Jo Oliver

Interview With Jo Oliver

SBS:  Welcome to our pages!  Whether you’ve been here with us in some way before, or you’re brand-new to the site, it’s probably best to get an introduction from you so that we get everyone on the same page to start.  Tell us a little bit about the history of your music, and what’s happening with it lately!?!

Jo Oliver:  Hello, my artist name is “Jo Oliver.”  Musically I mix Rock, Funk & Soul, I’m from Germany and I’m pleased to be able to tell you a bit about myself here.  I particularly appreciate the work of sleepingbagstudios, especially as I was contacted specifically for this interview after several years.

I have been making a living from music for many years, but not from my solo project.  Even at a young age in my early 20s, I managed to realize my dream of being a self-determined, independent musician – but I could never have imagined the unexpected challenges I would face as a veteran musician in the age of music streaming.

For years, I earned my income with a colorful mixture of live and studio music, guitar lessons, music editorial work (I also worked for Germany’s best-known musician magazine “Sound Check”), CD sales and as a music textbook author.  I produced other artists for years and only discovered singing for myself very late in life.  In 2017, I finally released my Soul-Rock debut single “Shine On (You).”  Because of my – for many people unpronounceable – German first name “Jörg,” my wife suggested shortening my two first names – Jörg + Oliver – to the artist name “Jo Oliver” so that people from other countries would find my name a little easier.  It’s also easier to remember.  Since then, I’ve been working on this unique blend of styles: “The spirit of Soul meets the power of Rock and the groove of Funk” you could say.

SBS:  Let’s talk about the before and after of where you’re currently at.  What’s something about the music that you’re making now that you don’t think you could have done five years ago, and what’s something you think you’ll be able to do with your music five years from now that you can’t do today?  How have you grown as an artist/band, and what steps do you take to continue your artistic evolution?

Jo Oliver:  You know, as a professional musician, in my case it’s not so much the musical things that I look at differently today than I used to, but rather the technical possibilities that are constantly evolving.  In the past, we hardly had access to many technical options or they were almost unaffordably expensive.  Today, there are so many things you can do yourself as an independent artist.  But we are overwhelmed by the wealth of new developments and information and also have to evaluate and assess the risks of these developments.  Separating the wheat from the chaff, i.e. filtering out what is actually important for me as a solo artist, what can actually be implemented and what really works, is one of the most important challenges in these constantly and rapidly changing times.

SBS:  If you were to assess the overall health of the independent music scene right now, what would you say?  What are the positives and the negatives about the current state of independent music, and what do you feel like artists & bands can do to contribute to the community & help it grow beyond the music being made?  If you’re not actively looking to listen to the music of other independent artists/bands, is it really all that fair to expect anyone would listen to yours?  How do you help the scene around you grow?

Jo Oliver:  The challenges for independent artists today are enormous and extremely high, not least due to the increasing influence of AI. But let’s start by asking how the last few years have affected my colleagues and me.

First of all, there were the cutbacks in the early 2000s when music was pirated on a massive scale and income from CD sales fell rapidly as a result.  As I had a focus on producing musical playalong CDs (jam tracks) as well as artist CDs, I wasn’t hit until a little later.  But my income from CD sales also plummeted.  Then came the second wave of the slump with the advent of streaming services from around 2006/2007.  Like many veteran musicians, I initially refused to embrace music streaming completely, as the proportionate revenues seemed far too low to me.  Even today, I don’t really consider the royalties to be fair, but I have gradually discovered that you can also become better known through music streaming if you actively get behind it.

It was actually only after observing my two stepsons – who, like many of their peers, quickly switched to streaming music – that I came to the conclusion that music streaming was here to stay and that as an artist, you can no longer refuse it if you want to be noticed by the public.  But the income is only a fraction of what we musicians used to earn from CD sales.

It wasn’t until the release of my debut single in 2017 that I really got into music streaming and was able to achieve over a million streams for “Shine On (You),” over 800000 of them on Spotify alone.  In order to achieve this, however, I spent a lot of late nights writing to music editors and portals, bloggers, curators etc. almost every day, which is very time-consuming and exhausting.  In the end, I didn’t earn much from it.  At least no real value for the time invested.  That’s why I had to change my strategy (although I already have the songs for a complete solo album written in the drawer), because after all, I’ve been making a living from music for decades, but I had to realize that the music streaming income wasn’t even enough to pay my energy costs, let alone my rent.

That’s why I only manage to release another single every now and then, as I’m still challenged enough to face the new framework conditions after lockdowns (which led to a completely different consumer behavior), high inflation, music streaming and the AI revolution: I am currently working day and night to bring my music teaching concepts (with a focus on guitar) – which I used to bring to the market mainly in textbook form – to the digital level.  In other words, I now mainly create online courses (instead of music textbooks) and have my hands full promoting them, as I have to make a living from something.  Music streaming is nowhere near enough and commissioned music work as a service provider is increasingly disappearing due to the emergence of AI-supported solutions.  Many music service providers in my environment are now lacking orders.

Only when I have overcome these personal hurdles do I feel able to expand my Jo Oliver songs again and can take the time for my own sophisticated, very time-consuming productions.  In  order to retain listeners in the long term, community loyalty plays a decisive role today.  That’s why I’ve become a bit more active on social media – even though I never really wanted to – and I’ve also started my own (German-language) musician’s blog, because as a former music editor, writing is my thing anyway.

Today, independent artists can network and support each other.  For example, I like to include unknown artists in my own playlists and am also happy when one of my songs ends up on a new playlist.  And I have to admit that I have already come across a number of exciting new artists via Spotify playlists that I would probably never have discovered without music streaming.

SBS:  What do you consider to be the biggest accomplishment or achievement you’ve had with your music to-date?  How do you personally measure your own success – is that something that even can be measured?  Is it awards, accolades, chart position…or is your definition of success based on something entirely different?  Should success, however you define it, be something that artists are continually focused on – or is success something that naturally occurs in the course of doing what you love to do?

Jo Oliver:  As a songwriter and music producer for other artists, I have already won a number of awards and achieved several chart placements.  Artists and projects I have produced have won international music awards and appeared in radio and DJ charts etc.  As a solo artist, I received an award in the category “best song in English” at the 39th German Rock and Pop Awards.  I was particularly pleased that my song “Respect Don’t Panic,” which called for more mutual respect in times of coronavirus and positioned itself against the increasing social divide, was recognized by a top-class jury.

But I also consider every interview, every editorial article and reaching over 100,000 streams for a song to be small successes in difficult times.  The fact that it is especially juries made up of top-class musicians who have awarded my songs – for example the jury of the international “Song Of The Year Contest,” where famous musicians such as Lenny Kravitz, Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Alicia Keys, The Edge (U2), Gwen Stefani, Dave Grohl (Nirvana) sit on the jury and have already honored three of my songs with an award – shows me that I have already received very positive feedback, especially from real experts.  But I’ve also already received a documentary award from the German section of UNESCO for an environmental song (which I co-wrote and produced for the music project “Songs Of Lemuria”), which I was of course just as pleased about.

As far as the state of the independent music scene is concerned, I’ve noticed that on the one hand there are great developments, for example through independent blogs, festivals, networks etc., but also that many musicians still don’t seem to have understood enough that it’s precisely the MUTUAL support that helps them get ahead.  Many only seek their own advantages, demand support and are unfortunately hardly prepared to support their colleagues themselves.  But consumers don’t always seem to realize that it’s often the little things like liking, sharing or commenting on a post that really help the independent artist or band.  Small things that don’t take much time but have a big impact overall.

On the question of what independent artists can contribute to the community today, I can only say how important it is in my eyes not to allow oneself to be taken in as an artist, especially not by political parties or ideological currents.  We live in a time in which many organizations try to instrumentalize people and especially artists for their own purposes.  In my opinion, it is always important to maintain a critical distance.  Especially as many things that are propagated as “facts” today may be outdated the day after tomorrow and may turn out to be untrue.

That’s why I’m much more interested in questioning things in some song lyrics than denouncing them.  In my song “Isolation Has No Good Vibration,” for example – inspired by the lonely death of someone close to me from my wife’s circle of relatives, who was largely isolated with her cancer during the coronavirus pandemic – I describe in simple words how it feels to be isolated.  I believe that asking critical questions and contributing to a social reappraisal without excluding those who think differently is a very important contribution that independent artists can make.  Democracy thrives on lively cooperation and a corresponding culture of debate at eye level, to which we artists can make a positive contribution through our songs.  In any case, you should never defame other people.  That seems to me to be a great evil of our time.

SBS:  When you’re working on something brand-new, and something about it just doesn’t feel like it’s coming together the way that you think it should, how do you know when it’s time to give up on it, or how do you know that it’s time to dig in even harder and find a way to make it work?  Are there distinct red flags you can hear when something’s not working?  What are the signs you look for that tell you to stop forcing the material?  What would actually encourage you to keep going with the process instead?

Jo Oliver:  The best songs are often the ones where you follow a sudden idea or a spontaneous impulse.  Otherwise you have to be careful that it doesn’t seem contrived.  Lyrics and music should fit together so that they blend well and sound good.  Sometimes a song idea just pops into my head.  For example, a chorus melody with the right line of text.  Sometimes I even get up at night to record the idea.  I now usually record my ideas on my smartphone using a recording app.  I leave them there for a while and then decide which ideas I want to work on further.

Unlike many producer colleagues I know, I hardly ever sit down at the computer to create a groove and then construct a song from it.  Instead, I work “classically” like in the Beatles era: Only when a song is completely worked out with guitar or piano accompaniment do I start the computer and start recording the song.  As a rule, I have already developed a musical arrangement in my head and try to pour the ideas from my head into a practicable arrangement.  Fortunately, I’m a multi-instrumentalist and can record one instrument after the other.  I only program drums occasionally, which I also like to record using an e-drum kit.  I also usually sing the choir parts myself and only bring a female singer into the studio if I’m specifically looking for a different female vocal timbre for the choir.

If I realize that I’m not getting anywhere with a production – which happens extremely rarely – then I just leave it lying around for several months and then decide with fresh ears what to do with it.  Occasionally it happens that I’m not completely satisfied with a guitar sound or mix and say to myself “you should have taken more time with that.”  You just have to make compromises from time to time because there are so many other tasks to deal with as an independent musician.  And luckily you can always improve old recordings, re-release them as remasters or even as remixes, etc.

SBS:  One of the points of general consensus in the art of making music, is that we all get our sound from somewhere…we hear what we like, then more often than not, we take tiny pieces of what we love to find our own voice & approach to go on and make music in our own way.  Essentially, what I’m saying is that it’s absolutely natural to be inspired by other artists/bands, and almost every artist/band ends up having that inspiration show up in their own work in some way, shape, or form.  What the real key is though, is retaining your own organic perspective – you still wanna be original too, right?  So how do you go about doing that?  Are there artists or bands that you know have been an influence on your style & sound?  How were you able to incorporate that influence without becoming too noticeably derivative and still be yourself?  Should we embrace and celebrate our influences more than we do?  It’s almost like we try not to admit influences exist in the pursuit of being original, but it’s like, bruh…if it’s there, we can hear it.  We all borrow something from those that came before us to some extent, don’t we?

Jo Oliver:  I think musical influences and role models are extremely important!  Because we are all shaped by what we hear and have heard.  They are our favorite artists who inspired us, made us make music in the first place, learn an instrument, sing and write songs.  I myself have processed so many influences and find so many artists and bands great that I can’t possibly list them all here.  But I process these very different influences and try to create my own mix of styles, what I describe as the “Jo Oliver Sound” – my personal mix of Rock, Funk and Soul with a good pinch of choral singing.  I also listen to Blues, Jazz, Fusion, Flamenco, Classical music and much more, but the first three styles mentioned above exude the most energy for me and I would like to capture this energy for my listeners and pass it on.

I was particularly influenced by the rock bands of the 70s such as Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, but also by solo artists such as James Brown and many others.  I was particularly taken with the sound of Queen, because I love Freddie Mercury’s voice, the band’s fabulous choruses and Brian May’s unique guitar sound.  But guitarists like Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix and scene musicians from Motown music with their funky rhythm guitars and crisp bass lines have also influenced me.  In terms of vocals, singers like Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan and singers like Steven Tyler or Joe Cocker influenced me.  But also newer artists and bands like Nickelback or an artist I only recently discovered via Instagram – Shaun Munday – who is an incredibly great singer and bassist.

And I would like to highlight one band that has had a particular influence on me: It is the legendary funk-rock band Mother’s Finest from Atlanta / Georgia, which is possibly even better known in Germany than in the USA.  The band made a spectacular appearance in 1978 on Rockpalast, the biggest and most important music program on German television at the time.  All music fans in Germany eagerly awaited the one Rockpalast appearance a year.  And Mother’s Finest didn’t just knock my socks off.  I was not yet 15 years old at the time, had only been playing guitar for a year and was literally “flattened” by this wild mix of Funk and Rock.

We had never heard anything even halfway comparable in Germany before and I was a fan from the very first minute.  This top-class band, which is still touring today, made a huge impression on me and showed me that there is more to music than Blues, shuffle and quaver Rock.  The band, with its great singer, no less excellent co-singer and first-class instrumentalists, had opened a musical door to a new world for me.  They combined black Soul/Funk with white Rock.  That was something very special at the time and was absolutely exemplary.  They were and still are the masters of groove.

Today, I would describe “Mother’s Finest” as one of the most important influences on my Jo Oliver sound, even though I tend to orient myself more towards other artists and bands when it comes to songwriting.  But I definitely owe the “groove feeling” to this great band and I am more than grateful to the musicians for that!  They have given other musicians like me so much inspiration, for which they should still be appreciated 100 years from now, simply because they have thrown musical blinkers overboard and mixed up musical styles like no band before.

Here is the performance of Mother’s Finest in 1978:

https://www1.wdr.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/rockpalast/video-mothers-finest–100.html

SBS:  Has there ever been a time where you wrote something inside one of your songs…maybe it’s a lyrical line, or maybe it’s a riff of some kind…something that you did, where you surprised yourself?  I like to think we all have a moment or two where we can stand back and be amazed by something we created, and appreciate the fact that maybe, just maybe, we exceeded our own expectations of what we thought we could accomplish – you know what I mean?  Get as specific as you can so the fans out there know what they should be paying attention to when they hear it – what’s your favorite thing that you’ve written on the inside of one of your songs, and why does this particular piece resonate so much to you?

Jo Oliver:  I started my solo project for pragmatic reasons, as I had a certain idea in mind – my own mixture of Rock, Funk and Soul, but combined with choral singing like Queen or the Beatles – but I couldn’t find the right singer for it.  Even though I had already sung in choirs in earlier bands, I never felt called to be a frontman and had therefore never practiced singing and had a completely untrained voice.  It was only after the death of my first wife that I jumped over my shadow, as I realized that I simply never really dared to sing.  The biggest obstacle was overcoming even the main voice, because as a singer you make yourself more vulnerable than as an instrumentalist.

The reactions from those around me were similar: While some people advised me not to sing, there were a handful of supporters from the first hour.  And I simply told myself that I was going to do what I wanted to do, regardless of who liked it or not.  Because that’s what it’s all about as a solo artist, “doing your own thing,” regardless of what others say.  After all, nobody is forced to listen to my music.  And the critics fell silent pretty quickly after the first hundred thousand streams, i.e. when they realized that there were indeed interested listeners who liked what I was doing.

In this respect – to come back to the question – it was probably the biggest surprise for me to record a song one day in which I not only sang the lead vocals, but also all the chorus parts myself, as I did on my debut “Shine On (You).”  Looking back, I surprised myself with this, as I would never have dreamed of doing this just a few years earlier.  Back then, I saw myself purely as a studio musician who played guitar and bass for other artists and arranged and produced their songs.  I didn’t feel comfortable coming to the fore as a singer myself.  I wouldn’t have dreamed of it before!  Today I think I could sing the song much better.  But the “crazy” thing is still just to have done it, despite all the prophecies of doom.  And quite a few people seem to like it too…

SBS:  I’ve been having a lot of great debates lately about whether or not everybody that’s making music has the right to be heard…and you’d probably be surprised by how different people seem to feel about this issue.  I know where I stand on it, and I think you can all probably get an idea of what my position would be from this free interview we’re doing here & the way we run things at sleepingbagstudios…but regardless, I’m putting this question out there to you, because I’m interested in YOUR perspective.  Just because you’ve made a song, does that mean people should listen?  If your answer is yes, do your best to explain why you feel that way & why we should make a sincere effort to listen to the music of others.  If your answer is no, explain why you feel that way, but also explain why people should still be listening to your music if that’s the case – what would make your music the exception, and not follow the rule?  Is there any value to an idea that’s not finished, or a song in its demo stages, or maybe something that’s not recorded in a top-shelf studio or with good equipment – somebody still took the time to make that song to the best of their ability with the means they had to create it – should that be listened to, or not?

Jo Oliver:  I am very clear on this question: Yes, it is always worth listening to new, unknown artists!  And of course it will always be the case that one listener will like it and another won’t.  One artist, one band will be able to convince their listeners more quickly than others and that’s okay.  After all, listening is voluntary and our listening habits and influences are very different.  So it’s good if there’s something for every taste in music.

The other thing is that humans are herd animals and are very susceptible to external influences.  On more than one occasion, I’ve seen even experts reject a song when it wasn’t yet fully produced, for example, only to find the same song good when it was fully produced.  But the song itself remained the same.  And it’s the same with success.  If your song is played on the radio, some people don’t like it because they discovered it there, but simply because it’s played there.  It’s this mass phenomenon; many people are deeply insecure about what they should listen to.  And it’s convenient and easy to follow the crowd.

It’s not uncommon for someone to think your song is “stupid”…and as soon as they hear that you’ve won a music award for it, the same person will say that they’ve always liked the song.  So listening should always start with a certain appreciation for the artist in question.  Incidentally, I received the most support from my wife Magdalena and from the few early listeners who told me that they listen to one or two of my songs every day and have them on their playlist.  There can’t really be more motivation for an artist than the direct listener feedback that someone is listening to your music and is already looking forward to your next song.  In this respect, I was lucky that there were people who appreciated my music and also my singing (which still has room for improvement and was still quite untrained, especially at the beginning) from the start and enjoyed listening to it and communicated this to me.  I am very grateful to these people today.

As far as studio equipment is concerned, I think that nowadays it’s more a question of experience and time available that determines the quality of a music production.  I maintain that with a laptop and a DAW for a few hundred euros, you can deliver a marketable production these days if you are sufficiently familiar with the many tools of the DAW.  I myself have recorded songs that have won awards for their production or made it to the top of the charts.  In other words, I definitely know which controls you need to tweak to achieve a good production.  But I don’t always have the time for my own songs, as I can’t automatically count on the corresponding financial returns.  So I sometimes release one or two songs in the certainty that I could have produced them even better if I had more time.

Most music fans may not notice this, but radio people, DJs, playlist curators etc. have a very keen ear for production details these days and are usually very careful to only play top productions.  I myself also listen to productions that are not part of the top-level production standard if the song is well made.  Because the song should always be the focus!

SBS:  There are ups and downs in the dynamics of almost every album we listen to, with very few exceptions.  Even those exceptions, probably still come down to more of a personal preference about what we enjoy about music and how we personally hear it, rather than anything being completely and totally “perfect” – you know what I mean?  Does an album actually need to have some kind of up/down dynamics in terms of what’s appealing to the masses in order for the best of the best songs in a lineup to be fully appreciated?  Wouldn’t every artist & band avoid the ‘down’ side (less accessible/less popular for example) if they could?  Does the ‘down’ side represent something else perhaps, like the story of an album or journey of an artist?  Is the ‘up’ side of a record as potent or noticeable if it doesn’t have a ‘down’ side to go with it?  Would a completely balanced album somehow be boring if it didn’t have the ups/downs that most have?  Do we HAVE to like every single song on a record for it to be considered complete?  Are the dynamics of an album something anyone can really steer in the direction they want to, or are all artists & bands simply going with the strongest material they have created at the time?

Jo Oliver:  Personally, I think that most artists/bands simply fall back on the best material that is available to them at the time of an album release.  However, there is something special about an album that is self-contained and possibly tells its own story with songs that accompany this story or tell it in individual chapters.  I think that this was more possible in earlier times – when record companies and bands earned a lot more money and could take more time in the studio – than it is today.  Times have become more short-lived.  Albums no longer play the same role for streaming services such as Spotify as they used to, as every listener can put together their own personal album in the form of a playlist.  For music streaming, singles are the most important thing and a quick release sequence would be ideal for marketing and promotion.  Nothing is like it used to be…

SBS:  I wanna send out a shout-out to YOU from me personally – I appreciate everyone that has taken the time to talk tunes with me throughout the years, and I appreciate the time YOU have taken with this interview too.  Because this one’s a little different in the sense that it’s been sent out to multiple people and is a little more generic in that regard, I have no doubt whatsoever that we probably didn’t get to talk to you about something you wanted to talk about – so let’s fix that!  This final space is what we call the SBS Open Floor – a spot where you can say anything else you want to say to the people out there.  It can be anything at all…your main websites…something else you want them to know about you and/or your music…your favorite bands in the scene right now…the secret 11 herbs and spices to the Colonel’s secret recipe – you get the idea, and it’s probably best you choose something that suits you rather than take any of my suggestions, but feel free to take the SBS Open Floor for a ride.  Whatever it is you want the people to know, now is the prime time for you to tell’em!  Thanks again for everything – keep in touch!

Jo Oliver:  I am happy to return the praise to you Jeremy from sleepingbagstudios!  As an artist, I don’t take it for granted that I’m contacted after a few years and asked for another interview.  It shows me that there is someone who is interested in what I do and someone who helps other artists to raise their profile by publishing interviews on a website that now seems to have grown into a real scene magazine.  I really appreciate this personal commitment!

Otherwise, I can only recommend anyone who is interested to visit not only my Spotify or Apple Music profile, but also my social media profiles and my website.  If you speak German, you can benefit from exciting stories, interesting information and free downloads (for guitarists) on my musician’s blog.  I will also soon be offering online courses for electric guitar and rhythm in the English-language section of my website.  In addition to releasing more Jo Oliver songs, another dream of mine is to launch my Jo Oliver Guitar Academy.  Just visit my website from time to time or subscribe to my newsletter.

I also believe that anyone who listens to new music with an open heart and stands up for other, as yet unknown artists and bands is a “music radiator.”  The world could do with as many of these as there are “Love Radiators,” people who stand up for fair coexistence and against hatred, hate speech and the exclusion of people who think differently or are different, regardless of where this unpleasant exclusion comes from.  We need mutual recognition and not prejudice.

Thank you for the opportunity to do this interview!

Jo Oliver

Find out more about Jo Oliver at:  www.jooliver.net

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