PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Why don't outstanding musicians and vocalist's get national or worldwide attention?

Or maybe some Beatles...

Come Together by The Beatles (Morgan James cover)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxpuV-MJaI&list=PL3r_j6sKne0di63XNGzZL1xvAH34-XcEs&index=3

I'll add Sarah Lloyde from South Australia to the list of great, and I mean GREAT, singers who won't make it to The Enormodome. Sarah is already 31 and soon to have a baby, so she may just fade into the gray with all that talent, charisma, and beauty.

She is in the middle in this video singing 1/3 of the front vocals. She has so much soul in her voice that I am okay with watching cover music by this band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI1iLTBnOB4&ab_channel=TheHindleyStreetCountryClub

The best guitar player I've ever played with was a guy named Marshall Scott. Turned out he was also the best banjo player I've ever met. He played on a few albums by a local band called Outdoor Plumbing Company.

I kept thinking he'd be snatched up by a better known bluegrass band. Then I moved away. I later learned he'd moved near me so I tried to contact him.

Turns out that he'd committed suicide shortly after moving here. Such a waste of a human life, ... and such a waste of incredible talent.

I know it's a downer story, but he could play rings around a ton of the Nashville musicians. I lost touch with him so I have no idea what was going on with him.

To me it's a reminder of how many people there are out there who could put the well known artists to shame if they were just given a chance.

Unfortunately the first prerequisite is that you have to be young and cute. There are a few here who are outstanding but they will never leave Cleveland.

You have to sacrifice almost to the level of selling your soul to Satan to succeed. As soon as women decide they want kids, their musical life is over. Sure it is possible to have kids and tour, and many have done it. But unless you are at Enormodome level you aren't making the money to have a nanny travel with you, have a qualified educator travel with you to "road school" the kids, and somehow maintain the balance of home and road. Can you even imagine the stress levels? (And I express this thesis based on single mothers, because face it, most are anymore.) Benatar and Giraldo did it but they had a lot of help.

Every city has a Holiday Inn level singer who has talent, but being able to sing isn't enough. There is one here who sings really well, but she is 4'10" tall and wide and not attractive even a little bit, so she is never going to make it. Again, sad to say, but people hear with their eyes first. Then you move on to material. You can go back in time and tell me about Sinatra, Anne Murry, Helen Reddy and many singers who recorded all cover material, but this is 2020. You need your own material. Period. Non songwriters will argue that point to the death but unless you are a Bonamassa guy who plays old blues standards at that ethereal level, you need your own music. Whether you write it or you hire writers, you simply won't make it as a cover artist beyond your local level. I call them "Wives and girlfriends" bands. And if your goal is to work at the machine shop all week and play on Saturday nights, great. That goal is not hard to attain. If you aspire to more, sell your soul to the music gods, quit the machine shop, and play with your band ALL. DAY. LONG. Of course that thing called money gets in the way, but that's the price you pay for a shot at the Enormodome.

It is simply much deeper than talent.

And then shall we open the can of worms about guys like Tom Bukovac, first call session guitar player in Nashville, who HATES touring and will only take an occasional touring gig if it is really attractive to him? Like he tours with Joe Walsh when bands can tour. He does that because of the Cleveland connection where Joe was a hero in the early 70s and Tom is from Cleveland. He doesn't want the spotlight or to play the Enormodome. Vegas size venues, and short tours as he has 2 kids at home.

So I guess the way to answer the question, as this thread starts to wind down, they don't get national or worldwide attention because they aren't national or worldwide. You have to tour around the world to beknown around the world. And nobody is going to sponsor a tour of any notoriety for somebody singing a mixed bag of 22 cover songs. No matter how good they are.

Notes, that story is all too common. Adding songwriters to steal writer fees, and 2 cents a record is just criminal. They are getting some payback now though as independent music has eaten into their profits. Of course it is all still controlled by just a few for the really big bucks. Money is not everything and you have obviously found your place in life.

Steal? You think being paid for your composition work is stealing? I mean, you've heard of ASCAAP, right? That organization that exists to pay people for their writing when artists perform their music? That understood band that gets broken non stop? Sometimes even here? I'm sure everybody posting covers on here pays a fee to perform it, right? Wink wink wink.

How many days did YOU work at your job for free in 2020? When you DID work were you stealing money from your boss? How about the agents that book bands? Do they steal? And the promoters who arrange press and advertising? Stealing? Road managers who book hotels, make sure there are meals ordered, finding a dry cleaner with same day service, make sure laundry gets done... stealing? The venue security, vendors, stagehands, lighting people.... All stealing?

When you really get down to it, the artists have the easiest job on tour. Show up for a 3pm sound check, then come back at 8 to work their 2 hours of stage time. After which stage crew tears down, loads the stage gear....

I don't know anything about you so I have to ask so I do know. Have you ever actually done this stuff? Extensive (let's say extensive means 12 weeks or more) travel? Being away from everybody who matters to you? Living out of a suitcase in bad hotels (Because we don't all stay in top floor suites) for what seems like forever? It's a tough life for everybody involved. And any money earned by anybody in that chain is really earned. True that the writer only has to write the song once and the band has to play it many times, but without that writer, they have nothing to play. That writer needed to make a demo, so he likely hired studio players to do the demo before he even submitted it to a band. Stealing isn't even close to the right verb.

Personally I think the writer should make more per track than each performing player makes. If 6 pieces of a band each make a penny per track, the writer should make 12 pennies per track. Multiply by 8 tracks that writer gets onto a CD, and he makes just under a buck. Sell 100,000 units.... that's just under $100,000 for writing 6 of the songs. Which is very fair in my opinion.

The public faces, the arts and musics, of today's entertainers and other specialists, such as political animals, are the end products of complex systems. Few talents are so overpowering as to stand on its own merits. Do musicians require an Albert Grossman or a Brian Epstein? My uneducated guess is, yeah, they do.
Then, again, there is the occasional hard to overlook act:
Aimee!

Two outstanding musicians and vocalists that will probably never get national or international acclaim in the general public are a couple of ladies that do have national and international acclaim in a limited genre.

They don't wear skimpy outfits. They don't shake their butts for the camera. They simply play and sing. Both of them are also accomplished songwriters. They're also not afraid of doing covers of songs by people they call their musical heroes.

Still, ... the general public will probably never know who either of them are.

Sarah Jarosz and Sierra Hull

Sarah Jarosz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv-Y2iYZi28&list=PL3r_j6sKne0eUAYgbaakqB9KVUVfp_30Y&index=15


Sierra Hull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5klcV63iWU

I think you misunderstood my comment. Notes wrote about Motown. Part of the deal offered included the fact that the label will add people as songwriters, so the fees paid by ASCAP or BMI or whoever is paying the writers fees, gets split amongst these other people as well as the actual writer of the song. That is stealing. These people had nothing to do with writing the song in other words.

Elvis' music publishers used to do the same thing, if you want Elvis to sing your song, you are going to have to add this guy and this guy as co-writers and split the writer's fee. That is theft by any definition.

As a matter of fact it still goes on today in music publishing, which is a stupid word since nothing is being published but that is what it is called. The publisher gets a share and the writer gets a share. If you add a co-writer and do not specify a percentage then it is half and so on.

It's not new. You see Irving Mills' names on a lot of songs that he never had a hand in writing. Duke Ellington is a prime example. If you want to get in the gate, you need to pay the gatekeeper.

And the opposite happens

Otis Blackwell wrote songs for Elvis Presley and Elvis got his name on it. When Otis was asked if he minded, he said that he didn't mind at all, because if Elvis recorded it it would sell more than twice as much as anyone else's version.

Insights and incites by Notes

Yes, it's often a two-way street.

As long as there have been visuals to go along with the music, the visuals win. Nothing new under the sun.

This is another great 'hidden gems' post - starting out with the most abstract question and resulting in lots of new "unknown" musicians for me to discover and follow : )

Well, to bring home one point that I keep bringing home, nobody is going to play The Enormodome playing copy music. Nobody here seems to accept that you HAVE TO WRITE SONGS to be a "playa" in the big game. You may define success as being the best cover band in your city. I do not define it that way. An occasional cover here and there, repurposed rather than note for note, okay, but not a 22 song show. The early Beatles albums were half covers, but the other way to look at that is that those albums were also half stuff they wrote. (Can you even imagine that in the middle of Sgt Pepper they'd do some stupid cover song?) Part of success is putting out an album, touring to support it, doing the radio promo for the shows, the t-shirt sales... all of it. AND you have to do something that is not exactly "in the mold" to set yourself apart.

Please take a minute to read my (fairly long) story below "the mold" and how I had to learn humility. Fast.

In 1984, I decided that I was going to head out to Los Angeles and show the music business everything they had been doing wrong up until then. I took a leave of absence from my job (I was a mailman) and loaded my car, and off I went. I had done a lot of leg work before this actually happened. I had a friend who managed an 18 suite apartment building and we worked out a deal where I could live in whichever suite was being renovated, as they were typically rehabbed with carpet and paint and such whenever a lease ended, and the next lease didn't start for at least a month, so I could stay in each place for at least one month, longer if they had no applicant. When he finally ran out of places, I stayed in the room that the Ramada on Highway 1 in Santa Monica gave his trio for their cases and such, and they were the house band there for a few years so that was stable. (Yes, I lived walking distance-ish from the ocean!)

When I got there the first thing I did was contact all my Cleveland friends. The guy with the apartment was a drummer. There was John the keyboard player who much later in life was in the house band on American Idol as well as doing sitcom jingles for NBC. Then there was Jim, a bass player, and his wife Pam, a singer/rhythm guitar player. I was playing guitar then. The game plan was that we (I) would write songs and do a showcase at a place in Santa Monica called At My Place, owned and operated by Matt Kramer. Matt had some business experience and he was very good to the bands that were going to perform as far as helping them pick which 5 songs they would play. I wrote about 15, pared that to 10, and then one afternoon we went in and he listened to all 10 and told us which 5 to play. We polished those up and he set up a showcase on Monday night, when they took place, 10 days later. We went in there ready to wow the dozens of label people that would be in the place.

Well, come showcase night, there were only 6 of them there, and the people who came to those things were the lower tier underlings, not the top guys. Matt told me it was protocol that when we finished I should towel the sweat off, grab a quick drink of water and then go out and greet people and thank them for coming. And that at that point IF they had any kind of critique, they would give it then. So after doing what I thought was a strong set, I dried off, grabbed a plastic cup of water and went out to see people. I never knew August in California could be so cold. The first guy, nothing. Shook my hand, grunted while he nodded, barely looking up from the pile of papers on the table in front of him. The second guy was nicer, but not much in the way of critical review, just to stay with the writing and keep trying. The 4th one was a woman probably 40-ish and she actually asked me to sit down with her. And that went like this.

She told me something close to "I can see by your eyes that this is your first showcase and the reception is falling far short of what you hoped for. Let me tell you this. NOBODY gets a deal on their first showcase. Never. Most of us here don't even bring contracts out of the briefcase to show you one until we see you at least 4 or 5 times, and each time we want new material. Your music is fine, but it is SO midwest mainstream, and there is already a Johnny Cougar. Get back to work with your writing and stay with it. There is talent and potential up there, but no wow factor. You need that wow to get anywhere. And that's the truth of the matter. Also, you are a handsome man, but you need to drop 25 pounds or so." And I shook her hand smiling through happy tears that somebody finally told me the truth.

I fought back the urge to say "This is 5 people from Cleveland here. What did you THINK we would do if not midwest mainstream? That's what we know because that's where we're from." I nodded, thanked her, and walked away. And about 2 weeks later I came back to Ohio with my tail between my legs, still arrogant enough to think they made a mistake not signing me to a rich 6 album deal and that they were STILL doing it wrong. Yes, I was THAT arrogant back then. And to a degree, still now.

But back to 100% more on topic, a lot of why people don't get discovered is that they never leave their turtle shell. You simply HAVE to be a writer. That is the other half of the creative toolkit. If not you can play at the campfire and back porch "jam sessions" (I HATE that term!) you want and be the star "picker" (I hate THAT term too) at those jams sessions, and if that salves your soul and makes you feel complete, then god bless you because you have reached your goal in music. But if you want anybody outside your town to know your name, the path is very different.

We have a scene here where Wednesday night is jam night, and the players are SO STUPID they don't see that they are providing the bar with free music when they should have to be playing $650-700 for a band. AND THEN, when their band is not booked on some random night, they complain how there are no places to pay anymore. Well, YOU are giving your craft away. That's WHY there are no places to play.

The game has changed since my day. For the worse.

Yes the trend today is to write your own songs, but I remember when people like Barry Mann & Cynthia Weill, Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller, Gerry Goffin & Carole King,Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich, and Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman wrote songs for professional singers.

I miss those days because a lot of singer/songwriters don't sing as well as some people who are just great singers (exceptions acknowledged).

The Drifters, The Clovers, Bobby Rydell, Elvis Presley, The Animals, The Miracles, The 4 Tops, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Ben E King, Tom Jones, Little Anthony, Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Kiss, Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, and so many more either didn't write their own songs or didn't write most or any of their own hits.

And doing e-fake disks for Band-in-a-Box I realize that most current country music is not written by the artists that perform them.

There is nothing wrong with a singer-songwriter. Some songwriters are excellent singers.

Some excellent singers and musicians can't write great songs.

Some great songwriters can't sing well at all.

IMO there is no reason why we can't have all 3 and appreciate everything for what it is.

Insights and incites by Notes

I agree totally. I am a singer songwriter who knows my weakest point is my singing ability.

There's a song I wrote years ago that I would love to hear it done by Vince Gill. It even fits with some of the styles he plays.

I know. Dream on.

No. Don't "dream on". How bad do you want that to happen? What have you done in all those years to try and make it happen? Have you contacted his management and asked for permission to submit that song? (Don't send it to him cold. It will come back unopened with a letter explaining that due to the possibility of legal repercussions in the future they will not accept unsolicited song submissions.)

The worst that could happen is that they say they are not interested. They will try to discourage you from doing it, but that is just some phone answering person playing goalie. Be persistent.

Vince ain't coming to West Virginia looking for you anytime soon.

As far as the old argument that many singers don't write, yada yada yada. Every time this comes up I have to hear about how Sinatra never wrote a song. That is not the point. Nobody is going to come and see an artist at a "real" venue for a "real" concert to hear rehashed a Beatles song, followed by a rehashed Merle Haggard song, followed by a rehashed anything else. Performers need an identity. A thumbprint. More will fail than succeed, but you miss every shot you don't take. You won't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket. You won't get a degree if you never go to college. You can fit your own metaphor to that idea, but for people who say "I can't write", my answer to that would get bleeped, so I won't say it. You won't write a song if you don't try, and you will write more bad songs than good. That doesn't mean you don't try.

I quit a job delivering mail, earning a salary and medical care, because I didn't want to look back when I was 60 and say "what if". And to MY lofty goals and expectations, I failed badly. If people are happy being a "gigging musician", god bless them. I wanted to be a "touring musician", recording for 6 months then touring to support that album. I would have accepted touring as an opening act at the start, but by album 3 I would want to be a headliner. I didn't come anywhere close to that, but I tried. And it is a deflating, defeating feeling when you are told "You aren't good enough", one that chased me away from music for years. And I have no delusions at 69 that it can ever happen. But man, low likelihood of success should never deter anybody from trying.