Todd P

In six years Todd P has risen high amongst the indie rock scene of Brooklyn.  Chances are you've been to a Todd P show whether you know it or not.









Chief Magazine: Let's start with the shows you put on this weekend (March 29-31, 2007)...

Todd P: Yeah, we had some really great shows this weekend.  Friday was kind of an amalgam show, a couple of different bills came together. At Asterisk.  Little bit of a last minute thing, a band called Giant Squid and a band called Grayson, both from San Francisco, kind of progressive metal stuff, and they opened the bill, and then an old sort of… semi-legendary band from Olympia called Two Ton Boa played. Which were really good. And also 31 Knots, which are old friends of mine from Oregon.  And then this band The Forms, friends of mine, headlined.  So it was kind of a weird potluck lineup, but it worked out really well.  And we had a nice, really warm party.  Almost two hundred people, it was a good crowd, everyone was really happy.

Saturday was a big party… much bigger than I expected it to be at some friends of mine’s loft on S.2nd St., called The Death by Audio House, they make these homemade guitar pedals, they sell them pretty well, they’re doing pretty well for themselves.  And they just rented a bunch more space in their building, so we’re going to maybe throw a couple more parties there to help pay for some of their renovations.  They’re going to turn it into various different artist uses and some living spaces…

Is that an instance of splitting the door or a couple hundred off the top?

No, I don’t split the door usually.  You know, maybe people sell the beverages?  The owners, the people who have the lease usually sell the beverages.  I’m pretty firm on the door going to the bands, I mean, I take a little bit for myself to pay for my expenses, to pay my staff, but it’s very minimal.  In general it costs a lot less than whatever it costs to go through a club.  And I think that’s the way it ought to be.  I mean people aren’t paying to see your building, they’re paying to see the music, and frankly that’s where the money should go.

I kind of don’t care about how much logistical crap I have to put together, like if I have to get five PA systems, and do all this other shit… unless there’s expenses I have to pay, that’ll come out the door, but if not, if it’s something I can get for free, and if I can keep it as cheap as possible, I like to give the money to the bands.  Frankly, even if I did skim money off the top or try to take a cut for me I’m still not going to get rich off it, so what’s the point of getting slightly less poor off it?

You moved here from Portland, Oregon?

By way of Texas and a couple of other places, but yeah, I had been in Oregon for a long stretch before that, and then there was about eight months where I didn’t really live anywhere.

Eight months making your way to New York?

I lived in Texas for a while, tried to finish up school, I’m from Texas originally.  Then I went to Europe for three or four months because I had to get Spanish credit, so I was like, “Hey, why not, I’ll go to Spain, that seems like a good way to get Spanish credit.”  And then I started running out of money in Western Europe so I went to Eastern Europe for a while and just kind of puddled around Hungry and stuff like that because you’re money goes a lot further there, or used to anyway, before the Euro.

And then I came back to Texas and made some money for a while doing tech support when you could still do that without being in India. And then I went on tour with a band for a month and the tour ended up here.

And then you stayed?

And I stayed.

What were you studying in Texas?

Well, I’m an English major, so nothing.

[Laughing]

Ya know?

Yeah.  And in Oregon, you were working for a club?

No, I owned my own club in Portland.  I owned a small, very DIY all-ages space in Portland.  That I opened.  It was a dry-cleaners business and we took on a little lease and put on shows there for about two years.

Was that something you had been thinking about or just the opportunity presented itself...?

Both.  I had been wanting to open a business of some kind and it occurred to me that a club, an all-ages club, A) is more exciting and fun, B) takes absolutely no start-up cash, all you need is a really crappy PA system and if you can build a stage that’s really nice, but you don’t really need one, and then you just need an empty room.  And that’s exactly what we had, so we just did that.

We were thinking about opening a record store, I mean this was before downloading so the record store seemed like a liable concept at the time, but you think about it then you have to buy all those records, you know, so fuck that.  And I didn’t have any money, I’ve never had any money, so…  I decided to do that because I’ve always liked going to shows and thought it was an interesting way to meet like-minded people, which it turned out to be.

The All-Ages scene is very different in the Northwest, what with the teenage noise ordinance laws and such…

Yeah, Seattle’s insanity.  I mean, Portland’s sort of like that because Oregon has the strictest liquor commission in the world, or in the country anyway.  Maybe Iran has a stricter liquor commission… but yeah, I mean, it’s fucking ridiculous.  And Seattle is just obscene… Basically the clubs got together and decided, “Hey, we’re going to make up this bullshit to the city council that if you have teens nearby… that dirty old men will take them home.”  And that’s why they have the law in Seattle.  And the reason they did this is because clubs don’t want under 21 people in their clubs because they don’t buy beer.  And it’s a way for them to get around having to even worry about it.  It’s disgusting.

Especially considering that Oregon and Washington have some of the least self-described religious conservatives in the country.  I think there are fewer people who profess to attend church regularly in Oregon than any other state in the country, per capita.  So why do we have this kind of Draconian, puritanical liquor laws?  Partly it’s because, in both those states… the same commission that was created during prohibition to regulate liquor in both those states is the exact same organization and division of the government… basically their bylaws were made from an era when alcohol was completely illegal and they were then changed after prohibition to be the agency in the government that regulated liquor, so their attitude about liquor has always been about trying to keep it from happening, but more importantly it’s because there’s vested interest involved.

In Oregon the liquor commission was really terrible, they actually had the right to blacklist any site, not just any business, but any actual site, permanently.  So if you had a club that at one point they decided had had too many violations, and they could go through without telling you what the violations were… like there was a club, that was probably the prominent club in Oregon at the time, the biggest and most legitimate indie-rock club, La Luna… La Luna was a 600-capacity space, which is the equivalent to an Irving Plaza-size place here.  Like a 1,500 would be the equivalent to a 600 in Oregon, because more people per capita go to shows in Oregon than in New York but New York has ten times as many people.  So La Luna was a very well-respected, well-know venue, and basically I threw a couple of hip hop shows… minor league, like Def Jux kind of shit, minor-league is the wrong word, but not even serious, gangsta scary shit.  I mean Oregon is the whitest fucking state in the country. Seriously it’s 95% Caucasian.

Well, all it took was some property owners nearby complaining that the venue was having people… a little bit of tagging a little bit of peeing in the corners on the street, or whatever, which happens at the rock shows too, but when they said it was a hip hop show… the commission came in and completely revoked all the permits. Permanently.  On that site.  It salted the earth.  You can never open a club there ever again.

But, what?  How…?

Because they were given that kind of power when they created the agency.

Wow.

And because it’s all done administratively. Like a lot of these kinds of things that effect clubs and rock and roll shows.  They’re not done through… it’s not like the state legislature passed a law.  They passed a law giving this organization the right to do things.  The organization then passes rules.  Rules aren’t as easily challenged in court, so you can’t bring up constitutional stuff like, “Jesus fucking Christ, you can’t shut down places just because they’re doing hip hop shows.” But that’s what they did.

Oregon is also one of the most racist places in the country.  Way more racist than Texas or the South.  And why is that? Because they don’t have black people.  They don’t have Hispanic people… I mean they have a few, but it’s tiny, tiny.

Yeah.

I find that the racism is a lot less vicious in the South than it is in the North.  You spent a lot of time in the South?

Exactly.  The racism that I felt in Seattle seemed so much more natural and everyday for people, to just make jokes about Koreans or Mexicans…

Yeah, they just saw them as completely other.

But whereas in the South it was more taboo, so that if it did come out it came out harder and more over-the-top and like this fireball as opposed to this everyday norm…

Well, there’s racism that comes from familiarity and proximity and there’s racism that comes from the unknown.  Like New York racism to me… I mean there’s a lot of racism here but it’s not like people are killing each other very often.  It reminds me of racism in Europe, xenophobia like, “I don’t like Italians,” ya know, that kind of thing. “Oh, the fucking Serbians,” that kind of shit. It’s the same thing here, “Oh, the goddamn Hassids.”   You know, people don’t like each other, but they’re not going to go out and shoot each other.  Whereas, I almost think the Northwest style, where they don’t even know what black people are like, is worse because they’re more terrified.

The South is more like racism in high school or something [laughing]… everyone’s around each other, we kind of have our own camps but we know sort of what everyone’s all about.  Again, it’s different.

But I like it here because people have to ride the fucking subway together.  Everyone rides the same subway; everyone walks down the same fucking Manhattan streets.  As much as we don’t all live in Manhattan, we all go there.  It’s like we all go down the same hallways.  We all have to buy stuff from the corner bodega, so whoever owns it you’re going to have to deal with, and whatever dudes are hanging out front you’re going to have to deal with those guys too.  You just have to get used to everybody.  You may not like other races or cultures or whatever, you may not be very open-minded about them, or you may not be very interested, but you know what they’re like to some degree.

And you’re presented with them on the daily.

And you have to deal with them as people, as human beings and not as odd creatures from some other universe, like in the Northwest; I felt they dealt with black people that way.

Would you ever move back to the Northwest?

No.  I’d go back.  I haven’t gone back in seven years because I’ve just been too busy, and I live in New York… if I’m going to take a vacation, why would I go to Oregon?  I mean you can get the cheapest flights to anywhere in the world from here, because everybody in the world comes here, so why would I go there?  I mean I love it there and I have a lot of friends who at least used to live there, but you know… it never really felt like home to me.

What about SXSW in Texas… do you go every year, back to Austin?

This is my second year.

You went to school there, right?

I went to college there, yeah.

How was SXSW this year?

I don’t know, I didn’t go.

You didn’t go?

I was there, I was in Austin.  I don’t go to the festival; I don’t like those festivals at all.

Why not?

They’re schlocky. It’s like an attempt to make independent music like a Cannes Film Festival kind of thing.  But independent music isn’t like independent film. Independent film you have to have money to make a movie.  You have to have that.  As bad as it is… I wish they didn’t have to have Sundance Film Festivals and Cannes Film Festivals and all that shit because it’s all about finding distributors and playing the money game, but you have to.  Because that’s how films work.  Films are really expensive to make.  It’s not expensive to make a record.  You don’t need all that cash to be a successful musical artist.  To be a successful filmmaker you need a lot of money.  To be a successful musical artist you do not.

So you end up with these schlocky festivals like CMJ, to some degree, although maybe it’s almost irrelevant… And SXSW, which is not irrelevant, it is very relevant unfortunately. And you end up with these things are basically built around… not about helping musicians make money and get exposure, it’s about helping people who make money off musicians get exposure.  It’s about the cottage industry of vanity.  Like, “Oh, we have our band and we really want it to get big!  Oh, we’re going to hire all the people to make our band big!” So it’s about going up there and parading your band.  And I don’t think the bands are aware that this is really happening but it is.  It’s really a marketing party for publicists, and booking agencies, and publishing companies, and all these people who suck money out of music.  About an industry that really doesn’t make any money.  Nobody’s selling records anymore.  Nobody ever sold records of indie rock, and nobody’s totally not selling records now.  Unless you’re the top five who appeal to yuppies, like Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Sufjan Stevens, or whoever… nothing wrong with those people, but they happen to have a business model that still works, people still buy their records because the kind of people who like them a lot still buy records. But most people don’t.  So what’s this all about, where’s this money that even supposedly magical exists… it doesn’t.  It’s just a way for people to make musicians make even less money, which is basically to get them to hire all these hangers-on.  Some of those people do really great work, some of them really love music, but bottom line, why is this festival necessary?  In what way does this let the cream rise to the top?  It doesn’t.  At all.  Not even close.  If you were to sit there and listen to every band they booked at SXSW… I mean, they booked like 1,500 bands this year… maybe more… there’s like 6,000 actually now that I think about it…

No…

There was a lot.  Whatever, there was a shit ton.  And if you actually listen to them, like… I’ve done that.  I’ve sat and listened to a random sampling of stuff that I didn’t know anything about… I mean, the level of crap is, I mean, really phenomenal.  Not to say they don’t have great stuff.  When you have that many bands and that much media exposure you’re going to have some great shit.  And I like to think I steal all of that and put it in my festival, you know? “Steal” is the wrong word.  But you know what I mean? Fuck ‘em. And I have nothing against those people, and I’m sure in their hearts they think they put on a really successful, beautiful thing that’s been going on for many years and more power to them.  But, in my opinion it’s boring as fuck and the elitism is through the roof.  And the whole trying to adopt a red carpet policy or a velvet rope policy… I mean I can get into those parties, man.  It’s just so tacky and devoid of any kind of actual cultural or artistic relevance.  And there’s so much of that, and that’s the real heart of it.  These people who have made a little middle-class lifestyle out of making money off music… trying to hang out with each other and sleep with each other and drink a lot of booze with each other.  And that’s it.  It’s not really about giving a shit about the bands.  It’s about waiting to see if maybe a movie star shows up…

It’s just not about the bands; it’s just not about… the love… [Laughing] And if it were about any serious amount of money, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Or at least I would understand it.  But here’s the real kicker of the whole thing: there’s so little money in it, that why don’t these people go open a fucking gas station, there’s money in that!  Like why do you want to fucking hone all these marketing bullshit skills in music?  Get out of it!  Go use your DeVry skills… [Laughing] Go open a widget factory!  Why are you poisoning this one, pure, tiny little baby industry?  I hate using the word “industry,” I think it’s tacky too.  They’re not talking about the community; they’re not talking about the scene.  They always, invariably, want to call it “the industry,” because all they give a shit about is the numbers.  It’s like, dude, there’s bigger numbers in making VCRs.  Why are you doing this?  Why is this the scene you want to be in?  And I think it’s because the sex and the drugs and the glamour are what appeals to be to people, but it’s certainly not the music.

And that said, when you moved to New York… wait, did you get here before the planes crashed into the buildings?

Yeah, I moved here in March of 2001, I’ve been here for about six years.

So when you decided to stay, did you plan to start throwing shows?

Nope. I wasn’t going to do that again.  The plan was to try and convince this girl to date me. [Laughing] And that didn’t work out either.  For the best, really.  But yeah, that was really the idea.  I was going to come here and not do music any more.  I was going to try and do writing, do my own creativity.  And I kind of thought I could pull it off financially, which was surprising to me when I tried to think about it because I thought New York was impossible financially, but anyway… I decided to do it and I thought if there was anywhere in the country where I could meet people who wrote who weren’t the corniest people in the world, it was New York, you know.  It’s unfortunate that the literary scenes in other places are pretty cheesy most of the time.  And unfortunately I got here and realized that a lot of it’s cheesy here too.  A lot of readings at open-whatevers being halfway house types and stuff, ya know?  So kind of discouraging at first… or all blue blood ivy leaguers, ya know?

[Laughing] The junkie memoir, or the…

Or the guy writing about his experience as a TA at Yale, ya know?  Basically trying to be a shitty John Irving.  And that was in the midst of the whole McSweeney’s vibe, you know, the post-internet economy…

When McSweeney’s was making a big push.

Literary stuff.  Like, “Books are cool again!” And it was all about the Internet too.  And that kind of went away.  People got real sick of it real fast.

So that didn’t work out.  And then basically I started working at an office job in Manhattan and uh, ya know… to fill my days and spend away my paychecks I would buy records.  So I went to Sound and Fury Records, which was on Orchard for a few years… and I would just go there because it was kind of like the only place that seemed to have any connection to the indie scene, the DIY scene that I was familiar with throughout the rest of the country, especially the West coast.  It was owned by this guy Peter who was from Oregon…  And I started going there a lot and meeting the guys who worked there and the people who hung out there, the hangers-on, and bought a lot of records… This was right before the whole post-punk, disco-funk era, so it was really exciting, ya know, buying the Rapture EPs as they were first coming out, ya know, stuff like that…  The beginnings of Lightning Bolt and that kind of stuff, stuff I work with now.

This was in 2001, so the New York music scene was really exciting. This was when The Yeah Yeah Yeahs broke and all that kind of stuff.  And so from there I started finding out about shows in Williamsburg, which I didn’t even know was happening at first.  I thought it was Brownies or nothing.  Brownies used to be the indie rock club in New York.  It was on Avenue A, it’s now called The High-Score.

I thought it just disappeared.

No, the same guy owns it.  He just decided, intelligently, that you make a lot more money running a bar in the East Village than you do running a night club in the East Village.  So in those days it was that.

And my friend was actually booking at Brownies and so he tried to get me the job booking at Mercury Lounge, which is funny to think in retrospect.  Apparently I got really close, according to him, he talked to the people there, and said I was second choice.  Which is hilarious at this point.  I’m pretty sure Bowery Presents, who owns Mercury Lounge isn’t very fond of me…

They didn’t hire me, from what I was told, this is the background… they didn’t hire because they thought I was too indie rock and they were convinced that indie rock was on the out.  And that in fact, adult contemporary and alt-country was what was around the bend.  That was their angle…

[Laughing]

[Laughing] So I don’t know what history proved right but…

[Laughing]

So I went back to working in the Financial District shit for a while and started buying a lot of records, started hanging out at the record store, started finding out about little shows happening in Brooklyn via flyers and whatnot… And then I started getting into the scene, the in-stores at that store, because they had great in-stores, and then dude didn’t want to any more do in-stores in his store, so I was like, “Well, dude, I can put these on somewhere else, if people are asking you…” Rather than having these folks not play in New York, which was what always had happened in the past.  Because it used to be really difficult to book shows in New York.  It used to be impossible.

If you were a DIY band, you could do really well throughout the country playing basements and playing whatever, but if you didn’t have a publicist and all that SXSW crap we were talking about… people pushing you and all this crap, you couldn’t get a show here.  And so I was like, “Well, dude, I’ll put on those shows.”  So I started putting on a few in Brooklyn here and there… starting out at your house!

[Note: Most Chief events occur at 95 Dobbin, where Todd P shows first started.]

And I almost immediately met other people who were doing the same.  And we created this little community. Most of those people aren’t involved anymore.  They’ve all gotten old and had babies.

That’s what happens.

Yeah.

So was there a moment, like a switch, when it went from Todd Patrick throwing shows for Sound and Fury to Todd P productions?

I called it Todd P from the onset… it’s sort of a curse, but it also works.  You never want to name something after yourself in some ways because it invites shit talk but who cares at this point.  I’ve stuck around long enough, proved whatever I had to prove…

But yeah, I called it that because I knew how New York works… I mean Todd P is sort of a made up personality, I don’t know if you’re on the mailing list or read my emails but nobody is that stoked on music.  [Laughing]

And it’s just this idea that… I always thought that New Yorkers can respond to positivity, inversely to what the national concept of New York is.  I always thought that New Yorkers really respect somebody who really believes in what they’re doing and is super excited and has taste and has quality.  To do something well and to really love what you’re doing and to really, really want to share it, I think New Yorkers respond to that.  That was kind of my angle when I started doing it.  And I was that excited about it, sincerely.

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Website

www.toddpnyc.com

Photos

Tod Seelie