Music Publicity with Brendan Bourke of The Syndicate

Graham is joined by veteran music industry publicity wizard, Brendan Bourke. They discuss his work with a seemingly endless list of artists including Elliott Smith, Broken Social Scene, Interpol, Clinic, and Tegan and Sara to name just a few. Word has it Brendan is probably solely responsible for Feist's "Let It Die" getting released in the US as well...
Also, Jerquee and Bob's Texas Jalapeno Chips.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Brendan, I thought, with your leave, I don't usually do this.
In fact, I've never done it, and it may go
horribly wrong. But I thought that I would do a
pro radio move and hit the intro with you so
that we can transition straight into your response to it,
and if it goes horribly off the rails, then we
can include this part as a disclaimer and I'll fix
the rest later. So that I sound like a genius,

(00:23):
which I know you, as a publicity.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Expert, know all about.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Sounds good.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
All right, check it out well, hear the music. Welcome
to Major Label Debut, the podcast about major label debuts.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
My name is.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Graham Right And in two thousand and seven, I, in
my capacity as a member of the indie rock band
Tokyo Police Club, arrived in Austin, Texas, America for my
first ever south By Southwest and the first thing we
had to do was go to a restaurant where we
were meeting someone to do an interview. Meeting us at
the restaurant, we knew was our first ever publicist. We

(01:00):
had never had a publicist before. We weren't totally clear
on what it meant, but we knew they facilitated interviews.
When we got to the restaurant, a convertible pulled up
and a man stepped out of the convertible and knew
without asking that all of us were twenty years old,
not yet old enough to drink in America at south
By Southwest a drinking.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Event as much as it is anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
That man opened the trunk of his car, and in
the trunk of the car were several loose cans of
warm Takata beer, and we all got to have a
delicious trunk beer before we went into our interview. Little
did we know that was the beginning of a long,
fruitful and beautiful friendship and collaboration that continues to this day.

(01:41):
The man who stepped out of that car, who was
our first publicist, who was Tokyopolis Club's last publicist, and
has publicized many of my doings and shenanigans in between.
That man, Brendan Burke, is my guest today. Brendan, do

(02:01):
you remember that moment as vividly as I do?

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I remember it very vividly. Yes. So it was at
a steakhouse in Austin. I will say that I don't
actually remember the name of said steakhouse, but yeah, I've
always prided myself and being a publicist that made certain
that their artists were taken care of and felt comfortable
and prepared for what lay before them. In the wonderful
world of having to do interviews with fres.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
And, I as a young person, was really not relaxed
about a lot of things, and including interviews, which in
retrospect is one of the more laid back tasks of
the musician, is answering questions about yourself. It's kind of
an unfuck upable gig, and yet I would get really
nervous about it. I remember doing my first ever phone

(02:46):
ers from my parents' house in Newmark and Ontario and
sneaking some Crown Royal out of the liquor cabinet because
I just was so amped up about doing the interview,
which was course three and a half minutes long. Wrote
questions from a student. Takata was very appreciated. And I
don't remember the restaurant either, because my memory has shrunk
to just that can like in motion on you know

(03:09):
that the fuzzy gray interior trunk carpeting, and you told
me you always rented a convertible.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
And south by Southwest, and I was like this is
a cool person.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
That was a south By Southwest and Los Angeles rule
always rent a convertible. But you are certainly not alone
in having interview angst. I think that is fairly common
for artists, some of them and carry that throughout their career,
but certainly for artists who were just you know, getting
their first start and first crack at having to do

(03:38):
interviews and talk about yourself and talk about your music.
You know, it's most of the time when you're making
an album, I don't think you necessarily think about having
to talk or answer questions about it. You're just sort
of writing and recording.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, and I found it. I think, you know, growing
up in the nineties, so much of what bands were
to me when I was dreaming of being in a band,
they were almost as much as they were songs on
the radio, they were interviews on much music or in
magazines that I would buy or read on the burgeoning Internet.
So I think I really perceived the interview as being

(04:15):
as important, perhaps as the music itself. I'm not sure
if that's wrong, although I do feel like maybe my
priorities were not exactly in order.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
In you know, who's going to hear the music if
you don't do the interviews.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Well put, And that is a perfect segue to back
up slightly. We're all about pulling back the curtain here
on major label debut. We have not yet spoken to
a publicist. We have not yet spoken to someone outside
of the like in the studio making the record, capacity,
producers bands. I guess we talked to Bob Mary, a writer,
but you are embedded in the industry in a way

(04:47):
that we haven't really talked about on this show, even
though everything we talk about on the show has to
do with it. So I wondered if we could start
by maybe giving the listeners a one oh one description
of just what it is a publicist does and maybe did,
because I know a lot of that is in the
process of shifting seismically certainly.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
I mean, when all a sudden done. The job of
the publicist is to tell the story of the artist.
If I could summarize it down to one sentence, The
ultimate job is basically convincing writers, editors, TV bookers, NPR producers,
podcast makers that the artists who are representing is where

(05:27):
it's speaking to and telling their story about the record itself.
As you mentioned, that has obviously changed greatly over the
thirty years now that I've been doing this, from early
days of it just being band makes good record, being
a good enough story to ban makes good record, not
being a story at all. So the storytelling portion, I say,
has gotten more important than ever over the years as

(05:49):
you try to find those nooks and crannies outside of
the ever dwindling number of publications that write about music.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
And I think that we'll definitely get into that at
how it's changed and what that means for telling the
story and what kind of stories people have been looking
for and bands have been generating, etc. What were the
stories like when you were first coming online as a
music fan. Do you remember like the first bands you
were falling in love with, and specifically the bands who's
like you know, who's like mystique and narrative and whole vibe.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Beyond just the songs really connected with you.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah, I mean, I think funny enough, when I first
started reading music magazines and probably the early days of
being a publicist, I mean, the most banned interviews were
literally just about the music and the album and what
led them into the songwriting or the themes that represent
this album. And not to say that isn't still part
of the storyline. It's just that there were so many

(06:46):
more music publications and they only cared about what went
into making the current record that that band was talking
about and trying to sell. And of course, you know,
they'd be the crazy tourist stories and you know, things
that happened on the road, and you know, for better
or worse, people probably were up to far more greater
shenanigans thirty years ago than they are now because they

(07:08):
knew that nobody was filming it on their phone.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes, and they could tell the story sort of edited
after the fact for the audience. And also you did
maybe less editing with then I've heard.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Well, I think there was there was certainly a degree
more of softball pitching to especially in any of the
larger artists back in those days.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
How did you get into it? What was your path
from music lover to music industry insider, mover, shaker, mogul.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean I didn't really have any concept of
the music industry at all. I just was a music fan,
you know, between one hundred and twenty minutes and buying
copies of The Village Voice at enemy weeks after they
came out, but finally made it to print to a
bookstore in Houston. So that was my whole concept of
that world until I had the good fortune of going

(07:57):
to college at NYU in New York City, back where
I came from originally, and ended up just befriending a
band from Boston at the time called Fuzzy, who I
really liked. Fuzzy shared a drummer with the Lemonhead mister
Dave Ryan, who was a phenomenal drummer and a generally
good human being, as the rest of the band were,
and I just ended up spending a fair amount of

(08:18):
time with them in various cities, New York included, And
as one year of college with getting started, they played
a show at CBGB's with another fantastic band from Boston
called Papas Frida's, and they introduced me to a gentleman
named Mark Litzitz who was the GM at a label
called Seed Records, and they were like, you should intern

(08:40):
at Seed Records, and I was like, people do that.
So Mark was like, Hey, we just come by the
office next week. Here's the address. And the following whatever
it was, Monday or Tuesday, I went uptown to sixtieth
Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue to the I can't
remember the exact floor, I'll be honest, but yeah, I
met with Mark there and he's like, great, if you

(09:02):
want to intern for us the semester, let's do it.
And that was my beginnings.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Did that derail you from another path? Were you going
to become a veterinarian or something?

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah? Oh, I was the good old fashioned English literature major,
which is a road to nowhere.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Really that was the road I was onto.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
So yeah, and you know, it works well thematically with
this podcast in the sense that Seed Records was owned
by Atlantic Records, which in the mid nineties, when the
time we were speaking of it was very popular for
the major labels to have what we call their faux
indie labels, yes, which was sort of like the Feim

(09:40):
teams for all of them. It was, you know, when
they signed a younger band who was just breaking out.
It gave the younger band a chance to sort of
soil their oats, if you will, in a musical sense,
and build up a fan base and not have to
be concerned about being on the giant major label. But
it also was a where they could put bands that

(10:02):
they didn't want to be tainted by being on the
major label as well. Yeah, and then to have a
triple function for those artists who had some success on
the major label but were no longer having success, but
we're still contractually on the label to get sent down
to the minor leagues, back to the Foe Indy or
to the Foe INDI for a first time.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
So it really is exactly like a farm team.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And it's funny because the Foe Indy has
been something that major labels sort of ebbed and float out.
I think it's a once again kind of a popular
thing for majors to have their you know, a lot
of them they purchased, and then sometimes just use that
label when they feel like, oh, we can slap that
label that we bought or had shelved or I.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Remember in like two thousand and nine when Tokyo was
talking to a bunch of labels and we went up
signing to Mom and Pop. But I feel like there
was that a version of that was starting to spike agagst.
We would have all these meetings, they would start someone
be like, oh my god, so we're gonna have lunch
with a guy from Atlantic today and then you get
to the lunch and you'd be like, that guy was
saying a whole different name he was talking him. He

(11:07):
was talking about like Fueled by Ramen or something, you know,
like Stiff Records. They're bringing it back. It's an ip
that they bought at some point and they want to
sign us to that exactly.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Like, so was that Atlantic, I don't I still understand?

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, Well, fueled by Ramen, I think is owned by
Elektra these days, which is owned by Atlantic, which is owned.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yes, And it was an electro meeting we took.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
It was with John Janik, Jeff Janick, the Fueled by
Ramen guy was kickstarting Electra. This is real inside baseball
ship for the.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
For the heads.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Absolutely the target market of that part of the conversation
was Josh and Paul, who.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Are listening to us talk while they produce.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
So what were you doing at Seed Records day to
day as an intern back then?

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, ironically at Seed Records there was actually no in
house publicist.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Ah, Lucky for you.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
The nice things Seed Records is that it had it's
shared an office with another foe India called Big Beat Records,
but it was separate from the Atlantic office, so we
had a floor on East sixtieth Street, and you know,
it had very much the feel and vibe of indie labels.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Could you paint a little picture because just I personally
as like, this is the era that defined what I
wanted a label to be. But I think by the
time we started visiting labels, they'd already gotten a little
more professionalized or a little more amateurized, and there was
less offices like this. So please, can you just situate
me there for my.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Own New York Midtown office and sense but we have
the whole floor and just yeah, you made it right
out of the elevator, that was the Seed Records section.
You made a left. You were in the big beat
section and there was a you know, a receptionist sitting
in the middle sort of taking orders for Chinese food
and directing phone calls that came in. So but you know,

(12:46):
it looked fairly fresh and clean. It wasn't like cramped,
or it wasn't like the Matador Records office in the
mid nineties, which looked like a hoarder's nightmare.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
That hoarder's nightmare is so I feel like that's what
I'm romanticizing, because now there's no stuff. There used to
be demos and publications and like physical stock and everything
that you did. A record contract was a piece of
paper that existed. A record was a box of tape
that existed. Now all you need to run a record
label is all you need to make a podcast? Is

(13:15):
all you need to make a record, or trade stocks,
or watch porn or read the news or anything.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Is this the computer that we're both on.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
And so a record label office looks exactly the same
as a tech startup, you know, give or take menalists, noam, yeah, yeah,
they all have those phone booths that you just go
sit in to do calls exactly.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
But yeah, I wouldn't say, like, you know, this kind
of looked like a nineties office, nothing like crazy.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Obviously there were gold records and tour posters and photos
of bands all over the place, so you know, it
felt like a record label in that sense. But Seed
was I think there was four of us, or like
four full time people and myself as one of the interns.
So I was doing mostly like colleing college radio stations,
and the favorite thing to do was calling all of

(14:01):
the indie record stores. That was a weekly task. You'd
call them up whatever, you know the cool indie store
in Indianapolis was, and he'd be like, Hey, I'm just
calling from Seed Records. Wanted to see if you had
copies of the Matter Rose album in stock, the Ivy
album in stock, the Fuzzy album in stock. And they
would go through and be like, yep, we've got four

(14:22):
of those, eight of the other and then like you know,
they're like, oh, we're out of this one. They're like, oh, well,
you know, we should have you reorder some stock into.
That was a weekly chore.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
How many independent record stores were there at that point
that were.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
On your call?

Speaker 3 (14:35):
There was definitely hundreds. I mean we're probably somewhere in
the five hundred to one thousand range.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
Oh and you must have talked to some real characters too,
Oh absolutely, that's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Some of them had no time for you, some of
them wanted to talk too much.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Oh god. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
So how quickly did you sort of zero in on
publicity as the stream?

Speaker 3 (14:56):
Well I very quickly. At Seed had an important music
into street life lesson, which was that between the fall
semester and spring semester when I came back, the entire
staff had been fired and a new staff had been
brought in under a new name. So the label was
now called TAG Records, which stood for the Atlantic Group.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
AHH.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
So I had a whole new group of co workers
at TAG Recordings and which included a publicist. So for
the first time there was a publicist in the office
to actually and I just kind of got funneled into
the publicity department. Ironically, that publicist had never been a

(15:40):
publicist before, and that publicist ended up being my co
business partner for Tag Team.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
You said tag and I was like, oh my god,
this is like when you watch a prequel to a
movie and they start dropping bits and pieces of the
original plot.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
I know, Tag Team. That was part of the nod
in the wink to Tag Team Media was the origins
of the name.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
What do you think it was about you at the time?
And I imagine still that made you a good fit
for that. You know, what are what are the character
attributes that define a successful publicist?

Speaker 3 (16:12):
I mean you have to be relentless to a certain degree,
patient to the other degree, and then be able to
take a whole whopping amount of rejection. So the overwhelming
part of being a publicist is getting passes, getting ignored.
You know, you're constantly having to circle back to your

(16:34):
pitches and as I always say, patiently being patiently persistent,
which is not annoying the shit out of people by
calling them nastily and saying, hey, did you listen to this?
But also, you know, not forgetting that you have a
job to do at the same time. And then obviously
my English literature degree got put to good use by

(16:54):
constantly having the right press releases.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
That's what I wanted to ask about next, in fact,
was the press release and maybe more broadly, the notion
of like a band's story.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
That you were talking about.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Do you remember like the first campaign where you were
aware of, like of the story as an element of it.
I don't know if that's because the band had such
an undeniable story, or if you found yourself helping them
find the story, or like, when was the first time
you went, ah, that's the ticket?

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, I mean I think it was a lot more.
I didn't really get into having to shape the story
more until I had moved on to my first INDIEPR company,
which was a company called Girly Action, who's still around.
But you know, I think when I was at record
labels themselves, at tag recordings or eventually a beggar's banquet

(17:44):
where I went next, there was like the bio and
all of that came from the UK, or it came
from somebody, and it was like, this is the story,
this is what you want to focus on, right, here's
the bio, which is still you know current today. Like
you know, the bio is going to shape everything in
a good bio and make or break you, But you know,
find the elements of the bio that you feel are
going to connect with whomever you're calling to. So and

(18:07):
you know, certainly back in those days, all the pitching
was done by calling, so a lot of times you
had thirty seconds or less to you know, get your
elevator pitch EPPIC or often just on voicemail. Yeah. So
you know, if you're calling Rolling Stone, it's a different
angle than if you're calling the New York Times or
the Peoria Independent or I'll turn it to press. You like,

(18:27):
who am I talking to? What do they interest in it?
And what part of this band's story do you think
is going to intrigue them enough to actually play the
music while they're doing something else.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
And obviously back then there were way more publications I
mean about music in general than they are now, and
also specifically about indie bands, because at Rolling Stone you're
competing with Springsteen and Dylan and Oasis and literally everyone
who makes music, and so you're a small fish in
a big pond if you're working for an indie But
there's a whole world of indie music media.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
There was fanzines, switch morphed into blogs. I had a
fanzine in the mid nineties as well.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Well was it tell us about it?

Speaker 3 (19:05):
It was called Hello Sailor, and it was, you know,
mostly an Indian music magazine, but it also anything pop
culture or anything that intrigued any of the writers who
want to write abouts they went in there. We didn't.
We only had a few issues before our art designer
had a nervous breakdown and disappeared and took that almost

(19:26):
finished issue with her, and it just sort of took
the air out of the balloon. Everyone was like, Okay,
we did that, Let's move on to something else.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Do you have a copy of all the issues you
did produce in.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
A box somewhere? Do you have the first two issues
on me in my apartment and they are in the
library at some university in the midwest of the US
that I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Oh wow, still legacy. Indeed, I guess I want to
get a sense of like the standard shape because you said, okay,
the you know, the label sends you the bio. So
the whole stream of going from like band forms, band
rights songs, band gets signed, band makes record, band delivers record,

(20:10):
label writes, bio facilitates photo shoots, and now we're getting
into the world where publicity is part of it. Where
do you tend to come in in that phase?

Speaker 3 (20:21):
You know, I think it really depends project by project,
to be honest, and the relationship that you have with
the artist. You know, there's a difference of just starting
to work with an artist versus an artist that you've
had a long relationship where you feel like you can
just interject yourself into the conversation of what's going on.
You know. I think once you're at an independent PR
firm usually and especially for dealing with an indie label

(20:43):
because there's less of a staff behind it, there's a
conversation as to like, you know, hey, what do you
think of this storyline? Or what do you think of
this angle? Or what do you think of these photos?
You know, we took one thousand photos, which five do
you think are the best ones? To go? You know,
that's all part of the conversation. You know, do we
have the one girl in the band up front or
do we have her mixed in with the guy so
it doesn't look like it's her front? To get back? Yeah,

(21:05):
so all of those conversations happen.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Would you be like in rooms with contact sheets?

Speaker 3 (21:10):
And you know, certainly back in the day, I'm sure
I haven't. In my I have way too many old
files still in the I've got a whole storage space
filled with press clippings and photos and old demos and
stuff of that nature, because I can't seem to get
rid of it.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
When we open the MLD Museum, we will acquire your collection.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
That's good to know. So I haven't quite gotten around it.
Sh I bought a shredder, but I haven't actually started treading.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
You got to save that for a special day. Shredding
a bunch of documents is one of the most fun
you can have with your clothing. That you can do
it nude.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
It's just not advised you know, I think again with
the if you're dealing with a smaller independent label, and
you might be dealing with one person at the label,
the manager, and the band all of that directly, So
there's much more hands on sculpting that goes on.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
But you know, I think to go to the simplest terms.
One of the main things I tell any artists before
they do an interview, and this sort of goes into
shaping the whole album campaign, is like one of the
three things you want people to walk away from this
interview with and then think about those things, and then
when you do an interview, when you get nervous or
you think the question is stupid, just go back to

(22:16):
one of those.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
Three things talking points.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Indeed, so as I always say, interviewers just want content
from you. They don't care if you necessarily answered your
question or not. As long as you said something interesting,
then they can use that, edit that and turn it
into a good story.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
I remember reading an interview with Tom Waits and he
would just yeah, he would just say things he would
talk about, like facts about honeybees or something. It was
completely unrelated, and I would feel so obligated as a
nervous interviewee to make sure not only did I answer
their question, but I answered it like fulsomely, intelligently, and

(22:54):
like succinctly. It felt like I was doing a job
interview every time.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Certainly, how did you come up with that band name?

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I wish I remembered all the old lies we used
to tell when we were too embarrassed to say we
got it off an internet names.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
You have to because it's just the worst world's worst question,
especially when that's not your debut single. You know, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
I mean, you're just telling people what your influences are
and how you formed for your entire career.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
The amount of interviews that I've seen go off the
rail by a poorly landed, not very well thought out question.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well do you?

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Because I know I remember reading a lot of interviews,
like I was saying online before I was in a band,
I was a huge music fan, and that the internet
was new, and you could go read like, oh my god,
here's a segar ROAs fan site that has every Cigar
Ross interview, and a lot of those interviews, in particular,
the transcript would end with like the publicist chiming in
and saying, that's our time, and it. It'd be like

(23:46):
JONZI hangs up, you know, mid sentence, because I don't
seem to recall you being on the phone for many
of the interviews I did that you facilitated. But are
there particular artists and feel free to.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Anonymize Elliott Smith. I was on every phone interview that
he did. He was a nervous interview. He didn't like
doing them, and he felt better knowing that myself, for
one of his bubble sists, was there listening in and
could interject or end things, as as the what happened
to Jonesy's interview as well well.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
So with Elliott, I really perceive I can see exactly
why he might need that, because there's the way that
people now, at least and you know in my era
as an Elliot Smith fan, engage with his music and
with him is like pretty hungrily, I might say. You know,

(24:40):
there's a lot people really want to go straight to
the point of like his mental health and his issues,
and like they want to get to some perceived truth
of how like the you know, the core of Elliott
Smith is romantically fractured and that's why the music and
blah blah blah was it like that at the time, Like,
did you have to protect him to degree from that

(25:00):
overbearing rabbit.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Definitely. I mean, obviously has gotten time as obviously romanticizes
things to a degree. But you know, he was very
wary of how press perceived him and didn't always you know,
feel that that was accurate. So he was worry about
going into interviews from the get go. So it was
always just you know, kind of getting him through the experience.

(25:25):
I was joked, I had no artist and I just
had a Microsoft word knock because that was the time
it was, and I just had this very long list
of interview requests, and people would call me and say, hey,
we really would love to interview Elliott for this. I'm
like great, I'm like, I'll add you to the list.
And I didn't say where on the list they were

(25:45):
being added. They could have been one hundred and one,
or it could have been number three. But it was
an extremely lengthy list of interviewers that almost none of
which actually got their interview set up.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
It must have been nice for a change to have
people pursuing you.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Oh, that's certainly nice, until they start to get angry
about the fact that you haven't scheduled there.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Well, you must really be the front line because there
is and even now with less and less music publications,
there's a real entitlement that you see from people to like, well,
you're making a record. You want people to listen to
the record, so you should drop everything and talk to
me for my you know, my blog that has three readers,

(26:28):
and give me an hour of your time or whatever.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
It is. Not to be too cynical about all this.
A lot of people are great.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
But you know, and you're the person who's fielding those
requests first.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of times where you
just have to be you know, always being polite, of course,
but sometimes you have to be the polite asshole. Yes,
all right, I fully understand that you want to even
you know, guestless requests. I'm like, you know, sometimes the
band's got ten spots on the guest list and fifteen
people interested in going, and you know, the reality is

(26:59):
is you're going to have to pick the people that
the band's going to get the most mileage out of
their attendance. And that's just the sad nature of the
way it goes. But you definitely have to break a
number of Hearts along the way.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
What's the hottest ticket guest list show you can remember
fielding requests for?

Speaker 3 (27:14):
I mean, it's wild because guest lists now are just
not anywhere close to what they used to be number wise.
I mean I remember Broken Social Scene shows where we
had close to one hundred people on the guest list,
and it's like insane because you know, the label had
to buy all of those tickets, right, and the label
was an independent label, so they were, you know, spending
three thousand dollars on concert tickets for this. So I

(27:38):
do remember some a journalist who I won't mention obviously,
of getting angry that they couldn't get a plus one
to the show. I said, they didn't bother showing up,
And they were the one person of let's say ninety
people who didn't bother showing up to the show that night.
So yes, the next morning they got a very irate
message from me about how they were never going to
be invited back to another show after that.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Though, have you ever become you have to I also
have to be careful because if I was like, hey, Brendan,
why isn't Tokyo Police Club on this new list? In
such and such a publication you don't want to be like, well,
it's because I'm in a feud with the editor over
a guest list slight from seven years ago.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
A few long feuds. I have one feud and journalist
who I have a feud with, but it's gotten so
long that I can't remember what we were feuding about
in the.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
First hat Fields and McCoy's.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Indeed, it is a fine balance, though obviously I can't
you know that. I then have to turn around into
my baby band that hasn't gotten any press yet, then
have to turn around and pitch the same person about
the Hey, could you write about this man nobody's heard
of yet?

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Not naming any names.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
But I remember one particular occasion where someone that I
had crossed paths with, let's say, responded in their capacity
as a music industry professional, to someone who was, you know,
writing in their capacity as a critic. And it was
like early Twitter days, when I think maybe people hadn't
quite caught onto the fact that it's like everyone can
see this and it lives there forever. But I remember

(28:59):
even then recoiling in horror at the that's just not done,
I thought, you know, to respond to critics. But have
you ever had to like tame bands who want to
call out someone that gave their record a bad review?

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Yeah, I mean nothing like no crazy stories so that
I can remember. You know, it's usually when something is
just factually incorrect. I mean, you can't control somebody not
liking your record. And you know, I feel like there's
a in the days of the most things being online
and then therefore edit to bole, like the people be

(29:35):
like can you get them to say this? And I'm like, well,
not really. I mean they're reviewing it. It's their opinion. Like,
just because you don't like it, it doesn't mean that
it's wrong or incorrect. But you know, if there's any
just factually incorrect stuff, especially you know now you can
kind of google most things, but certainly twenty years ago
when you know somebody might have just had an incorrect

(29:58):
idea of where this person came from or what they
you know, their prior life as the Grand Duke of Todi,
Like what the where did this come from? So you
know that happened and that you know, what are you
going to do? Write a correction? Which sometimes was done.
But who goes into the newspaper and reads the correction session.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, in the early days of Tokyo Police Club, Dave
edited our Wikipedia so that in the top, you know,
the first blurb you see it said that Pitchfork had
called Tokyo Police Club like the you know, the greatest,
and then it was nine words of sort of fake
genre word salad post proto new wave punk blah blah blah.

(30:40):
Since the reissue of Pavements, Wawi Zawi, which had happened
like literally that year, like just a really silly joke
that we thought was just you know, would get caught
and edited by the Wikipedia cowboys, and instead, for like
two or three years, constantly like people would ask very
straight basically like how did it? You must have been
such an ear and then they would read the quote

(31:01):
out through their mouth and somehow not in that process
catch on to the fact that it was a joke.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
So you know, there's no lies on the internet.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Well, it's now more than ever. So getting back to
the chronological run through tag Team, it says here two
thousand and one it started. I hope that speaking of there.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Being no lies on the end actually correct.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
There's also no lies on this piece of paper I
have what was the impetus to put out your shingle,
so to speak.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
I mean, you know, crazy times. I had three wonderful
years working for the Lovely Ladies who owned Girly Action Media.
But I was, you know, in the world of prs
more so than now but not necessarily true. But they're
send of like the senior publicists and the junior publicists
or the national publicist during the junior publicists. But I

(31:53):
had spent sort of the three years of Girly Action
in heading up the junior PR section of the team,
and kind of there was just a ceiling where none
of the national publics were going anywhere, so I couldn't
go anywhere. And then my friend Julie, who I had
met at TAG recordings, she was came over from another
PR from Nasty little Man. Didn't just gel but it

(32:15):
was a wildly different group of people and vibes from
Nasty little Man to Girly Action, and she just didn't
gel there herself. So she was trying to convince me
to start our own company together, which I thought was crazy.
When Juliet, Nasty little Man was required to bring in
her own projects, so she was always out fishing for

(32:35):
new stuff as the junior publicist to Girly Action that
was not part of my job, so I think I
had brought in one or two projects in the three
years that I was there. So it felt rather daunting
to start your own company that relied on money for
artists you were going to bring in when you had
not ever had the experience of going out and bringing

(32:55):
in projects. But I know that I had gotten my
year review at the time and was once again not
getting promoted, and so I just was like, well, fuck it,
let's explore this option. And then I had a very
fortuitous phone call from Daniel Kessler, which listeners would know
as the guitars for Inner Pol, But once upon a time,

(33:16):
Daniel was an NYU student who interned for me when
I was working at Beggar's Banquet, so I knew Daniel
from that. He called me up on my office phone
at Early Actions like, Hey, I'm helping Domino Records launch
a US office and I'd love to talk to you
about doing pr for the first release we're going to
put out, which was Clinic, one of my already a

(33:36):
favorite band of mine. So I said, hold on, Daniel,
let me call you right back, at which when I
took the elevator downstairs. More likely, I went down the
thirteen floors in the stairwell as I usually did, pulled
out my flip phone and called Daniel back and was said, well, funny,
you should bring this up, because I'm talking about starting
my own company with a coworker friend of mine, and

(33:59):
we started from there, great big leap. I think we
took a whole two projects from Girly Action with us,
which were Teagan and Sarah and the excellent electronic duo
on Warp Records Plaid Yeah, yeah, and otherwise. Yeah, just
a giant leap of faith. Really, did you have an
office to start off with? We did, of course, because
we were professionals. So when we got ushered out the

(34:23):
door at Girly Action earlier than we gave our two
weeks notice and we're told to leave immediately, uh huh,
we were able to walk all of our stuff over
to our new office, which was a whole three blocks away,
including my life sized cardboard cutout of Jarvis Cocker.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
From POLP is that still floating around somewhere sadly.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
I mean, he it was very different class era, so
he's like had this arm with a dangling hand out
to the side, and after years of abuse, the arm
and hand started to fall off.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
And yeah, yeah, Jarvis Cocker standy has a lot of
spindly parts. You know, it's not the strongest shape.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
It's not meant for decades. What do you.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Remember when you think about those those early days of
tag Team.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
It felt definitely pretty wild. I mean, we had a
lot of great projects very quickly. You know, we signed
on to work death Camp for Cutie. We had Teaken
and Sarah going. I mean I remember flying out to
LA to convinced taking in Sarah's label that they should
leave girly action and come with me, which felt crazy
at the time. I did think it was my only
my might have been my first ever work trip out

(35:26):
to LA.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Did you rent a convertible?

Speaker 3 (35:28):
I did? Yes? Hell, yeah, you know I got to
stick with that role. But yeah, you know, it felt like,
you know, I was twenty, I just before my twenty
seventh birthday is when we started tag Teams, So it
felt like I was doing something completely you know, half
great and half the worst decision of my entire life. Uh.

(35:49):
And then you know, it felt like things were just
getting rolling right when September eleventh happened, and a bunch
of labels were like, we're going to put a pause
on what's on these releases is and see what how
the dust settles caused a bit of a hiccup in
terms of like, you know, billing and trying to make
a living, but a brief bubble.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
It's really fascinating to me, Brendon, how much I mean
this is I suspect anyone who was there at the time,
this is a maybe a silly thing to be surprised by.
But you know, I always knew September eleventh as a
major thing that happened on the news. I was in
high school. We were in Canada. You know, it was
it was the story. It was a big deal. But

(36:29):
it was such a big deal that it's sometimes hard
for me to remember now that it like also happened
to everyone who is in New York, and a lot
of people were in New York and a lot of
the music industry, especially at that moment, which is such
an exciting moment in the music industry, that was all
in New York too, And we'd start Tokyo would go
to New York all the time and meet all these
people we worked with, and they would all have nine

(36:53):
to eleven stories, and it's so interesting to me how
it like it really affected the music industry. People were
putting really piece on pause. It changed the trajectory in
some way of like everyone's careers and journeys.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it felt cinematic for most
people who watched it on TV. I know, I watched
the entire thing from the roof of my building, Yeah,
on twenty fourth and Lexington, And then I didn't know
what to do. So I packed up my bag, I
took my dog, and I walked down to the office
because that seemed like the only logical thing. Yeah. So

(37:30):
I was walking downtown with the dog while all these
people were walking uptown covered in soot, and I was like,
very surreal. But I did have a I had a
client arriving in town that morning of September eleventh, which
was the band Clinic, and they were about to kick
off their tour, so we were supposed to do promo

(37:51):
on September eleventh and September twelfth. There was no phones
at the office, so there was literally nothing I could
do once I got to the office, and I don't
quite remember, wow. But I did end up finding and
meeting up with the Clinic guys that night at a
bar pharmacy in which you might recall on the fourteenth
Street between Avenue A and B. Oh, yeah, you had
to have a proof that you lived below fourteenth. Across

(38:14):
Fourteenth that night happened to have some light mail from
the office in my bag, so that was my ticket
to get below fourteenth straight. But I still did this
day have zero idea of how we managed to actually
meet up. But the next day, September twelfth, we did
our full day of promo. We didn't do any photo
shoots outside because clinic, you know, we're dressed in surgeons
masks and gowns and it seems not tasteful. But we

(38:38):
did the entire press day otherwise, which also seems completely bonkers.
That's like, oh, that event happened, Let's continue to do
press yep.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yep, Let's just do a junket and sort of surreally
go through all these conversations about process and artistry and
how the band.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Formed in our influences exactly.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
And yet this is not a nine to eleven podcast,
but for me, it's so tied into like Tokyo Police
Club was born out of this love we all had
for indie rock. At this moment when indie rock, as
we now understand it was sort of if not being born,
was like exploding in this new way into a different

(39:16):
part of the mainstream, and that was really centered in
a big way on New York. And you know, there
was social scene, and there was a Toronto thing in
a Montreal thing, but the center of it, the sudden,
at the center of the solar system for us certainly
was the Strokes and yeah, yeah, it's an Interpol and
all these New York bands. You know, this kind of
goes without saying. And to me, this all was happening

(39:37):
in like two thousand and one, two three four, and
here is this, to put it, mildly seismic event that
happens literally in the middle of it. When we were
in New York for the last Tokyo show, I walked
down to ground zero from the venue and was just
sort of astounded by Oh, I just walked past every
part of New York City I ever spent any time in,

(39:58):
and like right to play at pianos and we used
to hang out down like on Delancey and everything and
that's right there in the shadow of it.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
Well, I think many ways. Obviously September eleventh sort of
shaped those next couple of years, and there was a
much more like sense of like living your life to
its fullest that came out of the uh, you know,
never know what day could be your last.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yeah, because it was such a party scene. Definitely, Man,
what was it like to be there? This is like
getting to interview someone who was like in Harlem when
jazz was exploding, you know, or in Hamburg when the
Beatles were playing, Like you were fucking there?

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Man?

Speaker 2 (40:34):
What was it like?

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Funny just in the sense that you know, oh, since
I was in my older late twenties at the time,
it's like I knew, you know, I went to Plat
Bar and went to you know, all the places where
everyone was hanging out, but I felt like there were
so many other things going on that I was. I
knew what was going on. I saw all those bands
in their earliest for masons and shows, but it also

(40:57):
just felt like, because we'd lived here, it didn't feel
like that important. You know. It was like, ah, you know,
I'll see them another time somewhere else. Yeah, all get
you know, I can go see this band for the
UK or that band from out in LA. So it's
almost like the you know, why go see your local
bands when he is at the cool bands coming through
town that you want to see instead.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Is there any particular show that you passed on going
to that you kick yourself for now or that other
people think you ought to be kicking yourself for.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
Oh? There probably is. I mean I can mention the
show that for one of the bands you just mentioned,
who I walked out of their show like halfway through.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Was it just bad?

Speaker 3 (41:33):
It was at the Mercury Allowed that I got there
and like I didn't quite realize that the buzz had
gotten to where it was, and I was like, holy shit,
it's like every an R person from every major label
is in this room right now. I'm like, what the
fuck is going on? And then about three or four
songs into that, I'm like, yeah, I've seen enough too
buzzy for me.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Too buzzy. I think I understand that more now than
I did when I was, you know, even twenty seven
to twenty eight, and certainly when I was twenty.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Right in New York for the first time.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Did you feel that as that you know, because you
had been immersed in indie rock from you know, globally
long before this. You know, this moment that I just
described as the birth of indie rock, which it truly
and literally was not. But did you notice a rising
tide boat lifting situation with the acts you were working with,

(42:23):
even if they weren't like hypey new New York bands.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah? Absolutely. I mean, you know, I had the pledger
of first being friends with and then working with the
Death Gaff Aquitie guys, and I can't think of a
band that sort of exemplified the rising boat sense, you know,
as sort of as they took the production and the
songwriting to next levels with each album, it just you know,

(42:48):
crescendoed with all the other indie bands that were sort
of rising out, you know, obviously leading into things like
the OC and the big six feet under scene, you know,
on Mushrooms in the Back of the Hurst, And you know,
I think the craziest moment for that definitely was with
Death Cab in La at the Fonda Theater. And you know,

(43:11):
I had Adam Brody from the OC was coming out
early to interview the band for seventeen magazine and so
Adam's publicist gave me his phone number and said, you know,
Adam's going to call you when he's outside the venue,
and I went to let him in. He did the interview,
and then the rest of the cast, all the teenagers
were all on the guest list, so just making sure

(43:33):
that everyone got in. I was like, all right, well,
this feels like a Bonker's as shit moment. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Well, it's so funny. How like the intersection of like
band World with acting worlds. Everyone is so starstruck by
each other, you know, because acting world people are like
actually famous, you know, Adam Brody and Ben McKenzie and
Misha at the time were like quite a lot more
well known than Ben Gibbert and Chris and the gang. Yeah,

(44:00):
they were probably just as stoked to be coming to
this show, and they were probably very great. I hope
they were grateful and appreciative to you.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
They were all very lovely.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yes, damn straight, you heard it here first on major
label debut Celebs.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
They're just like, I still a ready phone number in
my phone if we need to get them to chime
in at any point.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
If Lauren Conrad from the Hills still uses her BlackBerry
email address I haven't memorized from when she came to
one of our shows and we didn't get to meet her,
but she was there, they told us, or at least
she was on the guest list.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
See, I mean, I think the thing death cap and then,
you know, as far as my own working experiences, is
just that explosion of Feis when I was working with her,
from Sesame Street to Apple commercials, which obviously led to
the Sesame Street to hosting York to performing on Saturday
Night Live.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
Was that my perception of that which I watched all
that very interestedly, both as like a new music industry
insider but also a longtime Feist fan. Was it just
the iPod commercial, Like, obviously the the record's great, the
song's great, But it looked to me like, here's the
second Fist record. It's cool, people like it. Oh shit,
it's the biggest thing in America, right, I mean.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Yeah, there was a lot of steps obviously that led
to that, and you know, since this is major label debut,
I think probably my favorite major label story as far
as my work experiences, it was just that, you know,
Feist was obviously a never broken social scene, so I
had met her briefly vaguely through that, but her album
Let It Die had come out in Canada and come
out in Europe, but it was not out in the US,

(45:32):
and it was the property of Interscope in the US.
So I figured out who at Interscope was technically in
charge of the record and found out that he was
going to be in town for a sort of like
semi secret small show by that uk ban Keene. Oh yeah,
And I'm like, all right, I'm going to go to
this show. I'm going to speak with him, and I'm

(45:53):
going to say, figure out what's going on with the
Feist record in the US. So I met him, brought
it up. Is like, I have no idea who you're
talking about or what this album is. So I was like, ah, okay,
so this is going to be a challenge. So I
was like, all right, well, somehow we need to put
this on Interscope's radar. So I ended up pitching a
story on Fist to The Fader magazine back when it

(46:15):
was a print publication, and they loved it. They did
a big eight page spread on Feist in it. I
was like, this is beautiful. It came out. I made
sure they shipped copies to the gentleman at Interscope and
was like, here we are, this is the artist is
ready to go. Crickets nothing. So I actually went to

(46:36):
Montreal to meet up with Feist, who was on tour
in Canada. Before setting up that Fader interview, I never
had a conversation with her about her wanting to me
to be her publicist. I just did it on my
own volition. So I went up to actually have a
conversation with her in Montreal to so I to strategize.
They're like, yeah, let's keep moving forward. So I did
another round of outreach and we got a feature story

(46:57):
in Vogue, which I think is still the only people
story on enough music artist I've ever gotten in Vogue
and Entertainment Weekly. And then before those came out, I
just said, sent a note to the Interoscope face and
like this is all running March April, and they're like, oh, yep,
album's coming up. So went straight into full on gear.
I know it was too late to get Feist as

(47:20):
an artist at south By, but we like, let's just
get her some day parties there. Yeah, she got booked
some West Coast dates with Kings of Convenience who she
was friends with, and then I asked one of my
clients at the time, Hey, you've got dates going from
south By East to New York, would you mind taking
out this artist as you're opening act And they were like, yeah,
love it, let's do it. She did that whole clean sweep,

(47:40):
and by the time we got to New York things
that were blowing up next level. But it was very funny,
just the like obliviousness. I'm not that Interscope doesn't have
five thousand artists, but they obviously had just the lack
of understanding that they had this record, they had this artist.
They were just like, I don't know, we've got another
one hundred artists that we're thinking about.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, this is just you were talking about your Microsoft
word lest earlier and they're like, this is like number
one hundred and three on our Microsoft flat list.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
And the best part is, like when I was trying
to get our contract together finally for as the independent publicist,
They're like, just reach out to the head of publicity
and Interscope and sort out your contract. I'm like, great,
Like this is his name, this is his email. So
I sent him an email. I'm like, hey, we're going
to be working the Feis record. Just need to sort
out of contract with you. No response, checked in again,
no response, checked in again, no response And then the

(48:29):
final leg I got a response from their assistant, who
I did not whose email I did not have, but
they said all it said was what do you want? I,
as you can see from my email below, we're working
this album for you guys. I need to sort out
a copy.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
My ambition in life is now to have an assistant
and their sole task is to email anyone who emails
me what do you want?

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Very very straightforward.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Well that's maybe a perfect example, because I want to
ask about you know, your your experience of the changing
music industry landscape, shall we say, And that seems like
a really good example where ten years before that you
might have got on the phone, like you were talking about,
you had to call all of these record stores and
you would talk to these people. And in a sense,

(49:16):
it's easier to ignore a phone call because you don't
pick up the phone, but it keeps ringing, and it's
usually just easier to pick the damn thing up.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
And get it over with.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
Is it harder to like get a hold of people
and get work done now that everything happens on email
than it was when when everything happened on the phone,
even though the phone seems like such a more cumbersome
way to do it.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
Oh one thousand percent. I mean, it's just it was
so much easier to, like I said, most people because
they also didn't know who was calling them at the time.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
That's true. It might be Trent Resnor. We got to
pick it up.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
It could be Trent Wrestler, So you picked up the
fucking phone just in case. And you know, usually you
got The nice thing is you usually got a quick
answer from people like no, I'm not interested in this,
or my one favorite from the editor of A turn
the press at the time is who said, I'd rather
shit a brick. That's right about the man, So I

(50:06):
put that in the report. The labor really wanted alternate
into press for the band. I'm like, not happening. Editor
really does not like the band. Yeah, and then the
nice part, like so many of my good friends are
mostly former music journalists because we talked on the phone
every week. So it's simpainly much harder to build any

(50:28):
relationship over email until you have that face to face opportunity.
But I said, I think part of it is just
that there's way more shows now than there ever used
to be, And part is I don't think that young
people go out to as many shows. But maybe I'm
making that up because I'm not a young person, or
they're desperately trying to ignore me. But I do think
there's a bit more of a combative relationship between journalists

(50:50):
and publicist these days, or an imagined one. Back in
the day, it seemed more like we were all in
it together, like your job sucks, my job sucks, but
we have music in common. Let's go out and grab atorry.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah, we're both in these low paying, shitty jobs because
we love music and we want to celebrate it or
at least immerse ourselves in it, and so we have
that in common, which is yeah, I know that feeling too,
and it's I feel like it was maybe already less
common when I came into the industry than it had been,
but that sense of just like we're all in this together,

(51:23):
from the label guy, the agent, the publicists, the every
you know, the whole team.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
So to speak.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Maybe not always the lawyer, but even the lawyer got
into it at some point because they love music. They
just seem to have so much more money in such
nicer office. It was hard to get a hold of
the lawyer.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
I mean that knows the mend lawyers who are still
in it to win it.

Speaker 1 (51:39):
Hell yeah, no disrespect to the lawyers out there. Major
label debut supports you. You know what do you call
ten lawyers driving off a cliff in a car? A
bad thing to happen. That's how we tell the joke
here at MLD. We we love our lawyers. Please sponsor
us any ambulance chasers, bloodsucking parasites.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
We are open.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
You love the spot, So yeah, let's get that beyond.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
That's the key.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah, just like really cheap local ads on a podcast
never fails. As things have shifted, it seems clear to
me that the big, big difference between thirty years ago,
twenty years ago, fifteen years ago and now is simply
that there's way way less publications that write about music.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Is that fair to say?

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yes? Absolutely, I mean that's a dying media landscape certainly.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
And many of the ones that exist seem like, you
know almost I remember you used to make a joke.
We would always talk in Tokyo about like who's going
to premiere the song? There was a period of time
when what website. If you get a premiere on Pitchfork,
it's going to get so many eyes on it. And
if it's a cool band, Pitchfork might do it because
it'll be the only place. But it got so it
became such like a game. I remember you joking about

(52:52):
starting a website called like musicpremieres dot com.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Yes, I'm still I still a meant that I never
launched musicpremire dot com, the tagline being don't worry, will
premiere it?

Speaker 1 (53:04):
That would be my homepage. Maybe it's not too late.
I mean, it must bug you even more than it
bugs me as a musician, because I'm sure you hear
people griping about this stuff all the time, like it's
your fault. I remember on the last we just did
a big publicity campaign together for the death of Tokyo
Police Club and the final tour and the final two

(53:25):
songs we released like a final single, which we really
thought once again it was like one last getting our
hopes up for Tokyo Police Club. We really thought that,
like this song is so good and it's our last single,
people are gonna go gaga for it, and then you'd
get your you know, your weekly press updates back, and
some of the stuff that you would get included in

(53:46):
was hilarious, and you'd be like, this website's like top
fifty songs of the afternoon, not of the week, not
even of the day, just of like, in the last
few hours since you came to our website, here's fifty
more songs. I got emailed by a publiciser. So the
bio becomes more important than ever.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Because people are just copy and pasting it.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Oh absolutely, I mean, your bio, your press release are
going to get carbon copied. Plus side of which is
that you can basically tell people what you want them
to say.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
You have a lot of control over what the story
is for all the eyes that will behold it. What's
the like Obviously the hard part is getting anyone to
give a shit, but like, what are what's the strategy
for standing out amongst all that noise and forgetting the
publications to care in a way that's more than just
like sure, we'll add that to our like content swill.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
Shoot, yeah, I mean, ultimately your best thing is to
have some you know, what are our five to ten
big targets and how are we to find a reason
for them to write about that? And that's not easy,
Like some of those storylines and you can't fake them.
They're like, you know, sometimes a band has a good storyline.

(54:56):
A lot of the times they don't. You know, it's like,
not everybody he has some wild story where they were
twins separated at birth and then met in college and
formed a band together. It's like, great, but you couldn't
have planned That's but you know, it's literally I feel
half the time as we're trying to figure out what
do you So, what else do you like to do
other than music? Yeah? Are you? Are you into sculpting? Like?

(55:20):
What are the things we can pitch you to that
are outside the music realm? Right? I mean? The sad
reality is just that most music fans don't necessarily know
how to find new music. Yeah, they don't know where
to go anymore. They just you know, they get stuck
in there whatever algorithm that Apple Music or Spotify or
whomever it is has put them in and nothing goes

(55:41):
beyond that.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
What's your position on lying for publicity, assuming that it's
a harmless lie, or you know, who is that band
that did like a fake sex tape leak. Do you
remember that?

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Absolutely? Yeah, I mean in the sense that was brilliant,
but it had a lot of backlash that came with it.
So yeah, be careful of what you lie about. Yeah,
it would be my most advice. And I think it's
so hard to you know, unless you're the President of
the United States, it's really hard to get away with
lying these days.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
I feel like bands and artists in general have never
been more forthright and earnest. And a lot of the
conversation about music seems to be very biographical now, And
unless I'm really getting hoodwinked, I don't see a lot
of you know, fabrication or fabulism now. Even Jack White's
barely lying anymore. That guy was the king for a while.

Speaker 3 (56:32):
I mean, you know, but now it's more about mental
health than the dealing with your daily stresses and good
old fashioned clean living.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
I wonder about this because I see, you know, when
music comes out, often it will be accompanied the big
records will be accompanied by feature pieces that you know,
we were talking about, like what story do you want
to tell?

Speaker 2 (56:50):
What is the hook?

Speaker 1 (56:51):
The hook? All the time seems to be like here's
how this person was or is miserable and suffering and
dealing with which I guess has always been. You know,
we talked about Elliott Smith and that was part of
that story.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
It used to be like, this is how this person
is suffering and continues to suffer in their music, and
now it's more like this, this is how they were
suffering and how they've gotten better.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
They've always got it figured out. And then you'll you'll
four records in You're like, that's a lot of epiphanies
for one person to have. But I worry, I genuinely think,
like it's if you're coming up, if you're sixteen and
you're in love with music and you're trying to become
a musician. The stories that you must start to tell
yourself and the you know, you're incentivized to have bad
mental health.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Almost so that you can overcome it for these stories.
I don't know if that's well.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
You know, I think social media is taken care of
the bad mental health part, and then that's true.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
You don't have to try that hard, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
There's plenty of things to be described about in twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Have you ever found yourself at odds with an artist
you're working with on like how the story is being
told or how it's being communicated.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Sure, you know, I think overall I've had overwhelmingly good
experiences with the artists that I work with. I think
generally artists understandably rarely have an understanding of what publicity
is or how it functions, or the processes involved of
getting from point A to point B to point H

(58:15):
and M and L. And you know, I wouldn't say
artists are necessarily known for their patients. I think most
of the frustrations tend to be of the nature of, like,
why isn't this happening faster? And why do you want
to focus on this? And I'm like, well, these are
the things that people will be interested in. And you know,
there are artists who generally think that the only thing
that to be spoken about is the music, and I'm like,

(58:37):
good luck, you're right, yes, you're thirty years too late
on that storyline. So, you know, I think any of
those confrontations are literally just based on not understanding how
PR works.

Speaker 1 (58:49):
What do people get wrong? Most often?

Speaker 3 (58:52):
I mean, most people don't seem to have an understanding
of what PR is. Even people who have worked in
the music industry for twenty thirty years seem to often
have not a good understanding of what PR is and
how it works, or or they think it's social media.
So we definitely get a lot of people applying for
jobs who, you know, there's a PR opening and they're like, oh,

(59:15):
I've been doing social media marketing for the past, and like, well, yes,
that's you know, I know that PR in the coming
years will probably die and they'll only be social media marketing,
but in the meantime, still have an understanding of what
PR is.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Well, I was going to ask, where you feel the
wind is blowing? That's a pretty clear and bleak answer
for your line of work, Brendan, Is that really Is
that really your prediction?

Speaker 3 (59:38):
I mean I think so. I mean the modern day,
you know, the majority of people don't spend much time
reading these days, so social media is where storytelling is happening,
and it's obviously in smaller snippets and in a visual format,
but I think that's mostly you know, I think that
there will obviously be certain publications that manage to keep

(01:00:01):
going and you know, keep having interest in long format conversations,
but I think that's number is going to continue to dwindle.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
So from a guy who's not twenty one anymore to
another guy who's not twenty one anymore. Do you immerse
yourself in the social media world to any degree? Do
you feel obligated for your job to learn TikTok or
do you feel like that's better handled by more contemporary hands.

Speaker 3 (01:00:27):
I mean, you know, there are some we certainly pitch
social media platforms that are doing short form interviews with artists,
and you know, I think I think, more than anything,
I think that social media departments and PR departments will
merge in the coming years. Yeah, that's ultimately what's going
to happen. You'll probably have some old foggie publicist like

(01:00:47):
myself who's handling like the TV bookings and nprs in
New York Times, while the younger folks are dealing with
the latest star on TikTok who's doing interviews with artists
coming through town, which is great.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Yeah, there's like you never seen musicians on hot ones.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
And yeah, I mean you can do a lot of
they'll do social media takeovers for hot ones.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
What do you just eat chicken wings by yourself? I'm
just just hear Duff's Wings on College Street in Toronto,
enjoying some hot wings alone.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Just a lonely artist eating wings.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
Please go to music premieres dot com to hear my
new single. Don't worry they premiered it something. Yes, I
don't want to take up too much more of your time,
but I have not hardly at all asked you about
working with Tokyo Police Club, other than we talked about
the very very early days, our first interview that we
did at least in the same physical space. As I

(01:01:45):
said in my amazing intro, which I banged off in
one take with no problems or no edits, I'm available
for hire. You worked with us over our entire career.
We briefly you mentioned Nasty Little Man earlier. That was
the one other publicity company we worked with, and then
we found our way back to Brendan Burke and stay.

(01:02:06):
I think stayed with you from then through the literal
bitter end, because you were there.

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
There was one other blip in the not working together.
But what over the course of eighteen years had a
lot of good highs and lows, and that first Letterman
taping obviously being an extremely high one. I don't know
if any band since has gotten a Letterman performance out
of sixteen minutes of.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
Music featuring the band performing on the last ten seconds
of our two minute song. Maybe that's why they had
us on it was they could let an.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Interview go a little over because I'm so sure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Yeah, remember doing the Nylon photo shoot on the West
side of Manhattan, not from Rich Cohen's apartment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Yes, I think those photos still really live around the
web if you're using the Google image search.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Absolutely it's been cut and pasted onto a piece of paper.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
I was going to say, what was your approach to
working with Tokyo, especially in the early days. I'm not
sure if that's quite what I mean, but like, how
did you how did you see the band, and how
did you see what was the story? What was the
story of Tokyo Police Club in two thousand and seven.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
You guys were so young at the time, so it
all and you know, obviously the music was high energy.
It all felt very fresh and new and exciting and
I and that just really leaned into that, and the
music spoke for itself and just you know, it was
short blasts of infectious songs. So it was literally just

(01:03:32):
the matter with that first Tokyo EP of just getting
the name out there and getting name recognition and getting
people out to see you guys. And you know that
worked that EP for almost close to two years. Again,
for sixteen minutes of music is insane to think about,
but it was literally just introducing, introducing introducing, because that

(01:03:54):
takes time as well. Usually put out the you know,
the first album is about recognition, the second album is
about getting half the people on board, and then the
next album is about getting all those people who missed
the boat to then get onto the boat. Even if
you've made a weaker record.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
That is a very is it like the first three
records are kind of where you build the foundation. I mean,
I guess you could start anywhere as a first record
and then you'd be like, oh, well, this band's fourth
record was the first one. Like the National feels like
they did that. Sure, Alligator Boxer High Violet did exactly
the thing you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:04:28):
That's exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know there's always the
band or the artist that gets that lucky break and
has this insane amount of buzz by single number two,
although they're usually from the UK.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Yeah, is it just my perception or Is it a
better landscape over there for like indie rock guitar rock bands.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Yeah, oh no, it's not your perception. It's it is
absolutely true. There's more music media in the UK still
for a much smaller market. Yeah, there's optical magazines. Yeah,
and they love their guitars still, they still love them.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
They still got like seven BBC's going, there's a couple
of those must still play guitar music.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Indeed, I got to get back to the UK. Man.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
It's got to reinvent yourself as a British some scallywag
who popped up in East London.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Just doing a really broad accent, the perfect lying this
is the new pr Yeah, you'd be like, this guy
just came out of like that movie where Seth Brogen
came out of the pickle vat. We just unearthed this musician,
this indie rock musician from nineteen oh six.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
It's been time sealed in a vat of pickle juice.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
I think we're onto something here, Brendan Burke, I know
you know that we end every episode of Major Label
Debut with the most important question. We have to modify
it slightly for our guests who were not literally in
the studio making a major label debut. So I will ask,
in the early days of Tag Team, which just sounds
I loved how you talked about that. I loved just

(01:05:51):
imagining being in that office, starting something new, getting on
the phone in that moment. What were you eating to
fuel those those early heady days.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
Well, the scary thing is I eat the same thing
for lunch every day that I did in the late nineties,
which is which is an un Turkey sandwich.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
An un turkey You could get an un Turkey sandwich
in the late.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
Nineties, indeed in New York City, only in New York.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):
I would say, if I was known for anything in
the late nineties early two thousands food wise, there was
a vegetarian jerkey called Jerk with like a hillbilly looking
dude on the cover. I think was j E r
q U E. E always had that around, and then
I always had deliveries of Bob Texas Jallapanio chips, which

(01:06:34):
were legendary.

Speaker 1 (01:06:35):
And it seems to me we were talking about how
a lot of things about both of our jobs, about
the music industry and the music press and everything has
maybe not changed for the better in the past three decades.
Is it true, though, that vegetarian eating, especially well out
and about outside of New York and LA, has really

(01:06:55):
improved drastically over that same time period.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
I would imagine life on the road as a vegetarian
or vegan musician has gotten one hundred times easier than
it certainly was twenty eight years ago. You know, when
your only option was going to the subway. Yep, yeah,
I'm getting a lettuce to maypetting the extremely sad salad
from McDonald's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
They discontinued that it was too depressing to go on.
Exactly well, this conversation in our twenty years of work
together in counting was the opposite of depressing.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
It was the opposite of bleak.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
And let me take this opportunity to formally say thank you,
not just for all of the great pr work you
did for us. Thank you not just for coming to
every farewell Tokyo Police Club show, for being like part
of our family this whole time, not just a coworker
and friend, but thank you, most importantly for one of

(01:07:48):
the most important beers and memorable beers I ever drank
in my life, that warm trunk to Cattail.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
I didn't do anything else. You are most welcome for
that beer, but no, it has always been a great
pleasure working with you guys and talking with you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Brendan Burke, publicity master, music lover and like ally on
the side of.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Good and light.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
We salute you, Thank you for this podcast. Great being
out of the podcast, my friend, my colleague, the wonderful
Brendan Burke. You know, it's easy and fun to talk
shit about the music business and the people who work
in it, But truthfully, I must tell you that one

(01:08:30):
of my favorite parts of my whole life doing music
was getting to know all these people who have been
part of like the indie rock infrastructure that I have
loved so much and that has changed my life so much.
I've known Brendan for like twenty years now, and every
time we hang out, I still hear some new, amazing
story that leaves me marveling, just like, how do I

(01:08:51):
get to sit here in this bar with this man
who's been in all these rooms that I spent my
life dreaming of being in. It's such a wonderful privilege
and pleasure for me, And hopefully you got a sense
of that in our conversation. Yeah, when Tokyo Police Club
shut her down. Brendan came out to more shows than
I think just about anyone who's not married to one

(01:09:11):
of us. He's worked with, and he works with so
many hugely cool and important bands. But he still made
me and Tokyo Police Club feel like we were a
big deal, and that really meant a lot to me,
and it meant a lot to the band, and maybe
it meant a lot to Brendan as well, and that
really warms my heart good. So I'm really glad to

(01:09:32):
have found a new way to hang out with mister
Brendan Burke. And I sent him a text to say
what's he promoting right now so that I can signal
boost it, give it the coveted major label debut bump.
And he mentioned Bodega, who we actually went to see
together last year and who are amazing big special dead
Tooth Nancy Adram Autohart, Weakened Friends, and also Taco Bells

(01:09:54):
feed the Beat Music program, which at least when I
was part of it, they would just like give bands
a lot of Taco bell gift Cus cards, and I
got to say, pretty good stuff, especially.

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
When you're on the road.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
So shout outs to Taco Bell as well, free advertising
on MLD.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
Just this once, Just this once because it's friendon.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
But that's it for the show today. Major Label Debut
is produced by John Paul Bullock and Josh Hook. Our
music is by Greg Alsop. Since this is a publicity
themed episode, I would really be remiss if I didn't
ask you to spread the word about our show if
you know anybody who would like it, or anybody who
likes tacos and wants to hear me talk about them.
This is a taco themed outro. Now this sometimes it
just goes that way, you know, the drill, like subscribe, follow,

(01:10:34):
drop us a line we love to hear from people.
I would love to be able to respond to people
on this show more if that's of interest, because I
don't know, I got to talk about something. Thank you
so much for listening. It was such a pleasure. Thanks
again to Brendan Burke for hanging out and for everything
he's done for me, which would take a whole podcast
to talk about any of itself. Major Label Debut will
be back with more tales from the intersection of art

(01:10:56):
and commerce and tacos.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Stay cool, Everybody seven