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

by Scott Bradlee

  Once he’d given his welcome speech, I joined Drue onstage to the tune of the band playing “The Final Countdown.” The place was packed, I was shocked to see, and it took a moment for it to sink in. I waved awkwardly and then launched into a ragtime version of the Super Mario Bros. theme, an homage to my YouTube channel’s roots. Next, Drue introduced Robyn, who kicked off the first full song of the night: “Thrift Shop.” The audience went absolutely berserk, with people swing dancing and singing along. We knew our act was entertaining and that we could impress any old crowd that stumbled across us at a party, but to see that we had exuberant fans—and lots of them—as far away as Toronto was a real “pinch-me” moment for all of us. It rendered us speechless, as we shot incredulous glances at one another onstage. Perhaps the oddest yet most fitting validation of our fans’ adoration was how dolled up they got to attend our show. Zoot suits, vintage dresses, flapper costumes—you name it, and it was there, despite the fact that I’d never mentioned anything about dressing up in our promos. It dawned on me then that, although we were just meeting them for the first time, our fans had been there on the other side of the screen all along. Like us, they had been waiting for this day to arrive.

  There’s one drawback to IRL performance, we soon discovered, and it’s that some aspects of the production will always elude your control. Never was that more glaring than at our show in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The night began with management at the venue unilaterally deciding to hold us for an extra hour before starting, in the hopes of selling more tickets. It was the least attended show on the run, and oddly, the fans were trending far younger than our audiences tended to be. The crowd grew understandably more restless as the delay ticked on, and they were vocal about wanting us to start. By the time we took the stage, they’d been drinking heavily for a good while, and I’d received a few angry tweets from audience members who’d grown feistily impatient or intoxicated (or both).

  When we finally came onto the stage—really more of a slightly raised platform—the crowd, which had been going wild off and on, went wild once again, except this time in a somewhat menacing way. Drue was constantly interrupted by people shouting out beer-slurred requests, some for songs we’d never even covered. A couple frat brothers had taken up the refrain “Where’s the clown? Bring out the clown!” as though Puddles were being kept in a cage backstage and poked with a stick until the time came to release him for his performance.

  The evening hit its high point when a girl who appeared to be on drugs climbed up onstage and latched on to Drue’s leg, refusing to budge. The lax security crew was of little help on this one, and so we just kind of accepted that we had to continue the show with an overzealous audience member clinging to one of our performers. If it sounds like the show was utter and complete chaos, that’s because it was. We will always remember Pawtucket as the closest thing to a punk rock show that we ever played.

  Our team scored a notable addition on the New Haven stop of the tour, when my old Hartford college buddy Rook came to see the show. Of all my credit-delinquent housemates, Rook—or Matt Telford, as he’s legally known—was the wildcard in the bunch. He was one of the most infamous characters at the University of Hartford, despite having only studied there for a semester before failing out. He had a zany sense of humor and zero inhibitions, and he could usually be found spearheading efforts to get our household kicked out of various establishments by ridiculous means. (Fake mustaches and other “disguises” often factored into the equation.)

  What else to say about Rook? Well, he certainly mastered the art of beating the system, in every sense of the word. Once, he went ten months out of a year without any employment, living entirely off the exploitation of a flaw in the promotional coupons from the Big Y grocery chain and bringing dates to Bob’s Discount Furniture to take advantage of the free coffee and mini golf. No stranger to my YouTube channel, he actually starred as Rappin’ Einstein in the second Postmodern Jukebox video, which was a rather bizarre, Special Theory of Relativity–inspired parody of Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” that ended abruptly after he became high on paint fumes from having to constantly reapply gray spray paint to his Einstein-ian wig/fake moustache combo. After this somewhat inauspicious debut, he’d moved out to Colorado to open a restaurant, and we lost touch for several years—though he did reappear briefly for one of the Saturday Morning Slow Jams videos, in which he performed a spirited and rather controversial rap about the television series My Little Pony.

  Rook may have come to our New Haven show with the sole intention of watching, but I had other plans for him. We’d been having difficulty selling merch on the tour so far, which I’d a hunch had something to do with our CDs and posters being displayed only halfheartedly by the unenthused venue staff. Knowing that Rook’s lack of inhibition could be extremely useful in the right situation, and knowing, too, that his exhibitionist tendencies were sure to attract attention, I asked if he would consider helping to sell merch for us in his own creative way. He agreed, and within minutes, he’d transformed the merch booth into a veritable bazaar of activity and energy. At one point, he got so caught up in the zeal of selling that he sold some of his own personal items:

  “Hey, New Haven, have some new pants—because I’m selling mine! Everything must go!”

  Tambourine Guy notwithstanding, Rook’s was probably the most surprising performance of the night. In the span of a single evening, he succeeded in quadrupling the total amount of merch we’d sold on tour thus far. I had an idea.

  “Hey Rook, do you have anything going on for the next week? There’s an extra seat in the van. Can I hire you as our merch guy?”

  “Yup, cool,” he said, without hesitation.

  “Awesome!” I thought for a second. “Do you need to go by your apartment and get some clothes or anything?”

  “Nah, I’m good. I just need to buy some new pants, ’cause I sold mine.”

  It was settled.

  I didn’t have even an inkling at the time that Rook, in accepting my invitation to join our circus, was actually leaving his entire life—which included a well-paying job as a restaurant consultant and, as we later learned, a live-in girlfriend—behind. I don’t think Rook had any inkling of it, either. What I’d proposed had sounded like a great adventure, something Rook was never one to turn down. It was, in the moment, as simple as that.

  Not everyone was as enthused as I was by the new addition, though.

  “Do you really think this is a good idea?” Adam deadpanned to me, upon hearing the news. It was more of a statement than a question. “Things are just taking off, and Rook is… well, Rook.”

  Adam was still a bit traumatized from his last encounter with Rook. Remember how I mentioned that I occasionally hired Adam to play nonpaying gigs with me and a friend in a giant koala costume? Yup, that friend was Rook. I shrugged it off.

  “It’s just for a few shows. Besides, you have to admit he’s creative.”

  Even Adam couldn’t dispute that. “Okay,” he said, resignedly, “but if he tackles me in a bear suit again, I’m out.”

  As our tour progressed, demand for us grew. Second shows were added in New York and DC to accommodate eager audiences, and promoters from cities not originally on our tour were now requesting dates. Jaron was convinced that if we wanted to make it happen, leaping to the next level of international act wasn’t out of the question. After all, we were already scheduled to play a high-profile wedding in Monaco a few weeks after the U.S. run ended; if we used the profits from it to secure a bus, we could easily pull off a month-long European tour and take a stab at establishing ourselves overseas.

  I, however, was skeptical. The upfront costs of the U.S. run were hard enough for me to absorb.

  “I don’t know, Jaron.… I was really looking forward to actually making money on a gig.”

  “What do you do when you’re at the casino and you win big?”

  “Um. Walk away?”

  “NO!” he replied, emphatically. “You DOUBLE DOWN! You
take that chance to win! Even bigger!”

  Did Jaron’s strategy sound like a surefire way to leave the casino without the clothes on our backs? Absolutely. But his excitement was contagious, and the prospect of touring Europe seemed worth the risk of possibly coming back with emptied pockets (or without pockets, period). I decided to double down and made a mental note to ask Rook how to get the maximum price when selling one’s pants—just in case things went south.

  I had still never traveled outside North America, and I was psyched to see Europe. The rest of the cast greeted the news happily, for the most part. Adam, who loved traveling, was probably the most excited of us all, followed closely by Cristina, who manically rattled off every cuisine she planned on eating, before dashing off to purchase several pairs of “Gatti pants”—what were essentially just elastic-waist pajama pants—as her travel attire. Robyn expressed enthusiasm, too, though with slight hesitation; some things about touring—from the lack of decent showers and cramped dressing rooms to the confusing sound checks that frequently ended in tears and pressure-filled onstage environments—were proving to be challenging for her.

  “How about we go to Europe and not play shows?” she said, only half-joking.

  Off we flew to Manchester, where we set our sights on what would become our very first tour bus—a used, bright yellow number with its rental company’s name stenciled on the side in Comic Sans. The font alone should have tipped us off to the fact that we were in for a bumpy ride, but we were too blinded by the thrill of being, suddenly, a band that traveled by tour bus to notice. As it turned out, this bus of ours was equipped with some really questionable amenities, which included, but were not limited to, the following: a broken door that swung open at inopportune times, such as while the bus was on the highway or rounding a tight curve; a sink whose water went from freezing cold to scalding hot in a matter of seconds; and a lookout hatch on the ceiling of the upper level, which would have been lovely, save for the fact that Europe is notorious for its dangerously low clearance tunnels. To cap it off, the whole vehicle had a musty scent to it, similar to that of a wall-to-wall carpeted basement that hadn’t been aired out since the ’70s. After I sent him pictures, Jaron, ever the reliable optimist where Postmodern Jukebox was concerned, called the bus “vibey.”

  To ensure that our first tour overseas went smoothly while he was in LA making deals, Jaron sent along one of his associates, Jordan Howard, to assist with tour management duties. An ardent music fan and devoted roadie, Jordan had been managing YouTube acts since the days when the YouTube music scene was just taking off. He met Jaron while working in Nashville and soon found himself working side-by-side with him, often by playing the role of “good cop” in meetings with Jaron’s clients and business partners. Indeed, they made for a balanced management team. Where Jaron could be analytical and aggressive in dealings, Jordan was personable and friendly. His people skills proved a tremendous asset with us abroad, getting promoters to better some of the smaller venues’ less-than-stellar conditions and helping to keep the peace among the cast.

  Over the course of the European tour, our shows became increasingly polished, allowing each performer’s star qualities to shine. One of my favorite memories from the trip took place in Prague, where we performed to a sold-out venue of eight hundred dancing fans who called us back for not one but two encores—the latter of which turned into me playing and singing an impromptu cover of “Dream” by The Everly Brothers. For someone who, only a year before, had only ever been treated at gigs as the background music, being the main event at last truly felt like a dream.

  There was no question about it: No longer just a salad days side project, Postmodern Jukebox had evolved into something of far greater magnitude—something deserving of the entirety of my attention and creativity every day. At last, I had achieved artistic freedom.

  HOW GETTING KICKED OUT LANDED US ON HOLLYWOOD’S MAP

  Hi Scott:

  I have received complaints that you have musicians come to your apartment on a regular basis to rehearse live music in your apartment. Please keep in mind that it is a violation of your lease to make undue noise that can be heard outside of your unit. Although I am a music lover myself I am sure you can understand that some residents prefer not to hear your music. Please contact me with any questions.

  Thanks for your cooperation.

  I can’t say this letter from the property manager of the building that housed the Dream Factory was entirely unexpected. After all, what I rented from them was very much a seven-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartment, surrounded on all sides by other seven-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartments. It was a reasonable request. Call me stubborn, call me cocky (the success was starting to go to my head… just a little bit), but I wasn’t ready to relinquish my salad days. And so, I made a conscious decision to carry on as I’d been carrying on all along, complaints be damned.

  This worked until it didn’t, when I was brusquely kicked out—just as I had been from my Hartford rental a decade earlier. The straw that broke the camel’s back? A zealous, noisy tap dancing cover of a Jason Derulo song. I was nearing thirty-three and again without a home; on the upside, however, my new displacement had the effect of freeing me up from the mind-set that I had to live in this city. I could do my job from anywhere!

  Living in Los Angeles had never really appealed to me. There was a certain rawness to my artistic methods and to those of my collaborators that was quintessentially East Coast, and on top of that, I couldn’t imagine being so far away from my friends and family. Yet the timing of my eviction lined up precisely with an opportunity to play a three-month weekly residency at one of Hollywood’s hottest nightclubs, Hyde Sunset.

  As usual, Jaron’s reaction was one of extreme excitement. “Dude, imagine doing a Postmodern Jukebox show and Leonardo DiCaprio and Rihanna are watching it, and Rihanna’s like, I want to sing with you, and Leo’s got all these models and they’re taking pictures, and Gary Busey’s acting all crazy and shit, and TMZ rolls up, asking ‘Who’s this hot new act that’s taking LA by storm?’”

  All right, yes, that did sound strangely fun. I pictured Rihanna as a flapper, Leo as a mobster, and Gary Busey perched beside a nearby bathtub, making gin.

  The goal, as Jaron explained to me, was to use this residency as a way to get in front of some of Hollywood’s biggest players, who tended not to frequent shows alongside the general public but were known to enjoy the club scene. At Hyde, we’d be bringing Postmodern Jukebox to them, in a creative, immersive way. Furthermore, the hot spot could function as an incubator for new ideas, since we’d be developing a whole new show tailored to the space. I loved the idea of taking an environment that wasn’t intended for live music and turning it into a home for the ever-changing Postmodern Jukebox. I ran the opportunity by our featured performers at the time, and it was met with resounding approval. PMJ—the acronym for the group that had caught on among our fans—was westward bound.

  To raise funds for the move, we announced back-to-back mini tours—appropriately dubbed the “Eviction Tour”—up and down the East and West Coasts. Our plan was to play Hyde every Wednesday and hit the road on tour in between. It made for a packed schedule, but playing Hyde so regularly would give us a nice home base. Worst-case scenario, if it all fell to crap, we’d come back to New York in three months’ time, sunkissed and perhaps waxing poetic about the joys of kale. I rented a large house in the San Fernando valley town of Van Nuys for the eight of us making the move. I’d yet to see the place, but Jaron assured me that he had checked it out and that it “had a vibe.” This made me immediately suspicious.

  Indeed, it did have a vibe—one that screamed either “reality TV house” or “porn set,” depending on your viewing habits. Each bedroom was wired with cameras that fed into what could only be called a control room. The interior was ’70s groovy, with red shag carpeting throughout and, in the master bedroom, a plush red bed straight out of a Mount Airy Lodge commercial. I wouldn’t want
to take a black light to the place, but all in all, it was in good shape and would meet our needs just fine. We celebrated that first night by drinking champagne in the hot tub (until the motor unexpectedly gave out, at which point it turned into a lukewarm tub).

  Although the rent itself was fairly reasonable, actually providing for eight people was beyond my financial capabilities at the time. The upfront costs of concurrently moving and prepping for tour—flights, rent, food, basic furniture, audio backline, shipping, plus two tour buses and tour salaries—amounted to much more than I’d anticipated paying. Keeping up with expenses became even more difficult when our Hyde appearance got pushed back by a month and a few other gigs fell through. Suddenly, we found ourselves on what appeared to be a two-week vacation in Van Nuys with no income.

  It didn’t help matters that I could only afford to rent two cars for the eight of us, leading to a prevailing sense of being under house arrest for a few in our group. No one had any outside means of making money, so the simple act of taking a taxi downtown to shake off the stir-crazy was largely out of the question. Our tour manager, usually so dependable as a calming force in the face of chaos, looked to be on the verge of snapping.

  When our Hyde show did finally launch, it was fraught with problems. The sound system was meant for DJs, not bands, and it turned into a nightmare of feedback when we introduced our sixteen-mic setup. The immersive speakeasy setting that I had pictured—replete with dancing flappers and assorted pop-up performances throughout the room—required more floor space than was at our disposal. “Immersive,” in this case, meant having a dancer knock a drink into your lap. There was no stage lighting to illuminate the performers, and Rook’s makeshift lighting rig, consisting of gaffe tape and a broom handle suspended from the ceiling, was met with horror by the club’s management. It wasn’t all bad, though; lots of fans flocked in to see and meet us on opening night, and none other than Puddles even dropped by to sing a few songs. The sight of him tossing crumbled Kleenex at a bored, snobbish couple seated in the front row gave us all a much-needed laugh.