IndieHQ / Article Detail

June 23rd, 2006

Interview with Sean Moeller of Daytrotter.com

Every once in a while, you see a site or an idea, and you think, “Damn, why didn’t I think of that first?” Daytrotter is one of those ideas. I was lucky enough to have heard about the Daytrotter site recently and it got me really excited. Daytrotter is a site ran by a group of talented, interesting people who decided to work with independent, touring bands by putting them in the studio to record 4 songs. The bands are able to rework existing songs, lay down new songs, or do whatever their heart desires. And the kicker is that when the songs are all done, the kind folks at Daytrotter give the songs away through free downloads on their site. I know, it sounds too good to be true, but guess what? It is in fact happening and you can go there right now and download really great sessions by bands like Sunset Rubdown(Absolutely Kosher), Hockey Night(Lookout), Somone still Loves You Boris Yeltsen (Polyvinyl), and most recently Casey Dienel. They post new sessions every Sunday night and have upcoming recordings from French Kicks, Two Gallants, Maritime, Oakley Hall and Tigersaw to name a few.

I interviewed Sean Moeller of Daytrotter who happens to be a fan of Deadwood and best of all, is a fan of Drag the River! He was very kind and prompt in answering all of my questions,

Please read the interview and when you are done, check out the Daytrotter site. These guys are doing some of the coolest things in independent music!

IndieHQ: I recently stumbled across the Daytrotter site and I was honestly blown away. Can you tell me how Daytrotter came to be? How long has Daytrotter existed?
Daytrotter: Gosh, I hope that’s a natural reaction for everyone…Daytrotter was just one of those spur of the moment brainstorm things that catch you so off-guard that you still kind of think they came from nowhere. It still feels kind of honest and natural to say that I have no idea how it came to be. It’s been like waking up one day and having a son or daughter ready for their first day of driving lessons after going to bed childless. All of a sudden we were driving this crazy, crazy idea and going full steam ahead. I’d been doing some freelance work for a businessman in the publishing world and we always wound up talking about Bob Dylan and how bitching it was to really get anywhere in newspapers (the day job). He randomly threw out the suggestion that I start my own magazine. Initially, I thought it was a bad and absurd idea and kind of dismissed it. I knew that the only reason to make a magazine was if you could do something original. I wasn’t going to clutter. I had a friend (Pat Stolley) who owns a great analog recording studio in downtown Rock Island, Illinois. I thought that if we were able to entice bands to stop in for a short recording session as they passed through here on Interstate 80, going from Chicago to Omaha, or St. Louis to Wisconsin or between any number of points, we’d have something really special. I thought he’d go along with it, but I was still shocked when he was aboard digging the idea. It just all worked out because I’m not chained to a desk and he’s a self-employed painter so if Cold War Kids or French Kicks want to swing in at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon we can accomodate that. The Casey Dienel week was our 11th week of being a website. We probably started with the idea about three weeks before that.

IndieHQ: You have been able to work with artists on some pretty decent sized indie labels (Lookout, Absolutely Kosher, Polyvinyl), how do you find the bands that record with you? And have there been any issues with any of the labels?
Daytrotter: The same way anyone finds bands. It’s my job to try to be a step ahead. I write about music and I’m always being sent new records to spin. The mailbox is full everyday. Over the five years I’ve been a music journalist for too many places to list here, I’ve developed some pretty good relationships with bands, publicists and record labels. I have a modest legion of blogs and websites that I religiously pore over, but mostly I’m attracted to what I think is interesting. I go for the stuff that gets me excited. Every label so far has been really great and really supportive. We actually have a number of record label employees who have signed up for and receive our weekly newsletter.

IndieHQ: You do not charge for full downloads of any of the songs, why is that? On top of that, recording and giving away those songs costs money, how can Daytrotter afford not to charge for songs?
Daytrotter: We nixed the idea of asking people to pay for the downloads early on in our discussions about what we wanted to do with this site. What we’re essentially doing is asking people to trust us and take a gamble on a band they may never have heard before. We don’t invite anyone in that we don’t absolutely love and every session that we record, I typically end up leaving thinking it was the best one we’ve ever done. But we understand that a lot of the things we throw out there on Mondays might be unfamiliar to people and all we’re asking them to do is to check out this really fucking sweet band. That’s the reason for putting the songs in the flash player and letting people listen to them on the site as well. We want everybody who comes to the site to listen to the songs every week no matter who’s up there because we think they’re great and we want them to be able to make a living off of their music. The more people who become familiar with their music the better chance they have of that happening. If people find someone new that they like, since this is just a live session and the records are much different, they’re going to buy a record or go see a show. We’re just an introduction and we want everyone to be able to hear these songs that we’re collecting.

The whole process does take a lot of time and effort. We’re away from our wives and girlfriends a ton more than is right and we’re all doing this on top of holding down full-time jobs. Recording isn’t free either, but it helps that Pat owns the studio we use. Eventually, though the site will have to make some money or we just can’t keep it going. We’ve never wanted to charge people for the songs so what we’re working with is an ad model. We’re hoping that we can attract some advertiser dollars to off-set our time and efforts. We would all like to work on Daytrotter as our full-time jobs. It’s the only way we see that happening. We want to be making these sessions and writing about these bands that deserve more 20 years from now.

IndieHQ: Daytrotter comprises of a number of talented people from rock journalists to artists to photographers to engineers, how did this collection of people come to be?
Daytrotter: We were all friends from a few different angles. Pat was someone that I’ve admired for a while for his own songwriting abilities in the bands The Multiple Cat and The Marlboro Chorus and he’s helped run a local record label (Futureappletree Records) for a few years now that’s really kick ass. I’d just gotten to know him over the years, writing stories about the label and his band. Johnnie Cluney, our illustrator is another guy like that. He’s always done these really tremendous fliers and posters for shows he was playing (as Quiet Bears) and for the shows he would promote and I thought he’d be perfect for this. The three of us would always grumble about what could be done to make here better. I think we were secretly all trying to figure out a way to combine our powers. Or at least I was. Our photographer, Jesse Codling, is just another buddy that goes to a lot of shows and his cousin Nick Codling lives out near Berkeley, Calif. He handles a lot of online promotion that we’ve been doing. He kind of keeps a scrapbook, works the MySpace pages and mentioned us for the first time publicly on his college radio show. One Sunday he announced and got hopes up that Ghostface Killah was coming in to record with us. I talked to Ghostface on the phone and we couldn’t work that out. He sounded very confused. I think he was eating a pulled pork sandwich or something on the other end of the phone.

Joe Sayers is a brother from a different mother. I found him in the Best Nonrequired Reading of 2005. I began going to his website weekly to check out his stuff and I just loved it immediately. I was struck by how funny and perfect one of his T-shirt designs was. There’s a picture of a smiley kid and it says, “Never give up on your stupid, stupid dreams.” And that kind of feels like what we’re doing with Daytrotter. I wrote Joe just to see if he’d be interested in being a part of whatever this site was going to be. I was kind of shocked when he said he was down for it. I think it’s because we bonded over John Vanderslice. When the site begins to bring in a little revenue, we’re going to pay the lad and he’s going to do some original content for us. Since he’s come on to Daytrotter his Thingpart strip has been picked up by a handful of newspapers and each week he writes me in amazement about how exciting it is to see the site continue to grow. It’s a fun partnership and last week we talked on the phone for the first time. We took it to the next level!

IndieHQ: The MP3s you have available for download are DRM-free. As there become more and more issues about DRMs, what is your stance on the issue?
Daytrotter: You know, I didn’t know anything about DRMs before today when I read this question. So I did a little research and my stance is that they’re bad. I’m glad our MP3s are DRM-free. I’m no computer dude though. I wouldn’t have known what our MP3s do unless you told me. It feels good knowing ours are the way they are though.

IndieHQ: Do you see a future for the CD format? What do you think is the future of music sales and music formats? .
Daytrotter: Of course there’s a future for the CD format. There have to be records. I think there’s going to be more and more records being sold electronically, but there’s always something to be said for having the artwork. I don’t know how people do it. I see people’s CD collections — I’ll be looking through a book of CDs — and all I see are burnt CDs. It drives me nuts. I have to have the actual CD or I don’t feel right. I have a copy of Ryan Adams “Gold” that’s a burnt copy and I really like that record, but I hardly listen to it ever and I think the reason is that I don’t own the actual CD. I need to buy a real one.

IndieHQ: If a band wanted to visit Daytrotter, how would they get in touch with you? What criteria do you have for bands that record for Daytrotter?
Daytrotter: They can just write us at daytrotter@gmail.com. We’re pretty picky though. We only invite people in that we love and bands that we want everyone else to love as well. We have to do it that way. It’s the only way to ensure that I can be passionate about something and I hope that all of the bands that we ask in the future to come in will appreciate that.

IndieHQ: What lies in the future for Daytrotter? Will Daytrotter ever become a viable form of revenue? .
Daytrotter: I don’t know. It’s kind of not up to me. I think the formula we have right now is one that can work for a long time if we do it right. I see us bringing more artwork into the picture. I’d like to do away with all publicity photos and have the site be completely art-driven. I can see us bringing some more writers into the mix, because it’s a tall order to make sure we’re giving people new content on a regular basis. I want to get to a point where there’s new content all over the site every day — Sunday-through-Monday. We will have no days off is the hope. I think Daytrotter will become a viable form of revenue. Like I said, I want this to be my job. I just hope everyone out there that appreciates discovering new music and hearing bands they love with that Daytrotter touch will tell 10 more of their friends and it will just spread on-and-on like that. I never want to push this onto anyone and I don’t think I need to. I believe in the goodness of what we’re trying to do — for music lovers and these great bands that deserve the chance to never have to deliver a pizza again. .

IndieHQ: Favorite Daytrotter moment? .
Daytrotter: It’s a tie: Getting an e-mail from one of our earliest fans/friends that she got her California driver’s license picture taken while wearing a Daytrotter T-shirt and just having Sunset Rubdown and Frog Eyes — two of my favorite bands — hang out with us for close to three days. We had 10 Canadians and a wonderful dog — Suki — sleeping in my living room and using my laptop to check their e-mail. It was a good moment hanging out on my front stoop asking Spencer Krug about playing Coachella the week before as he enjoyed his morning cigarette. .

IndieHQ: I see that you are a Deadwood fan (so am I), were you bummed to hear that season 3 is Deadwood’s final season?
Daytrotter: I was bummed, but I’ve learned to deal with these shitty decisions. I made it through my Arrested Development anger so I’ll get through this too. Al Swearengen is a golden god. Everything he says is prose that I feel like reciting at appropriate and inappropriate times. He will always be there on DVD.

Written by Virgil Dickerson