A conversation between Frank Beacham and Peter Stone Brown
On the state of writing and journalism, corporate takeovers, the music business in the 2000s and Orson Welles
August 2009
Dear Frank,
Someone posted a link to your journal on Facebook, with your quote about writers and the quality of writing today. The quote made me follow the link and go to your journal, and once there, I realized I've read you before.
I was fascinated by your comment on blogs, and in fact agree with everything you say in the column. I am a writer, though on a much smaller scale than what you've done. While friends have encouraged me to blog for many years, I've resisted for exactly the reasons you state. I'm always checking out the various journalism job sites and writing sites for work, but quite often the rates for articles are just appalling.
Thank you for saying exactly what I've been thinking.
Sincerely,
Peter Stone Brown
Dear Peter:
Yes, as both a fan of Bob Dylan and the Band, I know of your work as well. I recently read your comments about Together Through Life. I just went to your website and was fascinated at how much our tastes merge. In fact, I liked your CD so much I ordered a copy. I saw Cindy Cashdollar at the NY Guitar Festival last year. She was great. I will be reading all the material on your web site, as well.
The bottom has certainly fallen out of writing lately. I was just talking with Alan Light, who edited the now defunct Vibe, and he thinks all music writing has pretty much bitten the dust. It's very sad. I'm blogging only because people say I need too, but I'm with you. I see the money there, and it has made me not one dime. In fact, I've been ripped off more than paid. The dumbing down of writing is very sad indeed.
I write books and option stories for movies. Fortunately, that has saved me in recent weeks. I'm also helping some musicians and photographers market themselves on the Net. Mainly, keeping their "stickiness" up with fans—something most won't do. But it's hard to say it really works without a lot of sweat. The high-end writing work has all but disappeared.
Thanks again for writing. If you're ever in NYC, please call and perhaps we can get together.
Best,
Frank Beacham
Frank,
Thanks for getting back.
I just saw Cindy last month on tour with Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, which was just a fantastic show.
When Alan Light started that ill-fated magazine a few years ago, I contacted him when it was in progress, and he got back, but never heard a word again. Once it appeared, I knew from the first issue it wasn't going to last. Despite a couple of in-depth (sort of) articles, the rest was music light, almost aimed at people who once were interested in music to read on the go. (Sigh.) To me, what was needed was something more along the lines of a U.S. version of Mojo.
It's just such a strange situation. As much as I love the Internet because it creates situations where I can connect to you, it's also killed writing. Anyone can get on the net and blog, not know the facts or anything else for that matter. People will then read it and in some cases believe it.
I'm gonna bore you with some of my story.
I always wrote, pretty much from the minute I learned to write. When I was a kid, I had my own little newspaper my mom would mimeograph (courtesy of the Philly school system) and send out to my cousins.
When I was in 6th grade, I went to very cool school here that my stepmom (my mom died when I was 10) taught at. There I met Ray Benson who would go on to form Asleep At The Wheel. It was a progressive school. There were no marks. You called teachers by their first names. You were encouraged to create, encouraged to participate. In 6th grade, we were seriously discussing the Cuban missile crisis as it happened. A lot of the teachers (including mine) had been kicked out of the Philly School system during the McCarthy period. The other cool thing was subjects were connected. Studying the derivation of names for instance would lead to everyone tracing their family history. When I returned to public school, not in Philly but the north Jersey suburbs of NYC, I could do longer deal with it. It was just too stupid. After being in a situation where current events were actually discussed, the idea of a kid standing up, reading whatever article he or she had clipped from the newspaper, sitting down, and another kid standing up and doing the same thing was obviously a huge step backwards.
Fast forward to the '80s. I started writing for a little paper here called the Welcomat. It was originally a shopper, but a free-lance writer and editor convinced the publisher to turn it into something. The paper was also an in-print forum with a huge letters section where topics would rage for month. The key thing was you had to be able to write to get in there. They added an A&E section, so I submitted a review of Infidels. Not long after they offered me a column. Eventually I started actually working there, first as a typesetter. Then I became production manager. While all this was going on the paper was sold. The original publisher eventually stepped down and eventually they hired a new publisher. I became music editor, and later associate editor. But it was good and bad. The publisher was a viper who had a history of going up and down the East Coast, taking over various alt weeklies and destroying them. The NY Press was one of his many victims. He'd start at the bottom with the office staff, work his way up to production and finally editorial. He had two methods, firing people or making their lives so miserable they'd eventually quit. The original editor, the guy who basically started the paper quit, which was how I got to move up to editor. They made the A&E editor, the guy who basically hired me editor, and I moved up. Then of course the publisher increased the pressure on the new editor and he quit. They hired a new editor who was at the time putting out the NYC transit newsletter. The guy didn't have a clue, didn't know how to use a computer. The well oiled machine we built up to get the paper out fell apart, as I went back to correcting edited copy. They made me associate editor with no pay raise, only a promise of one, and didn't want me to write about music! Meanwhile I'd built up the music section to one of the best in the city. It became a long dark tunnel and finally I left with the one bonus being unemployment compensation. Basically I was editing and putting together the entire paper except the cover story, and I wasn't even making 20 grand a year!
Due to a lawsuit settlement from being seriously injured in a robbery, I came into a tiny bit of money. Ray Benson had been telling me to come down to Austin and check out his studio so I did. While I was there, the entire editorial staff of the paper was fired in a story that made the front page of the big papers here. The whole thing was a gigantic setup. The publisher had started (while I was still there) a suburban edition. He moved the editorial staff of the suburban edition into place.
I came back from Austin with what I knew was a real record. During the time I'd been writing about music, I'd established contact with every label, major, minor and in between and this also resulted in contacts with all the PR firms as well. I started shopping the album. I knew the labels I wanted to go for first. I converted my PE data base into an A&R database. There were a couple of bites that basically lead to nothing. I had some money but was also doing temp work, quite often proofreading.
I was very close to giving up when I remembered an item I'd clipped out of Billboard about a new company for singer-songwriters Tangible Music. I sent them a tape of the album. The guy called me up, gave me all this shit, and asked for a DAT. I sent him a DAT. Not long after a contract arrived in the mail. I had a lawyer check it out. Then the whole process of putting out a CD started. I was made a lot of promises. Finally the album came out. I remember going into Tower a few days before release and thinking to myself, holy shit, how am I gonna compete against all this. Of course I knew that already. I'd been writing about music for years and had quite a bit of record store experience as well.
The album came out, and the company which turned out to be basically a guy started working mostly radio. He got in on a bunch of Americana stations, enough to put me on the Americana chart. The thing was, by this time, I knew how things were really done. As a writer I saw how a couple of artists were broken from demo tape to scoring fairly large success. (Joan Osborne was one. I still have her demo tape.) The guy at Tangible was mainly interested in radio. Being a writer, I knew about press which he wasn't working nearly as much. I knew you had to bug people, but I also knew the artist shouldn't be the one to do it (at that time anyway). Also despite the Americana chart, the guy couldn't get it onto certain key stations such as FDU or even WXPN here, where I once was a DJ. Just as bad, he couldn't get a review in No Depression where he had a big ad. I told him, play hardball, threaten to withdraw the ad. :) I considered hiring a PR firm (and I knew who did the best job) but their rates were insane!
I also wanted the record release party to be in NYC, but he wanted it in Philly. So I had it in Philly which I knew was wrong. So I started booking gigs and little mini-tours big time. But the thing was, I'd be in say Boston playing when I should have been in Texas or somewhere else in the South where I was getting airplay. To this day, I think he knew pretty much what stations would go for it. But unfortunately he didn't tell me. Eventually it became ridiculous and unaffordable to travel hundreds of miles to play door gigs. I knew and still believe that if I'd been able to get on some sort of small clubs tour with someone like say Peter Case or Todd Snider, I could make things happen. But I didn't have the right connections (and the music biz is all about connections) to make that happen.
When I left the paper, I was kind of burnt out on writing about music for awhile. I wanted to move up to magazines. I remember going into Tower and other stores, checking out the various mags, and they all had the latest flavor of the month on the cover whether it was REM or U2. I started feeling like the whole thing is one big vacuous PR machine.
I started writing on the net, and the response was unbelievable. I still get emails about articles I wrote years ago. After six months of trying, I finally hooked up with this magazine Gadfly. Then they became internet only and eventually folded. At the exact same time Tangible Music went under.
Meanwhile I was unemployed, and couldn't get a job no matter what I did. This is another case where in internet made things worse. It used to be you looked in the paper, saw a job, called up, got the interview, went down and either got the job or you didn't. With the internet being the main source of jobs, it became very easy for employers to simply ignore you and most of the time not acknowledge you ever applied. At the same time as you obviously know, journalism got worse and worse. I'd read the major newspapers here and was just appalled at the mistakes I'd find, and yet I couldn't even get a job a proofreader.
Finally I got a gig, and of course a gig as a transcriber of reality TV shows about home improvement, the shit on HGTV. All I can really say about this is Andy Warhol was a total genius for his statement, "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes."
When I get out of this, I'm gonna write a hysterical article about it because to me it's unbelievable. When I started I was paid by the hour. Then they suspected since most of the transcribers work at home, so they started paying by the page. I did the math, and it was more money. Last year for the first time in my life, I was actually making money. Then they lost a show, and then another show. At the same time they lost a show, Jeff Rosen asked me to write the liner notes for what eventually became Tell Tale Signs. I was like finally. He needed them fast. I wrote them in less than a week and initially he liked them. Then, I don't know what happened, but they were rejected. In desperation, I rewrote the entire thing, rejected again. The 2nd version is on the official site on the page for the album. Only good thing is I was paid and not a kill fee either.
Last year the day before election day, a day I wanted to have some hope, the company I work for changed our pay again to an unbelievable by the line. Ten cents a line. Then they changed the margins to make the lines longer. Then they put us on this 30 plus pay thing as if the transcribers are a company, which basically means you wait a month to get paid, and then get paid for a week! Well I did it for a month, and what I realized which I knew all along is I can no longer survive. Getting paid has become a major strategic operation! And at this very moment, I'm faced with going into debt even more just to survive.
And the insane thing about all this is I know what I should be doing. I should be writing. I should be playing. And it's not like I don't have ideas. I have tons of those. I mean Sony merged with RCA. There's a wealth of great (for lack of a better word roots-based) compilations that could come out, that I would love to put together or write the notes for.
Here's a crazy story. Almost 10 years ago, or maybe 10 years ago, I wrote a song called "Wyoming" about the murder of Matthew Shephard. I never officially recorded it, but played it at a lot of shows and by shows I mean tiny coffeehouses and bars. Somehow word got around and two separate radio shows contacted me about getting copies of the song, one a show on a public station in Houston, and on a show on Sirius.
So that's my story. And yeah, I'd love to come to NYC and meet you. I used to get up there a lot. It's my favorite place and as insanely expensive as it is, I'd love to move back or close. I could be totally wrong, but I've long suspected that if I was in NYC, I'd at least hopefully been working. In Philly everything related to publishing is medical and that's a whole other story. Right now I can barely afford to get on a city bus.
Peter
Peter:
My god, man, what a story! Remarkable, yet so in line with what's happening to virtually everyone I know in the writing profession, including myself.
I don't disagree with anything you say. Last December, I was making $8,000 a month freelance writing. As of last week, the stuff I can still count on was down to $1200 a month and still shakey. I'm going month to month, fortunately on movie option money, which is a good way for writers to actually make some dough.
I agree with you that what you should do is write and make music. That record you made is damn fine. I listened to bits of it on your web site and liked it immediately.
As to writing, you know that situation. Most publishers ARE scumbags who rip off writers. It has only gotten worse in recent days. I don't know an answer. Also, as to getting hired, I don't think publishers even look at people our age. If you're over 40, the job market is pretty much dead, no matter how good you are. That's mainly because they want to pay so little. Starting salaries are now lower than when I started in the 1970s!
Though I have been struggling for about four months, I'm also getting nowhere. Lots of ripoffs on the Net or good people with little money. I suspect I will write and self publish books, which I have done very successfully over the years. The money is in publishing the right kind of stories and then optioning them for films. One gets about $5,000 a year in option payments, which adds up with several stories. I have never looked at actually making much from writing books themselves.
So far I've gotten one movie made. I worked with Orson Welles in the mid 80s and later was executive producer on the Tim Robbin's film "Cradle Will Rock." I brought the project to Robbins. Now I've got a couple of more that hopefully will get made this year. But I don't really know, because money is sooooo very tight. I keep my fingers crossed.
As to music, I'm surprised that you aren't performing more. That's actually where the Internet can help, especially with blogs, Facebook, MySpace and especially YouTube. YouTube is an amazing platform for musicians to perform and I have friends who have used it successfully. I sometimes record YouTube videos for clients performing in the Village. That way they can post themselves on YouTube. One friend, but not a client, is David Ippolito, who bills himself "That Guitar Man in Central Park." He has done very well in New York as a glorified street musician with an Internet radio show!
Another is Jimmy Norman, who was with the Coasters for 30 years. I'm doing all the marketing for his new record. He's got a bad heart and can't travel, and his story is an extraordinary one. Yet, Judy Collins is putting out the record. Jimmy worked with Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix, and I will market through their web sites. We'll also get him on the Americana stations. It's hard, but it does help get your stuff out there.
I suspect that part of your problem is being in Philadelphia. Have you thought of moving, either to New York City or Austin? Not that it will be any easier, but I think you'll get a lot more gigs. It seems you are at a dead-end there, especially since that news publication went belly up.
There are no easy answers to any of this. But I do think things have changed for a long time in the writing business. I'm a multimedia storyteller, meaning I write, edit, am a photographer, videographer and do audio. I learned all the skills along the way. I can't make money either, but I can tell stories and will probably go on, whether I'm paid to or not. I don't know how to do anything else. If nobody pays me, I'll do them for myself.
I wish I had your musical talent. You gotta keep trying. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side! Stay in touch.
Best,
FB
Frank,
Thanks for getting back. Oh I'm still trying. Philly is kind of a nowhere land and in many ways always has been. You do have some good ideas though.
I'd love to meet you and hear more about Orson Welles. A friend of mine once thought he'd be perfect playing the mystery detective Nero Wolfe, and supposedly someone approached him about it, but he wouldn't do it. I still think he would've been perfect.
Peter:
Welles was a great guy! He actually called me to have lunch. The next
year was a wild ride. I'll leave you for now with a piece I wrote for
Gizmodo on Welles for their fall film coverage on the web. It gives a
little background on that time.
Download: Orson Welles: Early Adventures with the Betacam
Frank,
Thanks for a great and moving story. I was not prepared for what happened.
You may have heard of Ben Vaughn who's a songwriter, producer, and now
sometimes does TV soundtracks.
He produced the final album for the great songwriter Arthur Alexander.
After the album came out, Arthur was to do a couple of initial gigs in NYC
and DC. He also appeared on Terri Gross' Fresh Air. For the initial gigs,
he hired some excellent local musicians. Some were in his band, and some
were in my band at the time (often playing in both bands). These guys were
as good as any players out there and this could've been their break. They
did Fresh Air and a couple of days later Alexander suddenly died of a heart
attack.
Let me know what you think of the album, and if you want to hear more, that
can happen.
Peter
Peter:
As I learned with Orson, anything can happen and at the damnest time!
I look forward to your CD.
Best,
FB