Middle Tennessee Music’s own Joshua Smotherman – the cross-country hoppin’ DJ / hip-hop super mack – caught up with J.J. Crowne. In the following interview, Crowne talks about the things that inspire him and have made him a charting independent musician. There’s a lot to be gleaned here, kiddos. Kick back, spin a tune and enjoy!
MTM: Let’s open with the basics. Who are you? Where are you from? What style of music do you create?
J.J.: I’m originally from the New York metropolitan area, and then moved to South Florida when I was in high school. I’ve been a self-taught singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist (guitar, piano, keyboards/synths, bass, percussion) since I was a teenager. I then had some formal training in arranging for orchestral instruments and electronic music programming at Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
After the usual high school and college rock bands, I started my real professional music career composing and recording jingles for local radio, and then themes and background music for various theatrical productions, as well as cues for local, regional and some national TV shows. My first nationally-aired material was for FOX’s “America’s Most Wanted” show, which then enabled me to become a full ASCAP Writer and Publisher member. I’ve written and performed in lots of musical styles since then, but have settled into mostly folk, alt-country and acoustic pop — all with a big emphasis on lyrics.
MTM: On the road to developing your music career you managed to earn a law degree… What motivated you to do that?
J J: Actually, I never wanted to be a lawyer. It’s just that after college I wasn’t getting enough musical and recording gigs to support myself, so I tried getting into the advertising game. But that turned out to be just as frustrating. For some weeks I’d have over a dozen jingles playing on radio all over South Florida at the same time, but then that would be followed by long periods of inactivity.
So I decided to apply to law schools in hopes of becoming an entertainment lawyer, mainly because I had a few friends who were on the verge of ‘making it’ in music during the ’80’s and I thought besides jamming with them I could help them with their musical legal issues as well. However, once they signed with big record labels they all decided to go with big law firms that their record companies would recommend (also known as a “conflict of interest” I might add) and I was sort of left out in the cold. So I changed my legal focus and specialized in criminal trial work, which I still do. And, as life would have it, they’ve all since blown their money and big record deals from the 80’s and ’90’s and now are mostly unhappy with their daily jobs; while I’ve been lucky enough to enjoy a fairly comfortable existence with my career, which also lets me finance some of my musical endeavors. So, in a way, I guess I have those guys to thank for it.
But composing and performing music has never left my life. I recall many late weeknights opening shows for The Mavericks or Marilyn Manson (when they were local Miami acts), and then having to get up at 7am to work in court the next day. It was a strange double life, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
MTM: With multiple songs charting on multiple charts I think the obvious question is…. How did you do it? What actions did you have to take beyond writing great songs to achieve this feat?
J J: When I recorded my first solo album in 2010 (called “Songs Of Innocence And Experience”), it was a totally home-made job. A local record company distributed it digitally with absolutely no marketing, so I just wrote dozens of emails to music review websites and mostly internet radio stations, and managed to get airplay on about 30 or 40 stations mostly in the Live365 Network – which is a great way for unknowns to get a little attention these days. But getting on terrestrial radio is a whole different game and it wasn’t happening for that first album.
Then I uploaded my music onto sites like Sonicbids and Music Xray, and finally got the attention of a producer who loved the songs but hated my production. Then, for a fee of course (since none of these guys work for free or even for back-end points much these days) he showed me how to craft my tunes into much more marketable products, and I was also able to keep the rights to all my masters. I then tried to get airplay for the first 5 songs, released as an EP, through email blasts to lots of very small stations in other parts of the world – which I’ve since learned is not very effective. Just because some station in New Zealand downloads your tunes from an email blast does not mean they’re really playing them much.
So this past year I took the lessons I’d learned, got a great engineer/mastering guy in Nashville and completed my new album (“J.J. Crowne”). I then shopped around for real radio promoters who work mostly indie projects to land radio stations. By “real” I mean the folks who actually send out your CD’s to real stations, make follow-up phone calls and “pitch” like you would any other product. There are several of these companies around who don’t charge an exorbitant fee. But even that isn’t the answer alone, because the first promoter I found was pitching my new material to the wrong types of stations (AAA and soft rock) that just weren’t very enthusiastic about my style of music and wouldn’t add me to their playlists. Finally, just about 2 months ago I found the right guy who really appreciated the music and knew exactly what stations might like it, too. He knew my market would be mostly Country, Folk and Americana stations, and once he started pitching to them, they loved it. For the past 3 weeks, one of my songs gets over 600 spins per week on Country stations around the U.S. and other songs of mine are getting about the same number of spins on Folk and Americana stations. My album entered the Roots Music Folk Internet Chart at #7 (now moved up to #5), is a Country ‘Prime Mover’ on the Country Spins Tracking System Radio Airplay Chart, and is also now on the Americana Chart. It’s a great feeling to finally find your musical niche with radio, but it’s taken me a long 3-year journey to do that, after about a 20-year journey of perfecting my song-writing skills.
MTM: Who influences your playing and writing style?
J J: My influences were and still are the great singer/songwriters of the 60’s and ’70’s like Paul Simon, Jimmy Webb, Harry Chapin and Neil Young. And I am a total Beatles freak… their diversity of styles always showed me one doesn’t have to just write rock or pop or country or ballads — you can do it all as long as you can feel it.
MTM: What music did you listen to when you were younger? What do you listen to now? Have your tastes changed?
J J:My dad was a big Sinatra fan, and I learned to love that stuff at a young age, especially those great Nelson Riddle and Count Basie arrangements. But as a child of the ’60’s and ’70’s, my real heroes were The Stones, Beatles, Who, Hendrix and Led Zep. Just last night I played a gig for my annual office dinner and totally blew their minds with my own Hendrix-meets-Van Halen version of “All Along The Watchtower.” No matter how mellow my own songs are, I still love to rock, lol! Newer folks I listen to are John Mayer, Jack Johnson, and some of the newer metal and red-dirt country bands.
MTM: What was the last song or album you listened to?
J J: Elvis Costello – “My Aim Is True”… now there’s another very diverse writer and a big influence.
MTM: As someone that has been in the game for a while, what’s one thing you wish you knew when you first started that you could tell someone now?
J J: Just because your friends or family think your songs are great, that doesn’t mean anything. They can always be better. Write, write, re-write, put your ego in a drawer, and get outside professional opinions of your songs as much as you can. All of my best tunes have been re-written several times after getting honest appraisals from places like “Taxi.” And the same goes for production. I cringe when I listen to some of the songs on my first album a few years ago, because I thought I could be a producer as well as a writer. You usually can’t and shouldn’t try to do both at first. Just like in the movie business, you can write a great script, but you still need a great director to put it together.
MTM: Do you play live? Where can we see a show?
J J: I play mostly festivals these days, such as the Key Largo Songwriters’ Fest every year in May and a few others. Since I play only originals these days, regular venues for that here in Miami are very limited.
MTM: What role has the Internet / social media played in promoting your music and connecting with fans? How has the music industry changed from when you first jumped into the game?
J J: I’m on all the standard music websites, like MySpace, Facebook, Reverbnation, Broadjam, Sonicbids and about a dozen others. I’ve got about 2,000 fans from them, but I don’t know how much those sites can really advance your career. Facebook and Reverbnation are out to make money from struggling musicians by charging you to “promote” this or that, with minimal results. I’ve also learned that lots of bands just pay different services for hundreds of automated “likes” or website “hits.” I do like Jango.com (now called RadioAirplay.com). Jango is sometimes called “the poor man’s Pandora” – your tunes are played along with famous artists that are in your same genre and listeners from around the world can “fan” you if they like your stuff. I get emails almost every day of the week from new fans on almost every continent that hear my songs on Jango, and it’s also a great testing ground for new material.
How has the industry changed since I first dabbled in it 30 years ago? I know we all think it’s changed so drastically, but I still see the major record companies, TV networks, movie studios and ClearChannel radio stations running most of the really big show. And I feel most self-released/self-promoted indie artists would still give their left arms for a deal with a Warner or a Sony or an Atlantic Records. We still can’t hope to compete with their money, promotion and sheer clout in the biz. My record, for instance, is the only “Independent” release on the STS Country ‘Prime Movers’ Chart this week – and I know that must be bugging the heck out of some record execs in N.Y, L.A. or Nashville, who are probably thinking “what’s this unknown guy doing crashing our party?” Well hopefully, there are a lot more of us to come.
Where can we connect with you online?
www.jjcrowne.com ; www.facebook.com/jjcrowne; www.reverbnation.com/jjcrowne
Any last thoughts? Shout outs?
It goes without saying that you usually can’t depend on music for a steady living, but you can never give up on the dream or on perfecting your musical craft. My journey’s been a pretty good example of that so far.
