The Submarines are widely recognizable for their jangling pop single,”You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie,” used in the recent iPhone 3G commercial. Others may know them as the artist-turned-producer and singer-songwriter from Boston who fell in love while working on an album, moved to California and started a band. The love story of Jack Dragonetti (a.k.a Jack Drag) and Blake Hazard (a.k.a. great grand daughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald) is really the bittersweet muse of The Submarines. The story goes that the couple broke up shortly after moving out West but Blake continued to record in Dragonetti’s home studio. The duo soon realized that the new songs that they were each writing were filled with sadness and longing for one another. They decided to rekindle their musical relationship which lead to The Submarines and eventually to marriage. Continue reading ‘Q To The A With The Submarines & Jay Sweet’
Author Archive for KB@OS
Elliot Yamin, the beloved third place runner-up for Season 5 of American Idol recently performed for U.S. military men and women stationed overseas. Many people also know Yamin for his commercial radio hits, “Wait For You” and “Fight For Love”.
OurStage caught up with Yamin in Guam, the first stop of his USO-sponsored Pacific Rim tour, and asked the Gold & Platinum-selling R&B singer about life before Idol, his experience on the show and what life as an indie artist has been like since the season wrapped.
Today, the Lilith Tour announced a new partnership with OurStage.com, the music discovery destination dedicated to new artist and music discovery. Lilith and OurStage will run the “Lilith Local Talent Search,” an exciting contest to find the next best emerging female musicians across North America.
A winner will be chosen in each North American city that the tour visits. That winner will have the opportunity to perform a full set with other emerging artists on the “Village Stage,” the same stage that featured artists like Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado and Tegan and Sara ten years ago.
“We are thrilled to partner with the such an important and prestigious tour as Lilith and to help deserving female artists earn regional and national exposure,” shares OurStage CEO Ben Campbell. “OurStage is in the business of delivering life-altering opportunities for worthy artists so this is really exciting for OurStage and our whole community.”
Lilith co-founder Terry McBride adds, “We are really excited to be partnering with OurStage.com. It was extremely important to us to choose a partner that was artist friendly, had a strong platform for discovering regional talent, and had the ability to enable the fans to sort through the best music in a scalable and fair manner. Together, we provide an exceptional platform for discovering and promoting the best emerging female artists.”
At this time, 17 North American cities are tapped for the Lilith 2010 tour, with more cities to be announced soon. Artists should only enter the talent search if they live in or near one of the Lilith tour stops. Further details, rules and regulations will be announced at a later date. Interested female musicians should visit www.ourstage.com/go/lilith to enter the contest and create a profile.
Stay tuned for more information, including artist announcements and more cities!
Dear Friends,
As you may have noticed, we recently made a few changes to the site. Thanks to all of the folks who took the time to write in with positive feedback regarding these changes. We appreciate those of you who cared enough to let us know your thoughts, even if you didn’t like some of the changes we made.
Operating a growing website like OurStage poses many challenges, like knowing when it’s time to improve functions and when it’s time to leave things alone. No one likes getting used to one experience and then waking up the next day to find everything has changed — forcing one to relearn how things work all over again. By the same token, we feel obligated to make the experience on our site the best it can be. And so we periodically make changes in an effort to improve the overall music discovery experience. Thank you in advance for bearing with us when we make these changes, and for understanding that we only make take these steps in an effort to improve your experience. If, and when, we miss the mark we really do appreciate users pointing it out to us. We try very hard to listen to our community in order to make the site as valuable as possible for each of you.
One of the new additions coming soon to OurStage is a section called “Best Of.” Unlike our monthly competitions which track fans favorites by genre, “Best Of ” will track those artists who are consistently performing at the top of the charts over a period of time. The analytics that drive the “Best Of ” charts will include how well artists perform on OurStage over an extended period (across a variety of metrics) as well as how much buzz the artists are getting out in the general marketplace on other sites too. Right now we expect to maintain “Best Of ” charts on the big four macro-level genre: rock, pop, hip hop and country. This means that rather than have “Best Of” rankings for all 30-40 granular genres, we’ll be rolling up all of the artists whose genre roughly fits in one of these four, larger categories and displaying the ranks for each on a regular basis. Important players across the music industry, from a broad variety of sources, advised us that this approach will make it easier for great OurStage artists to get discovered by fans and industry professionals alike.
Another change that we are considering is the concept of a Premium Channel each month. OurStage has been steadily gaining more and more traction in the industry. We are now at a point where many mainstream industry players are working with us. The good news is that this gives us the chance to offer prizes and opportunities well beyond what we’ve been able to historically offer. The bad news is that some of these opportunities are also very expensive for us to offer. In the past, when OurStage has offered great opportunities for top-ranked artists, we’ve been forced to pay substantial fees in order to secure the prizing. As you all know the site has always been free to submit to and free to use. We have never passed these fees onto you. Nothing about this is going to change. However, in the future when we have the opportunity to offer a truly career-altering prize (that costs OurStage significant expense to obtain) we will ask the artists entering into that particular “Premium Channel” to help offset costs with a modest entry fee.
We are well aware that our community, and the music world in general, is very sensitive to asking people to pay for anything. Given the long history of big companies taking advantage of artists and consumers this hesitancy is understandable — which is why we’ve never done it. So before considering this concept we asked you all what you thought. Two months ago we ran a detailed survey of our artist community and we were pleased that fully 73% of you said that you’d be willing to pay a modest entry fee for a competition that had a substantial, potentially career-changing opportunity for the winner, especially if the entry fee was only to be used to offset the cost of operating the competition and/or paying for the prizing. We think this is a positive thing because it effectively means we’ll be working together with our community to uncover and create even better opportunities for top- ranked artists than ever before. Please be on the look out for this “Premium Channel” idea to launch sometime in December or January.
In closing, I’d ask that everyone who has not done so to Opt-In for the OurStage newsletter. We take our communications to and from the community very seriously, and this is one of the best ways to stay abreast of all the cool happenings and potential changes to the site before they happen.
Thanks again to each of you for being part of the democratic revolution in the music industry, and for being part of OurStage. Working together, we really are changing the way the world discovers the best new music and the best new artists.
Warm regards,
Ben
We arrive at Camp Fuji after a 3 hour bus ride from Tokyo (2 of those 3 hours are spent driving side by side the world’s largest city). Clarias and I are very excited to go to the military base that borders one of the most beautiful and most climbed mountains in the world.
View of Mt. Fuji from Camp Fuji
To say that Mt. Fuji majestically soars above the US Marines training camp is almost an understatement. But, scenery aside, we quickly realize just how depressed (and how young) the soldiers stationed at the camp are. In fact, all of their military-produced television programming is filled with PSA’s on topics such as PTSD, suicide prevention, depression, the need to prepare a will, etc. We know that the 650 men and 2 women stationed here need a friendly reminder of home.
Soundcheck
As the band loads into Roadhouse, the base’s entertainment venue, we discuss a game plan for the evening. I overhear soldiers talking about the show and basically anticipating that the band is going to suck. With all the testosterone flowing, I know it is going to be a really tough audience to win over. My recommendation to the band is to place a drum solo at the front of the set as well as a guitar solo towards the end. I also suggest that the band back off from performing ballads and keep the set list adrenaline-heavy.
Luckily, these suggestions pay off. Jordan’s drum solo (complete with a military drum roll) receives hoots and hollers and earns the band masculine cred. Paul also gets props for his guitar solo which helps secure the band a captive audience of about 75 soldiers (although about 150 catch glimpses of their set). When the set is over, the members of Clarias get off the stage and take my cue to go up to the soldiers as opposed to waiting for the soldiers to approach them. What ensues is the ultimate bro down. The servicemen are extremely appreciative of the band’s American made rock ‘n’ roll. Overall, the night is a success (of course there is always room for improvement).
Back at the billet we debrief. The band admits they were all initially intimidated by their audience, which explains the weak attempts to connect with the soldiers while on stage. My advice on how to overcome audience intimidation is three-pronged: 1. Display confidence even when you don’t feel it—this will earn you immediate unspoken respect. 2. Show your audience how to engage with you and how to praise you. (Stepping up to the front of the stage during soloing, making eye contact, leading hand claps, etc. are all ways to engage). 3. Above all else, have fun. Fun is contagious and no one will ever fault you when they see your enjoyment on stage.
Next stop Yokota, where we’ll see if the feedback pays off.
-KB
