Author Archives: Kyle M

…do it the way I did it last weekend.

I was already excited about the trip. My band Shakedown at the Majestic had booked a festival gig at Liahonaroo, a “family-friendly art and music festival,” 30 mins outside of Nashville. I didn’t want to spend the whole weekend away from my family, so I figured I’d fly in on Saturday afternoon, play the gig that night, and fly out first thing the next morning. Fun, right?

But late Friday evening, I saw that my friend Mark Brown had posted details on Facebook about a live taping of Prairie Home Companion in Nashville on Saturday. In fact, it started an hour after my plane was scheduled to arrive, and ended with plenty of time for me to get to the fairgrounds…

AND it was happening at the historic Ryman Auditorium, which is basically the birthplace of bluegrass…

AND the guest performers were Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, and Emmylou Harris…

AND there were tickets still available! That’s both a crime and a miracle.

So, on Saturday morning, I had brunch with my wife/kids at Kitchenette, walked home enjoying the sunshine, and then I hopped on a plane to Nashville. (Side note: There’s nothing more thrilling as an amateur musician than traveling far away to play a show; and nothing more terrifying than checking your instrument at the baggage counter.)

Got in at 3:30 (my beloved bass was fine), picked up my rental car, raced to downtown Nashville, found the auditorium, found my seat, and plopped down just as the band was warming up and Sam Bush was playing his first of many solos that night. I was probably the youngest person in the whole venue, and I just sat there grinning for two hours, soaking it all in.

Afterward, I hustled down to Broadway (Nashville’s version of 6th St. in Austin), grabbed a BBQ sandwich and heard a crazy awesome country trio, then out to the fairgrounds for my own gig.

The festival was fun, with lots of good performers from the Nashville songwriting scene (some of whom are on the country charts right now). I met up with my friend Mike, a disgustingly good guitar player and songwriter for Engines of Commotion and his own solo projects. He filled me in on some of the details about Nashville:

• Songwriting is everything. Everyone is striving not so much to be a star themselves, but to write a hit song for a star.
• Full bands are rare, because drummers and bassists expect to be paid for gigs. If a guitar player wants a full band, he/she probably has to pay for it, so a lot of shows are just songwriters or duos performing on their own.
• Everyone seems to know who’s on the country top 100 charts at all times.
• A prolific writer can sell full catalogs with hundreds of songs.

Anyway, it was a different kind of show for us, but it was fun. The night was fer-eeeez-ing, which was bad for us attendance-wise, but good for us because everyone was in the mood to dance and stay warm. And if you’ve ever heard us play, you know that our music was written to be danced to.

Afterward, Mike gave me a lift to his place, where I was crashing for the night. Having lived in the city for…gosh…8 years?, I assume that everyone my age and younger lives in small, rented apartments. So I’m always surprised when I pull into a friend’s giant driveway leading up to a giant house. He gave me the tour of his grown-up house, and we talked music until late at night.

Next morning, I was back on a plane to NYC. If you can only spend 18 hours in Nashville, that’s the way to do it.

“Screw lead singers.”

That’s what I couldn’t help thinking when I saw The Shins perform on SNL last weekend. I say “The Shins” because that’s what they were announced as, but the lineup had been completely shuffled.  James Mercer was still fronting the band (which should probably just be called “James Mercer,”) but the drummer, bassist, and lead guitar player had changed.

Screw lead singers!

There’s no job security for bass players and drummers. Not only are they routinely left out of songwriting credits and publishing deals (where all the real money is), but as soon as a band gets big enough, the lead singer inevitably starts to wonder why he’s paying these musicians so much money when he’s clearly the talented, marketable one.

Every time I see that situation, I get all riled up (and believe me, it’s hard to get a bass player riled up). Gwen Stefani, Rob Thomas, Brandon Flowers, Patrick Stump–those guys had some incredible supporting musicians on stage with them. Gwen and Brandon might have actually been the least talented in their respective bands, and Patrick was just the voice for Pete Wentz’s songs, as far as I can tell. But the singers are the ones at the front of the stage singing the songs, and backstage doing the press interviews. So they can take their stardom to the next level, while the bassists and drummers drift away to wherever it is that washed up bassists and drummers go to.

So yeah, Mercer, congrats on the new band. Broken Bells was awesome, so maybe you deserved to up-level your Shins bandmates…I hear you plucked some great musicians from Modest Mouse and Fruit Bats. But I think I liked you better before you were a supergroup.