-to-air radio interview for ABC Mid-North Coast the day before the story was published. (At the time of writing this, I’ve not yet listened back to it, owing to embarrassment…)

In a way, the whole experience - the initial unexpected, but not unplanned-for phone call, the willingness on the editor’s part to take a chance with me - justified the time and effort I’ve dedicated to my writing since I changed my mindset and became serious about pursuing it as a career.

Looking back, it seems that this occurred sometime in June 2009. I’m simply thrilled that eight months later, I’ve been published in The Weekend Australian, one of the country’s biggest newspapers. Awesome. If you have any questions relating to this story, I’ll try to answer them in the comments.

Thanks to the following people who helped with the story.

Interview subjects: Troy Cassar-Daley, Adam Harvey, Graeme Connors, Amber Lawrence, Anne Kirkpatrick, Joy McKean, Felicity Urquhart,  Luke Austen, Chris Pickering, Roz Pappalardo, John Elliott, Geoff Walden, Nick Erby, Bill Page, Aneta Butcher, Cheryl Byrnes, and Scott Lamond.

Contact sources, miscellaneous inspiration: Stephen Green, David Carter, Craig Spann, Deb Suckling, Ed Guglielmino, Rick Chazan, Nick O’Byrne, Alison Brown, Dan Stapleton, Deborah Jones, Rachael Hall, Tim Lovett, Blair Hughes, Paul & Deb McMillen, and Matt Weller.

Filed under Writing | Tags: abc-radio, australia, country-music, genre, iain-shedden, Interview, lonesome-highway, mid-north-coast, Music, sourcebottle, the-australian, the-weekend-australian, troy-cassar-daley | Comments (5)

The Australian Review story: Lonesome Highway

This is my first feature for national broadsheet newspaper The Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts and culture lift-out. Entitled ‘Lonesome Highway’, it’s 2,000 words on the challenges faced by Australian country musicians. [Click the image for a readable version.]

This is by far the biggest story of my career; you can read about how it happened here. Full story text included below.

Lonesome Highway

Once a year country music gets its moment in the sun, then it all goes cold again. Andrew McMillen reports on a neglected genre

The country music scene appears on the radar of most Australians only each January, at Tamworth Country Music Festival time. Television shows brief clips of guitar-slinging performers; newspapers run wide shots of cowboy hat-wearing, denim-clad fans lining the main street and, if we’re lucky, which we mostly are, we’ll be shown “the weirdest busker on Peel Street”, says singer-songwriter Felicity Urquhart with a sigh, referring to the many performers who line Tamworth’s main drag and vie for the attention of visiting news crews keen to shoot and run.

Golden Guitar winners rate a mention in the mainstream media and then country music is put back in its box.

As singer-songwriter Adam Harvey puts it, “people tend to dismiss country music without giving it a go. They think we still sing about the one where ‘my wife left me and my dog died’, or if you play it backwards, it’s where ‘my dog left me and my wife died,’ ” he says with a laugh.

The problems are many: image, airplay opportunities, marketing, media attention, even differences in the sector about what country music should be in a wider music world dominated by glossy pop singers who flaunt skin and layer digitally enhanced vocals over processed beats .

As Harvey suggests, not everyone even knows what country music is.

The Australian’s music writer, Iain Shedden, puts it this way. “Country music, since it was first called that in the 1940s, has evolved and fractured into hundreds of sub-genres, from alt country to cowpunk to pop country crossover, so it’s impossible to attribute one strict formula to all of it.

“In Australia, however, it’s a little easier to define. Stretching back to the pioneering output of Tex Morton and then Slim Dusty, songs have simple folk structures, generally led by acoustic guitar, but accompanied by other instruments also used in the folk tradition, such as mandolin, banjo, harmonica. Most often the songs are in waltz or 4/4 time,” he says.

“The connection to the land is probably Australian country’s strongest lyrical characteristic, with John Williamson one of the leading exponents of that form. Lyrics often have a narrative, although at the pop end of country (taking Taylor Swift from the US as an example), they can be more abstract (or banal) with no ties to rural life at all.”

Amiable superstar Troy Cassar-Daley calls country “the story of everyday people. Vocally, it’s sincere; instrumentally, it’s proud to wear sounds like banjos and fiddles in the mix. Other music steers clear of those because they don’t want to be labelled, but we proudly use instrumentation that has the feel of the hills that cover this great land,” he says. “Lyrically, it’s pure home-town pride. And you know you’re listening to country - not pop or rock - when you hear songs for the common man. There’s a lot of people living, loving and dying in Australia, and this music is about them.”

Following this creed, Cassar-Daley won six Golden Guitars this year, including album of the year for I Love This Place, taking his career tally to 20.

“Afterwards I got a text from Keith Urban asking, ‘Can you just leave some for someone else?’,” he says, laughing.

Cassar-Daley was a popular winner, but there were questions elsewhere when writer-photographer John Elliott, a festival veteran, gave a lecture titled Let’s Get Real: The Need for Authenticity in Australian Country Music. “Great country music tells stories about our country; about who we are and where we come from. I think a lot of younger artists have lost this focus,” Elliott argued.

He also said performers needed to have an appreciation of what had come before. “Without that respect it becomes very bad pop music,” Elliott said. “And it has to have more of a connection to the country than wearing a hat, having a twangy guitar and getting your clip played on the Country Music Channel.”

Dusty’s widow Joy McKean, who celebrated her 80th birthday with a concert on January 21 at Tamworth’s Capitol Theatre, agreed. McKean is a songwriter who managed her husband’s career for more than 50 years. “As yet, no one has crystallised what it means to be country like Slim did. He was the point of reference for country music, and I don’t think we have that now. A lot of people are paying lip-service to country music for their own means, without having a genuine feeling for the music.”

The variety of music styles being presented in Tamworth this year gave some force to this argument, although Dusty’s daughter Anne Kirkpatrick, while warning today’s performers not to get “too wound up in the image to the exclusion of the heart and soul”, acknowledged the stature of Urquhart and Cassar-Daley in the business.

But no matter how good the country artist, there is still the matter of getting them heard. Aneta Butcher, who manages Australian country music at the nation’s largest independent record company, Sydney-based Shock Records, says: “I don’t know if we’re ever going to get mainstream radio to pick up what we market as country music. If we’re taking a country act to radio, we generally have to provide a pop mix of their single and hope for the best.”

In the US - where Urban is a huge star - there is a vast network of country radio stations, something Australia lacks. Urquhart, who won female artist of the year last month, has been sitting in as host of ABC radio’s Saturday Night Country program while regular host John Nutting is on leave, and says that in the absence of other outlets, “all we can do is try our best to promote, expand and educate the listeners of our ABC program … I truly believe there’s something in country music for every Australian.”

Scott Lamond, who was raised in Bundaberg on a healthy diet of Dusty and Williamson, has reported on country music events for the ABC for the past five years. “I know ABC radio takes country music seriously, but generally speaking there are limited broadcasting opportunities for country artists outside of community radio,” he says. “I spoke with [2010 Golden Guitar winner for group of the year] Jetty Road, who mentioned that there’s around 70 commercial stations in Canada playing country music 24/7. Australia just doesn’t have that; the platforms on offer to artists who want to share their music are limited.”

Harvey has tackled the issue of attracting attention by inviting performers from outside the country realm - including pop singer Guy Sebastian - to sing on his 2009 release Duets. Sebastian headlined a show at this year’s Tamworth festival, which was one of the first to sell out. The presence of such an unashamedly un-country artist was the talk of Tamworth, but as Harvey sees it, there has always been a diverse array of acts on display at the festival, where this year an estimated 2500 acts played across 10 days.

“The old guard tend to forget that the traditional Tamworth crowd’s getting older,” he says. “I understand we’ve got to respect our heritage, but we’ve also got to make sure we’re encouraging a steady influx of young performers. And if we’ve got to drag a few people with us to move the industry forward, we’ll do what we have to.”

Harvey’s willingness to test boundaries, is, he says, just “a bit of common sense. I’m aware of how important it is that we plan a long-term future for our industry.” Performers needed to remember “that we’re product who’re expected to sell records”.

Twelve-time Golden Guitar winner Graeme Connors says the country industry is in something of a trough.

“From my perspective, the music business cannot function without artists who are creating interesting, challenging, and diverse works … The business has this constant demand for large-selling records, and not every artist can do that with every release.” A powerful, individual voice is what’s missing, Connors says.

“That void will be filled in time, if only because the human spirit is incapable of staying in a lull. In the interim, there’ll likely be someone at the young end of the spectrum who’ll find a voice that reminds us just how good music can be.”

This year’s anointed up-and-comer is Luke Austen, winner of the 31st annual Star Maker talent quest. It’s a title previously held by Urban and Lee Kernaghan. Austen, 28, isn’t exactly a neophyte, having spent four years on the road with lauded bush balladeer Brian Young and six years as bassist for Cassar-Daley. He also co-wrote a song on Cassar-Daley’s I Love This Place.

“We prefer to select a winner who’s already working professionally in the industry, because they get it,” quest co-ordinator Cheryl Byrnes says.

A cautionary note is struck, nevertheless, by Geoffrey Walden, founder of the Gympie-based Australian Institute of Country Music. He contends that the Tamworth talent quest programs tend to build artists who don’t appeal to the younger demographic of potential fans. “It’s about marketability from the perspective of what the industry sees as the future of country music. They’re generally after someone who’s marketable and who’ll appeal to a wide audience, but not necessarily a young audience.”

Austen is acutely aware of the expectation thrust on him. “There hasn’t been a major star in a long time, but I’d like to put that pressure on myself because I feel that I’ll perform better. It inspires me to dig in and really make it work. I’ve won the respect of my peers, and now I just have to concentrate on backing it up with good product.”

Nick Erby is a Tamworth local who has attended all 38 country music festivals. “Competitively, contemporary Australian country music is the best you’ll find anywhere. We’re not backwards, we’re just underexposed,” he says.

Erby has a long history of broadcasting country music on radio, but now works online. He points out that terrestrial licenses for Australian radio are restricted and finite, but thousands of stations exist online, each broadcasting to niche audiences. “Online technology is shaking up the radio industry. Once the cost of access drops, the option will become more attractive to a wide array of listeners.”

He sees this as a potential answer to the lack of exposure for country music: his Country Music Radio online simulcast of this year’s awards overloaded his US-based server. “You watch,” he predicts. “In the next two years, the awards will be streamed via live video.”

Industry insiders also point to the success of the 20-year-old Swift, whose career and style could entice young Australian performers and fans. Swift’s second album, 2008’s Fearless, has sold more than seven million copies in the US. Butcher voices a hope shared widely: “Swift appeals to younger girls, who might be influenced to give country music a try,” she says.

Traditionalists may squirm, but this could be the future. As Urquhart says when despairing of the limited view of country music held by the media at large: “What about our shining lights and our new discoveries? There’s so much more to country music than footage of a hay bale and a guy with a chook on his head.”

And even someone as successful as Cassar-Daley half-jokes as he helps out with phone numbers: “Good luck with the story, mate. Keep it positive. We need it.”

This story originally appeared in The Australian’s ‘Review’ lift-out on February 6 2010. A link to the story on The Australian’s website is here.

Filed under Published Writing | Tags: adam-harvey, aneta-butcher, anne-kirkpatrick, cheryl-byrnes, country, culture, feature, felicity-urquhart, festival, geoffrey-walden, graeme-connors, guy-sebastian, iain-shedden, Interview, john-williamson, joy-mckean, luke-austen, Media, Music, nick-erby, Published Writing, Radio, Review, scott-lamond, slim-dusty, tamworth, the-australian, the-weekend-australian, troy-cassar-daley, Writing | Comments (2)