Interviews

On January 28, I had the chance to chat with CD Baby founder Derek Sivers over Skype. His unique insights into the music industry will help you to push your career to the next level.

For those who don’t know already, you are the founder of CD Baby. Tell me a little bit about that. What were some of your responsibilities?
Back in 1997 I was selling my own CD. Just a musician selling my own CD on my band’s website. But you have to remember in 1997 the world was pretty different. There was no PayPal, the only online record stores were CDNOW and Music Boulevard, both of which went out of business. But I contacted both of them and asked if they would sell my CD on their website, and they said, “Well, who’s your distributor?” I said, “Well, I don’t have a distributor. Can’t I just send you a box of CD’s and you sell it and pay me?” And they said, “Look kid, it doesn’t work that way. Our website is just a front end to the major distributors. They pipe us a data feed of their catalogue and we feature it on our website, and when we get an order we ship it. So the only way you could be in our store is to be signed up with one of the major distributors.” And I thought, “Well, that’s lame. Can’t I just tell you I’m a distributor now?” And they said, “Come on kid, it doesn’t work that way.” So I thought, “OK, how hard can it be to get a credit card merchant account, build a shopping cart myself?” Turns out it was actually really hard, it cost like a $1,000 in set up fees to get a credit card merchant account, you know? Like I said, there was no PayPal back then. Building a shopping cart used to be really hard. I had to go down to the book store and buy a big book on CGI-bin, Perl programming to program a shopping cart from scratch, because there were none available. It was hard work. So after about 3 months of work I had a “Buy Now!” button on my website. And it was so much work that some of my friends at the time said, “Hey man, do you think you could sell my CD with that thing?” So I said, “Yeah, I guess, sure.” So it was really just my own band’s website had my CD and then some of my friend’s CD’s for sale, and that just kept growing and became CD Baby.

What are some of the things that have changed now that you no longer work at CD Baby? What are some of your goals and aspirations?
I don’t have any. *laughs* No, really, I’m not a very ambitious person. I just tend to follow whatever interests me. So CD Baby, for example, was never meant to be a business. Just a little hobby I was doing, you know? I was making my full-time living making music, and it was just a little hobby and accidentally took off. I’m already far beyond any aspirations I ever had. I really just don’t have any.

Helping musicians with their careers seems to be one of your passions. Talk about some of the ways in which you help musicians these days.
Right now I’m just doing some things that I think are needed. For example, on the educational side… I think a lot of musicians don’t understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of their music. Everything is very self-centered, meaning you spend all this time and energy making your music and then you put together a recording or something and you send it out to the world. Maybe you shot-gunned 200 copies to 200 places. And when those 200 people don’t get back to you, you think, “The bastards. They don’t appreciate true genius.” You don’t really understand what it’s like to be the person, say, running a venue trying to keep it in business when the landlord keeps raising the rent, and all of their concerns on how their going to somehow stay in business. And only get acts coming through there that will double their attendance. Or what it’s like to be working in a radio station, in the dark dungeon basements of a radio station, where the DJ’s usually work and how their just concerned with bringing in advertising revenue, and music is really just kind of seen as something that keeps people listening so they can sell more ads and whatnot. So I think it really helps musicians to understand the full picture of where their music is going to and understanding the people that are on the receiving end of it. So I’ve started doing a lot of interviews with these people that are on the receiving end of independent artist’s music, and sharing those videos through… Just putting them up for free. Things like that, just things that I think are helpful.

What are some other ways you intend to help musicians?
Oh, there’s a few things. Setting up a new company called MuckWork, which doesn’t exist yet. It’s going to be a network of agents around the world who – when I say agents I mean just anybody who needs work – are willing to do the boring, uncreative dirty work necessary that musicians unfortunately spend a lot of time doing. Whether it’s updating a MySpace page, or whatever, you know?

If someone wanted to do what you are doing, how would you suggest they go about it?
How so? What part?

Well, you made a good living at CD Baby and now you’re shall we say – semi-retired – or do you have a day job or…?
No day job, no. So, “semi-retired”, sure. *laughs* You know the last time I had a day job was 1992. I quit my job at Warner Bros., and just dedicated myself to being a full-time musician. I was living in New York City at the time, and just said, “Alright, I’m going to do it. I’m going to quit my job, and I’m just going to do whatever it takes to make a living as a musician.” So, I actually haven’t had a job since 1992. When CD Baby started, I was resisting it. I didn’t want to start a business. I didn’t mean to start a business. It was just this little hobby that took off, because I was making my full-time living making music. The last thing I wanted was something to get in the way of that. But it happened anyway, you know? Could make that metaphor of, there are a lot of babies in the world that were not necessarily intended, and happened anyway. There you go, roll with it.

I’d have to assume you’re in a pretty good position financially to be able to do that, so…?
Yeah, but… I think with anything, I’ve been in the same mind-set since 1992 when I was 22-years-old and quit my job. The most important thing I think is being able to live within your means. So at the time I was making $800 a month on average just gigging and whatnot. And I just found a way to live, no matter… Rent was $330 a month, and I could do my monthly groceries in about $150 a month, and left me just a little money left over for saving up and whatnot… I just didn’t spend any money, you know? 9 years living in New York City, I never once took a taxi; I would only take the subway. I would never go out to eat unless somebody else was treating. Just things like that, I think it’s about living within your means no matter what you’re earning. So, even now, I refuse to buy anything I don’t need. I see all my friends get iPhones, but you know what? My existing phone works fine. Philosophically I’m against the idea, I resist the screaming of advertising trying to entice you to want things you don’t need, I just don’t fall for it. You can be “semi-retired” pretty easily if you’re able to control your means and just do only what you want to. I was actually really inspired by my girlfriend’s parents when I was 22. Her parent’s were hippies, lived on a commune, she grew up without electricity, never did have a TV. Her mom would do various odd jobs around town, and her dad was a photographer, yet they put her through College because they just found ways to keep their means down. From my point of view, they were “semi-retired” at that point too. Anyway, I’m sorry it’s just kind of my rant… I think a lot of people think that life has to be expensive, that they need to have two cars and a four bedroom house and such and such and all these massive expenses and I object.

How important is it for a musician to find a specific niche or audience?
It’s important to remember that you can have multiple niches, meaning the album is a perfect thing to use as a niche. Meaning, if you look at the career of somebody like Paul Simon and David Bowie have been two extreme examples of this, where if you look at their careers throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, every album they put out was a niche in a way. David Bowie would say, “OK, now my name is Ziggy Stardust and I’m from Mars. Now I am the Thin White Duke of Soul. Now I am Post-Modern Grunge dude”. Paul Simon would do a Gospel album, then a South African album, and then a Brazilian album. And with each one of those, he would sharply define this niche and say this album is this project. And it’s a great way just to completely dive into a niche, be very sharply defined, which I think opens a lot of doors because you’re trying to call attention to your project and get publicity for it. It’s easier to talk about and write about something that’s sharply defined, instead of, you know, “Hi, my name is Mark Miller and here’s my new music”, you know what I mean? I think a lot of people are too well-rounded. Whereas if you think of the world’s attention metaphorically, like as if it’s a big cloud or a hunk of cheese or something, what you want to do is cut through. You want to cut through the noise to call attention to yourself. You can’t cut through anything if you’re well-rounded. You have to be very sharp to cut. I’m a big advocate for just being very sharply defined, just having the confidence to say “OK, this project is this is sharp niche. My next one might be totally different, but this project is just a niche.” Got to do a niche instead of being well-rounded.

What are some other practical ways a musician could go about finding their niche?
I guess you just follow whatever excites you. Set yourself some limitations. I think it could be more inspiring to give yourself some limitations, to say, “OK, I’m going to make a new album but it’s going to be only… whatever, instrumental, only electric, or I’m going to use this synth-guitar for the whole thing, or I’m going to… ” Whatever it may be, you know what I mean? You’ll set some limitations, and say, “This is my new project”. And then just stick within those limitations is almost a challenge or experiment to yourself.

Obviously success looks a little different for every musician. Do you think that there are many different paths to finding that success, or only a few select paths that lead to success?
It’s more about what your definition of success is. To me, it was all about freedom. Success to me meant the freedom to do whatever I want, whenever, wherever. And so, to me, a major record label contract would have been the opposite of success, because it would have interfered with my freedom. Like I don’t know how many people have, you know… If you’ve met people who have had the misfortune of signing a major record label deal, but once you do, you no longer own your music and you now have a boss. The person at the record label is practically your employer that is able to tell you what you need to be doing with your music, where you need to be appearing, what you have to do, what songs are not going to be allowed on the record, and ordering you to go back and write something more commercial, etc. You know, I worked at Warner Bros. for two and a half years, and that’s the world, you know? When you sign a deal, you now have a boss, you have a job, you no longer own your music, it belongs to them. That’s why they paid you the advance is that they bought your music, it’s no longer yours. They own the rights to it, they can do what they want with it, etc. So to me, my definition was freedom and somebody else’s definition might be to be the headliner at their local venue that they always grew up going to, somebody else’s definition might be to hear their music on a TV commercial. So I think it’s important to know what your definition of success is, and forget everybody else’s definition, but go for what you know would make you happy personally. It took a lot of soul searching for me to realize that freedom was my real answer, and that’s why I didn’t want to be a part of that high pressure world of signing a record deal. I saw how that worked, and it made me noxious seeing it, and it took me awhile to figure out why, and it was because I realized my ultimate goal was freedom. So for me it was doing random gigs and playing the College market and let’s just say the fact that I haven’t had a job since 1992. That to me is success.

So you toured the College market for 10 years was it?
No, no, sorry. CD Baby was 10 years. I did the College market for 4…

I remember reading that, I just didn’t remember the exact number…
About 1995 through 99 maybe, 94 through 98, something like that. It was practically my full-time living, you know?

How important is networking for a musician?
You might have seen a story I put on my blog, about advice for a 19 year old session guitarist, or 19 year old guitarist who wants to be a session musician. So my advice to him was that first, stay in the shed. Just be an anti-social bastard, lock yourself in your room, 8 hours a day. Learn everything, practice everything, get to the point where you can just play circles around anything and anyone in any style, you know? But then at a certain point, when you’re ready to go make a living doing it, it’s really a completely different almost opposite thing. It’s crucial to stay in the shed up until a point, and then it’s crucial to go out and ‘network’ as you put it, but it’s really just a matter of meeting people, being a cool person, being an interesting person, being interested in others, not just self-promoting. All those basic rules of human communication, you know? Why people like certain people, apply. In general, people work with people they like. If they’re wondering who to hire for that certain gig, they call the person that they enjoy talking with, that they enjoy being around. I think there are some bad role models out there, where we’ve heard of the few of the success stories of people who were a total ass all their way to the top. But I think those people are the exceptions. I think their stories are told more widely because we are shocked at how a horrible person could have gotten so far. Or sometimes they succeeded despite their personality flaws. But for the most part, people work with people they like and it’s essential to get out there and just meet lots of people. I mean you could challenge yourself to meet 3 new people every week I think is a great goal. Not just other burnt-out musicians or whatever, but just say, “OK, I’m going to go meet 3 people a week” whether it’s writers, DJ’s, club owners, editors, publicists… Meet 3 people every week and as long as you use some basic human empathy, consideration, thinking of things from the other person’s point of view, at the end of the year you’ll have 150 people that you’ve met that year, that you can keep in touch with – at least half of them – every now and then, and that will be way more beneficial to your career than clicking around and adding friends to MySpace.

That’s a really good point, and also in some ways I find that to be a challenge because there was a period in my life where I probably did nothing but play guitar, and then found my world all of a sudden shrink, all of a sudden having trouble connecting with people, but…
But it’s essential. Every great musician always starts with a real kind of anti-social period. You have to. You’re never going to get good if you’re only social.

What are some specific things a musician could do to make the most out of connecting with other people?
Just keeping in touch. Think of things from the other person’s point of view. Don’t be always self-promoting, or otherwise you’re going to be like that greasy uncle that at family events is trying to sell insurance to relatives, or a cars salesman, people who never stop self-promoting kind of come across like that guy. Don’t forget that sometimes the best thing you can do for your career is just to be interested in others. Be a good conversationalist.

What are some other things a musician could do to stimulate the growth of their career?
Go to my website, sivers.org and click on the home page it says, music marketing advice. There’s a free e-book that I wrote up, it’s a book that I spent months writing, it was really all of my advice. Took months to write, put it into an e-book PDF format, and I just put it out there for free. It’s totally free, no string attached, I didn’t care to sell it, I just wanted it to be out there because it was really the answer to every question I had heard from musicians for years. All the questions about how can I call attention to my music, how can I find a great booking agent, how can I make more money per gig, like all those kinds of things, I address it all in there. I could read it to you over the phone, but probably more efficient to go get it.

It can be difficult for a musician to prioritize their time. How can they best balance their practice time, promotion efforts, and daily responsibilities?
That’s the big challenge. I think the biggest challenge for anybody trying to do this, is focus and discipline. I think there are so many musicians who are trying to, for example, blame their lack of massive success and fame on somebody else, some booking agent somewhere who didn’t fully appreciate them or something like that. When in reality the best thing they could be doing for their career is, waking up an hour earlier, or getting rid of their TV, disconnecting from the Internet, no longer surfing. Like there’s really no point in surfing, there’s nothing you can gain from it. Shutting off the Internet, shutting off distractions, shutting off the TV, waking up an hour earlier, doing the work that you know you need to do, and doing it first thing in the morning before anything can distract you. Most musicians know what they should be doing. It’s just a matter of will-power and discipline and focus to do it. I seriously think it’s 1 in 100 that actually do what they know they should be doing, and those are the people that are going to be successful. And those who surf the web, watch TV, sleep in, go out drinking instead of having the motivation to stay home and practice, just aren’t going to make it no matter what. You can try to blame it on anybody else or anything else but it’s you and your actions.

How important is it for a musician to have a website? How could they make the most of it?
Well, everybody has to have a website. See, I love when history repeating itself… I thought it was funny back in the late 90s, every musician had an mp3.com page. People would even spend money, whether it’s buying billboards or designing the graphic art on their CD cover, so they’d say, “I don’t need a website anymore, man. You can just find us at mp3.com/crunchyfrogs” or whatever, you know? “See that’s our website, and that’s where everybody is, mp3.com. So why would we have our own website when we can just use that one for free? Because that’s where all the people are.” And one day, mp3.com got sued, sold, whatever, shut down. And all of a sudden I think it was something like a quarter of a million websites, were just shut down one day with no warning. They just shut down the whole site. Goodbye. And all those musicians who had printed up materials, and told all their fans, that mp3.com/crunchyfrogs “that’s our website, go there” all of a sudden they were gone. All the fans that they had on their bulletin board, or whatever, gone. And you know the same thing could happen with MySpace. I’m amazed to see so many musicians not learn the lesson of only a few years ago and they’re just like, “Oh yeah man, our real page is MySpace. myspace.com/crunchyfrogs”, you know? You don’t own that. That’s theirs. That belongs to Rupert Murdoch from Fox News. That’s his site, not yours, and it’s amazing to me to see so many musicians basically just telling all their fans to go over to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News owned website, and Fox News then owns the list of all your fans and keeps that database. And they could just pull the plug and shut it down at any moment, and some day they will. So it is crucial, the only site that you should ever send your fans to is one that you own. It has to be your domain name. If that also links people to your MySpace, or even if it redirects or whatever… Maybe. Make sure you also keep a backup copy of your fan list, because again, MySpace’s servers could burp at any moment, and all of a sudden if you say that you’ve got a million friends or a million fans, if their server were to burp and accidentally delete them, do you have a backup? Because if not, their not really your fans or friends. So I think it’s absolutely crucial for a musician to have their own website. Especially these days, it costs, what? A few bucks a month? 5 bucks a month? It’s crucial. So what your website should do is engage in conversation, it should entice people to get into a two-way conversation. It should definitely not be a brochure that just says, “Here I am, here’s my music, check it out, OK bye.” It needs to be something that says, “Enter your name and email here in order to get the new free single, or in order to hear updates, or in order to keep in touch.” And then you’ve got to engage in conversation, and every few weeks or a month or something, have something interesting to offer the people that care about your music. Let them in on some new stuff you’re working on, ask their opinions, get into a two-way conversation and actually reply to them. These things are crucial, that’s why a lot of normal people are so much more interested in the Internet now than they were 8 years ago, because it’s much more of a two-way conversation now. It’s not just brochures out there for them to click on, look at, and go away.

From your perspective, how has the music industry changed over the last 10 years? How is it changing now?
A lot of things are changing. The physical distribution is becoming almost moot. Radio is definitely moot. All these old things that a lot of people used to think of were the music industry, like getting played on FM radio, I don’t think there are hardly any real music fans who are depending on their local FM radio station to turn them on to new music. I mean, there are a couple of exceptions, there are a couple of great stations, like KEXP in Seattle or KCRW in L.A. or whatever, that are kind of tastemakers that some music lovers actually tune to. But for the most part, for most people in the world, their only options are a couple Classic Rock and hit radio stations, and I think that too many people are focused on still aiming for the goal that they had when they were a teenager. They were 16 and they said, “I’m going to be all over the radio” or “I’m going to have my CD in every store in America.” But you know what? You got to admit that times have changed. Record stores are going out of business left and right. Distributors are scrambling, kind of Titanic half underwater, trying to figure out what to do. They can’t take any chances. A distributor can’t take on anything that’s not going to be a sure-fire hit and make a ton of money really fast. And if it’s not going to, they just can’t waste their time with it because there’s so few stores left. And I think because record stores are so few and far between, for example, it’s going even accelerate the trend, meaning fewer and fewer people are going to be counting on their local record store as the place to buy music. There won’t be a local record store, you’ll have to drive 20 miles to get to one. So the idea of getting into physical stores, or getting onto FM radio, a lot of these old things are moot. So I think you’ve got to look at the way things really are right now with fresh eyes, and make sure you’re not clouded by what you used to want when you were a teenager.

How is the industry growing?
It’s now cheaper and easier for people to discover new music.

Do you see any areas that are in high demand? Do you feel that there are jobs and roles that have yet to be filled, but could benefit others in a big way?
I think that promotion and marketing are crucial now. It’s like the recording of music got so cheap and easy 20 years ago that what used to be really expensive, to go into a big fancy studio, the Neve console and all tube, etc. became unnecessary. I think Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” was just done on a ADAT home studio or something like that. So the recording of music is cheap and easy now. Starting around 10 years ago with CD Baby and some others, the distribution of music became cheap and easy and basically a no-brainer. Distribution used to be hard, but now there are dozens of companies that are willing to give you worldwide distribution for free, which is amazing. So what’s left is the marketing and promotion. That’s a crucial skill for people to learn and understand. A lot of it is just pop psychology, it’s just understanding people and why does a person go out on a Thursday night at 11 PM even though they have to be at work the next morning? Is it to hear your complicated chord progressions and introspective lyrics, or is it to forget their life for a couple hours? When a person buys a record, is it so that they can pore over the list of thank-you notes, and admire the perfect reverb and tuning on the snare, or is it because they want something sexy to put on in the background as they’re having a candlelight dinner? A lot of marketing and promotion is nothing more than psychology. You don’t have to spend a dime to do marketing and promotion. It’s amazing to me when I hear a lot of people say something like, “Couldn’t afford to do any marketing.” As if marketing is advertising, which it is so not. There are some good reasons why advertising is practically moot as well. So I think just understanding marketing and promotion is still a really valuable skill to have right now. And if you’re going to be throwing yourself into some kind of new business or going to be doing something to help other musicians, I think marketing and promotion is the way to go.

Thanks for your time.
Cool. Thanks, David.

On September 11, 2008, I had the chance to chat with Harem Scarem guitarist Pete Lesperance. With Harem Scarem’s final record released, I was curious to find out what was in the works for this gifted musician. As it turns out, he is keeping himself quite busy.

What are your feelings looking back on the last 20 years with Harem Scarem?
It was great. It was a great run, it’s been like my whole gig, my whole life, pretty much, my whole adult life. It’s been really good. It’s been a good time, I’ve met tons of great people, I’ve seen a good share of the world, made a lot of records, made a lot of music with different people that I really enjoy working with. You know, other then the fact that we didn’t sell 10 million records I really don’t have much to complain about. It was all a good experience.

Was it a lot of hard work in the early days getting the band established?
Well, yeah, I mean it’s always a lot of hard work all the way along, anybody that does this, unless they’re a few of the incredibly fortunate ones, realizes that this is a ton of work. It was hard in the beginning, it’s a different animal now, but you know, obviously then we had label support and they did a lot for us and we took a much more do-it-yourself approach in the later years of the band. So it’s funny, sometimes I look back and I think “no, it was easier in the beginning.” We just kind of played and people liked it, and the label came out, and we got a record deal and blah, blah, blah, you know? So that’s kind of how it went. It was pretty simple for us that way.

Tell us a little bit about the latest Harem Scarem release, Hope.
What do you want to know? I think it’s a good collection of tunes to go out on, it kind of reminds us of a lot of things we’ve done in the past, and it’s something I’m proud of as usual. We finish a record, I mean you kind of always feel that way or else you never put anything out. I think some fans… Well I mean, I don’t have to think, I know some fans have really taken to it and some think it’s too modern, or too whatever… But, it’s just the way it goes, man. Things are what they are.

Do you see yourself working with another band in the future?
It all depends. I’m open to anything. I mean at this point I’m working on a new solo record, I’m doing some production work… I ‘m doing a bunch of songwriting trying to get covers with different artists and that sort of thing so if something came along… If there was a band that happened to come along and was looking for a hired gun kind of a guitar player thing, I might do that for awhile to get out and do some playing. But mostly I’m more in the studio these days than anything.

Tell us a little bit about Fair Ground.
Fair Ground was a labor of love, unfortunately Fair Ground never flew and that’s partially our own fault because Mike [Turner, formally of Our Lady Peace] and myself we both have studios, and we’re both trying to do a million things at once, and it would really take us kind of getting out there and putting down some cash and going out and playing and losing money where we’re actually making money now, you know what I mean? It’s too bad, because it was a record I really believed in and I think Mike’s addition to it was great… Unfortunately it just never materialized but again, it’s a record that I think we really did a good job on it and I hope some people do like it.

How has your musical style evolved over the years?
I guess it depends on who you ask. Obviously again we started out as a real AOR style band… Guitar playing was everything to me, that’s the kind of thing I focused on, and it just all totally changed over the years. Like you said, it’s been 20 years, so that’s a long time. I kind of stopped caring as much about the guitar thing at one point and then sort of got back into it and… It just changes all the time and quite frankly I listen to very little music now mostly because I’m kind of too busy making music. But there’s not a whole lot out there – especially in the Rock world – there’s not a lot that I listen to. If I’m going to listen to Rock, I listen to maybe Foo Fighters or My Chemical Romance… stuff like that. But again, it’s not a big thing for me.

The Harem Scarem website lists your musical influences as Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, Nuno Bettencourt, and Steve Vai. Are there any other guitarists and artists that are influencing you now?
Well that’s kind of going back to the last question… All those guys, that was an influence when I was 20. Last 10 years, I couldn’t tell you what any of those guys are doing. It’s not that I don’t enjoy their playing, it’s just that I haven’t been following it that much.

When did you start playing guitar, and what other instruments do you play?
I play kind of everything enough to sort of write on… I write on piano, and play bass, do whatever I have to do, kind of a multi-instrumentalist I guess. And I started playing guitar when I was 8, actually. Long time ago. Long, long time ago. Feels like a long time ago.

Do you have any advice for guitarists?
Write songs, and actually sing if you can. And if you can’t, figure out how because that’s really where you express yourself. I mean you can obviously still express yourself as a guitarist but over the last few years I’ve kind of figured out that if you want to say something the best way to say it is actually say it. I would recommend just being a well-rounded musician. Sing, play everything you can play, learn everything you can learn, and don’t think that the buck stops at the guitar because it doesn’t. That doesn’t mean that you still don’t have to practice 6 hours a day to get good at it, but the world doesn’t end there.

Would you put emphasis on good songwriting skills as well?
Absolutely. I mean for me… You know, there’s a lot of great, great singers that don’t write their own songs and a lot of great guitar players that play in bands that they don’t write the songs, they just write their guitar parts and whatever, but… For my money, yeah, songwriting’s kind of where it’s at. It’s the most fun, too. It’s the most expressive thing you can do is create something and when you’re writing the whole thing and you’re singing it or writing the lyrics or whatever you’re really kind of putting it out there, that’s the whole point I think.

Are there any particular practice methods or routines that have really made a difference for you?
Yeah, probably, a long time ago… I mean, I think the thing is consistency and the way of timing. Always play with a click track when you’re rehearsing things and break it down into small parts. Whatever the thing is if you’re trying to do like that… I see a lot of these crazy shred guys and it’s great in some ways, I just can’t wrap my brain around the playing though because it’s not executed properly, you know what I mean? Or you can tell they’ve done just that one riff and if you asked them to do half of it they couldn’t. They couldn’t break it down, therefore you can’t apply that other part of the riff to something else. I would really recommend breaking things down into smaller bits and just breaking down whatever barriers stopping your hands from doing what’s in your head.

Would you say that tone is more in your hands or more in your gear?
I’d say it’s absolutely more in your hands. It’s not a big thing for me. I mean I play through Line 6 stuff because it sounds good. I’m sure there’s stuff that potentially sounds better… There’s probably a lot of great tube stuff out there that I don’t know or care about. Just cause you plug the POD in with a great tube preamp, and it sounds pretty good to me. I mean that’s what I’ve been using as the main chunk of my sound for the last probably… I don’t know, 8 years, since they first came out with the POD. So, you know, I really do believe that it’s in your hands because people can tell it’s me playing or whoever playing, I’m sure. No matter what they’re playing through, if you know a player’s style, that’s what’s coming through, and it’s going to come through whether you’re playing through a Marshall or a POD or whatever, it doesn’t really matter to me as long as it sounds good. You get out of the starting gate with a good piece of gear and the rest is in your hands.

You’re often playing guitar on other people’s projects. What does it take to be a good studio musician?
I don’t know, I guess trying to have some flexibility. It’s hard to keep on top of it, because there’s a lot of stuff out there, and there’s a lot of guys that are more kind of noise-maker-y guys, and then there are guys that are more technical guys… I think it’s really kind of ideal to do a little bit of everything. Especially as far as being a studio player, you’re going to get called for a lot of things and it’s really good to have a little bit of everything. Be able to fake everything. As long as I can fake everything, I’m alright.

How do you connect with other musicians and bands?
It all depends. Generally they find me. I’ve got a MySpace page, I’ve got a Facebook page, I’ve got the petelesperance.com. If people want to find me, I’m not that hard, I’m the only Pete Lesperance in the book basically so… You Google me, you’ll find something about me. I’ve just been approached by different people that way, sometimes work comes through other people because we’re all kind of doing the same thing, the whole circle. Everybody’s a producer, and everybody’s working on something or trying to get something going on so it makes for a lot of opportunities.

You did a video of a vocal/piano arrangement of “Boy Without A Clue”. Can we expect more vocal/piano arrangements in the future?
Oh yeah, tons. I just got the website back up, actually, so I’m just getting together some video stuff. I want to put together videos of the new record I’m working on, the solo record, and I want to make sure people can hear the tunes before they buy the record so I’m just going to put up me and an acoustic guitar, just playing the songs and see what people think. So there’s going to be tons of new video stuff coming. I’m probably going to do some guitar stuff too, at some point, I’m just not sure what yet. But I’ve got a page up on my website called Guitar Shop where guitar players can write in and ask questions or whatever, comment on whatever. And I’ll post it, and post a return, you know, that kind of thing. So if there’s anything in there that ends up being ideas for videos then maybe I’ll do those.

Where do you see the music industry going, and where would you like to see it go?
Deeper into the toilet on both accounts [laughs]. No. It’s a bad time, it’s that simple. It’s a bad time out there and look for new opportunities. There are definitely still opportunities for people that want to make music, and especially for young bands. If you’re in a great band, and you’re ready to get in the van and go out across country and make friends and make fans everywhere you go, then life’s great. The merch thing’s still happening, live performance is still happening, unfortunately record sales is… That’s pretty much over. Inside the business these days, it’s far more about finding new revenue streams than clamoring on to the old ones.

Do you have any advice for people that are trying to get established in the music industry?
Run. Just run [laughs]. No. If you can do anything else, do it. No, I don’t know, trying to get established? Multimedia. Do everything. Just have everything, just put as much out there as you can. Do videos, I mean every artist is doing that now, you’re watching people going to the mall. And this artists is “oh, look! I’m taking you to the mall” and it’s kind of fun and everything. It’s really just hard to get heard, that’s the thing. You need to do something that will separate you from the other people, which is very difficult these days because a lot has been done, a lot is being done, and everyone’s trying to do it now. The dream is still alive, it’s just not paying anymore.

What are some important skills to have in the music industry?
Stick-to-it-iveness. Persistence. Persistence is everything, and if you give up the first time, unless you’re one of the very, very few, well you’re going to give up, so you kind of got to be prepared for the long haul for the most part, I think. And realize that once again, the days of getting the big record deal and seeing a ton of money right away and all that kind of stuff… I think those days are really, really over and people need to grasp that what actually is out there is a whole lot of work and a whole lot of love in music. If you love music and you’re stuck with it, then that’s what you’re going to have to do, probably. But again, it’s a great life. It’s not to make it sound like it’s not good doing the work.

Is it hard to balance the business side and performance side of music?
Yeah, it kind of is because you’re sitting behind a computer working on a website or making a video, or doing whatever, which is great too, but really it has nothing to do with getting out there and connecting with people or… You know, the business side even like you said, it’s so much more than it used to be for the artists now. They used to have a publicist, and had this, and had that, and well you don’t really have that anymore, no one does, hardly. If you’re trying to get out there, you still need that so you’ve got to be that, or you’ve got to hire a company that does that. There’s a lot of new companies out there that are pretty savvy in doing what they can do. Again, I keep going back to the same thing. It’s just a tougher burn these days but success is still available.

You have a new solo record on the way. What can we expect?
I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure yet. I’m working on it, the songs are pretty much done. Some lyrical things to finish, but I’m not exactly sure. I’m still thinking about directions as far as which way I want to go as far as the production and that sort of thing, because they’re all written either on piano or on acoustic guitar so they could be anything. They could be really sparse, or a lot of them could be done up as Rock tracks, I really don’t know yet. I’m going to see what happens when I start recording it but it’s kind of like the Fair Ground record, it’s a record full of things that I think and hope are good songs and that will connect with people.

What else can we expect from you in the future?
We’ll see, I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going to be coming around the corner. Working on a lot of different things, working really focusing on the songwriting, trying to make a dent with that, and that’s kind of where it’s at right now. Who knows what is to come, but the Scarem thing I don’t see that happening. We’ve put that to rest I think. And I’m hoping to get out and do some playing. I might even just go do some playing just around Toronto and some smaller clubs, and that sort of thing. Just doing acoustic sets of my own stuff. But it’s pretty up in the air right now. Mostly behind-the-scenes work I would think.

Thank you very much for your time.
No problem, David. Thank you.

On December 3, 2007 I had the chance to sit down and chat with video game composer extraordinaire Tommy Tallarico over Skype. Mr. Tallarico is perhaps one of the most prolific men in the video game industry, most recently creating and hosting Video Games Live with partner Jack Wall. The show is becoming immensely successful with each passing year, and I decided it was a good time to talk to the man himself.

How did you get into the video game business and what is it about the gaming industry that still makes you tick?
My whole life my two biggest loves were always video games and music. But I never thought to ever put the two together. In 1990 I got in my car and drove out to California because that’s what you do when you want to be in the music industry. I was 21 years old at the time, and I grew up on the east coast in Massachusetts, east coast of U.S. And I just drove out there with no money, no job, no friends, no place to stay, nothing. Literally left my mom and my dad crying on the doorstep. The first place I went was Hollywood, California, because again, that’s kind of really the only place I knew in the L.A. area. And I took a look around, and for anyone who’s been to Hollywood you’re going to look around and go, “Oh, really? This is it?” It doesn’t look like the way it looks on television, it’s a little run down. So the only other thing I knew was Disney Land so I stopped a bum on the street, I asked him where Mickey Mouse lived, figured that must be a pretty cool place to hang out. And he pointed me down to Orange County and so I drove into Orange County and I see the palm trees, and the fancy cars, and the beaches, and the pretty girls, and I’m like “Oh, OK, this is what I envisioned California to be like and I’m close enough to L.A. and Hollywood to still make my mark.” So I picked up a newspaper and I saw a job for selling keyboards at Guitar Center. I was literally homeless. I was sleeping under the pier at Huntington beach the first couple of weeks I was out in California. But first day there I picked up a paper, saw the job, I went down there the next day, and they said “You know, okay, cool, you got the job, you start tomorrow.” So the first day of work at the guitar place I was wearing a video game t-shirt, it was actually a TurboGrafx-16 and it had like just come out. And the first person who walked in, the first customer I waited on happened to be a producer at Virgin and they were starting a new video game company right down the street. He saw my shirt, struck up a conversation, and he hired me; “Hey, you want a job? Come by tomorrow.” So I was in California 3 days. They hired me as a games tester first because they didn’t even need a music person at the time but within 3 days of being in California I was in the video game industry and that was over 18 years ago.

How did you go about getting yourself out there in the early days? Did you have to hustle for your work?
Oh, absolutely. The thing I remember about being in the industry in the late 80s early 90s is that there wasn’t a lot of emphasis put on actual people who made the games. There wasn’t a lot of emphasis put on designers or artists or game composers or any of that stuff. So it was a struggle just to get the publishers interested. Because back then a lot of the attitude was like, “We’ll get anyone to do the music. We’ll get anyone to do the art.” There wasn’t a lot of emphasis put on the actual talent back then. So first we had to convince the publishers that we were actually worth something and it was a lot by trial and error. But one of the funny things I did, and it was just as a joke, but to kind of make a statement… Because the other thing is in the early 90s we didn’t have E3 back then we were part of CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Back then it was all basically a bunch of suits and the game developers stayed at home. So I would actually go to these things, just to mess with people, I’d wear like an Elvis jacket, I had like a 17 person entourage with like bodyguards, and strippers, and midgets, and literally like a whole big circus. And we’d roam around CES or E3 and everything, and a lot of the people in the industry still talk about it 17 years later. And it was like “What the hell is that? Who’s that? It’s some music guy. What?” So it was kind of a funny marketing ploy to get myself noticed or to get other game composers out there, like even on the radar because again back then there wasn’t anything. So I’ve been called a self-promoter by a lot of people in the industry. And that’s fine, I’m completely OK with that label, you know? You go back in time, a guy like Harry Houdini for example wouldn’t have had a career in magic and wouldn’t be into that whole thing if it wasn’t for him marketing himself and promoting himself during that time, because no one was doing it and no one cared as much. So it is something that we’ve had to do, we’ve been forced to do, throughout the last 10 to 15 years. And now you’re starting to see the turn. Gamers now know who their favorite designers are. They associate Mario with Miyamoto, or Zelda with Miyamoto. They associate Final Fantasy music with Nobuo Uematsu. Although not household names, and that’ll change, I’m sure, over the next 10 years, but now people are recognizing and appreciating that. “Oh man, what’s Will Wright’s next game going to be? I want to play that!” or “When’s Bungie coming out with the next title?” It’s not necessarily Microsoft’s Halo 3. People know that Bungie’s the developer of Halo, Halo 3, and I think that’s all a good thing.

What is your primary musical instrument, and how many instruments do you play?
My main instrument is actually piano and that’s where I write most of music, no matter what the style, unless it’s Rock and Roll, but normally I write on the piano, synthesizer, when I write for orchestra or anything else. And I’ve been playing piano since I was 3 years old, and my second instrument’s guitar which I’ve probably been playing almost as long. Probably think I picked that up when I was like 7 or 8. In the show, Video Games Live, I don’t play the piano even though I’m a better piano player than I am guitar player, but I don’t actually play piano in the show, because we have Martin Leung in the show. I don’t want to get anywhere near the piano after or before that guy’s sat down and touched it because he’s just the most amazing thing in the planet. Anyway, we have fun.

What are some of your musical influences?
That’s a great question because it’s really all over the map. In terms of orchestral and symphony stuff, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, but my biggest influence for that is Beethoven. And to me he is the greatest composer, in my opinion, that ever existed across any genre of music. So Beethoven was probably my biggest influence. But getting into the rock stuff, Van Halen was always one of my favorites, Aerosmith, of course, being kind of tied in with Steven Tyler a little bit there, and I like the songwriting and stuff of Sting, The Police, The Eagles was another one. In terms of Electronica music BT, a very good friend of mine, kind of the guy who invented that whole Trance style of music in the late 80s, BT, Delirium, Enigma, and I also love that style of stuff as well. So it really depends on the style of music I’m writing, but I would say that Beethoven’s the biggest influence of all.

Is there a particular style of music that you enjoy more than others?
It all depends on my mood, you know? It really does. When I’m driving around, for example, sometimes I’m listening to Beethoven, and other times I’m listening to Van Halen, and other times I’m listening to Delirium. That’s the great thing about music, it’s all about the mood and this and that. But I don’t think that I necessarily listen to one style of music more than another but I would say that those are probably my 3 favorite styles of music would be Classic Rock, Rock & Roll, Classical or Film Score, Symphonic, and then Electronica, Trance or whatever you want to call it.

How has your musical style evolved and changed over the years?
Another couple of influences that I didn’t mention were Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Because my parents were product of the 50s so that’s actually how I learned to play piano. I would listen to my mom and dad’s records and by the time I was like 4 or 5 years old I was banging out “Jailhouse Rock” and “Great Balls of Fire” on the piano and a big Blues fan as well, and Honky Tonk style. I would say that back then it was all about flash and speed and when I get into Van Halen and stuff like that it’s all about how fast can you play, and Jerry Lee Lewis and ripping those chords, and some of the old great Blues time, Pinetop Perkins and all those great Blues guys from the south and stuff I really got into, Robert Johnson. But then when I heard Star Wars in 1977, and then Rocky in 1976, and then later on things like Tron in ‘82 and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1980 that’s when I really opened my eyes to “Wow! What the heck’s making all this noise? This is great. That’s what I want to do. That’s the kind of music I want to write.” So because of John Williams and because of film scores and things like that, that then got me interested in symphonies and orchestras and as soon as I got interested in that, that’s when I discovered Beethoven. I mean the works, I mean really get into it. That’s how I learned how to write. I’ve never taken a music lesson, or gone to Music College, I don’t have a music degree or anything like that. I’ve strictly just have always learned and played by ear. So when people say “Well, how do you write for a symphony?” I would listen to Beethoven. I’d listen to John Williams. When the woodwinds are doing this, the cellos are countering it by doing that. Look at how that harp played along this way but then the other time it did this. That’s how I would learn, by just imitating on the keyboard I would figure out what they were doing and how they were doing that and say that’s interesting how he went from that key to this key or this time signature to that time signature and I would incorporate those same things or that same knowledge in creating my own work. So I would say that’s the answer there, for that.

It seems like you’re an all-around very prolific guy. How do you do it?
You’re going to laugh but this is an honest answer, I don’t really sleep that much. It’s an honest answer. And I’m passionate, I love what I do. I mean, “You call this a job?”, you know? When I’m not writing music for video games, I’m performing them on tour, or I’m doing TV shows about them, or helping new kids to get in the industry through a non-profit organization I started, the Game Audio Network Guild. So it’s passion, and because of that strong passion, I really don’t sleep a lot, because I’m so excited every single day of the week, 7 days a week. I usually sleep about 4 hours a day, that’s about the max. Literally, and I can’t bring myself to. People think “Oh my god, you’re going to get sick” but I’ve been doing this for like 15, 16 years where I don’t sleep so I get so much more accomplished because of those 4 hours a day. If you think about it the average person sleeps 8 hours a day, right? So by the time they’re 30 years old they would have slept 10 years of their life from the time they came into this world. They would have slept 10 years, right? But if you cut your sleep down to 4 hours a day instead of 8 you would get back 5 of those 10 years, right? So just think of all of the things you could accomplish in your life starting now, if you had an extra 5 years of no sleep. It’s simple math, but when you think about it it’s like “Damn, that makes sense.” So no sleep, and a lot of passion.

Is there something you do regularly to recharge your creative energies?
You know, I’m always going somewhere exotic or crazy or seeing the world, whether it’s with Video Games Live or filming a TV show or just because I feel like it. I mean just this year alone the countries we’ve traveled to with Video Games Live were New Zealand, and Korea and Spain and three weeks in Brazil, and England and then when I went on those journeys like when we did our England tour we had like 4 days off so I swung over to Italy for 4 days, and then when we were in New Zealand I swung over to Australia for 3 or 4 days. So for me I love traveling, I love seeing the world, I love meeting new cultures and studying new cultures and everything so I would say that I’ve never felt like “Oh my god, this is so tiring, I can’t handle it anymore.” It’s always been like, “Cool! Where we going next? What are we doing next? How can I work to get to some place that I want to go?” It’s always about setting goals for myself and having enough confidence to know that whatever I set goals for I know I’m going to be able to hit them because I’ve always done it in the past and that helps drive me, and again because of the passion, but because of the knowledge of knowing I can do something it always fires me up.

Where do you see the video game industry going, and where would you like to see it go?
Hell in a hand basket [Laughs]. No, no. I mean the great thing about the video game industry and this is what gets me really excited about doing all the stuff I’m doing with Video Games Live and everything is that the industry is only going to get bigger. It’s only going to get more mainstream, and this is a fantastic thing. When you think about it I’m in my late 30s, and I was the first generation of people to grow up on video games. I was weaned on Pong, and Space Invaders, and Pac-Man and the whole thing, Atari, and television, had them all. Now that my generation has grown up and we’re starting to now have children, video games are really evolving into our culture. I think it’s safe to say – and this isn’t a generalization for everybody – but I think it would be a safe comment to say that people under 40 get it. You know, because they grew up on video games, they’ve always been around, they’ve always been in their lives. They understand it. People maybe 45 and over kind of missed out on that whole era. Again, this is a general statement, I know there’s tons of gamers over 45, but kind of as an average, generalized statement, that maybe 45 and over kind of missed out on it. Your average 50 year old, or your average 60 year old, probably doesn’t play a lot of video games on a daily basis, right? But that’s all going to change. Again, we’re almost 40 now. We never stopped playing games. Now our generation is going to turn 50, and then we’re going to turn 60, and then we’re going to turn 70, and now all of a sudden the entire world has grown up on video games. Right now, 40 and under, that’s about half the world. So half the world grew up on video games right now. Within the next 10 or 15 years there’s going to be a President of the United States or Prime Minister of Canada who grew up playing video games. And so people are then going to get it. And if you look back in the history of entertainment, the same thing happened back in the old days with film. It wasn’t like the film industry came along in the 1920s and everybody was into it and it swept the nation. Heck no! People were really pissed because “Vaudeville is the way to go”, and “What’s this new fangled movie thing?”, and “That’s not for me these crazy kids” and blah, blah, blah. You know the same thing with Rock & Roll. When Elvis and guys like Jerry Lee Lewis when they created Rock & Roll in the 50s, it didn’t just sweep the whole thing. It took 20, 30, 40 years for all the people who grew up in the 50s are now older. Now they’re in their 60s and 70s and Rock & Roll is commonplace. Back then it wasn’t. That’s kind of where we are with the video game industry right now is that we’re still like Rock & Roll was in about the 70s, you know? Like the early 70s, or late 60s. We still have a long way to go, and that’s what’s really exciting because it’s already so damn big, just imagine where it’s going to be in 15, 20 years from now.

Do you still have time to play video games nowadays?
Every freaking day. Absolutely.

What is your current favorite?
I’ve been playing Super Mario Galaxy… I’ll give you like maybe my top 7 or 8 and then I’ll tell you what my favorite one was. Some of my favorites on the 360 are Halo 3 and BioShock, I think were my 2 favorites. I’m on Xbox Live a lot, I love Xbox Live, I think it’s the best online community out of all the systems. For the Wii, Mario Galaxy I’ve been playing that heavily the last couple weeks, Metroid Prime 3. For the Playstation 3, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, and I also loved – I know it got panned because people said it was too short – but I also loved Heavenly Sword as well. I would say out of all of those, though, my favorite game of the whole year was Uncharted for the Playstation 3 because it was so beautiful, and the storyline was so rich, and I got so into it, to me that was my favorite game if I had to pick just one game to say that one’s my favorite. But all those games. And of course, Guitar Hero III, and Rock Band we play a lot of those as well maybe in the top 10 also but.

Does the business side of things discourage you sometimes? Does it affect your creativity?
It doesn’t affect my creativity but a lot of the business stuff, again, kind of saying what I was saying before about the industry. We’re still somewhat of a young industry. As big as we like to say we are and all the 20 billion dollar a year industry. And again, it is financially a big industry, but it still has a lot of growing up to do. It’s not as established as the film industry is, you know? In terms of some of the contracts and the way some employees are thought of and the way music rights are established and things like that. So there’s still a long way for the industry to go, and I understand that. Because like I said, the film industry didn’t just lock in exactly the way they were going to do things right when they came out. The first couple years, when it was in the 20s and 30s, heck no! Even going into like the 50s and 60s actors were part of the studio. They were like employees of the studio. You never really heard too much about film composers until like the late 60s and early 70s because they were all working in-house. So it took the film industry 60, 70 years to get to where it is today. And I think the video game industry is much more further along than that but there’s definitely a lot more that I think the PR and marketing of video games can learn a lot from the film industry. I think the way that certain ownership and things like music rights and intellectual property ownership and things like that. I think that’s another big thing, where maybe looking at the film industry model of how it’s been very successful there. I’ll give you an example. For example, every time a movie is rented or bought on a DVD, movies have second lives, really. They come out in the theatre, big release. Now the second a movie comes out in the theatre, you can’t buy it on a DVD and you can’t rent that movie, right? But in the video game industry it’s very different and it hurts the business of our industry. Which is, the day the game is released, you can rent it, and you can buy it, oh and by the way, when a game gets rented, none of the people who make the game get any kind of percentage of that whatsoever. Not a single one. Whereas in the film industry, it’s much different. The film is released theatrically, people get cuts of the box office, and then when it gets released on DVD, they get another cut of that depending on who they are and what they did on the film and this and that. So again, it’s one of those things where, if you’re talking about business in the video game industry I still think we have a ways to go here, but it gets better each and every year.

Do you usually have to abide by a strict set of rules when you’re composing for video games, or do you have a lot of freedom?
It’s a great question, because my whole thing from the beginning when composing for video games, and this goes back to the very first video game I ever composed and worked on, which was Prince of Persia, the original one, and it follows me all the way up to today as well, which is I say there’s no freaking rule book. I don’t care what anyone wants to say in terms of “It’s video game music, it has to be like this.” It’s one of the things that I’ve always kind of thrown out the window. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Even when I was doing Prince of Persia, it’s like “You have to have 50 seconds of looping level music because that’s the way video games are done.” And I’m like “Well no, let’s make it more cinematic. Let’s have no music but then only trigger music when a door opens or when you draw your sword or when somebody dies or when you die” or something like that. It makes it more dramatic. And why does it have to be this kiddy-like marry-go-round. You know, a bunch of bleeps and bloops for the music? Why can’t it be Middle Eastern sounding because it’s Prince of Persia. Hey guys, get it? So that was like big shocking thing. And I remember another instance when the CD-ROMs first hit the market and the first game to ever use a live guitar in a video game, I used it on the Terminator for the Sega CD. It was 1993. And when I first was writing all this crazy Van Halen-ish rock style guitar and putting it in the game, and putting it on CD for the first time and people were listening to it. I remember having an argument with some of the producers going, “Well this doesn’t sound like a video game.” And I’m like “Uh yeah, exactly. That’s my point.” Forget what you’ve heard of in the past. The same thing with like Earth Worm Jim. There was like 8 or 10 of us who worked on the Earth Worm Jim game. And I remember sitting down, we were starting to talk about music and things like that. And one person was like “Well you know we should do just all Techno/Electronica style stuff, video game level music.” And one of the guys was like “Well no, let’s be like totally whacky because Jim’s this whacky character.” And there was a lot of discussions going on. And I’m like “Hey guys, wait, hold on, stop a second. I agree with both of you. Why can’t we just have both? Why can’t one level be Techno, and the next level be a freaking Banjo music?” Who cares? Where does it say that you can’t do that? Show me where that book is so I can freaking burn it. And that’s what we did and it was great and people loved it and everything. I’ll give you a final example here, Advent Rising, one of my last big orchestral scores that I worked on a couple of years ago. When we originally sat down you know people were like, “Ok, well it’s a space epic. And we want it to be John Williams.” Everyone wants to be like, “Oh, it’s got to sound like Star Wars because it’s in space”, right? And I’m like, how about forget Star Wars for a second? Because I’m reading the story, and I’m talking to the designers, and it’s a story about loss and love and tragedy and this and that. I’m like “Guys, this is an Opera. Why don’t we use Opera? Italian Opera? Let me write this like an Italian Opera.” So you’re like in space, even the opening scene of Advent Rising when you’re kind of in space, and you’re docking your ship, and there’s like this Italian Opera playing out and people were like, “Wow, that’s so cool, we would have never thought of that kind of stuff.” So again, my thing always from the beginning has been never let anyone tell you that what you should do or what it should sound like because I know that I’ve really built my career and stood out from the rest whenever I’ve kind of done something that wasn’t what people were expecting.

What advice do you have for people that are interested in getting into video game composition?
There’s a couple of different things. The first thing is to go to the website, www.audiogang.org. It’s a non-profit organization that I founded about 6 years ago. We currently have over 1200 members representing 30 countries around the world. It’s basically all of the professional video game audio people, composers, sound designers, everything. So it’s an organization, non-profit, that we help to educate each other about the industry and things like that. But we also have tons of programs, internships, how to learn how to get in the game industry, how to create your own demo… We have scholarship funds to send people to school to learn game audio in college. There’s actually college courses that the organization has actually helped to create the curriculum for. So that would be the first thing, audiogang.org. And G.A.N.G. stands for the Game Audio Network Guild. That’s the first thing. The second thing to get is there’s a couple of great books out there, called the Complete Guide to Game Audio by Aaron Marks, you can find that on Amazon. And then there’s another one by Alexander Brandon who’s the guy who did the original Unreal music. Great guy, and that’s a great book. I forget the name of it, exactly, but if you just look Alexander Brandon, if you look that up on Amazon it’ll come up as well [The book that Tommy's talking about here is Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production]. But then the big thing, the other two things are, if you’re local and you have a local chapter of the IGDA, that’s the International Game Developers Association, and that website is igda.org, definitely join up there and they have like monthly get-togethers and monthly meetings and you can meet all the developers around you and things like that. So always good to meet people who are also trying to get in the industry as well. Because getting in the industry, the biggest piece of advice I’d give somebody is it’s all about networking. The person with the most talent doesn’t necessarily get the job every time. Networking is just as important as talent. And I think that goes for any entertainment industry that you’re looking to get into. That’s a really important thing to know. And that’s why the final piece of advice is going to the Game Developers Conference. It’s held each year in San Francisco, in February and March area, in that time frame, the website for that gdconf.com. And gdconf.com will show you all about, and it’s basically a weeklong journey where you’ll meet, you know there’s 13, 14,000 game developers from all over the world that you can go and learn from and meet… Let’s put it this way. Last year Miyamoto gave the Keynote address at GDC, OK? So they have serious people from all over the world. And you can learn so much and we have a whole audio track. I’ve been on the advisory board for the Game Developers Conference for nearly 10 years now and we have tons and tons of audio speeches and get-togethers and we hold our big G.A.N.G. awards there every year and GDC is also put on by the people who also run the gamasutra.com website and that is another amazing resource. You can see all the game listings, the jobs that are available, tons of interviews with audio artists and producers and designers and programmers you can learn so much right there for free on gamasutra.com. There’s another great website called gamejobs.com which is a good way to get your foot in the door. Like my story, I started out as a games tester so feel free to start out on the bottom and then you work your way in. It’s definitely a way. I know a lot of my friends who are presidents of companies now, and running big development firms, started out in testing. So don’t be afraid to start on the bottom and work your way up. That’s the great thing about this industry, it’s growing each and every year, it’s getting bigger and bigger, and we’re always looking for talented people. Throw your hat in the ring, and if you have enough passion and ability to network, you should be good to go.

What musical skills do you need for video game composition?
Just know how to write music. Like I said, I’ve never had any kind of formal training whatsoever. I never went to school for it, I just learned it all on my own. Really, just the ability to do music. Or like I said, in the video game audio industry there’s not just composers but there’s sound designers as well. There’s people who just take audio and implement it into video games. There’s music supervisors, who their job is to just find music to put in a game. So you don’t even have to necessarily even have a musical talent in order to be in the game audio part of gaming.

What other skills are good to have for video game composition?
Songwriting’s the number one thing, you know? If you can write awesome music then that’s the number one thing. Everything else can be learned after that.

You talked a little bit about this already, but what counts for more? Musical talent, networking skills, or a balance of both?
It’s absolutely a balance of both. 50/50. No doubt in my mind.

Do you have any tips for people that are trying to get established in the music industry at large?
If you’re looking to go to get in the music industry there’s a lot of great books out there. Donald Passman’s book, the Business of Music or Music Industry Business or I forget what the hell it’s exactly called but again the author is Donald Passman [The book Tommy's talking about here is All You Need To Know About The Music Business]. And that’s probably the definitive book on knowing about the music industry because I mean, if you’re looking to get a record deal, or… And the whole music industry is changing, it’s kind of a loaded question only because what say I now will probably be completely different six months from now. But a smart way to go is to get representation, whether it’s an agent or an agency or the way it’s done in the music industry or was for many years and is changing now, is that people got music attorneys. They met up with music attorneys and they are the ones who are shopping around a lot of the artists, but again the music industry is in such a crazy flux right now, that it’s difficult. No one knows what’s going to happen over the next couple of years, but there’s definitely going to be a shakeout. Bands are finding that breaking in by doing video games, you know a band like Good Charlotte got broke in a video game. I mean when I say got broke I don’t mean lose all their money, I mean made it big, they broke into the music industry because of video games. The song “American Idiot”, which was a Grammy award winning song by Green Day was not first heard on MTV or first heard on the radio, it was heard in an EA Sports game. There’s lots of different ways to brake into the music industry these days, but always having somebody representing you in the music industry is always a good thing.

Tell me a little bit about Video Games Live, for all the readers out there that may not be familiar with it.
Video Games Live is all the greatest video game music of all time played by a big symphony orchestra and choir and what really makes it unique is that everything is completely synchronized to video and Rock & Roll lighting, and we have interactive elements where we bring people up on stage and they play a video game while the orchestra changes the music in real time on the fly, depending on what the person does. We have pre-show festivals where people can play games and play demos and we have game competitions and costume contests beforehand so it’s a complete celebration of the video game industry. But I like to describe Video Games Live as having the power and emotion of a symphony orchestra and combining it with the energy and excitement of a Rock concert and mixing that together with the interactivity, cutting-edge visuals, technology, and fun that video games provide. So you put all that stuff together and that’s kind of what Video Games Live is. It’s interesting because until you see it for yourself it’s probably kind of difficult to fathom, “OK it’s video game music and we kind of get that” and “it’s played by a symphony, OK whatever.” There’s a couple of symphonies out there or touring concerts that just play symphony music with video games, there’s some in Japan and some in Europe, but none of them really go to the level of detail and the level of really put it over the top. Because our goal from the beginning as video game composers, myself and my partner Jack Wall who’s the conductor and another great video game composer who just did Mass Effect, that just came out, he did Myst series games, he did Jade Empire with BioWare, and a bunch of stuff. Splinter Cell stuff he worked on. But our goal from the beginning was to really show the world. We didn’t want to create a concert just for hardcore gamers. Put a symphony on a stage and say they’re playing video game music, and it’s like, OK, you’re going to attract hardcore gamers, right? But we wanted the entire world to know how significant video games and their music have become. And that’s why we created this visual spectacular kind of the way we did. Our whole thing is you don’t have to know a darn thing about video games, at all, to come to the show and really be blown away and be able to follow along with the visuals. OK, maybe you don’t get all the inside jokes. Don’t get me wrong, hardcore gamers absolutely love it at the show but they can take their moms, and they can drag their girlfriends there, or they can take whatever, their non-gaming friends there and those are the people who are most blown away. All of the best letters, emails, that we get after we do a performance – and Calgary was no exception – all of the best emails were from the non-gamers. The day after the show, the weeks following the show, saying “you know, I went to this thing, I wanted to bring my grandson for the first time”, or “I bought tickets for my boyfriend”, or their moms saying “I brought the neighborhood kids and I didn’t know what to expect, but boy. Wow. I had no idea. I never knew that game music was so emotional and so impactful. I never understood the stories and the characters and the storylines were so cool and the graphics were so amazing. I get it know. Now I understand why my kids are so much into video games. Thank you, and I’ve told all my friends so when you guys come back next year, I’m bringing 5 other moms with me.” That was always our goal from the very beginning is to create something so spectacular and unique that no one else has ever done before in the history of live entertainment. Bringing all these elements together to provide entertainment, but to really as game composers, show all of the non-gamers out there, and show all the other mainstream audience how significant video games and the culture surrounding it have become.

What is it like to be on tour, going from town to town?
I love it. Like I said earlier I love travel, I love meeting new people. I don’t know if I’d ever gone to places like Louisville, Kentucky and Fort Wayne, Indiana if it wasn’t for Video Games Live. They’re all great places for different reasons. Going to Spain for example, or Brazil. I would have never gone to Spain or Brazil. Thank gosh, I have because they’re such amazing people and amazing places and the food and the people you meet and the culture and the music and… Wow, how exciting is that? I love it. We went to Korea this year for example. I would have never have booked a trip to go to Korea but I’m so glad I did. And some of the places coming up next year I’m looking really forward to, for example Taiwan. We’re going to go play in places like Taiwan next year, and countries like Sweden and Germany which I’ve never been to. So it’s really, really exciting to meet the people. And it’s also really strange to play down in a place like Brazil. We did three weeks of sold out shows down in Brazil this year. It’s crazy to go to a place like Rio de Janeiro and have people there who know your name and know all the music in your career and want to meet you and this and that. It’s so weird because it’s half way around the world and in a place like Brazil it doesn’t really pop into your mind as the top gaming places in the world. But the reality is that there are just as many gamers down there as anywhere else in the world and it’s just that they never kind of get reported on the charts because it’s all black market down there. You always talk about North America, Japan, U.K., Germany, Australia, those are the top big video game markets. But there’s more gamers in freaking Brazil than any of those places I can guarantee you. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it firsthand. Because all the stuff is so easily accessible they get the stuff for free, basically. Pretty much, because it’s all stolen. So there’s a lot of passion down there. A lot of passion for gaming down there, but you never hear about it.

What can we expect from Video Games Live and Tommy Tallarico in the future?
When we first started this thing we got together in 2002 is when we created Video Games Live and it took us 3 years to get it up and going because we wanted to do it right. And the very first show we did was at the Hollywood Bowl in 2005 in front of 11,000 people with the L.A. Philharmonic. It was the biggest video game concert in the world. We wanted to come out of the gate huge and strong. So it took us 3 years to put on that show and to get all the licenses from the companies. Because no one had ever really done anything like this, not outside of Japan anyway. And that concert that we did it was the very first time where games like Metal Gear Solid and Kingdom Hearts and Myst. It was the first time those games had ever been performed period. Castlevania, Sonic the Hedgehog. From there we really kind of opened up the market to others to start doing stuff like this as well, which again we think is great and is great for the industry. But in the first year we did 3 shows. The second year we did 11 shows. And this year, in 2007, we did 29 shows. And for 2008 we have about 50 shows scheduled, possibly getting close to 60. And so you can see each and every year, 3, 11, 29, 60… Our goal is to do 100 shows a year by 2009. And we’ve just had so many exciting things that are starting to happen. For example, this Friday we’re taping, we’ve been asked to be the lead performance on the Spike TV Awards, which is going out to 6 million people. So we’re opening the show, we’re closing the show, we’re taking the show to commercial 8 times throughout the evening. We’ve been asked now to perform on cruise ships. They’re having a video game cruise, and they want us to be the big kick-off of the event. We’ve teamed up with every major video game and comic book and Anime and table gaming conference in the world from the Game Developers Conference, to all the Wizard World stuff, and Gen Con, and things in Canada like Fan Expo in Toronto, Lodon Games Festival, we’ve partnered with them. We’ve got BlizzCon, all the Blizzard stuff we always play, the big E For All Expo that just happened that kind of replaced E3. And already in 2008 we’re playing in places like for the first time, video game concerts have never been performed in these states or cities: Orlando, Florida, St. Louis, Missouri, Montreal, Quebec, Fort Wayne, Indiana, places like Milwaukee and Phoenix, Arizona and Salt Lake City, Utah, Austin, Texas, Vancouver we’re coming back to. I mean we absolutely love playing in Canada because one of our big partners is Future Shop and they really understand and help support us and help to get the word out because that’s our biggest challenge all the time is getting the word out. Explaining to people what Video Games Live is if you’ve never seen it before. I like to compare it a lot to Cirque du Soleil. The first time you ever heard of Cirque du Soleil you were probably like, “What? What the hell is it? Circus clowns and animals jumping around? I don’t understand.” It was only until you saw it, or somebody close to you saw it and explained it to you that you really started to understand it. A thing like Cirque du Soleil or Blue Man Group is another one. Where it’s like, those are things that you have to see for yourself or hear. Now it took Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil things like that, it took 7 years for them to get to where they are today. To get that big area. Well, we’ve only been touring for not even 3 years yet, so we still have a long way to go and we’re going to grind it out. And hopefully, again, our goals is to be on that same level as a Cirque du Soleil or Blue Man Group where it becomes kind of almost a household name. Everybody knows about it, has heard about it, and knows what it is. And I think that’s only great for the whole video game industry.

Thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule, Tommy.
Thank you.

On February 21, 2007 I had the chance to sit down with local jazz guitarist JJ Soriano to discuss the local jazz & classical scene. After the interview, I also had the opportunity to jam with the man himself, and learn from his expertise.

How many gigs, on average, do you play in a week?
Not a lot right now; maybe once every two weeks or so. I'm experiencing a lot of cutbacks right now. I used to get a lot of gigs from a guy who did wedding and cocktail gigs but he doesn't pay the same rates anymore. I also used to get gigs from college, but now it's down to zero, which is unfortunate because I'm in a performance program. It seems kind of funny that a performance program would pull the performance aspect of it. Right now the only gigs that I can get are the "real world" gigs. I still play every month at the Pic Niq, but it's sort of back to reality right now. I'm not playing a lot of gigs because I don't take volunteer gigs.

Name some of the venues you've played in.
I'm not sure where to start. Um... Pridis, Cochrane Ranch, Cochrane Golf Club, the Sheraton, Eau Claire, Palister Hotel, the Beat Niq, Epcor Centre, the Pic Niq, Webster Art Gallery, Calgary Art Gallery, the Hiatt, Carriage House Inn, different venues at Mount Royal, the Winton... Lots of different venues. It's different every time.

What is the largest audience you've played to?
Not a lot. Not in jazz, anyway. Usually we play cocktail gigs [where there are a lot of people] so you're not really the focus. So I'm not sure if you would consider that an audience. But most gigs it's usually 150 people or less.

How much time do you spend promoting, marketing, and booking yourself?
I'm fortunate in that I don't need to do a lot of that. We usually get hired by someone so typically I'm not the one doing the promoting. My drummer Spencer [Cheyne] calls, gets the date, makes the arrangements, etc. In the jazz community it's all about connecting with other musicians, going to jam sessions, and attending other people's gigs. One day they might even invite you and have you sit in.

What are your thoughts on the Calgary jazz scene?
It's definitely getting bigger. In the past six months I've seen some good musicians move in. I mean, it's growing but it's evolving more so. There are two venues for jam sessions that I attend and they both have different crowds and a different set of players. It's interesting because the two crowds are usually separated. More recently some of these people have started to mingle. At first I thought the jazz scene was small, but it's not. I still see new faces frequently. It's a busy scene and the good players play about two to three nights a week. You don't get a huge crowd with jazz.

What are your thoughts on the Calgary music scene?
I can't really speak for other scenes, because I'm not really exposed to that. From what I've seen in the classical & jazz scene, it's growing. And the level of performance is up, too. Some of our local artists could match or top other experienced artists from New York. Many are amazed by the level of musicianship in this city.

What are some of your goals and ambitions as a musician?
I have lots of goals. I guess my dream is to not have a day job, and make a living at it. I would have my own band, and I would still play side gigs, but the dream would be to play full-time. I would rehearse with the band in the morning, set up during the day, or travel to the next town and set up, and play at night. One of my dreams would be to cross the Christian/secular market and reach out to those who don't know Him, and encourage those who do. And maybe twice a year I would do conferences or workshops for kids that are less fortunate, and share God with them. I don't really want to be boxed in as any type of band at the end of the day. I want God to place me where I can serve Him best. Why should I just play it safe and be in my comfort zone?

What do you see in the future for yourself?
I can dream, but I can't see the future. If anything, I see myself still following God. And even if it means leaving music I want to do that. I can only really see a week ahead, and beyond that I'm not sure. I had all these plans, dreams, aspirations, and God tells me "just finish your Diploma, and that's it." This is going to be much more "real world" than I expected. I can't see myself doing anything other than following God.

What are some things you do consistently to market and promote yourself?
For now, since I'm in school, it's not a big issue. I don't do a lot of booking but I try to get out to jams and treat musicians well. It's a good idea to exercise etiquette in all situations. If you get hired, be on time and perform well. Allow for suggestions and criticism. Having the right attitude is huge. Having a self-important attitude won't get you anywhere and it's key to remember that. Do what you can to please your client. Personally, I don't have a big fan base and I'm not really at the point to record a CD. But when you get to that point, you can promote by radio too.

In your opinion, how important is it to make new contacts?
It's very important. It's also important to maintain a good relationship with other musicians and previous clients. Exercising etiquette is very important. I'm a quiet guy; I only talk when I need to. Don't hold any bitterness or grudges either. I've worked with musicians who don't conduct themselves professionally, but since I'm Christian I think it's important to give them second chances. So it's all about being able to release any bitterness you may have.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get established in the Calgary jazz scene?
In a nutshell, it's a lot of networking. Tell your clients what to expect and promise your client profit based on the price you quoted. Go to other people's performances and jams and you'll get asked to sit in. If you have to volunteer a gig, go for it. Always take the right attitude. What helped me is being in school because I got a lot of referrals.

If someone decided that they wanted to do what you're doing, where would be a good place to start?
It all depends on the resources available to you. Do you have a repertoire? How many contacts do you have? How much experience do you have? Do you know of any other musicians you could play with? I've been studying music for a good chunk of my life so I have lots of contacts. I've established a lot of connections through other musicians and students of music. And, as I mentioned before, go to jam sessions and your friend's gigs.

What are some basic things every musician can do to promote themselves regardless of what type of music they play?
It's all about maintaining and establishing relationships with other musicians and your clients. It's also good to build a reputation of being a good player, or hard worker, or someone with a lot of passion for it. On the other hand, you need to be discerning too. Be cool, and don't oversell yourself. There was a guitarist that played all the time at the Beatniq and he started to get a bad reputation. Everybody would come in and see that he was playing and they went, "oh no, not again." He disappeared for awhile and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. About a month later he came back. People were leery. But this time he blew everyone away. So if you can demonstrate that you're a hard worker and you have a passion for it, it's possible to redeem yourself too.

Musicians often have to wear two hats; there's the promotion side of it, and the performance side of it. How do you strike a balance between the two? It's a process. When you first start promoting, you should have posters; send messages to people, like a newsletter, get an article in a magazine... Do stuff like that. Don't forget that performance in itself is a form of promotion. That's about it. Once you have a bigger fan base you can advertise on the radio. At that point you probably have a CD, and the radio station can play your songs and plug your upcoming shows. But just make sure your first performance draws people instead of repel them. Sometimes it feels like you have to wear two hats, but it is part of your career; one is not excluded from the other. Once you get bigger you have CDs and products and merchandise, and you'll play charities and things depending on the scene, and that's good promotion too. But the bottom line is that you're not going to promote unless you're performing. If you're famous, people come to you, so that's a different situation entirely. Oh, and websites are good for promotion too.

Thanks for your time, JJ.
Thank you.

On April 29, an uncharacteristically brisk spring day, singer/songwriter Riley Armstrong was gracious enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to sit down and have a chat. We met in a local coffee shop, and after we were seated in a corner near the door, we immediately began talking about the types of drinks we usually order at coffee shops, and everything to do with music. Soon enough the subject turned to recent happenings in Riley's musical career, and his upcoming album La Loop, and I felt it an opportune moment to begin the interview with this down-to-Earth Albertan.

On your website, it says that you listen to Radiohead. What are some other bands you listen to, and what are some of your musical influences?
Back in the day, one of my biggest musical influences was Ben Harper, and I've always liked Ani DiFranco, and of course Lenny Kravitz - he's been a huge influence. You would never even hear it in my music, but I just really enjoy his earlier stuff. Not so much now. What I'm listening to right now would be Snow Patrol, and Keane, and more indie rock that I've been into lately.

How would you say your music has changed over the years?
I'd like to think that it's gotten better. As you grow in your songwriting, it's like a muscle, right? The more you work out, the stronger you get. I think the same can be true about songwriting. The harder you work at it, the better you get at it. I would hope that this coming record would be the strongest so far. I think it's more cohesive, and sticks together better. The thoughts are better developed. I think that that would be some of the ways that the music's gotten better - there may be a bit more sensibility.

On your website your music is described as a mix of acoustic guitar with hip-hop rhythms. Do you think that's a description that still holds true?
Yeah, it's funny cause it's still a big part of what I do. You know, vinyl beats, and vinyl loop records, and beat box stuff. But at the same time you've still got that folk guitar element that's the common denominator from track to track.

The lyrics in your music are often quirky and clever. What inspires you to write your songs?
Just about everything. You know, I'll be inspired by... There's been songs that have come about from movies... watching movies. Songs that have come about from situations that have happened. I got married last year, and that was a big resource for feelings and emotions, and that's often what songwriting is for me - it's an outlet for thoughts and feelings on the inside.

What's the deal with "Recipe" off of Whatever the Weather?
That was just one of those things that I threw in there to see if I could throw people for a loop. It's one of these tracks that's really good the first couple times, and after that, it's like "man, that's annoying." I should've kept it as a hidden track or something. But it was fun, just something different, for people to expect the unexpected when it comes to my music.

I hear you have a new album coming out very soon. What can we expect?
The new album is going to be called La Loop, which is based on the verse from Ecclesiastes the first chapter, that talks about how there's nothing new under the sun. Just as the sun goes up in the morning, and it will go down in the evening, the next day it will be the same, and Solomon was talking about this great wisdom he had, that he has discovered, that there's this symmetry - God has ultimate control and sovereignty in this world. So, I'm going to learn the same lessons that my dad probably learned. There's this cycle in life, that's beautiful, just as in the hard times that I've had in my life, I know that my kid maybe or others out there will have the same hard time, and it will come around, and their joy can come of it. God uses those cycles to life to build us - our character. That's what makes life such an adventure, it never stays the same, it's always changing, and that's kind of the idea behind La Loop.

You've been an "acoustic-only" guitar player for a long time. More recently, I've seen pictures and videos of you playing an electric guitar.
That's right, I've been branching out with my Gibson 135. I love that thing. It took awhile to figure that thing out, cause I play my acoustic so hard that my fingers start bleeding. I just really play it hard. But when you've got an electric guitar, you play that hard, the strings just fall off the saddle on the bridge. In the middle of a song, it's like [makes string falling off of bridge noise]. So I really had to learn how to play softer on electric, which is such a weird idea, but make sense when you sit back [and think about it]. It's like, of course. It's electric. It's amplified. You don't need to kill it.

What motivated you to pick up the electric guitar, and is this a permanent change?
No, [it's not a permanent change]. We were doing these youth rallies with a group from Missouri called Real Encounter. They were basically this group [that did] freestyle motocross and extreme sports [and that] was their platform that they reach people with. We went into public schools and got kids to come on out to our event, and acoustic just... it needed something more - [more] grit to it. So that's when we started using electric, [it] was primarily for that. Then I just stuck with it for quite awhile after that and thought, "you know, this kind of works." Since then, the band I've been playing with - there's two people that I've been playing with - they don't play with me all the time, just for bigger occasions. So I'll pull out the electric when I'm with them, but for the most part I just play acoustic again for this new record.

Do you consider yourself a guitar player first, or a musician first?
I would say that I'm a songwriter that knows just enough chords on the guitar to write songs. I can't shred to save my life. That's why I dig on the Kurt Cobain one-note solos [makes guitar solo noises].

I've seen you perform live about 5 times. Sometimes you were with a band, sometimes you had a drummer, and sometimes it was just you and Conrad [Conrad is Riley's all-in-one vinyl loop beat box sampling machine]. Do you have a more permanent band lineup now?
No, it's pretty much going to be back to Conrad and Riley on this new record.

I recall on the "Pretend it's a Movie" tour you played a 80s medley. Do you still play it on tour sometimes?
No, I haven't done that so much anymore. I think that I'm going to have to come up with a 90s medley, you know, a little Milli Vanilli. Some Milli Vanilli and L.L. Cool J or something like that for the 90s medley.

What is it like to be on tour?
It's hard work. It's "go, go, go" with lots of late, late nights and not a whole lot of sleep. It definitely keeps you on your toes. But the beautiful thing about being on tour is, with the events close together, it gives you something to work at. Like when you're doing one-off shows, like I've been doing in the last few weeks, it's fly in for the weekend, fly in, fly out, fly in, fly out. Where this is more of a concerted effort where you're on your way in, and you get down to work, and you kind of get to have a little bit of a routine, even though it's crazy sleepless routine. But there's still a little bit of routine, and it's kind of fun. And ultimately when you're on your own tour you get a chance to play for people and make them laugh, and that's the reason I do this - to offer [a chance] for people to discover the songs that I've written, and to like them, and to take them home with them, and make them happy. On your own tour that's in essence what you're doing - you're out there playing for people and giving people something to smile about.

Have you learned any big lessons from touring?
That could be a whole another side to this tape. I've learned some huge, huge lessons about treating people with respect; and logistics, and how to plan accordingly. The variables in touring are time and gas, and there's only so many hours in a day. I've also learned a lot about pacing yourself, to try not to spread yourself too thin cause that can be something you do when you're "go, go, go." [I've also learned] where you can get wireless Internet, and learning tricks to flying, and different little ins and outs to know how to park the van and trailer so it doesn't get stolen.

Calamity [Riley's previous touring van that was stolen and trashed]?
Yeah, exactly - I've learned a lot of hard lessons like that.

What was it like when you first started playing shows? What kind of venues did you play in?
When I first started, I was pretty terrible. What primarily held people's attention was the humor aspect of what I do. As I've grown, the humor's still been there, but I've gotten better at playing which has been good. Initially the venues I played were primarily churches, or youth groups, or coffee shops. Since then I've moved onto youth rallies and youth conferences and summer festivals. So we do a lot more bigger stuff now. But every once and awhile, we still do little things too, especially on campuses of universities or colleges.

At the time, did you have any trouble finding your next gig?
Oh, you better believe it. Since then we've discovered MapQuest and figured out the inner workings of MapQuest and that sure has helped, because there's been times I've come pretty close to missing an event.

Do you have any secrets or tips as far as booking shows is concerned?
First of all, you have to believe in what you're booking. Second of all, you have to create something that people will want to hear. You want to create something that makes it unique, something that makes it different from something else. It's not like selling a used car, you know, it's a lot like selling an opportunity for people to experience what you have on your plate. And that's not easy. It's really not. Booking is really a tricky business. Over the years, a good thing to do is always if you have a show or event that goes well, that will hopefully lead into other ones that go well. You know, it's amazing how it bubbles up and one big thing leads to another, and that's been my experience. I've had big booking agencies in the past, and I've had moderate to low success in those. I've found that the best way to do it is just to have that personal touch, and I think people really like that personal touch. Rather than, "Hi, my name is John Smith from massive huge booking agency wanting to book you an event." At first a lot of people that are having you in, that scares them to death. It used to be when people would book Riley for a show they would get close to 18 pages of rider that they would have to sign on and send back. And most people that get that would be like, "uh, maybe this wasn't such a good idea." It scares them away. Now we just have a simple one-page agreement with just a few items. It just keeps it more accessible. It's not our prerogative to create some sort of paper mess. All we want to do is play music and share it with people. So, whatever it takes to make that as simple as possible. So that's what I've learned about it in the past, make it simple, believe in it, and make it accessible.

Do you have any advice for young struggling bands that are trying to get themselves established?
I wouldn't even put struggling in there, I would just say young, because I think we all struggle, no matter where we are. If it's not one thing it's the other. I think that as a young band, the best thing you can do is just practice and truly start to understand what you are doing and what you are about, and to really define yourself. I think one of the greatest steps that a young band takes is to truly define themselves. Start out small, and don't start with too high of expectations. Set attainable goals, and don't be too focused on trying to get a record deal. A record deal is not the be-all end-all. And any shows you play, try to make them your best shows so people are interested in booking you. There's always something that could go wrong, but just do your best. And I think the Internet is a great resource for bands, and has kind of made music a level playing field for bands that are getting started.

Do you think there is a point when a band or artist is "good enough" to perform, or should they push themselves to perform in front of an audience as much as possible?
That's kind of a tough question. I think one should tread lightly. Playing shows will help you grow, and kind of show you where your weak points are and the holes in the band, and what you need to work on in order to grow. As much as possible, you should be well-rehearsed before playing a show.

Would you call yourself a "Christian artist?"
Yes.

What is your goal as a musician? Do you consider your music a ministry?
Yes, music is a ministry to me, because the joy of the Lord is a big part of why I do it.

What are your thoughts concerning the "Christian music scene?" Is it reaching the right audience? Do you think it's relevant to non-believers?
Well I've heard the expression "singing to the choir," which may not be far from the truth. I don't think it's as effective as it could be, but I think it does a good job of offering alternative listening. There are elements that certainly make it viable, but has it arrived? No. I think there are a lot of bands out there like Switchfoot that offer the goods that the market will like. So all in all, I think that it's getting better. I also like to think of worship music and Christian music as two separate things, and I think that Christian music can be relevant, and it's different because Christian songs aren't corporate songs, whereas worship songs oftentimes are.

Thanks for your time.
Thank you.