Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'm told that writing about music is like dancing about
architecture. That may be true, but our next guest in the Inkwell
conference, Tom Hilton, started a music ezine in 2013 and has been
showcasing and interviewing independent artists across a variety of
genres over 500 issues in 13 years.

In early 2025, after I released my CD on Bandcamp, he reached out to
me and asked if he could interview me. I agreed, and it was
published about a year ago. That issue of Aldora Britain Records can
be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TciPSWRf2u5bWrNP8Niw-pFn0M8hpw2d/view

A recent edition (#500) of ABR can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d8zXy_F1evsBOuFV5_5E63F0cuLz2cmB/view

He also produces 5-song sampler CDs of his subjects' work and
distributes them on Bandcamp. They offer readers a great way to get
exposed to new artists and to follow up on those who have appeared
in ABR's pages. The most recent of these (#101) includes my tune
"For All" and is available at
https://thealdorabritainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-captain-aint-qualified

This topic is an AMA with Tom Hilton <abr2013>, discussing his
experience publishing a music zine during an unprecedented period of
transformational turbulence in the digital media environment and the
integration of massive streaming services disintermediating
traditional distribution models.
  

    
Joining us to help lead the discussion is Joe Hobaica <joeyx> and
Mark McDonough <mcdee>.
  

    
Hello The Well, very excited to be here and to discuss music, what
better conversation can you have? As Axon said in his introduction,
Aldora Britain Records is a worldwide community and a platform for
independent, underground artists and bands. It's all about
spreading their art to new listeners and making it more accessible,
in this current 'streaming' era, where it is simultaneously
easier to get music 'out there' and more difficult to get it
listened to! Thanks again and I am looking forward to all questions
and the conversation that follows. 
  

    
Mark McDonough here. I have a long and weird background in music,
including an attempt to start a satellite-based music service long
before SiriusXM existed.  I demoted myself to simply being a fan a
long time ago, but I remain interested in music and the music
industry.
  

    
Welcome! I'm a working musician and a former music journalist, so this
discussion is of interest to me on many levels.
  

    
Hello Mark and David, thanks for your introductions. Your
backgrounds sound very interesting also, especially the
satellite-based music service! It's amazing how music has brought
us together too, looking forward to this conversation. 
  

    
Hi Tom, nice to meet you. I am one of the hosts of the NewMusic
conference here on the Well. I'm coming from more of a punk
rock/indie rock background. I had an indie record label in the early
90s and am always excited to find out about new stuff. Welcome. 
  

    
Hi Tom, and thanks for making time to join us here. 

As I mentioned in the topic intro, Tom and I have a history. He
reached out to me around this time last year, after my CD came out
on Bandcamp, for an interview. It was a great experience, and when
he recently asked if I wanted to have a tune featured on an upcoming
sampler he was creating, I jumped on it. I like the way he runs the
store.

More than my own engagement with ABR, I was fascinated by the zine
itself, and how it had kept publishing in such a volatile digital
media environment for more than a decade. 

I'd be curious to hear a little of the history of ABR over 13 years.
Can you give us a capsule timeline of how you came to do this, and
some of the high points of building an audience and the channels you
use to reach it?
  

    
Hello Joey, nice to meet you to. Glad to hear from a former label
owner. Great work!

Great questions, Ax! So, 13 years is a long old time. But I'll try
to do a quick overview of how it came to be. It all began when I was
16. I was music-mad, my true passion, whether it be listening or
playing. At that time, I lived in a rural part of Scotland, so
things were quite limited as to what I could do, it wasn't exactly
the big city! Anyway, I started digging online about local music and
bands closer to me, and that's how it began. I then got interested
in independent and underground music from around the world. It was
originally a blog site and now it has grown into the e-zine, the
Bandcamp compilations, etcetera. 

A high point from that initial 'era' was ending up in contact
with The Empty Hearts, who I thought were just a new Stateside
garage rock band. It turned out they were the side project of Elliot
Easton of The Cars and Clem Burke of Blondie. It was a lot of fun
talking to those guys!
  

    
Ha, I'm just wrapping up Bill Janovitz's bio of the Cars and the
Empty Hearts and EE's projects get some time. 
  

    
Welcome, Tom! ABR looks very interesting!

I started out writing music for video games, detoured into designing
audio effects software, and now I'm focused on producing my own
music. I love songs that can make me laugh and cry at the same time,
so that's something I often strive for with my own songs.

I spent the last year recording my latest album, "Even Without You,"
with 48 musicians (not all at once!). I'm loving the magic of
blending written scores with improvisation. 

I'm also loving the freedom of not giving a care about the music
biz. I write these for me and give 'em away for free.
  

    
This discussion is publicly accessible, meaning anyone can read it,
whether or not they are a member of the WELL, the online community
platform hosting this two-week discussion.

For non-members, here's a short link for easy access:
<https://tinyurl.com/42ru6tuz>.

The full public link is:
<https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/562/Tom-Hilton-Aldora-Britain-
Record-page01.html>.

Both links will take you to the first page of the public
conversation. If you are not a WELL member, we encourage you to
visit regularly as the discussion will expand across multiple pages.
Use the pager (dropdown menus at the top and bottom of the page) to
navigate through the conversation as it evolves.

Feel free to share these links on social media or with anyone who
might be interested.

While non-members cannot post directly, we welcome your comments and
questions. You can email them to inkwell (at) well.com, and we'll
post them here on your behalf.

If you'd like to participate in more discussions like this,
consider joining the WELL: <https://www.well.com/join/>. The WELL is
an online community with vibrant, thoughtful conversations on a wide
range of topics--an excellent alternative to the fast-paced,
drive-by posting on social media.

This conversation will continue through the month of March, though
it will remain active and participants may continue to post. Thanks
for being part of it!
  

    
Tom, you may want to share the public participation links (in the
response above) with your readership, to encourage them to
participate in the discussion. I'd love to hear from some of your
subjects!

It seems like you are putting out a new edition every few days
lately. I'd be interested in understanding your editorial workflow,
and how you keep all the balls in the air, as well as some insight
into the selection process, and how you find subjects to interview.
  

    

> I love songs that can make me laugh and cry at the same time, so that's
> something I often strive for with my own songs.

I helped Earl with a couple of the tracks on his new record, after having
been a fan of his work for many years. Great songs!
  

    
Hi Tom, I'm looking forward to the discussion here. Sadly, I'm not a
musician, nor involved with the industry in any way (aside from
listening) so it's doubtful I'll be contributing much but I did want
to say that I'll be checking in on your E-Zine regularly from now
on. 

This decision is based on the list "Top 10 Most Influential Records
of All Time as voted for by our featured artists!" in the most
recent copy, which, if you remove some of the many Beatles albums
and The Beach Boys, would all get into my own top 10. So clearly we
have something in common. That and the fact you're featuring Madis,
who is from just down from me here in Poland (I'm in Warsaw - he's
in Krakow). Not necessarily my go-to music genre but always happy to
cheer for Polish music. 

I really enjoy finding new music and yet it is so hard to do without
putting in what for most people is too much effort - me included a
lot of the time if I'm honest - but it is such a rewarding
experience so I wish you and all your featured artists well.
  

    
Hey there - welcome tom, et.al.
My earliest memories are of being entranced by music - Never
considered I'd do anything else professionally - The first 15 years
or so of my professional life were as a player, concerts mostly
then.  While never not playing - and slowly in drips and drabs for
60 years composing, I transitioned to media technologist and have
spent the last not quite 30 years at NPR (the mother ship, not a
station).  

Tom - I'm intrigued with the way your distributing the zine, on a
google share drive.  Why that choice?
  

    
Joey - The Empty Hearts were a great band, for sure! Down-to-earth
garage rock and roll, and with those guys, all having 'bigger fish
to fry' shall we say, you could tell they were doing it for the love
of it. And this is a wonderful thing, especially when it is all
about the music! 

Earl - thanks for the welcome! That is really interesting too. I
have found that a few of the artists I have worked with in the past
have 'side gigs', such as music for video games. Thanks for sharing!
Some of those jingles in games from my youth have definitely stayed
with me. 

Axon - I will share the public link on the ABR socials tomorrow. I
appreciate the tip! And yes, I am keeping busy at late. You may have
noticed that I have shortened the e-zine so that I can keep up with
a daily workflow. I also think a smaller e-zine of about 20ish pages
allows each artist to be better spotlighted. The selection process
is simple, music that I like, although you may notice that is quite
a broad church! As for where I find artists, it is exclusively
Bandcamp, that is an amazing resource and very easy to navigate.

David - songs that can make you laugh and cry, those are the best!

Ian - nice to hear from you! I think the beauty of music is that you
don't have to be 'part of the industry', music is such a big part of
everyone's life, whether we put a record on the turntable or it's on
in the background throughout our everyday. It soundtracks our lives!
I love compiling those 'Influential Records' list. I do agree, the
60s can be a bit limited, a lot of Beatles albums! Ha! But I have
done a few different years now, the most recent being 1975. Check
that out here: https://bit.ly/aldorabritainrecords-magazine-533

David - you certainly have a fascinating path through music also.
Thanks for sharing! I am always curious about earliest music
memories, can you pinpoint anything specifically? And a great
question from you too. This gets asked a lot. I want to avoid
becoming 'just another site' or 'just another blog'. And I want to
keep that old-school magazine feel. So, whilst it is easily
accessible, each magazine has its own unique link. That's the logic.
Maybe flawed, maybe not, but it is certainly unique! 
  

    
>As for where I find artists, it is exclusively Bandcamp, that is an
amazing resource and very easy to navigate.

That's the sort of endorsement an internet property might want to
share more widely. And I have to agree about Bandcamp, as an artist.
In a marketplace dominated by money trying to find the most
efficient way to rip off creatives, Bandcamp seems refreshingly
nontoxic.
  

    
I can't say enough positive things about Bandcamp. I find that on
other platforms (YouTube, Spotify, the streamers) you end up just
fumbling about, not really finding stuff that is really to your
liking. And most of the stuff that is made available to you is
pushed to you... whereas, on Bandcamp, it has a really independent
feel. It is like an online record store, where you could literally
find anything, from anywhere in the world, independent and
underground or some bigger acts too. A Scottish folk musician, an
Australian garage rock band, Brazilian progs, or Spanish punks. I
also think Bandcamp breaks down barriers in that way, whether it is
style or location in the world. It has certainly encouraged me to
push past though pre-established genre borders that you find in the
'music industry', very outdated. Good music is good music!
  

    
OK, you have filled me with a desire to check it out far more
seriously!
  

    
Yeah. I don't buy much music these days, but when I do, Bandcamp is
my favorite source.
  

    
Seriously, Bandcamp is the place to go, it is like a treasure trove
for music. Anything and everything, with an emphasis on the artist,
and also physical media, and what is better than a LP, or even a CD?
Miss those days! Although cassettes never won me over!!!
  

    
A friend of mine still has the fancy Nakamichi cassette player I
sold to him decades ago.  Not a high fidelity medium, cassettes. 
T'was a beautiful piece of gear, though, and I think it was the
cheapest one in their line.
  

    
The first Friday of each month (Friday after this Friday, for
example) Bandcamp takes zero commission and all of the money goes to
the artist. Take a look around and time some purchases for Good
Friday, Apr 3.
  

    
For me it's not just the physicality of the media but also the way
that encourages you to play the whole album, or at least a side. So
much better than just individual tracks on a playlist.

In terms of the format in which I purchase and play music recently,
I'm following the same route as I took back in the day when these
things were invented. The circle so far has been - vinyl, tape, CD,
file, vinyl, CD - I'm skipping the tape part this time round as I
don't have enough pencils! 

I went many years without a CD player despite having boxes full of
them in the basement but I recently bought a new one and I'm
enjoying it. Although it does fill my head with same old arguments
about CD versus vinyl! (spoiler alert - vinyl wins)

With the artists you promote, are you finding they focus more on
individual tracks or are they compiling coherent albums? 
  

    
I think the cassette is like the marmite of the physical music
world! Sorry to offend any cassette lovers out there! Each to their
own, of course!

Bandcamp Friday is such a cool concept, grew out of the COVID world,
when artists couldn't play live or tour. I always love to make a
purchase or two on those days, and of course, the Aldora Britain
Records Bandcamp tends to see a surge, which is nice to see that
people are discovering independent and underground music!

My personal preference these days is a CD. I think the 'Vinyl
Revival' has made the format slightly too expensive for me. I buy a
lot of albums, so from an affordability standpoint, it has to go
that way. But holding a 12-inch piece of artwork is still such a
buzz!

So, I am a big album listener, and that reflects in my work with
Aldora Britain Records. When searching on Bandcamp, I tend to select
a few genres I like and then also tick the 'available on CD and/or
vinyl box'. This often tailors my results to EPs and albums, rather
than single tracks. Most of my interviews in the e-zine (literally
about 99.9%) will focus on album releases too. I find it so
fascinating to delve into that process, the writing of the album,
the recording, the release, and its life after release. 

I also prefer a full album from a listening standpoint, as it tells
a story, even when it is not a concept album. It is a time capsule
and an insight into that musician's art and their story. I hope that
the album will make a comeback, as we find ourselves moving towards
a 'singles era', especially with the attention span of the general
public!

Axon, who organised my collaboration with The Well, when we
collaborated through Aldora Britain Records, we delved deep on his
album, Pub Fare, a fantastic eleven-track collection.