Outside the Jukebox_How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession Into My Dream Gig

by Scott Bradlee

  Hi Scott,

  My name is Jaron Lowenstein. I’m an artist (formerly one half of “Evan and Jaron”) turned talent manager and I’m a fan of what you’re doing. I believe you’ve met my bro before (Evan, founder of StageIt) and I’d like to learn more about you and see if there is some way to work together in some capacity.

  I’m not sure what may come of it, but all my life I’ve just followed what interests me and let the rest fall into place.

  Hit me back if you’re interested and I look forward to speaking with you.

  Jaron

  I’d received a fair amount of press by this point, including a great interview with Audie Cornish on NPR’s All Things Considered, but this was my first serious inquiry about representation. As someone who valued the flexibility of managing everything myself, signing with a manager and ceding control wasn’t something I’d given much thought to doing. But reasoning that there was nothing to lose, I agreed to take a call from Jaron, with the private goal of collecting as much information from him as possible that I could then turn around and use for myself.

  I did wind up getting a ton of information, but that’s mostly because he talked very fast.

  “Hey, it’s Jaron. This is Scott, right? So, I’m watching this video, it’s like a fuckin’ singing clown or something, and I’m just thinking to myself, ‘Somebody has some skill here.’ Just everything—the arrangement, the placement of the background singers, the presentation—it’s clear that everything had a reason, and a master was involved somewhere. And then I see the name ‘Scott Bradlee’ on the channel, and I watch another video, and I’m like, HOLY SHIT! This one is great, too. It’s completely different, but it has the same fingerprints. It’s a breath of fresh air, especially after seeing all the fucking garbage YouTube covers that exist.”

  Right from the start, I knew this guy was either brilliant or insane. Or possibly both. As I’d already learned from Evan, Jaron had had some brief experience as a pop star a decade ago, as half of Evan and Jaron. Later on, he released a chart-topping country hit on his own—a clever breakup song called “Pray for You.” By his own description, he was a “one-hit wonder, twice.” I started to explain to him the basic concept of Postmodern Jukebox but didn’t make it very far before he cut in excitedly.

  “Yeah yeah, it’s a variety show,” he said. “There’s different singers, and everyone’s dressed up like it’s fucking Great Gatsby, and it’s in a supper club, and maybe there’s the girls handing out cigarettes, and there’s like, a fucking tiger in a cage somewhere.”

  To my surprise, he not only already grasped how it all worked, he shared my big-picture live-show vision, too. Well, maybe up to the tiger. But regardless of his taste in entertainment and whether it involved the participation of wild animals, it was nonetheless clear to me that he had a passion for management and that we were equally fascinated by employing bold strategies that might seem counterintuitive on their surface.

  Jaron offered to work with me on a per-gig basis to start—no contract, and he’d only take a commission on gigs if he added value to them. I figured it was worth a shot. If it didn’t work out, I’d only be out a few hours of phone time and possibly whatever it cost to rent a tiger.

  We struck a deal, and I sent him a brief history of where I came from musically, what I did for work, and what kind of press I had received. Armed with this information, he went back to several of the clients with whom I had outstanding contracts and doubled the “dogshit” (his word) fee on every one of them, simply by getting them insanely excited about our act. I couldn’t believe it. Part of me was still thinking he might be a bit insane, but based on those results, maybe insane wasn’t the worst thing to be. I decided that this was someone who could really help take Postmodern Jukebox to the next level.

  Within a month, Jaron guided me in bringing on a business manager to handle my finances, a lawyer to look over my contracts, and a booking agency to secure shows and build a touring operation—International Creative Management Partners, or ICM. It all happened so fast that it was a bit disorienting—one minute, I was a one-man operation in my living room, and the next I was discussing brand strategy with bigshot Hollywood agents. I didn’t know much about the music industry, and I had to constantly interrupt meetings in order to ask questions so I could understand what on earth people were talking about. Terms like guarantee (the money an act was guaranteed to receive for a show, regardless of ticket sales) and backend (the money an act would receive if they sold more than a designated number of tickets) were foreign to me. I also learned some valuable (but perhaps less fun) lessons about paying commissions and how fees would get divided up among the team. I was now officially an owner of an incorporated business.

  I wasn’t sure where it all would lead, but one thing was certain: Everyone was incredibly excited about this project. I spent a week in Los Angeles, waking up each day to meet with the various members of the team that Jaron had assembled. Scott Mantell from ICM—who was then the key agent for no less than Beyoncé—was already on the phone with promoters from around the world, telling them about the new act he was developing and how it was going to revolutionize the music industry.

  Robyn, Adam, and Allan came with me on this trip, which was initially built around an appearance on Extra! We stayed at the Safari Inn in Burbank, California, and took some time to survey our surroundings. It felt so utopian that it almost tipped into the realm of dystopia—a land of happy automatons brainwashed by yoga and sunshine.

  We taped two performances for Extra! outside at Universal Studios, including a version of “Timber” that featured Tim Kubart—who happened to be in town at the same time—as Tambourine Guy. Afterward, we were instructed to sign autographs for the fans gathered behind the barriers. I soon learned, to my embarrassment, that they were not fans at all but tourists who happened to stumble onto a television taping and had their curiosity piqued. There were several awkward instances of my signing autographs for people only to have them thank me and then ask, quizzically, “Who are you again?”

  We also met one of Jaron’s friends, nine-time Grammy-nominated saxophonist Dave Koz, who carved out time to make a cameo on a couple Postmodern Jukebox videos filmed in Burbank that week: a 1930s version of “Careless Whisper” and a jazz treatment of the Game of Thrones theme. Dave played great and was a good sport about rolling with our crazy video ideas, which involved him popping up in a different part of the frame for “Careless Whisper” each time he played the famous sax riff. At one point, he was even crawling across the floor, army style, to move from one location in the frame to another. A veteran entertainer, he loved the concept and seemed to understand and appreciate the entertainment value of our frenetic performances.

  It was a whirlwind of a week, and I left Burbank more excited about the project than ever before. It felt like I was on the cusp of something major, and the best part was how unlikely it all seemed: I was a thirty-two-year-old man with an act that turned pop songs into ragtime and jazz. Even after a few viral successes, I’d seriously doubted whether there would be room for an act like mine in the traditional music industry. I had always wanted to create a popular touring show, but I’d also mentally prepared myself for a life of YouTube videos and private events. Now, armed with a team of people working to support my vision, I felt unstoppable. When gigs came in, I no longer worried that we might get stiffed because I had a lawyer to ensure that we wouldn’t. If a client didn’t get back to me, Jaron would leave polite but incessant messages for them. If I had an idea, I knew the right person to help make it a reality. As nice as the independence of working solo may be, the power of the right team is undeniable. The hard work of building an act had only just begun, but luckily I wouldn’t be alone in that work.

  CONSTRUCTING A DREAM FACTORY

  All of my experience—from A Motown Tribute to Nickelback to my antics with Alan Alda in Robert Restaurant—had taught me that a little humor and the occasional over-the-top performance are two powerful butt
ons that could be pushed to get noticed. As I scaled up my team, scaling up my performance antics, too, only seemed logical.

  One day, I told Adam that I wanted to record a video with a saxophone that shoots fire out of the bell and that I wanted to do it… tomorrow.

  “Okay,” he said. “Can we finish by eight p.m.? I have to study for law school.”

  It was 2014, and the Postmodern Jukebox musicians were officially no longer fazed by the crazy shoots that transpired in my apartment.

  Over the past few months, we had been slowly expanding the vocal talent that appeared in our videos, and I was excited to put the chief female vocalists of the group—Robyn and Sleep No More vocalists Cristina Gatti and Ashley Stroud—together in one video. I had written a ’60s girl group–style rendition of Ellie Goulding’s “Burn,” and it featured a greater level of detail than any of the videos I’d previously produced. The vocals involved switching between doo-wop harmony parts, lead lines, and overlapping melodies, and Ashley had choreographed the movements to fit the era.

  It was time to make this thing happen. The aforementioned “flame-o-phone” was an invention wielded by saxophonist Stefan Zeniuk of the band Gato Loco. Basically, it was a baritone saxophone rigged with a flamethrower, which enabled its player to shoot flames up to six feet high in sync with the music. It was a sight to behold, kind of like the marching band equivalent of an EDM laser light show. Stefan, a trained fire performer, was known to incorporate it into his own shows, doing things like inviting the audience to roast marshmallows by its flame. It was perfect for a song whose hook was “… and we’re gonna let it burn, burn, burn.”

  I had few reservations about bringing a flaming wind instrument into my small Astoria apartment. We set up and rehearsed the video as we would any other, first doing a dry run without the flame-o-phone. Then we decided to record. On the first flame-laden take, the smoke detector went off. No big deal; I simply took out its batteries. We carried on, positioning Stefan in the very back by the door. The singers did a great job of ignoring the heat and fire behind them. (Look closely, though, at Adam, the musician closest to Stefan, and you’ll see him visibly wincing every time the flames shoot out of the bell.) We filmed two takes and then got the flame-o-phone out of there as quickly as possible, before anyone could call the fire department or building management on us. It was just another day at the Dream Factory—Cristina’s name for my small Astoria apartment’s living room.

  The Dream Factory was my latest laboratory, and its casual setup—a couch, a shag rug, and the piano that took up the rest of the room—was ideal for creative brainstorming. For an artist, tapping into creativity is kind of like catching a butterfly. If you chase it, it will elude you, so the best you can do is to position yourself in such a way that it’s lured ever closer until it’s within reach, and then—WHOOSH!—net it before it can escape. (I don’t know that using a butterfly metaphor here is particularly creative, but that’s beside the point.) Artists live in constant fear of losing the ability to tap into their creativity, and they often develop bizarre rituals to aid them in this struggle—everything from keeping recording devices bedside to meditating with low-frequency binaural tones. For me, maintaining a simple space and inviting creative performers over to hang out was enough.

  One important rule at the Dream Factory was not to overwork ourselves or force ideas to come. I’ve learned that there’s a certain amount of creativity I can access within myself each day. If I use it all at once, it’s gone, and I need to recharge by doing mindless chores, getting some exercise, or watching reruns of MTV’s Jersey Shore (seriously, don’t judge). To get back into the creative groove, I need to be relaxed enough to allow my mind to drift, with no thought of deadlines or other obligations.

  Of course, creativity usually needs something else, too, to flourish, and that something is what I call creative hunger. For me, it’s the name for what happens when creativity is mixed with profound inspiration. If you aren’t filled with creative hunger, then it’s all too easy to put things off, rationalize that a project is too difficult to tackle, or decide that you would be just as content watching TV instead. Ambitious young people generally start off with a great deal of creative hunger, but as they age and experience tastes of success here and there, the drive has a way of dissipating. After you’ve got a hit under your belt, it’s tempting to simply keep enjoying the fruits of the labor you’ve already harvested. If you want to stay at the top of your game, though, it’s imperative that you stay hungry.

  Thanks to the emerging possibility of being able to do Postmodern Jukebox full time and the anything-goes atmosphere we were cultivating in the Dream Factory, I closed out 2013 with a creative hunger like never before—even greater than any I’d had in my twenties. This was something else—an opportunity to build something great from an idea I’d been developing for years.

  To push the limits of what was possible with Postmodern Jukebox production-wise, we needed to first expand our audience as much as humanly possible. Jaron and I agreed that the videos themselves would be our engine for driving awareness of Postmodern Jukebox to the point where we could tour. Touring, I’d come to understand, was the true litmus test for an Internet-based act and the only way to achieve legitimacy in the industry circles I had recently begun to travel.

  After expanding the roster of vocalists so that we could execute a wider variety of genres, we filmed a Postmodern Jukebox 2013 year-end medley of pop hits, in collaboration with Cosmopolitan magazine. Finally, it felt like fans were beginning to get why I’d been describing Postmodern Jukebox as a “musical collective.” In addition to Robyn, The Tee-Tones, and Tim Kubart’s Tambourine Guy character, the medley introduced to our group Sleep No More vocalists Karen Marie, Andromeda Turre, and both Cristina and Ashley. It was a silly day, full of antics with sticky notes and copy machines, but the one-off video that came out of that day—with its rotating cast of singers and ever-changing genres and fashions—would go on to set the blueprint for the touring show that I hoped to build.

  The videos we produced at the Dream Factory explored the myriad possibilities of pairing unique talent with the Postmodern Jukebox concept. My time at Sleep No More had given me the opportunity to cultivate the raw talents of several singers, and Cristina Gatti—the one with the least experience—had improved by leaps and bounds. I was very excited to debut her on my YouTube channel and tell her story: In the span of a year, she had gone from never having performed in her life to becoming a star singer at Sleep No More. Her success as a performer, however, didn’t seem to have had any impact on her chatty, frenetic personality… proof, I guess, that success need not render a person unrecognizable.

  “Hey, you guys! I brought DOOOOUGH-NUUUTTSS!” she said, arriving to practice my latest swing arrangement of Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love.” “Well, actually, I got McDonald’s on the way, but I couldn’t pass Dunkin’ Donuts without going in! Is that bad? I don’t think it’s bad… OHH you guys have to try the spin class that I discovered—it’s called SoulCycle, and it’s amazing… is that a dog outside?? It sounded like a dog! Aww, puppyyyyy!”

  Cristina’s loquacious temperament may not have been dulled by her fast-rising star, but even that was overshadowed by her singular voice. Opening with the smoky jazz club lyric “I’ve been drinking,” Cristina’s voice on “Drunk in Love” didn’t seem to emanate from her so much as magically crackle forth from a 1940s radio.

  Our fans loved every second of it, but it wasn’t just they that loved it.

  A couple days later, I checked my phone and noticed that I had six unread messages from Cristina, which in and of itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I figured she’d probably found a YouTube video of a puppy skateboarding that she was very enthusiastic to share. I opened her texts.

  “BEYONCE SHARED OUR VIDEO!!!! OMG OMG OMG IS THIS REAL LIFE!?!”

  Wildly off the mark.

  I checked and saw that, indeed, the Beyhive was storming our YouTube channel with supp
ort. Postmodern Jukebox and Cristina had just been anointed by one of the biggest celebrities on the planet. The Dream Factory had produced another glowing star.

  In contrast to Cristina’s wild ebullience, Ashley Stroud was a calm and intelligent performer, exceptionally well trained in both singing and dancing. She saw the possibilities of Postmodern Jukebox as a platform, and she instinctively knew what our videos needed to realize them. Unlike the rest of us, Ashley had been in numerous stage productions and understood firsthand the importance of tight, rehearsed choreography and blocking. I wanted to make a Postmodern video that would highlight her versatility as a performer and the care she took in crafting a highly polished performance.

  Ashley’s dance students at a school in Brooklyn introduced her to Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” which was climbing the charts. Given our track record with turning hip-hop into jazz, I was fully on board. I recorded a piano demo of a 1920s jazz interpretation of the instrumental and had Ashley come up with a melody to fit the rap lyrics. A bit of tinkering and—voilà!—we had something catchy and fun.

  I’m so fancy

  You already know

  I’m in the fast lane

  From LA to Tokyo…

  The theme of the song worked nicely in our rearrangement in part because the decadence described in the lyrics to “Fancy” could be applied just as easily to the hedonism of the 1920s jazz scene. To really drive this point home, Ashley put together a full 1920s flapper outfit, right down to the jewelry and the fringe.