You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Special Guest: Jazz Memes

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

Today on You'll Hear It, Peter and Adam welcome a very special guest: Chase and Kevin from Jazz Memes! They discuss the origins of Jazz Memes, the importance of an online audience, and how to build a following on the internet.You can check out the comedy stylings of Jazz Memes on their social media pages:Instagram (@jazzmemes_) - https://www.instagram.com/jazzmemes_/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jazzmemesofficialYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/JazzMemesTwitter (@jazzmemes_) - https://twitter.com/jazzmemes_And for more tips on how to grow your online audience, get the Jazz Memes Playbook here: https://www.jazzmemes.org/playbookStarting this week, we're trying to help Peter remember when Hump Day is by launching Peter's Hump Day Special. Listen to Wednesday's episode to hear a limited time, 24-hour offer exclusive to You'll Hear It listeners.Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, Adam. Scale of 1 to 10, how memeable is this episode going to be? Man, this is going to be me, me, me, me, me memes for days. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Special edition of jazz advice and memes coming at you.

Why are we so meme heavy already in the front end? Why are we said it correctly so many times in a row? Because I'm always partial to me, me, me, me. There's so many different ways to say it. Is there a correct pronunciation? It's just like something you would only read. like on your phone as you're driving as you're not driving. Yeah, yeah.

On your phone as you're driving. Don't do that at home kids. No, we're talking about memes today because we have some celebrities on the line from the jazz world, from the jazz humor world, and from the jazz memes world, none other than the jazz memes, Chase, and Kevin. What's going on, fellas?

How's it going, guys? What's up, Peter and Adam? How's it going? Oh, wait, it's going good. We're excited to have you. We're a little nervous. Let's, let's, should we be honest? us about that, Adam? Well, this is definitely like

putting a target on our back a little bit. Yeah, because we consider ourselves, Kevin and Chase, you got to understand something. We consider ourselves kind of jazzy funny guys, but you guys are truly jazzy, funny guys on the next level. So, we may wilt in the wit department

today. Apologies if we do. Is that what we consider? I feel like we just do what we do, and it ends up being just stupid, funny. I mean, honestly, you know, the stuff you guys do, as you guys have seen, because we've met with you before, is just perfect meme gold. I mean, yeah.

You guys are just keep doing what you're doing and we'll be in business for years. And that it's a good balance of like cringy. Right, right. I do feel better that you're saying we're meme, you know, when you meme us, even saying that because I know that you've, and one of the things I want to talk to you guys about is about is you've memed everybody from the bottom of the bucket like us all the way up to, you know, of course, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, the Masters and everything. You guys don't pull any punches in terms of that.

And I do think that there's a certain feeling, and I've heard this from other jazz artists, is like once you get memed, it's like a little badge of honor up there, right? Have you guys, what's the feedback you guys are getting from different jazz artists? Or are they just lawsuits coming in the mail? No, that's pretty similar to what we've heard in some of the artists we've talked to is, is they know that they've gotten meme because, you know, their phone blows up in the morning. Right. And all their friends are sending them the meme of themselves.

And they're, you know, especially early on, they're checking out what is, what is jazz memes? like why is, why am I getting all these texts about this? Right. And then nowadays, now it's, you know, sort of become a thing. Right, right. So if our listeners haven't checked it out right now, Andrew's going to put a link to some jazz memes from me. Awesome.

Possibly some of the ones we were featured? I don't know. They'll be up there. Oh, I mean, they should. They're great. We love her. But, you know, we try to keep this somewhat educational. So we thought we could just talk to you guys today about semi-educational.

Just about something that might be important to our listeners, which is a bit of advice on growing your online following, which you all have done a great job at. We are obviously always aiming to do that. So, yeah, I think that would be a good place to start, right? Well, let's start there. Well, actually, let's start with the history of jazz beams. Yeah, the origin. So you guys are in Florida? Is that right?

Yeah, so we're from Miami, Florida. I assume, I'm just going to assume that you all met in, like, some dingy jazz school lounge somewhere at a university. Well, so Kevin and I are brothers. Oh, we're done. That helps. Oh, so you met? Are you twins by any chance? Yeah.

We met at birth. Yeah. We met me. No, we're not twins. But, yeah, yeah. So we're jazz musicians. I chase plays guitar and Kevin plays piano. And then we studied at University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Oh, nice. So, and that's kind of where, you know, the origins of jazz memes started because I was, you know, meaming my friends and in jazz situations, right? Like, I'd mean my friend Leo, and he's a trombone player, so it's very easy to, uh, meme. Talk about a meme that writes itself. Yeah, I mean, it was low hanging fruit, to be honest, but that's, you know, we all have to start somewhere. Absolutely. At humble beginnings. Yeah.

And really it was, you know, great for him, too, um, that people were talking about him. Now, when you say you started meaming him, was the format, because I, I want to get into this too about, you know, in terms of how you know, how you do grow something and how, because this is really almost its own channel. We always talk about, you know, Instagram or podcast and we're involved in some of these different things and you see how people respond. But I would say, I don't know what you guys think, but the meme is almost its own channel. No matter where you place it. Yeah. So we don't think about it so much as its own, like platform.

Like you said, you have podcasts and you have, you know, Instagram or Facebook or a mail. list or a website. Those are all your different platforms. But memes definitely lend themselves to being more easily shared. And so that's definitely one of the things that helped us grow our audience because it is easily shareable. But a main aspect, kind of what you were hitting on, is creating a brand that is consistent in the look.

Right. So that's why we actually consciously chose to keep that look of the meme. And that's the feedback we would get from artists is they would see a meme. And, you know, people repost this. It doesn't say jazz memes on the meme. Right. But they would know that it's us because it's in that format. And so it's sort of like a calling card instead of all the memes looking different on some of these other meme pages.

No one's going to recognize that as coming from that page because it could be anyone making it. Right. But jazz memes have a certain look and that was intentional. Yeah. Now, we do the same kind of thing here with the podcast on our YouTube. YouTube channel. You know, everything has the same font. This title is placed in the same way. Really? Yeah. Oh. Andrew's on it, man.

Oh, Andrew? Thanks, Andrew. I didn't even know, man. But, you know, and it's same two doofuses on the same side of the table every time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's cool. So when you talk about the, you know, how much does differentiation is there between your branding in terms of the look and feel of the memes compare with just, because like almost all the memes I know are you guys, I think, but just memes out in the world that have nothing to do with jazz. Because there is some overlap in that look. Is that right?

Correct. I mean, when we first started, we were obviously referencing there's certain types of memes or certain forms that have developed over the years that have become recognizable. And we relied on picking one of them. And instead of getting complicated and trying to make many different kinds to just make it simple and really focus on the content of the meme and not how can we make a million different kinds of memes, but just what is the meme saying? We stuck with one.

And like Chase was saying, that really helped with the brand. And by just sticking with that similar font over and over and really just being consistent, I think one of the biggest things that differentiates us is that we did it every single day. You know, we didn't, we didn't. And by doing it every day, it really communicated to even when we had a very small audience at the beginning, they're like, oh, that's them. Because I see that every day. I see it the same way.

Even if the meme's a little different, it just is like you're sending a strong signal that's consistent. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, that combined with the very simple branding visually and, you know, I can really see how it took off for you guys. But I would just say to that, the next part of it that I see, though, is the quality of the content. I mean, you could have all that if you guys didn't hit the quality. And I guess, you know, do you guys kind of look at the quality as? Is it just how funny it is or how much it gets shared? Like what's your guy's kind of barometer for the quality that you aspire to with the memes?

Yeah. So we have definitely different memes and different posts have different goals, right? So some of the memes that we post are definitely focused on getting new followers and growing the audience from a new network. So those would be some of the memes where we're either featuring an artist we hadn't featured before. so we're hoping to bring in some of their network or get them seeing it. It could be the ones where we tag something that's relevant to what's going on. So that might be something like the Jazz Congress is happening.

And we're being strategic about attaching the meme to a current event. Right. So that's a great tactic that any of the listeners can use to kind of have their content relevant to people on Instagram or whatever their channel is. No, that's great. And I remember it's, you guys killed it at Jazz Congress because I think of that really timely tagging. Because I remember sitting in some stuff where I was so bored that I was just like looking at my phone. And you guys, you guys saved me from just like basically hanging myself at the end of the halfway through some of those talks. Big shout out to Jazz and Lincoln Center, though. Love you guys.

Oh, yeah. No, we love them too. So, fellas, it seems to me that another consistent thing I see in your post is engagement. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your philosophy with engaging people who are commenting, who are engaging you. Well, I think that's a great point. And I think that that's one of the things we really want to drive home is that, you know, we have musicians who don't want to create meme pages per se, but they want to get their music out there. And one of the biggest things, and it's a hard time to be doing this is people want people engaged with their music, right? If you're just an artist coming out of school or you're an artist struggling to get your career going, you want people engaging with your music. And, you know, we have great engagement on our page.

And I think a lot of that is due to a couple things. One is we talk to our audience. We're really conscious about communicating with them when they try and talk to us, when they message us, you know, whether it's a comment or a direct message, we talk to everyone. We read all the messages. We communicate. I think that drives home a feeling to the other side that, wow, these guys are listening to us. There's a communication that's happening here and they care about me. Yeah, and just to build on that, I think where a lot of musicians can go wrong in this kind of engagement or trying to do that is they don't really interact or even think about their audience as much until they have an album coming out.

Right. And then all of a sudden they want or they have a gig coming up that's important. And then they're trying to get people to engage. Right. And that just gives off really the wrong vibe. You don't want to be that guy where you're only asking for help, you know, instead of giving help back to the community or sharing content that they actually value. So our whole goal is in building the community. And really the way we think about doing that is we create, you know, interesting, new, original, funny, educational content.

We do it consistently and we connect with our audience. So those three things for us really come together, in our opinion, to really bring jazz memes up. And that's what's led to its success. And jazz, not just the memes, but the whole community of jazz musicians and lovers and players, all of those come together. Yeah, and I love that you guys always, you guys are so consistent, not just in saying that, but in your actions also. I mean, I always feel that. And I think that you guys are such an asset for the community by putting our content by sharing things, but doing it in a way that. and you hit right on it where you're giving.

It isn't just about like, oh, you know, once you need something for me, I think that what you just highlighted there is great advice for musicians. And for some reason in the jazz world, this is not done as well, I think, as some other areas. Like I hear a lot from good artists, I mean, maybe young up and coming or otherwise, where they'll say like, well, you know, I want to post more, but I, you know, I can't afford. I'm trying to, I'm going to hire this social media manager. And I'm like, social media is to engage. I mean, like, you don't have to go on there, I think, to be a great musician.

It's not about that. But if you want to skip over the step of actually engaging with people, don't go on there. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I see you guys, you could just put your stuff out. It would be funny and entertaining and not engage. And people would engage. You have very engageable, I think, content with your audience with each other.

But the fact that you do jump in, that you do help out the community actively and stuff, I think makes it more exciting. And actually is, I think is a super smart marketing play on your part as well. Yeah. I mean, just to go into that point, we've actually never spent a penny on ads for jazz memes. So, I mean, we did a survey a few months back asking people, you know, why would they want to build an audience or what's their biggest struggle in building an audience? And that's one that a lot of people said is, oh, I don't have money to buy ads or to buy followers or I don't have time to do that. And that's almost hilarious to us because we've never spent any money in doing it. And you don't need to.

That's not the kind of engagement you want anyways. You want a real audience of real fans, and you do that by building trust and being consistent and building that community. Yeah. Now, I love it. And I think that you guys, you know, even what you, I love that you guys talked about, you know, having a simple piece of content being consistent with it posting. You said all these things, you know, serving the community and everything before you even said anything about, oh, you have to, it has to be on Instagram. It has to be this size and all that. And I know that you guys are very savvy with that.

But it's like I'm always telling musicians, even when they ask us, they're like, oh, man, open studio, you guys are killing it on Facebook. We see all this. Like, what's the best time of day? I'm like, man, we never think about, we probably should. But I mean, the more, I think, and it's great advice, you know, for all of our listeners that want to do stuff online and grow the audience. It's like, focus on the quality of your content and focus on your community. And if your community starts at one person, it will start with one person. Sure.

And then you grow that, do some smart things to do that. But don't get caught up in like, oh, should I put this on Twitter instead of Instagram? Just get it out there and hope that somebody looks at it. That's absolutely. I feel like all of the big things that we've done, you know, in marketing have been, you know, that kind of thing, where it's like we put out something that was, that just struck a nerve because of the quality or the consistency. Right. You know, like a daily podcast or whatever. And that has been more effective than any ad you could take out.

Yeah. So speaking of that, fellas, I got a question for you. Is there a number one jazz meme of all time? I mean, like, either that has been shared the most, do you guys track that, or is that you kind of got like an organic feel for it, or like the number most popular jazz meme? Oh, well, we definitely know which one's the most popular on our platform.

I mean, the, then we have our personal favorites. But I'm happily, like, these are both the same thing. So the best meme, I think there's really two that are vying for the first spot. But I think the number one for me, me is the one we did of Roy Hargrove, Strausburg, St. Dennis, to the Kanye West clip, that just, you know, to pay homage to him and the joy that his music brings, that was, to me, like, a perfect moment for us. And that really was, that, that's personal, but then we saw that response from our community,

that people to this day are still finding it, you know, finding it hilarious and, you know, commenting about him and his music. Yeah, no, it's a great place. I mean, I think that you, you know, probably, you know, maybe even inadvertently provided maybe a little bit of a meeting point for folks with, you know, that type of a post as well, which is a great kind of community thing, community service, really, you provide. Well, yeah, that's something we didn't really see in, you know, the jazz community at all when we started.

And, you know, this is something we've been doing for, like, about three years. So even people that have just now heard about it, it's a long game in building your audience. you know. Yeah. Yeah. If your goal is like, oh, I want, you know, to be, you know, real famous and have a 100,000 followers, you know, in a few months, you're going to go about it differently. You're going to go about it by buying followers and by doing these kind of shadier tactics instead of really trying to think, okay, I'm in this for years. How can I really establish a foundation?

Right, right, right. Well, it's got to be, I mean, my feeling is that for you guys, one of the best, you know, marketing things that you did has been word of mouth among people consuming your content, right? I mean, in terms of spreading things further. Well, honestly, I think the thing that we value the most is our relationships, relationships with our fans and with the artists. And by treasuring that the most, you know, whether that's, you know, all in all areas that we handle them or talk with them directly or the way we ask permission before posting certain content

stuff, we go about all that. I think that works the word of mouth for you. If you're someone that, you know, can be trusted and is someone to, you know, that translates, we didn't, we don't have to speak about ourselves. People will do that for us because, you know, they see what we're trying to do is genuine, you know. Right, right, right. Cool.

So one of the thing I wanted to ask you guys about was, um, how have you guys been able to so skillfully, I would say, navigate, you know, the, the tough shark infest, waters of creating humorous content on a daily basis about, you know, let's be frank, a field in general in which we are known to take ourselves way too seriously and to, especially at this time in the kind of history of jazz when it's been, you know, put up on a pedestal, what's the thing we always lionized and put into the museum and everything. And it seems like you guys have somehow been able to kind of, you know, thread that needle into making fun of it, but without it being disrespectful.

Yeah, I mean, really what Kevin and I are always just, you know, discussing different ideas for memes or we'll see a new photo and we'll save it. And we're really always thinking about this. So we're always kind of having that conversation ourselves. And really when when we think of something, whether it's, you know, we're going to make fun of a vocalist or this kind of thing happens on a gig or, you know, different situations that might be tense or might have that kind of contrast. That's usually the ones we think, oh, if we feel like we need to shy away from it, then we're like, we definitely need to talk about that. Because the jazz community needs to talk about that. And this might be a place in the comments on our Instagram or via DMs where people can

talk about that and share their opinion or share some new thoughts on it. Yeah. No, it's great. I mean, it's almost like a pressure release valve that you guys provide sometimes for something other people are afraid to say. And I think what you do really well, too, is like you'll mention. like in your description, you'll kind of soften it back a little bit by saying like, you know, you know, tag one of your favorite vocalists. You know, you kind of prop it back up after pull it, you know, making fun or whatever.

And I think that's a really nice way to do it and make it like you're not picking on somebody or whatever. Because I mean, it's like, you know, you guys have some of my favorite because he's such a comical looking guy. Big shout out to Ari. Love you, brother. Yeah. But I mean, you know, he's been a longtime collaborator. Yeah. I think one of the other things to your point is like how do we manage to walk that line. I mean, we're not perfect.

Like Chase was saying, a lot of our discussions, our initial reaction might not be the best one. But we always, I think if we always come from a place of positivity and we're always thinking, how is this serving the community? Because a lot of things can, a lot of the ways you can go about, you know, making a joke that attacks someone in a certain way. we're often attacking a situation, not a person. And that's a big important point. And honestly, if we're hitting on truth, that's also something that's crucial. But we also make fun of everybody. So I don't think you can come to our, you know, that's another thing.

You see that over time. If you've been a, you know, if you come to our channel just the one day that we're talking about making fun of singers, yeah, you can feel attacked. Right. But if you see that, we've made fun of every instrument, every possible thing, you know, that we can. think of in the jazz world, you realize, oh, this is to make a comment about something we can all have a light laugh about. Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, the other thing is if you think about it, you guys and, you know, some other kind

of satirists and humorous, I guess, or whatever, that do things within, you know, dabbling in jazz or connected with it or whatever, it's a great public-facing thing to sort of the outside world. I mean, I know a lot of what you guys do. It's so inside, which is great. It's almost like if you're not a jazz conservatory. student right now, you almost miss it. But if you're a musician or if you're really into the music,

but I think it transcends enough where people could ask something about it. But what happens is, like, we have so much negativity among, like, you know, all these articles about, you know, Brantford and Nicholas recently fighting. And, you know, we're very quick to put up negative things about each other as opposed to, like, humorous. And what I would say is really almost positive and fun loving types of things, lighthearted. But it goes along with the whole we take ourselves too seriously. Yeah, gentle ribbing.

never hurt anyone exactly come on now yeah well it might hurt uh chasing kevin they may have a stack of lawsuits i don't know man yeah how do you guys i was gonna ask about this this is a very tense time i was going to ask you guys on a similar vein here like have you ever got any like like like really severe pushback from anyone um we got a couple so you want to talk about the bill evans well no so i mean we've we've we've had only honestly i'm thankful to say we've only had pushback a couple times, you know, to what you were saying earlier, do we step, you know, how do we ride that line? You know, we've done posts like the Jazz Avengers where we had wanted to make something that was capitalizing on the popularity of the Avengers and, you know,

that brought up a common topic in jazz about women in jazz. And that was, we're so thankful that we had to go through that with the audience because we had to think about, really think about how does, how do we handle this issue, especially, humorous and still, you know, being real about what's going on in the jazz world. So that was definitely a tough one and definitely one that caused a lot of controversy for us. But, you know, we've gotten, honestly, the most hate mail we get is from jazz singers. Like, everyone else seems to be pretty on board with all the jokes, but, you know, they take it a little more to heart.

And it's okay. We understand. But that's honestly where we get the most hate mail. Is that coming mostly in the comments? that coming physically at your door with with weapons outside it's on the gig it's on the gig the series they play with give them side eyes oh right no no uh you know sometimes it's directly but you know what ends up happening is we talk with them and actually that's the best part is that we have a dialogue with them we don't shy away from it and they we actually come out friends with these people or

having a positive communication with them we don't shy away from that dialogue yeah maybe maybe Maybe you could even give them a gift as part of that thing, like a, you know, Harmony book or a scale. Oh, sorry. Oh, boy. Okay. Send your letters to Peter at Open Studio. That was Adam. That was Adam. Clearly.

Oh, my gosh. That's the jazz memes guys. They told me to say that. Well, guys. I think what Adam was hoping with that last question, though, was maybe like he was looking for something a little more like some cease and desist letter from Keith Jarrett's attorney. That would have been excited. You could have, like, drop that on the podcast today.

I mean, we get that from his record. label every other day. We hadn't had that really. I think one time Bill Evans' daughter, someone from his estate asked us to take down whatever meme we did of Bill Evans. I think that was about it.

As far as that kind of thing goes. Did you guys take it down? Yeah. Okay. Because I would think being because you guys are under the humor, you have a lot of leeway because it's humor, right? I mean, you can almost do anything. We probably do, but like going back to the point, if

If an artist came out of us is like, hey, I don't like that or I don't like how I look in that. Can you take it down? Sure. Like our focus, again, we always think back, okay, what's the point of this? And if the artist feels like it's not including them in the community or they're being attacked or made fun of in a way, maybe they missed the point. But we don't, we don't want to, you know, just cut off that relationship for that purpose, for the sake of, you know, some likes. Yeah, or me. That's great.

Great. Good stuff, guys. Thank you guys for taking the time to chat with us today. It's really fascinating to hear all about this. And I think some really good stuff for our listeners who are wanting to grow their online audience. Exactly. Everything that you guys talked about, I think, is crucial for it. Very crucial.

And it's not even to me, I mean, the humor is the quality of the content there. But I think the foundations that you guys kind of laid out can really be applied to a lot of things. The simplicity, the consistency and the branding, connecting with the community, giving to the community before you ask for something. I mean, that's like all very foundational and, you know, having kind of gone through a lot of the same type of things, I can tell folks it's very simple sounding, but it's a lot of work.

And I commend you guys because I know to show up every day and do that is, it's work. That's why most people don't do it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And actually, for your listeners, we actually put together a playbook, basically, of the top three strategies and tactics that we've used. And we put that together as a PDF that they can download.

Oh, nice. Oh, right on. Yes. So if they just go to jazz memes.org slash playbook, they can download that. All right. We'll include a link here in the description of the podcast. Jazz memes.org slash playbook. Now, is there a separate URL for a simplified one for vocalists?

Hey, oh, dude, dude. Well, they have, there is a section for my instrument so they can just put none. Okay. Oh, ho. Oh. Oh, wow. Okay. I like it.

I like it. They're ready to play ball. All right. Well, this is like, so I do you guys are from Florida, but knowing you from Miami now, the way I imagine this. Yeah. The way I imagine this is you guys are like, you know, at Miami Beach, you know, out on the beach, chilling. You know, you've got maybe like an iPad with a pencil, like creating the next jazz meme, you know. Oh, but for a dip in the water and then come back.

Is that how it goes down? That is exactly the vibe we want to give off. Cool, cool. Well, thank you guys. much Kevin Chase man much much love much success I'm so glad we guys you guys took a little time to come and talk uh to us you got anything else I think that's well just thanks guys so much for having us we love what you guys do you guys are part of the community that we hope to like bring into the world we believe jazz is alive and well and that this community is strong you know and you guys

and what we're trying to do is all serving that so thank you guys for having us on and letting us talk oh yeah man absolutely thank you guys I'm totally Totally agree. One love in the jazz world. For sure. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.