Exposed Vocals interviews John Dartnell

John Dartnell

I am English born and bred and I have been playing music most of my life. I have played in a few bands here in the UK some famous and a lot not quite so famous.
I had a brief spell away from music and in that time I did some acting work which included a small role in one of the Harry Potter movies, I also made an appearance in Sherlock Holmes 2, plus I did countless UK TV shows, some commercials and I was in a pop video for a band called ‘Busted’ with a song called ‘Year 3000’, which made it to number one in the charts here in the UK.

So all in all my career has been somewhat varied along the way. I have released 10 commercial albums, number 10 “Crazy Little Town’’ was released March 2016. A physical CD as well as a digital download is available from http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/johndartnell18

My music is also available from most major download sites including www.itunes.com

What others say about me.

John or The Beard as he is affectionately known, is a singer/songwriter from London England. His American influenced music and his UK upbringing gives John his own unique style of music. His songs vary from his own style of country (Well what do you expect from a Brit) to haunting love songs, through to songs about life, through to good old Rock and Roll. To sum John up in a few sentences is difficult, the best way to describe him is unique…….. Listen to the man listen to his music.

Achievements

John won artist of the year on Sound Machine Radio. In North Carolina I don’t even think Sound Machine Radio have realized just yet, what they have unleashed on their listeners.

John hit the New Music Weekly Indie charts for 15 weeks with his song ‘If It Ain’t Country’ which peaked at #9

And again New Music Weekly Americana charts for 18 weeks with ‘This Is Who I Am’.

John’s song ‘A Love Song’ from his album ‘The Road Goes On’ was voted Indie Song of the year on the Starliners Radio Network in Holland.

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

 

John Dartnell: I grew up in London England, I think I decided I wanted to be a singer/songwriter at about the age of 5 or 6 when I first heard Buddy Holly doing his thing and from there on in I just wanted to make music.

 

Exposed Vocals: How did you come up with that name? What was your inspiration behind it?

 

John Dartnell: No secret or inspiration behind it, my parents gave me this name… lol

Exposed Vocals: What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

John Dartnell: I hate those sites. I have never knowingly given my music away for free, It costs me a small fortune to make albums so why should I just give it away?

 

I don’t understand why anyone would want to just give away something that has cost them money and a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears to produce..

 

Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

John Dartnell: When I first started my band and I would go into bars and offer to play just for tips on a Monday or a Tuesday night just to get experience of playing in front of a live audience, you’d find most bars were happy to have you there early in the week because it used to bring customers in on quiet evenings. Once we started getting popular we started charging booking fees and the owners were happy to pay to see their bar filled up on a normally quiet night.

 

Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?

 

John Dartnell: Oh sure I make mistakes now and then we are all human, you just have to keep going a lot of the time the audience are unaware, luckily it doesn’t happen too often nowadays.

 

Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?

 

John Dartnell: I don’t tour as much as I used to, at one point we were doing around 300 shows a year which was just crazy times, when you take musicians on for a band make sure you can really get on with them, If you have to live with them more than your family, you really need to get on.

 

Exposed Vocals: Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

 

John Dartnell: I am constantly writing down ideas for songs, or I sing ideas into my phone. When I start writing a new album I’ve usually got around 40 or 50 ideas to work with, that’s when you find 30 of the ideas weren’t actually that great after all Lol but the ones that are left usually make for a good album. My last album ‘Crazy Little Town’ was completely inspired by the garbage I had read on social networking sites. I’d written the whole album within a month, took about four months to record, but the actual writing was done in weeks.

Exposed Vocals: Do you have a band website? What online platforms do you use to share your music?

 

John Dartnell: My website is: www.johndartnell.com I have two facebook pages my private one www.facebook.com/john.dartnell and my music page https://www.facebook.com/John-Dartnell-239111402709/ I also have a youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJoWvQJMMaDMS-8RDCgJYXw  and Twitter of course: www.twitter.com/johndartnell Plus people can find my music on www.spotify.com

Whenever I look at new on line platforms the first thing I do is look to see if there are any big names using the site, if there aren’t any big names I don’t tend to use the site, you need to be where the big boys are to learn and grow, you don’t want to be in competition with someone two streets away.

Exposed Vocals: What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?

 

John Dartnell: Horror of horrors I don’t have an MP3 player apart from on my phone and all I have on there are my ideas for new songs. Although I am a full time singer/songwriter I really don’t have to be listening to music 24 7

Exposed Vocals: If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

 

John Dartnell: Well my real passion is racing cars so I could see a chunk of it would be spent on that. But I really want to record in Muscle Shoals studio down in Alabama so it would be great to go in there for about 3 months with a bunch of top musicians.

Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?

 

John Dartnell: No immediate plans to upgrade. At the moment I am using ProTools Although I wouldn’t mind upgrading some of my piano samples.

Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

 

John Dartnell: That is the 24 carat question. I tend to spend a lot of money on promotion especially for radio play, I pay pluggers to push it around the radio stations, I think if I sat down 24 7 just emailing stations I still couldn’t get the songs to the same amount of airplay the pluggers get.

We released the title track off my last album ‘Crazy Little Town’ and within about 10 days of the pluggers having it, it was being played on over a 1000 stations a week.

That’s the other point you need to know which stations will play your genre of music there is no point just sending it out to 1000s of stations only to find 9999 of them don’t play your style of music. You really need to do your homework or pay a professional to do the job.

Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?

 

John Dartnell: I would love to play some of the real iconic music venues. Madison Square, The Hollywood Bowl, etc I think just playing these sorts of venues would really have me fired up on stage. I would love to have shared a stage with Buddy Holly, just because he started it all off for me, I would also love to share a stage with Bruce Springsteen just to be part of the whole ‘Boss’ energy.

 

Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

 

John Dartnell: I released the album ‘Crazy Little Town’ back in March so I plan to start working on a new album in July, plus I am going to be back in the states in November and we are already planning some live shows there. So lots of great things in the pipeline but I think with music there always is.

 

Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

 

John Dartnell: I have no idea I have never had any other desires other than making music.

Exposed Vocals: Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?

 

John Dartnell: The first album I bought was by a British band called The Move. It still sounds great even now. One of the members of the Move was a guy called Roy Wood, who went on to form The Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne, Roy is an amazing songwriter and producer.

 

Exposed Vocals: How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

 

John Dartnell: I actually only work about 6 months a year so it all falls into place. But when I say work I mean 18 hour days for weeks on end if I have to.

 

Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in 2016?

 

John Dartnell: Well there will be the live shows in America and in the UK, plus I’ll be shooting some new videos and in early 2017 there will be a brand new album.