Who remembers this Miller ad with the Del Fuegos? They played this ad constantly on Boston TV for a few weeks in 1985, everyone joked about it constantly. It’s a defining moment in my thinking about the intersection of music and commerce, but I’ll save that for another day.1 Today I’m thinking about Warren Zaynes’ immortal line: “Rock n’ Roll’s folk music, pretty much…cuz it’s for folks!” Easy to make fun, but it’s a good line and it’s on point. This post is about folk music - music for folks. By folks, for folks. Homemade music.
I guess I listen to music differently from most people. I listen to a lot of music I know I already love because I know it’s gonna make me feel good. I assume most of us have that in common. Beyond that “comfort food” listening, I spend considerable time digging as deep as I can to find music that is more hidden on platforms. It isn’t because I like obscure or eccentric music; in fact, my tastes are fairly conventional. Having conventional tastes makes me better at what I do! If I really like something, if I feel compelled to hear it over and over because of the way it makes me feel, I know others will feel the same. LOTS of others. I dig deep because I believe there’s always great music hiding on platforms that could - or should - be a lot more popular and even culture-changing. In fact, this always true. There’s music out there right now in obscurity that WILL connect and WILL reach millions. To me, this a thrilling thought that motivates me every day. The challenge is finding truly great music in a vast and growing and practically infinite sea of mediocrity. That’s where the goosebumps come in handy, along with insight into how music moves in commerce these days. It moves fast.
I don’t make year-end “best of” lists because I can’t ever think of more than a handful of records that really caught my ear in any given year. I’m impressed by people who can rank all the cool records everyone writes about every late fall, but I’ll leave that to the critics. This is as close to criticism as I’ll get - telling the reader about music I love. I either love music or I’m indifferent, not much in between. I don’t have negative feelings like I used to, though I’ll be happier for the rest of my life if I never hear about 99% of alternative rock “hits” from the late 90s.
Lately stuff I find that interests me mostly falls into the category I’m calling homemade music - projects that aren’t necessarily meant for a mass audience, but are created with love for what will likely be a smaller audience that deeply engages with the music. Homemade music might represent various genres, but isn’t overwrought like most commercial recordings these days. It’s music with humanity, Human Music (a title of my favorite Soft Boys song, which is DIY, aka homemade music). Nobody has used studio techniques to try to make it “perfect,” which in my opinion is why so much music is uninteresting. With homemade music, artists put a lot of love, inspiration, and sweat into albums that in all likelihood won’t reach more than thousands or maybe tens of thousands of listeners. But then occasionally these recordings blast off on digital platforms and scale around the world. When it happens, when the music’s extraordinary and people react, it’s exciting, intoxicating, affirming, and worth chasing.
This year my listening has been dominated by client projects and a few exceptional releases that in my opinion qualify as homemade music. One example is Clayton Nile Young. Clayton is a regular guy with a job and a family in Jacksonville, an obsessive music fan, and in my opinion an exception talent. He made the album Della, which came out in January, as a sort of “bucket list” gesture for family, friends, and whoever else might stumble across his tunes. It’s mostly him playing all the parts, writing all the songs. He told me that his goal was to get one of the tracks past 1,000 plays on Spotify. He’s blown out his modest goals, so it’s a thrill ride from here.
It’s easy to hear influences in Clayton’s music. It’s pretty obvious what he’s into. But remember, he wasn’t trying to forge a professional music career with Della. He made an album for a limited audience of his own community. He isn’t worried about critical scrutiny - he’s assuming his music won’t be picked apart by critics or tastemakers. In another era I might have taken exception to music that pays tribute to its influences, but as long as it doesn’t cross a line into legal great areas, that sort of thing doesn’t bother me. I focus on the quality of the writing and the authenticity/believability of the performance. I focus on the way music makes me feel. These are great songs written and delivered with passion and care. Homemade music isn’t usually about making money; it’s about connection and community.2 And hey, that is what folk music is - or maybe used to be. Like homemade cooking, most of it is ordinary and some of it is awful. But when it’s great, it’s better than what you’ll get at the corporate fast casual place. It’s good because it isn’t made for the mass market.
I believe Clayton should - and maybe still could - become a popular act with a big audience around the world. Maybe we’ll never know the potential because likely nobody will be pushing it out every ten minutes on social media. A guy with a professional job and a family simply doesn’t have time. Does that mean it’s the idle rich and trust fund kids who have the best shot at success? Welcome to the music business!
Speaking of social media, that is how I usually find stuff these days. Tik Tok and Reels - nearly everyone posts music content there, and I’ve figured out how to train the algorithm to give me mostly music content. That’s exactly how I found out about another homemade project that blew me away, The Glass Hours. I was mindlessly scrolling Reels a few nights ago3 and I lingered on the account of an old Birmingham music scene friend, Brad Armstrong (@btarmstrong) from the excellent 2000s band 13Ghosts. The video was this electric band rocking out in some sort of art space or retail store, set up to play on the concrete floor. I learned it was The Glass Hours, Brad’s band in Upstate New York (where he’s lived for years), a duo with singer/writer Megan Barbera. It sounded really good, so I looked up the recordings on Spotify.
Check out Hurricane, the lead-off track on their self-titled album. I love this track so much. It’s timeless. Eventually I listened to and enjoyed the whole album, but it took me a half-dozen listens before I could move past the opening track. It’s such a satisfying song, such a strong chorus, such a strong imagery. I love the conversational approach to the dual lead vocal, and the low-key, unfussy approach to harmony singing and arrangement. The performance feels like a no stakes first run-through by a bunch of seasoned musicians who play well together and aren’t worried about getting in each other’s way. Is it a guitar solo or a fiddle solo? Both at once - but the guitar is louder in the mix, so I guess it’s a guitar solo. Does it matter? Nothing is tuned, quantized, gridded, or (I assume) comped. The vocals are natural, which makes the whole thing feel vintage, like before everyone tuned every “imperfection” out of every vocal take. I feel like I can picture the very room, and I’m assuming it isn’t some sterile fern bar studio like the old days; it’s a room where people live their lives. Sure, the song is killer, but it’s the humanity of the vocal and instrumental performances that makes it especially compelling to me. It sounds homemade, because (I assume) it is homemade.
It makes me curious about the goals and ambitions of these folks. Are they aiming for a big audience? Brad has had a long run of playing music at a professional level. He’s the longtime sideman for the great Birmingham via L.A. singer/writer Maria Taylor, half of the indie folk duo Azure Ray, and he’s made a bunch of solid records on his own over several decades. There’s an indie label involved, Cornelius Chapel Records out of Birmingham. Cornelius Chapel is Brad’s longtime label home, and the label for a bunch of adventurous regional Americana and indie music and the occasional professional act from out of town. Cornelius Chapel has had some success as a label, but no massive break-outs. I can only guess about the band’s ambitions, but they took the time and effort to co-write nine excellent songs and record them in a way that truly serves the material. They put a record out into the world that found its way to my ears via my own mindless scolling, which sent me down the rabbit hole to hear more. In an age of abundance and consumption, that is the ultimate goal of digital commerce, at scale. Make it easy for folks to find community in and through the music. Folk music, music for folks…around the world in an instant.
I’ve said many times in many writings that I’m a hobbyist and an advocate for hobbyist musicians. I make my own records for joy, not necessarily for money or even attention (though I’m happy and grateful when people discover it). I’m aware that anything we cast into the vast sea of digital content could potentially go viral and scale, but it’s unlikely without marketing resources. It certainly isn’t why I release music. With projects like Clayton Nile Young and The Glass Hours, I’m not convinced people make records this good and fully realized without having some sort of real ambition beyond the obvious creative ambition. These are ambitious records with great, thoughtful writing, executed in a way that is a compromise between shoestring budget and a clear aesthetic sensibility. For thoughtful, well-made, well-written projects, there’s always a chance. Nothing excites me more as an artist advocate and development specialist than knowing that there's truly great music on platforms that nobody outside some small community is hearing or talking about. It’s what motivates me to always keep digging, and to always keep my ears open.
To tie this back to theme of how technology impacts creativity, there are a couple threads to explore. On one hand, it’s technology that makes homemade projects such as these possible. These are likely “in the box” recordings on some form of home recording setup that wouldn’t have existed a generation ago. The accessibility of good (enough)-quality home audio makes these projects possible. On the other hand, automation through generative AI models seeks to obviate the need for human performance. In the near future, perhaps we’ll be able to make recordings more or less like these using voice prompts and AI tools. But should we? Could it capture a similar magic? Because the essential element is humanity, I hope not.
One thing I hope comes out of the ocean of mediocrity that generative AI will unleash on platforms is a deeper appreciation for real human creativity. Whatever fascinating things AI and other tech can do in creative fields will captivate our imaginations. It will make it easier to do work in a lot of ways. But will it replace what people can do in collaboration with acoustic instruments and their own human voices? In some ways, of course. But I don’t see how it can every replace the essential humanity of people sharing their music, aided by technology but more or less in the same way they might have done it before recorded music existed. Listen to Cold Canary Gaslight by Clayton, or Silver For Mine Eyes by The Glass Hours. These songs and performances would work just fine if someone snuck them onto Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. The best homemade music these days, on digital platforms and finding its audience through social media, is real deal folk music that’s part of a tradition that’s longer than recorded music. It’s egalitarian as we all have the same access through aggregators and DSPs. For the most part, it all stays underground and doesn’t reach far beyond the immediate musical community. When it connects, however, there are no limits to how far homemade music can travel. Then, eventually, we can all be in a room together singing songs we heard and fell in love with on the Internet. That’s is as real as it gets!
Briefly stated, the “scene” was hostile to anything that aligned music with corporate commerce. Never mind that The Del Fuegos recorded for a major label. They took money and publicly aligned themselves with a corporate booze brand and that was an unforgivable sin. That made them “sellouts,” and I know it harmed their reputation. These days it’s seemingly OK for most musicians to do corporate tie-ins, sponsorships, and endorsements - these are the ways that musicians make money, and younger generations largely don’t seem to have a problem with it. I’ll delve deeply into this issue in a post once I can fully wrap my head around what exactly changed between 1985 and around 2000 to create this change.
But that doesn’t mean Spotify shouldn’t have to pay hobbyist musicians.
I rationalize this behavior, telling myself I’m talent scouting. I feel justified when I actually find something great.
I've made a couple albums, put them on all the usual streaming sites, etc. When I was making them I *thought* that I believed it didn't matter whether people listened, I was just trying to make something good. I never expected to get more than a few listens. And that's what happened, and to my surprise, it hurt. I'm old and already had a career, don't need money or want fame, but--it turns out--I wanted to *matter*. Somehow, to someone. Ah well. I'll probably keep making the same mistake, if that's what it is. I understand the idea of the bucket list gesture, but emotionally it's never that simple.
"I’ll delve deeply into this issue in a post once I can fully wrap my head around what exactly changed between 1985 and around 2000..." I am so here for your forthcoming retrospective. My sense is that it must have something to do with the collapse of any viable alternative to capitalism after 1991, but I can't put my finger on when the whole "sellout" label really stopped mattering to young folks because, oddly, authenticity still matters.