FingerPainting
A multi-album release of a series of concerts by Steve Lawson and Daniel Berkman, also featuring Artemis on vocals, from a US tour last winter.
Big label record companies bemoan the internet, they wail fans are sharing, call them pirates and criminalise.
At the other end of the spectrum, Paulo Coelho, Imogen Heap, Zoë Keating, Amanda Palmer, Steve Lawson welcome the opportunities provided by the net.
Bandcamp makes sharing easy, possible to download for free or pay what you think it is worth or can afford.
Paulo Coelho had only sold a few thousand copies of The Alchemist in Russia, his publisher was no longer interested, until a pirate copy was posted on the net, sales then became millions!
In 1999, when I was first published in Russia ( with a print- run of 3,000), the country was suffering a severe paper shortage. By chance, I discovered a ‘ pirate’ edition of The Alchemist and posted it on my web page.
A year later, when the crisis was resolved, I sold 10,000 copies of the print edition. By 2002, I had sold a million copies in Russia, and I have now sold 12 million.
When I traveled across Russia by train, I met several people who told me that they had first discovered my work through the ‘ pirated’ edition I posted on my website. Nowadays, I run a ‘Pirate Coelho’ website, giving links to any books of mine that are available on file- sharing sites. And my sales continue to grow — nearly 140 million copies world wide.
Steve Lawson prefers not to use the term free, instead a zero cost transaction, as an interaction has taken place, and who knows where it may lead. The best people to talk about your music, are those who like it, and what better way to get it known, than sharing with their friends.
Through others, is one way we discover new music.
Steve Lawson has an interesting set up, which he discussed at London Bass last year. It is as much a part of his music making as is his bass guitar. It also allows him to record every note he plays.
Last year, Steve Lawson did a tour in the States, joined by Daniel Berkman. They had never met until each was doing a sound check before a gig. Each was due to play a separate gig. There and then, they decided they would improvise as a duo, even though they had never played together before, not even jammed together, not even rehearsed.
Because he was able to, Steve Lawson recorded every note of the tour.
He then decided, rather than release a best of, he would release the entire tour, a multi-album release, a mammoth undertaking, that for a Big Record label would never get the go-ahead.
Four months later, a labour of love, mixing and mastering, writing sleeve notes, liaising with Daniel Berkman and Artemis, the multi-album set was available on a memory stick, in a neat little box with the sleeve notes.
Would this mammoth undertaking have been possible with a Big Record label? Highly unlikely.
Steve has already released five of the albums from the multi-album collection on bandcamp. Today, he released The FingerPainting Sessions, a two volume set. It will be available next week as a double CD.
And the excellent news is Artemis will be releasing next week an album from the tour featuring her vocals.
But why release so much music, does it not dilute what is on offer, would it not have been simpler, easier and better to have released the two volume The FingerPainting Sessions, plus the vocal compilation from Artemis?
OK, so first one — why so much music? — is pretty simple: This is how much music I make.
Contrary to what bafflingly appears to be popular opinion, I haven’t really got much clue about promo/marketing. If I’m ‘successful’ at it, it’s accidental, and I’m grateful for that, and I am certainly aware of trying to maximise the value in any story, but I just don’t have it in me to be all that crafty about how to make the most money off my music. Making music is the thing that matters, and my version of ‘sustainability’ is being able to keep making music. If I suddenly struck on a project that was viable and was going to take me 3 years to make, I wouldn’t mind doing that, but those aren’t the kind of things that ever present themselves to me, and I don’t have anything like the infrastructure to support that. So I make the kind of music that I know I can keep making, and that in and of itself is the soundtrack to the world as I wander through my tiny bit of it.
It’s pretty much certain that releasing this much music dents the headline gross earnings of each album. the longer the gap between albums, the more each one makes. But as most of these projects have zero start-up cost (I don’t have ANY capital at all to invest in the process of making music, nothing for studio time, for hiring other musicians, for artwork… Never have…) putting out more music is a better way to make music-making viable across the year than investing time and energy in marketing a particular album is.
I’m a solo bass player, the chances of me ever having anything like mainstream ‘success‘ is infinitesimally small. The cost of that gamble is not one I can bear, and I’m not sure that even the ‘success’ would be worth it if I had it.
I like making lots of music, with lots of people. I’m hugely grateful to the musicians who enter my musical orbit for a time and then spiral off to make music of their own again. I’ve been blessed to work with some of the most incredible musicians I could ever hope to meet, in situations that allowed us to make music that would never have existed had we had the idea then chased a record label for funding. With Theo Travis, Jez Carr, Mike Outram, Daniel Berkman and others, I been able to make a career doing things that are significantly more fun than a holiday could ever possibly be. With Lobelia I’ve managed to combine making some of the most beautiful music I can imagine with travelling across the world with the love of my life. that’s slowed down a LOT since we had Baby Flapjack (who’s FOUR this week!) but it’s still the best fun in the world.
So I make lots of music, I don’t expect everyone to find it as soon as I put it out, and I’m MASSIVELY reliant on, and therefore grateful to, the people who choose to tell their friends about it, share the music with their friends, bring them to gigs, host house concerts and generally get excited about this life that sounds more like the plot to an implausible b-movie than actual life, just without the big pay-off at the end where we have a massive hit and live in luxury for the rest of our lives…
You may wish to check out a few other recordings by Steve Lawson, on his own and with others: Nothing Can Prepare, Live So Far, 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything.
Also try Feverdreams by Daniel Berkman and Triptych I (Eight for a Wish) by Artemis.
It is worth checking out what Steve Lawson has to write on his blog.
And the musings between him and Andrew Dubber.
Steve Lawson is author of Rock and Roll is Dead.
Imogen Heap has criticised Big Record labels for stifling creativity.
Imogen Heap has spent the last couple of years working on Heapsongs, now known as Sparks. So much work has gone into each heapsong (each one had its own mini-blog), that she decided that work could not possibly be conveyed in a standard album release, even with a 24-page glossy booklet. She decided therefore to produce a limited edition de-luxe box set. Each heapsong, will have its own disc, the box set will include a 100 page plus, coffee table style illustrated book.
Would either of these projects have been sanctioned by a Big Record label? The answer is highly unlikely and probably no.
