Secondhand Serenade: Firsthand Experience at Making It Big

Singer/Songwriter John Vesely knows about hard work.  As the man behind Secondhand Serenade, Vesely does it all.  For his 2008 album, “A Twist In My Story,” Vesely played all of the instruments except the drums.  “I played the guitars, the bass, the keyboard and sang all of the vocals.  It’s still a solo project of mine but we added full production.”

And as Secondhand Serenade, Vesely played over 200 shows last year.  “I’ve been touring for over two years straight and I feel like I’ve learned a lot about the music industry through that.  I’ve obviously gotten better at performing - it makes you a better musician.  I’ve matured and grown since this all started and that helps me write songs too.  The album that we just recorded that’s not released yet is more mature and more developed - it’s all part of the growth process.” 

Solo also explains how Vesely made Secondhand Serenade so popular that in 2006 he was Myspace’s No. 1 Independent Artist for months.  “The most important part of the equation was me having a product - music - and having it be relatively good quality,” Vesely said.  “The fact that I went and took a chance and recorded an album by myself, and the quality of it - I paid for studio time and an engineer - allowed me to take the next step… making it into a business.  If you are going to spread the word you have to have something to spread the word with…. Myspace was still young and I spent like four or five hours a day networking on it and I would interact with maybe 500 people a day online and ask them to check out my music and say that half of them would add me as their friend and half of those people would become fans who would potentially go to shows and half of those people said, ‘Hey, I’ll buy the cd… I can order it or I can get it on iTunes….’  You do that every day and it’s not a bad start.  I started to increase over time and people started to spread the word by themselves.  It’s just a matter of persistence and trying to think a little bit differently.  At that point it was still kind of new.  But you always have to reinvent yourself because nothing ever stays the way it is.”

Vesely sees the current music market just as positive. “Of course these days the singles market is stronger especially with the induction of iTunes. However, the only difference is now with the singles market the consumer can choose the single… of course radio kind of guides them into a direction that the label chooses… but whatever song they want to get on the album they can get that song or just the songs they want.  So in that situation some people say ‘Oh it sucks and people aren’t going to buy any albums,’ but then again people that wouldn’t have bought the album because they only liked one song are downloading the songs now so it’s like a catch 22.  It’s true, if you like one song on an album you usually don’t go and buy the album… you just illegally download it, but now with iTunes you can just go and download it and what else you want.  It just makes it easier.”

When Vesely writes music, how it happens may depend on the situation but it usually starts as a melody in his head.  “It’s the kind of thing that you don’t really turn off - there’s always something going on up there,”  he said,  “and I start building it from there.  It depends on if I have something to write about and if I do then it goes really quickly.  Some songs have been written in 15-20 minutes and some songs over the course of six months, so it’s different for each individual song.”

But sometimes just being in a different place is what an artist needs to create.  According to Vesely, “‘A Twist In My Story’ was a cool album for me because I was in Los Angeles for the first time and I was writing and recording and experiencing new things and it was a total clash compared to what my life was before.  It really helped me kind of delve into the creative process.”
Secondhand Serenade will be at the Venue at the Hub Saturday, October 3, and according to Vesely, “It’s going to be a good show, really dynamic and it’s very interactive.  It’s big and fun and we’re excited to come back to Fargo - Fargo’s actually one of our favorite places to play.  We love the venue there and we have a lot of fun in Fargo.  We’ve had probably one of the craziest bus parties ever in Fargo so we always like coming back!”

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INFO:

Who: Secondhand Serenade
When: Sat, Oct. 3, 5:30pm
Where: The Venue @ The Hub
Cost: $19 in advance, $21 day of - All ages