The Irish independents

As A&R scout in the North for BMG Records, whose roster already includes songwriters of the calibre of David Kitt, Turn and The Thrills, and in his role as MD of the Bright Star Recordings label, Johnny Davis is ideally placed to present an overview of the current Northern scene as artists and those who work with them respond to the shifting emphases in the music industry.

“The current situation is very healthy from the point of view of the quality of the songwriters and bands we have in Northern Ireland,” he observes. “But we’ve yet to put an infrastructure in place that would result in fewer Northern bands having to go away to do their business. The fact that a couple of the Ash guys are based at home is a help towards that end.

“I firmly believe that creativity in music comes from the bottom up, from the streets rather than the corporate offices. But in order to build on that creativity and turn it into lasting careers we need access to the kind of practical advice you can get more readily in Dublin or Liverpool or in London, and we haven’t quite got the community spirit here among musicians that you find elsewhere.

“Artists need talent obviously, but they also need confidence in their own potential and the suss to know how to make the most of their talent. Bands have to accept that it’s so competitive nowadays there’s no point in just being ok, you have to be brilliant. Equally, if they’re going to get really upset and negative just because one individual like me doesn’t like them, that’s a worrying weakness. I’d much prefer if they had the determination to say, ‘We’ll prove him wrong and show him how good we are!’

“Musicians should ask more questions, develop their confidence so as not to be frightened of the business and look at all their options before jumping into something they can’t handle. Bands tend to go looking too early for record deals anyway, long before they’ve got a proper fix on what they can do.

“The new spirit of independence is empowering those artists who have the talent and are clever enough to develop it in their own way. So I’ve no doubts that the trail blazed by the likes of The Frames, Damien Rice and others will impact on the North. In fact it’s already happening and it’s a very exciting time to be involved with music here.”

On the course for success in the music industry

Terry Hackett is Course Co-ordinator for all the PLC courses at Kylemore College in Ballyfermot. Hackett believes the development of the independent scene is very important, but adds a note of caution.

“It would be wrong if everybody totally rejected the traditional channels in relation to developing music careers. For example, there are advantages in going the big studio route rather than doing everything at home, and the reverse is also true. Equally, it may be the best option for some bands to chase a major record deal. Major labels have the money, the resources and the power to deliver a lot for an act when they get behind them.

“On the other hand, there is much that musicians nowadays can do for themselves with no interference, so I think they should take whatever route gets them to wherever they want to go.

“We’re getting more applications than ever before and I believe that might be partly because potential students are more aware of the importance of academic qualifications for specific jobs than ever before and they recognise the need to explore all the options. So it’s important that colleges like Kylemore explore with students the full range of options open to them.”

Several of the students attending the Music Management And Sound course at Colaiste Stiofan Naofa in Cork have already released records and are now seeking ways of moving their careers forward onto the next level. Chris Ahern is the Course Director, and he can also see at first hand the recent changes in the Irish music community.

“It’s primarily a change in attitude. There was a time when the priority for nearly every musician was getting a record deal with one of the majors. Now I notice that many of the acts I meet wouldn’t even bother sending a demo to a record company. In fact some of them wonder if the companies even listen to the stuff they get anyway.

“But the situation on the ground now is much healthier. By recording and releasing their own material, artists feel they have more ownership of their talent and their potential. Here in Cork we now have four or five good regular venues whereas there were times up to recently when some nights we’d be lucky to find one.

“In order to focus our students on the new reality of making records I often set them a test. Basically, I ask them to imagine they have €20,000 to spend on recording an artist, and they have to decide who it would be, how they would go about recording it and marketing it and so on. That’s the real world we’re in now, but it certainly beats sitting around getting increasingly frustrated while waiting for a record company to pick you up.”

Technological know-how

It was precisely the new spirit of independence that inspired Music Technology Ireland to set up just over a year ago to supply the Irish music industry from a data base that includes 23,000 products.

According to Managing Director Cormac Smith, “We saw a lot of bands saying, ‘Shag the majors, we can do this better ourselves’, and we set up to serve those people with what we believe is the most complete range of products available anywhere in Europe, including instruments, music equipment, software and so on.

“The new technology has made it easier for artists to go it alone, and there are so many new products that are aimed at the bedroom and home recording market and which have helped make it much more affordable for bands to make their own CDs.

“Gone are the days when they had to go into a studio for a week and spend a fortune making a recording. Now they read all the magazines and log onto independent Internet forums where they get all the independent advice they need on any product they want.

“That means that by the time they come to us many of them know exactly what they want. But there are also those who come to us without their minds already made up. Unlike most of our competitors we’re not tied to specific brands, so we can give them totally unbiased advice and help them choose what suits them best.”

Working on air

Further evidence of the growing sophistication of the Irish indie scene can be seen in the views of Feidhlim Byrne, Manager of Music Control, the company whose services include the tracking of the airplay levels of specific records on nearly thirty stations all over Ireland.

“We used to get only the major labels using our services, but recently we’ve seen more and more of the independents coming to us, not just to find out who’s playing their records, but, perhaps more importantly, to see who’s not playing it!

“It’s rather strange that the larger stations, 2FM, Radio 1 and Today FM, tend to be the most adventurous with new Irish artists, whereas the smaller ones tend to play it so much safer. Although we’ve got rid of our inferiority complex in relation to most other things in life there still seem to be some pockets in Irish radio where they won’t play Paddy Casey or Damien Dempsey or a track like Perry Blake’s Ordinary Day’ but they’ll play something similar by an established overseas act. It may be partly down to a lack of interest in music or more likely they are simply underestimating the intelligence of their audiences.

“At Music Control we can now give our clients a complete breakdown of plays, not only of the stations playlisting their record, but we can pinpoint which programmes played it, at what time it was played and what the audience was at the time of each play. That kind of information can help an independent artist understand who the music is actually getting to and that in turn may be useful in relation to other decisions they might make.”