Vulfpeck – strong musical talent, loosely held

Gumptious and irreverent jamming by world-class multi-instrumentalists

Read all the way through for one of the best concerts ever recorded (imho, that is).

Vulfpeck jamming at Madison Square Garden (September 28, 2019)

What’s cool about this org?

Vulfpeck is an American funk/soul band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2011. Founded by multi-instrumentalists Jack Stratton, Theo Katzman, Woody Goss, and bassist Joe Dart, the band has released four extended plays, six studio albums, a compilation, and a live album through their own record label. – via Wikipedia, Vulfpeck

Vulfpeck is an incredibly prolific, irreverent and creative band that started as a YouTube channel.

It’s core members are all talented multi-insturmentalists that can’t keep themselves from collaborating with almost any other talented musician out there… or from causing good trouble.

They are so talented, in fact – and promiscuous and nerdy and fun –that it’s hard to tell if Vulfpeck operates as a band, or if it’s really just individual musicians coalescing to jam together on a live stage, or to record an album, every now and again. And having an absolute blast in the process.

One of my favorite bands ever, they are so much more than just an awesome funk/soul band. They serve as a template, if you will, of how a small group of people can collaborate to create wonderful artistic projects, and in the process get face-to-face with the gargantuan monster orgs of the entertainment establishment.

What can we learn from Vulfpeck?

Getting their start in the 2010’s, Vulfpeck strikes me as an outlier. Our oversaturated world is full of great music. So much great music that it will take you 20 lifetimes to listen to all those great tunes at least once. So much great music that you’d think it’s all been done before. Quit while you’re up sort of thing, which in this case would mean you don’t even get started.

But then you get a band like Vulfpeck, an explosive cocktail of irreverence and mastery, brains and skills, talent and mischief. I can’t think of musicians so hell bent on making a statement about the entertainment industry with world-class music.

Cheesy but true: Vulfpeck embodies that quote by Margaret Mead about the only people who can change the world, and in fact do change it.

Learn to jam, change the world. Why not?

Vulfpeck-ian Projects

Their creative output is simple remarkable. Again, I’d like to stress here the band’s out-of-the-box thinking and doing, and how this shows that they’re much more than just another great band.

There’s just something about this band, how they’ve organized themselves around this cheeky, nerdy, excellent music project that’s full of freedom and experimentation and…well, I’ll let you see for yourself.

Here are some cool projects they’ve worked on, beyond their music albums…

Sleepify:

Vulfpeck released Sleepify in March 2014 as a means to fund a concert tour of the same name; all of the shows were to be free of charge, but funded solely using royalty payments from the album on the music streaming service Spotify. The service calculates royalties based on how many times a track has been played, counting a single play as listening to the song for at least 30 seconds. As such, all of the tracks on Sleepify are just over thirty seconds in length, and consist solely of silence; a promotional video for the album jokingly labeled it as "the most silent album ever recorded". – via Wikipedia, Sleepify

They release their records through their own record label: Vulf Records

The band have released their music independently through their label Vulf Records since 2011, allowing them to do things like:

Auctioning a track on one of their albums

Vulfpeck sold track #10 of their album The Joy of Music, The Job of Real Estate for $USD70K+, on eBay, to Earthquake Lights

How cool is that?

You can take not one but two Masterclasses by Vulfpeck band members:

• Jack Stratton Mixing Masterclass: 7 lectures diving deep into the history and techniques behind the 'Vulf Sound’

• Joe Dart Bass Masterclass: 7 lectures spanning Dart's formative years, composing iconic Vulfpeck parts, and philosophy behind great bass.

Their start as a YouTube Channel

Here’s Cory Wong mentioning that. Cory, by the way, isn’t technically a member of the band…but what does that even mean in the Vulf-niverse?

Vulfpeck Live at Madison Square Garden

One of the best concerts ever recorded. Enjoy:

Channels of Origin and Becoming

There’s something about Vulfpeck getting started as a YouTube channel that feels relevant to the spirit of this newsletter, and I can’t quite put my finger on it yet. The thought is something like:

“Today Vulfpeck is a YouTube channel… tomorrow, who knows?”

And knowing that tomorrow has proven to be incredibly prolific like the band is today, putting out incredible music and shows while holding on to an irreverent maker/DIY ethos.

There’s an invitation for us all. Seeing YouTube or Twitch or Substack etc… as launching platforms and seeding grounds for future organizations of a different kind. The ways in which we get together to collaborate, and where those collaborations might take us, the organizations we might create, for having started this way or that.

It would be even more interesting, for instance, if a new platform is setup intentionally to create a new kind of organization. A music band, after all, still has to operate within the wider context of the music and entertainment industry and it’s messy, “red in tooth and claw” jungle of copyrights, royalties, recording and live music deals etc…

Here’s a tiny primer on the music industry…what if a new organization explicity takes on the challenge of upending that? What would such an organization look like? And what could music look like in the future?

The main branches of the music industry are the live music industry, the recording industry, and all the companies that train, support, supply and represent musicians.

The recording industry produces three separate products: compositions (songs, pieces, lyrics), recordings (audio and video) and media (such as CDs or MP3s, and DVDs). These are each a type of property: typically, compositions are owned by composers, recordings by record companies, and media by consumers. There may be many recordings of a single composition and a single recording will typically be distributed via many media. For example, the song "My Way" is owned by its composers, Paul Anka and Claude François, Frank Sinatra's recording of "My Way" is owned by Capitol Records, Sid Vicious's recording of "My Way" is owned by Virgin Records, and the millions of CDs and vinyl records that can play these recordings are owned by millions of individual consumers. – via Wikipedia, Music Industry