โItโs a good position for us to be in โ to be able to put out music when we want and build an audience in all different ways.โ
Mastering todayโs music marketing paradigm is no easy task. Do you release a single, an EP, a full album, or what? Whether you like it or not, the answer is โall of the above.โ
Fact is, todayโs musicians need to be super-flexible about the ongoing and constant availability of their art โ something the rootsy, Americana R&B collective known as Hollis Brown understand and embrace wholeheartedly.
In classic โgive the people what they wantโ fashion, Hollis Brown โnamed after Bob Dylanโs stark 1964 folk-blues classic, Ballad of Hollis Brown โ have plenty of aural ammo to choose from. This includes the current hit single Run Right to You, which gained further penetration when it became part of an Abercrombie & Fitch online ad campaign; Cluster of Pearls, a limited-edition vinyl EP tailor-made for last yearโs Record Store Day that sold out so quickly it demanded a digital release just a few months later; and a full album titled 3 Shots. That last release includes Rain Dance, a song featuring the late guitar icon Bo Diddley, which got the band major traction when it was used in the trailer for the recent Michael Keaton-starring Ray Kroc biopic, The Founder.
Yep, thatโs exactly how you do it right in the modern age.
Of course, all the marketing in the world donโt mean a thing if your music ainโt got that swing, but the good news is, Hollis Brownโs sound delivers on all cylinders.
โWeโre a no-frills kind of band. There are no smoke and mirrors,โ HB frontman Mike Montali explained to Digital Trends. โWeโre reliant on the five of us playing together, live and kicking. Weโre focused on writing the best material and getting to do the best songs โ the ones that go the best way with our style and the sound we make together.โ
Montali called Digital Trends from his Queens, New York homebase to discuss making music differently for vinyl releases, how to best respond to audience preferences, and turning influences into original ideas.
Digital Trends: Did you have a specific sound palette in mind for Cluster of Pearls because you knew it was originally intended only for a vinyl release?
Mike Montali: We did. We went to Nashville and recorded with Adam Landry [whoโs also produced Deer Tick, Vanessa Carlton, Diamond Rugs, and Lilly Hiatt]. We recorded it live, analog, and direct to tape, just like an old vinyl record would have been made in the โ60s or โ70s โ like a Creedence Clearwater Revival record, or something.
We definitely had the mindset to make it organic and have us all playing together. Even the vocals were recorded live. And since it was all live to tape, it wasnโt like we could go back. If there was a weird guitar thing in there, well, it had to stay. We couldnโt go back and overdub another guitar because it was all bleedthrough [i.e., multiple instruments appear together on the same track because the song was recorded live].
It made us a better band and put us on our toes a lot more. If we all had a great take but I had a bad vocal performance, everybody would have to go back and do it again. Nobody wanted to be the person holding up the ship, which was great. And doing it right to tape hopefully gave it a little more warmth.
And now we have different versions of that EP digitally on Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud โฆ
We didnโt even know it was ever going to be online, but you have to adjust and take how the audience wants to listen to music, you know what I mean? We just put it out there every way we can.
I think the vinyl revival has led to better listening habits and has gotten people to pay more attention to how a record flows and how good it sounds overall.
Yeah, definitely. It adds a different approach to the art of putting an album together. Streaming makes it more of a singles environment these days, which makes the industry feel like itโs almost going back to pre-Beatles.
You just read my mind. Until The Beatles introduced the concept of the album being an artform, it was more about the single of the week, and the album was an afterthought.
Yeah, exactly. We put Run Right to You out as a single recently and itโs doing well on its own, even though itโs not attached to an album of any kind. Itโs really interesting, because a lot of radio people have been saying itโs rare that a single like this does so well without an attachment to any album โ and thereโs no announcement of any album for it, either.
For a lot of people now, everything is quick click-click-clicks, and they donโt want to sit around for an hour and listen to an entire record. Theyโll put it on a playlist, or theyโll shuffle it where it comes up. Putting out Run Right to You as a standalone single is probably the best thing weโve ever done in terms of success โ itโs on the charts, at radio, in the Abercrombie & Fitch commercial, and itโs gotten onto some big playlists too.
Itโs been an experience trying to see what works for us as a band. Most people go, โYouโre a rock band? Oh, then we want to hear albums.โ But the single is the thing thatโs done the best for us, so weโre somewhere in the middle trying to figure it all out.
“Maybe releasing 12 singles over the course of a year is a better idea than just putting out one record that fades out right away.”
I look at singles as the gateway entry into a band. If I like what I hear with the first single, I might buy or check out the second one, and if I like that one too, then I may go all the way and figure the full album is worth the investment of my time, and my money. Iโm now willing to pursue a fuller experience with your music.
Exactly โ and it also adds shelf life. If youโre a band that puts out a collection of 12 songs and you do a quote-unquote โtraditional campaignโ โ create an album cycle around it where, a month after youโve dropped it, nobody really gives a shit. Theyโre already onto the next click, the next video, or the next viral thing.
Maybe releasing 12 singles over the course of a year or a year and a half might be a better idea than just putting one record out that garners some press right away, and then fades out. But itโs also situational, because it can depend on the type of band and artist you are.
Youโre smart enough to service your audienceโs needs in terms of however they want to get into your music.
Thatโs our mentality. Releasing new music is important. You get some bands that take four years in between their records. Thatโs never been our intention. We want to continuously have new releases every year, amassing a large collection of music.
Itโs important for us to release new stuff. And fortunately โ or unfortunately โ when you do that, you have to go with the flow, and put it out as it comes. It might be as a single, or an EP, an album, or a double album. You do it however it comes through.
I want as much new material as I can get from my favorite artists, as often as they can provide it.
And youโve got to be creative about it. Itโs a good position for us to be in; to be able to put out music when we want and build an audience in all different ways. Younger people are responding to the single and the video, and how we license it. Our older audience likes that we put out the vinyl and the Record Store Day stuff, so itโs all working for us.
“The mindset is very different from EP to single to album, in terms of the cohesiveness and style of it all.”
And weโre just trying to be authentic with the sound too. Certain songs donโt necessarily fit with others โ the recording styles, the ideas, and the lyrics. When youโre making a record, you might have 30 songs, and five of them you really really love, but they donโt fit with the cohesive idea of the album. You canโt really put them on there, so you put them out as singles. The mindset is very different from EP to single to album in terms of the cohesiveness and style of it all.
When we went in to cut Run Right to You, we recorded it while only thinking about that one song, and it sounded great to us. But when we were doing 3 Shots, we felt all of those songs were going to part of that one release. We wanted the vibe of that record to be cohesive from song to song, and we went into it with that mindset. Itโs situation to situation, I think.
Run Right to You was a continuation of the Cold City sound [one of the best tracks on 3 Shots], which is the direction weโre going in โ a little more R&B roots rock. Does that make sense?
Totally. I look at it like you guys have taken up that early J. Geils Band mantle, circa their early albums like J. Geils Band (1970) and Bloodshot (1973).
Oh, thatโs cool. Iโm going to have to go back and listen to those. Weโre going to go more with that route on our next big release, I think โ more upbeat rock with a more modern R&B, Temptations kind of feel. Weโve been an Americana band, which is niche music, but weโre also from New York City, so we have that natural edge that some other bands donโt have. We want to really dive into that and not shy away from it.
You guys do such a killer version of the blues classic Spoonful on 3 Shots that maybe it will get people to go check out the heavier Cream version [from 1966] as well as the original Howlinโ Wolf version [from 1960]. Me, I love all the surface noise and the harp [i.e., the harmonica] coming in on the right channel on your version.
So good! That one also features John McCauley from Deer Tick, who guests on the vocals. It was also done live, and I think we did two takes of it. At the end of it, it trails into a jam. That happened kind of coincidentally, because thatโs how the tapes played. We already had that jam on tape, and we went back and recorded Spoonful over it. At the end of the song, the jam was still there, and the song naturally floated into it, so we said, โLetโs just keep it. It sounds kind of cool.โ
Doing stuff like that is important for us to pay homage to the great American artists we were influenced by. We try to tip our hats to them while weโre still doing our thing. We want to be the act carrying on that legacy of American music where people care about the songwriting and playing your own instruments. Thatโs whatโs important to us.
Iโm down with that. You have to take your influences, put them into your own cauldron, and come out as Hollis Brown on the other side of it.
Itโs something thatโs forgotten about by a lot of bands. A band will come out with one record that has this unique sound, and thatโs all that they do; they donโt go anywhere else. But we like to change, and I feel like weโve changed our sound to get to where we are now. Weโre a much better band for it. Now we want to write the best material possible for the next release.
