INTERVIEW: Marc Broussard has a mission to make more music
Marc Broussard, the Louisiana soul singer, is enjoying a self-made renaissance. As he prepares for a holiday show Wednesday, Nov. 30 at New York City’s City Winery, he’s also plotting a full calendar year of new music releases. Fans of Broussard should be ready; he’s not taking any breaks in the coming months.
For the City Winery gig, he promises a combination of his classic tunes — maybe “Home,” maybe “Lonely Night in Georgia” — and Christmas-themed songs from last year’s DIY holiday album, Magnolias & Mistletoe.
“Well, you know, we put out a Christmas record last year, so there are several selections off that project that we’ll bring to the table as well as maybe a few others that aren’t on there,” Broussard said recently in a phone interview. “And then we’ll play classics from my repertoire that we can do in that kind of an acoustic setting.”
Broussard said he released last year’s Christmas album because he believes this time of year is important, and he wanted a selection of songs that showed respect and offered a fresh perspective. The resulting album includes “O Holy Night,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “The Christmas Song” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” among others.
“Well, it’s an important time of year, especially for music,” he said. “I think I felt like I could bring something substantial to the table, something that would have a lot of respect for the time of year and something that brought a really fresh perspective to some of these classic songs. We made an attempt at writing a couple of original tunes, which at the end of the day, I couldn’t be more proud of, so overall it was just a really fun project for us to do. It was the right time in my career I think. Overall it was just a really positive first step because that’s actually my very first independent album after being on major labels for so long.”
Magnolias & Mistletoe required some extra financing from his management team, but Broussard was happy to report that everyone made their money back and gained a new respect for going it alone. “It was kind of our realization as an organization that we have the skill set and the knowhow in-house to be able to pull off these kinds of projects for a very, very long time,” he said.
That’s exactly what Broussard and company plan on doing. The singer is building a career on the philosophy that releasing more music is better than waiting years in between projects. It’s a model that other singers, especially from Louisiana, are adopting as well. One only has to look at Anders Osborne for a similar story.
It is that mentality that led to the recent SOS: Save Our Soul II album, which is a followup to an earlier selection of soul covers. It’s also that mentality that will carve out Broussard’s calendar in 2017.
“I mean, I already have another record in the can,” he said. “It’s coming in February hopefully. Knock on wood. We’ve got eight songs in the can. We’re going to go back in for three more next month and hopefully get another record out by February. I’ve got a side project with a very good friend of mine whose the namesake of one of my biggest influences as a child and throughout my earliest years in high school, Brian McKnight Jr., and I have a side project together that I’m hoping to get out … at the top of next summer. I’m trying to put together a writers’ retreat for young, undeveloped, undiscovered writers for next summer that will hopefully put out a compilation in the fall, and then we’ve already got February blocked off to cut another SOS record for release some time next year as well.”
Broussard’s fans, who are growing in number, will have a good idea of the singer’s output and capability after the next few months. “We’re going to keep pushing forward as if we know what we’re doing, and we do,” he said. “It really boils down to us having access to relationships with people that can help us facilitate the recording process for next to no money. I think if we can develop these relationships to their fullest, what you’ll see is a network of young artists behind me that are going to be able to tap into that same network, and we’re going to start to help the cream of the crop get to market with their own skill set. I want to really encourage the young artists out there to broaden their skill sets to the point that they can actually get a vision for their career on their own.”
For the SOS projects, Broussard takes a trip down memory lane to some of the most influential songs of his lifetime. Initially, when he’s deciding on the songs to include, he can’t remember the lyrics from every tune because he counts himself as a “casual listener,” but he seems to love interpreting them for a 2016 audience. His new album has such selections as “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” “Twistin’ the Night Away” and “Cry to Me.”
“There’s some of them that I’ve heard, and I haven’t heard again for a very, very long time,” he said. “There’s some that I was quite familiar with, but I’m also not the kind of guy that knows the lyrics to a bunch of cover songs. I just don’t. I’ve always been a casual listener. I love certain songs by certain artists. … Like there’s definitely tons of Stevie Wonder songs that I definitely know and sing along with — Donny Hathaway songs, Marvin Gaye songs — but unless I had to perform them on a regular basis, I really haven’t ever put the lyrics down to memory. So it’s always a bit of an effort to get these SOS songs done properly. I’ve got to go and live with these songs and beat them into submission, if you will, just play them on repeat over and over and over and over and over and over again until I can kind of own the lyric.”
Releasing this much music also means a lot of touring to keep that music fresh with the fans. Over the years, Broussard has learned to minimize costs and keep a good balance between gigging and family life.
“I usually jump around from airline to airline, so I don’t have status with anybody,” he said with a laugh. “So I fly all the time, but … I don’t fly in the glamorous section at all. I don’t have TSA-Pre because I can’t score an interview anywhere because my schedule is so jacked that I can’t really plan two months out for a TSA interview. I definitely miss my family when I’m gone, but the way that we tour keeps me home most of the week. I generally only do three or four shows every week or every other week, so there’s some tradeoffs because we can’t stay out longer and because we don’t tour like we used to tour for a month, month and a half, two-month-long runs. It changes the dynamics of what you can do and can’t do as a dude and as a business. All of those factors come into play, and what we’ve got going right now is working for us right now. That doesn’t mean it won’t change in the future.”
When Broussard comes to town, he likes to bring a “song list” rather than a “set list.” He needs to feel the audience and gauge their reaction, and this helps him determine what songs to dust off, what classics to play and what new tunes to try out.
“I think I owe it to them to at least make the attempt to connect instead of just bowling them over with a bunch of funk, or all the slow stuff or just ballads,” he said. “I always try to give a mix. That’s what my records have been like. That’s kind of what my show is like, but it can definitely be a chore at times, no doubt. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose, which I think is what makes it hard because even if you play the same set list on a Friday night, it just might not play the same way on a Tuesday or Wednesday in the same place. Shoot, I played City Winery in New York on a Friday and Saturday night to two very different crowds.”
Broussard was born into a musical family with a father who played in bands. Add to that the rich history of Louisiana and its musical influences, and it’s no wonder that he became a musician himself.
“I think there’s a lot of music that originates here and permeates throughout the culture, and my father was definitely kind of a part of the culture of playing around here,” he said. “My dad had his cover band called Ted Broussard & Uptown Express that was doing like Michael Jackson and Earth Wind & Fire, and he was programming music for a lot of bands. He was programming the drums, the bass and the keys on an Atari computer system. This is like 1987, man, and bringing that whole Atari rig to the gig. He had a three-piece horn section and two lead singers, a guy and a gal, and he played guitar. He would start the song by hitting the space bar, and it would be a one-bar click intro. And they would start playing the song, doing like ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ and ‘September,’ all kind of killer tunes, and I was at a lot of those gigs. I was around a lot of those performances. The performer was my dad, and then when he went on to play with another band called the Boogie Kings, I went along to a few of those, too. I was just always, always, always around music. I took chorus in school. I was known as the dude that sang. It was always a part of me.”
As his father passed on that legacy to him, Broussard is looking to pass his musical chops and networking skills to the next generation.
“What I’m really looking forward to doing is working with other artists,” he said. “I’m trying right now to found some sort of a label or just a cooperative technology platform that will hopefully allow some independent artists to pull some marketing resources together and then take that show on the road, pull together a really nice team of some of the most amazingly talented independent artists and start working together and using maybe some of our record revenues to work with younger artists of our choosing.”
He added: “It could be a tremendously bright new kind of strategy because, look, if you can convince a 20-year-old badass to stay in a van and don’t start your publishing, and don’t sign a record deal with some of the majors, don’t take an advance, just stay in a van with you and your crew. Instead of hiring new guys, give yourself raises and keep wearing multiple hats. Do it for a decade. You’re going to get to the end of that decade with six figures in the bank and a little room to do what you want to do now. Just you’ve got to invest that kind of time and grow it independently. Meanwhile when you’re ready to make that big move, when you have that vision, when you get to 30 years old, and you have a little more perspective on the world and some maturity, you’re going to have a bank account that can back up your next play. And you’re going to have a catalog that can support all those new fans that you’re going to be bringing in.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Marc Broussard will play New York City’s City Winery Wednesday, Nov. 30. Click here for more information.
