What do I know?

What do I know?
By Thomas Nicholas

I’ve read the other articles on here and found them helpful and entertaining. This is not one of those articles. I have only been touring since the beginning of 2007. My experience is limited, so I’m gonna power through this. I’ll share a few tidbits on what I remember of the last 150 shows…

Gig sharing:
Want to play in a city, far far away? Pick a place where you have some friends, preferably a musician friend. If that’s not possible then use a social network to find a musician in that city. Ask them to help you book a gig in their city and you’ll do the same in return.

Never Stop Learning:
Take lessons. Don’t just take a lesson 1 time, that would be like going to high school for 1 day. (Which I think I only did half of that)
I get it, lessons can be expensive. Can’t afford to pay for them? Then barter for it. Trade a service for a service.
Do whatever you need to do, just take lessons.
Why? Because I believe that we need great musicians and singers in this world and even the best of the best still take lessons.

Travel and Gear Safety:
Need to fly somewhere with your guitar but you don’t want to gate check it? Make sure you check the size of the plane when you book your tickets and don’t fly US Airways. It’s surprising what a smile can get you as opposed to an argument. Flight attendants are people too.
By the way, I think the best place to shop for flights, hotels and rental cars www.sidestep.com

Always Promote:
I’ve made the mistake of booking a show that I was told would be heavily promoted. They promised a packed house and when I arrived … crickets.
Unless, you are just trying to get some live gig experience you always have to go the extra mile to promote the concert yourself.
Best place print flyers www.nextdayflyers.com
Don’t want to spend the dough? That’s why we have myspace, facebook, reverbnation, ilike, purevolume, sonicbids, imeem and twitter and you tube … use em.

Distribution:
I have been using TuneCore to digitally distribute my albums. For $20 you can reach all the major digital distribution outlets, including iTunes. Sign Up for a free TuneCore account, save 30% on first distribution

Well, I warned you. This was just a few tidbits of info that you probably already had in your back pocket. If anyone has a different perspective or experience on any of these subjects, please comment. As I mentioned, I have a limited experience. I am hoping to help those with less experience and to get help from those with more.

Click to Listen

www.ThomasNicholasBand.com
www.Twitter.com/TINband
www.myspace.com/ThomasIanNicholas
www.facebook.com/ThomasIanNicholas

Misadventures, Missed Turns And How Not To Be Famous On Tour: A Passage to India: Part II

Misadventures, Missed Turns And How Not To Be Famous On Tour:
A Passage to India: Part II
By Xiren with Ben Jansen

Click to Listen

To recap, last year I joined a handful of international indie bands for a 20 city tour of India hosted by WOA Records and supposed Indian star Oliver Sean.  What could go wrong?

I arrived exhausted at my Mumbai hotel and met my backing band, Mana3.  Wonderful people.  The next morning we caught a flight to Goa.  After a mid-route change of hotel plans (hmm…), we arrived and met Lloyd, the “new” tour manager from WOA and Edson, the all-access documentarian.  Fine.  However, Edson was filming with an archaic camera that had no chance of producing broadcast quality footage.  Hmm…

We were told to get settled and meet pool side at 4PM for a kick off meeting.  We were excited – but nervous.  Bands had come from around the world without communication yet from WOA directly.  Three hours later, Lloyd arrived and prepared us to meet Oliver Sean (you sit here, you sit there).  We waited.  And waited.

Oliver arrived much later offering no apologies or explanation.   He pronounced that in a couple of weeks we would be celebrities in India, playing a fully produced, filmed concert with a 30,000 strong audience!  We sat stunned, speechless.  He described a tour that would be legendary and quite possibly…impossible.  I asked Oliver about Pete Saunders and Alan Alvarez, the two people I had coordinated with in the States and was told that they would be unavailable during our trip.  They were (I kid you not) on “a secret expedition” and incommunicado.  All communications would go thorough Oliver for now.  Hmm…

Lesson Three: 35 days in a hotel is not a tour. Abso-fricking-lutely nothing happened after that – well, almost nothing.  Shows were cancelled daily. We had a small press conference pool side for a local access cable show and some of us were interviewed on a local radio station.  It was painfully quiet until quite suddenly we were kicked out of our hotel!  While I can’t confirm it, it may have had something to do with the fact that WOA’s big advertising effort for this 30,000 person rock concert was one illegible, dark, black and green billboard upon which our hotel had a small invisible bottom corner logo.  Quite possibly that didn’t impress the hotel who had traded that advertising for lodging and morning meals for 7 bands.

Lloyd called us as we were leaving the hotel and told us that WOA had moved us to another hotel.

Great.  Three weeks into a six week tour we hadn’t played a single show.  Prior to the tour we’d been shown a full calendar playing paid shows coast to coast all over the country – about 3-5 a week!  Demoralized, we realized that there really was no tour.

We complained.  Oliver told us to sit tight and remain “rock stars” while his team did the work.  On one fact-finding call to Oliver he said to me “give me the names of anyone who has a problem and I will kick them off the tour!”  I experienced a nauseating sense of déjà vu – these were the exact words “Pete Saunders” said to me in a call 2 months ago.  Things clicked: we can’t meet any of our original coordinators from WOA because they never existed!  Pete Saunders/Alan Alvarez was Oliver.  Oliver was WOA!

I shared my epiphany with the others and we agreed that Oliver Sean needed a chance to explain…about anything.  I called a meeting, and Oliver arrived and listened while we delicately expressed our concerns about a tour that looked precarious.  Oliver delivered the same rhetoric as before, not missing a beat.  We felt conned and one band nearly beat him physically, but we were able to cool them off and let him leave.

Lesson Four: Always have an escape plan. There was one show left in Mumbai that hadn’t yet cancelled, so Mana3 personally confirmed the show without Oliver.  We weren’t afraid of Oliver, but his calls were getting stranger and stranger like, “Xiren, don’t you worry if something were to happen to Mana3, it won’t affect you. You are the star”. What?

We played the show at Jazz By The Bay in Mumbai.  Whoopee.  I immediately took myself and gear to Mumbai International Airport to fly home.  A simple plan.  Of course it didn’t work.  After hours of bribing employees to move my flight, a successful passport kidnapping & ransom exchange by my hotel (don’t ask) and with 40 minutes left before takeoff, I threw my baggage on the scale.  The rep looked up from his screen and said, “That’ll be 20,000 rupees” (about $400).  I opened my wallet to find no credit cards – they’d been stolen somewhere along the way and my hotel took the last of my cash.  My gut did a summersault and sweat froze on my skin. “Desperate” didn’t describe me.  I looked the guy square in the face, told him I had no money and pointing to my Telecaster said, “See that guitar? I bought that just after high school and it’s been around the world and at every show I’ve ever played.  I will leave that guitar and everything else behind to get a boarding pass home.”

I bet it had more to do with the look in my eyes than my words, but the man shut down the ticket line and escorted me through the airport having frequent, curt conversations with the luggage handlers while handing them cash.  Temporarily disoriented, I finally realized what was going on. I asked, “Are you paying for me out of your own wallet”?  He smiled and answered “Yes, but don’t worry, I have a big heart”.  I love that my disastrous trip ended with such a redeeming act of benevolence by a true angel.  This was the real India.

Since then, bands have complained to the Indian Board of Tourism as well as Sonicbids.com who claimed a thorough vetting process.  Oliver Sean claims that we are all drug addled felons and racists.  Nothing meaningful has resulted.  WOA still exists and tours are still planned.

Indie music, what a life!

Follow along with this article on www.xiren.net/india

Misadventures, Missed Turns and How Not To Be Famous On Tour: A passage to India: Part I

Misadventures, Missed Turns and How Not To Be Famous On Tour:
A Passage to India: Part I
By Xiren with Ben Jansen

Click to Listen

My opinion: Slum Dog Millionaire was the best movie of 2008 and proved fairly accurate – except you can’t smell Mumbai’s open sewer system in the theater.  It is simply amazing what you can’t know from 8000 miles away…

In the Spring of 2008, a company called WOA Records recruited me for a tour that promised to deliver a respectably broad 20 city tour of India with 10 other international acts.

Fast forward to a brief history of hell:  My 5 weeks in Southern India would include facing extortion, hallucinations, being thrown from a cab with a thousand pounds of music gear, losing my credit cards and – more tragically – losing my sense of humor.  This is the story of a con man, sacred cows on the beach, and an Indie musician who set out on a hobbit’s (mis)adventure to learn life lessons.

It always starts with flattery and the allure of success.  For those of you who have been selected through a Sonicbids process it’s kind of like seeing a Sasquatch: other people have reportedly seen one but it’s rare; a personal sighting.  If unfamiliar with Sonicbids.com, it’s a fee-based online gig resource allowing musicians to browse, search and submit to tours, clubs, festivals and other things in just about any corner of the world.

After paying a $20 submission fee, WOA Records chose me for a 20 city tour in India leaving just after Christmas. Wow!  Kick ass. As an avid Yogi I had always wanted to visit India, and what better way than on an international tour – it’s a big reason I signed up to be a musician!  After assurance from Sonicbids that their vetting process was thorough, albeit “secret”, and after a few phone calls with the Indian Tour company, I was sold.  I bought my plane ticket, started my malaria meds (warning: may cause hallucinations), and coordinated my backing band (a great group from New Zealand, Mana3, also on tour).  Then, of course, came a thousand other details to wrap up including finishing my latest recording release, Trip-R.

Lesson One: trust that feeling in your gut. In retrospect, there were many clues that this tour smelled funny. When WOA rescheduled the initial start due to the Bhutto assassination, I began getting phone calls from other bands around the world who were, like me, preparing for the tour.  Through Myspace, Skype and dozens of emails, bands expressed clear concern about the lack of details around travel arrangements, contract concerns, and performance details.  The great unknown of India loomed large, and these concerns played heavy into the general anxiety preceding any tour, just amplified about ten times.  So, I anointed myself ambassador for the other bands and called the tour company in hopes of finding clarity for all.

I remember Pete Saunders of WOA International saying “give me the names of anyone who has a problem and I will kick them off the tour”.  Whoa, there big fella…  I figured that Mr. Saunder’s response represented a typical overworked and underappreciated overreaction, combined with possible cultural differences.  Therefore, I handled it with an appreciative comment and continued forward.  (Note to self, anytime respectful, clarifying questions are met with brutal threats of termination, something ain’t right in the Shire). Oh Sonicbids, you beautiful little oasis for all musician’s booking needs. You bastian of value and champion of all things Indie, how hath thou forsaken me?

Eventually, WOA appointed a tour manager, Alan Alvarez, who published tour itinerary, modified contract points and, along with Pete Saunders, gave reassurances that this is “how things work in India”.  We were back on track and ready to roll, or so we thought.

Lesson Two: Guns don’t kill people, cabdrivers do. The flight to India took over 24 hours and we arrived in Mumbai at about 1AM.  A crowded city of 20 million people, humid 100 degree weather, 50% homelessness and an open sewer system, Mumbai comes on like a SEAL Team assault on your senses.  After prepaying for the cab before leaving the airport and never, ever, taking my eyes off my stuff, I managed to load 2 guitars, a pedal board, my laptop & recording gear, a duffel full of gig necessities, my personal luggage and a 35 lb. power transformer without incident.  Let me tell you, the taxis rides in Mumbai go toe to toe with any modern amusement park ride, bar none.

My Mumbai cab looked like a car on the outside but lacked most of the “vehicle identifiers” typically associated with an American car like gauges, a radio, or any other interior comforts like seat belts! It was kind of a big, dated-looking bumper car powered by a lawnmower engine… but this bitch could zip.  Wow! I found myself being transported back to my childhood visions of starring in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  No rules, just rough roads and the mystery of the night.  Instead of getting me to my destination, however, it turned out that cabbie had no actual idea how to get to my hotel and only spoke Hindi.  Then, the yelling started.

Whether it was his frustration over being stuck working the night shift, or that he was lost at 3AM with a foreigner in his cab or because I wasn’t acquainted with our hotel route, I got a yelling like I had propositioned his daughter.  After my initial Hindi scolding, he pulled over and had me show my iPhone screen to 2 men sleeping on an abandoned car, and then proceeded to yell at them.  Apparently he asked for directions from these gentlemen and, though the car sleepers appeared confident in their reply, cabbie didn’t get what he wanted.  So, we stopped several more times so the “rich American” could wave his iPhone out the window at a couple more people to ask for directions. Somehow, around 4AM, we arrived at the hotel where I met up with the cavalry – my backing band, wonderful people who had been here before and could show me the ropes.

After a day in the big city we excitedly headed south to Goa, India’s coastal version of LA.  In GOA, we would rendezvous with the other bands and finally meet face to face with all of our tour coordinators that we had been communicating with online.  I think all of us expected that this trip would capture a bit of the exotic, but none of us predicted what would happen next.

Stay tuned for next month’s installment, A Passage to India: Part II.  Here’s a primer:

Q: What do Pete Saunders, Alan Alvarez and Prometheus have in common?

A: They only exist in mythology.

Follow along with this article on www.xiren.net/india