Austin City Limits Music Festival

When songbands meet, their fans follow

By Michael Corcoran
Sept. 16, 2004

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We all know about jambands, those blissful noodlers who fill huge venues with the extended experimentation and the hands-on business model they learned from the Grateful Dead. But there's a relatively new phenomenon on the scene, one similarly stoked by tape-traders and the Internet, and it's well-represented at the ACL Fest.

Dub them songbands, these crafty acts whose grass roots have taken hold and sprouted fans who plan vacations around their shows. Surfer dude philosopher Jack Johnson (the anti-Spicoli?), Mason Jennings, G. Love, Howie Day, Donavon Frankenreiter, Dayna Kurtz and Austin's David Garza and Bob Schneider have made their way in the music biz, not by tapping into some hip subgenre or by presaging the next trend, but by writing songs that connect in such a way that their fans go downright evangelical.

Photo by Lee Stanford Mason Jennings is a little bit folk, a little bit jazz. He plays Saturday at 12:15 p.m. on the Bank of America Stage.

Are free downloads killing the music business? You won't hear any complaints from songbands, who rarely garner radio airplay and yet often perform in faraway places where, thanks to shared MP3 files, the fans recognize the material on the first acoustic guitar strums. Whatever these acts may lose in album sales, they make up for -- tenfold -- in the audience sizes at gigs.

"Touring, touring, touring," is how Jennings' publicist Ken Weinstein explains the key to success for these nouveau Paul Simons, many who sport the close-cropped "Bookends" haircut. "We noticed that every time Mason returned to a city, there would be a spike in attendance. You want that organic growth, not some flash in the pan radio hit." Weinstein credits Guster, the Boston pop band that's obscure to the masses, yet has rabid fans all over the country, with showing that you didn't need to play 20-minute guitar solos to attract a cult audience.

Like smoking brisket, building a sturdy fan base can be a slow process. But patience can ultimately satisfy. A Pittsburgh native now based in Minneapolis, Jennings details early performing years that were a far yelp from the hushed, sold-out venues he now plays with regularity. "Once, in the middle of a song, a bunch of people starting singing 'Happy Birthday' for one of their friends," he says. "Sometimes it was like I wasn't even there."

But then, a few years ago, Jennings played a small Minnesota college on a bill with a barefooted surfer from Hawaii named Jack Johnson and the two instantly clicked. Just as Johnson had seen his audiences grow after being praised by Ben Harper, who took him out on tour, Jennings benefited by having a public fan in Johnson. "It's funny. Here I am, from one of the coldest cities in America, and my shows are full of surfers," says Jennings. That's how it works in Songbandland: Harper touts Johnson, who taps Jennings.

Johnson is even more heavily involved in the career of his ex-roommate Frankenreiter, a former professional surfer whose upcoming self-titled debut is more Poi Dog Pondering than "Pipeline." After J.J. and the Frankster trawled for tubes on the North Shore of Oahu, they used the leftover adrenaline to strum guitars and write songs that are informed by the power and majesty of nature.

Photo by Lee Stanford Jack Johnson plays the ACL Fest at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on the SBC Stage.

You look at that handsome, athletic rascal Johnson and you think, this guy could be the Cat Stevens of boy bands. But even as his 2001 debut album "Brushfire Fairytales" was selling more than 1 million copies, Johnson kept photo ops to a minimum and shunned MTV. If there's any career that's become cautionary to the songbands it's that of Hootie & the Blowfish, who made a nice living on the Eastern Seaboard college circuit for years, attracting a cult audience with their soulfully sung, simple anthems. Then, all of a sudden, they were on the radio every 10 minutes and their videos were in heavy rotation on all the big music channels except BET. The 1994 album "Cracked Rear View" sold about 200,000 copies in its first year of release and about 14 million in the next year.

And where are the Blowfish now?

"It was like this band that you discovered through a friend, that you had a personal bond with, suddenly belonged to everyone," says Jennings. The mass market can eat you up and spit you out. Look at former jambands Blues Traveler and Spin Doctors, who had Top 40 hits and today couldn't fill La Zona Rosa.

Lessons learned: the songbands of today are not out for instant stardom, but the lasting career. "Our model is based on any small business," says Jennings. "You don't spend more than you make. You find your niche and you just keep working."

Although they both appeal to the ages-18-to-25 demographic, the music of the songbands is as different from that of the jambands as a freeway offramp is to a winding path. But there's one very key thing in common: Fans of both genres are willing to follow the creative instincts of their favorite artists wherever it may take them. Now, what could be more attractive to those trying to filter life experiences through their songs?

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mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652