By Thor Benson
White Chocolate & the Cigarettes, featuring drummer Chase Spross and guitarist/vocalist Michael Whitby, is essentially a band that has done everything in its power not to appeal to the mainstream. Even their name was created in homage to how stupid most band names are. They’re not in music to make money, and this is evident in how little thought they put into what the masses will think about their music. I shared some brews with them and made them talk about the music industry.
In order to get a more diverse set of opinions I also had Kevin Evans of the band Ghost Tiger chime in via the internet from Santa Barbara, CA. Kevin and the rest of Ghost Tiger have been involved in the music industry for some time and are starting to make waves in Southern California with this new ensemble.
I decided to talk to bands of low notoriety because not many people realize what goes into becoming the music that ends up on their mp3 player, and no one understands this process better than someone who’s currently maneuvering through it. Many of us download music for free and end up at shows where we barely know anything about the band. I discussed this with White Chocolate & the Cigarettes in their home and tried to illuminate what it really takes to be known. It was a smoke-filled room that Robert Plant might have chosen as a place to die. The show posters on the wall were like obituaries, highlighting the ephemeral nature of music.
One of the hardest parts about being a musician is that everyone wants to book bands that will bring people in, and record labels are constantly berated with requests for representation from people they’ve never heard of. “You’re drowning in a sea of other musicians, even just in your city, and the internet puts you in a sea of even more musicians,” Chase pointed out. The advent of music technology available to everyone has made it so any jackass in an armchair can make an album. However, as we talked we realized how little of an effect this has had on what music is actually making it.
“Most of the music that gets recorded at home doesn’t get listened to by anyone who’s really willing to pay for it… Fucking Julian Casablancas recorded his shit on a little 8-track thing, but he knew people. Everybody in his band knew people,” Michael stated.
The meat of the thing is that people who are recording at home are often paying for equipment with money they could have invested in recording with a studio. Both methods require an investment in order to achieve quality. The deciding factor in finding success becomes if the music is quality or not and if you know the right avenues to get it noticed. “I didn’t want my personal bias going into it. We’re a two-man band, so I might as well have a third opinion,” Michael said in reference to recording their first album in a studio. He also pointed out that he didn’t really know where to market the album once it was finished, because there are so many music companies out there. Even when the album is complete it is very difficult to get attention to it. Most record labels don’t want to touch a fully formed album that has already been available for sale online for a number of months. “We put our first two years [of music] on our first album, and that’s not shoppable,” Michael said. “There are more musicians making money out there than there used to be, but they have to tour to do that…Record sales are only about recouping your expenses.” Even if you’re not in it for the money, making music is expensive and every musician would like to survive off of their art.
“When you count up the expenses that go into just having a band like, practice space rentals, gas to and from rehearsals and shows, not to mention all of the equipment needed to perform, a lot of bands barely break even. Before you have a label you can make money in all the same areas that you would with one, but having a label can give you more credibility and the same kinds of gigs will pay you more,” Kevin pointed out.
Michael and Chase have toured on their own dime, and claim that busking in Las Vegas was the most profitable thing they’ve ever done. Without a label backing you there is little chance of you making money that you don’t directly seek out and fight for. “You can’t just be passive and be doing it to do something,” Chase said. “I don’t think the internet’s done anything good for the music industry up to this point except killing the major labels,” Michael added. If you want to be successful on your own then you have to be your own publicist, manager, and music producer in many ways.
Kevin agreed with this concept by adding:
“In order to be consistently employed these days a musician often plays a multitude of instruments, sings, works as a sound technician, engineers/produce, and works as a concert promoter. In order to really make a real living as a musician, you need to do everything.”
Once you are on a label your music becomes a business model, and people expect you to dance on cue. Put on the tutu damn it, this is rock and roll baby! “If you get signed to a label, people come into your show with a preconceived notion,” Michael stated. You end up having to play shows you wouldn’t otherwise have wanted to play, and your activity on social media suddenly becomes a major conversation point.
Michael pointed out that even some of the bigger bands in their current residence of Portland had to work very hard to get where they are. “I feel like bands like Y La Bamba, Sally Ford, Sons of Huns, and maybe Wooden Indian burial ground have been around for some time in the Portland scene.” These bands appear to have meteoric rises to local stardom, but their foundations are actually in years of effort. There is also the fact that some bands just hit at the right time. Certain genres sell at certain times, and others don’t.
“I feel like all of these sub-genres come from us being overwhelmed with technology… When do we realize that we’re creating genres for the sake of creating genres? What we’re doing right now could be a whole new genre, two-man blues psych,” Michael said. “Everything has to be an iPod commercial with Feist playing in the background, and it’s fucking bullshit. If you’re stuck on these sub-genres you’re only going to look into these very small spectrums, and maybe that’s good for narrowing things down in an over-saturated market, but when does it end?”
“Labeling the music gets in the way of just listening to it and actually enjoying the music… You’ll get bands that are starting movements because that’s what they like to play, and then you get other bands latching on because that’s what’s becoming popular,” Chase added.
“Overly specific genres are inevitable if you’re trying to really express what you’re music sounds like using terms that are nonspecific in nature. Though my band would aptly fit into the genre “electronic-world-indie-rock” we have some songs that don’t use any electronics or rhythms from far off places, and some are very upbeat and poppy, so I guess that means to be really true to our sound we’d have to amend the genre to be “folk-world-electronic-indie-rock-pop” which I hope everyone would agree is just dumb,” Kevin said.
The ever-evolving world of what music genre you fit in is something that is often created by one musician. As The Guardian pointed out a couple of years ago, genres like ambient come from a Brian Eno album name. Genres like heavy metal originate from William S. Burrough’s character “Heavy Metal Kid” from his book The Soft Machine. Burroughs told The Paris Review in 1965: “I felt that heavy metal was sort of the ultimate expression of addiction, that there’s something actually metallic in addiction, that the final stage reached is not so much vegetable as mineral.” Burroughs wasn’t trying to invent a genre, and essentially it’s all a bunch of trendy doublespeak that should not define how a musician directs their endeavors.
Michael and Chase spent some time talking about what’s popular on the radio. From a musician’s perspective, the radio is both a mockery and yet a possible route to success. Radio play can be a game-changer for a band, but much of the music on the radio is… terrible. “The radio is in everyone’s car, and it’s passive and easy to listen to,” Chase said. “Music on the radio is always very well polished. They have access to great recording studios, studio musicians, and professionals.” Michael claimed to know the formula that the radio uses by saying that all is necessary is “a mediocre songwriter, a person with an image, and a producer that can fix it.”
“The music industry used to be very responsive… but now Clear Channel basically decides what we’re listening to, and they design it to be liked. Nothing gets onto the radio if it’s not a sure-fire hit. There used to be a little more chance-taking, and Ray Charles would be a perfect example,” Michael stated.
He expressed frustration with how many talented musicians still have to work day jobs because people are not willing to pay for music anymore. “The fucking 80’s are over, and it’s not all about touring and getting laid. Chlamydia is a thing, and not all of us want it.”
