Sound Effects
Running on passion and plugged into an international cyber-community of independent musicians, the mavericks of our local music scene are helping take Santa Fe creativity into the 21st century.
The electro-rock trio D Numbers makes dazzling music—retro-futuristic, hyper-intricate, sonically adventurous, filled with twists and surprises. And the intensity with which the band performs it is equally impressive. Onstage, drummer Paul Groetzinger, guitarist Ben Wright, and bassist-keyboardist Brian Mayhall communicate with nearly constant eye contact and an ever-evolving series of facial expressions (a congratulatory smile, a raised eyebrow, a get-ready tilt of the head). These are musicians in full sync, and on a good night, those connective vibes seem to radiate outward into the audience. And, maybe, beyond.
Something powerful is happening on the fringes of Santa Fe’s legendary arts scene. Forget the $20,000 canvases or $180 opera tickets: Musicians like Groetzinger, Wright, and Mayhall—with their $6 shows—are proving to be just as integral in carrying Santa Fe’s creative torch into the new millenium. They’re every bit as committed to their craft, which is apparent in the quality of the work they produce. And in an era of commodified art and performance, these “indie” musicians, who do their work independent of music-label support, exemplify the maverick, art-for-art’s-sake energy that the city’s reputation as a creative center was built on.
Santa Fe’s indie music scene receives almost no institutional assistance and relatively little attention. It’s spawned in living rooms, presented in tiny, sometimes makeshift venues, and driven by passion. And, increasingly, it’s part of an interconnected, international do-it-yourself creative movement that’s thumbing its nose at corporate-run entertainment.
Of course, working outside the profit-driven system isn’t always profitable. “I’m always a month behind on rent,” says Wright. That’s not a complaint; Wright and Groetzinger, both 29 and friends since Little League in their hometown of Norwalk, Connecticut, decided from an early age to dedicate their lives to making music. These notes from the Santa Fe indie music scene, framed by a week’s worth of entries compiled from Groetzinger’s journal, give a sense of why and how they keep going.
Wednesday 8 pm–1 am, Ben’s house: Rehearsed for our tour, playing through 25 songs. These songs aren’t like riding a bike, so we plan to spend 20 hours getting back in shape.
Thursday, 7 pm, Launchpad night club, Albuquerque: Hoisting our tables up onto the stage is a nightmare. The sound guy’s cracking the whip—he’s already behind schedule. We all have back problems and knee problems.
Thursday, 11:35 pm, New York Pizza Department, Albuquerque: Wrapped after a great show, our best yet in Albuquerque. About 40 people, and the promoter paid us $130, enough to cover a tank of gas plus a pizza and pitcher of beer.
Whenever Wright loads or unloads his equipment into D Numbers’ 1990 Chevy van (nicknamed Vance), he wears heavy gloves. As a professional musician, he knows a smashed hand might mean more than being out of work—it could mean being out of doors. “There is very little financial stability in what we do,” he says. For both him and Groetzinger, making music is an inevitable, higher calling, even a spiritual path. Money, on the other hand, is, if not a necessary evil, a potential obstruction. “If I wasn’t a struggling musician,” Groetzinger tells me, “my life would be way more complicated. If I was a successful stockbroker, I’d hate myself. I am doing what I do because there’s no other choice for me. Everything I do feeds my soul. I don’t know how many people get to do that all day, every day.”
Saturday, 10 pm, Meow Wolf performance space, Santa Fe: The visiting hip-hop tour doesn't have enough sound. I hop in the car to grab my speakers to loan them. Dual mission to enjoy the show and support the scene.
Sunday, 11:20 am, home: Digesting the rejection e-mail from a major music festival I won’t name. It’s the same story: Without label support, D Numbers is just another lonely independent band trying to get attention.
Just as the musicians themselves often live on the edge, so does Santa Fe’s club scene. The litany of fallen venues is long: Club Luna, Club West, The Edge, Swig, Club Alegria, the Drama Club, and, this past winter, WilLee’s Blues Club. With the exception of the bar at El Farol, a Canyon Road anchor of Santa Fe nightlife for decades, this town has yet to keep a live-music club alive. “The anvil dropped,” according to popular local DJ Melanie Moore, “when the Paramount closed.” Moore, a longtime staple and supporter of this town’s music scene, describes the downtown venue, which hosted late-night events for seven years before shutting its doors in 2005, as a “treasure” that “supported every style and everyone.”
“We need a really big space downtown that could hold larger touring acts,” says Patricia Sauthoff, the culture editor at the alt-weekly Santa Fe Reporter and the city’s most avid chronicler of its music scene. “That’s what we are lacking—a place where you can dance. The Lensic does a great job with bigger acts, but we don’t get indie bands, so people have to go to Albuquerque.” Local promoter Jamie Lenfestey of Fan Man Productions, whose business booking acts at venues like the Lensic is running strong, blames Santa Fe’s demographics. According to Lenfestey, who has imported acts like David Byrne, Lyle Lovett, Joan Baez, Lucinda Williams, and Al Green, “Santa Fe audiences now are a bit older, married with kids. They’ll pay $42 to see a big name, but not many will pay $5 to see a local up-and-coming touring band, even on a Saturday night.”
Monday, 11 am, Stepbridge Studios: We walk in, sit down, and nail the first song, “Insomniac,” on our first take of the recording session for our new CD. That’s walking onto the golf course and shooting a hole in one.
Monday, 10:30 pm, Stepbridge Studios: Take 12 of “Ghosttalk,” and I’m beating my head on the wall. Ben and Brian have gotten their parts, but I’m doing take after take.
Yet even without the benefit of promoters or beautiful halls, musicians are finding an easier time on the road these days. As recently as five years ago, unsigned acts operated in relative isolation. But bands like D Numbers and venues like Santa Fe’s volunteer-run art-performance spaceMeow Wolf now comprise what’s emerging as a loosely affiliated, digitally enabled international movement. This movement’s connective tissue is social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and its cash flows through download sites like iTunes, eMusic, and CD Baby. Instead of relying on marketing departments and press releases, it spreads the word through cell-phone text messages, e-mails, and Twitter. And rather than presenting market-tested, corporate-approved singles, it puts out tunes that are, as Groetzinger puts it, “music for music’s sake, un-juried and unaffected by money.” With American music conglomerates struggling with decreased sales and an ongoing identity crisis, this do-it-yourself scene might point to an imploding hierarchy.
“As we’ve traveled around America—from Tennessee to Nebraska—we’ve seen people doing this same thing,” Wright says. “And it’s really empowering. People outside the industry are programming and promoting shows and making their music, and beginning to feel something they are working on in their bedrooms might be worth bringing out into public.”
For major names in the music business, going independent and digital can mean more money. The British art-rock band Radiohead released its 2007 album In Rainbows online using a pay-what-you-will price scheme. According to bandleader Thom Yorke, the musicians netted nearly $3 million in the first month, with downloaders paying an average of $6 apiece for the album. For emerging bands like D Numbers, the new Internet tools can mean survival—if only barely.
Monday, 10:30 am, home: Woke up, checked MySpace, fielded requests from two Portland bands looking for a Santa Fe gig. Got 22 plays today. Plus an e-mail from CD Baby: two CDs and 10 downloads sold; a $35 check on the way.
Monday, 3:15 pm, home: Received fliers for Colorado tour next month; dropped them in the mail to Boulder and Denver clubs.
Groetzinger acknowledges the challenges of making music in Santa Fe. The band’s online sales aren’t breathtaking: D Numbers’ 2007 CD, Lightparade, has sold $1,000 worth of copies on CD Baby. After a year of frenetic touring (the band played more than 80 shows in 2008, while doing all of its own marketing, publicity, booking, driving, and hauling), it is $6,000 in debt. But, as it prepares for the release of a new CD in 2009, D Numbers is maintaining the kind of focus it embodies onstage. “We have fans and record-industry people who say, ‘Maybe you should try adding a hot female vocalist. That would really boost you,’” Groetzinger says. “But we can’t be manhandled by money.”
One of the ways Groetzinger supplements his income takes place every Tuesday night, when he (a.k.a. DJ Feathericci) and Wright (DJ Bacon) spin a mad mix of sounds at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Groetzinger also does session work, serves as a sound engineer for other acts, DJs private parties ($1,000 per wedding), and scrapes what he can out of each creative gig. Other musicians give guitar lessons, sell sheet music at the Candyman music store, or wait tables. Some leave in hopes of better luck elsewhere. And a few bands have made it—like Santa Fe native Zach Condon’s band, Beirut (now based in New York), which performed on the Late Show with David Letterman in February.
Tuesday, 5 pm, home: Craft my recruitment text message for tonight’s Cowgirl show: “Tuesday’s the new Saturday.”
Tuesday, 7 pm, home: Load turntables, PA, and computer gear into Vance. Between here and the Cowgirl, we’ll add another .6 miles to the 300K already on the odometer.
Tuesday, 9:20 pm, the Cowgirl, Santa Fe: I always start the first set mellow, with world music, soul, funk, hip-hop. Families filter out. Dancers filter in. Guy in cowboy hat in the corner is tapping his steel-tipped toe. I like that better than the old-timer who yelled at me, reached into his ears, took wadded toilet paper out and threw it at me.
For years, says Groetzinger, he, Wright, and Mayhall debated relocating D Numbers to the Bay Area, with its thriving club scene. But Santa Fe is “phenomenally supportive and inclusive,” he says. “In other cities, every band and every DJ are looking out for themselves. Out here, we all know it won’t be fun if we don’t support each other. I see it as my karmic duty to support the people who support me, and that happens all over the place.” With or without institutional support, artists here find a way to do what they need to do—and the music scene in Santa Fe marches along.
“Obviously if we were making pop music, if we had a hit with a verse and a chorus,” Groetzinger explains while drinking a $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon at the Cowgirl, “we’d have a better chance of someone signing us. But we aren’t going to yield to those temptations. We still believe we will be successful on our own terms.” And Lenfestey can imagine that success happening on a scene-wide scale, having witnessed it before. “The remarkable thing for me in doing this is that whenever it looks blackest, something comes along to energize and revitalize the scene,” he says. “I am looking forward to the dawning of a second golden age.”
