October 21, 2010
Sister Hazel – Jett Beres

Cathy: For the record, can you state your name and what you do in the band?
Jett: For the record, my name is George Michael and I am addicted to crack. Nah, my name is Jett Beres, and I'm the bass player for Sister Hazel.

C: Your new album, Heartland Highway, was just released earlier this month. What is your favorite song off of the new album, and why?
J: Of course, all of the ones that I wrote. –laughs- Hmm, favorite song. That's always a tough one.

Well, the album was just released last week, and it was a great release - we hit number one on rock on iTunes and Amazon, those were good benchmarks for us, and were very close on the heels of our last album, Release, which was released a year ago. We typically take three years in between records and release other things in between - holiday records, b-side records, live DVDs... But we were in such a -- I'm going to digress for a minute and then get to your question -- creative mode from Release that we just continued writing. So it's a little bit of an experiment for us, releasing something so close. Are the fans going to be as excited about it? Is it going to affect things? So far, so good. Everyone seems to still be excited over the release of new material, even that close.

My favorite song right now is one we just started playing. We only get to play about three songs on the new album, because we have so many songs due to being a band for fifteen years. It's not like we can come out and play the whole new album, people would literally go bananas. Everybody's got their favorite song and there are eight or nine songs that we HAVE to play every night so that people can get their money's worth. We really can only fit in two to three new songs a night. One of those that we're playing live that I really like is a song that Ryan wrote with a friend of ours named Aslyn, who's a female pianist/composer/artist, and it's called uh... "Track #2" -laughs- You just have to find it, my mind is blanking right now... But that's my favorite song to play live right now.

But, the last song on the album is a song I wrote called "Behind the Sun," which is part of a trilogy that I did for the album. We'd never done anything like that before, and I had this concept in my mind and wrote it. The last song in it is about my mother passing away a couple years ago -- not to bum you out or anything. I’m a songwriter, I had a lot of emotion, and I wanted to write a song about it... The path on this trilogy was to write from the perspective of three women in my life who have affected me the most, starting with my wife, my daughter, and finally my mother. The third one, "Behind the Sun," is a song I wrote about faith and good. It's in the perspective of my mother as if she was talking to me, so I wrote it in a much different way than I'd ever written a song before. I love the way it turned out, and how it stands out as something different from the album and from Sister Hazel. I'm really proud of that one in particular, from both a writing perspective and how the guys came in on it. We all produced our own material on the album, like we did on Release, so the four of us all brought in a certain number of songs and narrowed it down to three each and saw that vision through.

C: Was it hard to narrow down which songs would make it onto the album?
J: It typically is very difficult. All of us being songwriters, we come in with up to 70 songs for an album that we have to narrow down to 12-15 songs. That's usually pretty difficult to process. This one was not because we knew it was up to us individually at the end of the day. There were four of us writing songs, so we each had three slots, so I was very focused on just making sure my trilogy was up to par. We all picked our own three songs.
C: That's awesome. I feel like most of the time a band has only one or two songwriters, so it's really interesting to hear how all of you get involved. You have the exact opposite problem of bands that are scraping for more songs.
J: Yea! We have an endless supply. What's nice about that is that you go through ebbs and flows of writing. I think the fact that we all write keeps the rest of us on our toes. If someone realizes they haven't written anything in 6 months, and one or two of the other guys are working on demos, then they think, "Shit, I better get writing!" It's a friendly competition that makes for strong songwriting. We all expect a certain level to what we bring in. It's definitely a democracy, we all have a say and a vote on who we are and how we define ourselves.

C: What would you say is different about this album than previous ones the band has put out?
J: Every album is different in that we're different people when we write them. We're in different spots in our careers and personal lives and the way the world is around us. We're influenced by the things around us. I have an eight year old daughter. The song "Snow-Globe World," which I wrote about her and her views on the world, is a song about hope and about how we all look at ourselves, and the innocence of a kid... I would not have written a song like that on the last album, a couple years ago. Wherever we are in our lives defines a writing content. In the last album, one of our guys went through a divorce so the songs were a lot heavier, about that and our perspective on it.

I think that all of us coming into our own confidence as songwriters has given us freedom to explore different things, different directions. Whereas at one point we said, "Well, we need to sound like this," now we're like, "Well, we DO sound like that, so where do we take it from there?" Just the five of us in a room are going to sound like Sister Hazel, so how do we stretch that boundary? We're constantly challenging ourselves with stretching boundaries and embracing certain sounds. We've always said that there are no rules, but now there really are no rules. After you put out as many albums as we have, there is a confidence to who you are as a musician and a songwriter, and what you bring to the table. It keeps opening doors creatively every time we're in a room together.

C: Sister Hazel has been a band for over 15 years. What's the biggest thing you've learned in your time with the band?
J: It would be hard to narrow it down to one, there are so many lessons.
C: You can do a couple; I'm not picky on numbers.
J: I personally have learned so many lessons... I think I'm a better husband in my marriage because I've been "married" to four other guys on the road for 15 years. You have to learn to communicate, pick your battles, live together, and rely on each other creatively and financially in business decisions. Working in that kind of environment is constantly teaching lessons on how to fight for what you want when the time is right, or to let go and take a back seat when the time is right, and to trust and have mutual respect for your business partners. Those are just lessons we keep on learning as we go down the road. Musically, I feel it's persistence in the music business, plus talent. You have to be talented and stay good at your craft. You have to be persistent as hell, and have some luck. But, luck is really just capitalizing on moments when they come around. Eventually they do come around, but you just have to keep creating those opportunities for yourself and present yourself when you see an opportunity. That's how we've navigated our career to a certain level of success - by staying in the game and giving 100% all the time on stage. One thing that is always remarkable to me in the band is that I am shocked at how many bands don't appreciate their fans. I mean, truly appreciate their fans.
C: I can agree with that.
J: I get the whole "aloof musician" thing, I get it, but you also have to let fans near and respect the fact that they're not stupid. They're true fans of music, and even better, they're true fans of your music. To respect that, embrace it, and do things for them has been a key to our career. We've created a community.
C: That's awesome. I feel like there are a lot of bands that don't appreciate their fans, like you said, and I just can't understand why. Without their fans, they wouldn't be anywhere.
J: I know! You're not working in a vacuum; the world doesn't work that way. There is purity to it that I see, but you won't last for long. You can be pure and call yourself a pure artist and work in a bubble or a vacuum and hope that people like it, or don't give a shit whether people like it or not. But truthfully, if you operate like that long enough, you're not gonna... I would challenge anyone to name an artist like that; they are few and far between.
C: And if you want to be able to live off of it and have it be a career...
J: Exactly, exactly. You have to stay true to what you are and your creativity because fans will be the first ones to call you out on it if you don't. I think that's a huge piece of the puzzle, too. Staying who you are, and the truth in your music. There has to be that consistent genuineness. We're not trying to be this or that, we are who we are, and this is the kind of music we write. We're going to do our best to get our art out there and respond so that you guys can appreciate it.

C: What do you think is the biggest problem with the music industry currently? If you had the chance to fix it yourself, what would you do?
J: -Silence-
C: I know, it's a loaded question.
J: -Laughs- Yea that is a really difficult question to answer. This entire interview could be based off of that. You could take a lot of different approaches to how to answer that, but they all kind of interconnect eventually. At the end of the day, art is going to come out and artists are going to record it and put it out there. But the problem of the music business is the business.

I'm going to concise it, give you the pinpoint. Once you get something for free, you don't want to pay for it. Once you get apps on your iPhone for free, then a $0.99 app is a lot of money, when normally you'd spend $0.99 on anything. Here's what happened: music became free. People can go, and have been, whether it's legal or not, get artist's music for free. Even though the industry spent the last 8-10 years trying to catch up and make it so that it's difficult for people to do, once downloaders do that it's hard to value music monetarily. That's caused a huge ripple effect through the music industry. So that's one piece of the puzzle, and what that has done alone has gone into everything from how people create their music to how it's distributed. Even down to how we've probably lost a lot of great artists and bands to it because they just can't buy themselves a bean burrito playing music. It's kind of always been the case, but you've got great bands and great artists that just can't afford to do it. That's been a huge part of the problem with the music business, and the fix isn't a one step fix. If there's no money to generate, how do you have a business? You don't. There will always be music and people that want it; we just have to figure out how to find a middle ground to make everyone happy. But the days of throwing money at the wall and hoping it sticks are over. When we were at Universal Records, one multiplatinum artist had to pay for the entire label. That business model is dead, they're incorporating 360 deals in management and touring and every aspect of the bands career to help push them. A huge part of that stems from getting music for free.
C: How do you think that we could go back to that? Is there any way?
J: I don't know. I don't think that going back to that is the answer. I don't have the answer, though, or else I'd be doing it right now. I've been trying to find nooks and crannies and ways for my guys to get their music out there. There are ways, there are lots of ways, but the original model is nonexistent. Record stores are closed. You can't even go to them... You have to go to Target and Best Buy and even then...
C: It's hit or miss if the album is even carried there.
J: Yea! We just put ours out at Best Buy and Target, which is great because we get national distribution there, but they are selling it for $5. Depending on how much it cost to make the album, you could lose money every time you put out a record, unless you sell over 150,000 copies. It's tough for bands to do that. We're lucky we're able to make it work, but most bands out there, big names you've heard of, are coming out and not selling squat because people were able to download it. We got some number that our last album was downloaded like 500,000 times. We sold about 1/5 of that, it's crazy.
C: I think it also goes back to what you said before, about how you guys connect with your fan base. I feel like people will be more willing to go out and buy music when they feel more connected to the artist and their success.
J: Absolutely, like I said, everyone has to find their way in this chaotic world of the music business. For us, that's been the thing. We create fan events. We have a Rock Boat we do every year which has been huge for us. We have a Hazelnut Hang weekend, and all kinds of things. We run a charity, not that it helps us financially, but it helps kids and we've raised over a million dollars for cancer. We're out there doing things and finding what makes us happy. But it's not a conventional record deal where you sign, go out there and get on the radio and sell records from radio.

I heard a crazy number, that like 83% of songs on the radio are bought right now. The percentage of what that equals to in sales is like crazy low. They don't even come close. Before, when we had our hits, it was like: "You have one number one song? You’ll sell 1 million records. You have 2 number one songs? You'll sell 3 million records." That's gone. You have to find different ways to get your music out to people... You didn't know you were going to get that much of an answer out of me -laughs-.

C: I know you've been on both indie and major labels - do you have a preference at this point?
J: No, we don't have a preference. We go for what is best for us at the time, whatever the best situation is. Right now we have a team assembled that helped us put out our album, which is basically our old Universal people that were with us when we put out our album on Universal – the product manager and marketing and radio rep... It's like we're on Universal, but we're independent, because these people have all left and they're finding their own niches. It's like putting together a boutique record label that's really just your key people in place. If you can financially back it, then you have the ability to do it. Most bands can't because they need money and financial backing. Indie gives a lot more control for a band like us, as long as it works financially. Independent works best for our band.

C: Obviously "All for You" is your most recognized/popular song. If you had the ability to choose which song, out of every one the band has released over the years, people took the most notice to, what would it be? Would it be the same song or something different?
J: That's a great question. Wow. No one has ever asked me that question; I thought you were going in like 3 different directions than that. Yes... "All for You" is one of those things, that first song. Everyone's first hit song is how they are recognized, unless you are in that top 2% that has many hits. That was our biggest and first song. Luckily, we've stayed a band and put out a lot of albums since then, so there are actually people that come to our shows who don't actually know about “All for You” and find out about it later. That doesn't define us anymore, luckily, which means I can look at this question without any bias -laughs-. Eight years ago, if you would have asked me this question, I would have been like, "Yea definitely! That song! I'm so sick of it!", but it did open up a lot of doors for us and gave us the ability to go out and play everywhere and get our music out there.

It's a certain type of song that maybe doesn't define us as completely as other songs would. So yes, there are other songs that I think would be better... It's a happy, fun song, and we have many facets to our band. Fans of ours know that. We wouldn't be a band if we were just "All for You." Our true fans have moved on past that, or else they wouldn't still be here. It was a door opener. There were other songs with more musical integrity that I would have liked, though. There's one song called "Champagne High." It’s probably our biggest song, even though it's not like "All for You." But when we play it live, it's one of those songs that connect with people. It's why we've had fans for 10 years, that kind of song. We've got a handful of those, a song called "Change Your Mind" is also one like that, but "Champagne High" is a special song. I really wish that it had a chance to make it. It's a slower song, whereas "All for You" is an upbeat song where people get up and start partying. It's hard to say, a difficult question to answer. It's poppy, and such a small part of who we are, that I do wish our first #1 had a little more musical integrity.

But, I don't forsake that song. It's a huge blessing. The fact we still play it every night is great. Plus, there's something with that song in particular that doesn't get old for some reason. It's not like most hits, where they get so burnt out. That one has a passive nature that makes it listenable a lot of times, which is why it did as great as it did. It's a special song. But yea, I would probably say if I could switch them, maybe switch it to "Champagne High." Maybe.

C: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 things would you bring with you? Note: no transportation devices (aka ways to get off the island) allowed.
J: Can I bring my family?
C: Sure. Misery likes company, I guess.
J: We'd be like the Swiss Family Robinson. Family is my first - my wife and kids. Could I bring a jet ski if I just wanted to hang out and not escape? Wait, my wife and two kids would make three already.
C: Well, they can count as one thing if you want. I'm feeling generous.
J: Okay, my wife and kids. Also, a Chick-Fil-A, an entire one that I could live off of, and... -Silence- I think I've overstepped it; I'll just stick with those two... Wait, sunscreen!

C: Closing Statements?
J: Good luck with your music business endeavors! I hope I wasn't too negative or harsh, but more inspiring -laughs-