You guys have come a long way so far on your musical journey from the Tyneside flats where Overspill Poets was first conceived and developed between delivering sandwiches to office workers and watching endless re-runs of Auf Wiedersehen Pet with spirited impromptu jams. There are a lot of up & coming bands that can benefit from learning about how you’ve approached the business and marketing of your music as well as creating the music itself.
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Well it’s nice of you to say so. I don’t think we have all the answers by any means. We’re learning by trial and error really. We’ve done some things that have worked and others that haven’t but we’re very happy to share what we’ve learnt in the hope that it helps other people get what they’re doing heard.
What have been the factors you’ve brought to bear in “branding” Overspill Poets’ songwriting, recording and performing identity to establish your “artist uniqueness and identity?”
Overspill Poets
I hate the term “branding” because it sounds as if we’d studied a market demographic and worked out a sound and image targeted specifically at that profile. We’re about as far away from that approach as it’s possible to be. If we had approached things that way, we might have sold a few more records but to be honest I don’t think I could sustain an interest in something that artificial.
On the other hand, establishing your own identity is vital and unfortunately there is no quick or easy way to do it. I think most musicians have some kind of a feel for where they want to go, but it usually doesn’t come in the form of a road map – it certainly didn’t in our case. It’s more a case of trying a lot of stuff out and recognising the germ of an idea with potential when it strikes. We try to aim high – continually comparing what we were trying for against our favourite records to see where they fall short. You need to be self-critical. Ditch songs that don’t really cut it. Don’t accept clichés and make sure what you’re doing says something about you. You have to try not to get defensive about constructive criticism but learn to stand your ground when other people simply don’t get something you know is right. As I said – not easy.
When you’ve got a sound together and you’re trying to promote yourself, you have to grow a thick skin and not be precious about what you say and what you don’t. You may know there are subtle nods to dub reggae in the middle eight and chord progressions gleaned from medieval madrigals, drum fills borrowed from 70’s funk and vocal inflections with a knowing nod to Nick Drake all underpinned by a punk sensibility and jazz phrasings and all that just isn’t going to be done justice by billing yourself as “techno folk” or whatever glib phrase someone is suggesting. Unfortunately, what most people want to know is “do you sound like the kind of thing I might be into”, which generally means asking “who do you sound like?” or “what are your influences?”. Answering “we don’t sound like anyone in particular” or “oh lots of different influences” simply means people won’t fall over themselves to check you out. Then again, saying we sound like Nirvana, The XX, Portishead, REM, Radiohead or the Hoobs isn’t really going to get you much further (well maybe the Hoobs – if your audience is young enough). So you need to convey an interesting twist on a familiar frame of reference.
Sometimes saying what you’re not about works. I started out in a Newcastle band called Hug. Newcastle was home to Kitchenware records who’d had some success with bands like Prefab Sprout and Martin Stephenson & the Daintees. At the time nearly every band in Newcastle sounded like one of those bands. We billed ourselves as “the only band in Newcastle who doesn’t want to be on Kitchenware”. It worked so well we ended up signing to Kitchenware – well they already had Prefab Sprout and The Daintees – it turned out they were looking for something different.
A little humour, especially if its slightly self-deprecating, can go a long way. I always loved the Housemartins’ “4th best band in Hull” claim. We bounced ideas off friends and tried out phrases out for size. With Overspill Poets, a friend of ours quipped “Bob Mould crashing into REM”, others hooked on to the alt country angle so we put it together as “Bob Mould crashing into REM on Johnny Cash’s iPod”. Several journalists picked up on that so I guess it did the job.
How do you manage and balance “live” appearances with building and developing a fan base online?
With ease, given that we haven’t done any live performances to date. Overspill Poets started life as a recording project with no plans for live work. As such, the album was promoted exclusively on line and to a lesser degree in print and via airplay. To be honest that gave mixed results. We were able to generate some great press feedback and build up a solid network of friends through MySpace, Reverbnation and Facebook. On the other hand we discovered that people who seek out new music on line, tend to listen on line. As such, we sold less than we hoped. In retrospect, I’d have to say that if you really want to try and attain a degree of commercial success you need to get out there and build a live following. (Which really is how it should be). I think until you’re really established you have more chance of selling CD’s at gigs than anywhere else. A live performance can make a lasting impression that is hard to match streaming MP3’s on social networking sites.
Hug toured relentlessly. With Overpill Poets, the decision not to gig was purely down to practical considerations. Overspill Poets’ singer Tim Taylor lives a fair distance from me so I tend to put things together bit by bit in a home studio and then draft him in when it’s ready for a vocal. He then gets involved with the vocal arrangements, harmonies and scrutinising the mixes. The other members of the band credited on the album and MySpace are really just pseudonyms (nicked from Auf Wiedersehen Pet – those endless reruns you see) because I didn’t want to take the blame for the bass and drums. This is all about to change, however. At the end of last year, we got asked to do a live acoustic session for a radio show and that fired our imaginations with whole new possibilities for the songs. A promoter from the North East subsequently found us on MySpace and offered us an unplugged gig, which spurred us into action with the result we’re going to make our live debut on May 1st at Jay Jays in Bedlington supporting, of all people, Martin Stephenson and The Daintees (funny how things come around).
You guys have embraced social media to market yourselves creating an online identity at: iTunes, hmv.com, THE GENEPOOL, Ditto Music, PLAY.com, amazon.co.uk, emusic, CDBaby. Spotify and cdUniverse. Is there a “master plan” or “grand scheme” to where and how you market yourselves online? How do you choose where you’re going to promote yourselves online?
There was no grand plan at all. It was simply a case of trying things to see what works. Myspace is at the heart of everything we’ve done, because it’s so easy to send friend requests to people you think might like you. We regularly check out the new friends of established bands we have something in common with and selectively send out friend requests. This is something you have to take care about as SPAM on MySpace is a real pain. Again, you have to use yourself as a frame of reference and figure out a message you would not only NOT find irritating but actually be amused or intrigued to receive. We always tell people why we targeted them “as a fan of REM or Bob Mould (or the Hoobs) or whoever”… and use a little self-deprecating humour (in the same spirit of “4th best band in Hull”). I’m not going to give away the exact wording we use – that’s a trade secret – but we avoid saying things “You have to check out this band” … because, no actually, you don’t – and messages like that get right up my nose so it’s a fair assumption they aggravate other people too.
The downside of MySpace is that it isn’t easy to do effective targeted mailings to groups of friends. Reverbnation is excellent for that and that’s what we use. You can embed their “Join the Mailing list” widgets (as well as music players and many other helpful things) into your MySpace page, link into Facebook or Bebo, hook up with Twitter (which we’ve never got round to) or into your own web site. Facebook is good in other ways. Posting links to reviews etc on your wall keeps your friends in the loop and you can get good dialogs going with people.
Beyond that, we tried to seek out up and coming music blogs, internet or community radio stations through MySpace and send them stuff – CD’s (even home burned demos), MP3’s, photos etc if they showed an interest. NME-Europe (as in Nick’s Musical Express rather than the better know New Musical Express) became an early ally. We’ve ended up getting airplay all over America, Europe and the UK on smaller community and internet radio stations. We used Google to find other webzines and radio stations and emailed them stuff. Some picked up on it, some didn’t but it’s always worth trying.
We got onto the download stores (iTunes etc) through Ditto music’s digital distribution service.
How does your website http://revengewestern.com/ fit into your overall marketing approach to Overspill Poets and how do you orchestrate all the parts of your marketing plan?
We created the website initially so we could look half professional when we put the album out. However, it’s been a lot of fun to do and allows you to express yourself a little more freely than the templated pages of social networking sites. Also, it’s now attracting Google and Yahoo referrals so it can become self-promoting (you do need to get hold of “Google rankings for dummies” so you get a little bit sussed about how or how not to put it together – or better still buy beers for someone who enjoys doing that kind of stuff).
You decided to release your debut album Thompson Falls on your own label, Revenge Western Records. What decisions went into creating your own label and how did the name Revenge Western Records come about?
We’d been recording various ideas for four or five years on and off, but in the last year and a half we had a body of material which seemed to coalesce into an album. The sound crystallised into a blend of very American guitar influences with very English sounding vocals, which we thought was interesting. We’d started the MySpace page and were surprised and encouraged by the positive response we were getting from people and started to think about ways we could try and get heard a little more widely. We came to the attention of some journalists and bloggers and got featured on Diskant and NME-Europe, but webzines and publications won’t usually feature you unless you have a record out. Turning what we had into a finished album seemed to be the logical next step but we wanted to keep control of it. I’d already had the experience of making records for someone else with Hug and although Kitchenware Records was a really creative, music focused label, there were inevitable trade-offs and compromises and above all small budgets that couldn’t be exceeded. The upshot was that we made records we didn’t always feel truly represented us. So, we opted for making a record at home. What we lacked in sophisticated equipment and experience, we made up for by being able to scrub things and do them again until we got it right. Sound on Sound magazine (and their website) was a really useful resource in finding tutorials on how to use reverb, EQ, compression etc effectively.
The name Revenge Western (like so much else to do with Overspill Poets – including the name Overspill Poets) was borrowed from Auf Wiedersehen Pet and a scene where Barry confesses to have starred as the Banquo Kid in an amateur production of Macbeth staged as a Revenge Western. The term Revenge Western seemed to resonate with what we were trying to do – the alt country and indie influences – and the Auf Wiedersehen Pet / Shakespeare association gave it bizarrely English twist that amused us and felt right.
Was it complex setting up your own label?
It was surprisingly easy. Basically you just have to register with the PPL (Phonographic Performance Ltd) who issue you with a unique record label code you can use to in creating your own ISRC codes (International Standard Recording Codes). These are codes that uniquely identify a sound recording (a bit like ISDN codes for books). PPL is the UK body. Different bodies perform a similar service in different countries. Registration is free. Once registered you are officially a record label. You assign ISRC’s to your recordings and register these in the PPL CatCo database. The ISRC’s are digitally encoded onto your CD’s when they are replicated (disk burning software like Sony CD Architect allows you to do this yourself but CD replication houses will do it for you) and enable automatic monitoring of radio play etc. The PPL then collect performance royalties (due to the performers and label) from radio play etc for you on your behalf. A separate body (PRS) collect the royalties due to songwriters.
There are other technicalities such as getting a product bar code for an album (again CD replication houses can often supply these) and registering with the Inland Revenue or IRS or whoever. Befriending photographers, graphic designers and web designers is extremely important if you’re working on a shoe-string budget. Creative people with a passion for music like to get involved and will often offer “mates rates” or even do stuff for free if they think it looks good on their portfolio.
Persistent use of Google furnished us with CD replicators, physical and digital distributors and music PR and promotion services. Again, you have to make decisions here about what you can afford to do. You can release recordings digitally for next to nothing. CD’s cost money and employing a professional to help with your PR and promotion costs more still. However, if you shop around none of this has to be extortionate. It depends what you’re after. Our main aim was to get some press and get our stuff more widely heard. Most magazines, websites and radio stations still prefer stuff on CD. A small run of CD’s (less than 500) doesn’t cost much less than 1000 so it can be worth going for the larger quantity and if you can try and sell the rest online or at gigs you might make some of your money back. You might even make a profit but don’t count on it – don’t spend more than you can afford to lose. We spent less than many people spend on an annual summer vacation and for me the experience was infinitely more rewarding.
Physical distribution is a lot trickier than digital distribution as, although distributors work on a percentage, you often pay for warehouse storage and many stores get CD’s on sale or return. Returns cost the distributor money and they will pass on a charge to you and they still get their cut because their job is to get the store to take it. It’s your job to ensure someone buys it from the store. All this means, if you don’t sell enough you can end up owing the distributor money. If you don’t want to risk national distribution for CD’s, sites like TheGenePool.co.uk or CDBaby.com will sell your CD for you through their online stores. You supply them directly which is pretty risk free. Digital distribution is easy – there are many companies offering this: Genepool, CD Baby, Tunecore, Reverbnation to name but a few. We went with Ditto but you should shop around and decide whether you want minimal up front charges but to give away a percentage or keep all the royalties and pay a fee.
The Thompson Falls CD is getting terrific reviews from the press:
“A living, breathing lexicon of catchy, hook-laden lo-fi opulence infused within layers of guitar driven alt-country and entrenched in the indie/pop sensibility. Multifaceted cleverness indeed.” (Writers Choice Subba-Cultcha-Best of 2009)
“One of the best albums of 2009…a worthy addition to any discerning music collection.” (Rock n Reel Magazine)
“Whoever described Overspill Poets’ sound as ‘Bob Mould crashing into REM on Johnny Cash’s iPod’ git it just about right. Thompson Falls,their debut, is as heavyweight as any of the former Husker DU man’s solo recordings, has the vibe of the Athens, Georgia mob at their jingly-jangliest, and wears the hardcore troubadour spirit of Cash on its sleeve.” (Rock n Reel Magazine)
In a spirit of irrepressible self sufficiency the Poets have set up their own label, Revenge Western Records (named after an ill-judged amateur dramatic misadventure of Fendig’s). Overspill Poets’ debut album, Thompson Falls is out now on CD and as a download.
“Passionate, heartfelt and with enough grit to give it some real traction, this is stirring stuff and well worth seeking out.” (The Crack Magazine)
“Literary stylings and Byrd-like country rock make for some intriguing listening.” (Tasty Fanzine)
“If drive-time country rock is your bag you could do worse than visit the stretched out highway that leads to Thompson Falls.” (Artrocker magazine)
What have you done to market your music and “live” appearances to the press? How do you build a relationship with the press?
You can do much without spending money – we’ve made some good contacts through MySpace but we also employed Alan Jepson at Vision Music to push the album to the press. He did a good job but it’s tough. The fact that you can record an album at home and put it out yourself means everyone else can too and the press are literally deluged with “unsigned” material so the competition for column inches is fierce. As such, employing a professional is no guarantee of reviews. We did all we could to promote the album ourselves as well, and roughly half the reviews the album received we got through our own efforts. Read that anyway you like. We could have saved money and still got press but, looking at it another way, employing Alan got us twice the coverage we’d have got on our own.
What advice would you give indie artists, in particular those starting out, to generate the kind of impressive, total marketing approach Overspill Poets’ has developed?
I think I’ve already probably answered this in my overlong replies to your previous questions but in summary I’d say work long and hard on the music before you release anything. It’s got to stand out if you’re going to get anywhere. Put in the hours online – make contacts – don’t overlook the smaller sites and blogs who may be on the up and remember no-one owes you anything. No-one is under any obligation to listen to your stuff let alone like it or write nice things about it. It’s up to you to capture their imagination – entice don’t demand. And if you can get out and play live. I miss it and I’m really looking forward to get back to doing gigs (even if they may be fewer and more sporadic than in years gone by – but then again there’s only some many years you can spend in the back of a transit van, sleeping on floors and living on junk food).
Thanks for your time and insight, George. And keep us posted on any new developments with Overspill Poets!
Garrison
Tags: CDBaby, cdUniverse, facebook, indie artist, iTunes, Marketing, MySpace, Overspill Poets, Revenge Western Records, Reverbnation, spotify, Thompson Falls, Tim Taylor, twitter