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Shaun Groves is a husband, father, singer, songwriter, preacher, writer and a bloggger. Formerly with Rocketown Records, Shaun discusses his transition to being an independent artist, the benefits of blogging, Patty Griffin and the importance of community to artists.
Listen to Shaun’s song Miss Texas:
1. What has been the biggest shock/transition between being a label artist and an indie?
I haven’t been independent long enough to experience too many shocks. Let’s talk again when I’m releasing my first full-length studio album independently.
The most positive shock so far has been the ease of generating support from fans/friends like you. A small army of 88 people fully funded the new live CD that just released. And all I had to do was ask for help on my blog. And that ask only had the effect it did because a small group of friends started reading my blog almost two years ago and told their friends about it, who told their friends about it, and on and on.
The big revelation for me since I went independent is how I may need a label even less than thought I did. I truly have amazing supporters backing and spreading anything I do...and even helping create what I do. I knew they were out there but I never knew how powerful and generous they were.
2. How do you manage all the hats that you wear? Husband, Father, singer, preacher, blogger, writer?
Not well, honestly. I’ve been very fortunate to marry well, very well.
My wife is my opposite in most ways. For one thing, she’s intensely organized. Organization is her drug. I sometimes wonder if we had kids just so she’d have more people to keep organized..you know, in case she got bored after getting my life together.
We talk almost every night about the next day – what she needs me to get done for her and the kids, what I commit to getting done in my various jobs, when we’ll see each other and just hang out.
She’s learned that I’m great at the big picture and dreaming for the future but can’t handle a long to do list that covers more than the next couple days. I shut down. She helps me take small bites – what I’m doing tomorrow and the next day.
And that’s all. Taken in bite-sized chunks like that, all the hats I wear aren’t so overwhelming.
3. What does your typical day/week look like?
There is no typical day or week, which is something I like about my life right now. Yet I don’t thrive if life is total entropy. I actually don’t like change at all. So, there’s a skeleton to my day that never changes. It’s the muscle and what not added to it every day that varies tremendously.
Here’s what doesn’t change. Becky works out and showers before I wake up. I rise about seven, take a shower while Becky starts waking kids. I get dressed and finish that process with her, sit down and eat something with my kids, get them dressed, play a little or take the two smallest to pre-school (two days a week). Becky teaches the oldest (now six) at home and runs errands with her while I head up to the bonus room/office and write a blog post, check my web site stats and thank anyone new who’s linking to me, return e-mails and add anything new to the day’s to do list. Then I work the list until lunch time.
I eat with my family and then it’s back up stairs or out the door, depending on where my list takes me. I check my e-mail and my site after I complete something on my list, if I’m at home. It’s a little doggy treat I reward myself with – a little conversation. Plus a lot of the mail I get has a little exclamation mark by it and ASAP in the subject line and I truly will miss opportunities if I don’t check in often. I stop working at four and play with my kids until dinner around 5:30.
Mondays are my days off and Becky’s break from children. Once a week, usually Tuesday, we go on a date. And that’s the routine. It keeps me sane and healthy – that and limiting my travel days each month. On the road, of course, the schedule is out of my control.
4. How do you see the music industry changing in the next 5 years? How can artists stay on top of that wave?
I truly don’t know. My best guess is that we’ll continue farther down the various paths we’re already on as an industry.
Artists who depend heavily upon the traditional touring, radio and expensive advertising/marketing model created BY major labels over the last fifty years will likely have no reason to wean themselves from that way of doing things. And that way will always work for a certain kind of artist with a certain kind of consumer. Rumors of that model’s death, I think, are greatly exaggerated.
And the web 2.0/grassroots driven labels and artists will continue to put new tools in their box, gain more fans who convert new fans who convert new fans and on and on. And that viral spreading of music is unstoppable now that it’s started. It will no doubt morph many times over in the next few years, getting monetized and restricted, then freed up and evolved again, then monetized and restricted again and so on. But it’s here to stay.
What’s very encouraging to me is how many labels are finally making use of web 2.0 as a kind of street team on-line. What I’m watching to see, though, is whether or not labels – used to being in control and measuring the effectiveness of every dollar and minute spent – will be able to fully embrace and milk web 2.0 and viral marketing strategies that often cannot be controlled or measured without slowing down the spread of the viruses themselves.
5. In your opinion, what should a musician look for in an “artist friendly label”?
I always ask artists looking to sign with any label one important question: Why do you do what you do? We talk about what it is he wants to accomplish and what he’s accomplished so far.
Here’s an example. A guy called me a few years ago and said he was thinking of signing with my label at the time, Rocketown Records – a great label. I got him to tell me what he loved about what he does, what he wanted to do in the future. Turns out he was a horrible fit for Rocketown. He wanted to make music for non-Christians and Christians. “Crossover” was an important dream of his. I bragged on Rocketown and what they do well and then told him my opinion was that he should sign with a mainstream label that had a track record of breaking people backwards in the Christian marketplace. Someone like Red, part of Sony, where Switchfoot is. He didn’t listen and he made one record with Rocketown that was a stylistic compromise for him – his choice. He’s now independent.
I’m not saying this to say “I told you so” but to point out how important it is to find a label that is good at doing what you want to do. Artists, being the relational gut-based people we often are, tend to sign with labels the way they choose friends: I like them, we have fun, I trust them, let’s sign. All that’s important, but if your friends keep you from doing what you feel born to do they won’t be your friends for long.
6. When and why did you start blogging? How do you think it has impacted your transition to being an indie artist?
A friend of mine – a real forward-thinking “early adopter” type – Randy, at the time the worship pastor at my church, was blogging and recruiting everyone he knew to do the same. I wonder now if that was just a clever way of getting links. (Only half kidding.) I decided to try it. I thought it would give me a way of connecting with a small group of core fans and honing my writing skills.
Little did I know it would become the spine of my career today – generating almost all of my bookings for the tour I’m on, hooking me up with a distributor for the UK, getting me writing gigs and maybe even a book deal soon. Never thought that many people would care to read a blog, much less mine.
7. What are some advantages of being indie?
I really haven’t been indie long enough to know too many. So far, it’s discovering the power of the audience to grow the audience, like I already talked about. But that’s something I started discovering when I was on a label, I just never had to lean ON it.
So maybe the best thing so far about independence is learning how to be dependent on a sea of strangers to make my blog worth visiting, and spread the word about free downloads or a new album release or whatever. Learning that I can do this without a label but I can’t do it alone is a gift. Besides that? I suppose we’ll see on the next studio record if being indie allows me more creative freedom. We’ll see.
I felt very little creative control coming from on high when I was at Rocketown and any that came was originating from what radio stations said they’d play and what bookstores would carry. Without thinking about radio and retail, maybe it’ll free me up to try some new things. No promises on that.
8. What are your 3 top marketing vehicles/tools for your solo career (i.e. Myspace, Purevolume, your blog etc.)? What has given you the best response?
1. The main blog, Shlog.com. It’s amazing how many people who don’t even like my music show up to read that thing every day and over time try out my music and like it in light of what they’ve gotten to know about me and what I care about over time. Amazing. And blogs are very spreadable. I get loads of traffic everyday from links from sites like yours, from sites talking about my site, or my new project, or some random thing I wrote that I didn’t think was even all that great but someone did. Like I’ve already said, it’s the spine of what I do now, keeping me funded and inspired and connected to the audience for more reasons than just commerce.
2. The audience. No marketing tool is as powerful as a fan, provided he/she has been given the tools needed to spread the word.
On my next CD, I’ll own all the rights to every song so I’ll be able to give away more music. The plan, at this point anyway, is to give free CDs to everyone who buys one, in hopes that the music and ideas in it will get spread by people who are already enjoying what I do. Ideally, my music would be free, which would help the audience spread it even more, but I haven’t figured out how to live doing that. Maybe someday. When the kids don’t cost me so much in diapers and macaroni and cheese.
3. Radio station web sites. This is a weird one but if you look at my web traffic stats you see a lot of people coming to my site through an artist directory of some kind on the Fish or K-LOVE or Air-1 web sites. A lot of people listen to those large networks on-line and then click around to find out more about what’s being played. And they find me.
9. Where do you get inspiration for the songs you write and what is your songwriting process?
I don’t know where inspiration will come from so I just keep my eyes open. It’s not unlike blogging in that respect. Bloggers often start great but soon run out of things to say. I wonder if THEIR eyes are looking at the same world I am.
Life is full of meaning and questions to be asked. It’s packed with messages to decipher and communicate. We just have to notice. Once I notice I write it down. Some day I’ll be hit by a melody and record it on my voicemail so it doesn’t get lost. Later I’ll listen to that melody and add some chords, maybe a snippet of lyric too. Later I’ll come back and add some more.
The music usually comes first. The first parts of lyric to emerge are almost always the chorus. Then, when I know what the song is about, because that’s what the chorus tells you usually, I go back to the start and write the verses – lots of them, and later pick the best parts of them for the final version.
I don’t write songs; I rewrite them. So the process is a long one usually. What I want to say in the verse now that the chorus is done may not fit the melody I’ve got, so it gets scrapped or tweaked. Once the verse lyric is complete it might take me in a direction that doesn’t match the chorus I had as well, so it gets scraped or tweaked. It’s a balancing act and usually it feels like flying a kite – the wind is always shifting and I’m holding on tight just trying to keep the thing from crashing.
10. What is inspiring you right now?
Story telling. I’ve been reading some about the stories Jesus told. They weren’t always original. He borrowed a lot from other rabbis. And his audience knew the stories he was ripping off. But he’d make changes, small changes, that changed the meaning. It kept people listening but it also showed how his spirituality was different from the rabbis before him.
Anyway, I know it sounds nerdy, but I’ve gotten into those stories and I’ve wondered if I could try my hand at writing an album that is a story. I don’t read fiction though and I’m not a great story teller but I’m inspired to try. My songs are usually conversations with God or with a friend. I wonder if I could pull off something completely different. The challenge is inspiring.
11. List three resources that will help others as they develop their career. These can be creative resources, business resources, marketing resources, or just about anything that might help another artist.
Your church. The greatest mistake I think we artists making stuff primarily for the Church make is detaching ourselves from the local church. Whether it’s a home church, a small group you learn and serve and laugh with, or a mega church with people in it you’re connected to, I can’t stress enough how important those people really are to what you do.
No, they don’t sell records or market your music or buy tickets to your shows, but they keep the place your art comes from nourished and protected. They can, if you’ll start by being vulnerable and accountable to them, take care of your family when you travel, help you communicate more clearly, help you learn about yourself and God and others, inspire you with their own stories and knowledge, give you a place to serve without a guitar, give you a sense that you’re part of something bigger than your talent and career, and generally be unimpressed by you in a very healthy way.
Don’t sign with anyone who doesn’t respect this connection and your commitment to be there for it. They’ll kill you spiritually and emotionally and stunt your development as a person, an artist and a minister and for what? More money? Not worth it.
Then I’d say anything Seth Godin has ever written or said. I’m a fan, I admit. Everything he says is very applicable to not just marketing but to life. He’s great at explaining business, marketing and human nature in a very artsy person friendly way. Start with Purple Cow.
12. Name one artist the folks reading this really need to know about.
Patty Griffin. No hesitation. She’s like a novelist but with two verses and a chorus.
It gets harder I think to paint a picture the fewer brushstrokes you’re allowed. She does in one song what it took Fitzgerald or Hemmingway to do in 200 pages. So, her for great lyrics.
And Wes Cunningham for music. He’s indie now but at one time he put out a record on a major label that made me want to write smart pop songs. It’s cleverly titled “How To Win People To Your Way Of Thinking” and even though he recorded it in the nineties, it still holds up sonically. Every verse is so hooky it could be a chorus, and the choruses raise the bar and then the bridge comes and you’re saying, “That’s even better.” He writes a song a day and the practice shows. He’s a bottomless pit of melodies.
Monroe Jones produced that first record of his, by the way, which is why I asked him to produce my first two records. And, bonus, Wes went to Baylor when I did. And he’s a Texan, so he can’t be bad right?
More About Shaun
If you want to learn more about Shaun Groves, be sure to check out his web site and his blog.
Check out Shaun’s Vault for free music, photos, videos, lyrics and articles.
Buy Shaun Groves music via iTunes.
Buy Shaun Groves’ music from his online store.
