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This year's
Atlantis
Music Conference was my first, so I have no basis to judge it
against previous incarnations. But the consensus among attendees
that I spoke to seemed to be that it was the best Atlantis yet.
"I think this year by far has been the best," said Brandon Hinson,
drummer for the band Bridge, which I previously reviewed. "I've been
every year and I've always gotten something new and fresh out of it.
It's been well worth it this year with the caliber of people that
have been on the panels."
Hinson cited the distribution panel and the A&R panel on "How, When
and Why to get Signed" as highlights, but I think the best panel by
far was the songwriting panel which opened the conference. Much has
been written about the conference's corporate connections and the
hard feelings that are generated when bands pay a fee to apply for a
showcase and get turned down. But the songwriting panel was an
example of why I think Atlantis is a valuable resource for
struggling musicians such as myself.
The panel began with Ed Roland of Collective Soul explaining how
emotions can get in the way of the songwriting process. Roland
talked about the difficulty of writing about his divorce.
"It didn't feel right but it was something that was necessary," said
Roland. "Every song you write is not a good song. You've got to get
them out."
It reminded me of Sting's album The Soul Cages, which was written
about the death of his father. In interviews after the release of
the album, Sting said that he hadn't wanted to write about his
father, because he hadn't made peace with him before his death. But
after dealing with a long stretch of writer's block, when Sting
finally began to write about his father, an entire album of songs
came pouring out. I consider The Soul Cages to be the peak of
Sting's songwriting, an opinion which Eddie Vedder, who has been
known to ad lib lyrics from the record during Pearl Jam concerts,
seems to share.
Roland went on to talk about how not all hit songs follow standard
formats. He said that once while waiting for his band to arrive at
the studio, he wrote the riff for the song "December," and decided
he wanted to have that single riff running throughout. When he
described what he wanted to do with the song to his band mates, they
told him it wouldn't work. Roland then played the song for the
panel's audience, and afterward, Butch Walker of Marvelous Three
quipped, "That'll never get played on the radio!" Roland shot back
to Walker "You sound like an A&R guy!"
Roland's lesson was that something simple could still be beautiful.
"I think Bono from U2 said it best: Three chords and take over the
world," said Roland. "I'll settle for two chords and take over the
South."
Next up on the panel was Butch Walker, who talked about how he used
to worry about maintaining his indie credentials, but one day came
to the revelation that, "God, it'd be awesome to eat!" He said he
had a feeling that the song "Freak of the Week" might bring his band
commercial success.
"[I thought] if this song ever gets picked up, it's going to be the
only song we have that's gonna get on the radio," said Walker. "Sure
enough, ironically, that's the song that went straight up and hit
the top five on the Billboard charts."
Despite the success, Walker said that he still liked it when fans
connect with a song that they didn't hear on the radio.
"We put out a not-so-radio-friendly song second, and of course radio
went as far as to say that they hated it," said Walker. "But
ironically it became the fans' favorite song. And I thought that was
interesting. You can get a song on the radio, but when you get a fan
base that's been with you for a while. their favorite songs end up
becoming the ones that are the least format friendly. And I kind of
liked that."
Walker, who was also on an excellent panel on ProTools that I
attended, went on to describe how he kept the groceries coming in by
writing and producing hit songs for other bands.
"I had a friend who was in a band called SR-71, and he called me and
they had just finished recording a record," said Walker. "And they
needed one more song - they felt like they were just one song shy -
and they wanted to have an up-tempo, radio-type song. So I said
let's go in and write a formulaic, up-tempo radio song. And we wrote
it in about 10 minutes while getting drunk one night. Ironically, it
went to top five on the Billboard charts."
Walker then played a few bars of SR-71's radio hit "Right Now." Then
he talked about how a song he had discarded ended up being a hit:
"I was sitting around - go figure - drinking with my buddies,
talking about how we've got to write a song about all these white
bands that are mad at their dad, and complain about how rough they
got life and all this shit. So I sat there and wrote this song
called "The Girl all the Bad Guys Want." And it was so silly to me
at the time that I never recorded it, because it's one of those
things where you wake up the next morning and go 'It seemed like a
good idea at the time.'
"So this band called Bowling for Soup that I worked on a record with
heard it and loved it, and they were sort of more of a comical
pop-punk band. They do it. Number one hit in Europe and a top 40 hit
in the United States. That's when I started to realize that I don't
have a problem embracing the format. But what this beautiful thing
showed me was that as an artist myself, maybe this will allow me to
concentrate on writing songs that are more personal to me, and not
worry about whether or not they are going to fit a format, or
whether they are going to fit an agenda.
"The lesson learned is I think if you just do something real, and do
something that you truly believe in, and don't worry about whether
or not it ends up fitting a format, sometimes that's important too.
And groceries. groceries are important."
Next up on the panel was India.Arie, who talked about how her music
was part of a movement to present a more positive image of young
black people, and how she's actually been criticized for being too
positive. She talked about how she got into songwriting as a means
to bring out her ideas about the world.
"I started playing guitar and writing songs at the same time," said
Arie. "I think the reason it happened that way is because by
learning just a few chords and the first three frets of the guitar I
had a format to put my ideas and my lyrics around. I wanted to have
songs that spoke for me in a vocal way and in a lyrical way, that
spoke of my ideals and all the things I thought about."
She described how her success as a musician allowed her to travel
the world and realize that much of the world's image of young
African-Americans is derived from music videos. She said she's glad
to be a part of a musical movement which is presenting an
alternative to the image that's presented through all the cliché,
overproduced rap videos.
"I think I'm a part of a movement of young black musicians who are
doing something that is filling a void in black music," said Arie.
"We play our own instruments, which is rare today but is becoming
more common, which I'm grateful for. We write our own songs, and we
have a statement [that] is grounded in a different reality. It
[makes] me happy that I could be in a position, without even knowing
what I was doing, where I could shine a different light on what we
are as young people and musicians and artists."
Arie said that she never set out to write positive music
exclusively, but that's what comes out when she sits down to write.
"The week I finished [the album Acoustic Soul], I looked back and I
listened to all the songs and I realized that every song on the
album was inspirational or had a message" said Arie. "Even the chord
progressions [were] major progressions. I heard Roberta Flack say
this: 'When you put a song out into the universe, it belongs to the
universe then.' After releasing "Video" as a single and after
releasing Acoustic Soul, I then became looked upon as this person
who did inspirational songs and inspirational music. That was never
really my intention: those are just the kind of songs that come out
of me when I'm being really quiet and I have my solitude and I'm
very open to the influences."
Arie said she was surprised to find that the common thread running
through her music, which she never set out to create, drew criticism
from her hometown press.
"Whenever I'm home in Atlanta, I'm always reminded of the album
critique some writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did on my
second album," said Arie. "He said that it was too positive and too
unrealistic. Where was the song about how mad I was about the
Grammys? Where was the song about how mad I was about how the press
has treated my private life? And where were all these songs that I
was supposed to have written in his opinion?"
Arie said that ironically, because of her approach and her desire to
bring something positive even out of bad experiences, the writer
missed the message in the songs that were right in front of him.
"Those songs are actually there," said Arie. "Even though it may
seem that all my songs are really positive and light, and in a way
they are, I think it's the way I approach songwriting. A lot of
times I write more about the lessons that I learn from a situation,
rather than detailing the situation itself. And so the songs come
out a certain way, and once again that was never a conscious thought
or idea. I don't think I'm that wise to say I'm going to do it this
way [and] it's going to help some 12-year-old kid. That's just what
the intuitive thing to do for me was and continues to be.
"The man from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn't know me and
he doesn't know what the songs are about because he didn't listen. I
think that anybody who ever listened to the song "Little Things" can
kind of tell that I'm talking about the music industry and the
Grammys. It's funny how critics don't really listen, and they
consider that their job."
Arie said she was not feeling well, and didn't perform any of her
music. When she finished her portion of the panel with the story
about the AJC writer, Roland turned to her and said, "Nothing
touches a work of art less than criticism. Always keep that in your
head and your heart 'cause that's the truth. You rock."
Next on the panel was a man who is probably my single greatest
influence as a vocalist, Glen Phillips, formerly of the 90's
hit-making band Toad the Wet Sprocket. Phillips said that if bands
want their songs to have longevity, they should avoid writing about
experiences and situations that are so personal that others can't
relate to them.
"People expect things to be really direct," said Phillips. "There's
nothing more boring to me than hearing a song about being in a band
by a guy in a band. It means absolutely nothing to anybody who's not
in a band."
Phillips joked about "feeling sorry for Pink because L.A. Reid
wanted her to dress more like Brittney Spears," and said even this
could be turned into a song which could touch a lot of people.
"The songs that get me are the songs that are universal," said
Phillips. "So if you're writing about L.A. Reid wanting you to show
your belly more, you can write a song about people wanting you to be
someone you're not. You don't have to mention L.A. Reid and you
don't have to mention your record company because when you play that
song when you're 40 and you're covering up your belly button, you'll
still understand how it feels to have somebody wanting you to be
somebody you're not.
"So it's a question of taking those circumstances, and do you want
to put it in something that only means something today, or do you
want to put in something that's actually going to age well, and
actually may mean something to somebody else who is listening to
it."
Phillips described how he went from a high school production of
"Oklahoma" to touring endlessly behind a hit record.
"I was in a band called Toad the wet Sprocket. it was way back in
the 90's. We got together - I was a freshman in high school and they
were all seniors. We did "Oklahoma" and "Our Town" for the school
theater. And the guitarist could do the riff from "More Than a
Feeling," so we started a band.
"Our third record we did in the studio, and once again, the
happiest, most major [song - Here Phillips sings a few bars of the
hit "All I Want"], that got on the radio. And it was 250-300 shows
[a year] for that record, and we toured forever. two and a half
years or something."
But after the band's 1997 album Coil, which featured the radio hits
"Come Down" and "Crazy Life," the latter a tribute to Native
American political prisoner Leonard Peltier, also the subject of the
Rage Against the Machine song "Freedom," the band broke up over
creative differences. Although Toad recently reunited for an
American tour, Phillips has kept a low profile with studio and live
albums as a singer/songwriter. It appears that Phillips has made a
conscious choice of being a father and husband over playing to arena
crowds.
"Times change," said Phillips. "At this point, I've had a career and
not had a career. I have three kids and a wife [and] we just had our
tenth anniversary. I used to not write love songs because I thought
love songs were trite. I've found I've been writing a lot of love
songs because with everything that's happened to me in the last few
years my family has always been here. That's why I live. that's why
I love life. And there's other things to love, definitely, but
that's the core of it."
Phillips said he didn't want to play any of the songs he'd written
for Toad, many of which are 12 years old, but instead performed a
song he'd written recently, which I didn't catch the title of. He
said the song started out pretty dark, but in the end became about
how things work themselves out over time.
"It started out awful," said Phillips. "It was about how everything
is wrong and nothing is going to work out at all. And I hated it [so
I thought] you may want to take a look at that. You may want to ask
yourself a couple questions.
"You get knocked down in life. it happens. You have your up periods
and you have your down periods. Things don't change until you kind
of don't expect them to any more. And you keep [doing] what you're
doing, and chances are that you'll get knocked down a few more times
just for good measure, just to remind you that even though you've
worked some stuff out you're not necessarily going to get a parade."
As best as I could get it, with having to flip my tape in mid song,
these are the words to the song:
One way or another, we all need each other
Nothing's gonna turn out the way you thought it would
Friends and lovers, don't you duck and cover
'Cause everything comes out the way it should
Someone's in the backyard banging on the door
Daddy's gone away, he's coming back no more
Baby's curled up on a stranger's floor
Momma's thinking family dinners weren't too much to ask for
Everybody here's got a story to tell
Everybody's been through their own hell
Nothing too special about getting hurt
Getting over it, that takes the work
'Cause one way or another, we all need each other
Nothing's gonna turn out the way we wanted it
Friends and lovers, don't you duck and cover
'Cause everything turns out the way it should
Blessed are the humble, blessed are the weak
Blessed are the hungry, blessed are the meek
Blessed are the ones on the other side
Blessed are we for just being alive
One way or another, a man's gonna suffer
It makes no difference the way you wanted it
Friends and lovers, don't you duck and cover
'Cause everything comes out the way it should in the end
It seems like life is a palindrome
You cry when you die, you cry when you're born
In between it's all about the ups and downs
Add 'em all together, they cancel each other out
'Cause one way or another, one way or another
You won't get what you wanted, but you'll get enough for sure
One way or another, [illegible] for the summer
You won't get what you wanted, but what you've got'll be good
Someone's in the backyard banging on the door
Daddy's gone away, he's coming back no more
His baby's curled up on a stranger's floor
Mamma's thinking happy endings weren't too much to ask for
Phillips concluded by saying, "I just have to mention: That song is
about critics and A&R guys as much as it's about anything else."
The final members of the panel were Trapt guitarist Simon Ormandy
and vocalist/guitarist Chris Brown. Ormandy said that what makes the
difference between a good song and a bad song is the reaction of the
listener.
"One of the most important things about a song is that people like
it," said Ormandy. "If the song or the music gives you that certain
feeling, and makes the hairs raise up on the back of your neck, I
think that, in my opinion, is what makes a good song. It could be
the voice, it could be the guitar. whatever it is. I think that's
the most important thing. And people liking your music is not bad
either."
Brown said that his approach to songwriting is to write the music
first, and let it inspire the lyrics.
"You capture a mood with music in a way that makes you feel good,"
said Brown. "And the job of the lyrics is to capture that mood
that's coming through the music with words. So we usually come up
with music first, and come up with lyrics later. Because I think any
good song has great lyrics, but has to have great music to
complement those lyrics."
This was an amazing panel and a total inspiration. The ProTools
panel also included some heavy hitters, and made me realize that a
$700 piece of software with an input device is in the process of
making a lot of full production studios obsolete.
The media panel was also excellent, with a collection of editors
giving advice on how people promoting music can go about approaching
the media for coverage. VIBE Magazine music editor Erik Parker
summed it up in a single word: "Food!" When his questioner asked if
it would therefore be appropriate to invite a writer out for coffee,
Parker clarified: "Coffee? Didn't you hear me? I said FOOD!"
One key difference at this year's Atlantis was the growth in
programming catering to Atlanta's burgeoning urban music scene.
Although Atlantis started off as exclusively a rock event, the
conference was clearly made stronger by tapping into Atlanta's wide
talent pool of performers, producers and personalities from the
Hip-Hop and R&B genres.
The conference also departed from an emphasis on just getting bands
signed by major labels, and had numerous panels devoted to helping
artists get their music out independently. By diversifying the
programming in this way, Atlantis this year seems to have generated
a vibe it hasn't had in the past.
I'd like to thank the organizers of the Atlantis Music Conference
2003 for a great time. If they can somehow make next year's
conference as good as or better than this year's, it shouldn't be
long before Atlantis is recognized everywhere as an excellent event.
Read Part 1 of Atlantis Music Conference >>>
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