With Tokyo Police Club winding down for good, the band's Graham Wright has announced his next project: a music podcast about the struggle between art and commerce.
Major Label Debut will launch on October 28 with an initial six-episode run. He will be speaking with fellow musicians, producers, and other music industry folks about the "business" part of the music biz.
Season 1 guests are: Rob Schnapf on Elliott Smith's XO, Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket on their album Fear, Bob Mehr on his book Trouble Boys as well as the Replacements' Tim, Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney on their album Piece of Cake, Brenda Sauter of the Feelies on Only Life, and Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum on Hang Time.
In a statement about the podcast, Wright explained:
Over years of writing songs and making records, I've become fascinated by all the ways that engaging with the business part of the music industry can alter the creative trajectory of a band. There's just a million sliding door moments, some of which are obvious but more often they're subtle. I can, and frequently do, listen back to creative decisions I've made and wonder how I would have acted differently if the circumstances had been different in that moment. And since I'm an obsessive music listener, I can't help but wonder the same thing about records I love.
Everybody knows that art and commerce are strange and uneasy bedfellows, but I'm intrigued by the specific ways that sharing that bed changes the art that comes out of it. People are happy to shit talk the business, which often deserves it, but it's way less common to hear artists actually wrangle with how their art has been transformed by the commercial necessities of being a working musician. The idea behind the podcast is to try and get into all that stuff. As well as just to talk to artists about how they write songs and make records. Before I was ever in a band, I was a humungous music fan, and I loved any opportunity to [peek] behind the curtain. Now that I've had a chance to walk around back there, I can never resist pulling the curtain back for my fellow obsessives.
Episodes will drop every two weeks on Mondays.