Outside the Jukebox

by Scott Bradlee

  “I don’t know, man.… I got my sister coming over for Thanksgiving dinner, and I have to do all the cooking. It has to be tomorrow?”

  Figuring it’d be a tough sell because of the holiday, and not wanting him to feel awkwardly put on the spot, I made sure to bookend my invitation with a gentle, repeated plea that he “just think on it.” To my surprise, he said he was game pretty much right away. Now I just needed to cobble together the rest of the band. I had enough mics to add drums, bass, and sax, but I had no sense of how staging an entire band in my living room would actually sound—besides loud. It was an ambitious scheme, and one that was certain not to please my embittered upstairs neighbors, who as you may recall were the ones responsible for my current identity as Agatha’s newly orphaned nephew.

  For bass, I recruited another musician I knew from college, Adam Kubota. Adam was a few years older than me; he’d been at Hartt for graduate work at the same time that I was entering as a freshman. We had traveled in different social circles but were uniquely, weirdly bonded by dating two sisters who also went to our school. Adam’s girlfriend didn’t like that her sister was dating me, and my girlfriend didn’t like that Adam was dating her sister. All of this dislike was very much out in the open, and it was something that Adam and I would occasionally joke about. (Looking back on it, they were totally justified in their feelings that neither of us was great boyfriend material.) Adam and I also bonded by doing private gigs together around town, including the hilariously stressful experience of playing a bar mitzvah in Hartford only to learn halfway through that we had been playing the wrong bar mitzvah at the wrong synagogue.

  “Okay, so you need me to learn a Nickelback song to perform in your basement. This is where a master’s degree in upright bass performance has taken me, huh?” he asked now, with characteristic snark.

  Adam was a good sport about doing crazy gigs with me from time to time, but that’s not to say he was ever thrilled to get my calls. Most of the shows that I’d talked him into playing in the past few years had been slightly ridiculous, largely unpaid, and often involved someone dressed, inexplicably, in costume—usually me as Thomas Jefferson or another friend as a giant koala.

  Next, I brought in Allan Mednard, a talented young drummer I’d met on a jazz gig. Allan had been featured in my thirtieth birthday video—a one-take version of “Imagine” that I filmed on the street where I grew up—and he’d become my go-to drummer for gigs around town. To round out the ensemble, I called up my friend from that fateful first gig at Walmart, sax player Steve Ujfalussy.

  With Adam on bass, Allan on drums, Steve on sax, and—with some reluctance on my part—Tim on tambourine, I had my band, and on the evening of November 23, we gathered in my basement abode to record.

  I’d splurged not so long before on a new Canon EOS 60D DSLR camera as an upgrade from my cheap Flip camcorder, and I was excited to put it to the test. Recording went fairly smoothly but ended abruptly at 11 p.m., when the upstairs neighbor started pounding on my door and screaming at us to stop. We obliged and packed up, lest I create more trouble for Aunt Agatha, and I got to work editing.

  The next morning was Thanksgiving, and I had an early gig at Robert Restaurant, which overlooked the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade route. This was my second year of doing this; I treated it as a fun challenge wherein I would attempt to play the theme music of every float as it passed by. Some, like Snoopy and SpongeBob, were easy. Others, however, proved to be more of a challenge; Hello Kitty got the Sailor Moon theme song, and Buzz Lightyear got “Space Oddity.” (By now, my perfectionist days were over.) After my shift, I raced back to Astoria to release the new video and then drove home to New Jersey to spend what was left of the holiday with my parents and sister.

  I logged on to my parents’ computer to check the view count as soon as I arrived, and a familiar feeling of excitement washed over me. The video had racked up twenty thousand views in a matter of hours, and it was already being featured in major—albeit Canadian—publications such as the Vancouver Sun and the Calgary Herald. The comments on the video ranged from the hilarious to the abusive, but a theme was quickly emerging across them: an enthusiastic endorsement of the inclusion of the hyperactive “Tambourine Guy.”

  Now, if you’re watching the video after viewing many later appearances by Tambourine Guy, it’s clear that this is as restrained a performance by Tim as it gets. But for newcomers to the character, it was just over the top enough to have viewers speculating on whether it was all an act or if this man was genuinely that enthused to be playing tambourine in this video. The beautiful thing is that both interpretations are correct. The sheer joy that Tim radiates during his performances as Tambourine Guy is infectious. There’ve been times when he’s made an appearance at a show, and I’ve felt as surprised and excited as the audience when he walked onstage, even when I knew he was going to be there.

  At first glance, it’s ridiculous to see Tim paired with so many phenomenal singers and musicians, but after seeing him in action, it actually makes perfect sense. Tim embodies the ethos of Tambourine Guy like a champ, representing the desire of every audience member to be onstage, performing alongside so many great musicians—regardless of who they are. Tambourine Guy is living the dream, and you can’t help but root for him for it. He also represents what A Motown Tribute to Nickelback came to symbolize in my musical development: the commitment to always have fun in whatever I create. After all, having fun is contagious.

  A Motown Tribute to Nickelback was a huge success, landing me all over the Internet as the “Motown Nickelback Guy.” I even gave a pseudo-satirical, academia-like interview about it to the Village Voice, tapping into some variation of the Gordon Hunter character from my college days. The biggest surprise to come of the whole nutty idea, however, was a phone call from a woman named Lara, a booking agent for Live Nation, North America’s biggest concert promoter.

  “We’re booking a festival in British Columbia called ‘Live at Squamish,’ and we wanted to see if A Motown Tribute to Nickelback could perform,” she explained, audibly attempting to suppress a chuckle, lest I take my life’s work of revamping Nickelback too seriously.

  “I would love to… but, just so we’re clear, we’re not actually a band. We only do that one song.”

  “Don’t worry, I know. I’ve been following the story. Do you think you could do other Nickelback songs, too, though, if you had the time?”

  “Sure,” I said, as another idea dawned on me, and I began to gush. “So, I also do jazz versions of contemporary pop songs. I bet I could make a bigger show out of this. And I’ve got this video game thing, it’s a secret, but—”

  “Actually,” she said, cutting my daydream short, “we’re only looking for Nickelback songs.”

  Foiled, I had been pigeonholed yet again. First, I was Ragtime ’80s Piano Guy, and now I was Motown Nickelback Guy. I felt for the “Where’s the Beef?” lady.

  Despite my initial misgivings, it was a neat opportunity. After a few emails and phone calls, A Motown Tribute to Nickelback was officially booked for Live at Squamish, a legitimate festival headlining real acts, like Chromeo and The Tragically Hip.

  Since we had no press photo or bio, and Live Nation was hesitant to use the low-resolution video still that I’d provided, I organized an impromptu, faux-dramatic photo shoot for us in The Cloisters. Tim was the only one smiling, of course. I also drafted a bio describing us as a group that “painstakingly translates every song in the Nickelback catalogue into the Motown genre.” I liked to think of us as some kind of bizarre fraternal order of mad scientists, dissecting every new Nickelback song and turning out Motown remakes.

  Lara and Live Nation helped us assemble all the press materials we needed to qualify as a legitimate act, but that didn’t mean everyone viewed us that way. When our name appeared on the festival fliers, most people assumed it to be a joke played by a disgruntled intern and had a good laugh about it in the comments section of the festival’s Facebook page. Th
e solution, I decided, was for us to record an album; after all, we needed to learn a set’s worth of Nickelback songs regardless, and anything we could get online before then would help to build our fan base. But making a full album required first having the money to do it. My savings were still paltry, and the festival fee didn’t even cover our flights to Vancouver, so I turned to Kickstarter to raise the funds.

  I’m not sure whether the hundreds of people who pledged to the Motown Tribute to Nickelback Kickstarter were genuine fans or just supporters of weird projects in general, but either way, we easily cleared our goal of raising a few thousand dollars. We were ecstatic, but there wasn’t much time to bask in the glory of our Kickstarter success; we had a big show to work toward and an album to plan.

  So began the Summer of Nickelback.

  When it comes to remaking modern songs in older styles, especially modern songs that have a less-than-sterling reputation in the public’s eye, there’s a fine line to be trod between tribute and parody. Though I recognized and appreciated the humorous aspects of the Motown Nickelback concept, I never wanted the project to drift too far toward parody. I was lucky to have bandmates who felt the same way. A true professional, Drue was able to set aside ego and shake off his friends’ ribbing when he took on the not-insignificant task of memorizing the lyrics to eight Nickelback songs. I’ve learned that there’s something much more admirable about taking these song transformations seriously and not giving in to peer pressure to deliver everything with a wink and a nod. That it’s possible to celebrate and explore much-maligned songs without mockery has become something of a guiding principle for me whenever I’m approaching new material.

  In addition to recording the album in Brooklyn, we also shot a few episodes of a mockumentary titled The Road to Squamish. We had fun playing exaggerated versions of ourselves and filming short sketches around Astoria. (The trope of the band that takes itself way too seriously has always appealed to me.) We wanted to make a great impression and put on an awesome show, but at the same time, I was still hesitant to take my own work completely seriously. In my mind, we were a troupe of musical pranksters, thumbing our noses at the establishment and willing to piss off both Nickelback fans and haters alike in our quest to make interesting music.

  We departed from JFK two days before the festival began, flying to Vancouver and staying at the airport hotel before catching a cab to Squamish. Since we couldn’t afford hotel rooms for the rest of the days, I had asked in advance on social media if anyone would be willing to let us crash at their home, and one very kind family with a nice, large basement and several air mattresses obliged. They even took us sightseeing in the mountains the next day, and during our outing, we were recognized by a couple of fans—the first time that had ever happened to me. It was my first time out of the country, and it was shaping up to be a memorable one.

  The actual festival debut of A Motown Tribute to Nickelback was, indeed, one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Everything about it was exciting: our trailer, whose door was marked “A Motown Tribute to Nickelback”; the artist-only tent stocked with free snacks and beer; the pre-show sound check in which we pretended to know what we were doing (“Can I get a little more 1K in my monitor?”) but really hadn’t a clue. It was obvious to us that we’d been booked for our novelty value, but still, we felt like the mischievous upstarts who had somehow conned their way into the exclusive music world. If nothing else came out of this, we were thrilled just knowing that we’d succeeded in making some ridiculous idea debuted on the Internet come to life on a big stage for a night.

  There were about a hundred and fifty people gathered before us at the start of our set. Not a robust showing, but significant nonetheless because each and every one of those hundred and fifty people was very obviously a fan… and we’d never seen A Motown Tribute to Nickelback fans before. One girl had even hand-lettered a very attention-grabbing, oversized “I LOVE YOU TAMBOURINE GUY!” sign, which, as you can imagine, sent Tim over the moon.

  Something magical began to transpire as our set got under way. Right before our very eyes, the audience doubled, then doubled again, and then doubled again, until the energy emanating from the crowd had reached a fever pitch and everyone was singing along to us (well, to Nickelback, anyway). The high point of the show for us involved the tossing onstage of an article of intimate clothing by an adoring young lady during the appropriately titled song “Rockstar.” It was insanity, and we were relishing every second of it.

  We buzzed with the high from that performance for quite some time, even keeping our suits on after the set so that we could walk back and forth across the festival grounds and be recognizable to fans. There were a few post-show interviews given that probably should be destroyed, seeing as we were drunk on Canadian beer and fleeting fame. It was my first taste of the life of a successful touring musician, and at nearly thirty-one years of age, with a decade of trying to make it happen under my belt, it was intoxicating.

  THE QUIET BIRTH OF POSTMODERN JUKEBOX

  Contrary to popular belief, an “overnight success” has often been years in the making. In the same way that we’re only able to see the tip of the iceberg that’s above water, the general public really only gets to see the “overnight” part of a success story.

  A truly successful project generally takes years to build and involves a series of smaller successes punctuated by a few failures. Eventually, a critical mass of attention is reached, and the project gets launched into the mainstream, where it circulates widely, and its identity is cemented in its current form—a form that, intentionally or otherwise, rarely pays obvious homage to the years of blood, sweat, tears, and more rudimentary sounds that engendered it. Such was the case for Postmodern Jukebox.

  Around the time of our Motown Nickelback triumph, I had the idea for a YouTube series revolving around the creation of an alternate universe of covers of top Billboard hits, featuring a variety of guest musicians and vocalists. I didn’t envision much structure to the format: Invite some friends over, shove a page of hastily penned sheet music into their hands, and hit Record. Often, I’d found, the simplest of formulas lead to the most exciting results.

  Hearing Miche Braden add her masterful vocal style to my “Tainted Love” arrangement on BioShock Infinite had inspired me, and I was ready to start bringing vocalists and instrumentalists into my YouTube world. Naturally, I kept it in the family, and the musicians I selected for the first video all had been classmates of mine at Hartt: vocalist Emma Walker, saxophonist Ben Golder-Novick, bassist Chris Anderson (from both The Sesha Loop and Gordon Hunter & The Wandering Rocks), and harpist Brandee Younger. Scanning the Billboard Top 10, I settled on a song that seemed to have potential: “Paparazzi,” a hit from the debut album of an up-and-coming artist named Lady Gaga. It had a pleasant minor key verse with a jazzy melody that would adapt well.

  The shoot for the video was a laid-back affair. The gang showed up at my basement apartment and, after a lengthy ordeal involving the maneuvering of an unwieldy harp through a back alleyway rife with stray cats, we got to work. It was a pretty loose arrangement, even by my 2010 standards. I gave chord charts and vague instruction to aim for a quasi-Latin feel to Chris, Brandee, and Ben, and then we just kind of ran with it.

  After recording, I synced the audio to the video on iMovie and placed a music video–style lower-third title in the bottom-right corner of the frame. I sat there for a minute as the cursor blinked, trying to think of a catchy name for this series. Finally, I had an idea that seemed good enough: I highlighted the text box and typed “Postmodern Jukebox.”

  “Postmodern Jukebox” felt like a placeholder at the time, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to fit the project I had in mind: Postmodern because it questioned the historical walls between genres and blended the old with the new, and Jukebox because it showcased pop songs that would be familiar to a lot of people. Of course, I had no idea if the name—or even the project—would stick for more than a
couple weeks. All I knew was that it sounded smart, it was somewhat self-explanatory, and—most importantly—it would look cool on a t-shirt.

  The first Postmodern Jukebox video received only a couple thousand views in its first week, but I believed that the concept had vast potential as a vehicle for collaboration with talented vocalists. The video I filmed soon after—a moody take on a new Rihanna song called “Only Girl” that featured Brandee’s friend Niia on vocals—demonstrated this clearly. Smooth and mellow yet also pitch perfect, Niia’s voice was stunning. I’d first heard her on another video she’d done with Brandee, and despite having already garnered worldwide recognition as the featured vocalist in Wyclef Jean’s hit “Sweetest Girl,” Niia was incredibly receptive to my invitation to collaborate on something more homegrown. We decided to meet up at a rehearsal studio in New York City and see if we could brainstorm some ideas.

  Everything about Niia was unique, right down to her appearance. She was tall and slender, wearing a black, baggy sweatshirt, a large streak of dyed gray hair through her high ponytail. She was shy—an obvious introvert—but as she warmed up, she came to life, spilling forth creative visions of concept albums and charming, self-deprecating musings.

  Niia was offered lots of record deals after singing on a platinum record at age eighteen, but she hadn’t felt that any of them were the right fit for her—a self-described “weirdo” with a Frederic Chopin tattoo and an obsessive love for jazz and James Bond movies. I was struck by her ability to follow her vision so strongly at such a young age. While I could relate to feeling like an outsider, I knew nothing about having a record go platinum and still feeling that way. She wasn’t interested in mainstream attention or being cool, Niia explained to me. She wanted to find her own voice as an artist and express it in ways that were intriguing to her. As I listened to Niia speak with such earnest conviction about her artistry and values, I knew I was in the presence of someone who would help inspire me to soar creatively, too.