Friday, April 06, 2007
Anatomy of setting up an interview with a famous musician
If there's one thing I've learned from the New Media types, it's to not be afraid to put the process out there for others to see. Sure, there are going to be those who will attempt to copycat it, but something I've learned from Apple is that it doesn't hurt to let the copycatters chase after you. The idea of putting it all out there is so that others can take a look at what you're doing, perhaps learn from it, perhaps help you learn something from it. At PodCamp Atlanta I offered a session on how to score and survive interviews with the people you want to talk to (at the request of another attendee), and I had a number of people tell me that it was helpful to them, so perhaps my five-day process this week of requesting, scheduling, prepping, and conducting an interview with the band Augustana will be of use to others:
Sunday night: see Augustana in concert, based on hearing and liking their hit single Boston. Decide the band is good stuff. Go home and download the rest of the album.
Augustana in concert at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale
Monday afternoon: mention on-air that I saw the concert the night before. Catch flack from my co-host, who's also a fan of the band.
Monday evening: google for contact info for Augustana's publicist, send a fairly brief email requesting the interview, explaining why we want to talk to them, what we'd need from them, and for reference, a short list of other recognizable musicians we've previously interviewed. Write up some preliminary interview questions just in case.
Wednesday evening: receive a reply saying that the request has been approved, and that a phone call will be coming in order to schedule something.
Thursday morning: wake up to a phone call from the label, offering a fifteen minute interview slot later that same day with the band's bass player. Contact my co-host to make sure that that's going to work, confirm with the label that it's a go, put everything else on hold in order to do more research and write/revise better interview questions, as well as remove some questions that were written under the false assumption that we'd be talking to the singer/songwriter.
Thursday afternoon: jump on Skype, make a test call to confirm that my latest remote recording process is actually going to work, merge my questions with my co-host's questions, change the order around a bit, take a deep breath and call the publicist. The bass player is on the line, the interview flies by, we get everything we need from him and more. It's over. Take another deep breath. Since this week's episode hasn't gone out yet, go back and overdub it to include the fact that the Augustana interview will be a part of next week's episode (sorry to ruin the magic, but editing is your friend).
And that's it. In this particular case, that was the entire process from start to finish. It's not always that quick or easy. Sometimes it takes months to come across the proper contact information and then pin down a definite taping date. In fact I've got a few interviews that are tentatively scheduled for "later this year, after the new album finally comes out," and there's just no way of knowing how firm those are until you're actually on the phone with the artist. This particular interview was the first time I've ever been given as little as three hours advance notice on a musician interview, but that kind of thing can happen and it's why it's so important to have some questions to fall back on.
The Augustana interview will be included in the April 11th episode of iProng Radio next week.
If there's one thing I've learned from the New Media types, it's to not be afraid to put the process out there for others to see. Sure, there are going to be those who will attempt to copycat it, but something I've learned from Apple is that it doesn't hurt to let the copycatters chase after you. The idea of putting it all out there is so that others can take a look at what you're doing, perhaps learn from it, perhaps help you learn something from it. At PodCamp Atlanta I offered a session on how to score and survive interviews with the people you want to talk to (at the request of another attendee), and I had a number of people tell me that it was helpful to them, so perhaps my five-day process this week of requesting, scheduling, prepping, and conducting an interview with the band Augustana will be of use to others:
Sunday night: see Augustana in concert, based on hearing and liking their hit single Boston. Decide the band is good stuff. Go home and download the rest of the album.
Augustana in concert at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale
Monday afternoon: mention on-air that I saw the concert the night before. Catch flack from my co-host, who's also a fan of the band.
Monday evening: google for contact info for Augustana's publicist, send a fairly brief email requesting the interview, explaining why we want to talk to them, what we'd need from them, and for reference, a short list of other recognizable musicians we've previously interviewed. Write up some preliminary interview questions just in case.
Wednesday evening: receive a reply saying that the request has been approved, and that a phone call will be coming in order to schedule something.
Thursday morning: wake up to a phone call from the label, offering a fifteen minute interview slot later that same day with the band's bass player. Contact my co-host to make sure that that's going to work, confirm with the label that it's a go, put everything else on hold in order to do more research and write/revise better interview questions, as well as remove some questions that were written under the false assumption that we'd be talking to the singer/songwriter.
Thursday afternoon: jump on Skype, make a test call to confirm that my latest remote recording process is actually going to work, merge my questions with my co-host's questions, change the order around a bit, take a deep breath and call the publicist. The bass player is on the line, the interview flies by, we get everything we need from him and more. It's over. Take another deep breath. Since this week's episode hasn't gone out yet, go back and overdub it to include the fact that the Augustana interview will be a part of next week's episode (sorry to ruin the magic, but editing is your friend).
And that's it. In this particular case, that was the entire process from start to finish. It's not always that quick or easy. Sometimes it takes months to come across the proper contact information and then pin down a definite taping date. In fact I've got a few interviews that are tentatively scheduled for "later this year, after the new album finally comes out," and there's just no way of knowing how firm those are until you're actually on the phone with the artist. This particular interview was the first time I've ever been given as little as three hours advance notice on a musician interview, but that kind of thing can happen and it's why it's so important to have some questions to fall back on.
The Augustana interview will be included in the April 11th episode of iProng Radio next week.
Comments:
Post a Comment
