An interview with Ed Ackerson of Susstones on 11/26/08
By: David Rachac
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| Ed Ackerson - Photo by Ashley Ackerson |
How Was The Show: Before you were a musician and a producer, you were a kid with a guitar and a dream. Tell me about your musical background -- when you started playing, early influences, etc.
Ed Ackerson: I come from a fairly musical family. I've been singing and banging on stuff as long as I can remember, writing little melodies and rhymes as well. My first recorded song is from when I was about 2 ½ years old. It's called “Poor Old Truck”! I did a pretty good “You Are My Sunshine” at the time as well. Our house was full of music all the time -- my mom in particular would play anything from 40's, musical soundtracks to whatever was on the radio at the time. I got an extremely deep education about Western music without even noticing it, sitting in my high chair or coloring with my crayons!
HWTS: The Dig and 27 Various were your first two bands that made a lot of noise locally. What were some of the things that were most memorable with those bands?
EA: The
HWTS: How did Susstones come about?
EA: Susstones was formed by my friend John Kass and me to put out the first Dig releases. The label in its initial incarnation put out a ton of releases, about 100. My participation in the label diminished as I got increasingly busy touring and producing records for people.
We re-launched Susstones again a few years back as a home base for Polara and also our community of friends and artists. Susstones operates on a semi-cooperative model; I like to look at it as more of a community bulletin board for our projects than as some sort of boring “music industry” enterprise. The Susstones arrows are basically the pirate flag that flies over our various creative ships.
HWTS: Then came Polara – local stardom, major label, stratospheric expectations. Tell me about the triumphs and the heartbreaks that came with Polara breaking out so explosively.
EA: I'd been working super hard for several years leading up to the breakthrough of the first Polara releases, so it really felt like more of an ongoing process than a “triumph”. After many hundreds of tour dates, making and producing records, networking, getting our act together basically, the whole situation aligned for us. Due to that we were able to shape a record deal that would allow us to achieve our ultimate goal: to have the ongoing resources and freedom to make records on our terms into the future. We didn't have “hits” in the way some people expected we would, but that wasn't really what we set out to do. If it had been, we would probably have gotten them. I think where you wind up has a lot to do with where you originally really wanted to go. In the final analysis, I don't think we really wanted to go there.
If there has ever been any sort of heartbreak in the process, it would be from the vast amounts of time we wasted in the major label system. We spent a total of 2 or 3 years sitting around waiting for schedules and other factors at Interscope, then another 18 months at Palm Pictures. There were a critical couple of years there that we should have spent out touring and being a rock band. Instead, we were stuck at home waiting for business situations to get sorted out. Having said that, I have no regrets whatsoever about either of our major label situations. We knew what we were getting into, and the music industry acted like the music industry does. We lost some time and momentum, but in other respects, we came out amazingly farther ahead than expected.
Most importantly, all of us are still friends and we're making cool music together now still. And these days, I've taken my scheduling very much into my own hands!
HWTS: There have been a lot of local guys who have found some success and then relocated to LA or NYC. You didn’t – what is it about
The cover of Ackerson2
EA: I would much rather be an ongoing participant in the culture of where I live than be someone who is trying to grab onto the culture of somewhere else. I could almost certainly achieve more short-term success and earn more money if I lived in LA particularly, but my “big picture” has always been based on me being here in
HWTS: You opened Flowers Studio in 1998. Was owning a studio a long-time dream of yours, or was it just a natural progression from musician to music businessman?
EA: From the very beginning, I always wanted to live in a big building/complex somewhere with a full-on pro studio in it. I wanted to be able to make records 24 hours a day, even before I had any idea of what making records was! This was a goal going back to when I was 11 or 12 -- it's always been part of the picture for me. A lot of my personal rock heroes had their own studios, and I wanted some of that myself.
HWTS: You’ve had a virtual Who’s Who of musicians come through Flowers Studios’ doors in the past 10 years – which projects that you worked on were particularly memorable or personally satisfying to you?
EA: This may sound a bit facetious, but virtually every single record I've worked on has been memorable in some way or other. I really love working with people on music, and there's always something to be learned or some achievement to be proud of in any situation, even seemingly trivial ones.
I do really value some of the long-term working relationships I've built at the studio. The huge amount of stuff I've done with the Jayhawks/Gary Louris/Golden Smog/etc. axis certainly comes to mind. The Replacements sessions were certainly super fun. Recently, I've really enjoyed working on stuff with Motion City Soundtrack, who I think are truly one of the great
HWTS: After being relatively quiet on the recording front for a while, you’ve been pretty damned prolific in the past twelve months – two solo CDs and a new Polara CD. What is the cause of this sudden influx of new music?
EA: I've always been pretty prolific as a writer, so this is not an unusual amount of output for me artistically. What is a bit different now is the approach we've taken to releasing albums. Susstones was tied up for a while due to our distributor going bankrupt, our cashflow was crippled and we had no way to get records into stores. We've now decided to go totally independent, using direct sales to stores, and of course the Internet, to get our music out to people.
In the past, I've been frustrated by not being able to release records fast enough. Now, I'm determined to get stuff out in as real-time a fashion as possible. The most important thing about releasing albums for me is to have creative milestones. It's very unrewarding to create music and not have it released while it's new and exciting to the people who created it. I personally have dozens and dozens of unreleased tracks waiting around to see the light of day. One of the projects of Susstones over the next year or so will be to get some of that material out finally.
HWTS: Talk to me about your writing process – how does a song go from a germ of an idea to the finished piece?
EA: I pretty much still write everything on acoustic guitar, and I write pretty quickly. My normal process is to have some snippet of lyric or melody pop into my head, after which I'll bang out some kind of little arrangement. I'll sing and play that into voicemail on my phone while it's fresh in my mind. After I have a few ideas in that form, I'll find time to go in the studio and start making demos. Very often, those demos will wind up being the actual album versions of the song, especially in the case of my solo records, which are 100% demo-based.
HWTS: At what point do you know whether a song you are writing is a Polara song, a solo song or a song for an entity yet to be decided?
EA: It's usually clear immediately. Polara as a group has a definite dynamic, so certain types of song will suggest a vocal line that would be great for Jennifer to sing or a rhythmic structure that Peter would help bring to life.
I have come to really love the Polara “sound,” the particular singular noise that the band makes best. One of the reasons I have done these solo albums is that I don't want to force these acoustic-based, introspective songs into the Polara framework. I think in some cases, I've done that on earlier Polara albums, and it dilutes the message. With the last Polara album, I think we really re-established the “sound”. Going forward, I think there will continue to be a fork in my creative path between Polara and the solo material. I believe different approaches serve both sides better.
HWTS: Your CD release party for Ackerson2 will be on Friday, November 28th at the Varsity Theater. What are we going to see there?
EA: Susstones has been sponsoring these Sussedtacular! events every 6 months or so as an excuse to round up our artists, friends and community and have a good time together. It's a place for everyone to come together and see what their friends have been up to artistically since the last one, another “milestone” concept. This show at the Varsity should be a particularly cool one. For the first time, Polara and the Ed solo group are both playing on the same show. I'm very excited to have our old friend Jim Boquist guesting on my solo set -- he is a true rock jewel. We're celebrating new and forthcoming releases from the Janey Winterbauer + Marc Perlman, The Mood Swings, and Colonial Vipers Attack. Plus Farewell Continental are playing their second-ever gig. The lineup of that band is a secret at this point, but I will say that it contains some of the most creative people I know making an awesome noise together!
In Sussedtacular! tradition, this show will feature musicians from age 19 to age 50 or so, men and women artists doing acoustic, rock, noise, and electronic music, everyone working together not because they're all the same but because they share similar goals as a community of creative people. I guess it is my “CD release party,” but it's also about all of the activities of the people involved in the Susstones cooperative. It'll be a wide-ranging, diverse night of interesting music, which is what Susstones is all about.
HWTS: In addition to your CD being released, you will also be releasing new music from The Mood Swings and Colonial Vipers Attack. Tell me more about these releases and about the 3Sides format.
EA: The Mood Swings and Colonial Vipers releases are the next in our 3Sides series of digital releases. We want to help define a new context for digital music presentation, something more “real” than simply downloading a couple of MP3's off some site. The idea of the 3Side, or 3-Sided Single, is to make a self-contained miniature release which will include songs, artwork, and full notes including credits, background information, lyrics, and whatever else the artist wants. We've talked to a lot of artists who would like to release their music in smaller, short-form increments, but who are unsatisfied with the standalone, one track model that iTunes etc. have pushed the market towards. Our feeling is that artists want to create “releases” rather than random, context-less tracks. Our impression is also that serious music fans would like more information and value from digital music downloads than is provided by the current model.
The 3Side is a perfect, bite-sized way to make a release of music which has more depth than a single track but also requires less effort to make than a full length album. Susstones is developing the 3Side as a Creative Commons-defined open standard in conjunction with a group of other indie labels, and we are encouraging labels and artists who are interested in the idea to contact us. Full information is at 3sidedsingles.com.
HWTS: Thanks for all of your time. Do you have any final comments you want to leave with?
EA: Thanks for talking to me! I really appreciate the support How Was the Show has given to Susstones and Twin Cities music in general. Peace.
Artist Info: Ed Ackerson
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