Kerouac

 

 We are organizing an album fundraiser for the JPKALLIO.COM's first album, so we can go back to the studio. The night will take place in the Thomas House, this Friday the 4th of May 2012. Doors 8pm and Adm €5. On the night obviously JPKALLIO.COM will do a set, but also we got few bands to help us out:-). On the bill we have our drummer Sebastians another band Down the river, who are going to kick off the night, also we have Kerouac, who have been making noise in the Irish underground lately. I sat down for a chat with Kerouac's bass player Keith O'Neill, who also takes care most of the promotion duties in the band and I realized we had more in common than we thought, when it comes to the music business.

  J.P. First of all big thank you Keith for taking the time to talk to us. Could you tell me a bit about your background in music?

Keith Back ground in music... I started playing guitar when I was twelve. Guitar is my main instrument.
I wen't to Ballyfermot college studying guitar in the music course. That's where I met the lads. So went in as a guitar player and came out as a bass player! Amazing stuff. But guitar is still my main instrument. I do lot of acoustic instrumental music. So that would be me in music, between that and metal. I play bit of drums as well. One of the first bands I was in was a Nirvana covers band where I played drums when I was fifteen.


J.P. So let's talk about Kerouac a bit. I've seen the band live few times now and I was delighted that you agreed to play with us in the Thomas house this Friday. How did the band get started?

Keith No worries, we were delighted to be asked. We met up in the college in 2002. There was another bass player in the band before I started. He left the college after the first year, so they were looking for a bass player for the second year. So I said I'll play bass. I was playing guitar with lot of other people in the college, but the D C D chord thing just does not do it for me. I am delighted I came out of college with Richie ( Mason, drums) and Aaron (Gaffey, vox and guitar). When we left the college we did not do much for few years. We were occasionally jamming in Kilkenny where I am from, Richie was in Cork and Aaron in Dublin. So we rehearsed in a mate of mines house in Kilkenny. We did about six gigs in four years. That's the way it went until about two years a go when Richie moved back to Dublin and we've gone full belt at it since then.


J.P. You've done some quite big gigs in the past and seem to be gigging a lot. Any highlights you'd like to mention?

Keith Germany obviously. That was brilliant. We entered the Emergenza battle of the bands that goes on in eighteen different countries. We entered 2004 and didn't get out of the first round and then entered again last year and ended up winning it! So they flew us out to Germany for five days to play at a three day festival. It was nice as there were only two stages, the main stage and the second stage and we were on on the second stage on Saturday. It was really good, some amazing bands, as I said it went on in eighteen countries so we got to see lot of bands. It was 35000 people at the festival. Iggy Pop was on on the first night. Some energy for his age! It was cool, we did the gig and then we could just sit in the back stage and drink free beer. Yeah, we'll remember that one for a while.
  We are doing the Ballymurphy fringe festival this summer. It is kind of the only festival in Ireland we could get in to. We seem to be too heavy for lot of the festivals, but then not heavy enough for the Metal festivals. But sure, what can you do?




J.P. Yeah, it's tough. It seems so many bands put so much effort in trying to get to play at festivals, makes me wonder if they could use that energy on something else.

Keith Yeah, the usual answer you are going to get, even though there are over 200 festivals in Ireland, is thanks but no thanks. It still seems to be all Indie stuff they are looking for.

J.P. I think that is a bubble that is about to burst.

Keith Yeah, me too. Somethings got to give, it's gone stale...

J.P. Tell me about it... But as always, it takes time before the mainstream catches on to whats brewing in the underground.

Keith That's it. Some amazing bands out there around Ireland!


J.P. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was because I know you do most of the booking and promotional work for the band. What advice would you have for any new bands on how to get out gigging?

Keith Unfortunately I have to say that Facebook is a handy tool to have in your artillery. I do lot of bookings through Facebook. I have all the pubs we play in added up on my Facebook. So anytime a gig comes up the venue post it up and it says support to be established. So I'll email them and ask if there is any chance on getting in that. There are lot of gigs going on around Dublin and you can get in on support. Which is good. You get to meet other people, meet other bands, get to know them and maybe get to play with them later. And when you do put on your own gig, you'll actually get in couple people. I Kind of approach it like that.

J.P. What's your take on the battle of the bands?

Keith We have entered couple of them, but I kind of do it to get the name out there. When you go to play at these things, there is a mixture of lot of people there. So you have lot of people seeing you play. We did the Hard rock rising one. That was to support Bruce Springsteen. We got to the final on it. And they had some influential people in the jury. It could have taken us long time to get these guys to come see us play live. And even we did not win it, which we knew we would not as Kerouac would be just too heavy to support Bruce Springsteen, we got lot of good contacts out of it. Take it as a gig. And if you do well, you get through the first, second or even third round, that's three gigs in few months. You are going to end up meeting promoters, sound engineers, the bar staff, the people that book the gigs. I think its a great way to get the name out there.


J.P. You guys have very professional live show. While playing at many band nights you get to see many bands at all levels. Would you have any tips for young bands on how to improve their live show, or is there any mistakes you see bands do regularly?

Keith I think being very well practiced is one. For band to come across professional you need to be well rehearsed, you can't keep making mistakes. It kind of puts the audience off a bit. Your songs need to be tight and structured well. So I would say practice! If we were practicing new song, we could end up jamming the same riff for a half an hour, taking it to different places and seeing what happens. So I would say be well practiced and have fun with it. Go mad on stage! After doing lot of live shows, you do get comfortable in your spot and you start putting across a good confident live show.


J.P. We all know this is expensive business to be in, no getting away from that. If you wan't to take the music seriously, you need to invest in to it as well. What is your take on this and how would you prioritize it?

Keith Get a CD with three songs sounding very good and get a website. You need a website! We have played with lots of bands and if you would put a list of 20 bands on front of me, I'd say maybe three of them would have website. I am the administrator of our website. We got a friend in IT to set it up for us for few hundred instead of eight hundred by a professional web designer. We use Wordpress on our site. It's amazing! It took me three weeks to figure it all out, but once you have it done it looks well and come across professionally.


J.P. Hallelujah! I'm glad I am not the only one saying that :-D. It seems to be a big step for any Dublin based band to get to play outside Dublin. How important do you think this is and how do you guys go about it?

Keith Find out the venues that play your kind of music. There are some cracking venues up and down the country that are looking your kind of music. We've done Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Kilkenny, Galway. Some great venues out there. It is always good to play to new audience. And it is good idea to play with maybe two local bands. For the music we do, there is only few bars in Dublin, so it is nice to get out and play somewhere else once and a while.


J.P. It still seems to be most bands dream getting signed. Do you think up and coming band should still try to get signed, or should they work on making their own record?

Keith I'd say work on making your own record. Send it off by all means, but concentrate on building a bit of a fan base, so if the record company comes along you can show you have something to offer. But you need a good sounding recording. There is so many people out there who want to do it, so you need to stand out. It needs to be done right!


J.P. I like to put lot of emphasis on playing a live show when it comes to our band. Would you have any other promotional tips or recommendations?

Keith CD, Website, Facebook and a video. People like to see what they are listening to, even if it's a collage of pictures put together in Movie maker. Videos are great promotional tools.


J.P. So what are the future plans for Kerouac

Keith The plans are to get the E.P. finished in the next few weeks, then get it mastered. Book lot more gigs, even though we have had a busy year so far. we did about 30 gigs last year, and we have already booked 30 gigs this year and its only May! So get out and play lots of gigs and promote the E.P.


J.P. Once again, big thanks for your time and just to wrap up, what should people expect from Kerouac this Friday night?

Keith To get your ass kicked! Expect loud, heavy, smelly, riff based, energetic madness. Any time we go to do a gig, it's 110%. I'm really looking forward to it  now. It's been a while we played in the Thomas House and its a good spot! So see you on Friday night!

www.kerouac.ie
www.facebook.com/kerouacmusic

Rock n' Roll road house show
JPKALLIO.COM
Kerouac
Down the river
In the basement of the Thomas house this Friday the 4th of May 2012.
Doors 8pm  Adm €5

Musician v Publican

Part 78

   Lets talk about gigs for a bit. We all love going to good gigs, we love playing gigs. In fact, that definitely is the reason I became a musician in the first place and it really should be a big driving force behind every musician. I have come across few blog posts about the subject of promoters and venue owners expectations on musicians. My mind is bit divided here... The argument in general is that the venue expects you to play for very little money and expect the artist to bring in a crowd. This is something I am sure every musician have had a bit of a reality check about. Of course your friends and family will come to support you in the beginning, but if you are playing your fourth mid week gig in a month and most of your friends need to get up to go to work in the morning... Sooner or later you will run out of friends to drag out. And lets face it, none of us goes out as much as we used to do. So the argument on the musicians side is that it is the promoters/ venues job to bring in the crowd. They should advertise the concert, stick up posters, hand out fliers, spend half of their day posting stuff up on Facebook. Yeah, that sounds nice to me, but at the same time, I have played long enough in bars and clubs to know that running a bar is a full time job. And so is being a promoter of a venue that has music most nights of the week. What we are left with is blame game, musicians blame the venues and the venues blame the musician. So who's right? Well... neither. Both are hugely misinformed. There are several small venues around me that specializes in entertaining tourists. Yep I live in the tourist strip;-) And i would say there is at least 15 venues in a square kilometer around me, that all fight for a slice of the same pie. I have been in a middle of it for over 15 years now and talked to several bar owners, heard their expectations and in my foolish youth actually tried to live up to their expectations. Now I am glad to say those days are long gone;-) The bar owners really suffer from a bad case of “the grass is always greener on the other side”. The ones who expect bands to bring in the crowd, usually are the ones who eventually decide music is not for their bar and turn on the socker. What they should be concentrating is, how well the musicians can hold on to the crowd that manages to walk in to the bar. Once the owner recognize this big difference, they are on to something. Then there are the occasional mad ones, who have some of the busiest bars in town, and they end up running around the bar blaming musicians that their bar is not full three a clock in the afternoon... You might think I am joking, but I am not, that really did happen... And once a while you have the ones who know what it is about. They get quality music in, make it regular thing. You see people are creatures of habit, they like to wonder in to a bar where they know they will hear good music. These are the ones who have regular customers all year around, and tourists queuing in year after year. These are the ones, who have my respect, and if they are stuck last minute, I will drop everything and help them out. Oh nearly forgot, then there is one more type. The cheapskates ;-) They go for the cheapest and usually worst musician they can get, and wonder why people are running out of their bar... Well, we'll leave them alone.
  Now as to the musicians. We expect to just turn up and play and that should be enough, right? Well... not exactly. Our work is to play a great show and no matter what goes wrong around us, do it with a smile on your face. Be professional, and by this I mean, set up in time, sound check discretely if you play in a bar that is open during the day. Start your set on time and stick to the schedule. Make sure you have all your equipment, spare strings, sticks etc. And work with the crowd. Now these are obviously very specific type gigs, and when it comes to independent music in our dear old Dublin, things change a lot. You are very lucky if you get paid. But I still think that traffic stopping blinder of a show is something that will get you there eventually. You see, your act needs to have value, and that value needs to stand past the point of dragging your friends to see you night after night. Once you have that great show, you will start to build following and filling venues and venue owners will start calling you. And let me just say here, we have handful of great venues here in Dublin that genuinely support the local independent and underground scene. And I am glad to say, it seems like these venues are being rewarded for their efforts.
  I'll leave you with the third part, the promoter. Good promoter is worth its weight in cold! They know what works, and eventually build the venues reputation to the point where they can take risks, and people will come. But this does take years of work and most promoters quit before they get that far. I don't blame them though, as they usually end up getting crap from the bands and the venue owners... So what if instead of blaming each others every one would work together trying to figure out ways to get people in to the gigs? Now there's a fresh thought, lets think about it and come back to it later:-) And let me just say, this is a musicians point of view, I'm sure the venue owners and promoters have their own.
   JPKALLIO.COM 4th of April in the Sweeney's, hope to see you there.
     
     J.P.