http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment0
Partial Transcript: Dennis [00:00:09] All right, Carlos, thank you for doing this interview.
Carlos [00:00:11] Absolutely. Glad to do it.
Dennis [00:00:13] Um, so can you tell me about yourself a little background information? Like what do you do?
Carlos [00:00:20] What do I do? How do I do it? Why did I do it?
Dennis [00:00:23] Yeah.
Carlos [00:00:24] That kind of thing. I started out when I was very young. I was a teenager, mid teenager, and I got invited to a recording studio to play on a session. I was a keyboard player at the time and I play the organ and piano and this folk band wanted me to play some piano on it. So I went in there. I was immediately hooked. I loved it. It was amazing. It was a little recording studio here in town called Eastern Recording Studios, and they are long gone. The guy, Tom Freeman, that ran it, he... he, passed away of cancer, which was unfortunate, but his studio closed and it was a pretty interesting studio, but I was definitely bitten by the bug through it. His engineer at the time was a guy named Mike Stavro, who went on to go to work with George Martin at Air Studios in London. So that was pretty cool. So he did really well. Got to work with Paul McCartney and all these other people, was pretty neat. So that was my start, was that. And then I started going to VCU, I was taking music, I was also playing on jingles that one of the professors there was writing jingle tracks, and he had a deal with another recording studio in town called Alpha Audio, which was up on Broad Street is right across from where Wholefoods is now right on Broad and sort of down from the Broadberry. And that studio, a lot of famous things happened in there we recorded all sorts of amazing artists, people like Bruce Springsteen and I know Pat Benatar and funk bands like The Parliament-Funkadelic did some stuff there and all these all these amazing bands did stuff there. And Richmond really was kind of bubbling at the time. It had a lot going on, particularly with, I'd say, funk and more gospel influenced music. Certainly, more African-American black music was really happening at the time there's a lot going on here. I was really involved in that and I became friends with these guys in Philadelphia, a studio called Sigma Sound Studios, which was up there, which was noted for being sort of the Sound of Philadelphia. And this was during the this was during the disco era and all that. And they were just churning out hit records like crazy. We were working with them on some things, and I got to know all those guys and got to go up to New York and Philadelphia and places and work in those studios. And I got to hang around with some amazing people and just be a fly on the wall and learn how it was all done. So I actually got to see, all these sessions take place up in New York and Philly and so forth and, firsthand learn how you got those sounds, how you get those drum sounds, how you get those bass sounds, how you get all those sounds. And, you know, I was lucky enough to be like an assistant engineer on Rolling Stones session from "Tattoo You" and various things like that. So I just really, really learned and was immersed in recording and, and production and how you got all those sounds from that era and everything. But I also was very technologically oriented, I always was messing around with building things or working on things. So when I needed to make money, I was always repairing guitar amps and organs. So that was just a way of life back then. You just learn to do everything. And we built a lot of our own equipment and designed it. I actually helped design and build the first computer, editing system for audio. We installed about 25 or 30 systems worldwide with this thing, which I was co-inventor of, and we installed six systems at Walt Disney and it was used to edit all the, back in the days, of tape when they had 24 track tape machines. The film guys really wanted these machines because their machines would only, they could only do like, four or six channels on their machine, so they really wanted to adopt what was being used in the audio industry to film because they wanted more complexity for surround sound and all that stuff. So before digital was powerful enough to just stick everything in a computer, they had to do all these crazy hybrid scene situations with synchronizing, these, these fancy multi-track tape machines with whatever they had film-wise on their side. So we ended up working with Disney and Lucasfilms and all sorts of people, and I got to know a bunch of people out in Hollywood. I met the guys that, basically invented ProTools, I knew those guys pretty well. And, so I got involved in technology really, really heavily, and then my career kind of did a weird shift. I wrote a couple of things that became somewhat known [unintelligible] musical compositions that became pretty well-known, I wrote some stuff for Sesame Street and I wrote some stuff for Coke and McDonalds, and, so my career took off as a composer. Which was really weird because I didn't see that coming, it just started happening, and they wanted me to produce it, and I think part of the reason was, is because I could get the sounds of modern records and stuff and make, you know instead of it sounding like a jingle or an advertisement, I can actually make it sound legit. So they, they realize that and these guys started hiring me to do this work. And I. It made me enough money where I could start my own business, start In Your Ear with another composer who I worked with.
Keywords: Air Studios; Alpha Audio; Bruce Springsteen; Coke; Eastern Recording Studio; George Martin; In Your Ear; Lucasfilms; McDonalds; Mike Stravro; Pat Benatar; Paul McCartney; Rolling Stones; Sesame Street; Sigma Studio; The Parliament-Funkadelic; Tom Freeman; VCU; Walt Disney; engineer; studio; technology
Map Coordinates: 39.95656649102402, -75.15902908722134
GPS: Location of Air Studios in London, also a place Carlo had the opportunity to work in, along with George Martin
Map Coordinates: 51.55293670398736, -0.16979098859798644
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment383
Partial Transcript: Carlos: And we started this place, but we started it to write music strictly for our clients we didn't want to really sell studio time to the outside world or anything. We just wanted it for ourselves. We just needed it to do what we do and it kept growing and we kept adding on to it and we worked with somebody on an album or whatever and then one thing led to another. And, you know, I eventually got out of the advertising part of it because I just didn't enjoy it anymore I just didn't like that world and I got back to what I really loved, which was producing music, and that's what I've been doing for probably 15 years, is I've gotten just gradually out of anything like advertising. I haven't written anything for advertising for years and a you know, I just work on people's albums and do stuff and I've developed, we've gone much further into video, we're doing a lot of video streaming type stuff and everything and so we we do a lot of that now. And I think most bands that come here, the one of the big reasons they come here to record is because we can shoot video of them doing it or sometimes we can even set it up so it's a live audience situation and that's the best for them because if they're going to, we can get a great sound and we can still, they can have, you know, content that they can put up on YouTube and other services, you know, Instagram and things like that. And then people can see they're band and actually experience their band, it's a lot more exciting than listening to a second grade demo tape, you know, that's recorded in somebody's wherever, you know, some club with a phone or something horrible like that, you know, so they can they can actually get really good quality here. And if we can get an audience involved and stuff like that, it can help subsidize the recording. And they don't run up nearly as high as studio bill and they get all this other great stuff that they can do. So that's something I've been pioneering because I think that ultimately the reason that we're having so much trouble in the music business today is that artists can't monetize what they're doing. They just can't do it. You can't sell enough vinyl, you can't sell enough CDs, you can't sell enough merch. You know, you've got to do everything you can possibly do to make ends meet. Having a big band is almost like suicide because then you got a bunch of mouths to feed, so people have tried to boil it down to simple rags, things like that. It's just not working. And so, you know, obviously, it doesn't pay to come in and spend $10,000 or more producing an album. You've got to have something else besides that. So what we do is say, hey look, how about this, why don't you sell 30 tickets, at 20 bucks apiece, and get your friends down, get your audience, get your people in, do a show live in front of them, we'll charge you $1500 to do the videotaping and the recording, and then you can come back and mix it later and you can figure out which songs you really like, get that all straight. You got the video for them, you can put up now content on YouTube and all this other kind of stuff. And for well under $5,000, you've got everything you would have paid much more for, back in the day to produce an album.
Carlos [00:10:13] Plus, remember, you sold 30 seats at 20 bucks apiece to a bunch of people, so you just practically paid for the whole thing. So, you know, it's just those are the kind of ways you need to think about doing promotion and recording these days, because it's got to make sense. You got to be able to make money on it. And the only way you're going to make any money is if people know who you are. So you've got to put content up on the social media services or you're dead in the water you can't do it.
Keywords: Youtube; audience; bands; buisness; monetize; producing music; recording; streaming; video
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment643
Partial Transcript: Carlos: So I did that and then more recently, the last thing that I've gotten involved in, which is really something I swore I'd never, ever do, is I started a record company, and that was about six months ago, a company called Shockoe Records, and we've signed five artists, we're looking at three more. Hopefully within four years we will have 40 artists signed to the label and that's what we're doing. But it won't be a traditional music label at all. It's basically, the idea is, to work hand-in-hand with the artists to try to further their career and we can come up with valid, legitimate ways throughout that process to make money and companionship with the artist so that it builds their career, we can ride along and help, we can get paid to do it, and it won't hurt the artists because they're getting opportunities they never would have had. You know, playing in venues and doing things that they would never be able to do on their own because we can advocate for them, so we can get them radio airplay, we can get their, their records and their merch in record stores, all over the place. We can push their career out, you know, we have contacts with people in different markets that are interested in their kind of music and that kind of thing. And we have no, one of the things that we are saying about the record company is we are absolutely not going to be pigeonholed. We have no particular type of artists we push, we like diversity. We want to try things that people are either ignoring or whatever. You know, if we think a band can recoup its money by making, either an album or CD or both or whatever, cassettes, I don't care, whatever it is. If they can present us with enough evidence that they can sell a certain number of units and we can at least make this much out of the deal.
Carlos [00:12:57] We're in. We don't care what kind of music it is. We don't care what they're doing, as long as it financially can work. And they're good, they're good people and they're good to work with. You know, I don't want to work with jerks, but if it's somebody that I like, I like what they're doing, I think it's, I think it's valid and it's viable, yeah, do it. That's really, that's really all we care about. You know, because it's not, you know, I just don't think it's appropriate or even reasonable for me to say that my taste is your taste, or whatever. I should not be the king of the label, going oh, well, you know, I don't like that kind of music we can't sign them. No, that's not valid. You know, I'm not, I'm not the one that should be making that decision, the public should be making that decision, the band and their fans should be making that decision. And if they can grow their fanbase, great, that's, that's not what I'm capable of doing, I've never been trained to do that. Why should I be, saying they are or they aren't going to make it. Prove it. That's all I want to see, just show me, and I've seen artists that can do that. When they get up on stage and they're in a club or they're in a situation, everybody knows they're going over, I mean, they're doing really well, I mean, you know, or they're not. You know, it's pretty obvious, the crowd either likes them or they don't, you know. And if they prove, if they can prove that the crowd does really enjoy their music and really, they really connect, and they have fans, fans buy stuff.
Carlos [00:14:40] If you're not a fan, you're not going to buy it. And if they can convert people into fans. Let's go, it's good for me, that's good enough.
Keywords: Shockoe Records; artists; band; career; diversity; fan; music; opportunity
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment888
Partial Transcript: So that's me, that's what I'm doing, you know, I started this, this particular, In Your Ear is about 30 years old. The company I worked at before that I worked at for about ten years, I've been in the business a little over 40 years, I've been doing it since I was 16 years old. So I've been at it for a minute. And I've seen a lot of crazy stuff, but it's still fun I love doing it. I absolutely love coming to work, I love what I do, I love the musicians, I love hearing new stuff, still, I mean, I never get tired of experimentation and hearing new things and trying to make things sound better. And I don't care if I'm mixing an old, you know, old school jazz thing like I showed you a few minutes ago, or if I'm mixing a metal record, I don't care, it didn't matter to me. you know, or even a hip-hop record or something, you know. I'm fine with all that because it's all interesting, and it all has very different sensibilities. And you're, you're trying to make somebody feel a certain way about that music by giving them a really great sound. And you, and whenever you do that, the only way you're going to get there is if you study that music for a little while, at least a little while, maybe longer, maybe you need to study it for a long time. But, you know, you can't mix a record if you don't know what the audience expects to hear. And so you really have to go to school and listen to what is club, what is happening in clubs right now? What does it sound like? What are they doing? What are those mixs sound like? Who's the top mixers in those in, that genre and so forth. And you just go study it. I mean, the great thing is today we have access to all that stuff on the internet through YouTube and other outlets, you know, you want to see, a certain person mixing a certain style of music, there's, there's hundreds of YouTubes about it, hundreds!
Speaker 1 [00:16:56] You can go in a rabbit hole and not come out for quite a while. So it's pretty cool, it's fun, I love it.
Speaker 2 [00:17:02] It sounds really fun.
Speaker 1 [00:17:02] It's really fun. I love learning. I think, I still think one of the most fun things about my job is it puts me in a position where I have to learn. I love that. I love having to learn. It's fantastic, I mean, I can't imagine anything more boring than if you know it all, which is impossible, but if you think you do, and that's a problem, I think that's a real problem. So um, I don't know it all by any stretch of the imagination, I learn new stuff, every single time I sit on this chair. I'm always learning something new, you know, some tricks, some thing, something that I heard once that I go, wonder if that would work here, and then you try it and use all that and go down that road, it's really fun, it's really cool.
Keywords: experimentation; internet; learning; music; new things; record; sensibilites; study
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment1071
Partial Transcript: Carlos: So that's, that's what we do here and that's what, you know, that's what goes on and, this is just one of our studios. In Your Ear has five full-time employees and then we hire a bunch of freelancers to do various things, depending on what we're up to. Whenever we're shooting video or doing things like that, we're hiring people and or friends of ours that do it all, either freelance or part-time basis. Some of them are even retired and just want to keep doing it.
Carlos [00:18:23] So we have a whole bunch of freelance people that we access and work with and you know, but the five full-time people here, you know, are here to help keep the business going and help me do what I do and, we have another engineer, another old studio, Paul Bruski runs that studio and his, his plan load is primarily Hollywood, he does a lot of work for pictures, motion pictures and TV shows. He records a lot of the stuff for voices, for the Fox animated shows, like The Family Guy and Bob's Burgers and all those things. We record a lot of the voices here for those shows, so that's pretty cool. There's a bunch of people that live in Richmond, not a bunch, there's several people that live in Richmond that are part of that cast, and so they come in here to do their parts, so it's pretty cool. And we had to actually get our studio, his studio is set up to sound, totally compatible with the Fox animation stages where they record those voices because, you know, they have to intercut the dialog all the time and they're always having to cut somebody's line or whatever. So it has to sound the same or it's going to be weird. So we had to go to some pains to make that sound exactly the same as the voices that are recorded in Southern California, so that's, that's fun. So we have a lot of interesting things, we do a lot of recording for video games and things like that as well, where we just record sound effects and Foley work, which is the art of, you know, actors performing the sounds that you see in a scene. We do that kind of work and, so on any given week, we might have, our clients might be a record company, a film production company, a television production company, and I mean, we have had, in one week we had, this happened fairly recently, we had Paramount, Apple and, the Warner Brothers in the same week. In the same week! That's crazy! So we do a lot of work with that, with that, and that's, a lot of that is connections that we made back in the day when I was doing that technology stuff and everything, you know, I'll meet people out there and, they trust us to do it and do it right, so then when they have any actor that has to replace lines in a movie or do anything like that, it's within, you know, anywhere close to Richmond, we get the call, so like, you know, we got to fix this, for Disney or whoever. I mean, we, we've done scenes that are in really, really big movies. We did a lot of Sissy Spacek's lines for The Help, that movie. We did a whole scene for the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie for Disney. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on, if you go to our website, there's a whole page that shows you just some of the things that we've worked on, this goes for a couple of scenes it's pretty fun. So, you know, whether we're mixing, you know, a local bands album or we're doing some line for a TV show or even recording the music, we did the music for one of the Apple, features that's out right now, and um, that was recorded right here, part of the soundtrack. So, you know, that, that's the, it's just always something different here. You never know what's going to happen. And that's part of the love of it, is that you just don't know what's going to happen, you know. You'll get a call and be like, Really? Oh, my gosh, you know, it's, those kind of things. Um, we've also been doing a bunch of these, if you go to NPR's website, there's a series of stations of which WNRN here is one of them, but there's about, I think, about ten stations maybe, that are shooting these videos with bands, you know, new bands that are breaking, for the most part, you know, coming along pretty big. And we're one of the studios where they do that. So if one of those bands happens to be playing on the National or somewhere close by, they will bring them in here to do a live concert with, you know, with the interview and stuff from one of the people from WNRN. And so we've done some pretty, pretty cool ones, we just, we just did one with, um, let's see, we just did, well, right before, I guess this was right last spring, we did a band called Japanese Breakfast and Japanese Breakfast is, was just beginning, their song was just becoming like a big deal and so the video that went up on the NPR website and everything was the one that did here, which is pretty cool. So, so we've had bands like that, just a bunch, I mean, if you go up on our website, you can see stuff that's been done here, a band called Shaky Bones did theirs here. Those guys and I mean, it just goes on and on and on.
Keywords: Apple; Bob's Burgers; Disney; Family Guy; Hollywood; In Your Ear Studio; Japanese Breakfast; NPR; National; Paramount; Paul Bruski; Richmond; Shaky Bones; Sissy Spacek in The Help; WNRM; Warner Brothers; bands; clients; compatible; freelancer; mixing; sound; technology; video; voices
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment1437
Partial Transcript: Carlos [00:24:02] But it's really cool because we're in a real good spot to intercept this kind of thing going on. It's funny, being in Richmond actually works to our advantage because, yeah, because of Japanese Breakfast, let's say it. Say, take a band like Japanese Breakfast, you know, they're, they're not a mainliner or filling up stadiums quite yet but they're, they're definitely playing places like the National and, the bigger theaters, right? So they go to New York City or L.A. or somewhere like that, their schedule is just jammed because they've got to be on interviews, they've got to go to this, they got to do this, they got to do an appearance here, they got to do all that. They come to Richmond, it's kind of a break, it's like, oh, all we got to do is play this gig at this theater. And, you know, so NPR will go, well, would you mind, doing a concert that, you know, we'll promote it and do it all, and, you know, we can hook you up with doing it at In Your Ear in Richmond. And they're like, oh, yeah, we can do that, cause that's only a mile from the venue. That's easy, we just walk down the street practically, and we're there. So that actually works in our favor.
Dennis [00:25:16] Oh, is that why you sort of, like, chose this location?
Carlos [00:25:20] No, we just lucked out.
Dennis [00:25:21] Just lucked out?
Carlos [00:25:22] We had no idea. I mean, we built this place 20 years ago. There was no YouTube yet.
Dennis [00:25:27] Yeah, exactly.
Carlos [00:25:28] I mean, it's hard to believe, but YouTube's only been with us for well over ten years, not very long, and it's taken over the world. But, you know, we weren't, we weren't thinking of streaming or shooting video here or anything like that, we just were like, we're just a recording studio, you know, we just do what we do, but we morphed into it. You know, COVID actually pushed us into doing this more because we had to get creative and start thinking about, well what can we do, besides what we used to do to make money? And, you know, this, this whole thing of doing these concerts and things like this, we'd already been doing them, but we really didn't, the, the video was more of a pain in the ass than it was anything else, I mean it's like, we don't really want to, we got to set up cameras, you know, gross, you know, we don't want to do that, we just want to sound really good, right? And you know, when COVID started, I kind of went, no, now's the time, where we get serious about this streaming stuff. Let's get some really good cameras, let's get switching equipment, let's get what we need to do it so we can do it, kind of in a baby version of Austin City Limits. That's, that's what I envisioned. You know, it's like if we could do a baby version of Austin City Limits, it would probably be really cool. That would be something that people might need or want to utilize, and they did, I mean, we did it and it was like. Whoa, be careful what you ask for because all of a sudden there was, there was a lot of business there. It's tricky, you know, it's it adds a lot of stress and it's a lot more work than a recording session. For sure, but, it's also fun and we have great people, so if you got the right staff, you got the right gear, you can do it, but it's not exactly a cheap investment, and you really, really do need the people that will love to do it, that want to do it and want to do a good job and come in and put in the extra work before the band shows up to get it lit correctly, and make it look good, do all the things, it's way beyond the scope of what one or two people can do. You need a team and that's key, so if you don't have a team, good luck. You'll drive yourself crazy. You'll want to go jump off a cliff after the first concert. That's why WNRN and these radio stations, they just hire us to do it, I mean, even the Virginia Museum, when they were doing the Stories Strings exhibit, which we were part of. They came to us, they went, we are not going to tackle this unless you say yes, because we know what it is, we know how hard this is to do and you guys know how to do it, and we want you to partner with us to do this exhibit because it has a recording studio in the exhibit. Which is really cool, so, We're doing it.
Dennis [00:28:25] Yeah.
Carlos [00:28:27] You just never know what'll happen, you know, it's so fun. So great. So what other questions you got?
Keywords: Austin City Limits; COVID; In Your Ear; Japanese Breakfast; NPR; National; Richmond; WNRN; YouTube; business; location; money; streaming; studio; video
Map Coordinates: 37.54203734483268, -77.43527729042617
GPS: Austin City Limits, a music venue in Austin TX
Map Coordinates: 30.270768486871866, -97.74802969067089
Hyperlink: Official website for the Nationals in Richmond
Hyperlink: Official website for Japanese Breakfast
Hyperlink: Official website for WNRN a music radio network
Hyperlink: Official website for NPR
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment1712
Partial Transcript: Dennis [00:28:34] All right so, in our class we're talking about, like the music scenes in like different cities, so how would you describe the Richmond music scene?
Carlos [00:28:43] Potential.
Dennis [00:28:44] Potential?
Carlos [00:28:45] Potential. It's um, it's it's. When we started doing the Shockoe sessions live things, I thought we'd probably do it for about six months, maybe a year. I wasn't sure. I really didn't know who knew what the pandemic was going to do. And I just want to give bands a place where they could play that was safe and they could actually play in there, and their fans can go online and see them play because you couldn't go to a club, they were all shut down. So that was the way it started. And I figured, you know, the original music bands in Richmond, there's probably a good, you know, 20, 30 of them maybe that are good enough to put on something like that. Well, that was back then. Now, we've we've repeated a few bands when they kind of had something different to say, but we really haven't repeated any bands to speak of. Maybe a few, just one or two or three or something like that, a handful. But, you know, every week we put on a show with bands that play original music from Richmond, from here or close by, you know, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville maybe, Hampton Roads, something you know. But, but these are bands that play original material, these are not cover bands, they do not, these are not wedding bands, they're not cover bands, they're none of that shit. These bands are bands that are playing their music that they've written, and we've done over 120 of these bands. And half the time I ask and I go, Where are you from exactly? And they'll go, oh, I live up on Church Hill, I'm on 25th ave, you know, we rehearse right up the street. Or we rehearse over at Orbital Music Park or we rehearse, you know, and a lot of these bands are variations of the same members. It's really funny, it's like there will be three guys playing, who played with this band are all of a sudden playing with this band, and you get some of that stuff too, where it's really funny, you know, like one week, one time this drummer in town, Kelly Strawridge, Kelly showed up three weeks in a row playing with a different band, and we were like, Kelly, this has got to stop, man, what does this do? And it was funny, it just worked out that way, but um, we do get that, you know, where it's the same musicians, but different bands playing a different music though. But, but you know, I would say we haven't even had half the bands. We haven't had half the bands. I, I, we could do this twice a week and still not have all the bands. That's how crazy it is around here. That's how many original bands are around Richmond. Bands, not single artists not, not a singer with a guitar, a band. A band. It's crazy. It's insane. It's like, if somebody told me that three years ago, I wouldn't have believed them. I thought they would, I would think they would be exaggerated. I can promise you I'm not exaggerating.
Dennis [00:32:09] It's like, where do you, where do you like hide all of them around the city?
Carlos [00:32:13] I, it's just weird. I mean, it's all different kinds of music, a lot of it is stuff that you wouldn't expect or there is no venue for it. There's a problem, there's no venue that would play, that band, because they're playing something really weird, a little offbeat, but they can come in and play an hour of it, on our show.
Dennis [00:32:36] And this is like how they get like, exposure.
Carlos [00:32:40] Yeah Exactly. It's wonderful.
Dennis [00:32:42] Yeah, that's really great.
Carlos [00:32:43] It's really great. And I don't know if that's true in other cities, I mean, maybe it's true in other cities the size of Richmond, I don't know, I can't speak to that because nobody's making any effort to uncover it. You know, this was an accident almost that we did it. And we're discovering all these people. It is astounding. It's astounding, I can't believe, I tell people, you've got to be kidding me, there can't be that many bands. I go, oh, yeah, there are. I said I, I'm such a believer in it now, and so amazed by it, I started a record company, I mean, come on, you know, the thing I vowed I'd never do that. So that's what it's done for me. I mean, that's how much of a believer I am.
Dennis [00:33:31] That's amazing.
Carlos [00:33:31] It is amazing. It's a terrific story. Just terrific.
Keywords: Band; Kelly Strawridge; Potential; Richmond; Shockoe; believer; discovering; music scene; original; record company
Map Coordinates: 37.5328° N, 77.4163° W
GPS: Orbital Music Park (musical club)
Map Coordinates: 37.5535712684507, -77.48040313089817
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment2013
Partial Transcript: Dennis [00:33:36] So you talk about your record labels, do you expect like, it to, how much are you expecting it to grow? Or how much do you want it to grow?
Carlos [00:33:49] The business model we put together, which is was put together by a team of people I really, really admire. I got all my friends that are not in the record business, that are in finance, that are in education, they're in all sorts of fact places, artist and also, and we put them all room and we had about eight meetings where we just brainstormed, how would it work? What would a new what would a record company look like today if you started all over again? What if Motown started today? What would it be? That kind of question. And you just bat these questions, you throw these things out and you get all this stuff and write it up on a whiteboard, you're just like, okay, even crazy ideas, just put it all up there, and then we just sat around and figured out what we would do and what we wouldn't do. Because it's important to realize what your strengths and weaknesses are and what you're capable of doing, what you can't do. So we made a big, blob and put it up there on the wall and said, this is what our record company is going to be. And basically, in a nutshell, it works this way. The artists are responsible for developing their own work. We're not going to tell them what they can play or sing or do they have to come up with it and then they have to convince us there's an audience for it. Then they have to record it and we're not going to, we might help them pay for recording it, but we're not going to pay for recording it. It's their responsibility to record it, recordings cheap these days, there's a million ways to do it. You can either do it at home, you can do it in a low priced studio, whatever. If you need something that's kind of crazy, like maybe a full string section or something like that, okay, we can talk about it, and we actually have done that for one of our artist, but we can talk about that because that is a bit to chew off. But generally speaking, we expect the artist to produce their own album with their friends and with whoever they want to work with. We really don't want to get in the middle of that, we don't want to push them to be something they're not. We want them to do what they do, and we also want them to be responsible for it, because if it doesn't sell or it doesn't work, it's their fault, you know, we, we didn't do anything to, to muck that up, you did it, you know, now that said, I'm not going to put something out that I think sounds bad. If they bring it to me and they go, we finished, and I go, no you didn't, that can happen, I can say no, you need to go back and clean up this and do this, and I really don't like the sound of these drums on this and whatever, figure it out, you know, and bring it back.
Carlos [00:36:33] I've done that with a few of our artists and, you know, it's just a give and take thing and it works out and it's fine, but they have control over that. So when they get that to that point I look at what their budget is, I look at or we look at their budget, people in the company, I'm not the only one. We look at what they're doing, we pretty much match them, their effort and their money that they put in with whatever they did to create the album, in promotion and all the stuff that needs to happen now that they've got an album. So maybe pressing it, doing the artwork, helping design the cover, all the way out to promoting it and putting it in record stores and getting it on the air and all that. That's what we have. We kind of match them, how much effort they put in, money they put in, so that if they agree with what we propose and we like their album and we come to agreement, we shake hands at that point, we split everything because we both got as much invested as the other one. So we just split everything down the road, that's how it works. And so, you know, if there's cost involved with CDs or cost of all of the various things, costs have to be paid off first. You know, if a lawyer showed up in the middle of this process and said, hey, so-and-so wants to see you because you sound just like so-and-so, well, and we have to pay for that, that gets paid out of the proceeds before we split. You know that we agree, 50/50. That has to be dealt with. So everything's 50/50, and then, you know, we do that for six months and then we have a meeting, we decide, okay, where it go from here? Do we need to order more merch? Do we need to order more records? Do you want a tour? Do you want to do this? How can we design the next six months to be a collaborative effort as well? And if it can't be a collaborative effort, what does it need to be? 60/40? 30/70? What does it need to be? We agree on that, we move forward another six months and if we get to the end of the first six months and it's just not doing anything, everybody gets off free, you just let it go. You either absorb the loss or take the gains and move on down the road. And that's why we need 40 bands and at least five years or faster, because some of these are going to do things, some of them are going to be experimental, we don't know what's going to happen. Some are going to work out, some of them aren't.
Carlos [00:39:15] People get sick, people change careers, people change directions in their lives. You don't know what's going to happen, so we need critical mass with at least 40 acts going, to maintain enough money to pay for a staff for the record company so the record company can keep going, and that's the way it works. And if some artists really blows up and becomes super famous and great, wonderful. It's beyond the scope of what our record company can do, we'll help negotiate a deal with the next big dog record company, you can move on with your career, we're happy, you're happy, and we just helped you get to where you needed to get to where we look at it. We have no idea, we have no desire to be, Warner Brothers or someway or something like that, it didn't make any sense, that models, it works for them, I guess because they're who they are, but I can't imagine being that in Richmond, Virginia, it just doesn't make any sense, but we're really good at finding bands and finding talent, helping them get better. We're real good at that, that's what we're good at. So that's what we need to stick to. That's the whole scope of what we're talking about, basically. And we've got some really great people working on the label, I mean, behind the scenes. Wow. We've got some really great people. Um, one of my partners is Q. Martin's a guy who has, came from New York, moved down here about three years ago, is working with some people, developing television content, so forth, he was, he was very connected, in the, in the motion picture entertainment industry in New York still is and was actually one of the founders of MoviePass. That thing that started up to get people in movie theaters and stuff like that, he was actually one of the founders of that. So he's, he's a pretty big deal, great guy and a wonderful human, just a great guy, you meet him, it's like, wow, what a cool guy, you know, he's great. And then, one of our other partners is Craig Martin, who's, funny they both have Martin's last name, but they're, but, uh, Q. is African-American looks nothing like Craig. Yeah. And so there's no confusing the two of them. Um, but Craig Martin is the host and producer of The Good Road on PBS, which is a national TV show. So he's, he's really well connected with all of that, with all the television stuff and, you know, he's working on a thing right now for HBO, I mean, he's you know, so these are real people that have real connections in the, our in the entertainment industry. They can get our artist's songs placed in movies and TV shows and things like that, so, so that's why it's, it makes sense, you know, it's not like we're just wishing we get a star or something like that, we really don't care about that, that's not it. We're just trying to help these really wonderful singer-songwriter bands and people that do their own material get to the next level.
Dennis [00:42:36] To gain exposure.
Carlos [00:42:37] Yeah, exactly, and get their work and things other than, you know, a gig, you know, up the street selling merch and trying to hope like hell you'll get enough money to pay everybody in the band, all that kind of stuff. We're trying to get them, you know, some options, some other things other than not getting paid by streaming your stuff and having to buy, you know, expensive vinyl and all those dangerous activities that bands are forced into. That's what we're doing.
Keywords: Craig Martin; HBO; Motown; MoviePass; PBS; Q. Martin; Richmond; The Good Road; album; artist; business model; career; collaborative; control; even split; experimental; exposure; finance; invested; promotion; record; record label; responsible; strength; weakness
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment2585
Partial Transcript: Dennis [00:43:10] Yeah, so this label only, like, takes people in from the Richmond area?
Carlos [00:43:13] Yes. Yeah, we're, we're focused here. If we expand, we won't do it in the normal way. If we expand, what we'll do is we'll start a satellite version of what we are, with people in a different market using our examples and using us as mentors and helping, but we would recreate the model in a geographically specific, way in another city to take advantage of whatever that city has to offer cause it won't be like Richmond.
Carlos [00:43:49] There will be things that are similar, but there will not, it won't be the same musicians making the same noises. So, you know, it's like you have to have the culture of the, of the city embedded in an effort like this or I don't think it'll work, and that's part of what went wrong with the record business in the first place, is that, you know, when they lost sight of people, people's musical culture and their essence, where they came from and turned them into what everybody thought they should be, it got weird. You know, it just got weird. It's like Nashville, you know, you see these, these guys, these stars that come out of Nashville and you go, where you just think of him as Nashville, you don't think, you don't know where they came from, you don't know which town they were born in, you don't know where they learned to play guitar or sing the way they do, breathing in because they've been, assimilated into the Nashville machine. It is, it is part of that whole thing and Motown, you know, back in the day, they did a similar thing. They would grab artists and they'd go, okay, you are now a Motown artist, you know, these are the guys that are going to be playing on your records, it's going to sound this way, this guy's going to produce it, so it's going to sound like him or her, you know, it's weird, you know, but that worked, you know, at that time. But I think we've grown past that, I think that the world doesn't work that way anymore, you know, with YouTube and social media, you know, anything can come from anywhere at any time, and you don't know, and there's no saying that it has to be this way or it won't work. That's not true. It's just not true. It doesn't have to be that way, it can be, if it's good, it's good. And if you can find people to agree that it's good and create a fan base, anything's possible. Anything's possible. That's my feeling. So that's the way we're operating. You know, we're not trying to get people signing the labels. We're not trying to do any of those things. We're just doing what we know is right and good, you know, a guy writes a good song, let's share it with some people.
Dennis [00:46:18] Yeah.
Carlos [00:46:19] Get him some better people in his band. You know, get that guy out of there that's trying to play drums and get a real drummer in there, and we'll skip this, I mean, we'll help him, but we're not going to tell him, here's how you have to sound or here's going to produce your record or, no, we don't, that's just not what we're doing, you know, if we do anything, it will be pushing people to get out of a box and quit being, quit trying to sound like something else, they have already heard you know.
Dennis [00:46:48] Yeah be different.
Keywords: Motown; Nashville; Richmond; city; culture; different; geographically specific; musicians; noise; satellite
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment2804
Partial Transcript: Carlos [00:46:49] But we've had some really cool artists. There's a, there's a guy we're getting ready to do a big release party at the Hippodrome Theater here in Richmond, which is a really interesting theater. People don't realize the history of the Hippodrome, but the Hippodrome had back in the forties and fifties, it was a venue for some of the biggest artists in the country. They had Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, all these people would come to town to play for the Jackson Ward neighborhood because that was the center of black culture. It's one of the centers of black culture in the South that and I'd say that Jackson Ward was certainly one of those places, a couple spots in Atlanta, New Orleans, that was it. That was it. This was a big, big, big place to be and come as an artist and do that. And that theater has that, that legacy just oozing out of it, it's crazy, you go in there, you just go, God, I can almost feel it, you know, Ella Fitzgerald sang her first, her first gig as a child, as a singer, was in that theater, you know, just stuff like that, the history of it is phenomenal.
Carlos [00:48:09] And it's never been taught in any school or anything around here. Unless you go to Virginia, Virginia Union, they'll tell you about it, but you know, these dumb people around here, they don't know that stuff, I know it because these are my clients, these are people I work with all the time, you know, and I know it. So it was only proper for us to put Rodney's show because he's a soul singer, he is a throwback artist to the early days of soul music and Motown and all that stuff. That's what he grew up listening to as a kid, and so he loves that stuff and it's just amazing. I'll play snipple of his record, because he's a, I mean, it's, it's all being pressed right now, so it's just gotta, let's see. [Unintelligible].
Carlos [00:49:35] Okay, so this is the mastering project for the CD. This is the actual thing. [Unintelligible].
Carlos [00:49:51] Things to get its act. Okay, good. Okay, so the way this starts out, as we made it, it's a concept, what we call a concept. It is a, it's not a full album because it's not quite an hour or anything. It's a little over 30 minutes, it's eight cuts, and it's bigger than an EP because those are four cuts. So we call them concepts and what I'm getting our artists to do, the one thing I encourage them to do is I make it, I say make it so that all your songs flow together. Make it so, it's like a sad of an album, sorta. And if you want to put in anything else in there, make it a journey for the listener. Do it, I encourage you to do that. So Rodney did that, he goes, I got this Carlos, I got it, he goes I know what to do. He goes, this is what I want people to hear when they put this in, in their car or they stream or whatever. Yeah, this is what you'll hear. It's pretty interesting. So listen, this is a turntable record dropping.
[music playing]
Carlos [00:54:20] That is a taste of Rodney. Rodney is a postal worker.
Dennis [00:54:24] No way.
Carlos [00:54:25] Yeah, yeah way. He should not be.
Dennis [00:54:28] He needs to.
Carlos [00:54:29] He needs to be out of there.
Dennis [00:54:30] People needs to know this.
Carlos [00:54:32] That this is exactly why I started the record company. After I saw this happen about five or six times, I just was like, this has got to stop, this is just ridiculous, this is actually making me mad.
Dennis [00:54:44] Yeah, like these talented people are just not known.
Carlos [00:54:47] That's insane. He wrote that, sang and produced it all himself. When he brought that to me, I just went, Rodney, you're crazy, man. I mean, what are you doing? You know.
Dennis [00:55:02] What are you doing here?
Carlos [00:55:03] Yeah, what are you doing, man?
Carlos [00:55:04] He goes, he goes, he goes. I know, I got it, I got to get it, you know I got it, you know. But um, so we, we you know, we're getting this out. This is I want to get this out the door because this is like his stuff that he's been sitting on for a couple of years, and he's got a whole bunch of new songs that are better than these. Seriously!?
Carlos [00:55:33] I'm not kidding. I can't wait to produce them, you know it's like we want to start with the ground up and do those right, you know. You know, no screwing around your basement stuff, I know, this is, like, really nailed it.
Carlos [00:55:47] Isn't that amazing?
Dennis [00:55:47] That is so amazing.
Carlos [00:55:49] He's one out of five artists that we have, they're all like that. They're all that good. They're good in their own way. Just totally different. It's crazy, it's crazy it makes no, sense.
Dennis [00:56:02] That is so, that's insane.
Carlos [00:56:03] It's just. It's wrong.
Dennis [00:56:05] Yeah, I would say he's like some frickin star, but he's just wow.
Carlos [00:56:09] No, he's not, That's the stupid thing. That's the dumbest thing, but that's the way these stories go. You know, when you look back in history and you just, you know, when you read about some famous person, you know, how they start out, how are they discovered? Who? Who found them? What was the story? You know, people came from ordinary places, did ordinary things, driving trucks, working at the post office, working in a burger place or a restaurant or whatever. And just, you know, somebody heard them, and went are you kidding me? Why are you doing that, you should be doing this, you know, and the rest is history, you know. So that's what our job is, is to uncover these diamonds in the rough and just bring them out, let people see these things, hear these things, because, man, I got to believe people hear this guy, their going to go, where is that coming from? Who's that guy?\ Where did that come from? I mean, that's a throwback to the, it feels like you're in 1969.
Carlos [00:57:18] 1978. It's just like this is Motown, this guy could have been a staff writer at that record company, I mean, but he was born too late.
Dennis [00:57:27] Yeah.
Carlos [00:57:28] You know, it's weird. And I'll tell you a live, he's even better.
Dennis [00:57:35] Really?
Speaker 1 [00:57:36] He's even better, he transforms into one of those guys, he's just like, he's got the style, he's got the moves, he's got the whole thing. His band is smokin. I mean, it's insane, and he's, and he's now he's got these two, he didn't even have them on this, he's got these two background vocalists, these two women that are phenomenal. They're just really, really, really freaking good. And, and they're backing him up and it's like, are you kidding me? This is like, off the charts now. ,t's it's better than this, because he's doing all parts on this now.
Dennis [00:58:19] Yeah, I'll be listening to that on repeat. That's, that's amazing.
Speaker 1 [00:58:23] It's insane. It's insane, you know, right in our backyard.
Keywords: Atlanta; Black Culture; Concept; Dizzy Gillespie; Duke Ellington; EP; Ella Fitzgerald; Hippodrome; History; Jackson Ward; Motown; New Orleans; Richmond; Rodney; Virginia Union; journey; legacy; postal worker; soul
Map Coordinates: 37.5477° N, 77.4401° W
GPS: Hippodrome Theatre
Map Coordinates: 37.5473° N, 77.4380° W
GPS: Virginia Union
Map Coordinates: 37.5685° N, 77.4501° W
GPS: Atlanta, Georgia
Map Coordinates: 33.7488° N, 84.3877° W
GPS: New Orleans, Louisiana
Map Coordinates: 29.9511° N, 90.0715° W
Hyperlink: Ella Fitzgerald Biography Official Website
Hyperlink: Duke Ellington Official Website
Hyperlink: Rodney performance at Hippodrome Theatre
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment3512
Partial Transcript: Carlos [00:58:36] They're all over the place. All of us, one day I was in here and, this guy I was doing a thing where I was trying to get people to come in, I was trying to connect musicians with business people to try to help their careers and so forth, so I was inviting business guys down here was getting restaurant, restaurants and bars and stuff to give them, give their time and money and stuff to help do this, and the whole thing was to do a mini concert with a band and just get the band in here, and this was before COVID, and this was when I started experimenting with this kind of stuff. And one of the bands that came to my attention, so I just put feelers out, people I knew and they said, well, you know, here's a guy you ought to meet, said, okay, cool. So Sid, comes in here, he plays piano, I got him, Sid Kingsley. Sid comes in and he's uh, he plays piano, he sits down, he goes, okay, you know, I got my group in here, you know, we'll do it, you know, so I got some business people in here and they did, we did a set, I think it's up on YouTube, um. A year later, he's a finalist on The Voice. They discovered him through the video he did here. He made it all the way up to the second round from the top. He's a killer singer. Great songwriter. Yeah, a great player. I said Sid, where are you from? He goes, I grew up over in Gray Street, it's three blocks away?
Dennis [01:00:17] Yeah.
Carlos [01:00:18] Three blocks away. I couldn't believe it. I, I can't make this stuff up. It's, it's good, it's too good, it's, and it's, it's, this is really a hotbed for this stuff, there's so many bands, so many really great bands, just, you know, band we had last week two guys were are the one person that helps us with the show Annie Lacey she's involved the record company a little bit, she's, she's a sort of an intern person I would like to hire her full time when we get money. But Annie goes, you know I, I went to high school with these two guys, they're really great, you ought to get them in here.
Dennis [01:01:02] Yeah.
Carlos [01:01:03] And I said well are they, are they going to play on? She goes, yeah, I think so, I think they're good enough, they've got a new band. So they're probably really good, you know, so, so I go okay, so this was last week, right? So I meet these guys, I go um, I said, what is the name of your band man? And he goes, Twin Brothers. Well I think, oh, please really? That's the name of your band? You know um, it's just crazy, so um, so I went, yeah, well, let's check it out, let's see what these guys can do.
Carlos [01:03:41] And so it goes. You know, where these guys come from? I don't know, and, you know, that's just a recommendation from somebody on the crew. Just, hey have you, are these guys? No, I never heard of it, man. Let's get them in here. Okay, fine. Are they any good? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So fine. So, you know, and you go to our shows and there's, a lot of these, there's a lot of these kind of bands, they're just insane. They're really, really, really good.
Dennis [01:04:16] Yeah, I'm at a lost for words.
Keywords: Anna Lacey; COVID; Sid Kingsley; The Voice; Twin Brothers; bands; business; musicians
http://ragakusuma.org/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=Interview115278.xml#segment3856
Partial Transcript: Carlos [01:04:19] I know, it's kind of like, what is that? That's really kind of amazing. Yeah, there's a, there's a bunch of those shows up and, you know, just everything under the planet, I mean, we do, we've staged operas.
Dennis [01:04:33] Operas, really?
Carlos [01:04:35] We've done, we've done every kind of music you can think of, everything, you know, it can be stuff like that, but, you know, it's what it is done, what we've all decided is that, Richmond doesn't really have a sound. It doesn't, it's, it transcends sound, it is, it is such a multicultured sound here, it's so multiculturally integrated, between the jazz, funk, rock, all these, all these guys playing each other's bands. So it doesn't make any sense, it's like, you know, you may have a strong writer or somebody every once a while that shows up, that goes, here's my style, and everybody plays behind them and backs them up, and that's cool. Like a, Jason Farlow with ah, the Last Real Circus, he's one of those guys, he's really good, and whoever he gets in his band, it becomes the Last Real Circus, it becomes his band, and he definitely has a strong style, and he's got a sound. But, but that's not the Richmond sound, that's just Jason.
Carlos [01:05:45] And, and you know, when you look at, you know, Jay Roddy and all these other guys that are around town and you just go, you know, well, okay, they're all different, they all learn something different from somewhere, but they all exchange bandmates and stuff. So you get, you know, these bands like No BS Brass Band, which is one of the strangest bands you'll ever hear, I mean, it's like a big, huge New Orleans brass style band that plays hip hop influenced New Orleans big band. And you're like, wait a minute, how does that work, and and you realize, you know, these guys, you know, it really blew me away, a couple of years ago, I was riding somewhere and NPR did a story about music influence, it was like a Saturday afternoon, I was just listening to NPR driving from D.C. or something, and this band came on, they started talking, this band, they were talking about New Orleans horn bands and the incredible ability of these people, these kids, to just play this shit like crazy, you know, just this ridiculous ability to play this horn charts and stuff. And they played this band, they go, now interestingly enough, this band's not from New Orleans at all. And I knew immediately who they were, and it, it was it was No BS, and they did a whole story, they they, they interviewed them and they were interviewing, you know, all those guys, you know. And I just was like sitting there laughing, going, yeah, well, that doesn't surprise me too much. You know, for those guys, what did surprise me is one day we were in here and one and Dave Parrish, who does our photography for the show, he's one of the guys, he's great, amazing photographer, he said um, and I don't know if you heard these guys, like we were talking about No BS, and he goes, well, you know, he goes, if, you know, speaking of No BS, he goes, you know, we should um, he goes, [unintelligible]. Audacity, you ever heard of Audacity. Audacity brass band? [unintelligible] Okay, so anyway, let me just, just play you a snip, and keep in mind, this band has no rhythm section, they have a drummer and a bass player, the rest of it is horns.
Carlos [01:08:32] And their killer, they're not messing around at all.
Carlos [01:09:30] Let's run it up, get some, some development to it, that's, that's really.
Carlos [01:11:34] Insane.
Carlos [01:12:21] It's just amazing this goes on, I mean, you can watch this channel forever, you know, it's like it's like how many of these shows have we done? You know? And there are just bands like this that just blow me away, you know, there's like maybe out of all the shows, there might be five or, maybe, maybe eight, seven or eight that I thought were kind of like, ehh. The rest of em are like that. It's insane. It's, I mean, I got to believe people tune in.
Keywords: Audacity; Dave Parrish; Jason Farlow; Jay Roddy; Last Red Circus; NPR; No BS Brass Band; Richmond; band; funk; hip hop influenced New Orleans big band; jazz; multicultured; operas; rock
Hyperlink: No BS Brass Band performance on YouTube
Hyperlink: Audacity Brass Band performance