Toad The Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips – HuffPost 4.16.10

[Note: This is a portion of my Glen Phillips interview that contains information new artists might find useful.]

Mike Ragogna: Does it seem that with the most successful popular recordings auto-tuning, hyper-compressing, etc., it’s a challenging environment for a purer artist to try and find one’s own sound as well as big success.

Glen Phillips: I’ve got to say, that’s within a narrow pop world. That’s a particular kind of music that’s very placement friendly. Your best chance, once you’re playing pop, is the major label game. But there are certain genres like punk where people can find music like that. And then there are singer-songwriters, you know, kind of “in quotes,” with songs that have a particular, hopeful, beautiful swoon to them that will find their way onto Gray’s Anatomy. It’s kind of its own genre. A handful of people make their living through that. But I also think there are more incredible bands coming out now then I’ve ever seen before. I think it’s an incredible fertile time. You’re getting the first of the iPod generation.

MR: Very different than any other because of the technologies.

GP: I mean, when I was a kid, it was like people were so into their one genre, right? If you were into punk, you were only going to be punk. If you were metal, you were only going to be metal. Now you have kids that are going through their parents’ iPods, going through their own iPods, and they’re actually challenging each other on a basis of breadth of knowledge. The wider your musical taste is, the cooler you are. I think with the breadth, you’re getting like a lot of new bands making really intricate, kind of epic, kind of far-reaching non-genre specific music. A few of them find their way to the light like a Grizzly Bear popping out, however they managed to do that. So, I think there’s more interesting good music happening now than ever before. It’s just finding it is a real challenge because there’s more of everything including junky pop and the fact that anyone can put an album out there.

MR: Everyone’s got Pro Tools.

GP: I read some statistic that I cannot verify that’s saying there are like 105,000 records released last year and 1500 of them sold more than 10,000 copies. I mean, it’s a fascinating era in that anybody can put up an album, and a lot of them are actually really good. How then do you distinguish yourself or get heard? I’m feeling very lucky these days having a band like Toad, having some history back when a record company let us do our job and they did their job and it actually worked and people bought records. Now people don’t people really “get” buying records. Economy aside, they don’t understand, by-and-large, that THEY are the patrons of the arts to make it fly. And I think they have a very magical thinking process on how musicians make ends meet. So, I’ve been feeling very lucky, but I also know so many people who are so talented and so capable who are not really doing well. They didn’t have their day on the radio, so they can’t get the old crowd who remembers. It’s a bizarre combination, there are great opportunities and there’s great adversity.

MR: As far as the iPod generation, I’ve never heard it put in the context of “they’re the new patrons of the arts.” I don’t think they look at it that way.

GP: I know, it’s more associated with the classical world or the art world, places where there are grants. Talking about available music grants, for instance, from the government, in Canada, you get matching funds to record an album. You get matching funds to go on tour as an indie band. They have the idea that you should support the arts and that songwriting is one of the arts. The United States has a very odd stance in that in order to get any kind of arts grant for writing, you have to prove that it is completely commercially non-viable.

MR: That’s odd considering our government, these days, is all about capitalism and that’s about it.

GP: The strange thing about songwriting is that it can occasionally be extremely economically viable, sometimes just for a very short period. It has that potential. But the potential is so rare for most writers these days, that it’s almost non-existent. You combine that with the fact that this actually is the art that people consume on a daily basis. They don’t tend to wake up and look through a book of paintings though some people do. They don’t necessarily sit there as they’re getting ready for work and, you know, go through a few pages of poetry. They listen to music throughout the day. They put on that music to underscore the things that they do to enhance their lives constantly. It is the most consumed type of art that there is. It’s the most appreciated, most personally important, and it’s the least recognized. I think we’re in a state where songwriters, to some degree, are in danger, in at least as far as make a living doing their art. I’m just saying a modest living, not making a killing. And I think people continue not to buy albums, and then radio stations die, and most music is streamed or pirated. It will actually become a big question whether being a traditional songwriter is now an endangered enough position that it should perhaps be eligible for patronage.

MR: Unfortunately, I have a feeling that the country just isn’t in the mood to hear this type of argument because it seems like we’ve been so self-centered.

GP: We are. I think that’s a national tragedy. The thing is people will complain about the music that’s out there and they will complain how there’s nothing good on the radio, how the major labels suck and then they will happily burn twenty copies of their favorite records for all their friends. All their friends will sit and listen to whatever great new band it is and talk about how wonderful it is and play that record over and over and they will never consider paying for it because everybody thinks it’s somebody else’s problem. And the question is when does it stop. There’ll be a lot of guys who have day jobs, they’ll make beautiful records at night and people will continue to listen who love music, but it will never actually enable that artist to continue making that music as anything more than a hobby.