– • david ross macdonald • extras and journal

Now here’s a question for you.

Should we pay money for art?

I’ve been thinking this one over a bit lately given the recent proliferation of freeconomics on the web and I am searching for answers.

Maybe you can help?

So for the sake of argument let’s start at an art gallery opening that you happen to stumble upon while cruising some hip part of town, you nudge your buddy and say “hey, let’s check that out, free wine!”. I’ve done that more than once and I am sure there are serial gallery creepers out there just trawling openings for the free booze (mainly other artists, musos and actors).

However, on this particular occasion you see a canvas hanging on the wall and you just love it, LOVE it. It speaks to you in ways no words ever could, it’s texture, colour and composition just gets right under your skin, it’s strange, unique, inexplicable and vivid, words fail you. What happens next?, well maybe that doesn’t matter, you see, you just love it and that is a priceless moment of art appreciation, totally free. This visual feast is an unencumbered gift directly from the artists heart to you. Nice. But you pay $500, you meet the painter and start telling all your friends about it and are burning for the 3 weeks you got to wait before you can hang the damn thing in your room.

So at the visceral level, you are paying nothing for art, art is free because art is an expression-experience and not a purchasable commodity. The purpose of art is to move your spirit in unexpected ways, humanity manifest and for everything else “there’s Mastercard”. So the only reason you paid the 500 bucks was so that you could OWN it, and enjoy it in the privacy of your dwelling at the exclusion of all but you and your homies. Sure you could argue that you also bought it to support the artist, but I hazard to guess that you’re not running a charity here but if you are, I could send you a list as long as my filemaker-pro “find all songwriters” query result outputs for you to run your eye over if you’d like, it’s a long list. Chances are, if it’s not your nieces 1st year ink blotch landscapes then if you don’t love it then most probably all cash stays in your pocket, right?

You could easily switch up this experience with a music venue, street corner busker or hearing THAT song for the first time on your sweethearts car stereo. A song, becomes THAT song and then instantly YOUR song and all for free while you stood there with your mouth agape listening. You might have walked on, flipped a quarter or been powerless in stopping yourself from buying the CD. Nice, again.

So where am I going with this? Well, unlike a painting that hangs in a gallery or now in your living room as your objet d’amour a music track is like a virus that can replicate and spread itself throughout the digital universe of iThings. That MP3 is an untameable, irretrievable and serpentine little bastard and for all intents and purposes, free as a bird, a fait accompli.

From my reasoning thus far, the economics of a recording artist appears to be vanishing as quickly as the nasty merlot at the exhibition opening.

So why am I spending the equivalent of 2 years rent on making that next album!? I’m glad you asked.

It’s a question that I am hearing more and more these days from my muso buddies with the global financial downturn-slamdunk and all. With all the media and pop marketing gurus saying the same thing, “if you love your content, set it free” what’s a guy to do? This is not the same as scoffing “if you can’t make money from art why bother making it?” which is a question reserved purely for those chewing on the blue pill. Look, there is nothing worse than a whining musician lamenting the busted ways of a world gone wrong with tanking CD sales while drowning in a sea of proto-talent that extends as far as the bandwidth can see. I don’t consider myself that type of guy, but what’s the deal? What’s the deal?, the new deal, you know how last weeks deal was the old deal, right? oh, you missed that blog, geez, social networking is so yesterbyte , huh?, this afternoons tweet-ference on micro-monitizationism and longtail nechenomics was sooo boring, it went on for minutes, talk about stonehenge, they even had a rep from a record label! no i’m not kidding, brb.

Being facetious here doesn’t help my cause (much) and every cynical pessimist will profess to be a realist but the ‘what’s the deal’ question remains, if art is free, then as an artist what’s left to ethically monetize and how does one sustain that to a level that allows for the usual subset of humble social aspirations. “You could sell some t-shirts and buttons at the gig” your friend says while scratching their chin earnestly or “how about you get your music on the telly?” mum asks as if it’s some grocery item you inexplicably left off your list last time you shopped.

From my direct experience and from the tour scars of my compadres the humble coin is out there on the road, the only place where the face-to-face exchange of art exists for a musician, and for all intents and purposes it’s free because it’s performance art (hey, you might have to pay a few bucks for the right to go through some doors and sit at a bar or buy a CD if you want). Cormac McCarthy once wrote a book about a road, and when I saw the movie, Viggo Mortensen looked not unlike most touring singer-songwriters after a stretch of house concerts, bombed club dates, cash sucking music conferences, fried engine blocks and deeper fried truck stop shash. To all you touring musicians out there, we salute us!

So, I ask you the question … do you feel, like I do, that art is free and if so what’s the new deal?

Just click on the gift box above to open/download the MP3

The MP3 above is free, free as a bird, it’s a tune by Bob Dylan I tracked, I once played drums for the guy while sound checking, that’s a story for another time … tomorrow is such a longtime … enjoy.

Please leave your comment below, I will read them all.

Live Recording - Pepper Tree

Sunday 8 November 2009
David Ross Macdonald with Mel Robinson on cello

Recorded live in the Church of the Trinity, Adelaide, South Australia with Mel Robinson playing haunting and improvised cello.

Share and enjoy!

Just click on the gift box above to open/download the MP3

Umalali, Alejandro Escovedo, Luluc and Jah Youssouf are impossible to spell on your mobile phone using predictive text and so probably make them TWITTER hostile and thus consequently perfect for my tastes, IMHO.

The substance of these seemingly anagrammatically named artists that I gloriously witnessed (in person, actually there, youtubeless, surrounded by other humans) performing at the Calgary Folk Festival last week is as indisputable as is your probable unawareness of their existence. Go figure, how could such beautiful and substantive music slip under our collectively networked full time online radars?

I mean, I am constantly being reminded on my travels during after-party-small-talk and by the self-digesting media that “the world is a small place”. With all these networks of TWITTER, GoogleCHAT,Myspace, Facebook, Skype, email and the worldwide web keeping us informed and safe aren’t we all being brought “closer together”? If the glossy backlit airport terminal advertising panels are anything to go by all I need (providing I have high speed broadband) for a fulfilling, meaningful and connected life is some quasi motivational guru catch phrase that distils the essence of a Tiger Woods 3 iron swing and the sleek black reflective lines of a Lexus Hybrid. But I digress. I am guilty of the same geographically ignorant and glib remark during a conversation I shared with the unforgettable songwriter and blues guitarist Chris Smither.

The conversation went along the lines of us making some random connection resulting in our having a friend in common to which I goofily(*) remarked “huh, the world is such a small place” to which the insight-ready Smither instantly retorted in eloquent southern drawl “but as my daddy used to say ‘I wouldn’t want to have to paint it!’”.

So here’s my hunch. Drawing upon the wisdom of Chris Smither’s father, a George Bernard Shaw quote “The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong” and my own mothers observation that “The more something is advertised the less it is needed” I commit Disney sacrilege and propose that “it’s not such a small world after all”.

Maybe the world just appears small because this is what the communication medium of our age brings to bear upon our elite psyche and the fact that the minority of humanity with broadband aren’t dodging bullets or going hungry nor are they hanging out with the majority of humanity that is. If George Bernard Shaw was around today maybe he would tweak his own quote along the lines of “The minority is sometimes self righteous; the majority always wronged”.

TWITTER me that as I could do with a distraction from the irony that George Orwell tipped off the capitalist think-tanks who then reverse engineered his ‘1984′ so that instead of the state allowing no privacy for its citizens, we subjects now willingly surrender it as a seemingly harmless and entertaining adjunct to consumer convenience and it’s nemesis, terrorism.

Our society would be consumed by irony if it didn’t have such an appetite for it.

But I digress, the reason for this post is for some fun, tasty, free and brisk picking and irish whistling that I recorded with Ormond Waters to one of my tunes “Tammys Jig” .. please enjoy and share with impunity as no one is watching you, I hope.

tammys-jig-duet-1

(*)Goofy is the subordinate lapdog to the Disney Inc. icon Mickey Mouse who in turn is the cute and innocent mousy personification of the western consumer capitalism ideal, IMHO.

So I am playing to the barflies at this open mic in Melbourne, it is late and I am gazing beyond the casually disinterested drinkers to the TV set above the cigarette machine. The tube never sleeps in bars, they hard wire the power into the wall, there are no controls on the face panel for the punters to screw with … there is a remote, but that lives in the managers safe along with the hash and girly magazines. I see that the medico-drama HOUSE is playing and I am cruelly reminded that tonight was supposed to be the most important night of my musical career. What happened?

Well, weeks prior to this bitter and empty open mic night I received, completely and utterly out of the blue, an email and contract from the good folks at NBC/Universal in LA who make the afore mentioned series HOUSE. I couldn’t believe it. They had somehow discovered my version of Waltzing Matilda on Youtube or iTunes and wanted to place it in the show. Fantastic! Couldn’t be better, but it was. They didn’t just want to place a 5 second instrumental sound-bite during a fade-out, they wanted to place the music and song beneath the finale episode closing montage that ran for two and half bloody minutes, incredible!

Once I had established that this wasn’t some elaborate hoax perpetrated by my high-school-hater, one thing led to another. Late night international phone calls, transfers of hi resolution audio files to the video editing suites in LA, back and forth of contracts, copyright and licensing issues resolved, and everyone was very happy and this was my magical mystery ticket and ride to musical infinity and beyond. Show airs Wednesday May 20, 9:30pm.

It seemed too good to be true… and it was. What happened?

Well, I don’t know. Somewhere, high up in the chain of Universal command the NBC powers that be decided a splash of the Rolling Stones’ ‘As Tears Go By’ was the perfect fit for the poignant conclusion to the series. Right. So, just like that my golden Willy Wonker chocolate bar ticket to Universal stardom is snatched from my fumbling fingers by the most fickle and fateful of warm LA breezes and I can only watch in bewildered astonishment as it wafts and shimmers it’s glinting, taunting and mocking way down through the alleyways of Hollywood boulevard and across the smoggy LA valley through the outdoor workout gym on Venice Beach and into the high bacteria count of the Malibu surf. It smelt of Cohen brothers cruelty, it tasted like crow pie but I was having seconds and thirds.

There’s a proverb out there that says something about eggs hatching but it escapes me as I am playing to the barflies at this open mic in Melbourne, it is late and I am gazing beyond the … 

Bela Flak! With Simmo on Banjo

Just click on the gift box above to open/download the MP3

post leonard cohen concert … took it back to my hotel room and recorded an old tune of mine ’til i’m gone’ …

Just click on the gift box above to open/download the MP3

… feel free to share these gift MP3’s that i am recording in various hotel rooms and posting from the road … peace & respect, DRM

Welcome! Here is your free Christmas MP3 download gift. Enjoy and Thank You!

While working on new music for my 2009 release I wanted to record something especially for those folks who have purchased my music and supported my art. But what to record?

As a young kid some of my earliest recollections of music came from my father who was a gigging jazz pianist and trumpeter at the time. The music of Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller often filled the music room, so I’ve chosen a song of that era made famous by Old ‘Satchmo’.

Recorded late one snowy December night in a small cosy house in western Ontario, here is my interpretation of ‘What a Wonderful World’.

Just click on the gift box above to open the MP3 for you to then save and enjoy!

All the very best, DRM

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To gift someone special with my music, the buttons in the right column will make it so.