8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Getting Nostalgic with the Spot Lyte On Podcast

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I had an enjoyable conversation with Lyte’s Lawrence Peryer last week. We got nostalgic about learning about new music in our formative years — especially challenging for me as a teenager in the middle of Louisiana. I told him about hanging an electric antenna out of my bedroom window and how crappy equipment made me a better DJ. Then, we talked about why there should be niche streaming services, how people are forgetting Frank Zappa, and that Sandinista! isn’t the best Clash record to start with. I used the word “fascinating” a lot.

Oh, and we recorded this sprawling conversation. It’s the latest episode of the Spot Lyte On… podcast, and you should give it a listen. It’s fun.

At one point, on the subject of indie music discovery in the mid-80s, I mention a fanzine called The Bob1Sadly, I can’t find a history online to link to, but contributor Fred Mills talks about it in this interview.. I call it my ‘music bible at the time.’ I can’t express enough how vital this mag was for me. It brought this sixteen-year-old punk rocker to The Velvet Underground, after all. Anyway, after we spoke, Lawrence sent me this link on Etsy. Someone is selling four vintage issues of The Bob. I remember all of these — I read them cover-to-cover, and probably more than once, when they were brand new. Seeing these mags in this photo delivered that melancholy pang of remembering that youthful period of discovering that music means something. You know the pang I’m talking about. Sigh.

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For someone who professes to avoid nostalgia, there’s a lot of nostalgia in this podcast. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

A Lot of Honking: The Age of Social Distanced Concerts

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I expect a lot of honking. Ray, a longtime friend, alerted me to The Road Rave, an event billed as “North America’s first-ever drive-in festival of the COVID era.” The festival is led by EDM sensation and Ultra Music Festival veteran Carnage, performing alongside at least four other acts. A maximum of 500 cars will line up in formation, facing the stage, each with two to six inhabitants encouraged to stay seated during the event. “Roaming golf carts” will take concession orders.

The Road Rave takes place Saturday, June 20 (postponed from the original date of June 6), about six miles from my house. It’s sold out. No, I’m not going, but thanks for the invite. That said, I’m close enough that I’m sure the not-too-distant sound of 500 cars honking will echo over Lake Holden and into my eardrums throughout the evening. Every bass drop — honk honk honk. Every on-stage glitter explosion —- honk honk honk. Every DJ raising his hands in the air — honk honk honk. There will be a lot of honking.

We’re now in the phase of The Strange Times where watching a concert from the seat of a car seems attractive. I get it — we’re making our way through this any way we can. And even a glimmer of normality that’s not normal at all can provide reassurance. But, man — all those cars.

In the last several months, there was a push to explore the idea of environmentally-conscious, carbon-neutral touring. Massive Attack and Coldplay were high-profile advocates of the concept. So it’s ironic concert-goers are now encouraged to lean into the fossil-fuels, idling their automobiles as a festival broadcasts over an FM signal, and a guy in a golf cart takes another nacho order.

It’s not only The Road Rave. The concert promoting Borg, known as Live Nation, is planning nationwide ‘drive-in concert’ tours this summer, taking place in the various parking lots of its 40 amphitheaters. And for promoters who don’t own stadiums, drive-in theaters are a no-brainer for events. However, most existing drive-ins are far outside of bigger cities, and the owners would rather show movies. Says one proprietor, “We don’t mind doing one-off special events, but most of us feel we’re here to show movies.” Less hassle, less honking.

In an article about the absence of live music, the drive-in theater aspect inspired Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield to remember a scene from ’70s movie dystopia:

There’s a scene I keep re-watching from the Seventies sci-fi zombie trash classic, The Omega Man. Charlton Heston is the last human left alive in LA after the plague. He drives out to the empty theater that’s still showing the “Woodstock” documentary. He sits alone in the dark, a ritual he’s done many times before, watching the hippie tribes onscreen boogie to Country Joe and the Fish. “This is really beautiful, man,” a dazed flower child tells the camera. Heston recites every word along with him. “The fact is if we can’t all live together and be happy, if you have to be afraid to walk out in the street, if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody, right—what kind of a way is that to go through this life?”

Charlton Heston gives a sardonic smirk. “Yup—they sure don’t make pictures like that anymore.”

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On the other hand, there are approaches to social distanced gatherings that border on performance art. For example, the restaurant outfitted with mannequins and the TV show with an audience of balloon people. A precursor to social distanced performance art might be 2018’s Mile-Long Opera, where listeners walked along NYC’s High Line. Singers were encountered along the path, each singing in tandem, and, as an ‘audience member,’ you are encouraged to keep moving. It’s a compelling idea, but nowadays, even a performance in motion has its COVID-19 dangers. Jane Moss of The Lincoln Center, considering the option, worries about transfixed groups stopping to watch in a virus-spreading bottleneck: “The more ingenious and intriguing you get, the more people want to come together to see what you’ve done.”

Performance art directly inspired one daring concert experience. Marina Abramovic’s exhibition (and terrific documentary film) The Artist Is Present featured the artist sitting across from a stranger in silence. The simple act of this face-to-face meeting — at about a socially distanced six feet — caused intense feelings of intimacy in many participants. Some of the seated museum-goers broke into tears during their sittings. From this idea came performances at the dormant airport in Stuttgart, Germany. A musician from the local orchestra gave a series of ten-minute ‘concerts’ to solitary audience members. They faced each other at a short length, with no conversation and no applause. In a NY Times piece covering the event, listeners spoke about the same sort of intimacy that Abramovic’s temporary partners felt.

This intimacy is unexpected, but innovative answers to the live-music-under-COVID problem will produce unexpected results. That’s the subtext of all performance art — experiment with people’s expectations and things will happen. And the further away we get from a traditional live performance, the less it looks and feels like a concert. Understandably, that worries a lot of people.

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Others have attempted to zero-in on the center of the Venn diagram linking live music and COVID-19 safety. There was this small event in Münster that featured famed DJ Gerd Jansen, social distanced dancing (in theory), a 100-person limit, and €70 tickets to break even. And in Arkansas, blues-rock singer Travis McCready played to a sold-out — but still smattering — crowd who were temperature-checked before entering:

On the surface, the concert had all the makings of a typical rock & roll show. Stage lights set the mood. The audience clapped along, with some even dancing in their “fan pod” seats (tickets were sold in blocks to keep groups six feet apart). But when the bank of floodlights at the front of the stage illuminated a nearly empty 1,100-seat theater during Travis McCready’s set, the reality of the situation was clear. The first socially distanced concert in the US felt more like a dress rehearsal than a typical concert experience.

It’s something, but is it helping? And by that, I mean, helping us cope or return to something like our ordinary lives? Since reading the Vulture piece I linked to above I think a lot about this paragraph:

The first fallback options—play to an empty house (as a small sub-ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic has done) or distribute a few hundred listeners around a hall that could seat 2,000—would only emphasize the melancholy weirdness. That kind of event can have an impact as a ritual of mourning, a dramatization of all we’ve lost. But it’s no way to lose ourselves in some alternate, virus-free world of the imagination.

The music is only one reason we go to concerts, festivals, nightclubs, or raves. We also go for the community, to connect with (as Seth Godin says), “People like us who do things like this.” We’ve all forged at least one friendship with someone we saw at ‘all the same shows.’ Many of us even met our future life partners at a club or concert. These solutions I pointed out — attending in cars, listening alone to a flute player, or boogying at a distance in a near-empty club — only solve the ‘music’ part of the equation. It’s true that we miss and crave the rush of volume, performance, and the live music experience. But until we regain the electricity of community that accompanies it, we’ve, so far, only captured the facsimile.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Tornadoes

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Do you get tornadoes? I’ve always lived in towns where tornadoes happen when you least expect it. Once, while at college in North Louisiana, a tornado passed through as I walked back to the dorm from a class. I hid under an open stairwell as nature wreaked havoc around me. And then my house here in Orlando had its top ripped off during Hurricane Irma — the roofers told me that a hurricane-wind inspired tornado hit my home. So I’m no stranger to tornadoes.

Last night I was preparing dinner, and, out of our large window that looks over Lake Holden, I caught a weird blue flash. I was already on edge due to a ‘tornado warning’ in effect and incredibly ominous low-hanging inky clouds on the horizon. So I looked up and just past the lake I saw a huge tornado funnel traveling north.

For context, here’s one of my daily dawn photos of the lake to give you my vantage. And now here’s a video someone took of the very tornado I saw. Luckily, I wasn’t as close as the person who made that video, but I was close enough.

About a quarter-of-a-mile away from me, there’s a lot of damage. Fortunately, there are no reports of fatalities or even injuries. I’m unnerved and in awe. That tornado funnel on the horizon — with occasional blue sparks and flashes lighting its interior — is an image that will stick in my head for a while.

I woke up this morning with the Butthole Surfers’ “Tornadoes” in my head. The song really does sound like getting swept away by a tornado.

Disintegration to Integration

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Green Gravel

The author Robin Sloan is fascinated with how art changes (and often deteriorates, but in a beautiful way) when transferred across mediums. For example, from physical to digital to physical to digital — he calls it a flip-flop.

Robin recalls the origin of William Basinski’s The Disintegration Loops, based on a melody recorded off the radio, forgotten, rediscovered over a decade later, and digitized from a corroded analog tape. A performance of the melody, broadcast on NPR, increased Robin’s obsession. He gives this recorded interpretation to a neural network that reinterprets the melody even further. It’s no longer disintegration — it’s integration.

Exploring further possibilities for this simple melody, Robin requested participation from his newsletter readers: “After I published the first version of this post in April 2020, I invited anyone reading to join me by playing or singing the melody once through using whatever instrument (including their voice) and recording device (including their phone) was closest to hand.”

Robin has released the outcome, a beautifully haphazard collaborative piece he’s calling “An integration loop, pt. 2” (part 1 was the AI-assisted interpretation). A number of people sent in renditions of the melody. That number included me, playing EBow guitar, heard just past the halfway point.

Robin: “In my imagination, each contribution is a rung in a ladder out of the pit of confusion and loss, all of us both (a) carrying the melody forward and (b) being carried by it, up towards something new, something whole.” So simple, and laced with so much meaning. Read more about this project and listen to the final (?) result at the [LINK].

Shine a Light

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First off, as previously mentioned, today is ‘Bandcamp Friday’ — the platform is waiving its cut of revenue with 100% going to the artists. Here are some suggestions where you can throw your support today:

  • Pitchfork’s list of labels and artists directing Bandcamp revenue to Black Lives Matter organizations [LINK]
  • A list of black artists, producers, and black-owned labels on Bandcamp [LINK]
  • Resident Advisor’s list compiling both, with an emphasis on electronic music [LINK]
  • If you’re into ambient music, here’s a Reddit thread listing ambient artists of color that could use your support (h/t Terry Grant) [LINK]

Like most of you, I was feeling dispirited and down yesterday. The constant barrage of evidence that this country is falling apart weighs heavily. And the gray skies and rain weren’t helping. I had an interview scheduled in the early afternoon and didn’t know if I was up for it. I was looking for some good news, and anything would do.

Unexpectedly, Warren Ellis provided that bright spot with a shout out on his blog, perhaps in response to my shout-out to his blog on Tuesday. It’s a nice boost to get mentioned under the ‘Isles of Blogging’ tag. I’m proud to inhabit my little beach-side hut.

One thing I learned: Ellis has a lot of readers. There are a lot of new eyes peering at this speck on the web (hello), and I picked up a healthy amount of newsletter subscribers. Shining a light on a fellow toiling soul is one of the best parts of operating in an independent space, whether you’re a band or a novelist or a painter or a blogger. It’s a lovely feeling when you’re the recipient.

I mentioned Ellis’s newsletter — Orbital Operations — only a couple of days ago. It’s something I look forward to each Sunday. One of its regular highlights is the heartfelt words of encouragement closing each email, a needed end-of-week reminder that things eventually will be cool. I’ll shine a little light back by urging you to subscribe.

My interview was with Lawrence Peryer for the Spot Lyte On podcast. I talked about growing up in Central Louisiana, the challenges of finding underground music there, the historical threads of influence that connects musical artists, utopian streaming models, Kraftwerk (of course), and lots of other things. It was freewheeling and fun. Though I think we intended to include music industry shop-talk, there was very little of that. The podcast hits the pod-ways next week. I’ll give you a preview by linking to a record from 1981 that comes up at the end of the discussion: the mind-blowing “Outside Broadcast.”

Side-note: I enjoy gabbing on podcasts. If you’re interested in having me gab on yours then please get in touch.

I also mentioned a podcast interview with Derek Sivers. It’s an episode of Yo Podcast — an uplifting listen that will give your brain a break from the world-on-fire for an hour. Specifically, I mentioned and clumsily explained this part where Derek answers the question: Hendrix or Bowie?

Jimi Hendrix is like Charles Darwin. Darwin, he presents “The Origin of Species” to the world and it blows everybody’s mind. But now the theory of evolution is common knowledge, so to read the book, “The Origin of Species” now, is not so impressive. So Hendrix presents the “Star-Spangled Banner,” full of feedback and more sounds from a guitar than anyone had heard before, and it blows everybody’s mind. But now, every kid in the guitar store can do the same thing. So to hear the original, is not so impressive. I think it’s kind of the same with Stravinsky and the “Rite of Spring,” it’s actually kind of unfair that they’re revolutionary contribution is diminished with time.

But David Bowie is like Josephine Baker, exotic and desirable in their time, and exotic and desirable now. And same thing with Claude Debussy’s music. Like, David Bowie, Josephine Baker, and Claude Debussy, all of them stood outside of the culture. Their art didn’t infiltrate the culture and culture didn’t assimilate or adopt it. And so time doesn’t diminish their allure.

The podcast audio and the transcription are on Derek’s site.

Once again, dawn brings a bluish-gray over Lake Holden this morning = [LINK]

Bandcamp’s Charitable Opportunity for Artists

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This morning, I mentioned that Bandcamp plans to donate its sales revenue to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund this June 19 and every June 19 after that. I failed to mention that tomorrow, June 5, is another one of Bandcamp’s monthly artist-appreciation days, with the platform paying out 100% of sales to its artists and labels.

There are inspiring examples of the two ideas coming together. Many labels, bands, and artists are taking advantage of Bandcamp’s full payment of sales by pledging that amount to civil rights organizations. For example, I received a message from the cool label Music From Memory. Starting tomorrow, the label is donating ‘all profits’ to Black Lives Matter-related organizations for the next two weeks, which includes tomorrow and June 19. An interesting side-note: Music From Memory hails from Amsterdam, not our troubled USA.

Bandcamp is providing a list of labels and artists with special offers for tomorrow’s percentage holiday, including those giving to charities that can help in this time of civil unrest and tragedy. Many artists and labels that aren’t necessarily relying on Bandcamp income understand the power of redirecting this money to worthy causes. I hope Bandcamp keeps running the monthly ‘waiving-our-percentage’ days long after COVID-19. The gesture not only supports artists but also gives those artists a means to publicly support organizations fighting for issues important to them.

Update: Yes, there’s also this to consider.

Too Much Popcorn

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• I’m listening to Stephen Vitiello’s Buffalo Bass Delay, which Sasha Frere-Jones recommended in his terrific S/FJ newsletter. The Bandcamp description says that Stephen’s recordings are “site-specific — marked by relationships to special places, reworking and echoing an often harsh and barren reality.” The sounds on Buffalo Bass Delay were found in Buffalo, NY, including “the sounds of distant sirens and traffic on nearby Route 5, and the mournful heaving of passing locomotives.” It’s a lulling mixture of field recordings and swaths of bright ambient music, one interchangeably taking turns in prominence over the other. Buffalo Bass Delay was recorded in 2003 and feels fresh, remastered and reissued recently on the Room 40 label. It’s adding a needed calm to my workspace today. [LINK]

• The Brazilian film Bacurau follows in the steps of Parasite as a statement about class inequality, addressing localized themes in a way that feels global. The movie is a shape-shifter for making you think it’s one thing — a magical-realistic portrait of a town’s quirky inhabitants — and then becomes something else entirely. Or even a few things, as multiple genres and influences get mixed-and-matched to varying success. It’s enjoyable, but I admit I was left a little cold at the end. A Jordorowsky-meets-Tarantino experience sounds fantastic in theory, but I can’t say it worked, despite the strong positive critical consensus. The magic of someone like Bong Joon-ho is a rare ability to mix political messages with popcorn entertainment where one doesn’t overwhelm the other. Though I do recommend Bacurau overall, I think it has a little too much popcorn. [LINK]

• Bandcamp continues to capture the goodwill of the artist community through its charitable moves. As you probably know, the platform held artist support days due to COVID-19’s disruption of the touring industry. Those now-monthly happenings see Bandcamp waiving its percentage of revenue to give artists the full sales amount. In the wake of tragedy and turmoil, the much-needed spotlight on racial injustice has inspired Bandcamp to action this Juneteenth. Promised to become a yearly tradition, on June 19th Bandcamp will give 100% of their revenue to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “We’re also allocating an additional $30,000 per year to partner with organizations that fight for racial justice and create opportunities for people of color.” Good on them. Meanwhile, Spotify inspires tweets like this from its employees. [LINK]

• Speaking of rankled employees, Facebook is inspiring some of its own to make statements like this. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber doesn’t hold back: “Facebook’s real risk here, as I see it, is getting branded as the social network for racists. Talent retention is the top challenge for every tech company. We’re going through history, right now, and Facebook is on the wrong side of it. No one wants that on their resume.” [LINK]

• Today’s Lake Holden sunrise photo = [LINK]

Ballad of the Blog: Phase 3 or 4

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I’m thinking a lot about my responsibilities as a digital citizen and how I can better contribute to the ‘indie web.’ There are steps I want to take to lessen — and perhaps remove — my participation in ad-supported social media. Ideally, my internet output will happen through this blog, my newsletter, and — for direct engagement — email. A longer post is forthcoming about why I’ve come to this point, but tl;dr: I’ve had it with Facebook and its ilk.

One upside is that I’ll post here more often. 8sided.blog has been quieter than usual, mainly due to growing pains with the demands of the weekly deadline of the newsletter. I don’t think I’ve had a writing deadline since college, so that’s proved challenging. I also set myself up by mostly posting more extended essays on the blog. That set up an expectation for myself that anything that goes here should be meaty — a multi-paragraph screed on a newsworthy topic. That’s held me off when I don’t have anything lengthy to say. It’s time to drop those reservations.

I’m an avid reader of other personal blogs out there in the ‘indie web.’ One of my favorites is Warren Ellis’s, which he claims to use mostly to post status updates and catalog his music and movie purchases. He peppers short posts that are sometimes just a photo of the sky (’timestamp‘) with longer musings about his world and process. The blog is entertaining and serves as the backbone for Ellis’s weekly newsletter, Orbital Operations. Every time I read it, I think, “I’d like to do something like this.”

Of course, I’m not Warren Ellis (there can only be one! … oh wait), and I’m not going to embarrass myself through imitation. But his approach gives me a lot of ideas. I’ve always wanted a more personal flavor to this blog and some fun posts outside of essays on ‘music’s place in the 21st century.’ And, as I begin my exodus from social media, I’ll want to use this space to check in with the world. It’s my home base, after all — the hub of my digital world. So if you’re a regular reader or have this planted in your RSS reader, then, first off: thank you. And secondly: get ready for an increase in blogging action.

One goal is to regularly post my version of a daily ‘status update,’ compiling what’s on my mind alongside things I’m encountering with my eyes and ears. If you’re a fan of the meatier stuff, that will still happen on the regular. Stay tuned for phase 3 (or is it 4?) of this blog.

 

Handwash Jukebox: Battling COVID-19 With Music Discovery

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At the beginning of ‘Corona-Time,’ I was re-introduced to Daniel Bremmer, who I first met around 1999 at a coffeehouse in Orange County, CA. I was on tour with the band GusGus, and he invited me to do an impromptu off-the-beaten-path DJ set at the café before the Los Angeles show.

Time goes by, and we all move on to different things and careers. I’m doing … well, this. And Daniel is a creative director working with the likes of National Geographic, No Kid Hungry, and Barack Obama’s youth voter registration campaign Vote For Change. So I was psyched to hear from Daniel after all these years and learn about his brand new project: Handwash Jukebox.

“The idea came to me in the shower,” Daniel explains. “I had just watched a video that explained how the detergent molecules in soap break up the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind COVID-19. I had, of course, read that washing your hands worked, but that made it visceral and real, and the 20-second thing made sense. I wondered if there was something I could do to help people wash their hands for the full 20 seconds. I’d heard of the alphabet song, but that sounded tedious. Then I wondered if these smart speakers we already have in our homes could be a cool way to solve that problem, by offering different fun 20-second experiences that would keep people washing their hands to the end.”

Utilizing Amazon Alexa, Handwash Jukebox is a ‘skill‘ that — upon the command, “Alexa, open Handwash Jukebox!” — plays a cool 20-second song to accompany your sudsy routine. Unlike the same old “Happy Birthday” refrain, the songs are hip and fun, coming from the likes of The Slackers, Lisa Loeb, Azalia Snail, Rithma, and Shana Falana. The artists are diverse, across all genres, and from around the world.

Not only is Handwash Jukebox a brilliant move to make washing hands for the allotted time fun, but there’s an embedded element of music discovery. A voice-over reveals the names of the artists and where to find their music when each song finishes. It’s a fascinating concept, exploring an outside-of-the-box opportunity for bands and musicians made possible through emerging technology. Handwash Jukebox presents a compelling tie-in without that brand-aligning ickiness. It should make us eager to brainstorm other unexpected technology-meets-discovery collaborations.

I spoke with the core team behind Handwash Jukebox — Daniel Bremmer (creative director), Layne Harris (creative technologist), and Lucy Kalantari (artist & music supervisor) — to get their insight and perspective on the project, the reactions they’ve gotten, and how it opens doors to future similar artist-technology collaborations.

What were the challenges in putting together Handwash Jukebox? What’s it like working with the Alexa platform on something like this?

Layne: I have worked on a few branded Alexa Voice skills in the past, so I was pretty familiar with how to both make and promote them.

Daniel: The software was the easy part — Layne had a demo up in a little over a day. The most time-consuming process was reaching out to artists and working with them to get music that was right for the occasion, getting the licensing done correctly and working with Amazon’s Alexa team to make sure that we weren’t in violation of any laws or policies relating to a skill directed at both children and adults.

Layne: Alexa is a pretty friendly platform to develop on, but it’s helpful to have had experience with building these. You sometimes really have to have your ducks in a row to get approval. Things like sound compression settings can be very specific.

How did you quickly find your first musical collaborators?

Lucy: I’m a songwriter, composer, and producer and have been focusing my work to make quality content for children and their families. My last album won a GRAMMY award for Best Children’s Album. The Kindie community (that’s what we call kids independent music) is a close-knit group of musicians. And when I put a call out to my friends about needing some hand-washing music, I had a handful of tracks within 15 minutes! During this trying time, we feel the need to DO SOMETHING, and this was a call-to-action we could all get behind.

And how have the musicians reacted to their music in Handwash Jukebox?

Lucy: The artists are thrilled to be participating in something meaningful during a difficult time. And since I’m friends with some of the artists, they often recount what the experience has been like for their children using the skill at home. Emotions range from, “Hey, that’s my mom’s song!” to groovin’ to the addictive beats of Kent Lucas’ awesome track. I love that we can become each other’s fans, and families around the world get to dive into all this great new music with us.

I imagine creating experiences for people during a crisis in a delicate act. How did you approach this differently than you would in normal times?

Daniel: One of the things we’ve really tried to adhere to early on is the mindset of the user. When we started, all this felt precautionary — but we knew that people were going to be personally affected. So we’ve made an extraordinary effort to keep the tone light and fun. Yes, we all need to change our habits for a serious reason, but no one wants to be reminded of why when they know someone who has COVID-19 or just lost their job. I hate having to ask artists who are volunteering their time to change lyrics or to turn down submissions I personally like, but if we aren’t making it a rewarding and useful experience, then people aren’t going to use it and aren’t going to slow the spread.

Now that people are using Handwash Jukebox, have there been any surprises?

Layne: I love that people who know me were using it not knowing it was me that built it! That’s pretty exciting and humbling.

Daniel: Something I only discovered by using the final pre-launch build was that certain songs make the 20 seconds fly by — even if they are actually longer. My favorite example is the song by Icelandic artist Ólöf Arnalds. The song switches perspectives halfway through the song, and the musical build carries the listener. It not only makes the time pass, but it gets stuck in your head. I’ve found myself walking our dog and signing it to myself.

It’s great that people can find new bands by simply washing their hands. How important was the discovery element in developing Handwash Jukebox?

Daniel: While this is primarily a tool to get families to wash their hands, we designed this from the very beginning to give the artists credit and to direct people to where they could support the artist. This caused some delays in the approval process, as it kept getting flagged as advertising. But it was important to us, so we worked with Amazon to make sure that it was absolutely clear that we were just crediting artists and not up to anything untoward.

How did your own experiences prepare you to work on a project like this?

Layne: I think of myself as a maker, the result of which is ending up in roles where I either take the lead on coming up with wacky inventions or support other people’s creativity. I’ve been a huge fan of voice tech for some time, and have really enjoyed developing content for voice platforms, so this project was a no-brainer for me.

Daniel: This is kind of a perfect combination of things I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid — music, technology, and trying to make the world better. Like Layne, I make my living in advertising — creating experiences and campaigns that people like to connect with. And like with any creative job, you bring your interests and experiences to your work, but seldom this many at once.

Lucy: When Layne approached me about Handwash Jukebox, I felt the immediate need to connect with families who struggle to have their children wash their hands for 20 seconds. I know I was having a hard time with my own son. He would sing the alphabet at lightning speed, cutting it down to a mere 7 seconds, which was impressive in itself but wasn’t getting the job done.

Despite the stressful times that inspired Handwash Jukebox, it’s fun and surprising that hand-washing is now something that helps people find bands.

Lucy: People digest music in so many different ways, and discovering new music while doing a seemingly innocuous thing like washing hands is not something I ever would’ve predicted a few years ago! If we can find more ways to integrate music into our daily routines — creating a soundtrack for our lives — we’ll discover some incredible and eclectic works being published. It’ll be an important and new way to feed our musical souls.

Learn more about Handwash Jukebox at www.handwashjukebox.com.