SonicJive.com:
Indie Music's New Alternative
by Kimmi Rudolph
On September 8, 2008, indie musicians will have a whole new world opened to them, courtesy of Mike Canter. It's called SonicJive.com.
In a suburb south of Chicago, Mike grew up involved in music as a singer in a band called Buck Dancers Choice and as a follower of Grateful Dead, attending 38 concerts in one summer alone. At the age of 30, he went back to school at Northwestern University in Chicago, majoring in Business Management and Finance. In 1997, he prepared a business model that was designed to help the “musicians being screwed by Napster," as he says, to which his teacher encouraged him to follow through, marking the paper with the words, “You should do this." Mike ignored him and went about his life until a fire took his home and his entire collection of CDs.
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Believing that musicians should be paid for their artistry, he refused to pirate and decided it was time to realize his dream – his original business model from 1997. A website for bands and their fans, where bands would get paid for visits to their page and downloads of their music.
By now, though, Myspace and Facebook had taken off and were making a lot of money off of indie bands. Effective Labor Day 2008, Myspace will have sold their Music royalties, allowing the four major labels of America to profit from all of the music – both major label and independent artists from all over the world. Every time a band page is visited, the music labels make money. They give none of it to the musicians themselves; the indie musicians will get nothing. The key reason to why they will find SonicJive.com.
A one-man operation, Mike has built SonicJive.com from the ground up, teaching himself how to build and code a website, buying drinks for band members and shaking their hands, finding advertisers. A bit shy initially, he becomes as animated as a father of a newborn baby, so protective is he of his creation that many times he would clamp his mouth shut as to not give away too many of the surprises that this website holds; so excited that he once leapt off his barstool in an attempt to fully describe everything. So protective is he of this baby he has found that he gets thousands of hacker attempts per hour – and so changes his 116-digit password daily.
The name SonicJive came to Mike while watching the John Cusak movie “High Fidelity." In it is a band called Sonic Death Monkey; Jack Black’s character is Barry Jive – it clicked in Mike’s mind and there is was: the website he hopes will someday become a household name, as much as an addiction as his competitors have become. However he is quick to say he is “not competing with any other website; SonicJive is an alternative to what is now offered."
Already endorsed by Southwest Airlines and an energy drink, Mike is looking to build his staff and find investors. But he is not so desperate for help that he would allow a major-label artist to have a page – actually becoming offended when approached by a musician who he felt was “just being greedy” – this site is for independent and minor-label musicians only.
One of the first bands to sign up for SonicJive was The Frantic, a local Chicago band. They rose through their ranks and were quickly snapped up by a major label – and dropped from SonicJive. Right now Mike’s goals are to raise money, get advertisers and recruit bands. He has programmed an advertising “skin”, as he calls it, located on the front page of the website, rotating so advertisers get equal time.
Also lined up: a monthly broadcast from Florida where sports figures will be interviewed and SonicJive’s featured band of the month will play poolside. He is planning a huge presence at Chicago’s Mobfest ’09 and South By Southwest in Austin, TX, in March ’09. A contest sponsored by Harley Davidson, scholarships to Northwestern University and a SonicJive Compilation CD.
Mike never stops coming up with new ideas for the website and the promotion of indie artists. Exposure for bands being so important to Mike, he is even allowing band pages to include a link to their Myspace page – knowing that the more attention a band gets the more money that band can make. So into music is Mike that when asked to list his 10 top favorite bands he did so with no hesitation, even adding in small comments on each one. To name a few: Sheila Sondergard, whose music makes you feel like you are on a vacation. Tripcatta, whose music is “phenomenal, better than Tool." Roe Tierney: “better than Van Morrison."
Had he been asked, it is quite possible Mike could have listed the other 1600 bands that have already joined the site. Although SonicJive has not yet made a profit, Mike says that it has “been worth every bit of blood, sweat and tears.”
Visit Mike Canter at
http://myspace.com/sonicjivera
http://www.sonicjive.com
Kimmi Rudolph is a writer from the Chicago area
and is The SoupyGato Show's Fifth Listener.
She also writes CD Reviews. http://myspace.com/kimmirude
http://www.myspace.com/goofymusicchick
GanoRyan Dream
Dreams of Flight
by Lisa Babick
You may not have heard of GanoRyan yet, but you've definitely heard of its members: Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, Billy and Brendan Ryan formerly of The Bogmen, Lonnie Hillyer from Maggie's Dream, and Frank Ferrer from Guns 'N' Roses. These five professional and experienced musicians have recently come together to form this incomparable-sounding new band. GanoRyan casts an engaging and distinct glow on alternative rock, and reveals a new layer to Gordon Gano's powerful and passionate voice. Their music is energetic, at times haunting and emotionally raw, and instantly addictive. We talked with keyboardist, accordianist, horn player, and all-around nice guy, Brendan Ryan, to find out what GanoRyan is all about. His brother, Billy, guitarist and back-up vocals, chips in for a bit too.
IMR: How did you guys decide to record together?
BR: From what I recall we met in a bar in Greenwich Village called The Blind Tiger Ale House. Billy and I had been fans of the Femmes for years, but I don’t think Gordon heard our music until after we met. After The Bogmen broke up, Billy and I would play in a piano bar in the Village, and I remember Gordon coming down once or twice. Oh yeah, one common denominator that the Violent Femmes and The Bogmen have is that we both had a record produced by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads. That probably triggered some fun conversations which would usually segue into talk about music.
In 2001, I played organ on a tune on Gordon’s Hitting The Ground. Then, The Bogmen reunited for a Bogmen benefit concert, and we asked Gordon to open for us. He had a lot of material that he was writing at the time, and Billy and I backed him up. While we were preparing for that show, we decided to write some songs as well, and that was when our collaboration began.
Click here to go to Part 2
of our interview with GanoRyan
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