Rainy Days and Monday

After three and a half weeks without rain in the Chicago area, the skies finally opened up on Monday just as my wife and I exited Costco, $250 poorer than when we entered. The rain was such a welcome site that we opted to get wet and load up the car, but after arriving home the weather got more serious with a deluge of rain, wind gusts, hail and tornado warnings – none of which, I might add, had been forecasted by our weather apps, which had merely predicted a “chance of rain.”

As we hunkered down in our basement, I marked the occasion of this wonderful, beautiful rain (granted, with a side of danger) by playing a recording of The Carpenters’ song, “Rainy Days and Mondays,” as it was both raining and a Monday! How perfect! Well, the gods were having none of that nonsense, and one minute into Karen Carpenter’s glorious delivery, the power went out, flashed back on for a second, went out again, flashed on again, and then went out for good. There would be no music for the time being.

Once the worst of the storm had passed, I headed upstairs and I took matters into my own hands, sitting at the piano to pluck out the 1971 tune penned by Roger Nichols and Paul Williams. The chords were no problem, but I botched the melody pretty badly. It brought to mind how much easier it had been to play the song when I could just hide behind my daughter Jessica’s singing voice, who performed the tune with me from time to time when she was around 12 years old. Playing chords while someone else took the melody? No problem. Melody on the fly? Not so much.

On one occasion in 2009, Jessica and I performed “Rainy Days and Mondays” for my mother and her husband. Jessica had – and still has – a very good voice and vocal technique. We picked the proper key, I played the intro, and she took it away from there. I added some silly backup vocals behind my daughter’s controlled performance, but overall it sounded good.

After we finished the tune, my mother said, “Oh Jessica, why didn’t you use your pretty voice?”

Now, it would take years of psychoanalysis to understand what prompted that remark. I had gotten used to callous comments from my mother over the years, but this one left me dumbfounded. I stood up, looked at Jessica with eyebrows raised, wiggled my finger toward her and said, “Follow me.”

When Jessica recounts the story today, she says that she thought she was in trouble, that she had possibly embarrassed me in front of my mother, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

We walked to the back room of our house, I crouched down to her eye level and said, “Do you know what tactless means?” She said she didn’t. “It’s when you say something rude, something unkind. You sang beautifully, and what Grandma said was tactless.”

Jessica and I will occasionally recount this story when reminiscing about her childhood. It was one of my prouder parenting moments and one of my mother’s weaker moments. But Jessica wasn’t deterred. She went on to sing throughout high school and college, and even made a career as a music therapist for half a decade.

“Rainy Days and Mondays.” I love that this wonderful song that accompanied me during my early childhood now has a personal history with my daughter. However, I’d be much obliged if the next time I choose to play the record, the skies let it go to its completion.

My New Band - Anchors Away

When I subscribed a Spotify a few years ago I started making a massive 70s playlist, not of songs that I already knew like the back of my hand, but all of those tunes that pop into my head at odd times, little remnants of my youth when I listened to WOKY Milwaukee in the backyard of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Songs like “Jackie Blue” by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, “Reminiscing” by The Little River Band, “Just Remember I Love You” by Firefall, and “Lotta Love” by Nicolette Larson. Remember those song? I do, and scores of others, some that I hadn’t heard in decades. I just picked up an album by The Tarney/Spencer Band – a group that is NOT on Spotify currently – because as I was driving down the highway a year ago or so, the song “No Time to Lose” clawed to the surface from the recesses of my mind. I don’t know why it got there, but it’s a great tune, and I love so many of these old songs that don’t get the radio rotation that they used to.

This type of music has been retroactively labeled yacht rock, a very nebulously applied term and one that many musicians resent. But the label seems to have stuck, and the genre has gained a bit of a resurgence. So imagine my excitement when I got the call to join a Chicago-based yacht rock band, Anchors Away? The music is challenging, fun, and more subtle in nature than much of the music I’ve been playing live for the last decade or so. I’ve been busting my butt trying to get 30 songs prepared for my first gig with the band, taking place on October 29th in Downers Grove, Illinois. What I really like about it is the fact that we’re not playing the same old stuff that you can hear on every radio station in the country. No more Rolling Stones, Beatles, and the like. This music may not be new, but it also hasn’t been beaten to death.

Anchors Away has some killer musicians “on board” (see what I did there?) and I can’t wait to get sailing with the crew. It’ll no doubt take me a few gigs to feel comfortable, but I hope you’ll make it out to one of our shows docking at a bar near you. Visit us on Facebook or on our website.

BEWARE! Don't play that song!

A musician I know recently received a list of approximately seventy artists he's no longer allowed to play at a particular restaurant. They include: Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, The Eagles, Smokey Robinson, Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen. Luckily, the inclusion of Megadeth on the list didn’t affect my friend’s playlist, but the others did.

So, what do all of these artists have in common?

They’re all part of the company Global Music Rights, a music publishing entity led by Irving Azoff whose mission is to collect higher performance royalties for artists, some of whom haven’t played music for decades by virtue of the fact that they’re dead. John Lennon, for instance, and Ira Gershwin!   

On the surface, demanding more money from radio conglomerates and on-line streaming services like Pandora might seem like not only a reasonable business pursuit, but even a moral one, the equivalent to Major League ballplayers demanding more of the pie from greedy owners back in the 70s and 80s. According to a New York Times article on the topic, a song that’s streamed around 40 million times on Pandora only collects approximately $2200 under the traditional publishing compaies of ASCAP and BMI, and since the music industry has taken such a tremendous hit on physical sales, it's reasonable that some artists would try to make up for the loss elsewhere. 

Of course, nothing is forcing a radio station to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” for the billionth time. Hell, maybe Global Music Right will be doing everyone a favor by eliminating overplayed songs from our radio dial. But either way, I concede this end of the business strategy. I don’t care if 97.1 FM "The Drive" in Chicago (which is of course owned by a large broadcasting company) has to pay a little more to play “Hotel California.” (Though can we all agree that the estate of Ira Gershwin should give it a rest, already?)

But what about musicians? Not DJs, mind you, who play the original recording, but musicians who play an interpretation of the song? Should the arms of performance rights enforcement extend this far? 

I will play around forty gigs in 2016 plus another forty-five church services and will be lucky to gross – get this – $10,000 for doing so. I’m not joking. I earn less per hour than my teenage daughters. And yes, just like no one is forcing a radio station to play Journey, no one is forcing me to play music for money. I could call it a day and start working in human resources again and within a matter of months slit my wrists.  

But the questions is: should musicians really be restricted by what songs they can play? And should restaurant owners really be paying licensing fees for hiring a cheap-ass band on a Saturday night doing serviceable covers of well-known songs? I see small restaurant owners, program managers of struggling park districts and night-shift supervisors of dive bars on a weekly basis, and they’re not exactly driving Teslas to work. Still, my musician friends often have to protect themselves and include a clause in their contracts stating that the restaurant owner is liable for any licensing fees associated with hosting live entertainment.

What about large national restaurant chains that own hundreds of locations nationally? Surely they can pony up the cash to the publishing companies, right? Perhaps. But I know of at least one national chain that has opted not to pay the likes of Irving Azoff, and who wins in this scenario? Not the musician. Not the music publisher. Not the composer. Not the patrons (unless avoiding certain artists is a plus). And not the restaurant owner. It’s a lose-lose-lose-lose arrangement.

Should live performances be exempt for paying licensing fees? If yes, what if James Taylor plays a Carol King song at Wrigley Field next week (as he most surely will)? Should Carol King get a cut? What if I play a Carol King song this weekend at a dive bar? The two scenarios are not equivalent, and I could imagine the law drawing a distinction between the two. But where should the line be drawn? Should licensing fees only be paid when an artist plays in front of an audience of 500 or more people? 1000? 10,000?  

I can't say for certain, but I can say that it would be ridiculous to ask a rock band making a cool $400 on a Saturday night to pay performance fees, just as it's equally ridiculous to ask the small bar that's hosting the music to do so. Something's gotta give here.

Maybe restaurant owners nationwide will wise up and refuse to pay licensing fees altogether, and bands can go back to doing what they used to do: play original music. Who knows? A musical renaissance may be just around the corner!