Here’s a quick word about a unique privilege on Neworleansmusicians.com. On our home page at the top is a link to our classifieds section. It is broken into three main categories; For Sale – For Rent – Wanted. The advantages are outlined below. But first, some general info to consider.
Users on NOM must register to list on our Classifieds. We implemented this to weed out bots and vet outsiders just passing through. It is my intention that we all become a close-knit community here. Listings in the Classifieds section are relevant because they were made by someone that is already a part of this site. And this area is policed by admin. So, you won’t have to tolerate trolls or spam.
All listings get the boot after 30 days to ensure that you’re not wasting your time on old postings. So that guitar is probably still for sale. And if that DJ is serious about finding a gig, he/ she will repost, ensuring you’ve found the right person for your next event.
Shopping within our state means your money is going to a local fellow musician. Lets keep “us” a priority in everything we do!
For Sale – On social media, it doesn’t take long to end up under a stack of other sellers. We assure our listings are relevant to the music community and current. Ebay, Facebook, Etsy, Amazon…. Frankly, you’re a drop in a sea of listings. By design, we help avoid this pitfall by restricting our community to Louisiana residents only.
For Rent – You won’t find apartments or spacewalks on here. This is about rehearsal space and other musician needs. Check the listings in the For Rent section of our Classifieds. Perhaps you need some sound and light equipment for your next show. You’ll find listings from individuals and companies. If it’s a company, chances are they have a business profile on our site. Without leaving, you can research them and decide if they are a fit for you.
Wanted – You won’t find your mugshot here. But do send us a copy of that. We glue our own decorations to the milk cartons in the break room. Seriously though, looking for a new gig? Need a replacement for the drummer you just kicked out the band? Would you like to find a DJ for your next event? There’s a wanted section just for these situations.
In closing, I see this area of the site as self-explanatory. But, by Neworleansmusicians.com catering to Louisiana musicians only, it tunes out a lot of the foreign and irrelevant noise found on other sites; the same noise that covers your listing up within seconds. I hope to see your band on our site soon!
You can register and begin using the classifieds with the link below.
Start by creating a profile on Neworleansmusicians.com. Be sure to fill in all the blanks and upload a song. With your registration, you can message other bands and businesses in the industry. You can also list on the show calendar and music classifieds. And any tracks you have on the 12 streaming platforms we are a member of will be added to our public playlists on those platforms. Your music presence online has just doubled!
Short Questionnaire
Because you uploaded at least one track, you are e-mailed a questionnaire. This contains questions about your band’s style, inspiration, and history. Once this is returned, you will be featured in our podcast. Instead of commercials half-way through every episode, we shout out our members. We draw our discussion from your questionnaire answers, and then play an example of your work for the audience to hear.
Upload a video
Once you are a member, you are able to upload videos. This would preferably be footage related to your band, and you do this from your profile. Your video is displayed on your profile, as well as our Videos page. And it will appear on our Youtube Channel as well. We will also began promoting your video on social media. You’re one of the family now. We’ve got you!
Inquire about an interview
Contact us via e-mail, social, or by phone and inquire about being interviewed. After we verify that you have a complete account with us, we confirm your eligibility and place you in the interview pool. We choose all our interviews from this group, making sure to cover every genre. Our interviews result in several Youtube videos, an article on our blog, and a podcast episode on our show.
Becoming a member of NOM means many things….
In becoming a member of our growing network of Louisiana musicians, you gain many advantages. This site is not like facebook and other social media sites. It exists strictly for networking purposes. We are onboarding Louisiana bands currently, and will move on to filling Vendor directories soon. These will include venues, sound & light companies, recording studios, and the like from all over the world. Our goal is to empower Louisiana’s talent with tools while remaining exclusive to bands from our state. This is why we only accept bands from Louisiana. Members can message other bands or vendors directly within the site at any time. I created this site and personally keep in touch with its members. Promotional material that our members create is shared constantly on our social. You will begin to see your show announcements shared by us. Promotional material that we create for our interviewees is shared repeatedly on social for months. Any leads on gigs that we generate are sent to members first. We have assisted in filling spots at venues, in movies, and on podcasts. Members’ song plays are tracked through our site and those with the most plays earn placement as Artist of the Month. There are three chosen per month. Those bands are given a spot at the top of our home page with a graphic and link. I look forward to getting to know your band and fulfilling your needs. And remember, I will NEVER ask you for money. I have created a line of merchandise and an account at BuyMeaCoffee to help support my efforts. With enough eyes and ears, I also hope to generate money from Youtube and podcast ads. Any money generated from this site goes right back into it, back into supporting Louisiana’s independent artists.
Childhood memories are of such a profound permanence. Not only are they the antecedents of our future existence. But they play an integral part in shaping who we become in this world. Whether it be parallel of or contrary to, those closest to us in the beginning are the means from which we model ourselves. For Robert, growing up amongst musicians exposed him to the many sides of music at an early age. His father, Sidney Snow, was playing bass and guitar professionally in various bands since 1957. And both his cousin and uncle were musicians as well. Answering the house phone sometimes meant hearing the voice of someone like Eartha Kitt on the other end. And before Robert would go on to choose his own path in life, he witnessed his father successfully support a family performing with people like Dr. John and Teddy Riley. Celebrity may not quite register in the minds of children. But hearing his father play guitar on the radio most definitely did. And knowing his dad played the guitar in Angel Baby may not have struck a chord with a young Robert. But he knew who the Beatles were. And hearing John Lennon compliment the guitar piece in that very song by Rosie and the Originals certainly resonated with Robert.
As fate would have it, by the time he was at Mcmain Magnet High School in New Orleans, he was playing second chair coronet. It was here that Robert spent some time picking up on music theory and a deeper appreciation for jazz. He would later make the move to Chalmette High where he was selected for all-state in the school band. For his exceptional talent, he was awarded several scholarships. But playing jazz in a school band wasn’t something that he took all too seriously. Many of us have a time in life that we can look back on where we chose desire over opportunity. For Robert, this would be one of those times. The transitional period from adolescence to manhood swayed Robert more toward his girlfriend and less toward the out-of-state scholarships. Combining this factor with the hold early eighties metal had taken on him, playing coronet away from home in a College jazz band just didn’t appeal to him. Still, the fact that playing music had become elemental in Robert’s landscape was clear, no matter the course.
As with many musicians coming out of high school, the need for cash landed him at various jobs and further away from any consideration of a career in music. A tinge of rebellion had seeded within him though. And it manifested itself in Robert trying out anything other than music as a profession. Life sent Robert through a myriad of jobs, from washing dishes to construction. And by the mid-eighties, he had moved on to casually playing bass in metal bands while making ends meet through a roofing job. While his metal roots took hold and felt right, his band practiced more than they gigged. Sweating atop a roof in Algiers one day, he stared at the skyline of downtown New Orleans across the Mississippi River. He recalls thinking, “my daddy’s over there making money man… playing music. I can play bass!” The thought became the catalyst for Robert quitting his job and vowing to make it in life as a career musician. Well, maybe not THE catalyst. We can’t leave out the persuasive impact he felt the time he fell off a roof while on the job (pun intended). Either way, his mind was made up. And he sought guidance from his father for his next steps.
“My old man helped me out to get some gigs. And it took me about four or five years to really get a repertoire of songs in my head”, Robert explained. And as he pointed out, most people don’t realize what it takes to ingrain such a sizable collection of songs in one’s memory. But through determination and repetition, he was able to build and retain a catalog in the hundreds over time. The first gig Robert’s father was able to book for him wasn’t for coronet. The music director had too many trumpet players already. And it wasn’t for the electric bass he had been playing in rock bands. Out of necessity, Robert was thrown in the bullpen clinging to an upright bass with a jazz band. Robert recalled, “Oh God that was painful. Because I was an electric bass player and I didn’t have the chops. It’s a different animal too. It is bass. But you got to know intonation ‘cause there’s no frets. So, there’s nothing to guide you. There’s no dots. So, it takes a little while. But after maybe four or five months of me doing it, I finally got to where I knew my intonation; where everything should be. I could here if I was out of tune. The cool thing about upright bass is you can slide into tune. You might hit the wrong ones but you can fudge it a little bit.” One might say that the upright bass that landed in his lap basically outlined his life up until this point. He was slapping notes and making sounds. But he wasn’t quite in tune with where he should’ve been. Over time, he slid into his groove and true tones came ringing.
For decades Robert played in countless bands like King James & the Special Men, The New Orleans Jazz Vipers, The Abitals, and Three Piece Mix to name a few. He built his repertoire, sharpened his skills on the upright bass and electric bass. And he is still very much involved in music today. He currently occupies the roster with bands like The New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings, The Melatauns, Little Freddie King, Franklin Avenue Overpass, and The Smokehouse Brown Trio. As he pointed out, this month (October), he’s got 32 gigs in 31 days. And I’m willing to bet he’s the only man in New Orleans that could pull off a two-fingered death punch with those well-earned callouses. Along the way, there have been certain times in life where he’s had to make decisions concerning his path in the performing arts. One can choose to go with the flow so-to-speak and feel or appear to be progressing. As long as your band keeps getting gigs, things are going as they should, right?
Ever present in the back of Robert’s mind existed this aversion. It was based on his antipathy for being confined to one genre. I’ll be the first one to tell you that stagnation is death. And I would imagine this rigor set in over time with him. For example, while playing with King James and the Special Men, all seemed fine. Things were better than fine as a matter of fact. That band became largely popular in the New Orleans area circa 2010-2020. And with them he enjoyed a ten-year run in front of packed houses. But that aversion started to set in, and through it he came to realize that the band had missed its mark. In his opinion, they should have peaked years before and made it big. And despite their successes and camaraderie, he felt it was time to move on. It was right about this time that Little Freddie King came calling. Freddie had parted ways with his bass player and was in search of fresh talent. He was acquainted with Robert through their mutual gig spot, BJ’s in the Bywater. And both Freddie and his drummer, Wacko Wade, knew Robert’s father Sidney. Now, at the time Robert received the call, he told Freddie that due to his current involvement in so many bands, he wasn’t sure he could commit. But the two agreed that Robert would play with King James and the Special Men that night and talk to Freddie the next day. So, Robert played with the band that night at their regular gig, The Saturn Bar on St. Claude. The next morning, before he spoke with Freddie, Jimmy from King James and the Special Men called him. He explained to Robert that he was moving in a different direction with the band and would be laying off Robert, along with a guitar player and a sax player. The parting was, and still is, looked back upon as amicable between the two. And Robert acknowledges that this experience truly helped him shed his skin. Not ten minutes later came the call from Freddie King. And to Robert’s confirmation that he was ready to make the move came Freddie’s quick response, “Ok great. We’ve got a gig in two days… Bayou Bugaloo.” Almost immediately, Robert had gone from packed houses to a three-day outdoor festival event that sees attendance in the tens of thousands. Making Little Freddie King his main gig, he’s stuck by Freddie’s side ever since. And he was even able to enjoy work through the pandemic because of this turn of events. And this is no surprise given Freddie’s prominence. Little Freddie King’s gut-bucket style blues has carried him through fourty-two years of appearances at The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, an induction into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, and the achievement of Blues Performer of the Year three times. He took home Best Blues Album at the 12th Annual Independent Music Awards for his 2012 album, Chasing tha Blues, and has appeared in countless publications. And he has fourteen albums on the books.
Another band Robert plays with, his baby as he calls it, is The Melatauns. He’s published seven albums with this band, one that he founded with a buddy from high school, Pat Ricks. True to form, they’ve always written and recorded original songs. And you never know what genre they’re coming from next. Their first two albums were heavy metal. From there they moved to an all original album of latin and swing music. And the prefix to The Melatauns name would change with the tone. The first two albums being heavy metal found them as The Mighty Melatauns. For the next, they were The Swinging Melatauns. And so on. Their singer Pat has always been able to keep pace with Robert’s constant quest for the next genre, despite his modest beginnings in a church choir. Robert describes his tone as “blue-eyed soul”. And the keyboard player for The Melatauns can also play accordion. Which also contributes to their diversity amongst the genres. On their albums, Robert would use a rotating roster of about twenty different guys. And live, you could find five or six guys on stage covering guitar, drums, keys, and horns with Robert on bass.
A recent development in Robert’s life has been the formation of the Smokehouse Brown Trio. Smokehouse plays with the band Johnny Mastro and Mama’s Boys, a blues band based out of New Orleans that travels all over the world. And somewhere around April of ’22, Smoke called drummer Chris Davis, also known as “Cakewalk” to discuss Smoke’s interest in forming his own band. He was particularly hopeful in snagging a few of the guys from the old group King James and the Special Men. So, on Mardi Gras night, they all got together and opened for C.C. Adcock. “We were under the impression that we were gonna go into the Special Men kind of bag. And it wound up not being that. So, three of the Special Men quit and me and Chris stayed. So, we wound up being The Smokehouse Brown Trio.” They now perform every Monday night from 9 p.m. until 11 p.m. at BJ’s in the Bywater. And as Robert describes it, it’s really hardcore Chicago style blues with a rock and roll feel. You’ll see Robert on both upright and electric bass for this arrangement. And if you’re lucky, other musicians will sit in on the session as they sometimes do. Harmonica player Andy J. Forest is one of them. Bobby Lewis, also a harmonica player, from Little Freddie King is another. As for now, they are considered the house band at BJ’s. And the band isn’t sure if they’re going to start pushing their music out into other areas. But there is a possible album on the horizon. Robert couldn’t give up the name at the time. But a notable blues label out of Chicago is interested in the trio to re-record a record that was made in the 60’s. We went on to discuss his education in copyrighting and sync licensing, as well as his delving into writing scores for movies. And you’ll be able to hear about that on our Youtube Channel. If you click subscribe, you’ll be notified when this interview publishes. Or you can click your favorite streaming platform below and catch the podcast.
Not remaining in any single genre has been a common theme throughout Robert’s life. His innate desire in the beginning to explore the many facets of music and be a part of them all plotted his course to success later on in life. Through it, he’s met and worked with too many musicians to name. And he’s performed in so many places. He was even able to land a gig in Italy because of it, expanding his contact list while there. And there’s a bit of irony here in that, in the beginning, he didn’t want to entertain the idea of his father’s intentions for him as a musician. That adolescent, rebellious nature came calling as it does in so many of us. And during that time, Robert questioned the notion of ever becoming a professional musician at all. Nowadays, being well versed in so many styles of music, he frequently borrows from one genre to experiment with in other genres. And as he affirms, everything is related to the blues. “Rock and roll is related to the blues. I mean, listen to Led Zeppelin. Listen to any great rock band. They were all into the blues. Same thing in swing. They use blues progressions. Not all of ‘em. But a lot of ‘em, they use blues progressions. Listen to the Saints (When the Saints Go Marching In). It moves to a blues progression. So, I think a unifying genre that unifies all of them would be the blues. And it’s rooted in gospel.” In some ways, one might say that Robert became his father’s likeness, sliding into genres just as he would slide in tune on his upright bass. You can find Robert’s music under the many monikers above at Louisiana Music Factory on Frenchman Street, as well as Spotify and Neworleansmusicians.com.
While preparing for a radio interview for a program aimed at independent musicians, I was forewarned that the host would likely ask me about Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs are supposed to be the next big thing for independent musicians like me, but I had been avoiding the subject, since it’s highly technical and drowning in jargon like “blockchain,” “smart contracts,” “distributed ledgers,” and “bonding curves.” Even the name “Non-Fungible Token” is off-putting. Why should musicians even care to learn about it? All I ever wanted to do was to write songs and perform them at a few gigs!
Anyway, not wanting to seem like a Luddite, I decided to school myself about NFTs. After some study, I concluded that an NFT serves the same function as a portable flash drive on which can be stored files like digital art, mp3s, video game items, documents, and other digital goods or links. Assuming that any of those stored digital files are rare or unique, the flash drive itself could become valuable.
But if NFTs are simply like flash drives, why do we need them? The answer is that NFTs are created using blockchain technology – like cryptocurrency – that provides a failsafe way to prove ownership of a particular digital asset and assure it cannot be altered. In contrast, the contents of a flash drive can be easily altered, and absolute ownership by any one person would be fairly difficult to prove. By imbedding that same information on an immutable blockchain, proof of ownership and identity of the contents are secure.
To see the implications, let’s say that NFTs existed back in 1952 and the Topps Candy Company minted a Micky Mantle rookie year baseball trading card not on cardboard but using an NFT. Would it today be seen as a valid collectible worth $5.2 million, just like the cardboard version? Many NFT boosters would answer yes, and that’s what has helped set off the NFT gold rush we’ve seen in the past year.
According to Chainalysis (a cryptocurrency research house), an estimated $41 billion was invested in 2021 to create new NFTs, and that amount is likely understated. That’s billions with a capital B – an amount almost as large as the entire world market for art and antiques in 2021, and more than 3 times the music industry’s total 2021 revenues for streaming, CDs, vinyl, and digital and customized radio services, combined.
The vast majority of those NFT investments so far have been in digital art, rather than music. But since music, like art, can be digitized, those eye-popping investments have grabbed the attention of many in the music industry. Depending on who you listen to, NFTs are poised to revolutionize the industry by opening up a new revenue source for musicians that will reduce their reliance on stingy streaming companies, touring, and record label payouts. On the flip side, others say NFTs are just a fad generated by the current over-the-top infatuation with cryptocurrency and will soon confirm P.T. Barnum’s observation that there’s a sucker born every minute.
Some recent attention-grabbing NFTs include one by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey who just auctioned off an NFT that links to a jpeg of his very first Tweet for $2.9 million. Another recent NFT sale that astonished even its creator (Mike Winkelmann, an artist also known as Beeple) was Christie’s auction of his NFT-linked jpeg art entitled “Everydays” for $69 million. What did the purchasers get for those millions? In the case of Dorsey’s Tweet, the purchaser received a certificate of authenticity signed by Dorsey’s @handle, but no copyright or commercial rights for the Tweet’s image were included. In the case of Beeple’s $69 million jpeg, the purchaser also seemingly did not get much – just a link to the file and some vague language about display rights.
Could these simple jpeg files actually be worth that much? It’s common wisdom that the fair market value for any item is the price agreed to by a willing buyer and a willing seller. That’s an economic fact but examples like the above have left some people questioning whether NFT sales at such astronomical prices can form the basis for a sustainable economic model.
If you were to buy the Mona Lisa, you would get a one-of-a-kind physical painting, with the original brushstrokes and pigments carefully applied by the great Leonardo DaVinci himself over 500 years ago. With a digitized piece of art or music, you get something that can be duplicated exactly digit-for-digit and is likely already widely shared on the internet, and can be downloaded anytime by anyone simply by right-clicking the image and hitting Save As. In essence, these NFT purchasers got bragging rights but not much exclusivity. It should be noted that NFTs do not actually contain any digital files – rather they contain a link to files that are stored somewhere else, a setup that raises a host of access and security issues.
Despite these questions, many recent NFT offerings have been remarkably successful and have naturally opened the floodgates to digital offerings by numerous other artists looking to cash in on the current craze – some excellent and some showing questionable talent – but most priced far higher than one might think considering that all you get is a link to file.
In the music realm, one of the earliest NFTs was created by the Kings of Leon who sold tokens for $50 each that provided a download link for their latest album, artwork and access to a limited vinyl edition, along with entry in a lottery to win VIP concert seats and other perks. The band also sold high-roller level NFTs (so-called golden tickets) that included a lifetime pass for the band’s concerts, guaranteed front row tickets and VIP treatment on every tour, and other perks. One of these “golden tickets” sold for about $160,000. The ones that did not sell were destroyed but altogether the Kings reportedly raked in some $2 million for these offerings.
Taking a slightly different approach, André Allen Anjos (also known as RAC) released 100 NFTs linked to a cassette tape of his latest album BOY. Each token (known as $TAPE) could be redeemed for a physical copy of the tape. Since the auction, those tokens have changed hands for as much as $4800. Justin Blau also known as 3LAU auctioned for $11.6 million a collection of 33 NFTs that included tokens for vinyl records, unreleased music, special experiences and an opportunity for one token holder to collaborate with 3LAU on song creation.
Other recent random NFTs include Duran Duran auctioning 100 images taken from its AI-created video for the song Invisible; Whitney Houston’s estate auctioned for $1 million a “never-before heard” demo track she recorded when she was 17 years old, along with a digital art video; Mick Jagger joined with Foo Fighter Dave Grohl to benefit a charity with an NFT auction of a new song coupled with 3D art by Oliver Latta (who goes by the name Extraweg); and Grimes made $5.8 million with some of her artwork NFTs that sold out in less than 20 minutes.
Those transactions are fascinating but an even more intriguing idea is now evolving, which takes advantage of the NFT’s ability to execute “smart contracts,” which are simple if/then contracts imbedded in the token that run when certain preset criteria are met. Using these, the creator of an NFT might automatically get a commission on subsequent resales. In that same vein, multi-platinum recording artist, Pia Mia, auctioned an NFT collection in December that included not just her new song “Whole Thing” and artwork by Ben Ditto, but also 10% of the master royalty for that song. 3LAU recently gave tokens to 333 fans entitling them to 50% of the streaming rights to his latest song, “Worst Case.” As of this writing, 3LAU’s royalty-bearing NFTs are trading in the $5000-7000 range giving them an aggregate value of over $2 million.
Hand-in-glove with the explosive growth of NFTs, we’ve seen the emergence of numerous online marketplaces – such as Opensea, Rarible, and Nifty Gateway – where people can create, showcase, buy and sell their NFTs. There are now dozens of such marketplaces with an aggregate annual trading volume in the tens of billions of dollars. Meanwhile, new types of cryptocurrencies are being launched at the rate of one per day.
For musicians, one conclusion that can be drawn from all this is that to be successful, an NFT must have some element of collectability, i.e., some scarcity, rarity, or baked-in benefit, that combines ownership with exclusivity. We do not see successful music-only NFTs, i.e., those that link solely to stand-alone digital mp3 files, precisely because mp3s are not scarce. Consider that the goal of every musician is to have their music become ubiquitous – broadcast on the radio, streamed on numerous playlists, danced to in clubs, downloaded, synched, listened to on CDs and anywhere else a song can be played. It’ll be hard to convince potential NFT buyers that an mp3 file is rare or collectible when it’s available everywhere.
Moreover, it wasn’t very long ago that the peer-to-peer file-sharing service Napster had 80 million registered users happily paying nothing to download music collections from other users, some of whom boldly proclaimed that music should be free. It’s going to take a lot of work and chutzpa to convince many of the same people to now pay substantial sums of money for an mp3 simply because it’s linked to an NFT that’s bundled with some artwork or a t-shirt. This may change if clever marketers can somehow tweak an mp3 to convey rarity such as by indelibly marking one as an “original file” or a “limited edition,” assuming that the marketplace will value such things. But at the moment one mp3 pretty much looks like another – unless of course it’s bundled with a bunch of other unique goodies or the promise of royalties.
A second conclusion is that average working musicians should not think that by minting an NFT it will suddenly start raining money. The headline-making NFTs yielding big bucks for their creators are pretty much the province of very successful multi-platinum Grammy winning artists, with hundreds of thousands of followers and very high profiles. These are not the common folk of the music world. Sure, lower-level artists can and will issue NFTs but stripped of all the technobabble, these more likely resemble GoFundMe campaigns, where fans support their favorite local artist by swapping dollars for t-shirts and memorabilia, except those benefits are linked to an NFT instead of a fulfillment house – basically old wine in a new bottle.
This leads me to a third and perhaps less obvious takeaway, that many NFTs are being snapped up not by fans or supporters of a particular artist, but by investors and speculators. In a review of the overall NFT market, Chainalysis found that just 9 per cent of NFT owners held 80% of the market’s value, and many of those engage in flipping to turn quick profits. Cooper Turley, the Editor of DeFi Rate, observed with respect to RAC’s cassette $TAPE NFT, “Trading at $100 just 2 hours after its release, the $20 entry price was quickly purchased in heaps by speculators, with many buying upwards of 5-10 $TAPE at a time. This was the first signal that there was no intention for the vast majority of early buyers to redeem the product. In fact, roughly 50 of the 100 total tokens were scooped up in the first minute of the offering going live.”
Finally, most of the artists who are pioneering the use of NFTs are young, hip and tech-savvy, which is also true of their fans. Given that demographic, it’s no surprise that genres like pop, EDM, dubstep, house, electro-pop, hip-hop are disproportionately overrepresented in the most successful NFT drops. Conversely, more traditional genres – blues, classic rock and country, for example – have not been on the cutting edge of the NFT boom. This has implications for old school artists who appeal to an older less tech-savvy demographic who may be more skeptical of NFTs and unwilling to tackle the technicalities of purchasing them.
Looking ahead, if we want to peer further down the NFT rabbit hole, we may see a future where many of us are supposed to be sitting around in virtual reality headsets, hanging out in virtual nightclubs, and using crypto to buy and sell NFT-based assets including virtual real estate where we display our NFT art and listen to our NFT music. That may sound like something out of the Matrix but for some it’s already here. In one online virtual world known as Sandbox, Snoop Dogg is building a virtual replica of his luxurious California home where fans can come and hang out, and someone else just paid $450,000 for some virtual land in Snoop’s vicinity.
The Sandbox will be even more crowded in the future due to companies like Adidas that purchased 144 parcels as a platform from which to market digital and physical wearables. Meanwhile Warner Music is planning a virtual music theme park where its artists can “hang out” and mix with fans, to be accompanied by a sale by Sandbox of adjacent parcels for music fans. Elsewhere, a virtual real estate developer recently put up $2.5 million to purchase a parcel in Decentraland, another virtual world. The digital asset manager company Grayscale estimates that the entire virtual real estate market may be worth more than a trillion dollars and I personally think that’s what this whole game is about – NFTs are a gateway drug that will hook people into a plethora of virtual realms that generally come under the heading of the metaverse.
It’s obvious that NFTs have been successful and profitable for some big-name entertainers in the recent past. It also seems obvious – to me anyway – that the market for NFTs is experiencing irrational exuberance and driven by speculation, with some folks paying tens of millions of dollars for digital files that can be had for nothing, through simple expedient of “right click and SAVE AS.” It also may soon be saturated.
So, what happened to my radio interview? It turns out that my conversation with the host pretty much focused on live music, studio recording and songwriting, so we never got to the subject of NFTs, and that’s pretty much the story for most of the musicians I know who also have not gravitated to the subject. In fact, there’s probably more interest in exploiting the 70-year old technology of vinyl than there is in embracing NFTs which appear to offer very little value for money to purchasers and performers alike – except for wealthy speculators and Grammy winners.
About the author
Jon Spear is an independent musician and retired public policy analyst with a law degree from American University. (He is also an alumni of Bruce Houghton’s Berklee College course of music technology).
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“I got inside of it (the tomb)… I dug down a little further, and it was about the size of a cigarette pack. It looked like the little bible you get from Sunday school. And I knew immediately what it was… I could barely read any of the words. It was weathered and in bad shape. But I read those words, that poem, and it hit me what this guy was going through.” What Levi held in his hands was actually a diary containing the last words of a man headed off to battle in the Civil War. He would go on to include this in his upcoming EP, Gettysburg.
Levi Clark grew up in Metairie, Louisiana in typical American hard-working household. They built cars, they played football, they worked on dead people, and they played music. Okay, maybe not entirely typical. But they were close knit and full of life. The youngest of five children, he began to gravitate toward music at a very early age. And there was certainly a wide variety where he was raised. Levi remembers, “My brothers were listening to Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin; there was Woodstock basically in that room. And my sisters listened to LTD, Earth, Wind and Fire, and Peabo Bryson. Mom had Coltrane and Billy Holiday. Dad had Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson, ZZ Hill, Muddy Waters.” His first experience making music was on his brother Avery’s drum set. At the age of six, he snuck into his brother’s room with the intention of figuring out what drums were all about. But with no drum sticks in site, he proceeded to break a drum head using a brush and a comb. Being a percussionist, part of the discipline his father handed down was playing Led Zeppelin IV over and over, and making Levi learn how to play the proper way, this time with actual drum sticks. “Every time I made a mistake, I got popped with a drumstick. And when this (interview) comes out, my brother Avery will find out how I learned that because he has no idea that I got my ass tore up for breaking his drum”, Levi recalled.
At family gatherings, the Clarks didn’t break out the radio. The family would bring their instruments and a live session would serve as entertainment for the occasion. With his brother Avery on drums, his other brother Ronald on bass, his step-brother Donald on keys, and his cousin Wade on guitar, the gatherings became real events. “They were kids, barely in their 20’s! And they’re back there playing Hendrix. And they’re back there playing Muddy Waters, and Sly and the Family Stone” Levi exclaimed. Music would always be a huge influence in Levi’s world as a child and even to this day. At the young age of five, he got a chance to see his father DJ at a dinner reception for his brother. And one could argue that this experience forever changed his life. The place was packed, everyone was on the dance floor. And to close out the night, his father played Who’s Loving You by the Jackson 5. Levi explained, “I had already known that Michael was my age when he sang that. And I’m watching these grown, drunk ass men belt out the words being sung by a 5-year-old. At that point it became my disease. I thought, I wish I could create something that made people move the way I saw those people move.”
With an ear for the drums, Levi would spend the rest of his life in pursuit of his new found passion. Though his first band was known by the name of Never Fall, his first gig was a sold-out show at the municipal auditorium with a band by the name of House of Dread. He was just sixteen years old. Accompanied by his two cousins, he showed up with all his gear only to find out that, unbeknownst to him, the band had hired a guy named Kufaru to replace him. Yet he didn’t cower, nor did he break. Wounded, betrayed, and dressed to the nines, Levi got on stage anyway. “It’s a live gig man”, said Levi. “Shit’s gonna happen that’s out of your control. Not everything is going to go the way you want it to happen. You just have to duck and cover and move forward.” With a hard lesson learned, he went back to playing with Never Fall which, according to Levi was a three-piece progressive rock band influenced by bands like Rush and Saga. And oddly enough, he would be using his brother Avery’s drum kit. On the bill with Big Sum, Exhibit A, and Dead Eye Dick, Levi recalls one night playing at Muddy Waters, in Uptown New Orleans. “So I’m on stage during our last song doing my Neil Peart thing, my big rock thing (insert mouth drum sounds here), you know. I hit the last note and found out that someone had put a door behind the drum riser. When I hit this last note, the centrifugal force threw me back and through the door to the outside. I had to run back inside and up on stage to close out the set.”
As Levi was well aware, paying dues came with the territory. But the common goal was always to make it to the big leagues. One time at practice, he found himself face to face with an A&R for Sony Music Group. The only thing more they wanted was a bassist and a rhythm guitar player to make the outfit complete. At the time, Levi was occasionally jamming with another band by the name of Sobriquet. From that experience, he was able to call on some friends. As Levi explained, “I contacted Michael Prado and a guy by the name of Brad Richoux. They were ready but Adam and John decided that school was more important. And they were right. John went on to be a banker or some shit but Adam went on to do work for Steve Vai.” Always moving forward, Levi would form his new band Cain immediately following.
Cain would start out playing at The Abstract on Magazine Street, and even got an opportunity to Play with Green Day before they made it big. To hear him paint the picture, Levi described The Abstract as the CBGB’s of New Orleans. “They had Dang Bruh WhY, Cain, Apostacy, Abuse played there. One of Philip Anselmo’s projects called The Satanic had played there. It was a shithole. But it was the best shithole. It was the atmosphere, the ambiance. To get any further underground you’d have to go to Haiti. But it grew. It grew like an oak.”
I wanted to shift focus a bit so I inquired about a bar in Fat City that so many people of that era used to frequent. Arguably, it was one of the most important bars for the metal scene in the greater New Orleans area. This gem was known as Zeppelin’s. With bands like Crowbar, Sevendust, Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Obituary, Anal Cunt and countess others, and often for as cheap as five bucks, you couldn’t find a better place to go see live rock music. Alongside this hotbed of talent came networking and opportunity. And Levi with his band Cain was eager to come up. He thought back to one such fortunate night playing at Zeppelin’s where his band scored a chance to perform on tour with Sevendust. “We showed up that night, played our asses off, and hit it off pretty well with Lajon. We threw all our shit in a minivan and followed them.”
Remembering a time after a particularly rough day on the job at the funeral home, Levi told me how he came to meet his now guitarist and closest friend, Trey Heflin, at the Ski Lodge in Fat City. “I drive up with my entire 10-piece drum kit packed into my Nissan Pulsar, don’t ask me how. But I get in there and standing on the bar, smoking, drinking, doing shots is Trey Heflin. We had played with his band called Genocide at the time. And about a month after that gig we got a call from The Abstract to go do a gig at the New Orleans Music Hall. (We played with) MeJack, Gwar, and Rawg. That was insane. Genocide would end up being Cain’s brother band. We would play around town with them. I haven’t left that dude’s side since.”
Albeit small, the metal scene was very interconnected at the time. Sometimes, the same guys you heard on the local radio station that day were the same guys you saw in the bar that night. And Levi’s experiences were no exception. “I was at Last Stop one night when I actually got a chance to hear the Down’s album NOLA record demo there. Philip (Anselmo) had gone in there some time after midnight when the crowd had thinned. I heard Temptations Wing, Underneath Everything, and Eyes of the South. I said to Philip, ‘man I don’t know if you know it man but that’s some bad ass shit.’ That was the first time I actually saw Last Stop…. Stop.”
As a current member of not one but two bands, Misled and Southern Brutality, he’s somehow found time to cultivate a new sonic venture. Levi’s latest project, 1016, is named for the address of the house he grew up in, where his love and obsession for music began. Resonating an influence of blues from his mother and his father, he maintains that 1016’s style is raw, uncontrived and unpretentious. His vision is to see it fester into a disease that will infect as many people as possible. (That ought to trip a few Covid algorithms) Following 1016’s eminent EP, Gettysburg, their first album will come. And they hope to spawn a tour shortly thereafter. When asked about his vision for the band, he cited no one particular direction, literally. “I’ll put it to you like this. The same vision that Robert Johnson had, the same vision Leadbelly had; they had no vision. They just did it.”
Whether it be visions or messages, both can be found hidden in the sounds coming through your speakers. Levi pointed out one such message conveyed through the power in 1016’s melodies. “The reason why we’re tuned to C and still playing the blues shit is to show people you don’t have to be blast heavy. The technique I’m using is a blues technique; the call and response technique. And the reason I do it tuned like this is to get rid of that whole death core, metal core, blues core… whatever you want to call that shit. It’s called Rock and Roll man.”
