The N45 Blog

This is the End

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:48:04 -0700

Well everyone, the time has finally come. Put a fork in us, because we’re done. This is the end of Northern45.
We all had dreams of making this thing work, but for many reasons, it never materialized.
If you’re a recent fan, or if you’ve been with us from the beginning, thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting us in whatever way you did. Without you, we would not have lasted even this long. Thanks for coming to our shows and buying our EP and liking us on facebook and making us believe that a band made up of working stiffs had a chance.
In this, our last blog, I will tell the story of the rise and fall of Northern45. We’ve fallen off of the blogging bandwagon a bit in this last year. Like so many other things with this band, we began it with the best of intentions, but of course you probably already know what they say about that.
So here it is: the tale of the late, great Northern45, from start to finish.

N45 began as the musical outlet of two young dudes, Jeff and Nick, who came to Los Angeles for college. Back in those days this folksy group called themselves Mosaic. Jeff played guitar and sang and Nick played the drums and sang. They had some good songs, and they put a band together and made a 4 song EP entitled “Tessera.” It was a fun, if musically inexperienced, project that whetted their musical appetites. (I’ve got about 500 copies sitting in my garage, so if anyone wants one, please stop by sometime.)
The producer of the “Tessera” EP was a friend of Jeff’s, Glyn. Glyn was a whiz at many things, including spotting raw talent that needed development. He saw this in Mosaic and worked with the guys to make their record, while still recognizing that the songwriting talent had was still in its infancy, and encouraging the band to develop their craft.
It was around this time that Mosaic made some additions to their band that kicked things up a notch: a new guitarist (Geoff, who would be with them until the end), a new bass player, and a real-deal singer & front man. And a new name: Skyline Drive.
Sadly, Skyline Drive never made a record or EP or even a demo recording for posterity. Most of their time was spent writing and arranging songs, dreaming big, and losing money on shows.
A word here about losing money: Here, in Los Angeles, and probably in other cities too, there are some great opportunities for rock bands who perform original material. There are also great pitfalls. One of these pitfalls is what I like to call “pay-to-play” shows. The folks who don’t like that name usually call it something like “presale ticket requirement.” The way it works is like this: a band wants to play at a club, or open for a bigger band, or whatever, so they call a promoter. The promoter says, “sure, you can play here, but you have to bring (20, 50, 100) people to the show.“ So they will give the band, say, 50 tickets to sell to their fans, and before the band goes onstage, they must pay the promoter $500. (Assuming a $10 ticket price; 50 tickets at $10 a pop = $500)
Inevitably, a smalltime band will fail to sell their all of their 50 tickets by showtime, simply because they only have so many friends who are willing to put up with this nonsense every month, and who wants to go see a band they’ve never heard of? So the band must pay the promoter the difference out of their own pocket. And bands do it. All the time, actually, because there is that tantalizing whiff of a hope of making it. “Maybe this will be the gig where the A&R Rep or the Record Label or Big Producer or Famous Band hears us, and will break us into stardom.” Or at least break-even-dom.
Some bands can keep doing this indefinitely until they get picked up or create a decent-sized fan base on their own, but here in Northern45 land, we have families to feed and mortgages to pay, and no trust funds to fall back on. We want to make music, but we can’t afford to keep losing money while we’re doing it. Further complicating the matter is the fact that we are a big rock band. We can only play so many acoustic gigs before we’re no longer being true to our music. A decent singer-acoustic guitarist can get gigs at the local coffeeshop or outdoor mall for whoever strolls in, but it’s a little harder to do that when you’re a loud rock band.
The unfortunate truth is that originals bands in Los Angeles lose money all the time, sometimes lots of money. There are loads of folks out there making money off of bands, but few bands actually making money themselves. Even relatively good bands with good songs like Northern45 have a pretty small chance of simply breaking even on their music. When the balance sheet comes in, no one in this band will have actually profited from their music. (Personally, I’ve probably spent about $2000-ish during my tenure with N45/Skyline Drive/Mosaic, and haven’t made a cent. Mostly it was through failure to sell tickets, recording studio time, PR campaigns, gig submissions, etc.)
Northern45’s end is not uncommon. It is in fact the sad fate of many great bands in this town.
Part of me decries the injustice of it all: how on earth can a video like Rebecca Black’s “Friday” garner tens of millions of hits on YouTube, while good, solid music like ours is virtually ignored? I don’t have the answers. Part of it is related to the changing way that music is consumed, I think. Maybe it no longer matters whether you have a great album or not, or even whether you can back it up live for that matter. I’ve seen more than a few bands with names you’d recognize that sounded lousy live. Maybe it’s about saturating the market. Quantity over quality, perhaps. The songs on our EP are already over two years old, for Pete’s sake; we probably should have had another entire record out by now. Or maybe it’s just random, dumb luck.
I’ll get off the soapbox. Back to the story.
Skyline Drive was the musical bridge between the naïve Mosaic and the more musically mature Northern45. Although no record was created under that name, the time was not wasted. Jeff’s melody and songwriting craft was honed, Nick figured out how to hit his drums like a monster and Geoff learned how to own only a few notes (or many notes) like a pro. The more they played together, the better the music became.
The loss of one lead singer, and the addition of Kevin put the final piece of the puzzle in place. One more name change, and the band became known as Northern45. Now with the voice that they had been missing, this was the finally band that Jeff, Nick, Geoff and Glyn had been waiting for. Catchy songs, tight playing, a ballsy rock sound, good arrangements and a voice that blew you away. There was no nonsense, no frills, and no studio magic there. Just a solid band with excellent music.
They bought a few days of studio time to go make a record. Working from the afternoon until the wee hours of the morning at Eldorado studio in Burbank, they came away with an excellent foundation on which to finish the record: drums, bass, lead vocals, acoustic guitar, piano and B3. (Thanks to Chris, Ben, Dave, and Dana for all of their help and input during the recording process.)
After several months of recording electric guitars and backup vocals at Glyn’s studio, the tracking was finished. (Or so they thought.) Onward to mixing and mastering. It was out of the band’s hands and at this point.
A full nine months later, the Northern45 EP was born. It was, simply, fantastic. The songs hit hard, the arrangements were forceful, and the whole thing had a polished, professional sound. Armed with a lineup of would-be rock stars, and a killer EP, how could they fail? They were the whole package, boxed, sealed, and ready for delivery.
They took on Los Angeles as best they knew how: the clubs, the outdoor malls, facebook, email, twitter, youtube, itunes, pandora…
Two years, they are wiser. And a little cynical.
Perhaps it was fated to be so. If two years of playing shows, promoting the band and their kick-ass EP, calling PR people, labels, promoters, potential managers and clubs won’t get you noticed, then what will? (Three years, perhaps?)
One obvious failure was fans. N45 could simply not get bodies out to shows. They played a lot of killer sets to sparsely populated rooms, and were usually met with this sentiment: “You guys are incredible, why don’t more people come to see you?” Maybe they didn’t know how to promote themselves. (Actually, they definitely didn’t know how to promote themselves. At one point, they hired a local PR firm and paid them $600 for literally nothing beyond a few phone conversations.)
Another failure was the EP production: Although it sounded amazing, it took entirely too long to finish, and there were some pretty serious hurt feelings in the process that killed some of the momentum of the project. And, as fate would have it, it turned out that after all was said and done, the band doesn’t even own it, and can’t really do anything with it.
In the end, life moves on, and people grow and change. Sometimes life leads folks on paths that bring ends to good things. Sometimes good intentions don’t turn out so good. And sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees.
What can be said? Another band with big dreams has come and gone. They made their cave drawings, and a few people noticed.
RIP Northern45.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I don’t know how this stream-of-consciousness blog entry has kept you entertained so long. If you choose, you can be rewarded with the complete Northern45 EP, as well as some of the other tunes we’ve created, by pointing your browser here The Northern45 EP.zip.

We had a good run guys. Much better to have loved and lost, after all.
Personally, I’ve learned some hard lessons, and been a part of making some incredible music in the process. I’ve become a better musician and maybe even a better person. I’ve enjoyed some simply sublime experiences onstage with you all. Kevin, Jeff, Nick and Tim, you are all stellar musicians, and good people.
Continue chasing your muses and I’ll chase mine.

Am I Right?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:03:55 -0700

“Given the choice, any one of them would have chosen poverty, with the success of their project over wealth and its failure.” – Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose. That book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and (while I admittedly have not yet finished the book) it has become a nice source of lines like the one I just listed. The fictional characters “given the choice” Stegner was referring to were miners/pioneers/settlers set in the late 19th century American west.

Ok it might be a bit presumptuous to equate making music with the plight of early pioneers, but I can’t help it. I sometimes see the making of music and the drive to generate something lasting as an epic Hellenistic, mythic, ancient struggle. We are like cave-dwelling man who couldn’t help but scrawl stories, images into the wall of the cave in hopes that someone, something might find it and know that someone, something was there. Because we (Northern 45) are a rock band we are somewhere in the margins between a freeway overpass with desperate artists spray painting such nonsense as “Satan Clause,” (one of my personal favorites from Hollywood) and the enigmatic but carefully crafted graffiti master Banksy whose work is beautifully conceived, poignant and mostly illegal. I am again being presumptuous but what the hell this is a blog and presumption is the cost of admission, am I right?

Here is the upshot - there is some new music posted on the site… enjoy. There is a hard copy coming of the ep I also urge you to enjoy/purchase. We also finished tracking basics for songs I don’t believe anyone but members of the band have heard. Those will be posted for FREE. Why free? Because like those Stegner pioneers we have “chosen poverty with the success of (our) project over wealth and its failure.” Well maybe not poverty exactly but its cousin, known as “paycheck to paycheck.” As far as wealth goes, I didn’t even know that was a choice - AM I RIGHT?

Cooperation Sounds Better Than Synergism

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 22:32:19 -0700

“To produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects: the synergy between artist and record company.” This is the definition for synergy from the “i dictionary” in my mac. I am not sure who to attribute the definition to exactly (Webster, Oxford, etc.) but I like that there is a reference to “artist” in the “use it in a sentence” section. This certainly can’t be a recently edited dictionary because everyone knows there are no such things as record companies anymore let alone synergism between them and artists. Record companies are like flavored air salesman. “Flavored air salesman” you ask? “That’s ridiculous.” And you would be correct, which is why they don’t exist. Likewise the Record Company doesn’t exist, except in the fond recollections of successful artists from before the era of FREE. How can you sell something that everyone already has access to for free? The answer is that you don’t, which is why flavored air sales never really took off. If I can go take a pair of jeans off of a rack on the street for free why walk into H&M and buy a pair?

Which is why artists (stay with me) must resort to synergism. A vulgar sounding word that really only means (in the words of Fred Rogers) “cooperation.” Artists and bands such as Northern 45 must unite with other creative entities to create an “effect greater than the sum of their individual parts”. So I would like to encourage our legion of followers to go to here and vote for the music you would like to hear in the upcoming indie film Regionrat. There are Northern 45 songs posted there that you can vote for and a blurb about the film and lots of other fascinating things there. Our good friend and photographer Javier Reyna is working on getting this very creative little film funded, shot, and distributed gorilla style. We would like to help and by helping be helped (synergism) in getting more listeners to hear the captivating sounds of Northern 45. So go, vote, encourage others to do the same, support the guerrilla operation and SYNERGIZE!

Some Shocking Omissions!

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:31:30 -0700

There is another serious pitfall with thanking/acknowledging people and that is leaving key people out of the thanking/acknowledging recipe. When this happens the cupcakes are ruined but unlike cooking you can always run a retraction or an addendum or whatever you want to call it and it is like unscrambling an egg sort of. The question I immediately asked myself after reading the last blog entry was: “Who plays bass?” or perhaps: “Does anyone play bass in this band?” The answer to both of those questions is yes. The answer to one of those questions is yes and the other is not a yes or no question…its complicated.

First of all Tim Archer (the latest and greatest addition to the band) plays bass with Northern 45 and if you travel in any of the musical circles in LA you would know Tim by the string of broken necks going out the door from his impossibly infectious bass lines. Ask any Paramedic who has to work in the vicinity of Sunset Blvd. They know him by name. “What’s that? 12 broken necks all inside the Key Club!? Archer that son of a bitch!” Timothy is no joke and has a penchant for reading dark, obtuse fiction which I really appreciate. You may also hear him in the bass section from one of the many film scoring sessions he plays on. I enjoy the visual of Tim sitting in a room with a bunch of 50 something’s and a few arm band tats of his showing as he plays remarkably difficult material.

I should also mention Tim did not come along until after the EP was recorded so props must be handed to Dana Decker of “The Dan Band” fame. Dana is no longer with us and by that I mean he no longer plays regularly in the band so the “us” is Northern 45 not the living. Dana can also be seen banging out industrial strength bass at holes-in-the wall and million dollar venues respectively, it simply depends on the night. He also has a penchant but not for Faulkneresque fiction but technology. He is the first person I knew who had and swore by the iphone and if his tech IQ were added into the bands quotient he and Gross might bring the group up from ‘tech disabled’ to ‘functional’. Dana also showed me how to save names in the contact area of my cell phone years ago and while I still use the same phone I have managed to utilize the contact list with great success. Thank you Dana.

Who Did That?

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:54:20 -0800

It occurred to me while watching the Oscars (along with 41 million others!) that the least entertaining part of the night is listening to the list of “thank yous,” or the “This would not be possible withouts.” But alas, what else are the beautiful, rich and blessed to do but thank people. They could congratulate their great genes or serendipity but that would be even more irritating and they would all come off as enormous ‘a’ holes. The last thing you want to do when basking in self-congratulation is to seem ungrateful. It is also no doubt true that what they have done could not and would not have come to fruition without so and so. That said while Northern 45 has won no Oscars or really any awards, trophies, or ribbons thus far in its collective existence I think you the readers/fans/listeners/critics should know “Who did that?”

First off there are no songs or rhythm guitar without Jeff Jansen. While N45 is a collective, the songs are written overwhelmingly by the legendary Jansen. So I'd like to thank Jans, without whom we would not have this lyrical golden nugget: “You lack the energy for faithfulness. You find redemption in your foolishness.” Love that lyric. I also must thank Jansen’s cohort and co writer Nick Roseta who is an integral part of the song writing process. Nick also happens to play the shit out the drums so he double dips. The other cat who is responsible for all 16 of you having a chance to read this is Geoff Gross. Not only does Gross have one of the coolest last names in existence but he plays scorching lead guitar and has put together the website, blog and photos. While every other member of the band operates on a technical IQ of 40 (borderline brain dead) Gross takes up the slack. He also happens to own the rehearsal space, minus one air conditioning unit, and a blue ribbon wining canine. (I still think a mug shot of Zoey should be the album cover.)

Lastly The Beatles had George Martin and Northern 45’s ‘5th Beatle’ is Glyn Morgan of GSQD. Glyn is responsible for polishing the EP to a mirror-like finish. All rhythm and lead guitar, background vocals, various overdubs and the enormous amount of mixing which, much to my wife’s dismay, I likened to her soup. It actually doesn’t require any where near the amount of mixing that a good rock album does, and this rock album's post-studio was all done at Glyn’s place. Without him we would not have this gem: “My job is to get you to do something you can’t do once, and only once, and pray that the record button is on. ”Without him this EP would not exist. I would also like to thank myself for singing on the thing. And while it may be appropriate to thank my mother and father for providing music lessons as a kid, or my wife for supporting my musical aspirations, I think I will just take a moment and say “thank you serendipity and good genes”. It does have a bit of a ring.