Weathervane Music Organization to celebrate fourth season with concert at Johnny Brenda's

Weathervane Music Organization will be celebrating the launch of the launch of their fourth season this Saturday night at Johnny Brenda's with a concert featuring Twin Sister, Ava Luna, Steven A. Clark and a bunch of special guests. We caught up with their deputy director, Peter English, to get the low down on what they're all about and how they shattered their fundraising goal for this upcoming season. Tickets for the show can be found HERE.  

When and how did the Weathervane Music Organization come to be? How did you meet founder Brian McTear?

Weathervane Music was founded by Brian McTear in 2009. Through 15 years of being a record producer he saw how challenging it was to be an artist and wanted to create a new way the community could be involved in creating new music and building new careers.

I met Brian in late 2009 when he was producing an old band of mine, Sex Piano. We were as ridiculous as the name suggests, but Brian loved it and we hit it off. I offered to volunteer and he asked if I could edit some behind the scenes footage for him. Things just kind of built from there. That was more than two and half years ago. It's been a wild ride.

What's the overall goal of Weathervane? 

Weathervane Music creates community funded projects that support independent music. Our goal is to connect audiences and artists in new and authentic ways and to make it clear that both artist and audience are critical in bringing new music to our culture.

Our flagship project is Shaking Through, which is a documentary series about the birth of a song. Each year we bring 10 emerging artists into a studio here in Fishtown to track one song in two days. We document the process and release the song, videos about the artist and the technical process, as well as the raw audio for our community to remix and learn from. Through one song we bring the music community--artists, fans, aspiring creators, industry folk--together to explore and create. It's been a thrill to watch the community grow.

It's pretty incredible that you set a goal of $9,000 and raised over $21,000. How does that feel? What will that money go towards?

Raising nearly $22,000 feels unreal. It's one of those things that sits deep in the back of your head, but are too afraid to say. It really blew me out of the water.

While it's big for us, I think it really says something amazing about the independent music community and how willing they are to support new and innovative ideas. It's a sign that after all the chaos and turmoil of the last 15 years, we're working towards a new equilibrium. Our fans are a critical component of that, and we feel so grateful for their involvement.

All the money we raised goes right to funding our next season. We put a lot of sweat and tears into each season, including making the opportunity free for our artists, so this money makes a huge chunk of next year possible.

Have you used Kickstarter in the past? How did they turn out?

We've done a Kickstarter campaign each of the last three years, raising a little bit more each time. We get better every year, but this one really stands out as something special. So we feel like we're on the right track.

We get asked about Kickstarter a lot, especially by musicians, and we're really lucky because we have consistent, hi-quality programming that can engage an audience month-in month-out. This means we have thousands of subscribers who engage with our work multiple times a year. Running a campaign off that is challenging, but very do-able.

How have past artists contributed to the project?

We are lucky to have the support of nearly everyone we've ever worked with. Our list of curators has grown to include some really big names many of whom donated signed LPs for us to use for our Kickstarter which helped us raise a big chunk of our goal. It is such an honor.

For us, Shaking Through is a community. We often invite past artists and curators to make guest appearances on new episodes. It really brings it full circle.  Past artists are also welcome to come by when we're shooting, though we've had a couple shoots that have come close to resembling parties at times. I've had to put on the brakes when that happens, we've only got one day to track the song!

Tell us a little bit about the Night Panther shoot. Who curated the session? How did it come to be?

Night Panther was brought to us by Connor McGlynn or runs an awesome blog called I Guess I'm Floating, as well as a music label called Small Plates Records with our dear friend Mark Schoneveld. Night Panther has former members of Drink up Buttercup (whose name got thrown around a lot in the last 2-3 years) and when we heard their demos we knew we could do something amazing.

The studio we shoot at, Miner St Recordings in Fishtown has amazing 10 foot windows, which during the day give us all the light we need. But in the winter when the days are short we like to shoot at night and use dramatic lighting to transform the space. Night Panther has a mystique and a theatricality that I wanted to accentuate, so I used film lights and gels to paint the session in bold hues. Expect lots of deep reds and blues.

If you had to pick, name one or two of your favorite Shaking Through sessions. Be sure to include why..

My favorite episodes have the right blend of great people and a great end product. There are so many that were amazing experiences (Secret Mountains, Snowmine, Strand of Oaks, Filthybird, Family Band) but I'd say the Purling Hiss episode tops my list. They are such great guys, so the shoot was a blast. Plus Adam from The War on Drugs curated/produced, who we love working with. I also tried out a number of new ideas (split screens, voice over) that really suited the episode. It ended up feeling like an hommage to the original Woodstock film, which made me really happy!

But be on the look out for new episodes this season, we've shot three and they may be my favorite yet.

How do you and your team approach documenting a Shaking Through session? 

The key is preparation--we do a LOT of pre-production for each episode. It all starts with getting the right band, so we work carefully with our curators to pick the best artist who has the unique mix of story, personality and musicianship. Once selected, I spend time getting to know the artist, building rapport and mapping out potential story-lines/interview questions. Recording can be a vulnerable process, and we ask them to do it under serious time-constraints AND with cameras in their faces, so having their trust is crucial. They need to know I'm on their side. Based on their vibe I put together a visual approach that I discuss with my cinematographer and research lighting schemes or scout locations around the city. Meanwhile, Brian talks with them about their production ideas and figures out his game plan for recording the song. Our goal is to answer as many questions we have before we even start shooting.

Day of, I have 2-3 camera people running throughout the day. I have my eye out for how my initial story ideas are evolving and make sure I capture both the story AND the technical / musical aspects of the process. They are marathon shoots often, but if we've done our job, they go smoothly and everyone leaves feeling great.

Weathervane and Shaking Through have gained attention from several media outlets including Pitchfork, NPR, among others, and was even nominated for a Vimeo award. Can you talk about the Vimeo award experience and the reaction from other media outlets?

Shaking Through was shortlisted for Best Original Series in 2012 at the Vimeo Awards Festival, which was amazing. To be acknowledged as one of the best series of the year by people who spend all their time with online content was a big deal to me, it was very validating. My team puts so much work into each episode.

What's on the 2013 agenda for Weathervane? Where do you see the project going?

We feel like we're getting better each year. There are so many things we did this last year that we want to do again this year. We've got some amazing new episodes already in the works. We're talking to some amazing curators and bands, we have some really cool gear to showcase from amazing sponsors. We've got a good feeling.