Swank currently resides in Chicago, Illinois where he does radio promotion and tour press for Bloodshot Records. Previously he spent 7 years at Yep Roc Records as head of radio promotions. Swank also has a collective 20+ years as on air talent in both commercial and non-commercial radio, 5 years as an entertainment journalist for the Nightlife in Carbondale, Il, a six month stint as a stand-up comedian and has written, produced & directed 3 one-act plays. Joe Swank and the Zen Pirates self-released Hank Williams Died for My Sins on November 10, 2009.

I started playing music rather late in life. I was in my mid-20’s when I joined my first band. Mostly covers at first, but one by one, I started incorporating originals into the mix. Fast forward past several bands and two albums and I was starting to wonder how this music thing seemed to take plenty of money, but never really gave all that much back.

The music I have always played is best described as Honky Tonk. Honky Tonk fans make up a VERY narrow band of the Country Music crowd. They are the ones who seek out artists/groups like Dale Watson, Shaver, Wayne Hancock, Whitey Morgan and Hank 3 ….or to a further extent, Drive-By Truckers, Slobberbone and The Waco Brothers.  

My first record (The MoJoDeans – The MoJoDeans 1998 – Relay Records) was almost all my money invested. The band fund kicked in a few hundred dollars, and I ended up eating around 8K over the course of 2 years. Funding recording, hired radio promotion, keeping us on the road and general expenses. A key band member moved away and the band broke up. It was then I realized if I was going to invest in music, I was gonna need to get my name in the title, or it was virtually a wasted investment on my part as far as branding my music was concerned. The second record (Joe Swank & The Mule Skinner Band – Cowpunk! 2001 – Cowpunk Music/Self Released) was recorded in exchange for my Honda Shadow 750. The band had problems that can all be traced back to medication, and was a short-lived project. By the time mixing and mastering was done, the band no longer existed. I pulled together a band and about 200 copies of the disc for CD release and then put it to bed.

I already had eyes on North Carolina as they seemed to have the most thriving record industry outside of Nashville and L.A. I moved to North Carolina in 2001 and started working at Redeye Distribution in order to figure out where the money goes and how to get some of it back in my pocket. This was supposed to be a temporary warehouse job that would help me do it right the next time. I would learn where to spend the money vs. where not to waste my time. Something funny happened along that path in that I ended up taking a full time job with Yep Roc Records (owned by Redeye Dist.) and actually started liking the Rubik’s Cube that is the music industry. I became intrigued with the different patterns in an attempt to get to the same end.

This, unfortunately, put MY band on the back burner. I tried to keep up on nights and weekends, but time just wasn’t on my side. As I got deeper into the business, there was always something else to research and study. Just when I thought I had it almost figured out, the whole game changed with a little thing called the internet broadband connection. The computer was relatively useless back in the dial up days, but the high speed connections changed the game. I-tunes also changed the game. Pretty much everything that happened on the internet in the last 8 to 10 years has eventually changed the game.

I released our record HANK WILLIAMS DIED FOR MY SINS on November 10^th, 2009. I formed the Zen Pirates in Raleigh in late 2001. We played around and worked up a mess of my originals and tried recording them in 2002. Two days in, the sound just wasn’t right and we scrapped to re-group. Second attempt at recording in 2004 was with a cat that got a last minute gig offer to go on the road. He stored the hard drive with nearly a completed record. I have not seen him (or the $800 I paid him) since that day. Third attempt was in 2006. 3 songs in and the engineer got called away to a 3 month job in Ohio. Finally, (with an entirely different band than when I started), I got all the ducks in a row and booked studio time with Rick Miller in 2008. Between the time I booked the studio and the recording date, I was offered a job I couldn’t refuse. Despite my 7 years in the industry at this time, I was still a one trick pony as far as my views of how a label works, so I decided to make the leap, accepted the offer and literally recorded the album in the two days before I got in a U-haul and moved my life up to Chicago and went to work for Bloodshot Records.

The last year has been a difficult time of booking for overdubs and trying to mix from 850 miles away. I flew down a couple of times to do what I could in person, but ultimately, half the disc was mixed without me present. In the end, I had to remove two cuts because they just weren’t where I wanted them to be. Had my mastering done here in Chicago where I could be present, and finally called it done.

2 constant truths about the music business:

#1) If you don’t tour, don’t bother

#2) If your #1 concern is making money, join a cover/tribute band.

Now, without my presence in North Carolina and everyone in the band having a full time job, it’s pretty clear that we’re not going to be able to tour behind this record, outside of weekend bursts when all of us can get away. On top of that, we play Honky Tonk. Not a large demand for such a splinter genre. The Americana/Roots section at the store is already small enough, and there are some road warriors out there that deserve the coveted slot a lot more than we do. So what does one do with a record that doesn’t have much of a chance? Why even MAKE the record in the first place?

Ars gratia artis is latin for “art for the sake of art”. I have had many of these songs in my head for several years and needed to document them to let my brain move on to the next creative endeavor. The amount it might reap at the end was never even a concern. It would’ve been SO much easier on me to just call the 7 years in N.C. a wash and get a band together in Chicago to do the songs, but these guys in the Zen Pirates are the best band I have ever had and we’d been playing the songs so long that I knew they would nail it, and nail it they did. Now we have a finished disc and with the knowledge I have in my head about how the industry works, I knew it was a relatively dead project coming out of the shoot. Any artist will tell you, sometimes you just have to do things, regardless of how well thought out they may or may not seem at the time. 

BUT…There is hope. This new-fangled internet thing can at least give me exposure to a large number of people that, until the last few years, would’ve been unreachable. Tunecore is a godsend. With a nominal fee and a few weeks waiting time, they can post your record to most every major digital site in the game. You can hyperlink a button on your site to take people directly to your album. This is an amazing leap forward in getting music out there. Granted, it is also easier than ever to get free copies of stuff off the net, but one hopes that people who actually like the music, would want to compensate the artist. Myspace and Facebook are both huge tools to get the word out on your music and each day, new opportunities show themselves. Café Press is another site that is truly helpful in getting you some merch. Your take is about 10% for the use of your logo, but it at least makes your chosen image available to the general public world-wide. The newest event that I am excited about is the ability to “gift” song streams on Facebook for a dime. This business is BUILT on nickels and dimes, so even if that gifted song only shows up as a penny in earned income, a thousand pennies can make a different.

From a professional “what-you’re-supposed-to-do” perspective, I mailed around 100 cd’s to radio and about 60 to press. That is dramatically shy of what I would recommend on an artist we’re trying to work with professionally, but I am honing down to the precious few that have shown themselves to be Honky Tonk fans. I am paying for every mailer and every disc that goes out, so the shotgun approach is not an option. Also hitting a handful of Digital sites, but the main bulk of those can be serviced digitally. I have the record up on Airplay Direct as well as a private link I have to send someone the full download with art. Digital Distribution is also a boon to the new Music Industry. Stations that wouldn’t even consider downloading a song 5 years ago, now request digital delivery in an attempt to fight back the wall of hard copy discs that fill rooms in the radio stations. You can save a TON of money servicing people digitally. There are still people that require a hard copy, and you need to factor that in for radio service. I am also currently talking with film & T.V. licensing agents regarding video game, movie and television placement. There are thousands of outlets out there now, many for free or nominal cost. You never know where an album may earn its keep. 

The Zen Pirates will continue on as a band that rarely plays out, but I’ve learned that it’s a very small world and that you never know where the next wind will take you. As for me, I am going to take a break from MY music, at least through the holidays and see how this whole digital campaign works out for us. We have plans to do some touring next year. We’re pondering a couple of long weekends up the east coast and down to Texas, as we have connections in both directions. In the mean time, I love my day job and I’m gonna continue to punch in and try to get the word out about good music that other people have made. If I’m lucky, some of those same folks will find our stuff out there in the digital landscape.

Swank*

Hank Williams Died For My Sins can be purchased at http://zenpirates.com/ as well as digitally at I-tunes, Amazon.com, Shockhound and other fine digital outlets. You can listen to cuts from the record at http://www.myspace.com/joeswankandthezenpirates.  Joe Swank recommends you read this piece if you are looking for a label, as it has many answers: http://www.bloodshotrecords.com/faqs#b