How did everybody know?
It's a big city, but you run into people you know everywhere. You can't go to a show without seeing someone you went to school with, someone you met at a party, but on Wednesday night I didn't recognize ANYBODY! Other than a handful of music business insiders, but there was not a plethora of the usual suspects down front, it was like they imported a whole new audience that I wasn't even aware of.
This was not the Riverside crowd... Leave the city center and you don't exactly get rural people, but those more roots oriented, more country, but that was not this crowd, they were positively middle class, scrubbed-up, dressed well, HOW DID THEY KNOW?
Tyler Childers has not had a hit, but he can sell out the Hollywood Bowl?
Now the dirty little secret is the Bowl has turned into the Garden. Acts many have never heard of play Madison Square Garden and sell out, or close, and ditto with the Hollywood Bowl. Is this one and done? If Tyler Childers played another venue within a fifty mile radius could he sell this number of tickets? I mean I've gone to the Bowl to see household names and there are empty seats, but not the other night.
His agent told me that Childers normally plays amphitheatres. But with lawns he can sell up to 20,000 tickets. And he's reciting other numbers and it's clear this is a veritable phenomenon. How exactly did this happen? There are theories, but nobody's really sure. But one thing is for sure, the music business revolution we anticipated at the turn of the century is now here. There are fewer hits, and they're not ubiquitous, but there are acts most people don't even know with huge fanbases making beaucoup bucks. It's got to do with the internet, but it doesn't have to do with the label.
Childers was playing bars, as far as Missouri from his hometown in Kentucky. Hell, he'd never even BEEN to the west coast until he played his first gig at the Echo, where 180 people attended.
Did the label blow him up? THERE WAS NO LABEL!
He and his manager met with Keith Levy at Wasserman and it was decided it would be best to do an album with Sturgill Simpson, whom the agency represented. That took a while to happen. But the record came out and the audience built and it did not happen overnight, theory is it happened DURING Covid. When everybody was at home with time on their hands and looking for something to listen to, word of mouth broke Tyler Childers.
Who is truly country. I don't mean country like the massaged hits that come out of the Nashville hit factory. In many ways, not even Americana. This guy SOUNDS like he came from the country. That voice, you don't hear that in hit music. This is not what Beyoncé and Post Malone think of when they decide to go country. This is closer to the fifties than it is to today. Then again, it's about the songwriting, which speaks to the audience.
And who is the audience?
Used to be there was a clear divide between north and south, everybody below the Mason-Dixon Line was considered an inferior redneck. But that's not how people view the country or music these days. We're all in it together. Sure, there are political prejudices, but those are mainly fights between politicos that the average person feels estranged from. When it comes down to living your life, today most people are surprisingly on the same page, despite media trying to divide us. Just like you don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's, you don't have to be from the holler to like Tyler Childers.
2
Most acts are concerned with the economics. They don't want to spend money, they want to make it. But including Tyler himself, there were eight musicians on stage. And projection and other production. This was not overwhelming, this was not the bells and whistles of today's arena acts, the production complimented as opposed to overwhelmed, but still...someone was spending money.
So the first number begins and after a couple of verses, they go all instrumental, they start to IMPROVISE! ON THE VERY FIRST NUMBER!
Sure, the Dead might do that, but almost no one else. Maybe Dave Matthews Band, but that act appealed to a more upwardly mobile crowd, which also likes Chiders, but you don't have to be an educated intellectual to get on the train.
And Tyler comes out in a sweater that resembles nothing so much as that ratty green one Kurt Cobain wore in Nirvana's MTV "Unplugged." But Tyler's was new, and it didn't seem to be ironic.
And he's playing an acoustic, got another acoustic player on stage, got a guy with a Les Paul...
This is not Keith Urban, this is not a rock show. Then again, there was occasionally wailing.
And it wasn't down home country either. It was an amalgam of those sounds, and more. A melting pot of Childers's own creation.
AND THIS GUY HASN'T EVEN HAD A HIT! Tyler's success is not the result of a label push, hell, the breakthrough record was put out by David Macias and Thirty Tigers.
And now Childers has made a record with Rick Rubin. Does this portend further success?
Rubin lets acts be true to themselves, he doesn't force them to sell out, he tries to hone their essence, will this be a breakthrough?
Not everybody is going to like Childers. Zach Bryan sounds like you and me, Childers does not. You hear that voice and it says rural south. Natural if you live there, but if you don't...there's a decent chance you'll consider it hick and don't want to hear it.
And the band is firing on all cylinders and then Childers employs the modern country trope of going out to play in the audience, Morgan Wallen has been doing this for a while, never mind a slew of other acts. But it illustrated that Childers does not need support to do his act. This is not a studio concoction, this is raw and from the heart.
And then Childers introduced the band...
3
Normally band introductions are a simple going from player to player, maybe mentioning their hometown and who else they've played with. But Tyler turned it into a whole routine. Like a cross between a carnival barker and an auctioneer. Usually it takes years and years for acts to develop their stage patter, never mind be comfortable in their skin and deliver their words with ease. You felt like you were at a revival meeting, albeit with a preacher with a sense of humor. The bit about the keyboard player having sat in with Lynyrd Skynyrd... Tyler said he'd known this guy since he was fourteen, how come he's just hearing about it now? Is it true?
This is when Childers controlled the audience.
Now the cheaper the seat, the more people were standing and involved. But when the music got quiet, you could not hear a pin drop, there was an undercurrent of noise, of people talking. Were people diehards, paying rapt attention? Some were. Some were singing along. I was trying to judge fan involvement and passionate devotion, then again a night out under the stars is a unique environment.
And I was wondering which side of the political spectrum Childers was on, after all, merely a few miles away law enforcement and protesters were battling it out, and the majority of Nashville acts are firmly on the right, or busy staying out of the fray for fear of losing their audience. But the words of Martin Niemöller's legendary "First They Came" poem were put up on the video screens and Childers performed a live version of his song "Long Violent History" for the very first time. So there was an underlying current of politics, it all wasn't just a good time, you've got to take a stand, where on the spectrum are you? And when do you stand up and say NO MAS!
4
Like I said, this guy has no hits, not a single one! And let's be clear, his music is not Spotify Top 50 friendly, it's far from hip-hop and pop. But if you go on Spotify Childers's songs average hundreds of millions of streams. One has 600 million. Another 522, another 421... What is driving this? Certainly not radio play. Sure, there's been some ink, but nothing of the volume given to Jason Isbell during his ascension.
No, the audience decided they liked this music. All by their lonesome. And I doubt it was playlists, they were looking for THIS GUY! Who is certainly unique. And playing rock and roll, but the music is closer to Nashville's roots than Crosby, Stills and Nash and the rest of the country rockers.
The AUDIENCE decided they liked this music, and not only did they listen, they had to go to the show.
Do you get it? Every record business rule has been broken here. Childers doesn't sound like anybody else. He didn't gain attention via the traditional avenues of exposure like radio and media onslaught, rather he made the music, went on the road and the public embraced him.
Which doesn't mean the audience will embrace you. Anybody can pick up a guitar, but not anybody can be Tyler Childers, with talent and a vision.
Childers might not be your thing, but I'm telling you we're now reaping the benefits of the internet revolution in music. You don't have to sound like anybody else, you don't have to have a hit and recordings are just documents, entry points for people to become fans and attend the live show. We keep reading that people are economically-challenged. You wouldn't have known it on Wednesday night, people didn't think twice about paying to show up.
And there were no hard drives. And the show is not the same every night. It's a living, breathing thing. Sans compromise.
It might not be for you, but you don't have be for everybody to make it these days. As a matter of fact, the truer you are to yourself, the more people are attracted to you. They don't want what everybody else is selling, they want authenticity, credibility, and those are at the heart of Tyler Childers.
I'm just hipping you.
--
Visit the archive: lefsetz.com/wordpress/
--
Listen to the podcast:
-iHeart: ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj
-Apple: apple.co/2ndmpvp
--
www.twitter.com/lefsetz
--
If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter,
www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1
If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, Unsubscribe
To change your email address this link
No comments:
Post a Comment