Indie Artist Music Hustle
Indie Artist Music Hustle Podcast with Blonde Intelligence is where you will experience exquisite cranial repertoire. The podcast (Available on your favorite podcasting platform) provides entertainment news, thoughts on celebrity gossip, independent music artists, as well as businesses that contributor to the music and entertainment industries. The purpose is to provide exquisite cranial repertoire. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button!!!! follow me @BlondeIntelligence @RRoneice. Also the channel name is That Blonde Broad.
Indie Artist Music Hustle
The Longboat Chronicles: An American's Take on British Life Through Music
Welcome to this week's Indie Artist Music Hustle with Blonde Intelligence. I am your host Ms. Roni and I always seek to give you exquisite cranial repertoire. Seattle-born indie pop artist Longboat brings a refreshingly unique approach to music creation that defies conventional expectations. With a voice that evokes comparisons to Duran Duran and a creative spirit that embraces the unconventional, Longboat crafts narrative-driven compositions that deliberately avoid the typical love songs dominating the pop landscape.
"I don't write love songs," he explains during our candid conversation. "I write songs about things that have stories behind them." This philosophy has fueled an impressively prolific output – Longboat has already released numerous albums with seven more coming in the next year and a half. During the pandemic alone, he created six complete albums, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to musical expression regardless of external circumstances.
What makes Longboat's music particularly compelling is his storytelling approach. His most recent works, recorded at London's prestigious Studios (where the Spice Girls recorded their debut album), represent his American perspective on British life. These albums explore everything from ghost stories and colonialism to mortality and revenge, all packaged in what he describes as "eclectic pop" – accessible melodies with unexpected subjects and sonic choices.
When discussing today's AI-influenced music industry, Longboat positions himself as a welcome "glitch in the Matrix" – an unpredictable human element in an increasingly automated landscape. "The glitches in the Matrix are good things," he insists. "They are healthy for the rest of the matrix... those are the things that will lead to innovation." This perspective perfectly captures his artistic approach: authentic, distinctive, and unconstrained by commercial expectations.
Ready to discover music that challenges and entertains in equal measure? Visit longboat.band or find his extensive catalog on Bandcamp. Longboat welcomes connection with listeners and values constructive feedback – a refreshing attitude from an artist who has clearly found his unique voice in today's crowded musical landscape.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to this week's Indie Artist Music Hostel with Blind Intelligence. I'm your host, ms Ronnie. We always seek to give you exquisite cranial repertoire. This week we're going to have an interview with an indie artist that goes by the name of Longboat. Please forgive the audio. I had some Technical issues with the Platform that I was using that I would not be using anymore, but I did my best with editing On this one, so check it out.
Speaker 3:So where are you originally from?
Speaker 4:I'm originally from Seattle.
Speaker 3:Originally from Seattle. Okay, and you wrote many songs about Seattle.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 3:Okay, so I was looking at your Spotify and your fan base. Do you think that your core fan base is in Seattle or do you think, because of the type of music that you make, where is your core fan base?
Speaker 4:It's everywhere. It's everywhere where people like eclectic pop music. I don't write rock songs. I write songs about whatever is interesting to me at the moment.
Speaker 3:Okay, you remind me, your voice reminds me of Duran Duran, really To me. So when I looked at the genre the agency sent over they said that it was indie pop and I was like, hmm, you kind of sound pop, rockish to me. So what would you name your genre? Because, like I said when I first heard, I mean, it's not just totally that, it's like you have another piece. That's really eccentric, it stands out on its own.
Speaker 4:Well, thank you. Yeah, I mean I tried to make, like 10 years ago I tried to make the term un-pop stick and it totally didn't. But I go with indie pop, I go with eclectic. Usually the more words people use to describe their music, the more confusing it is to people and I just say I do pop music. People use to describe their music, the more confusing it is to people and I just say I do pop music. But I don't write love songs. I write songs about things and songs that have stories behind them have stories behind them.
Speaker 3:So what are you planning to do with your music? Because whenever I listen to music, I'll be like I can see this music here or placed here, or doing this right here Now. When I first listened, what I thought was because I just came back from Las Vegas I was like, yeah, I could hear this while I'm shopping in Vegas out on the strip. You know it's that type of music because you know Vegas has like a wide variety of all type of entertainment and I just feel like that your music would fit in like so good on the Vegas strip. So where do you see your music?
Speaker 4:You're so sweet to say that I see it everywhere. Honestly, because I write it, I don't write it for any specific person or any specific occasion, and I used to, when I would release albums, I would think, oh, this song with people would are just going to, this is going to play somewhere and people are going to really latch on to it and it's going to become part of their experience, which, like 50-watt university stations, there was very little— Nothing wrong with that, yeah, nothing wrong with that at all but it wasn't being circulated among a wider audience. It wasn't being circulated among a wider audience, and I really really want my music to find a wider audience and a dedicated audience too, and I'm always very, very I have great desire to communicate with my audience beyond the music.
Speaker 3:If anyone has any questions or any comments, too, I'm I'm always up for answering those, okay so with, I would say, the onset, with, especially having eight albums with the onset of, I would say, covid, the recovery from COVID, the introduction, not the introduction, I would say the boom of AI in the music industry and the pressure with social media, how do you navigate this as an independent artist?
Speaker 4:How do you navigate this as an independent artist? Well, you know that's a heavy question. Well, the thing is, with COVID I made six albums during 2020. And I actually had a session cut right in into because our state went into lockdown and I was the last session at that recording studio and three months later I was the first session when they opened back up. And you know it's going to get made. And that's kind of how I feel about all my music that it's inevitable to me and AI doesn't bother me at all because it's inevitable to me and AI doesn't bother me at all because it's not good music.
Speaker 3:I'm not even talking about just in the aspect of music, I'm talking about in the music industry has implanted itself into the music industry. I mean because it's like, even if you have to be smarter than the computer, of course yes, but then when you look at, oh, we can cut this and half the time I can get this done, I mean so it's like with the Matrix, the sentinels are invading.
Speaker 4:You like that movie too.
Speaker 3:I love it To me too.
Speaker 4:I absolutely love it. The other two not so great, but the first one yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm crazy about all of them. I have bought them over and over. Yeah, I'm crazy about all of them. I have bought them over and over again. I bought the DVDs. If they get scratched, I'm going back. Yeah, I love the Matrix, so I can see a lot of and it's going to be a lot of the things that happen in the music industry within the Matrix. So I know that it's a navigation and you have to. This is fantasy and this is what can really happen. And hey, do you want to cut this person to get this deal? I mean so I could see all of that, but I mean even with navigating the different parts of AI within the music industry. So I'm talking about not just the music part, not just creating the AI artists, not just using AI-generated musical verses or whatever. I mean just infiltrating the music industry.
Speaker 4:Well, the thing is that the glitches in the Matrix are good things. They are healthy for the rest of the matrix. You should look for the birches in the matrix, um, because those are the things that are will lead to innovation, and, and, and I I don't really consider myself an innovator, I just consider myself someone who writes a lot of music, and I have sort of shifting visions about how music should be. And lots of times, instead of just writing one song about something, I write an entire album about one thing, and and I it's. It's uh, up to people as individuals to listen to this music and judge for themselves, and whether it's it's part of the matrix or whether it's a glitch in the matrix. And I would love, I, personally, I would love to be a glitch in the matrix. And I would love, I personally, I would love to be a glitch in the matrix okay, so it wasn't just a cat that kept going back and forth.
Speaker 4:How does a creative become creative? Um, um, it's something that you can't force, it is it? It it's kind of you are or you aren't. But the thing is that in the music industry, lack of creativity has never stopped, and you can have a lot of hackery and imitation disguising itself as creativity. I used to work in an ad agency and every single week the company newsletter would come out, uh, emphasizing creativity, creativity, creativity. And the thing is is, in my experience, when you have to emphasize creativity that much, your industry is not creative. Um, you have. And the thing is this it has to come from within, you have to want to do it.
Speaker 4:I, it took me a long time to write music because I was looking for the right approach, because every time I tried it, it was, it was difficult, it was uh, uh, it was not as I thought it would be, it wasn't like it wasn't a movie. You don't. It's not like you hit the two notes on the piano and suddenly you have a song. Right, it takes work, it takes a lot of work and it takes your own method. You can't, you can't work by anybody else's method. And so I would just say, in summation it has to come from within. If you have that desire, then you have to work that through. And also this is probably the most important of all Once you start doing it, it has to become something else. It has to constantly become something else, otherwise it will get stale and stagnant and it will die and you will be unhappy with what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, when I think about that, I think about the many hobbies that I like to do. Of course, I like to craft, and you might finish something, and then you're looking, I'm going to add this to it, I'm going to do this to it. Maybe it'll look better with a brush of this color on top and as a I would say as a creative, when you're working on music, how do you know that the product is finished? Because if you keep listening to it, you're like I might want to add something right here, or so how do you know when it gets to the point that you're going to consider it a finished product?
Speaker 4:It's always that's always a thorny question. It really is and and I, just, I just it becomes a personal experience that that this, this tune is done, this tune doesn't lack anything, and and you just kind of have to convince yourself that. And now when I I you know, I just finished mixing my eighth album yesterday in london and, um and uh, I'm listening to it and I'm thinking maybe I could put a backing vocal there, maybe I make this once drum patch a little quieter. But you, just you have to walk away from it.
Speaker 3:But that's when you can take the opportunities to incorporate those things during your live show, where you're giving the the, the audience, something, a different version of a part of you, I would say because, yeah, there's different things that you might want to add or I might want to change this lyric during this time right here, and I think those give opportunities to the time to show your stage presence and the things that you can give to the artist. So you know, I just wondered about when does a creative say, hey, this is the finished product product. Does it ever get to that, Is it? I have some other ideas for it, but I'm going to incorporate these ideas later. So I know some people like release deluxe albums and things of that nature. That's why I'm wondering does a creative ever get to a finished product?
Speaker 4:Well, you do, you do sort of touch on the fact that there is an audience involved With a lot of things, say like oldies. The audience wants that note for note. It has to be note for note, otherwise it seems strange and different to them. They, they don't want that, but say, on the other end of the spectrum, there's bob dillon who tries to do, um, every song. Every time he does a song, he wants to do it differently. And and that is, if you're, if you're, uh, you know, a live performer and you're not used to that, and you, you are urged to make a different version of it every single time.
Speaker 4:It can be exhausting and so well, there is a happy medium here. And, uh, I would, I would love, I'm going to be, uh, working up, uh, piano versions of a lot of my tunes and I'm going to be doing all the stuff that I think should have been done and I think it's a fantastic idea. And, plus, you know, you give people a unique reading. That is going to happen again. It's a once-in in a lifetime thing.
Speaker 4:Especially if they like your music, uh, they can take that with them okay, so tell us a little bit about your eighth album oh well, it's, it's kind of the seventh and eighth album are a group and what I wanted to do is my wife and I live about a third of the year in London, and I am an Anglophile. I do like London, I think it's the greatest city in the world, and I came here. I came to London right after I graduated from high school and I kind of looked around and I said, yeah, so, so what is what a city's supposed to be? And? And you know, it could have been, it could have been dallas, it could have been phoenix, it could have been you know, tokyo, it it, but it it just it kind of vibed with me and uh, I've, I've, I've really liked it ever since.
Speaker 4:Okay, and, and so these two albums are, are basically sort of my take on on English, british life. I make up ghost stories, I tell uh, I tell tales about uh I. I even touch on colonialism, um, I, I talk about, um, my perspective on uh life in England at this at this time. And so, yeah, and, and I wanted to make it in London, and so I made it at Strongworm Studios where the Spice Girls recorded their first album. There are 14 studios there and apparently two weeks ago when I was recording my first album there, roger Waters was like hanging around and yeah, and so they get like famous people in there all the time, and but it is it's tales of England and Britain and I just it's just an American's take of that, okay. I just it's just an American's take of that, okay, sort of like what the Kinks were doing with Village Green Preservation, so do you do live performances.
Speaker 4:I haven't done a live performance in a long time because I've just concentrated on making albums, but I'm going to start, since I have just made eight albums, I really want to work on self-accompanying on piano and that I'm going to start playing live, most likely in London.
Speaker 3:Okay, so tell me, how do you navigate social media?
Speaker 4:um, whenever anybody reaches out to me, I answer I I like hearing what people have to say about my music and usually it's it all that I don't think I've ever gotten a troll. Um, I've gotten spammed, but I haven't gotten a troll ever, because people realize that I'm honestly trying to make good music and trying to release it to the public. I don't get any like hey, mongo, you saw, or anything like that, because I feel like I'm doing this in good faith.
Speaker 3:Is there anything else that you would like us to know about? I'm going to call you the one man band.
Speaker 4:Well, I do. I do have. I have made four albums this year with live players. I've made three with completely live bands. I've made one album about and this is going to sound super heavy, but it's pop music. It really is, it's pop music. I've made one album about loss, one album about mortality and one album being an Eastern European, this warms my heart one album about revenge. And just talk to another Ukrainian and they'll tell you all about how much they save on revenge.
Speaker 3:You know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, I had just interviewed a group. They were a heavy metal group called oh, I can't remember the name of it, but they had one member from Russia, one member from the Ukraine and one member from Sweden and I had been trying to check on them. I don't know what happened, but when the war broke out there, I think that it interrupted a lot of things there With that war. How did it affect your music, being that you live a third of the year in the UK? Because, although it's not right there, it's still, the world is small uh-huh, well, it was.
Speaker 4:It was very strange because, um, my, my wife and I, before we lived here, we had our honeymoon over in London and and this is this is 2018 and, um, you know where you went all the time you heard russian spoken. You heard it on the tube, you'd hear in public, and then, after the war started, nothing. You do not. You do not hear russian spoken in public at all.
Speaker 4:You hear lots of Polish and you occasionally hear Ukrainian, but Russian almost never that leads me to another question go ahead, go ahead, go ahead but uh, but you know, as my family lives in Western Ukraine and so they're not getting uh, bond or cruise missile, but my cousins, my younger cousins, are getting to be draft age and I'm worried for them. I really am.
Speaker 3:So yeah, that brings me to the question, because I know I was getting ready to end it but what do you think about censorship? That, like with YouTube and even with the Super Bowl that was here, in some words that cannot be said? Like on YouTube, you cannot say the assault word, you have to say grape, you have to code words and things like that for censorship now. And things like that for censorship now. Music used to be and I'm not saying that it's not now, but music was always right there with literature, with different events that happen in the world to shape how people think and how people view things, and before I'm not going to always say that freedom was. I mean that speech was free, free. But it seems like now, if it is going against the message that they want the public to know, that they're censoring people who are speaking on raw truth. Do you think, or how has censorship influenced your creativity? Because we are being censored?
Speaker 4:It hasn't at all. It's strangely enough because I I mean, I wrote an entire album about January 6th and that was not, that was not censored at all, and I have, I've done political stuff, made plenty of fun of Trump and mega, and that is that. It has never really been anything. But then again I don't have a wider audience. I, I, I, I haven't done you know the equivalent of like, try that in a small town, because you've heard of that. That was like.
Speaker 3:You have to know your audience.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I haven't done anything like that, but it hasn't affected me at all. But it seems that, especially on social um, that it's very arbitrary, that you know you can, some people can get away with some language, other people can't. I don't. I, I use almost no profanity in my music and um and I, the controversial topics are, are discussed and they're not, they're not foisted on people, and then if it, if worse comes to worse, there's always satire. Satire is always, is always, um, is is supposed to make people think, it's supposed to ruffle feathers, and I have, I have that as well, and and I and I like doing that. But you won't get censored for it, okay.
Speaker 3:Now I want you to tell everyone where they can find your music, where they can find you on social media, if they want to work with you, how they can get in contact with you. Anything about long boat? Okay Well, social media if they want to work with you, how they can get in contact with you. Anything about long boat?
Speaker 4:okay, well, um, you can. You can visit my site, which is at longboat, that's l-o-n-g. B-o-a-t dot band um, and you'll like my. You'll like my website because it looks like it's for the world's worst Mexican restaurant, and you can access discography through there. Or you can go to bandcampcom, and I have 30,. I have released 32 albums and the other seven are coming in the next year, year and a half or so, and then, if you want to send me a message, you could do it through the website, and I'd love to hear from anybody who has listened to the music and has an opinion that is constructive. It's always constructive. Opinions are always, are always, valued. Okay.
Speaker 3:Well, you can catch in the artist music hustle on our podcast and platforms. You can catch us on social media, especially on YouTube. Check out the YouTube channel and on the website at wwwblonde-intelligencecom, and we will see you next week. Bye, learn about the indie artist from the indie artist. I'm Jana Key. I'm an artist. My name is.
Speaker 1:Lauren, as you already said, I am a singer-songwriter. I'm.
Speaker 2:Omar Pems. I originally come from the Caribbean.
Speaker 4:St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Speaker 2:My name is Brian Doucette. I'm an East Coast Canadian rocker.
Speaker 3:And then I found myself in Las Vegas, where I'm at currently for dancing for Cirque du Soleil with my own solo. I also learned from music industry professionals.
Speaker 4:I'm a music producer. I've been producing professionally for about 14 years. I have worked with a couple people in the industry Grammy-nominated Trev Ridge, isha from 702.
Speaker 1:After I got my deal with Universal Music, after the Alicia Keys and Gunna record and many others that I've done, and then Alicia Keys was the number one adult R&B song of the year.
Speaker 2:I asked a question.
Speaker 4:That's a great question. Yeah, it's a good question.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is a good question. Wow, I love all these questions. These are great, like most of the questions that I get are like you know, tell me about Justin Bieber.
Speaker 3:Indie Artist. Music Hustle is for the indie artists, their fans, industry professionals and the music lover. Subscribe on YouTube, facebook or the podcast on Apple, spotify, pandora or Blonde Intelligence Facebook page. Don't forget to add me to your playlist.
Speaker 1:Bye, it's been really fun, especially talking to someone across the pond. Let's go.