Interview with Timothy Hays
Timothy Hays is director of the music business program and applied music at Elmhurst College. He has served as president of the Music and Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA), the world’s leading organization devoted to music business education. Hays’ credits include recent additions to the leading text for music business pedagogy, The Music Business Handbook. He also has served as associate editor of the Chicago Musicale. As a writer, his work has appeared in a number of publications, including the Harvard Case Studies Series. His dissertation is the leading source on the history of the American music department in higher education. A professional performer since an early age, Hays spent years on the road, worked as a studio musician and record producer, and started and operated a record label. He is an active performer in the Chicago area. A longtime member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), Hays votes annually in the Grammy Awards. For more information, check the book’s companion website for links to some of the things that were discussed.
Part I: Chicago’s Music Scene
RW: What led you to living in the Chicago area?
TH: I’m an east coast guy born in New York City and am a singer and bass player. After five years on the road with a soul band out of Washington, D.C. I went to James Madison University in Virginia and got a music business degree and an M.B.A. I was playing on a lot of records and producing, was a founding member of the band Moments Notice that became the Dave Matthews Band, and was recruited in 1984 to come out here and direct the music business program at Elmhurst College and teach music theory.
RW: Chicago must be a great hub for you as a jazz player. How far outside of the city are you?
TH: We’re very close, just 16 miles away. I’m very much a player and play all the time. There’s a very good ratio of gigs to musicians here. Boston is terrible, I have friends there. Everybody plays an instrument, there’s a music school on every corner. Chicago is a very good scene for live music for lots of reasons.
RW: What would you say is unique about the Chicago music scene?
TH: For one thing, it’s the second biggest classical music scene outside of New York. There’s the Chicago Symphony and all the other satellite music groups to it. The Lyric Opera is arguably the second best opera group outside the Met in the country, and you’ve got the Ravinia music festival. I call them the “the Big Three” and each of them has offshoots. There are a lot of other not for profit groups, too—classical vocal groups, chamber groups, music of the Baroque, all kinds of things like that going on. We study arts administration in my class and a number of students have gone into that field. So for classical music I think it’s a healthy scene. If you go out to Los Angeles there’s a lot going on but it is so distracting because there are so many other types of entertainment. In Chicago music is kind of a big deal in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of popular music, too. There are a lot of clubs up and down Halsted, there’s a lot of original music, bands, and scenes that people play in. Every little suburb around here has its own festival in the summer.
RW: Anything else that’s special about the upper Midwest states clustered around the Great Lakes with a hub in Chicago compared with the coasts?
TH: The audiences are probably not as jaded. Americana music has a certain resonance that it doesn’t necessarily have on the coasts. It seems more of an identity in our area. There are big ethnic populations with Polish, Greek, and Mexican bands that play in their neighborhoods in the Chicago area. I don’t remember that as much on the East Coast, in Maine or New Jersey. In Polka is still popular in Wisconsin. If a bunch of people come in from Wisconsin you need to have a couple of polkas in your repertoire in case they come up and request one. I’m more aware of the ethnicities in Chicago and the music that goes with them.
Part II: Touring
RW: There are so many more cities close to each other east of the Mississippi river compared with the west. Is it still viable to get in a van and drive and go on regional tours? What good does that do, and what’s the alternative? Can you just stay at home now and connect with fans on social media?
TH: What you’re talking about is more like an original band trying to break in. It’s a tough life to string all the dates together. With all the expenses you’re not going to make enough money to break even if you don’t have star power with push from media and a label. It’s a tough thing to do, but it always has been.
RW: What was your experience like touring?
TH: It was a scene that doesn’t exist anymore. I got out of high school in 1972. I played for five years in a mixed-race soul band out of Washington, D.C. We played dance clubs, sometimes in a hotel. We played five sets a night, starting with two dinner sets and then three full-on dance sets playing songs from the Temptations, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Elton John, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Queen, and the early disco stuff before the Bee Gees. Everybody in the band sang. I was the youngest guy in the band, played bass and sang the funky white boy songs. We set up shop at a club and would be there for a week or two. I remember playing a big expensive hotel in D.C. called L’Enfant Plaza for two months every night, six nights a week. We had a floor show, it was a real show biz thing. We did a little bit of original material but it was hard to fit it into the show, it wasn’t what we were doing.
RW: We’re the same age. I’m thinking of the generations of musicians who came before us, rock and roll, and the dance jazz bands in the 1940s. Why did that go away? What happened to the dance scene you were a part of? Was it due to a change in technology? Is it because audiences today have more entertainment options and stay home to chat on their phones and watch Netflix?
TH: When I was out there it was the newest thing and we thought it would last forever. If you were a real club you would have a live band. Bands knew how to play wall-to-wall dance music. There aren’t that many bands that know how to do that anymore. Musicians knew how to play instruments and play dance music. What happened is that the DJ thing became cool, and are a lot less expensive than a band. Clubs created big permanent installations, DJs came in and did their thing. The touring scene that I was in existed at most for ten years into the early ‘80s. By ‘82 to ‘83 it had disappeared. I made a lot of money. We weren’t starving. The hotel would put us up and give us meals. I was booked a year in advance and kept putting college off. Eventually it fell apart. It wasn’t just the scene, it was the band. Everybody started fighting with each other. I think that what happened is that the DJs replaced the touring dance bands.
RW: Did the rock groups with their amplifiers replace the large dance bands before them?
TH: The big band scene had to have sizeable ballrooms, with a big enough stage. Some of them are still here. I just saw Sting in one of those rooms leftover from that era. I was playing in smaller clubs with smaller band stands. The big band scene became more of a concert scene by the mid ‘50s. People like Stan Kenton were playing concert music, not dance music. The rock and roll bands took over the dance part of it, and it was cheaper since you’re paying four or five people rather than a 15-piece orchestra anymore. The band I was in had six players. The scene that I was playing in developed in the ‘60s. It depended on having an affordable, portable P.A. system that you could travel around with. That technology didn’t start developing until the mid ‘60s. It was joke what the Beatles were using for places like Shea Stadium and Candlestick Park.
RW: Have you seen Ron Howard’s documentary Eight Days a Week? It must have sounded terrible playing through the public address systems.
TH: I remember reading about it. They just plugged into the announcer’s system. It sounds bad when they call the balls and strikes, I can’t imagine someone trying to sing through it. It was ridiculous, but that’s all they had in those days, and was one of the reasons why the Beatles stopped touring.
RW: What opportunities do you see for your students in the music and entertainment industry? Would you recommend touring, or staying at home and trying to build a base electronically?
TH: I firmly believe the you should try building your base where you are. If you can’t do that, why would strangers come see you? It’s hard to do. These things run with a certain amount of energy. During the times we were talking about there was fertile ground in terms of being a singer-songwriter. When the Beatles were coming up it was wide open. There weren’t so many genres. There was rock and roll and jazz, there weren’t so many categories of rock. Audiences have moved into separate niches each with its own space. If you’re going to be a band you have to be in that space. It’s hard for original bands to create that space. That’s what you have to do. You have to be a singer-songwriter, ramp up a band around that idea, put out material, try to build a base where you live, and get on tours where you’re backing other acts up. There are more live situations than there used to be, more little festivals. In the heyday of bebop there weren’t all these little jazz festivals like there are now around now. There were just a few clubs in big cities, that’s what those guys had to play in.
©2017 Timothy Hays and Robert Willey
Part I: Chicago’s Music Scene
RW: What led you to living in the Chicago area?
TH: I’m an east coast guy born in New York City and am a singer and bass player. After five years on the road with a soul band out of Washington, D.C. I went to James Madison University in Virginia and got a music business degree and an M.B.A. I was playing on a lot of records and producing, was a founding member of the band Moments Notice that became the Dave Matthews Band, and was recruited in 1984 to come out here and direct the music business program at Elmhurst College and teach music theory.
RW: Chicago must be a great hub for you as a jazz player. How far outside of the city are you?
TH: We’re very close, just 16 miles away. I’m very much a player and play all the time. There’s a very good ratio of gigs to musicians here. Boston is terrible, I have friends there. Everybody plays an instrument, there’s a music school on every corner. Chicago is a very good scene for live music for lots of reasons.
RW: What would you say is unique about the Chicago music scene?
TH: For one thing, it’s the second biggest classical music scene outside of New York. There’s the Chicago Symphony and all the other satellite music groups to it. The Lyric Opera is arguably the second best opera group outside the Met in the country, and you’ve got the Ravinia music festival. I call them the “the Big Three” and each of them has offshoots. There are a lot of other not for profit groups, too—classical vocal groups, chamber groups, music of the Baroque, all kinds of things like that going on. We study arts administration in my class and a number of students have gone into that field. So for classical music I think it’s a healthy scene. If you go out to Los Angeles there’s a lot going on but it is so distracting because there are so many other types of entertainment. In Chicago music is kind of a big deal in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of popular music, too. There are a lot of clubs up and down Halsted, there’s a lot of original music, bands, and scenes that people play in. Every little suburb around here has its own festival in the summer.
RW: Anything else that’s special about the upper Midwest states clustered around the Great Lakes with a hub in Chicago compared with the coasts?
TH: The audiences are probably not as jaded. Americana music has a certain resonance that it doesn’t necessarily have on the coasts. It seems more of an identity in our area. There are big ethnic populations with Polish, Greek, and Mexican bands that play in their neighborhoods in the Chicago area. I don’t remember that as much on the East Coast, in Maine or New Jersey. In Polka is still popular in Wisconsin. If a bunch of people come in from Wisconsin you need to have a couple of polkas in your repertoire in case they come up and request one. I’m more aware of the ethnicities in Chicago and the music that goes with them.
Part II: Touring
RW: There are so many more cities close to each other east of the Mississippi river compared with the west. Is it still viable to get in a van and drive and go on regional tours? What good does that do, and what’s the alternative? Can you just stay at home now and connect with fans on social media?
TH: What you’re talking about is more like an original band trying to break in. It’s a tough life to string all the dates together. With all the expenses you’re not going to make enough money to break even if you don’t have star power with push from media and a label. It’s a tough thing to do, but it always has been.
RW: What was your experience like touring?
TH: It was a scene that doesn’t exist anymore. I got out of high school in 1972. I played for five years in a mixed-race soul band out of Washington, D.C. We played dance clubs, sometimes in a hotel. We played five sets a night, starting with two dinner sets and then three full-on dance sets playing songs from the Temptations, Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Tower of Power, Elton John, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Queen, and the early disco stuff before the Bee Gees. Everybody in the band sang. I was the youngest guy in the band, played bass and sang the funky white boy songs. We set up shop at a club and would be there for a week or two. I remember playing a big expensive hotel in D.C. called L’Enfant Plaza for two months every night, six nights a week. We had a floor show, it was a real show biz thing. We did a little bit of original material but it was hard to fit it into the show, it wasn’t what we were doing.
RW: We’re the same age. I’m thinking of the generations of musicians who came before us, rock and roll, and the dance jazz bands in the 1940s. Why did that go away? What happened to the dance scene you were a part of? Was it due to a change in technology? Is it because audiences today have more entertainment options and stay home to chat on their phones and watch Netflix?
TH: When I was out there it was the newest thing and we thought it would last forever. If you were a real club you would have a live band. Bands knew how to play wall-to-wall dance music. There aren’t that many bands that know how to do that anymore. Musicians knew how to play instruments and play dance music. What happened is that the DJ thing became cool, and are a lot less expensive than a band. Clubs created big permanent installations, DJs came in and did their thing. The touring scene that I was in existed at most for ten years into the early ‘80s. By ‘82 to ‘83 it had disappeared. I made a lot of money. We weren’t starving. The hotel would put us up and give us meals. I was booked a year in advance and kept putting college off. Eventually it fell apart. It wasn’t just the scene, it was the band. Everybody started fighting with each other. I think that what happened is that the DJs replaced the touring dance bands.
RW: Did the rock groups with their amplifiers replace the large dance bands before them?
TH: The big band scene had to have sizeable ballrooms, with a big enough stage. Some of them are still here. I just saw Sting in one of those rooms leftover from that era. I was playing in smaller clubs with smaller band stands. The big band scene became more of a concert scene by the mid ‘50s. People like Stan Kenton were playing concert music, not dance music. The rock and roll bands took over the dance part of it, and it was cheaper since you’re paying four or five people rather than a 15-piece orchestra anymore. The band I was in had six players. The scene that I was playing in developed in the ‘60s. It depended on having an affordable, portable P.A. system that you could travel around with. That technology didn’t start developing until the mid ‘60s. It was joke what the Beatles were using for places like Shea Stadium and Candlestick Park.
RW: Have you seen Ron Howard’s documentary Eight Days a Week? It must have sounded terrible playing through the public address systems.
TH: I remember reading about it. They just plugged into the announcer’s system. It sounds bad when they call the balls and strikes, I can’t imagine someone trying to sing through it. It was ridiculous, but that’s all they had in those days, and was one of the reasons why the Beatles stopped touring.
RW: What opportunities do you see for your students in the music and entertainment industry? Would you recommend touring, or staying at home and trying to build a base electronically?
TH: I firmly believe the you should try building your base where you are. If you can’t do that, why would strangers come see you? It’s hard to do. These things run with a certain amount of energy. During the times we were talking about there was fertile ground in terms of being a singer-songwriter. When the Beatles were coming up it was wide open. There weren’t so many genres. There was rock and roll and jazz, there weren’t so many categories of rock. Audiences have moved into separate niches each with its own space. If you’re going to be a band you have to be in that space. It’s hard for original bands to create that space. That’s what you have to do. You have to be a singer-songwriter, ramp up a band around that idea, put out material, try to build a base where you live, and get on tours where you’re backing other acts up. There are more live situations than there used to be, more little festivals. In the heyday of bebop there weren’t all these little jazz festivals like there are now around now. There were just a few clubs in big cities, that’s what those guys had to play in.
©2017 Timothy Hays and Robert Willey