Jennifer Jans

HELVETIAROCKT: MUSICIANS IN CONVERSATION SEASON 3 JEN JANS Helvetiarockt is a Swiss national association raising awareness about gender inequality in the music industry while supporting promoting and connecting professional female inter non-binary and trans artists. Through its grassroots projects such as producing, DJing, band workshops and songwriting camps, it offers platforms for young people of all levels to discover music and be part of an empowering community find out more on our website helvetiarockt.ch, sign up for the newsletter and follow us on social media. Musicians in Conversation is sponsored by Suisa The Cooperative Society of Music authors and Publishers in Switzerland Suisa is celebrating its 100 year anniversary in 2023. [Music] Hi everyone my name is Natalia and I'm a presenter content creator and DJ. In this epi-sode of musicians in conversation I speak with Jennifer Jans who is an artist manager promoter and musician we discuss the differences between programming and booking how to develop the skill of programming bands and artists and learning from failure we also get into the perspective of artists and talk about how and when to contact bookers Jen shares a song with us from her band and she also answers an audience question don't forget if you have a question simply send a direct message to Helvetiarockt on Instagram in the meantime here's my conversation with Jen. Hi this is Jenny Jans and you are listening to Helvetiarockt Musicians in Conversation Backstage Hi Jen thank you so much for joining me on Helvetiarockt Musicians in Conversation. Hi thank you so much for having me my absolute pleasure I will start the interview with the question that I ask everybody and that is how did you get started on your musical Journey well I grew up in a musi-cal family both of my parents were professors at the music school in in Basel and yeah music was always a part of my life and I think like at age 17 18 I realized that I really wanted to do some-thing with music in my future but I didn't want to earn my money as a musician so I realized that I love music and organizing and yeah that's how I ended up doing what I'm doing today. Oh my god, that is such a unique path. How did you realise you like music and organizing? Well I think, I just always had the flair of like doing projects and yeah organizing things for my family organizing trips for example and yeah. Do you like the logistics? yeah exactly and like all the things you have to think about all the details and then we'll do that then then we have to calculate the timing and stuff like that so yeah I realized that I'd really love to work in a venue or in a festival or something. Honestly that is literally the first time I've heard someone say that but also just connecting the two you know you love music you know you love that logistics and organizing but having the sense to put them together you know knowing that oh wait a minute these two things can actually work together so when was the first time you sort of stepped in to kind of sort of organizing and in terms of music? Well after I graduated from gymnasium I wanted to become an audio engineer and I did an internship at our audio engineering company and then sort of after half a year sort of got into the administration part as well and yeah it was a production assistant for the boss and then was able to go along to like a lot of productions that was more in the like musical field and yeah and I just saw a lot of those things and then realized that I really like doing that and but also realize that for me I mean I think from a fairly early age on I realized that like pop music and more of sort of the undergroundy pop music type experimental stuff was more my kind of music and the stuff I was doing there was a lot of more sort of commercial events and things and yeah that's how I realized that I really would like to work in a venue or something where I could be booking bands and curating more in that direction and I think I mean that was kind of hard be-cause at a very early age like at 20 you don't have the experience so it's kind of hard to get into something so basically volunteer work was the thing to do yes yeah because that's what I want to really get into like how does somebody get into it. You mentioned about having experience and that's one of the things when you're young, exposure to music can be quite limited I mean I think maybe you might have, given your parents worked in music, you might have had a broader expe-rience or exposure than most people but even then it might be quite hard to know what's even out there and perhaps for a job like booking and programming you kind of need to have a bigger view of what's out there so how does somebody you mentioned volunteering but how does somebody like really start in this industry of booking. Well I think I mean there's different oppor-tunities and I think one part was really I think at maybe at age 14 I started to realize like the city I live in actually has a really good music scene and then I started going out to shows and yeah re-ally trying to understand how that works and I started playing in a band at age 17 and you know had first shows and stuff like that so I saw the perspective from there and then saw what there is in the city and I think it's really important at a first stage to connect with the place that you live in or your community is where your friends are like to understand because mostly there's like somebody who knows somebody and then you'll get to talking to this person and understand okay this is the I don't know co-booker of this venue and if you have a show then like to under-stand and then maybe just to ask like could I could I come and just you know be there one even-ing to understand how you're doing this or just to be there for a week to see yeah sort of have a view behind the scenes what yeah what sort of things you have to do and I think for me one of the most important steps was I was a volunteer at the BScene Club Festival which was like the one of the major festivals in Basel and I volunteered there as the program as the Booker and of course that was also sort of vitamin C (contacts) to get into that but that's because I yeah I tried to speak to a lot of people and exchange and then yeah through that I basically got into my other things and parallel to that I started working at a venue as an assistant in booking in PR so those two things really they put together yeah yeah what are people looking for? what qualities did you show them? that you had that made them want because without much experience and to coming out as a volunteer level there's still something that they want from you so what sort of qualities are they well I think one of them is to have to have like a broad yeah a broad view into the scene like into different kinds of music and also sort of understanding trying to understand what does it mean for you know to book a newcomer band for example like will they have a community coming out will we be selling tickets for that yeah just sort of trying to get into understanding how these how these things work yeah and I think just a broad knowledge of musical styles I guess I think that was always something that was very important to me understanding yeah that there's so many different kinds of smaller scenes like bubbles in our scene and that it's important to involve all of these and I think I had the network at that point I mean not a huge network but I had like into some of those bubbles I had the network which I could bring along but I also think that it's yeah important from the view of a festival to also you know give people a chance young people a chance who maybe don't have as much experience yet and I remember the first the first Festival Edition that I programmed I mean there were things that didn't work at all what do you mean like for example I programmed the band two bands into like the biggest Hall with the capacity of like 1200 people and there were like I don't know maybe like 30 or 50 people from the stage so yeah that was like oh my God that was a failure but on the other hand yeah from the perspective of the festival giving young people the chance to fail yes so important because that never happened again and I started to understand okay this is how it works and of course I had people who helped me with this but basically it was just trying it out I mean I also remember the first couple of like requests for big International acts that I send out if I think about that now I'm like oh my God I was so naive tell me about it what was it like because that's actually something I was thinking of like how do when is that step they take you're not doing the local thing anymore you're like Red Hot Chili Peppers can we have exactly you know so the act that I remember so this was like when I was I don't know 23 so quite a while ago I was just you know collecting a bunch of names also talking to some people what kind of acts do we like and on that on that list was the act Sia so she was she's a major artist now she she used to be quite underground I remember listen I'm from London from the garage yeah exactly yeah she was yeah quite undergroundy and I really liked that I loved that and I like sent out a message to her booker and well first I researched like on her website what was the booking agency had no idea about you know how exactly these things work and just send out a request and was like would she be available then and we can pay I can't remember what it was and the booker was just like I got like a one sentence message back and sort of I can't remember exactly what it said but it was sort of like okay I'm way out of my league right now. But atleast you had that experience. It’s so so so important it's essential to have those experiences and to not be afraid of failing yes oh I love that not to be afraid of failing sometimes especially when you're reaching out that could be so daunting but it's a case of look this is just what the industry is it's about you know reaching out sometimes you've got to do it cold yeah sometimes you sometimes you know someone you've got connection but not being afraid of the response at the other end exactly because I know isn't that bad is it no it's not that bad no it's like oh my God what but yes it's not that bad in the end it'll like it'll take you a step further yes exactly is there a difference between booking and programming and if so what is that. well I mean I think both are basically the same but I think programming goes more into the cura-tion parts where you really think about like who are you gonna book where with which style what are they gonna be like it makes a big difference if you program something at nine o'clock or at six o'clock or it's eleven o'clock and it also depends on who you have before them or after them so I think that's one of the major things that that interests me in the whole programmation process and then I think the booking part is sending out the requests and why it's so technical yeah side of it because I mean you mentioned before when you your inverted commas failure or you have a big room and the particular band didn't draw in as many as you thought they would and then going thinking about the side of things where you know who comes after who goes before who what time of day they go on how do you look at a band and go oh they should be at this time where they should kind of go after this person band or artist you know how does that process work well I think it has a lot to do with experience it's yeah I think it helps to be in the audience yourself to or when you're at a show sort of you know feeling how's the audience going along are they like what is their perception of of the music and also thinking about like if a festival day starts at maybe like five o'clock people will be like coming gradually in the beginning there might not be that many people yet then like at seven or eight it's the main time where people will go and get food so people might be listening to something while they're eating then they'll sort of get into either you know having beer after beer or yeah depending on like the festival but I think that's something to take into yeah to think about as well because a band that is like really calm might not work at a certain point if people are just you know if they want to dance and if they want to move and yeah and want to be like if they want it to be loud at the end and I think that's some-thing that's just really important to yeah to like soak up when you're at a festival yourself and to experience it and to and like I always I always try to ask myself when I'm at a show like what is it doing with myself what am I what am I feeling yes that's basically how that develops absolutely. Do you get pushbacks from bands or people you say okay we want to put you on this particular stage at this particular time and they're like no we want to be on this stage at this time you know and how do you deal with that yeah of course we get that but I think we in our team we put a lot of thought into that so we can usually explain it when we talk to the band and tell them look this is why we want to position you there and we're aware that you might prefer this and this but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's a better slot and we have the feeling for you this is the per-fect platform and that they yeah that they also have to have they have to trust in that and I think that something that a festival or a venue really has to like develop over time to have the trust that have the trust from the artists that they know okay if the bookers want this then this must be part of the like the curation process If you are involved in music as a hobby profession or both sign up for free on the Helvetiarockt music directory. It's a platform for women, non-binary, trans and intersex people in the Swiss music industry. For singers, instrumentalists, bookers, managers, sound engineers, photo-graphers and many more of all levels. It's about visibility, it's about community, it's about empo-werment. We invite all of you to participate in the project. For further information go to musicdirec-tory.ch What would you say is your favorite part about being a booker? I think I mean that curating part and we invest a lot of time and research too researching bands going to see bands or acts and yeah thinking about how to how to implement that or how it would fit and I think the other parts so over all of this time I've always invested a lot or tried to create platforms where exchange could happen and I just love when that happens like it can happen in a backstage of our festival where we also think about I mean we of course the main thing is thinking about what what's going to happen with these artists on stage and how like what's the curation part and how yeah the positioning how would that be for the audience and for themselves what's the platform but the other thing is like what's going to happen backstage if these people meet and that's always been a big part like so cool the network you're actually thinking that in advance like you know these people are going to be here at the same time What would happen yeah exactly and like the also the local artists what does it mean when they have like the connection the possibility to connect to International artists and we've had the situation at B-Sides for example that one of the like local bands was able to go on European tour as a support act for one of the International acts that played with us yeah after seeing them and just and getting to know them in the backstage of the festival and stuff like that so there's lots of like little connections like that which I think are the nicest things that come out of it and it's also I don't know sort of a sustainable part of the whole thing because I think yeah creating platforms where exchange can happen is just so fruitful abso-lutely we're gonna go on into that before we do though I want I want a bit of a balance because we talked about the things that you love what are the difficult parts of your job would you say I mean there's difficult parts such as for example if an International artist doesn't work out which is you know you have to wait for a long time and maybe you don't have, as a small Festival, you don't have the same respect from the international booking agencies I mean they have respect for us of course but maybe not like that it's not their priority so it's a lot of waiting sometimes and sort of yeah trying to figure out what to do there of course the like the festival days themselves are quite intense because it's just a lot of running around it's a lot of troubleshooting it's very ex-hausting it's super super nice to get to know all the artists that you've booked until like you see it's also like the moment where you actually see okay this is like what we've been working for for a whole year but it's yeah at the end of those days you're just like dead for a week yeah yeah but at the festival itself as bookers I think it's so important to go and meet the people that you book and for them to have a face of the people who are behind the festival so yeah what do you look for when you are booking acts and there was something that you mentioned earlier about going to concerts and being in the audience are you already aware of who you potentially might want to book yes B-Sides Festival takes place in June and usually we start with the booking process in August and we talk about like what are the sorry I need to yeah my brain is just thinking about a calendar wait a minute so so June is the festival the August before the year before yeah exactly okay you were already starting with the bookings and usually we're done with the main slots by December Of course we leave some things open if there's something like in January or so new coming up yes yeah usually that's like the main booking process which is also very important for also for young artists to know that the process starts so early because we get a lot of emails like in Jan-uary asking for the summer and it's like sorry we're all booked out but of course we do like part of our job is already in August reaching out to everybody like everybody meaning the agencies and stuff that we work with like to figure out okay what are releases coming up I need to break this down yeah I need to break it down hold up hold up for the people here listening. There are so many different layers I think you go to venues or sorry you go to see bands but you know that you are going to be programming for June the year after from August what you're doing is you're going to be reaching out to people that you already know or labels or agencies that you know to find out who they have or that you are already aware of we're usually are already aware of right yeah I mean we get emails of course from agencies saying hey next year these and these bands are going to be on the road with new releases so we get that information as well but usually we already sort of have an idea of who we think would be interesting and then sort of reach out and ask what are their plans and is there something in it yeah that's going to happen is the release or yes yeah I want to understand and for listeners who may not have representation, might not have a manager or an agent how do they reach out to you or how can they be considered to be booked at so for B-Sides Festival? I guess the main communication happens via email there it's just always really important because we get so many emails to have like a very personal email so no “hi B-Sides team” or stuff like that you got don't you have your name and your picture on the website yes we do I was quite surprised about that you want to actually get emails no contact at these well it's a picture you've got well your inbox is actually quite it's a programming at being said yeah exactly yes but your picture is there and your name is there so people can see who they're writing exactly but it's still surprising to see how many emails “not personal emails” we get so yeah I think that's like make the effort to go and like for any venue or a festival that you want to apply to and want to play to and then keep it short and sweet why think about the main information that we as bookers need I'm not interested if you had like three different drummers over the past year I want to know like are you releasing something have you be on the have you been like playing before but I want to see your picture I you know that kind of thing so I think if you want to reach out then try to have like a link where you can find all the information and have like a short description of your band and maybe also give a few key words about you know what are bands that have influenced you of the likes of for example because that could help you when you're thinking about where to place yeah exactly and yeah musical style is important I think and yeah how to reach them the easiest way I think that's like the main aspects. Right, let me see if I can summarize so picture like you know artwork or and a picture of the band that you can see them any releases anything that's happening where they've played before what they've done before musical style genre who they've been influenced by that was that yeah that's basically it keep it concise yeah exactly maybe also like look at the lineups of the festival or the venues and say hey I've seen that Agnes Obel has played at your festival I'm such a big fan and our music goes in that direction for example then I'll see as a booker, okay you've looked at our lineup you actually know what our Festival is about and yeah. What do you want artists, bands, DJs to know about your job that's a good question I think for me because I know both perspectives, I mean the fee is always a big question understanding where a festival is at and what kinds of fees we can pay for example B-Sides is mainly self-funded so we basically finance the festival by tick-et sales and food and beverage and we have only like 25 percent funding from City or Canton and other foundations but in comparison we pay really good fees I think, still there's of course always a discussion with what kind of slots that we want to program them in I think yeah being able to trust why we suggest a certain kind of fee and I think also for venues for example certain venues just don't have the possibility to pay high fees although it's totally I absolutely agree that musicians in this field are mainly underpaid with the fees but it's yeah it's always a balance of this reality and finding each other and I think to have an understanding for where the festival is at yeah I think that's really important and that also takes a little bit of research maybe for a band or a musician understanding that a no is not generally meaning I think your music sucks. Yeah, let's just drive that home because it's so hot it's one of those things that you know as a musician it's so personal isn't it and so when you get a note it can feel like time to give up yeah but please don't yeah it could be any reason why exactly and I mean for us it's often that we don't have the feeling it fits in the curation of our festival or of like an evening we have the feeling we need anoth-er something in this direction for example and then we'll you know can't program everything that we'd like to have or want to wait until the artist has a release for example yeah or if somebody does not give a reason also take the opportunity and say hey I totally I understand this but I'd like to know why and usually people are really open to share. Ah that's good, that's good to know We did mention that you are in fact a musician yourself so you've got that bird's eye view you are in a band called Bleu Roi and I just want to take the opportunity to share your music with people who are listening today I'm taking the opportunity to talk to you about booking it's fascinating but also your music is wonderful you are going to share with us a track called Onomatapoetry did I say that correctly? yes you did Onomatopoetry I love that can you tell us a bit about this song so this is a song of our last album Dark Light it was recorded in Gothenburg and this was one of the songs so most of the songs I pre-produce and have a very clear idea about what I want it to be and with this song I had just a synthesizer line which I created like I don't know a really long time ago certainly seven or eight years ago and just always really liked it but never did something with it and then this was really like a creation process at the at the studio and something really great came out let's listen to Onomatopoetry Can you tell us about M4Music Festival what is that Festival? So M4Music Festival is from the Migros I'm not sure maybe you can say it in I won't repeat it yeah okay it's a pop music festival supporting the Swiss music scene for already I think 25 years, so it's been around for a really long time. It takes place in Zurich usually two to three days and it's for networking so for a lot of professionals to come together and exchange there's a conference in the afternoon which is free for everybody and musical program in the evening which is sort of on the one hand Showcases of up and coming Swiss artists then in the afternoon there's also the Demotape Clinic which I am responsible for yes tell us about the Demotape Clinic that's like a big contest and you can regis-ter for it between November and January and this year we had 1144 applications wow we have five categories this year we have pop rock lyrics and beats electronic and out of genre and that's the new category I love that I saw that on the website I thought that's so good yeah for new Jazz and experimental music I'm very excited about that we listened to all the tracks that have been sent in and we choose per category between 8 and 15 tracks and these will be discussed at the festival by a jury and then one of these artists per category can win and these are supported by the SUISA by the foundation SUISA each winner gets 3 000 francs wow and then there's a Demo of the Year where you get 5 000 francs plus you get exposure and publicity and platforms like live platforms and you can get a coaching as well that is amazing such a brilliant initiative is there al-ready a quality that arrives at your door is there a certain level or is literally anyone it's any en-ters yeah okay you're going to be heard yeah they will you will hear them yeah we will we listen to everything wow sometimes you would send your demo to people you just there's no feedback or there's just no way of knowing if anyone's ever listened to it, so just even having that guarantee that you are heard and someone's taking the time to listen that's really wonderful I think. You mentioned before about exchange about communicating these ties into I think Say Hi! Can you tell us what Say Hi is part of the the B-Sides Festival. So Say Hi! is a networking and exchange platform for the Swiss music scene basically in the very beginning it was more for our local com-munity and then we started making or creating events and always in cooperation with a partner we've done a lot with Helvetiarockt as well, to go to a different festival and have sometimes we had an input, sometimes we'd walk up a hill and go to a festival together and have enough or something like that, but have the opportunity to exchange in an atmosphere which is not neces-sarily like this very official atmosphere yeah we've been doing that for quite a long time now and it's really been established as a national platform. We've done things in in Ticino and the Romon-die and yeah Swiss German part so we try to move around a lot. Yes what you're doing there with Say Hi! is almost like the physical embodiment of exchange right, what we can practically do what does exchange mean to you, why is it something that is important to you in particular? I mean what my experience has been over the past few years is that you're sort of in your own bubble often it happens that you have the feeling you have a broad sense, and you have a lot of know-how but I think it's so important to share these things it's so inspiring to get to know new people and to understand okay this is how things work I remember the very first time in one time for music I was 21. and I went there all on my own and I was just so scared it was totally freaked out and I had like one person I had a meeting with and I was clinging to this person it was just and I mean I think about yeah young musicians or young people who want to get into that field and creating the platform where you have people you can connect to and can hold on to because it's scary sometimes and I think that just yeah sort of all of that comes together it's certainly on the one hand my own experience and then on the other hand music is such something so per-sonal and working with music is something so personal so I think trying to understand each other is just so so important in all of this and yeah I think that's why I from a very beginning I've tried to set a focus on that field and in all in everything that I do that's one of my main things yeah yeah how do people get involved with Say Hi! for example what is the process for somebody to attend an event so there's a newsletter that we send out like every one to two months and you can subscribe to the newsletter so you'll know what's going on also we sometimes give like just gen-eral information about important things that's happened and then yeah all the important events are listed on our website now we're going to listen to our audience question this one is from @CarmenCampari let's hear what Carmen has to say my question is to all the bookers what do you hate the most when art-ists contact you? So just to repeat what do you hate the most when artists contact you I'm giv-ing you full permission to let it rip well I find that kind of hard to let it rip because there's not that like I mean I mentioned before that I dislike it if I have like a really long email where it says well last year my drummer Fabio stopped and then we got two months later we got George to join us but he didn't like to play the cowbell and that's why we decided to change our musical style from I don't know what to what and yeah that's just stuff where I'm just I don't have the time really to get into that plus it's just not essential for the music in the end so yeah I guess that's sort of with requests that sometimes something like that sort of gets on my nerves or away I just don't un-derstand what why are you doing that or go and read other you know biographies or things of other artists that you like and see how they do it because that's just the easy advice yeah that's the easiest way to get into that or to know how to do it or maybe like requests via Instagram for example Instagram oh well I mean you can you can write to the festival but yeah that it's just sort of not the I mean what you can do is like write and say how can I contact you okay but don't send like a long message yeah yeah good oh fantastic thank you so much for that listen Jen thank you so much for your time for breaking it down for us so we could understand I know that many people will get so much value from this conversation so thank you very much thank you so much for having me it was a pleasure my pleasure. If you want to join the Helvetiarockt community or find out more check out the website, sign up for the newsletter and follow us on social media. If you'd like to support Helvetiarockt you can also become a member or donate and if you like what you heard today please share it with your friends. Helvetiarockt Musicians in Conversation is a concept by Natalia Anderson in collaboration with Helvetiarockt. It's presented and produced by Natalia Anderson music is by Jackie Brutsche and The Jackets.