ERIC GRODE INTERVIEWS JAY FARRAR
Eric Grode: Now that you’re coming up on a full year, roughly how many subscribers do you have? Does that more or less line up with your projections?
Jay Farrar: The annual subscription is $100 which seems like a psychological “steep hill”, but broken down by week it’s about $2 a week, which definitely sounds more like what’s in a music listener’s wheelhouse. We’re adding content as we go, mostly archival audio from Son Volt and solo collections and archival photos with an occasional video to add to the mix. It roughly shakes out to a new track a week plus another unreleased demo or live track per week. Every Tuesday morning it comes out and kick-starts things. The amount of subscribers thus far I think are like a crowd at a small club show – dedicated and fearless!
EG: What is it like coming up with new material on a timetable? Do you find yourself essentially “working ahead” sometimes and saving a second song until the next month?
JF: I’ve been indoctrinated into the routine of writing 12 or so songs a year for a long time, so I’m used to that kind of schedule. The reality of a band spread across the country (Austin / St Louis / Brooklyn) presents its challenges, but we’ve often scheduled recording sessions after live touring. It strikes a nice balance that way. Releasing a new song a month is actually a welcome change of pace. In the past, touring schedules and record label release schedules all played a part in determining when a record would get released (often a year after it was recorded). There’s a fresh immediacy to releasing a song a month. It reminds me of what it must have been like in the 1950s and 1960s when singles ruled the day and were put out quickly.
EG: As far as you know, are any other artists of your stature following a model like this?
JF: Dave Dolger Schwartz has been doing the Son Volt web site duties for over 20 years. He brought up the idea of doing a club subscription based on a similar approach done by Guided By Voices during Covid. The fan club subscription idea completely made sense to me especially in regards to finding an outlet for all this archival stuff.
EG: Purely from a financial standpoint, is there a “break-even” number where you feel you need to get subscriber-wise?
JF: It’s a fan based thing, so as long as the archival vaults are full – we’ll keep the content flowing.
EG: How has it been digging deep into the Son Volt archives? Are any aspects of resuscitating these tracks easier or harder than you had anticipated?
JF: The subscription model doesn’t seem to be a well traveled endeavor in the music world. It’s more like a “start up” with a combination of hurdles to overcome, along with stretches of “open field running”. The amount of archival stuff I’ve accumulated over the years and diggitng it out has been mostly the easy part, though finding analog tape machines in working order and transferring old analog tapes that oxidize during playback (sticky-shed syndrome) has been a challenge. Literally “baking” the analog tapes in an oven brings them back to life!
It’s all been a learning curve and nothing is easy in the music business, but it feels good to be giving it a go in a world where a “stream” is a fraction of a penny. With that said, I’m lucky to have been involved in music as long as I have. I recently met some people in their late 20s that asked me “what I do”. When I replied “music” they seemed incredulous…. “Your whole life??” Yes, I feel lucky.
Eric Grode is a journalism professor at Syracuse University and longtime arts reporter.