17
May
2006
The
complaint is painfully common. You look at the list of hot
indie-cred-heavy bands playing at Gabe’s in Iowa City, or in Des
Moines, and they’re the same bands that are playing in Chicago a few
days later or earlier. They’re already driving Interstate 80 – hell,
they’re probably stopping near the Quad Cities to pee – yet they rarely play here.
Sean Moeller has heard it. “We’re right on the way,” he said last week. “Everybody who’s anybody drives on I-80. They’re passing right by us every time. It gets to a point where you get really sick of that. You get sick of people ignoring you. ...
“When you are feeling like you’re bypassed every time for a different place, it’s easy to think that this place is crap. It’s easy to think that every place else is better.”
So Moeller gave people a reason to stop: Daytrotter.com.
The concept is so obvious that, as best as anyone can figure, nobody did it before. Entice up-and-coming bands to take a two-hour pit stop on I-80. Let them use some instruments and a recording studio with lots of vintage equipment. Have them run through four songs live, record them, and release them.
The band gets some fresh material for fans. The Web site gets traffic from the collected devotees of all the groups it features. And without any fanfare or publicity, the Quad Cities becomes something of a destination. Sometimes, the bands even stay long enough to do a gig here.
“It’s going to be just as good for the community if this thing goes well,” Moeller said. People who live in the Quad Cities “start thinking about here rather than there. ... ‘And, oh, these bands are coming here. Maybe this isn’t such a bad place to live.’ ... People start re-examining the goodness of here.
“If they just knew that this place wasn’t getting bypassed, I think that’s a valuable thing.”
Even more valuable to the world at large is that Daytrotter offers songs that nobody else has.
And if Daytrotter were to shut down tomorrow, it’s still given the planet 31 tracks (to date) that are literally not available anywhere else.
“I don’t want to ever be the retread, or the carbon copy,” Moeller said.
“Why Would They Say ‘No’?”
Moeller, a 27-year-old sports and music writer at the Quad-City Times, said the idea came to him in February. Some people for whom he works on a freelance basis – Bob McIlwain and Mark Hurty of National Publisher Services – suggested he start a music magazine, but he didn’t want to jump into such a crowded pool.
“What would set you apart?” he asked himself. “It took a couple days thinking about it, and all of a sudden, it was like: What if we had original music? What if we had bands stop in? They’re coming through, and they would have time. ... Why would they say ‘no’? Little did I know that they actually would say ‘yes.’ ...
“The idea ... just kind of pounced, really.”
McIlwain and Hurty agreed to become Moeller’s business partners in Daytrotter.com.
Two weeks later, on February 24, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Catfish Haven stopped by Pat Stolley’s Futureappletree Studio 1 in downtown Rock Island, taking a detour between gigs in Columbia, Missouri, and Iowa City.
On March 23, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s four songs were posted on Daytrotter.com, and Moeller’s vision had become reality – something akin to a John Peel for the early 21st Century.
“It actually scared me at first,” Stolley said of the Daytrotter concept – the idea of not just recording a live session but trying to apply studio artistry and sophistication in a highly compressed time frame. Like Peel’s famous sessions, Stolley wants Daytrotter to have a signature sound, a recognizable stamp. “It’s a challenge,” he said. “It’s a lot harder than it looks.”
So far, Daytrotter has posted the sessions from seven bands, from the swampy rock of Catfish Haven (with a damaged vocal style reminiscent of CCR or the Black Keys) to the kitchen-sink, sometimes spastic bedroom techno of Jason Forrest (self-described as “cock-rock disco”) to a jazz-via-Björk interpretation of “Honeysuckle Rose” by singer-songwriter Erin McKeown.
One song has topped 1,000 downloads. Moeller said the site is getting roughly 5,000 visitors a week, and that number is growing by between 500 and 1,000 every week. When Said the Gramophone (http://saidthegramophone.com) featured Daytrotter on Tuesday, Moeller said in an e-mail, traffic to the site was “massive.”
Recordings from another eight groups (including The M’s, who were featured in the River Cities’ Reader on April 26) were in the can as of Monday, when Canadian outfits Sunset Rubdown and Frog Eyes (both side projects of Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug) stopped by. The bands had an off day between shows in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and Minneapolis, and were spending the night at Moeller’s house.
Moeller brings his passion for music, and also writes reviews and feature stories for Daytrotter. Stolley records. (Moeller admits he doesn’t know what anything does on Stolley’s console.) Johnnie Cluney creates illustrations for the site, and Jesse Codling takes photographs.
Moeller has tentatively scheduled more than 20 bands for future sessions, including Rogue Wave, The Smoking Popes, and Maritime (which includes members of Promise Ring and Dismemberment Plan). He’s hoping to grab a handful of bands from the Lollapalooza and Intonation festivals.
“Three months ago, before we even started pursuing this crazy project, ... it would have been asinine to even think, ‘We’re going to get some bands from Lollapallooza to stop by,’” Moeller said. “Right now, it looks like it’s going to be happening.”
The bands might not be household names – Daytrotter’s slogan is “the ultimate way to meet your new favorite band” – but some of these outfits are bound to find indie-rock success. My vote among posted sessions so far goes to Impossible Shapes, who have a delicate, intricate pop sensibility akin to The Shins without being so damned sweet.
“They Had No Evidence That We Were Legitimate”
After the idea took hold, Moeller started using his contacts in the music industry to solicit bands. That initial flurry, he said, included more than 50 groups.
And all he could pitch was the idea. “They had nothing to see,” Moeller said. “They had no evidence that we were legitimate at all, and we couldn’t give them any evidence, really.”
Yet Moeller said that nobody’s turned him down. While some bands said it wouldn’t work on the current tour, they promised to try to work it in another time. “We haven’t had anybody say they’re not going to do it,” he said. Ted Leo has said he wants to stop by with his band the Pharmacists, and the Fiery Furnaces are on-board with the project.
And Moeller is aiming high, with a wish list that includes Wilco, Joanna Newsom, the Decemberists, Arcade Fire, and the Shins.
“I think Wilco would be great,” Moeller said. And he thinks it’s a possibility, that the group might be drawn to the idea of doing something different, particularly when it’s a short drive from its home base of Chicago. “They’re just dudes,” he said. “Maybe they don’t pack up their gear anymore, but that’s how they started.”
Stolley said he bought into the idea solely because of Moeller. “I like Sean,” he said. “I’m willing to go along with Sean and see what happens.” He added that he’s satisfied with the results, particularly the “literary” quality of the writing and the uniqueness of the sessions. “The recordings are one-of-a-kind,” he said.
Like many of the best ideas, a defining characteristic of Daytrotter is that it’s simple yet works on multiple levels.
The bands get something out of it artistically. “It’s almost a way for them to demo while they’re on the road,” Moeller said. “It breaks up the monotony of, ‘Oh, we’re traveling eight hours in the van to do the same songs we just played last night, the night before, and the night before.’ They actually get to experiment a little, and charge themselves up a little.
“They find it kind of thrilling that they’re going to be using other equipment, they’re going to be using all this vintage stuff, all these really old amps, this Rhodes and this Wurlitzer, and they really love that. ...
“They see all the instruments and they see the setup, and they know immediately that it’s going to be a good situation, it’s going to be a good experience.”
Moeller said the ideal session would include a pair of tracks from the group’s latest recording, a new song, and an oddity – whether it’s a reworked version of a song, a rare track, or a cover. During the session, the band runs through each song once to get the levels right and records the second take live.
The bands aren’t risking much, and that’s probably one reason they’ve been so willing to try it. “It takes an hour and a half at most,” Moeller said. “We get them in and out.”
Daytrotter gets exclusive rights to the tracks for six months, after which the bands can do what they want with them. They can buy the master tape of the session from Daytrotter for the cost of the tape, Moeller said, and release the tracks themselves, on singles, for example.
The bands get something out of it in terms of a following, too, because their music will be heard by fans of other Daytrotter acts. “I think all these bands are under the impression that they are going to be able to feed off what’s happened before,” Moeller said.
That same principle works for the site, as well; every band that comes through brings (in terms of Web traffic) its fans. “If we have the bands, we’re going to get the people,” Moeller said. “What we’re doing is combining fan bases. We’re stacking one fan base onto another.”
Early evidence suggests that’s happening. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin had a song downloaded from Daytrotter more than 1,000 times – a feat the band’s own Web site hadn’t accomplished in three years of existence, Moeller said.
It helped, of course, that the song – “Oregon Girl” – was featured on an episode of The O.C. on April 27. “We’re the only place that had that song available legally and free on the entire Internet,” Moeller said. “We were the place where they could get that song.”
On a personal level, Moeller gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor while Stolley handles the recording. “I get the band in the studio, and then I sit back on the couch and watch and listen, and he takes care of everything,” Moeller said. “I get to bring in whoever I think is really great. ... I get to hang out with my favorite bands for like an hour and a half.”
As for music consumers, there’s also little risk involved. “The whole essence of this thing is that it’s free,” Moeller said. “People don’t have to pay to get these songs. The bands don’t want that. We don’t want that.
“You do that and you run into a lot of legal things anyway. ... We don’t really have any legal hassles that way.”
Of course, Moeller eventually hopes to make money of the Web site. The Daytrotter idea is cheap, he said, but it needs to generate income. “The costs of operating are minimal if any,” he said. “All it’s taking is our time,” and a small amount of money for Web hosting.
By mid-summer, Moeller said, Daytrotter hopes to have enough traffic – 40,000 to 50,000 visitors per week – to generate advertising revenue. A longer-term goal is weekly traffic of 100,000 visitors.
“They Canceled Their Madison Show”
A major appeal for bands of Daytrotter is also its primary drawback in terms of community impact; because a session can be squeezed into a tight schedule, bands are in and out without anybody actually getting the opportunity to see the band perform live. Daytrotter’s impact is primarily global, and by itself contributes little to the local musical landscape. On the site, you’ll only find one mention of the Quad Cities at all.
Moeller is hesitant to open up the sessions to the public but said he hopes that bands will not only stop here for a session in Stolley’s studio but also perform a gig.
That’s already happening. Oakley Hall agreed to a Daytrotter session on May 27 and also asked if they could play somewhere in the Quad Cities. Devin Hansen of the River Music Experience’s Redstone Room put them on a bill with the Ginn Sisters.
Best of all, Moeller said, Oakley Hall canceled another show to accommodate playing here. “They want to do the session more than they want to play Madison [Wisconsin], so they canceled their Madison show and asked me if I could find out if they could get a show here.”
That’s also the goal with Maritime, which is not stopping in between shows but is making a special trip for Daytrotter. “They’re just driving from Milwaukee,” Moeller said. “They don’t have any show set up” – yet.
And Hansen booked Impossible Shapes for July 6 after hearing the group’s Daytrotter session. “That’s sort of the first cross-pollination that we’ve had so far,” Moeller said.
If Daytrotter grows, the Quad Cities can expect a lot more cross-pollination. But even if it remains at its current pitch, the Web site is meaningful.
“We did something different,” Moeller said. “We did something that actually means something ... . We’re bringing new life into this songs. ...
“It’s very rare that you can feel like you’re a part of something that nobody else in the world is doing. ... This is something that holds a greater purpose.”
Sean Moeller has heard it. “We’re right on the way,” he said last week. “Everybody who’s anybody drives on I-80. They’re passing right by us every time. It gets to a point where you get really sick of that. You get sick of people ignoring you. ...
“When you are feeling like you’re bypassed every time for a different place, it’s easy to think that this place is crap. It’s easy to think that every place else is better.”
So Moeller gave people a reason to stop: Daytrotter.com.
The concept is so obvious that, as best as anyone can figure, nobody did it before. Entice up-and-coming bands to take a two-hour pit stop on I-80. Let them use some instruments and a recording studio with lots of vintage equipment. Have them run through four songs live, record them, and release them.
The band gets some fresh material for fans. The Web site gets traffic from the collected devotees of all the groups it features. And without any fanfare or publicity, the Quad Cities becomes something of a destination. Sometimes, the bands even stay long enough to do a gig here.
“It’s going to be just as good for the community if this thing goes well,” Moeller said. People who live in the Quad Cities “start thinking about here rather than there. ... ‘And, oh, these bands are coming here. Maybe this isn’t such a bad place to live.’ ... People start re-examining the goodness of here.
“If they just knew that this place wasn’t getting bypassed, I think that’s a valuable thing.”
Even more valuable to the world at large is that Daytrotter offers songs that nobody else has.
And if Daytrotter were to shut down tomorrow, it’s still given the planet 31 tracks (to date) that are literally not available anywhere else.
“I don’t want to ever be the retread, or the carbon copy,” Moeller said.
“Why Would They Say ‘No’?”
Moeller, a 27-year-old sports and music writer at the Quad-City Times, said the idea came to him in February. Some people for whom he works on a freelance basis – Bob McIlwain and Mark Hurty of National Publisher Services – suggested he start a music magazine, but he didn’t want to jump into such a crowded pool.
“What would set you apart?” he asked himself. “It took a couple days thinking about it, and all of a sudden, it was like: What if we had original music? What if we had bands stop in? They’re coming through, and they would have time. ... Why would they say ‘no’? Little did I know that they actually would say ‘yes.’ ...
“The idea ... just kind of pounced, really.”
McIlwain and Hurty agreed to become Moeller’s business partners in Daytrotter.com.
Two weeks later, on February 24, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Catfish Haven stopped by Pat Stolley’s Futureappletree Studio 1 in downtown Rock Island, taking a detour between gigs in Columbia, Missouri, and Iowa City.
On March 23, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s four songs were posted on Daytrotter.com, and Moeller’s vision had become reality – something akin to a John Peel for the early 21st Century.
“It actually scared me at first,” Stolley said of the Daytrotter concept – the idea of not just recording a live session but trying to apply studio artistry and sophistication in a highly compressed time frame. Like Peel’s famous sessions, Stolley wants Daytrotter to have a signature sound, a recognizable stamp. “It’s a challenge,” he said. “It’s a lot harder than it looks.”
So far, Daytrotter has posted the sessions from seven bands, from the swampy rock of Catfish Haven (with a damaged vocal style reminiscent of CCR or the Black Keys) to the kitchen-sink, sometimes spastic bedroom techno of Jason Forrest (self-described as “cock-rock disco”) to a jazz-via-Björk interpretation of “Honeysuckle Rose” by singer-songwriter Erin McKeown.
One song has topped 1,000 downloads. Moeller said the site is getting roughly 5,000 visitors a week, and that number is growing by between 500 and 1,000 every week. When Said the Gramophone (http://saidthegramophone.com) featured Daytrotter on Tuesday, Moeller said in an e-mail, traffic to the site was “massive.”
Recordings from another eight groups (including The M’s, who were featured in the River Cities’ Reader on April 26) were in the can as of Monday, when Canadian outfits Sunset Rubdown and Frog Eyes (both side projects of Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug) stopped by. The bands had an off day between shows in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and Minneapolis, and were spending the night at Moeller’s house.
Moeller brings his passion for music, and also writes reviews and feature stories for Daytrotter. Stolley records. (Moeller admits he doesn’t know what anything does on Stolley’s console.) Johnnie Cluney creates illustrations for the site, and Jesse Codling takes photographs.
Moeller has tentatively scheduled more than 20 bands for future sessions, including Rogue Wave, The Smoking Popes, and Maritime (which includes members of Promise Ring and Dismemberment Plan). He’s hoping to grab a handful of bands from the Lollapalooza and Intonation festivals.
“Three months ago, before we even started pursuing this crazy project, ... it would have been asinine to even think, ‘We’re going to get some bands from Lollapallooza to stop by,’” Moeller said. “Right now, it looks like it’s going to be happening.”
The bands might not be household names – Daytrotter’s slogan is “the ultimate way to meet your new favorite band” – but some of these outfits are bound to find indie-rock success. My vote among posted sessions so far goes to Impossible Shapes, who have a delicate, intricate pop sensibility akin to The Shins without being so damned sweet.
“They Had No Evidence That We Were Legitimate”
After the idea took hold, Moeller started using his contacts in the music industry to solicit bands. That initial flurry, he said, included more than 50 groups.
And all he could pitch was the idea. “They had nothing to see,” Moeller said. “They had no evidence that we were legitimate at all, and we couldn’t give them any evidence, really.”
Yet Moeller said that nobody’s turned him down. While some bands said it wouldn’t work on the current tour, they promised to try to work it in another time. “We haven’t had anybody say they’re not going to do it,” he said. Ted Leo has said he wants to stop by with his band the Pharmacists, and the Fiery Furnaces are on-board with the project.
And Moeller is aiming high, with a wish list that includes Wilco, Joanna Newsom, the Decemberists, Arcade Fire, and the Shins.
“I think Wilco would be great,” Moeller said. And he thinks it’s a possibility, that the group might be drawn to the idea of doing something different, particularly when it’s a short drive from its home base of Chicago. “They’re just dudes,” he said. “Maybe they don’t pack up their gear anymore, but that’s how they started.”
Stolley said he bought into the idea solely because of Moeller. “I like Sean,” he said. “I’m willing to go along with Sean and see what happens.” He added that he’s satisfied with the results, particularly the “literary” quality of the writing and the uniqueness of the sessions. “The recordings are one-of-a-kind,” he said.
Like many of the best ideas, a defining characteristic of Daytrotter is that it’s simple yet works on multiple levels.
The bands get something out of it artistically. “It’s almost a way for them to demo while they’re on the road,” Moeller said. “It breaks up the monotony of, ‘Oh, we’re traveling eight hours in the van to do the same songs we just played last night, the night before, and the night before.’ They actually get to experiment a little, and charge themselves up a little.
“They find it kind of thrilling that they’re going to be using other equipment, they’re going to be using all this vintage stuff, all these really old amps, this Rhodes and this Wurlitzer, and they really love that. ...
“They see all the instruments and they see the setup, and they know immediately that it’s going to be a good situation, it’s going to be a good experience.”
Moeller said the ideal session would include a pair of tracks from the group’s latest recording, a new song, and an oddity – whether it’s a reworked version of a song, a rare track, or a cover. During the session, the band runs through each song once to get the levels right and records the second take live.
The bands aren’t risking much, and that’s probably one reason they’ve been so willing to try it. “It takes an hour and a half at most,” Moeller said. “We get them in and out.”
Daytrotter gets exclusive rights to the tracks for six months, after which the bands can do what they want with them. They can buy the master tape of the session from Daytrotter for the cost of the tape, Moeller said, and release the tracks themselves, on singles, for example.
The bands get something out of it in terms of a following, too, because their music will be heard by fans of other Daytrotter acts. “I think all these bands are under the impression that they are going to be able to feed off what’s happened before,” Moeller said.
That same principle works for the site, as well; every band that comes through brings (in terms of Web traffic) its fans. “If we have the bands, we’re going to get the people,” Moeller said. “What we’re doing is combining fan bases. We’re stacking one fan base onto another.”
Early evidence suggests that’s happening. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin had a song downloaded from Daytrotter more than 1,000 times – a feat the band’s own Web site hadn’t accomplished in three years of existence, Moeller said.
It helped, of course, that the song – “Oregon Girl” – was featured on an episode of The O.C. on April 27. “We’re the only place that had that song available legally and free on the entire Internet,” Moeller said. “We were the place where they could get that song.”
On a personal level, Moeller gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor while Stolley handles the recording. “I get the band in the studio, and then I sit back on the couch and watch and listen, and he takes care of everything,” Moeller said. “I get to bring in whoever I think is really great. ... I get to hang out with my favorite bands for like an hour and a half.”
As for music consumers, there’s also little risk involved. “The whole essence of this thing is that it’s free,” Moeller said. “People don’t have to pay to get these songs. The bands don’t want that. We don’t want that.
“You do that and you run into a lot of legal things anyway. ... We don’t really have any legal hassles that way.”
Of course, Moeller eventually hopes to make money of the Web site. The Daytrotter idea is cheap, he said, but it needs to generate income. “The costs of operating are minimal if any,” he said. “All it’s taking is our time,” and a small amount of money for Web hosting.
By mid-summer, Moeller said, Daytrotter hopes to have enough traffic – 40,000 to 50,000 visitors per week – to generate advertising revenue. A longer-term goal is weekly traffic of 100,000 visitors.
“They Canceled Their Madison Show”
A major appeal for bands of Daytrotter is also its primary drawback in terms of community impact; because a session can be squeezed into a tight schedule, bands are in and out without anybody actually getting the opportunity to see the band perform live. Daytrotter’s impact is primarily global, and by itself contributes little to the local musical landscape. On the site, you’ll only find one mention of the Quad Cities at all.
Moeller is hesitant to open up the sessions to the public but said he hopes that bands will not only stop here for a session in Stolley’s studio but also perform a gig.
That’s already happening. Oakley Hall agreed to a Daytrotter session on May 27 and also asked if they could play somewhere in the Quad Cities. Devin Hansen of the River Music Experience’s Redstone Room put them on a bill with the Ginn Sisters.
Best of all, Moeller said, Oakley Hall canceled another show to accommodate playing here. “They want to do the session more than they want to play Madison [Wisconsin], so they canceled their Madison show and asked me if I could find out if they could get a show here.”
That’s also the goal with Maritime, which is not stopping in between shows but is making a special trip for Daytrotter. “They’re just driving from Milwaukee,” Moeller said. “They don’t have any show set up” – yet.
And Hansen booked Impossible Shapes for July 6 after hearing the group’s Daytrotter session. “That’s sort of the first cross-pollination that we’ve had so far,” Moeller said.
If Daytrotter grows, the Quad Cities can expect a lot more cross-pollination. But even if it remains at its current pitch, the Web site is meaningful.
“We did something different,” Moeller said. “We did something that actually means something ... . We’re bringing new life into this songs. ...
“It’s very rare that you can feel like you’re a part of something that nobody else in the world is doing. ... This is something that holds a greater purpose.”
