After 30 years working with major stars (yes, I worked with four of the twenty most streamed songs worldwide) and with small upcoming acts (I have started two of the biggest showcase conferences in Scandinavia). I know how to make an artist successful and get them to be a major star.

The problem is not how to know how to do it. The problem is to be able find the raw material to mold an artist to become that star. In many cases right now the industry just takes chances. Throw out a hundred artists and then see what sticks and how long we can take them and then dump them when they get tired. That is not how you build a new Michael Jackson or Queen. And the industry knows that. The fact is that the new industry has a hard time to find the material, because it’s trying to hold for a longer race. 

What do I look for then? In three story episodes,  I will try to explain that. Because I just can see that hundreds of artists right now think they are the ones I’m looking for. But like Carly Simon sang, You’re so vain. Here is the criteria.

Coming in with ‘St. James Infirmary’ from the Speakeasies Swing Band

Why do everything just halfway? What’s the point of going to a just one day on a four-day conference? Why just write a perfect song and then record it on an 8 track recorder with the worst possible sound? Or not having an ok song and then enter Abbey Road and think they will fix the problem.

If you can’t afford the whole thing. Either don’t do it or put everything on the same level. I don’t  know how many times I have had an artist approaching me with a recording for 10,000 dollars and I ask how much you will spend on PR? And they have spent all their budget on their recording.

Or artists that take all their money going on a showcase festival and can only stay there the one night they play with no one else to pick up the contacts. And they spent all their money so they can’t even follow up any opportunity the festival actually gives them.

Too many don’t really get things done in full. They cut corners and think it will work. And, it’s actually doing the full job is the things that actually get you somewhere, the half-done job is just a waste of money.

This week Talking Heads sets the tone with ‘Life During Wartime’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jShMQw2H2cM

Here’s some fresh material, mostly of a sturdy, we-will-not-be moved sensibility, ideal for keeping self-isolated spirits up. Leading the charge, Philadelphia rock quartet Soraia with just out new album 'Dig Your Roots' via Steven Van Zandt's label Wicked Cool Records.

Stream 'Dig Your Roots' here: https://orcd.co/digyourroots.

Stream/download the latest single "Superman Is Gone" here: https://orcd.co/supermanisgone.

The Corona Virus aka Covid-19 is now officially a pandemic causing panic and pandemonium around the globe. Every facet of life and business is affected by this virus including the music and entertainment industry.

We have survived 9/11 and SARS in the past twenty years but this Corona Virus seems to be much more intense. Perhaps because it’s global and mostly because it’s so fluid and unpredictable. Every day we wake up to the ground and ground rules shifting under our feet.

For all of us, the news and writing around the Corona Virus (Covid-19)  seems overwhelming right now. And yes, I wrote about it when SXSW closed. The truth is that no one really knows what is going to happen. And it might not be as bad as you think.

This will be like 9/11 - ‘a before and after’ Covid-19.  9/11 affected a lot of security and border issues, Covid-19 will directly affect the music industry like nothing really before.  Record labels, studios, and publishers will be fine. Here it is the live industry that will get hit the hardest. The live sector is still the biggest part of the music industry, over fifty percent in most parts of the world. Also, this sector hasn’t had problems like this ever before. Just that we closed smaller gig places. That hasn’t affected the big companies, Covid-19  has now just affected everyone big time.

Internationally awarded and honoured Canadian quintet Sultans of String collaborates with over 30 musicians on Refuge, including Yasmin Levy, Béla Fleck, Robi Botos, Ifrah Mansour, Demetrios Petsalakis, Imad Al Taha, Amir Amiri, Sammy Figueroa, Twin Flames, and many others on the wide-ranging treatise on displaced peoples, Refuge.

On this visionary seventh album, Sultans of String bring their unique brand of musical synergy and collaboration to bear on 13 songs that speak to the challenges facing the world’s displaced peoples--their stories, their songs, their persistence and their humanity.

On track #11, Asi Soy (This is Me), the band combined songwriting with Yasmin Levy, an acclaimed Israeli artist known for her twist on Sephardic songs. The musical tradition came from her father who recorded and preserved folk songs in Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish language that emerged in the territories of the ancient Ottoman Empire after Jews were exiled from Spain in 1492.

This week’s my fave format, the mixed bag. First outta the bag, Dan MacDonald. Dude’s from a family of musicians from the small village of Ironville, Cape Breton and began fiddling around at a very early age. His fiddle education came mostly from his father, Lloyd MacDonald, who is a well-schooled fiddler, and from the surrounding musical culture of Cape Breton Island. In the late 1980s, MacDonald, and his family formed Scumalash, a traditional Cape Breton band, with whom he toured throughout the United Kingdom between 1988 and 1992, culminating in the release of a self-titled album. Scumalash recently returned from a reunion tour of England.

MacDonald moved to Toronto in 2003, where he became a co-host at the Irish music session at Dora Keogh Irish pub, which is where I became acquainted with his stellar skills and amiable perso. He hooked up with the traditional Irish group, Spraoi. Spraoi.In 2006, MacDonald became music director of The Magic of Ireland, an Irish dance and music show, with which he toured the UK, Canada, the USA and Europe.

Chart-topping and touring powerhouse Toronto-based all-girl teen pop band Girl Pow-R are once again inspiring young women across the country as they receive their first JUNO Award nomination for 2020 Children’s Album of the Year! And to celebrate, they continue to put the spotlight on others: This year’s JUNO nominees for Single Of The Year featuring songs from the Single Of The Year category - Alyssa Cara, Bulow, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, Lennon Stella, and Scott Helman. 

The ceiling-shattering nod as one of the youngest acts to ever receive a nomination lands for their debut release, This Is Us — available now.

Hot on the heels of the album’s critically acclaimed hits “Never Let Go” — which debuted on the iTunes Canada Children’s chart at #2 (second only to cultural force “Baby Shark” but ahead of genre mainstays such as Sharon, Lois & Bram, The Wiggles, and Raffi), and #15 in the U.S. — the album’s title track “This Is Us” has received more than 500,000 streams across all available platforms.

We have done so many free gigs we really need to get paid for this tour.

I was talking to a manager. She had asked me to give some advice on festivals this summer and I had asked for the conditions on the tour. This was a hard-working project. Both the band and the manager had put up both money and time to get things going. But in so many ways, they had spread the cost in different ways and now the shortage of cash was stopping them to get on the tour they needed.

The problem, in this case, was that they had spent money on things they really didn’t need to spend that much on. Early in a career you really must be a cheap bastard that no one likes and actually save it for the future. The hard part is to be able to tell when you should spend and when you should not?

Yeah, I know I’m always on about the live music but there are those albums that must not go unnoticed. World Circuit Records’ special edition reissue of Buena Vista Social Club vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer’s Grammy-winning second solo album Buenos Hermanos is out and available to stream and purchase at http://worldcircuit.lnk.to/BHSpecialEdition.

In celebration of the newly reimagined reissue, WBGO is premiering the never-before-heard track “Me Voy Pa’ Sibanicú;” stream the track at https://www.wbgo.org/post/behold-radiant-ibrahim-ferrer-newly-unearthed… and share it at https://youtu.be/NBjKxYxxyOY.

“We had a discussion and feel that posting on social media is not our thing.”

“We like more to be a secret band and then people will post more about us!”

The band I worked with had one of these famous meetings. The ones where they sit in the rehearsal room picking up things from some random dude, like the clerk at the local music store, gave them some tipoff that is totally insane.

Yes, it sounds like a cool idea to be this secret band. In reality, it’s career suicide. Why is it attractive? The main reason is that the band is lazy and really doesn't have the stamina to keep things up and alive. Then this stupid idea sounds really attractive.

As a manager, I can fight this idea. Then, of course, I'm the idiot that doesn't get this new cool thing. Or I can let them try it and slow down their career by a couple of years. And then it’s always a possibility that they quit.

Born and raised in a closed military city in Russia,  a global nomad currently resident in Milan, Italy, experimental electronic producer Ka Fu has joined forces with Lama’s Dream on ‘Rain Catcher (Ka Fu Remix)’ released on the 14th of February, via Alae Records. Ka Fu’s interpretation of the title track from Lama’s Dream’s new EP Rain Catcher appears alongside remixes by Tuba Twooz and Alae Records founder Ivan Latyshev. In 2019, he burst onto the scene with his album Encoding: Master, an eclectic collection of tracks characterized by Ka Fu’s well-paced production and ability to convey a sense of unyielding forward motion through his sound. The album boasts mixing credits by Klas-HenrikLindblad (Anja Schneider, Rodriguez Jr., The Presets) from Berlin BlackHead Studios and received support from Data Transmission, XS Noize, Child Of House and Progressive Dreamers amongst others.

You really don't need to be the best to make it in the music industry. It's not like running 100 meters in the Olympics where it only counts if you are the fastest. Even better,  if you break the record to be the fastest in the world. In the music industry, it's not like that.

It's not to be the smartest either. You surround yourself with inspiration and you steal things in a nice way and you will be fine. You really don't have to invent a new instrument. Here you just take things and elevate them a bit and make them your own.

The big issue is that nothing goes fast in the music industry, nothing. It's always delayed. At the same time, it moves so fast so if you leave it for a year you are totally out. In the whole equation, you need to have stamina. Stick to your guns, and do it well.