Spearheading the discussion as moderator was KXT 91.7 FM's Benji McPhail, along with Grammy-winning rapper Bobby Sessions; Texas Music Office Director Chip Adams; Visit Dallas’ Kristina Kirkenaer-Hart; and Hear Fort Worth’s Tom Martens as panelists. Noticeably missing was legendary hip-hop artist The D.O.C., aka Tracy Lynn Curry, who had been advertised as a participant.
For starters, Texas leads the nation with 73 designated music-friendly cities across the state, with Fort Worth being the first locale to be named as such. From paying artists fairly, to more collaborative efforts amongst North Texas and artists benefits, the discussion hit delicately on the often hush-hush topics. From what was a vibrantly candid chat, here are our key takeaways for what may make North Texas’ music scene even more great.
For Artists: ‘It's Your Art, Fight For It’
Bobby Sessions was undoubtedly the voice for local artists at the symposium. Reminiscing on former days at Club Dada, Trees, Three Links and other Deep Ellum hotspots, the rap artist depicted the battles for indie musicians that rage at the intersection of tech, culture, social media and the craft itself.“There’s this pressure on artists to double as content creators that wasn’t there before when I started," he said. "In the beginning, you tried to find the talent buyers and get on to the shows, or offer to perform for free and then you could start to build an audience. Now, with the rise of social media and everybody’s attention spans getting shorter, the time you would have spent working on your craft, you’re crafting videos, and learning how to edit. You’re turning into a film director, marketer and a producer. It’s tough to balance all of those things and be effective, and truly become a master. That’s an added pressure of today that I see artists dealing with, that I didn’t have to deal with when I first started making music…but like most things, you must adapt to thrive.”
But adaptation comes with what costs? Being the end-all-be-all as independent artists becomes less efficient, and utterly exhausting, which took the conversation to fair compensation and evolving technology. For Hear Fort Worth’s Martens, artists' pay is always at the front line of communications.
“We’ve really tried to make it clear that musicians aren’t a novelty that you just have in the background,” he said, which was met with applause. “Musicians are a working person that can’t pay their rent on ‘exposure bucks’, or groceries, or eggs. It’s things like that that [Hear Fort Worth] advocates for, and it’s also been something that we will turn the tide on.
“Everyone loves music,” Martens continued. “Music is the good news department. … It’s something everyone feels good about. So we need to do a better job of supporting musicians. That goes from healthcare to affordable housing to making sure that they’re compensated fairly.”
The “we” referred to the city music offices, primarily represented by Dallas and Fort Worth. For the cities, the future involves listening, empowering, and most important, collaborating.
For North Texas Cities: The Power of Collaboration
“We need to go to the artists, versus expecting them to come to us. We need to find ways to do open venue conversations and hear what they need or where their barriers are, and facilitate breaking down that access,” Visit Dallas’ Kristina Kirkenaer-Hart said.In 2016, the Texas Music Office launched the first Music Friendly Community Program. It now lists 73 certified music-friendly cities across the state, and Texas Music Office Director Chip Adams noted that the highest density of these cities hail from North Texas, thus making the power of collaboration key to the success of all of the intersecting music scenes.
“We are really encouraging collaboration between the cities, to have dialogues, to share ideas and programs,” Adams said. “And from that … starting an export program to help artists find better paths to play in cities all around North Texas. If we can also invigorate other cities to really inject some excitement into their music scene as well, it’ll help all of North Texas. Just know, it's in progress.”
While city-to-city collaboration may prove fruitful, the real payoff will be when cities and artists develop more partnerships. From travel grants, to merch funding, to affordable healthcare and housing, all avenues for artists support are being explored on the municipal level in some cases.
“I interviewed 30 industry people, from musicians to venue owners to city people, and across the board … people were asking for education, healthcare, rebate programs and all of these things,” Kirkenaer-Hart acknowledged. Although the Dallas Music Office has only been in existence for less than a year, artist support similar to Tarrant County is on the table for adoption.
“We started a program called Soundcare ,which is affordable healthcare for musicians in the Tarrant County area,” Martens said. “Even Kristina [Kirkenaer-Hart] in Dallas is looking to partner with Parkland Hospital to figure out how we can do this in other cities. It’s cool that we [Hear Fort Worth] started it … but it’s also about affordability and keeping musicians in the community.”
Dallas’ recent efforts in the evolving city-to-artist relationship can be seen through the latest programming now offered by the Dallas Music Office.
“We launched a busking program in Dallas this last fall … and we had seven amazing artists, and they all got professional gigs from it,” Kirkenaer-Hart disclosed. “We just had our auditions at the House of Blues last week and now have 25 that will be on our roster for this year. The amazing part of this is that this is a professional development program. So going through it with us for one year, artists learn how to speak to the public, as well as trainings … and at the end of it they automatically go onto our directory for hire, which goes into corporate spaces in our convention spaces.”
With any panel discussion exploring the future, the question begs whether it will end up being all talk with little to no action down the road. For Sessions, opportunity waits for no one. The time is now.
“As artists, there’s an abundance of information out here that we can use, but we can’t wait on people to come get us,” Sessions said. “It’s great for [the city and the venues] to have the mindset to come get us, but we need to be just as aggressive pursuing them as they are to us, and I think efforts from both parties will turn this into the community and industry that it needs to be. That’s going to take so much effort outside of the creative process but it’s your art — fight for it.”
