Unified Macon Theory: What stays in Macon, dies in Macon

This won't make sense to some of you, at least the part where I'm authoring it. It'll seem contradictory and maybe even contrary to my previously stated beliefs. Hopefully the rest of you will get it.

There are three reasons why I believe so strongly that some of the players in our current music scene will make a significant impact on the music world-at-large (and thusly, the world-at-large). No, reason number one isn't that I believe in magic, or that it's because there's something in the water (though I do believe in magic and think there's something in the water... something magic in the water).

In fact, these three reasons are the same three reasons why I think historic Macon musicians have had such an impact on the world of music, thusly the world.

#1) To be a remotely serious musician in Macon, Ga, means you have dedicated yourself to your music because you know no one is listening, which, in turn, means you're going to be more concerned with your craft than whether or not the people here like it. You probably have more than a little confidence in yourself, which doesn't hurt.

#2) Having relegated yourself to the outskirts of the local population, your friends are likely going to be other remotely serious musicians from whom your learn and take some motivation. Your clique is probably pretty tight and most of your conversations are, at some point or another, about music. Your passion is becoming your life fully.

#3) Being a remotely serious musician in Macon soon leads you to one inevitable question--"How serious am I?"--and depending on your answer--if it is "very serious"--you're then led to another question: "How do I get the fuck out of here?"

The same thing that seems like a problem in Macon is probably what has given Macon its place in history, its advantage over other places like Atlanta, LA or New York. You THINK you're serious about music when you uproot and head to LA, but trying to get someone to pay attention in Macon, you've got to be serious then, right?

More than that, there's the issue of your competency. Just because you're serious (or you think you're serious) doesn't mean that you're any good. In most cases, good just means you've been working on it. Talent or talentless, nothing good comes without practice. In other words, it doesn't matter if there's something in the water here because all the water in the world won't make you worth listening to. So you can go to LA or New York because you're serious (or think you're serious) but if you're in Macon for a little while, you'll find yourself consumed by your music.

Consider Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-Hour theory. He says to be an expert means you've put in 10,000 hours into a subject. For Bill Gates it was computers. For the Beatles it was music. Before they broke big, they spent 10,000 hours at their chosen field.

Think about Little Richard on the Chitlin Circuit, in the bawdy houses and nightclubs performing with drag queens and piano players. Just to eat, he was putting in days and days of shows every week, and the hours started racking up. Same for Otis Redding. Think about how many church services, how many of those talent shows, how many Hamp's Hops... the hours piled up.

You might not know this but Otis Redding didn't sound like the Otis Redding we know today back when he was sweeping those talent shows. He was doing Little Richard knock-offs and Sam Cooke covers. That's why he won them--he did a good job impersonating artists the crowd knew. It wasn't until he started hanging out with Johnny Jenkins (or so Jenkins says) that he tried to break away from that because Jenkins told him to find his own voice, and supposedly, with the help of Johnny's guitar-playing,
Otis did just that.

That's that community of outsiders. It's how the Allman Brothers were formed. Go ye forth and make a jam band out of what you find. Boom! Those outsiders came together with their different influences and made some music stew.

And I don't know if I really need to explain reason number three, but I will elaborate. It seems simple enough to get out of Macon, to pick up and leave town, but it isn't. (Both Little Richard and Otis Redding both recorded on the West Coast before going broke and having to return to Macon.) If you're smart that drive to leave will motivate you to do whatever it takes to be successful because that is your best chance at leaving.

Look at Emmett Miller. I know he's not a popular example because he's most widely known as a blackface minstrel singer, but he is considered an important figure in American music and he is from Macon. And he does illustrate my point.

He so wanted to leave town, to join the minstrelsy circuit, that he dropped out of school and started hanging out with black people so he could be more "authentic". Yes, his caricature of them is absolutely deplorable, but at the turn of the century, when the predominant form of popular music (i.e. - pop music in the early 1900s, which prevailed for nearly 100 years of this country's 233 year existence) was blackface minstrelsy, and white folks weren't supposed to mingle with black folks, he had to be dedicated to what he was doing if he was going to go that far. (By the way, the first all-black blackface minstrelsy group was also formed in Macon, a few decades before Emmett Miller got famous.)

For Otis Redding, it meant serving as Johnny Jenkins roadie on a trip to Memphis because Jenkins and the Pinetoppers--not Redding--had the recording contract with Stax Records. He loaded and unloaded the band's gear and begged (or pestered) the Stax crew until they let him record his song with the 30 minutes left on the session.

I see these parallels now with the folks making music in Macon, GA. I see a handful of passionate and dedicated musicians doing nothing but making music and hanging out with other people who make music. You should already know their names because they're playing here so much. And I see most of them eyeballing the bright lights of the big city. That is as it should be because the only way they'll ever realize their dreams will be to try it out somewhere else.

Every show I go to now, I'm thinking about whether or not it's the last time I get to see them here, in the grungy little dive bars, in the ill-suited night clubs, in the basement of an "event center". I don't see them stopping here, not because they're greedy and want lots and lots of money, but because they just want lots and lots of people to be able to hear what they've done.

There is no doubt in my mind that one of these people (and probably more)--Floco Torres, Oh Dorian, Al K!NG, Rolybots, Nomenclature, City Council, Citizen Insane, Abby Owens, etc., etc.,--will make a big splash when they jump into that big pond. No doubt in my mind at all.

The weird part is that this is sort of an argument against supporting the music here. Or maybe, if you squint your eyes and tilt your head, it's just another way to tell you all that it's happening whether or not you like it, support it or even know it exists. In another 20 or 30 years, it'll just be another wonderful facet of our city's cultural contribution that isn't utilized to make the city better, which means in another 20 or 30 years, another crop of musicians will emerge.

And so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Amen.

Mouthin off...

(This is the long overdue posting of my long ass response that I wrote {and sent to the appropriate people} to an editorial in the Mercer Cluster, which stated we have no music scene and then blamed it on the lack of bands and venues. While I agree we have some work to do, my belief is that what we lack is fans. Wow. That's probably all I had to write... whoops. If you feel like reading three pages of my ranting, get down on it.)

Mr. Brown, Editors, et. al,

Loved the April Fools Day stories. Good satire. It is unfortunate that Eric Brown's piece about the Macon music scene wasn’t conceived in a similar vein. It would’ve been closer to the truth if it had been.

It’s disingenuous for Brown to name Nomenclature and then say they moved away and think that’s an accurate or even adequate description of what’s happening here, as if the only good band left town. The problem here is folks here don’t look for local music so they don’t know that there is anything good.

So what Brown accidentally illustrates is one of the major and generally unaddressed causes of our chronically sick music scene: uninformed opinions have become the prevailing wisdom, having spread like a fungus that colors public perception so that it becomes a "reality".

In other words, one of the reasons our “music scene sucks” is because so many people think our “music scene sucks”.

Just as it is hard for a “dirt-poor college student” to “create an award-winning venue”, it’s hard for a dirt-poor musician to bust his and/or her butt when no one’s showing up because they’ve already decided that there isn’t a music scene worth supporting. (The musicians, however, continue to.)

To avoid making this a totally subjective argument about taste, just look at one of this year’s Bearstock posters. The bulk of the opening acts are local, spanning a variety of styles and sounds, and there were many more from which to choose. The bands that made the cut (and most of those that didn’t) all play frequently, so the real question is why didn’t Eric Brown know that they existed?

Until recently there haven’t been enough fans to support local bands to make it a financially reasonable prospect for venue owners to showcase more local talent, which means the scene wasn’t very visible. But that’s changed. All the good venues—limited as they may be—book a healthy dose of local bands.

Even though local bands sometimes suck at promoting their shows—whether humility or laziness—they do play often enough that, if you’re looking for live local music, by now, there are no good excuses not to have seen Floco Torres, Citizen Insane, Trendlenberg, Rolybots, Al K!NG, Oh Dorian, Abby Owens, Magnificent Bastard, City Council or the dozen others I could name.

UNLESS… A#1) you’re scared to frequent the venues where they play, or B#2) you don’t actually like music enough to go see someone that doesn’t already have an album on a major label.

So now the question is: Do you REALLY want more “interesting and experimental” bands? If so, forget about learning an instrument and starting a band, as Brown suggests, just be “interesting and experimental” yourself. Be adventurous enough to see what already exists.

Folks like to compare Macon to cities with a thriving scene, but they forget one of the most crucial elements: FANS! In places like Athens and Atlanta, people will go see music for the sake of seeing music. And then… then the bands have to work to steal attention away from other bands. Our bands compete against prime time TV and the hordes that only go out to get drunk and get some booty.

Brown asks: “So how to fix this problem?” My response is stop being a part of the problem. If you look for good local music, you’ll find it. You’ll become a patron of the Hummingbird and the Capitol where regional and national acts play. You’ll know that the biggest strides in the local music scene haven’t been made by The Refuge (though I love JJ Weeks and his crew) or at Jittery Joes (where I sit typing this). It’s in the cracks and crevices downtown, like the Golden Bough, the Macon Venue Project, Envy and the 567 Cafe, or even uptown at Rivalry’s, the Shamrock and CJs.

Honestly, I don’t even like all the music here, but I don’t have to. I support what I like and try to be nice to everybody else. There is enough going on here that that’s all you have to do. It isn’t a charity. It’s like anything else, you might suffer through some crap to get to the good stuff, but regardless of how well it matches what you like, there is plenty to choose from—far more than most think.

I’m not trying to invalidate everything Brown wrote or even to take jabs at him, but I believe there are some serious issues to address before the blame is aimed at a supposed dearth of musicians or venues. Remember, we’re all still driven by very simple market realities: supply and demand. There is a dearth of demand. That’s what must change next.

Or maybe we just need to admit we’re not really THAT interested in local music, that we just want bands like The Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie to play Macon so we don’t have to drive to Atlanta. If that’s all this is about then we’re just displaying a fundamental misunderstanding of music business, and the problem remains the same. Those bands don’t play here—not because there aren’t local bands to open up (see who’s opening for Gym School Heroes and Chester French) or because there are no venues (we have spaces so small they only fit 30 to those big enough to hold thousands)—but because they cost tens and tens of thousands of dollars for a performance.

And really, that’s only a problem because “no one” pays to see live music here. Ludacris didn’t sell out the Coliseum and Dwight Yoakum couldn’t even fill the much smaller City Auditorium. Our problem is the absence of real music fans, and the money they generate, which funds it all.

I used to think like Eric Brown (and scores of others)—it’s Macon, not me. Then I became the nightlife writer and later the editor of The 11th Hour, and watched what happens here. I'm now the publisher of Georgia Music Magazine, which is housed by the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, a tourist destination that should be treated like a blessing to this city but is, instead, ignored by locals and the officials they’ve elected.

But it isn’t all bleak. For the past three years, I've been on the board for Bragg Jam, a music festival which is hitting its stride. I’ve been a part of the Bearstock selection committee for the past two years and think it’s about to cement its place in the community. More people are warming up to live music here.

To push it more, I helped start The Local 478, which tries to facilitate growth in local music scene with showcases and concerts. With the help of local musicians, I'm putting together Monkeywrench Music Club, a multifunctional space where bands who can't get booked elsewhere can play, where bands who have nowhere to rehearse can rehearse, where they can get their mail, copy flyers, burn CDs and meet other musicians. This summer, we're going to release the first wave of albums on Random Family Records, a record label whose roster is entirely made of local talent.

You can see why I might be a little sensitive about this, but beyond my obvious bias, I hope you see the much deeper lesson: if you’re looking for good local music, you can find it. I have. And with that, I’ve found a lot of great people, crazy stories and the kind of fun I never thought possible here. All I had to do was look.

I agree with Brown when he writes, “By creating a closer community of bands in the Macon area, you can guarantee a better music scene…” I agree because I’ve been watching it happen for the past couple of years, and I hope that now that you all know it exists, you’ll support it. That’s the piece we’re really missing now.

To that end, I would be honored to introduce Eric Brown and the Cluster editorial staff (and anyone else who is interested) to a wide spate of the talented musicians ranging from indie rock to hip-hop and all sorts of stuff I can’t begin to classify. We’d love to see you be a part of building this music scene because I truly believe that history is about to repeat itself in Macon, that there are some names in the lineups around town that will eventually join the list of celebrated Maconites.

See it for yourself. Come out to Rivalry’s this Friday night to check out three of the best bands in Macon, swing by the show at Monkeywrench on Saturday, April 11, or wait until Bearstock and see even more in action. If you still feel like the scene is “far away” then it’s just a matter of your taste being bad. (Just kidding… no I’m not.)