On Friday night, The Eastern Sea played a show at Mango’s to kick off their east coast tour with Screwtape and Holy Fiction. Halfway through The Eastern Sea’s set, during an instrumental interlude, Houston’s own Fat Tony hopped onstage and began to rap – it might have been freestyle, but it was probably planned, was nonetheless impressive and got the crowd pretty hyped.
Groups of people speaking with one voice are what power and influence is all about. Never try and promote local music by promoting only yourself; instead, make your case in one voice as a group. Because in all honesty, who cares about your garage band? It’s got to be about more than you.
Working together can be discussed in the language of teams or collaborations or partnerships — yet one word doesn’t really define the activity, because it’s the process of group pride and group accomplishment that is so powerful and needed in our H-Town music community today, regardless of the name we give to the process.
Or as Shakespeare said, “That which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Houston musicians may want to follow the example of Ten out of Tenn, which is a group of ten artists who collaborated to support one another, buy each others’ CDs and attend each others’ shows to form a collective group of talented musicians. As individual artists, you may record, produce and release an album or two, garner some attention from the press and gain a small fan base, but together the groups really flourished and earned the attention of the nation.
“A Ten Out Of Tenn show typically consists of each artist playing two songs, acting as their own house band, along with their backbeat, drummer Will Sayles,” says John Tumminello, a musician from Tennessee and avid supporter of Ten out of Tenn. “They say the whole is the sum of its parts, and as individual parts, these ten artists have their own successful careers and fan bases. Bring them together and their true artistry shines as they swap vocals and instruments during their shows for a unique twist on each other’s creative work.”
So how can we do this, Houston? A lot of you are already collaborating, and some of you have bands that you play with regularly, but can we do it on a grander scale? We shouldn’t let our preferred genres define us and should instead focus on embracing the eclectic nature that defines Houston as a city, UH as a university and our music scene as an underground movement.
If you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them, because we’re trying to show everyone why Houston’s music scene is quite possibly the most underrated in the country.
I suggest that young musicians in H-Town come together and ask the old timers at SugarHill Studios to conduct a workshop at UH about team work and collaborations among musicians over the decades here in Houston.
http://www.sugarhillstudios.com/
SugarHill Recording Studios here in H-Town is the "Abbey Road of the South" and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating recording facility in the U.S.. It is 69 years old!
Learning what works from the old timers who were sound engineers seems like an especially good thing to do since they will tell the real truth about teams and collaborations that worked well over the decades.
If young musicians like this idea you might want to move forward with a sense of urgency as the old timers aren't going to live forever.
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GP
Gary, those aren't "old timers" at SugarHill. Maybe Dan Workman, who's oldest, but that's a massive stretch.