Echotone Director Nathan Christ at Rio Rita

Photographs by Benjamin Gustafsson

Two weeks ago I wrote a post about Nathan Christ’s documentary, “Echotone—a cultural portrait of the modern American city examined through the lyrics and lens of its creative class.” At the time Echotone was being considered for a premier at either Sundance or SXSW. Unfortunately, due to last minute changes to the film, Echotone missed this years Sundance selection. It is still being considered by SXSW and the Toronto Film Festival. Last Thursday, I sat down with director Nathan Christ at Rio Rita and asked him to expand on some of the films themes.

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BG: First of all, why the title ‘Echotone’?

NC: Echotone–etymologically it means a tension in ecologies. It’s when two ecologies overlap.  And there’s the period in between, like in a Venn diagram, where one side has to dominate – but it has to be a communication and a collaboration and a harmony, or one side takes over completely and the system collapses. And we saw that is exactly what’s happening in Austin right now, with the development downtown and how that’s affecting the venues. It also has to do, on a more symbolic level, with some of the art and commerce questions that come up in the film. Like at what level is selling your music not okay? There’s a lot of overlapping tensions within the film, so Echotone seems to encapsulate all of those. Also there’s the reality that Austin is kind of like an echo chamber right now, in that everyone is talking about the same things in their own colloquial way.

BG: So one of the tensions that you mention, whether it be symbiotic or antagonistic, is the relationship between urban growth and venues and artists. Can you talk more about that?

NC: It’s very difficult to see what it’s coming to. You can only use examples like Lower East Side Manhattan and San Francisco. Those are the examples we use, and we barely touch on it. It’s not like the music is ever going to die or the culture is going to die—in some ways it’s more vibrant than it’s ever been. But it can definitely be pushed away. And there is something to be said for a place like Red River for instance, which right now is going through a renaissance in my opinion, or the East Side. But if the venues go away on Red River—that’s the major thing—if the venues are no longer able to pay their rent, and the bands don’t bring in enough clientele, and with the way alcohol is taxed in Texas, it just makes venues difficult to sustain. If they go away then downtown is just going to change. And I’m not even making a judgment on it here. In the film both sides are shown. So I think this film is going to put up a red flag, at least, and make developers and venue owners themselves put these things into question even further.

BG: We were talking about the renaissance of Red River, and how you felt it might come under threat from development. How do you feel Red River is being threatened by development?

NC: It’s really just about the value of the property and taxes going up. And I’m not an economist; I don’t know the exact way that property taxes work. But I know that when you have high rises being built downtown, it goes up. If the bars and clubs on that same street are still making the same amount of money they were five years before—and you don’t have a lot of super star venues other than Stubbs and The Mohawk– unless they can meet that demand and make more money, they are going to be threatened. And on top of that, I think there is a 14% tax on alcohol, so bars have it hard as it is. So it’s just simple economics.

And there’s also the noise thing. At The Mohawk you can’t play a show after midnight. And there’s a lot of noise ordinances downtown. That being said, there’s been a lot of cooperation. The Red River flats, across the streets, helped The Mohawk build a giant sound wall, and they installed double pained windows. So the noise complaints are more like the hyperbolic sexy aspect of it all, and everyone likes to talk about it. But there’s actually a guy in our film who calls musicians terrorists, and claims musicians are going into his bedroom and terrorizing him. So you have some crazies. If you’re going to move into a music district, you better expect music. So in one way that threatens it, but it’s not as dire as the value of the street rising.

BG: What about artists? It seems like there are still a lot of venues, but are artists having a harder time living this marginal existence?

NC: Well, what I’ve found is this. The mayor’s chief of staff said he moved here roughly 20 years ago, and the population has roughly doubled since that time, but the number of live music venues has stayed constant. So I found that. I also found in a poll that 75% of working musicians make less than $10,000 a year off their music alone. That contrast is pretty staggering when you consider that musicians collectively bring in about a billion dollars into the city’s economy outside of ACL and outside of South by Southwest. And they make next to nothing off their music. So those numbers speak for themselves. I can’t speak for the musicians; some of them don’t even want to make money off their music. But I know that most musicians are lucky to split $40 dollars in a night, and maybe a drink each, if they’re lucky.

Another funny quote in our film, there’s this old guitarist John Inmand (sp?) who says, “I made the same money a night in 2006 as I did in 1966, except in 1966 one paying gig would pay my rent.” So I think the numbers speak for themselves.

BG: So even if we can’t narrow this deficit between what the musician is providing the city and the clubs and what he is earning, is there at least a way to make this relationship sustainable?

NC: It’s really tricky. I noticed that Daniel Perlaky wrote on your blog recently. He runs an independent record company called Indierect, and he is just a real advocate for artists. So you have independent band managers like that acting as a conduit between bands and the commercial world, which is not such a bad thing. People have a real kneejerk reaction against selling out. But he actually finds really interesting and innovative ways for bands to sell their music, you know, to the right commercials and the right places, cause that’s the only way a bands going to make money these days. They’re not going to make money off selling their records. They’ll make a little bit of money selling merchandise. I would be overstepping if I claimed I could tell you the definitive answer to any of this.

I do know that the Live Music Task Force last year tried to get the city to sponsor a music department downtown, which would have acted as a resource for musicians to go to. And they wanted to hire managers from New York and L.A. to come to town and basically build up an industry. Because Austin has a great music culture but not a music industry.

BG: Is there anything that the individual music lover can do to help?

NC: Buy the merchandise, buy the CDs, just go out, go to The Mohawk. It’s the best venue in town. Just go out and support it. I’m not saying you’re going to change the world, but just buying a ten-dollar shirt makes a big difference.

BG: Thanks for meeting with us Nathan. We look forward to seeing the big premier whether it be at SXSW, Toronto or San Francisco.

NC: Thank you.