Soulshine Interviews G.Love (Part 2)

10 December 2009 by Max Easton

On his most recent foray to Australian shores in support of Australian only release ‘Long Way Down,’ G.Love sat down for a chat with Soulshine’s Max Easton. Covering anything from the fate of Lauren Hill to the state of the music industry, Soulshine has it all typed out in two parts.

Part Two:
G.Love: I was talking to my manager the other day and I got kinda bummed out y’know. I’ve never…look…I can sit at home and play my guitar and everything like that, I love music. If I wanted to just play music I would sit at home and play music and not fly all over the fucking world and do all the bullshit that comes with playing music professionally. If you’re gonna do it, you should try to make as much money and make as many hit records as possible so you can do what you want and travel in style, but I never have felt like I have this past year. This whole industry…is totally fucked. It’s just fucked man. And it worries me. It’s been great and you felt…sort of untouchable in a way. But last year I had to have surgery on my vocal chords…that was the first time I realised that I could physically lose my whole shit. If I’ve got no voice, I can’t work…I can’t rap, I can’t sing…my band is based around that, they’re awesome, but the music we play is mostly a lyrical thing. Fuck…that scared me…and I got through that, but now the economy is fucking people and they aren’t coming out to as many shows. Sure, there will always be the hot bands that people will get out to see and go out to. But steady touring acts like myself who are on the circuit and have been for years…then maybe like…people who have come see us six times, or five times or fifty times… don’t have the money anymore. So people say ‘damn, there are two shows coming through town…like, G.Love’s coming, but this new guy Bon Iver is there…we’ve seen G like ten times, but we’ve never seen Bon Iver’ and they don’t have enough money to do both. Before maybe they used to be on the fence about spending that money…but they just don’t do it now. It cuts into your draw. But the only thing you can do is play the greatest show you can, and man…I had a great show last night in Melbourne. So…all you can do is play your music and be true to that…and good things will happen if you focus on your music. That’s all you can control. Wait, have I even answered one of your questions yet?

Max Easton (Soulshine): Well yeah, but you’ve answered ones I haven’t even asked yet…so you know…it makes my job easier.

G: [laughs]

ME: Do you have any advice to young artists who are tossing up between going independent or signing on with a major label? Do you think the perks to a major are worth it?

G: I don’t really think there are perks anymore. Like you get perks when you first get signed. When we first signed up, it was a lot of fun…you get flown over to England…you get picked up in a limousine…you get put up in a fancy hotel and they buy you dinner and send you DVD players or DAT recorders for Christmas and gift basket bullshit. Then you put out a record which doesn’t sell as much and all the shit just goes away. I’ve seen all sides of that shit. There used to be fat advances…we got $250, 000 to make each of our first five records…one was $320, 000…before we even did anything…and that’s just a regular record deal, people are getting million dollar deals at the end of it…the smartest thing we ever did was take our ‘Philadelphonic’ advance and start our Philadelphonic studio. When that money’s there you take it for granted and go ‘oh, we have a 250 grand budget and hopefully I’ll put some of that away in the bank at the end.’ But you pay your band real well and get high and…smoke weed for 12 hours a day and record and try to get lucky…then spend way too much money on a record that’s not as good as we can make in our studio now for $50, 000 or for free. I don’t even know how a band can get started right now…I don’t see how it’s possible. There are so many people trying to make music…you have to get a regional following through a touring thing, that’s the way to do it…now that people aren’t selling records it’s harder, cos whether you’re independent or on a major label you’re chances of selling records are so low. Even Tristan Prettyman…she made this great record on a major label which had two really strong radio songs…and it sold 60, 000 copies. So what’s the point of spending two hundred thousand bucks if it’s only gonna sell 60, 000 copies? You just gotta tour relentlessly and make fans…like a politician going from door to door. Introducing yourself to people and making great records. To use that Bon Iver again as an example, my girlfriend really liked that one great tune…that ‘Skinny Love’ thing? There’s a guy who just made music in his bedroom and it clicked with a lot of people. I dunno how many records he sold, but he’s obviously got a huge touring thing that can sell out a lot of rooms around the country…and he made a name for himself. He got a bit of heat on him and there are still websites like what you’re doing and a community of people who crave new music. So it’s just a matter of trying to get them to buy your shit and come out to the show. So…it’s tough man. It’s tough.

ME: After this Australian tour, what are you up to? Still going round and round?

G: No, after this we’re done man. We’re making a new record and uh, that’s been really good. I’ve actually been working with some songwriter producers for the first time and collaborating more, not so much artists, but people who write songs and stuff. And it’s been awesome man, I’ve got some really great stuff so far. And I’ve written like forty tunes since my last record. That shit and the new shit I’ve been working on with these other people…is great. So I’m plugging away at it. This next record for me is really important, so I’m gonna make my best record…I’m making it, that’s what I’m doin.

ME: The stuff you’ve done in the past has always featured a lot of collaboration and guest artists and the like, and tributes to other bands where you’ve worked in covers to your existing songs, which is true of hip-hop and a lot of the Blues…is this something that you feel is important to what makes you who you are as a musician?

G: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, in this latest session I was working with this English guy Paul Simms and we had this cool approach – like, he was doing a lot of the music and we’d be ‘alright, well, let’s check out this tune by so and so, or lets do a groove like that’ and then I have like a million lyrics, so the music would start and I’d say ‘this would be a cool theme for that.’ But we worked by listening to some older records and hip-hop records for ideas for grooves…and then taking an initial groove and making it into my own thing, so that it really does sound like something new. I’m kind of a musical sponge, so everything I hear comes back outta me. The most important thing you can do is be original. And I do think that music is this thing that is totally cyclical. There’s not that many notes. So everyone’s played them already, it’s just a matter of thinking about how you can play them a different way or say something in a different way and talk about something that nobody’s talking about in that approach or arrangement and chord progression and lyrics in your own way. Then the most important thing is to have your own style. That’s the most important thing you can tell an up and coming band, is to have your own style. If you can do something that no one else has thought of yet, then you will win. You can also have the kids fighting people…you know, doing something that other people are doing better than them, but I’d rather be original and have an identity and be where I’m at now…you know…the opposite. I feel like that now, that we really proved ourselves over the years and that we’ve survived so much different shit. We’re a fixture, whether we sell a million records or one record, I’m gonna be around. And we did make our own style and a lot of people now – not so many critical people, but a lot of musicians…I know a lot of musicians like my shit. This past year I met Kid Rock and Jack White and they both were at the same show the first time we played in Detroit, just as people coming to check us out. I’m not saying I’m responsible for anyone elses career, but I know that a lot of people that are really big right now peep us out and know who we are and maybe were inspired by us in a certain way. The same way that we’ve been inspired by a lot of people, cos music just keeps being rehashed and mixed up so you can’t claim a certain style necessarily. Once you put it out there it’s in the public domain…especially with someone new, everyone’s gonna jump on it and try to emulate it, so let ‘em do it.

ME: Yeah, it’s interesting right? Like especially now, or in the past few decades with sampling and whatever, people are being influenced indirectly by older musicians…like where Cypress Hill sample Dusty Springfield…it’s introducing something to someone who listens exclusively to rap that they wouldn’t have heard otherwise…so I guess there’s a lot of interesting music being written with second hand influences.

G: Well yeah, totally. It’s a new world.

G.Love & Special Sauce’s Australian only release ‘Long Way Down’ is out now through Philadelphonic, distributed by Shock Records.

In case you missed it, or are numerically dyslexic, you can check out Part 1 of the interview, covering his history with labels, the rise of Jack Johnson off his album and the impact of the digital age here: http://www.soulshine.com.au/article/2009/12/11/537-soulshine-interviews-g-love-part-1-of-2-.html

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