KEN: Every dollar that's spent
out there… I can give you Record Company 101… every dollar that
you spend comes out of your pocket.
ANDREW: Learn the word recoupable!
KEN: Everything is recoupable
or half recoupable. So know that it's your money. When I say that
I mean… when they buy commercials or ads or put your CDs on endcaps
in record stores… that's all money that's spent. And you want it
spent certain times, but it's your money. And so when a record company
sells a record to retail for $10 - the average deal to a band today,
maybe they're making a $1.80 on a record that they're splitting
5 ways between management and everything. They don't even see that
$1.80 until every bit of that recoupable money is paid back. That
other $8.20 doesn't even begin - that's just record company money.
That's where the frustration - I think - from the artists' comes
from a lot of times. It seems lopsided like that. But there are
huge chunks of money that record companies are putting up and they
deserve respect for that, because they are taking a risk, every
time, ya know?
Being Signed
ANDREW: It can work both ways,
but I'll say this for our label, Universal: they allow us to be
as involved as we're willing to be. I can only speak for myself
- I've never felt like we've come to them with things or ideas that
we wanted to do, and they've been like "just do your job and we'll
do our job." It is it's own beast. Being involved with a major label
does have it's complications. But to be honest - without their support
and without their machine, there's just certain areas you're not
going to be able to reach.
KEN: And again, we treat them
with respect. And we treat them with the fact that we understand
that they're working for us, and that they don't necessarily owe
us anything. A lot of artists don't understand that. There are times
when it's frustrating, because as an artist you may have a different
idea on how something could be attacked or presented… some things
just slipping through the cracks and things like that. But I think
that when Universal first got started - we were they're first platinum
rock band. And so we're held dearly in their hearts. We don't come
in there flailing about and bitchin' and moanin' about things we
really don't know about. We come in there with logical conversation,
things that make sense… plans… and timetables… and budgets. We understand
that it's not just whimsical ways of getting through it… for them
it is a business. And where art and commerce meet, it can get a
little bit messy. The President will take the call if I call up
there and he'll talk to me.
It doesn't mean that we aren't disappointed about some things sometimes…
and it doesn't mean that they're not disappointed about things sometimes.
It's part of working with a major label. There are certain things
that only major labels can get done, and there's not doubt about
that. There are different philosophies from label to label… but
I think if you ask any band, there's going to be some frustration.
If you ask anybody who works for any big company, or who's involved
with any big company, there's going to be something that they would
say, "man, somebody dropped the ball here… we could have done this
better here." But we're fortunate enough to have the "Bat Phone"
where we can actually pick it up and talk to the President and have
a couple cocktails with him and talk strategy and talk honestly
about things, too.
Control
KEN: We still control things
as much as we can. We're talking with people from our label because
we have a new idea on how we want to attack the next single on this
record.
ANDREW: We just spent (even
at this level) we just spent two days in Raleigh… we had two days
off after doing… how many shows in a row did we do?
RYAN: 11 in 12.
ANDREW: 11 shows in 12 days.
We had 2 days off… and in those 2 days, we spent two days having
meetings about what we're going to do. How are we going to get back
to doing the things we felt like we let go. I feel like at a certain
point we kind of put our stuff into the label machine, hoping that
it would work out well. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.
We wanted to get back to going, "you know what? I don't want to
look back and go 'if we had just been doing this." So we had 2 days
of meetings with brainstorming ideas with what can we do to increase
the awareness about the band?
KEN: And how to make our show
better… what was bothering us about our set… how can we make some
new transitions? Cause we like to keep our shows fresh. That's one
of the things about this band that we're really proud of… our improvisation
and the sets changing from night to night which is a real pain in
the ass for our crew. But we think it works well. You know on this
tour we've even started some of the sets sitting down, doing like
an unplugged "Storytellers" thing to start the night, before we
turn it up full blast. Doing different things. We're signing stuff
after every show right now, trying to get out there and meet people
again… and we're years and years into this - a million records later.
If you're not willing to really commit like that. You've gotta be
doing it for the music. For me, it's pure therapy, because there's
a lot of weirdness in here (points to head) and if I didn't have
that outlet as a writer and as a performer and connecting with some
of those people and having conversations about how you've affected
people profoundly in a lot of cases. That's absolutely what recharges
my battery and makes us feel that this is what matters and that
this is what we need to be doing.
