MUSIC WORTH PULLING FOR

Music Worth Pulling For 09/04I recently sat down with Sean Kelly, lead-singer, lead-guitarist,and lone original member of The Samples. Kelly has been generating authentic music for an ever-evolving, fiercely loyal fan base from the late eighties to the present day. Kelly has consistently produced outstanding albums of original material: blending reggae, folk and rock. He has done this without receiving the acknowledgement of music critics (where the hell are you?) or the music industry in general. The fact he doesn’t routinely generate astoundingly large crowds at each concert is irrefutable evidence that once corporations deem an artist to be disobedient, a forced exile will follow regardless of talent. What Samples fans lack in numbers they make up for in passion and resilience. Following the devastation of September 11th, The Samples were forced to cancel their tour, but Sean still had to pay the crew, as well as the numerous other ancillary fees required of a band conducting a nationwide tour. Sean Kelly found himself and his band financially crippled. In one of the most amazing stories you’ve never heard, Sean reached out through the band’s website and implored fans to order “Lifetime Passes” for varying amounts of money. The pass itself was meant to resemble a typical backstage pass, it was laminated and dangled from a long black tether. Sean simply suggested his fans ask themselves what The Samples music was worth to them and to then give accordingly. The purchase of a Lifetime Pass entitled the fan to nothing tangible, no backstage access to future performances, no t-shirts or signed posters – but the fans didn’t care. They knew what they were really buying: more years of Sean Kelly producing the emotional nourishment they’d come to depend on through his music over the past two decades. The Samples ever loyal fans came through, the passes moved briskly, and the band was soon on their feet again, and back to the business of recording and performing. Sean Kelly’s career proves that one doesn’t need to compromise their ideals to have a career in music, and that artistic integrity is its own reward. DW: To start out: on your DVD [in a clip filmed] during 1989 you said that you thought “record companies and bands should have the same relationship as tenants and land lords. a band can’t get to where it wants to go without a record company and a record company can’t be a record company without bands.” Has that kind of been your philosophy? SK: That’s kind of my philosophy with everything, because the world we live in; one hand washes the other, if it’s done correctly. So, that was certainly my attitude then and I still stick to it. DW: I was curious whether, at this point in your career, if you’d look back on that as a naïve statement, but you’re not. You’re actually saying that that’s still what you’re all about. SK: No, it’s probably been more refined, and is much clearer now for me to describe than it was then. DW: Okay, now with the “Blue Album” (fan vernacular for The Samples first album, entitled The Samples) I never realized it was released on Arista. SK: Yeah DW: And how was that relationship? Obviously it ended prematurely. SK: You know, at first it was interesting, because it was the first time we’d been approached by a major record company or maybe the second time. The ending came when we were making the next album, No Room, and we submitted demos, and we submitted the song “Did You Ever Look So Nice” and they wanted to change the song all around, and we allowed them to do that, and I heard the song after, and I felt it was unacceptable. So [Arista Records] said “either, you take the version we made or you’re going to be dropped,” and I said “then we’re going to have to be dropped.” Kind of a bummer as far as the compromise, but that’s a typical record company. DW: You also were signed by Columbia? SK: No, MCA. DW: And that was “Outpost?” SK: Yeah, it was “Outpost.” DW: And there you faced the same types of problems? SK: It was very similar, we were having problems making a video and also the entire company had just been bought out by Seagrams in the middle of the process of recording the album. We had a bunch of new people coming in that weren’t interested in The Samples. DW: So all of your advocates were vacated and they brought in new People? Okay. SK: Yeah, yeah. DW: Okay, now I have a theory, and correct me if I’m wrong but in terms of in Rolling Stone, I’ve noticed you’ve taken out ads [promoting album releases], because they won’t review your albums. SK: Yeah, they won’t do anything. They won’t acknowledge our existence at all. DW: Do you think there’s a conspiracy because of the tumultuous experiences you’ve had working with major record labels in the past. I mean is it that tight-knit of… SK: I definitely think it’s that tight-knit of an organization, but I don’t think our story was anywhere near as tumultuous as half the bands out there, what they go through and the disasters that accrue; I think ours was ridiculously tiny. So, I can’t really speak for why they did that, I feel in my gut that a band like The Samples is a threat to the industry because we can do it on our own and the industry would like to portray something quite opposite to that. So, a band that’s doing something on their own leaves ‘em with a lot of questions, leaves people with a lot of questions, about how that can be done. Because they’d like to make it near impossible. But, without their help, we still have an amazing audience, incredible fan base, but it is definitely a very tight-knit industry. DW: So, it’s when you get shut out of the mainstream, you get shut out of all different forms of media [My theory alluded to earlier]. SK: Oh sure. Definitely. I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t know what’s going on behind closed doors or how we’re described. But, I can’t imagine that anything that came up, discussing videos and all that, had any real impact. It’s just that we were integras, we had integrity. I mean, look at this Simpson girl… DW: I know. Ashlee. That was great. SK: It just shows you so much of what this stupid business is about, and it’s just like the lowest common denominator is, like, pushed on people; I mean it’s embarrassing. DW: I totally agree with you. MTV can be an evil force, I mean like, for brainwashing kids with these marginally-talented bands or whatever. They seemingly are selected by someone in a position of power who sees them as marketable and that’s all the consideration the music is given. SK: You’ve got to do what they say, and so you get people with no integrity. With that girl, I don’t get MTV or anything; I don’t watch it at all or anything. But I saw a bit of the Saturday Night Live clip and even the girl lied and said her band messed up. It’s just so embarrassing. DW: And, don’t forget, she also lost her voice. SK: Yeah, sure. DW: (laughter) DW: Have you ever considered selling your lyrics or your songs? SK: Sell them to who? DW: Well, I don’t know, to like, well, that’s a good question because I guess you’d have to be solicited first. SK: Well, if somebody wanted to use a tune, they could have used “Carry On” for the Kerry campaign. DW: Yeah. SK: I don’t really promote politics, but I can’t really think of … People borrow ‘em all the time for movie soundtracks and I always let them use them… DW: Really? SK: Yeah, it comes in bits and pieces. I don’t think I’d give away the songs, they’re going with me. DW: You’re comfortable with where the band is? Well, you I mean. You essentially are The Samples. SK: Yeah, I mean, we’re comfortable in one sense: artistically, and all the things I made my investments into as far as the artistic aspects. Monetarily, I’m definitely not comfortable, it’s very frustrating to tour the way we do. We’re an endangered species. I’ve had to constantly question walking away from it all, because, you know, I don’t want to drag it. If it becomes a drag, I’m not interested in it. But, I always look at people like The Grateful Dead and Neil Young - that are my heroes- for sticking with what they did and doing it their own way, seemingly without a monetary force driving them. That’s for sure. DW: I remember a quote from you saying that the first time you hear a song on the radio you don’t even like it, I’m paraphrasing here, but after the thousandth time it becomes successfully drilled into your head. SK: What they do is, they [music industry] cater to a reactive audience, not a proactive one. There’s a total sequence of events that happens in that pounding-into-your-brain-thing. It’s a formula, and if you listen to any song on the radio within fifteen to twenty seconds it has to go into a chorus, and it has to go into a middle break down, “middle eight,” they call it, it’s just completely fabricated formulas. And then if it’s played enough, people will hear it and start singing it in their head, and what they think is, since their singing it in their head it becomes familiar, and then it becomes something like “I’ve got to buy that” regardless of how manufactured it is, or produced. There are so many tricks you can do in the studio it’s unbelievable. DW: Really. So there’s an actual psychology behind it? SK: Oh, absolutely. Go get a stopwatch, listen to the radio from Dave Matthews to whoever and it’ll go directly into a chorus at exactly the right times. It’s a formula, and it’s so horrible – so few times you hear something any good, but it just drills it. All the radio stations are owned by Clear Channel, so they own everything. DW: Yeah, I know. I worked in the radio industry for a bit. SK: Did you? DW: Yeah. DW: I’m curious, because I’ve thought I was crazy for a couple of years, but was your song “Taking Us Home” on a Disney commercial? SK: It was, yeah, that was done out of my control, I didn’t mind that they did it. It was really cool. An ex-record company, W.A.R records… DW: Yeah, who owns, what, your first three [albums] … SK: Yeah, they own three or four. DW: I forgot “Underwater People.” SK: Yeah, and um, normally what happens is people will come to the artist to see if they want to do a deal like that. They apparently went straight to W.A.R Records, and apparently W.A.R Records did not steer them to us and did the deal without our knowledge and wound up paying themselves back for fictitious debts that The Samples had “accrued.” We ended up getting maybe a couple thousand dollars or six-thousand dollars at the time, which is nothing. We spend that in two days on the road. It’s about twenty-five-hundred-bucks just to be in the bus, on the road, for one day. We have to tour so much just to pay for it, and to not have any tour support or anything coming in, it’s real difficult. But, yeah, they did that deal in a real sneaky way, as they’ve done with a lot of deals. DW: When you signed the contracts with these companies, when you were younger, I mean you seem like a pretty analytical guy, weren’t you hesitant? SK: Yeah, we were hesitant, but there’s only so much you can do when people are blatantly lying to your face. We had managers that were involved who were just as sneaky. They were making deals to benefit themselves and not The Samples what-so-ever. We paid for every one of those albums, the whole thing [their catalog owned by W.A.R.], and still we don’t own them; and that’s as unethical as anything can ever be. We should have complete ownership and control over those albums – that’s just the way it works. They made deals and [The Samples] being naïve mixed with idealistic. Hoping people are operating on the same … DW: Moral plane? SK: Moral plane, yeah, that wasn’t the case, and that’s rarely the case in a lot of business. DW: How do see your future in music developing? SK: I don’t know. DW: You’re at a crossroads, it seems. SK: I’m always at a crossroads. I’m so used to being challenged with ‘what do we do?’ ‘Why am I doing it?’ It always comes down to the fans. We also do it because we enjoy playing and being in control of our own destinies to the best of our abilities, and to align ourselves with people who are going to be part of the solution and not the problem. It’s out of some story or some fairy tale or something, but after so many knocks you kind of go numb and you do it because it’s what you do best, what you know, and as long as somebody gets it somewhere that’s the most I could ask for. Big dreams of being financially secure through this job, that’s vanished a long time ago. I’m not pessimistic, but I’m just being more realistic, with optimism and faith. Because you own that, that’s something, you can sleep at night knowing you did things right, but then some miracle happens, but you just can’t plan on it. What the business does is it creates miracles with smoke and mirrors. In five years the biggest band that’s happening will be suing all of their business associates and they’ll find out they’ve been ripped off and they’ll just disappear. They can’t maintain their careers any longer, it’s unbelievable. You have to have such a tight-knit circle around you to operate through, nothing really positive has come out of the industry side of music. I think that we’re threatening to people [in the music industry], not to our fans, we’re like the Red Sox right now [this interview was conducted before they won the World Series] or something. You just want them to win because, it’s, fucking, you just keep going back to the drawing board and you don’t give up. And continue, knowing you’re going to succeed, that’s what drives us. DW: I think that’s a rare quality that you bring out in your fans. I printed off your “We’ve Got Mail” [fan mail section of their website, www.TheSamples.com] it seems like people believe in your music and they believe in what you’re doing; as opposed to just thinking “Those guys rock” and being done with it. Now, maybe I’m talking about your core fans, die-hards or whatever, but a lot of bands don’t inspire that emotion. SK: Yeah. DW: They’re all like “please don’t stop” and other similar sentiments. SK: I think we represent the same things that we all believe in at a gut-level and that is that faith does exist, and the belief in working hard for the right reasons. There should be an outcome. I think our lack of positive outcomes reflects on some of the worst aspects of the human race. DW: Greed? SK: Greed! I’ve given up my whole everything for doing what we do musically and the only thing that we get back are those letters and the people that show up at our concerts that get it … DW: And the college girls! SK: Of course! Yeah, well, we give up our personal lives. The audience becomes our lovers, they become our mothers, and they become our brothers, our sisters and our fathers. They become all of those things because we don’t have those in real life. DW: That’s interesting… SK: We all have needs and desires. But when you’ve given every single thing to your passion, you know, it’s only natural that the whole thing becomes all encompassing and replaces all of those things that we’ve sacrificed. DW: It’s like your own surrogate world. SK: It is! It is! I can’t remember the last time I didn’t really worry if my rent was going to be paid. DW: I think people see you up on stage, creating this music that they’ve known for years and are utterly familiar with, and they confuse that with wealth. SK: Oh, I think at times they do. DW: Yeah? SK: Yeah. I had my own brother, one time, several years ago, was like “Man are you rich?” It was very interesting to have him ask me that question. We’re very private too. I was like “No, Jesus, you think that?” I had to explain it to him. DW: Not to sound overly idealistic, but there are different forms of wealth. SK: We’re the richest people on earth with our souls and spirits, I definitely feel like that about myself. Artists aren’t usually known for a long time after and… DW: Do you…sorry didn’t mean to cut you off. SK: No, that’s okay. DW: Do people, managers, still approach you now? Are you interested in being managed right now? The reason I ask is because as I understand it, you’re the manager right now? SK: Yeah, myself and Tom Askin, who just removed himself for personal reasons at home. Yeah, we solely run it. But we’ve had big management companies, small management [companies], so many managers and it’s always just, they’re playing by the same rules as the industry. We don’t have someone that guards The Samples interests jealously. I think our audience, our audience collectively, is our management. That’s really what it is. DW: Yeah? SK: We’re managed. DW: Over the years you’ve had several different line-ups behind you as The Samples. They all seemed to have just given up. I mean, you seem like a really optimistic guy, which is great because that’s why The Samples are still going. SK: I draw from the strength of people and that’s it. When the strength dwindles, they’re dead-weight and that was certainly happening. I’ve never fired somebody or said “Get out of here.” They’ve chosen on their own, I mean it is a hard life. This is a very, very, very hard life, with sacrifices. DW: So while you’re out touring or in the studio, life is progressing, in terms of what people would consider normal and you feel alienated from it. SK: Yeah, Tom lost his significant other last year, I know that this has most likely, majorly impacted his personal life; the person you’re in love with is gone. Its (inaudible) gotten caught into drugs, not that anyone in this organization, in a long time has had that issue. But the world keeps spinning and it’s really hard for people to get into a different kind of life, you disconnect from friends and it becomes a very lonely existence. DW: That’s ironic, because you’ve got all these people fired up to come see you and then after the three hours or whatever is finished… SK: You’re alone, completely. It’s so rewarding though to do that, I’ve realized everyone’s alone in this world. You know? DW: We’re all here alone [lyric from “Taking Us Home”]. SK: We’re all here alone, (pauses) but what an awesome job that I have to entertain people and take them away from their lives – to give ‘em a break and to celebrate music. Yeah, you know…we’re all…this is our one life. Everyone can do whatever they want, but I think the machine, the government, the whole thing, is like so controlling and it fears people into not following their dreams. So, for someone like myself: there are wicked highs and wicked lows. But at least you’re responsible, ultimately, you’ll never be like ‘Oh man, why did I do this’ there’s so many people in dead end jobs and they’re just doing what they hate. Why that happens is inconceivable to me, I can’t understand not doing… even if music failed, I’d sell photographs or something. I’d do something I still loved to do, it’s non-negotiable. We should all do that, it’s our responsibility for life. DW: Yes. SK: Yeah, well, I also know we’re an inspiration for those who didn’t do what they chose and that’s why they root for us most of all. We represent the lost dream and that ‘Wow can you really [act out] your dreams’? And man, it’s (inaudible), you get punished all the time. There’s no silver lining and red carpets that role out because you do what you love to do, I mean, it’s just not a reward. The one’s who get the reward are, like, the attorneys looking to rip somebody off or some corporation that finagles some new way of dumping their shit in a river without getting caught. DW: So it’s you versus the machine from here on out? Any chance you’ll ever really breakthrough to mainstream? SK: No. They [music industry] completely dictate who’s going to do that. We’ve had offers through the years to do that type of stuff [conform], but for some reason it just doesn’t sit well. You know, either you do it on your own or you succumb to the pressure of … I just can’t afford to live with the failure of doing that formula and it not working and selling out on the level. Doing the work this long and realizing, you know, we have no idea what hit songs we potentially would have had if they just played them, just the way they are. They’d be appreciated on so many different levels. We’d have to succumb to the machine. The machine is evil. I don’t like it.