In Conversation with Lionel Lodge, Singer-Songwriter, Producer & Founder/CEO of the SyncLodge…
We discuss all things music, Radio caroline, Touring, Major labels, The Indies, and the SyncLodge project!
To kick off the New Year with our next guest of Season 2 on The Entertainment Engine podcast we welcome the Scottish-born singer-songwriter and producer — Lionel Lodge to the show.
Lionel was born in the early sixties in the Highlands of Scotland even though his family was living in London England at the time.
His father, Tom Lodge was soon to become one of the top DJs on the first pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, which introduced Lionel at a very early age to the exploding sixties British music scene.
Quote from Lionel “My dad was interviewing the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, we always had the newest releases playing on the home stereo, dad would go off to gigs and come home with these great new band’s latest recordings.”
When Lionel was four he and his brothers re-wrote the words to the Stones` song Get Off My Cloud, turned it into an anthem to call their mother to get them out of bed.
Also, in England Lionel started a live music booking agency that grew to be a team of 10 booking over 750 bands and 1200 DJs.
“Lionel was such a terror when he was young that we had to tell him he couldn’t get out of bed until me or his father came to get him, left on his own he would destroy the house in minutes.
At first, he would wake up before us and start shouting from his room that he was awake, we had to tell him not to shout in the morning, that’s when he re-wrote that song and started singing.”
“In Canada, we were very strange compared to the rest of the children at school, we had long hair and wore hippy-like clothes, plus we had English accents. I hated it for the first five years, didn’t like Canada at all, got into a lot of fights. We moved around a fair bit and so we were always the new kids with funny accents.”
Lionel’s first instrument was the piano.
“ I had a piano teacher for a short while who taught me the basics to boogie-woogie piano.
But he disappeared one day never to return. It was around this time I started getting seriously interested in girls and the girls thought that the piano was a sissy instrument, so I changed to the saxophone, far sexier, but singing was my main passion, all I really wanted to do from as far back as I can remember.”
Lionel had a few different bands until the final Corndog line-up which centered on the writing partnership of Brodie and Greg Clarke.
Greg was the lead singer and main guitarist, Brodie was on drums, Lionel on bass, and Pat Gilmore was the fourth member.
Pat played mostly guitar but also played keyboard on some songs. They were signed through the Cowboy Junkies record label Latent Recordings and distributed in Canada by BMG Records.
They toured Canada from end to end many times with some success and a steadily growing audience.
“But there were some problems on the business side of things, problems with the record company and their perception of who we were the same old story.
I was not so satisfied and wanted to get out of the deal and try to move the band to another company but it was not an easy situation.
I loved the traveling and wanted to go farther afield, across the ocean, I guess there was something inside me trying to get me out of Canada at that time.”
The travel bug had bit and Lionel took the exit to England. It was 1992, he originally thought he’d only stay that side of the Atlantic for a few months but, Lionel stayed longer, over 15 years, longer and started traveling around Europe, meeting local players to record 8 of his now 12 solo CD s.
Quote from Lionel “It was time for a change, personally and musically. After recording `She’s No Game´ I was feeling the need to shake this life of mine up a bit. I was becoming too comfortable, too mellow. Time to take a jump into the unknown.”
First stop in England he put together a loud electric band that was said to be a mixture of The Pixies and Stax Volt.
With this four-piece band his third CD, `Sister’, was recorded.
“It was a band based on fun, we played for fun, I was writing for fun, nothing was taken seriously. The effect was very uplifting. We played all over England, pubs, clubs, a few small festivals, whatever came our way. We were loud but not proud.”
“And then came the offers. We were talking to Chrysalis and Virgin, there were some pretty big amounts of money being discussed, they wanted to pick up “Sister” and release it as is. I didn’t really believe it, I didn’t feel it was for real and I wasn’t at ease with who was offering the deal.
We were doing showcases in London and working the situation when the band started to fall apart.”There’s an old saying, `A rolling stone collects no moss´, well you won’t find any moss on Lionel.
Lionel was also a senior editor and co-publisher of a UK entertainment magazine called NOW with over 40,000 monthly circulation.
Late in 2002, Lionel started to do what he called Sessions at a little cafe/bar in Vienna. The core of this new group was Valentin Oman on piano, Bernhard Osanna on contra bass, and Peter Müller on drums.
Lionel invited other players to come and sit in with them, players Lionel had worked with in the past and others he had only heard about.
This takes us onto the current project with Lionel vision and energy, which ties in nicely with the “music streaming” series covered by — The Entertainment Engine podcast;
The Synclodge:
Lionel wanted to replace the scrambling of competition with ease of flow in the sync licensing industry. He wants to amplify the creative joys of the music supervisor and let computer systems do the heavy lifting of the tedious and frustrating.
Allow all who create music to have equal opportunity in sync placement, regardless of where they are in the world, regardless of their connections, finances, or level of fame.
This is our motivation. SyncLodge is the most powerful B2B ecosystem for music supervisors, visual production companies, and copyright holders/administrators, to conclude all the sync licensing tasks needed to professionally license music.
We have studied and researched the International Music Synchronization Industry and with SyncLodge we have designed a system to overcome the problems and boost the potential.
Advantages for Music Supervisors and their Teams:
The needs of the Music Supervisor is the core focus of the SyncLodge system. We have asked and polled many music supervisors around the globe to gain a clear picture of what it is they need, what tools would be most beneficial to bring ease to the complicated work of sync licensing.
We gathered the information and have set to build a platform that delivers. A complete, sync licensing, project management system that automates the tedious tasks, brings verification to information, gives a clear overview and secure communications. Plus, some very nice added features to bring fun and ease to sync licensing.
Advantages for Visual Media Producers and their Teams:
Complete sync licensing management system designed for the professional visual media production company to integrate and communicate with the project music supervisor.
Designed for the needs of the industry to complete the tasks of sync licensing in visual media.
It is secure for file sharing a confidence, private for project team communications, intelligent for automating a lot of the tedious tasks with tools that will bring ease and clarity to work-flow and project management overview.
Advantages for Copyright Owners and their Administrators:
Membership in SyncLodge for copyright holders and their administrators will bring extra leverage for your music being available for searching by the global music supervision community.
They will have clear and secure access to communicate directly with you when they want to consider your music for placement in visual media.
With your identity and catalog verified by SyncLodge, music supervisors will have the confidence when making an offer for placement that they are dealing with all the copyright holders and their administrators.
Inside SyncLodge all communications are private and secure plus you will have the tools to maintain a clear overview of your catalogs sync licensing details. SyncLodge does not ask for a membership or registration fee and it does not ask for any ownership of your copyrights.
Become a member, supply your information, once verified you will be contacted when a music supervisor is interested in placing anything from your catalog.
It was a real pleasure to catch up with Lionel and learn more about his current project, but it does show you it takes a long time to really understand the business of music.
With the launch of the Synclodge, this certainly looks like a great catalyst to help the “indie” music sector move forward, one to keep an eye on!
Part 2 of the conversation will continue with Lionel in next week's episode on Thursday 11th February 2021 on The Entertainment Engine Podcast.
By Pete Moore
