Interview with Lucy, Racquel and Me

You seem like a bit of a social media wiz. What are your promotional tips to fellow indie artists?

I'm far from a 'wizkid', just a regular practicing novice … but 3 tips come to mind:

1. Regular publications seem to me to be the most important point. 15 messages a day and nothing for 2 weeks is not useful. One a day, at least.
2. I use TweetDeck to pre-program at least one daily mail.
3. As I don't have a team of taggers, I focus mainly on a single social network, Twitter in my case, even if instagram or TikTok are more fashionable at the moment. Adding images, not only text (songwhip is great for that).

Can you tell me a little about the #ArtistsSupportingArtists campaign?

For a long time I ran a website where I reviewed albums of independent and non-independent artists. In my youth I was an FM radio host and did promotion for Indies. I guess it's in my DNA. And it's by supporting each other that the circle of people who have access to our music can grow, each of us then being good enough to convince the listener. I like to discover new songs, new artists, and to share these discoveries. If I can help a little on my own scale, to make them gain some listeners, my goal is achieved.

As the French say - "The small streams make the big rivers" 😄

What social media platform do you find most effective?

Well My opinion is biased because I mainly use Twitter. I'm present on Facebook and Instagram but not very much. I concentrate on a single network because I don't have the time to disperse myself, even if, ideally, this is probably what should be done. As a professional it would be essential, but as an independent it's impossible, at least for me. As far as I can judge, Twitter is efficient, I have a little more than 4k followers, but I don't analyse my results, number of retweets, follows, unfollows, etc ... what I should probably do to be more efficient.

How did you distribute your latest release? Was it ok?

Always the same way. I use Distrokid for streaming platforms, whereas I upload myself on SoundCloud or Bandcamp and Youtube. I'm rather happy with this distributor. Simple interface, efficient, rather fast processing, for a reasonable processing time and a correct price when you publish regularly. I recommend it without hesitation.

How did you record your latest release?

Because of our configuration, scattered over several continents, everything is done remotely. I've been doing this for more than 20 years with other projects, so it's now routine.

Lucy sends me the lyrics, I put it to music, I make a quick demo, I send it to Racquel for the choice of the tone.

Once that's done, I'm looking for musicians to do, in colour, what my demo was doing in black and white. For Home One Day, our last release. Bass and keyboard were taken care of by Dave in England, guitars by Salvatore in Italy. Cyril from Belgium did the mix and mastering. I chose a royalty free picture of a Danish photographer, René.

What inspired your latest release?

Country music, I had the Eagles in mind for this track. That's the instruction I gave to the musicians, with Take It Easy as an example. As for the text, I can't say what inspired Lucy.

Which artist do you look up to the most and why? If you could ask them one question, what would it be?

My reference album is The Beatles White Album for its eclecticism. So, in our music, some tracks are blues, folk, bossa, country … and all the Californian soft rock music where the vocal harmonies are essential, and the melody is the strong point … no question to ask them, just "thank you for the music" as Abba would sing 😄

Vinyl or Downloads?

I use to have 4000 vinyls. But I'm a streaming boy now. So neither.

Bandcamp or Spotify?

We're on both. Bandcamp is for selling music - I've sold one single in four years :) But our songs are free on our website so, it doesn't matter. Spotify is a must at the moment. I'm a subscriber. Having access to so much music for so little money is amazing for someone who was saving hard to buy albums when I was a teenager. But it's also worrying about the economics of music. The return of live music was becoming the way to make a living, but it's obviously not a good time for it [2020 covid-19 pandemic], you see the fragility of the system. And then all the bands can't perform, our virtual band is an example of that.

Best $100 you ever spend and why?

Reaper, excellent DAW, cheap and very powerful.

What's the first album or single you ever bought?

K7 Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. As vinyl - Chuck Berry's Best Of

Anything else you'd like to say?

Our next release is planned in a few days A groovy track this time! 😉

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Have a listen Lucy, Racquel and Me or follow them on Twitter. If you're an artist and would like to be featured on the Songwhip Blog reach out to me via email or messenger.