In May Field Music performed their first show as a Doors tribute band. After some backlash from fans, the British art-rock duo shared a statement as to what inspired the new project called the Fire Doors.
Responding to a Facebook commenter asking why they would start a Doors tribute band, Field Music answered, "Given how difficult (bordering on impossible) it is now to make any money from releasing or performing our own music, we thought that maybe as a side-hustle we could use our skills to actually earn a few quid doing something that we'd enjoy. And it keeps us in good shape, performing-wise. It doesn't mean we'll stop making our own music. It's either this or get a 9-to-5, which would leave us a lot less time to create. Unconfident? Unconfident in the commercial prospects for a 20yo band - yep! Unconfident in our ability to create interesting music. Not for a second."
Shortly after, they posted a full statement. "Making a living from making our own music has become increasingly difficult," David Brewis (Jim Morrison) offered as one reason. He also explained that, due to their disinterest in popularity, they've "quietly passed into contemporary irrelevance" especially in the streaming era. Here's what they said in full:
So, earlier today I mentioned on the Field Music Facebook that we'd started playing gigs as a Doors tribute band. A gentleman called Phil responded with a really interesting question which throws up loads of issues regarding creativity and the music industry at the present time. Please don't hassle Phil — he may be a bit disappointed in us and, more so, disappointed with the implications — but it is definitely a worthwhile question. He said, “Genuine question - why would you do this? I mean, the Doors didn't become brilliant by being a tribute band, rather by exploring their own musical and spiritual dark corners. Seems odd, in some ways unconfident for a band I perceive as a popular act to spend their time performing as a tribute act.”
The first stage in answering this question is the straightforward one. Why are we doing this? Making a living from making our own music has become increasingly difficult. We need other income streams. We have a lot of musical skill. We love The Doors. We became musicians by learning how to play this stuff when we were kids. Lots of venues put on tribute acts. Lots of people go to see tribute acts. We think that we could be really, really bloody good at doing this one. By doing maybe one show a month we can fill a hole in our dire finances.
The next stage is the why behind each component. Why has it become difficult to make a living from original music? Well, for one, it's always been difficult. But where we used to see a lot of casual record buying — how many of you spent a tenner on a CD back in the 90s and only ever listened to it once? — we now have a streaming culture where casual listeners get the same experience but without wasting that cash (which inadvertently subsided thousands of smaller artists.) Streaming also funnels attention and money to the top the middle class of record makers either fights to get to the top table (by making music which fits the streaming paradigm) or gets a real job.
In our case in particular, we've now been going for twenty years, sticking rigorously to making the kind of music we want to make with absolutely no regard to what might be popular. Without an indie dancefloor hit we can't do the heritage circuit (and honestly, a Doors tribute band is probably more suited to my temperament), and without any sense of Bovelty (oh, another Field Music album ruminating on the passing of time, memory, anxiety and disappointment. How surprising!), and without fitting into any playlistable genre, we have quietly passed into contemporary irrelevance, despite writing new songs and making new records which are, no false modesty here, as good as, or better than anything we've made before.
And on the subject of avoiding false modesty, I mentioned our musical skill. Boy, we are really, really skilled. Thirty+ years of developing as instrumentalists, singers, composers, arrangers, engineers, bandleaders... We're really good at it. But in the current climate, those skills are basically worthless. The grassroots music industry is so on-its-arse, that no one has any money to pay us to employ those skills. In recent years we've often been asked to be the house band for one all-star event or another, working with different singers and different ensembles, learning their songs plus covers, twenty or thirty at a time. Even when we've been paid for these things, there's no way the fee can cover the time we put into working on these events...
...We always go above and beyond. And, you know, that's fine — we like to contribute to our musical community. And also, each time it becomes something like a research project — we're interrogating other people's music, finding out what makes it tick and inevitably synthesising some of that into what we make ourselves. But also, Wouldn't it be awesome if we could actually get paid (more than a fraction of minimum wage) for this level of musical expertise we have?
Why do people go to watch tribute acts? Because they want to be entertained! For better or worse, we haven't been entertainers since we played (Doors songs, obvs) round the pubs in the mid-90s, and even then, I'm sure the most entertaining thing about us was seeing little kids playing old music so, so seriously. We'd go home after a gig and analyse our faults ever bottles of cheap supermarket lager, almost exactly as we do now. Since we started writing our own music, we've been treating it (and how we present it) as art - never as entertainment. It's no wonder we're such a niche concern. It's difficult not to be hugely precious about our creations. Maybe we can let that go (and feel some joy) by lovingly playing someone else's music to entertain an audience.
As an addendum, any embarrassment I might have felt about doing this has dissolved. Why the hell should I be embarrassed about devoting a chunk of time to music that I love, playing it with people I love, applying to it the same passion, dedication and care we take with all of our musical endeavours, and doing it all so that we still have time to make Cur own music, and as Phil puts it
“exploring [our] own musical and spiritual dark corners?"Peace, love and faux-leather trousers,
David/Jim
The core of Field Music has always been brothers David and Peter Brewis; the former previously had a side project called School Of Language and the latter one called The Week That Was. The Fire Doors have gigs lined up through April, the second of which is already sold out, and Field Music proper will play their own 20th anniversary shows this fall too.
