Today, I’m at Studio 4150 in Nashville with James Wasem, co-founder and operations director of Gigee.me an online broadcasting platform. James and his team are bringing performers, teachers and instructors closer to their entire audiences, building online communities and changing the way we view live events.
BUMPER
TAJCI
You’re here James!
JAMES
Howdy!
TAJCI
Oh, great! Howdy! Can I say ‘Howdy’ even though I’m not from Montana?
Well, you know, I traveled for so long, and I have fans in Croatia, Philippines, all over Europe, and it was always like, I would play a town in North Dakota, or Cincinnati, OH, anywhere and I would always feel… this is so beautiful if only my mom in Croatia could see it. Or my so-and-so, these fans that I really wanted to connect with. And I did a live stream concert… and the best thing I could find was YouTube… because there’s all these great professional platforms that are… you really have to be like Top 40 to afford the streaming.
And then I found Gigee. And I was like “Yes!” This is going to revolutionize the world, the music, the artists… giving us, giving me the power to connect with my fans, offer these concerts, and now I’m talking to you James! You are one of the founders.
JAMES
Yea, me and one of my best friends. We played music together for a number of years and finally decided we needed to change the way we were approaching things and why not change it for everybody.
TAJCI
Yes! Thank you! I wanna thank you on behalf of all of musicians and their fans. Thank you!
JAMES
You’re welcome! Pleasure!
TAJCI
So, in your own life… tell me before you ‘waking up’ moment, tell me about your background, where you come from, what was your dream as a little boy that you dreamed?
JAMES
For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a pilot. So, in my family that kind of led me through the whole military route. So I was going to be… If I was going to be a pilot I needed a college education. If I was gonna get a college education I needed to have it paid for some way. We were very blue-collar family.
My dad had electrical contracting business, we worked as many days as we could doing that and so I got to learn a lot trade stuff that way, but I knew that if I was gonna go to college I needed the scholarship of some sort.
I put in for Air Force ROTC scholarship and ended up getting it. So, I’m pursuing my dreams, I’ve been been doing this for 10 years, I’ve been thinking about this…
TAJCI
And what about being a pilot… I have three boys and at one point all three of them wanted to fly.
JAMES
Sure!
TAJCI
But tell me what it was?
JAMES
So much fun! I don’t know, it’s this liberating experience. It’s a sense of… Some people like, maybe the control aspect of it… I mean, your life is in your own hands at that rate.
If you’re a pilot you… it’s, you have to be in the moment. It’s a very pressured thing to be doing, you have to you be constantly aware and constantly in control, but at the same time it’s also equally freeing and you’re just soaring above everything…
It’s an amazing feeling and I really connected with that for some some reason.
My dad was a pilot and he flew privately and So, I got a chance to experience that from a young age and really took to it.
TAJCI
So it’s a combination of freeing and being together, focused. I don’t wanna say ‘in control’ but yes being present.
JAMES
Fully present.
TAJCI
I kind of feel that way when I drive in Europe really fast…
JAMES
Yea, the autobahn?
TAJCI
Yeah (laughing)
JAMES
Yeah!
TAJCI
Cool! So, then what happened? I guess then you got a full scholarship to the military academy.
JAMES
So it’s ROTC. So I went to a state school in Montana. Montana State University and had a awesome time. I love school. I love learning, I love all that stuff. But in the back of my mind I was also a musician and one of my other loves was playing music.
It was funny, when I got my very first snare drum I had to practice every day, that was part of the deal.
I’d practice every day, but because I didn’t want to forget my dreams, I was like 12 years old, I traced this fighter jet on my snare drum with a magic marker.
So every time I’m playing drums, I’m staring at this jet ’cause that’s what I’m after. That’s my prize, right? I still got the drumhead it hangs on my wall.
TAJCI
Why did you pick up, how did you pick up music?
JAMES
I’ve been banging on stuff since I was a little kid. My profile picture on Gigee is me sitting on a dinning room table you know with a clown drum set or something so…
TAJCI
Anybody in your family musician?
JAMES
My mom. Yes, she plays guitar and sings.
TAJCI
And then did you go, did you play in the band?
JAMES
So, in high school I started… I played in the pep band in school and that sort of thing, but then a friend of mine David Boone who is co-founder of Gigee, he invited me to play music and I thought we’re just gonna play like Pep band songs. I didn’t even know who Bob Dylan was. I’m in Montana stuck in the woods somewhere so…
So we started playing and do kinda of the classic garage band type of stuff and that was in the early 90s. We were doing a lot of grunge and post-grunge type of stuff, so Yeah! It was a lot of fun! I love playing drums. It was an emotional release for me you know, being a teenager, you got to relate to something and playing drums was a very physical thing but also just expression.
TAJCI
So, here you are, set to be a pilot who drums on the side, ’cause that’s two passions that you are living out. You’re living a dream in college.
JAMES
And then go Christmas break after my first semester, I go play some shows in Spokane, Washington, the big city and so… being from Montana and going to… from place of two thousand people to 250,000 people, that’s a pretty big shift!
TAJCI
Yea, I’d say so…
JAMES
So to me… I’m like, oh this is big-time, right? So we do a few shows we actually got this really weird surprise following there, all this stuff happens and in the spread of one week, it was like what’s going on?
And I’m nineteen you know, so my emotions are more exaggerated than maybe they are today but… so, I’m feeling all this stuff and I go back to college. I get ready to start my first, my second semester back at school, and I went back early, started my job for a couple days at the pretzel stand that I worked at, and couldn’t sleep for three nights, didn’t eat very much, and was just thinking about what am I going to do here.
‘Cause in the back of my mind and in my heart I was being pulled in this music direction. It was like it is totally irrational, it doesn’t make sense. I’ve got a full scholarship, I know what I’m gonna do twenty years from now.
I’m gonna retire, I’m gonna be a pilot, I’m gonna have this military thing
TAJCI
And it’s been your dream for years!
JAMES
Yea, for years.
TAJCI
And you’re only 19 at this point.
JAMES
Yea. So, I made the tough decision, it was… it was equally tough and equally easy. It was one of those things where I probably knew what I really should have done or needed to do. And it was that logic of getting into that place and saying: “I am committing to it”
Was I gonna go ROTC and pilot and fulfill that dream or was I going to follow particular passion that may have been fleeting as a teenager who knows… you know.. You’re kind of conflicted.
So I finally decided… I walked up to the lieutenant colonel’s desk, gave him the salute and said: I’m checking out! And I moved to Spokane, Washington the next day. (laughs) Packed up the drums and handed out and six months later I got my first bill from the… I had a student loan that I had for, like, room and board or something. I had an academic scholarship but I had to pay room and board. That reminded me, yeah I had this other life… in just six months I was just so… so many things changed.
TAJCI
What did you… So you woke up, you said, okay I have to be true to yourself?
JAMES
Yeah it was one of those things where the outside around you is this turmoil and you have all these voices speaking into your life and saying do this, do that, do this…
TAJCI
And whose voices?
JAMES
Well, I guess it’s more… for me it was kind of a cultural thing of course, what I’ve grown up, what I knew to be right at the time, what I felt was society directing me in the certain path of stability and all these different things we strive for, we think we strive for.
But on the inside there was this peace somewhere there. I wasn’t sure what it was all about but I knew there was something that I needed to really push through and follow. I didn’t know how to do that, but part of that decision making process was just making a decision and going for it.
TAJCI
So you’re out in Spokane, and you just had, you just left your path to a successful career and now you are a drummer.
JAMES
Yeah. a rock drummer… Rockstar, right? Drummer, kind of… Yeah! We are playing alternative rock, indie rock and and I got into playing some ska and I ended up moving to Seattle a couple years later and kinda moving around and not…
But being: a) young, you know, nineteen, twenty years old and; b) a drummer. We have a certain stigma associated with drummers often times. I hope I bucked that trend but yes, so I have my little hatchback and I’m throwing all my drums in there and everything. And I remember living off of Top Ramen, of course, what college kid hasn’t done that, yogurt cups, you know the 50 cent yogurt cups, whatever…
And I remember pulling up to a gas station putting… literally digging through and and putting in 25 cents worth the gas in my car to get home.
I ended up getting a girlfriend and realizing there is more to this than just my, you know, playing drums. I need to get a job, or I need to… so society’s kinda confines come crashing back into you. After six months of scraping by and living on that high of… I mean I was physically shaking for good three months after making that decision is was just like life-changing.
TAJCI
Because I’m sure… I mean, were there any people that would say to you… because, in my story, when I left my super successful career, there were plenty of people that would look at me and say, you’re so stupid! What did you just do? Why would you throw such a beautiful career? For what? For now putting 25 cents of gas to get home?
JAMES
Right!
TAJCI
How did you feel in those moments?
JAMES
That was definitely there. I had plenty of voices looking at me and saying, what are you doing? you know… You had it… you had the Golden Egg right in your hands, you know… Why didn’t you just stay on that track and…
I don’t know, there was something inside of me that was just at complete peace with that decision.
And I can’t explain it… even today after thinking about it years and years I can’t fully explain what that is, but you know it when you feel it.
TAJCI
But you honored that. You honored it and you like, you didn’t listen to the voices on the outside honored that peace on the inside, and it now… it opened a path to you, and we’re gonna get into it what you do now and how you give from that place.
JAMES
I think if I would have chosen the other track, doing the pilot thing, I would have done just fine you know. I still think personality wise and engagement wise I think I would be totally content in that track.
TAJCI
But even just the way you said it: just fine is not as… the same as…
JAMES
Right, it’s not as…
TAJCI
Here is James from Gigee, okay? Who is changing the world
JAMES
Yeah I see where you’re going with that.
I guess, yeah, it’s where do you find that passion, where you connect with that. Probably what’s become more and more clearly, and this is all in the last few years that it has solidified for me because I’ve made several of those turning points if you will, I’ve left jobs, and gone on the road to tour,
I’ve had this love affair with music and being on the road and doing… jumping off of cliffs and just making these decisions that get you out of your comfort zone. But you’ve got to follow that peace, you know.
So I realized that that’s probably the expression of my passion.
It is in doing those things, and with starting Gigee and really seeing a need for how people connect with each other and how artists relate to their fans, and fans relate to their artist, and what my experience was playing music, being on the road as a struggling musician.
But let’s face it, it’s not… you’re not a struggling musician or starving artists necessarily, you’re starving businessperson or an artist trying to be a business person.
TAJCI
Yes
JAMES
And that’s really the transition I think we fail to define properly because we go from being passionate about our craft and being the technician in our craft whether it’s a singer, whether it’s a drummer, whether it’s a pilot, it doesn’t really matter what that is, but then you realize:
Oh, if I’m gonna make a living out of this, if I’m going to engage with the people that love me and want to support me, how do I do that successfully?
TAJCI
Yeah, and that’s what Gigee is, it’s a platform… and I don’t think we explained what Gigee.me is.
JAMES
Yeah, so what we did is we, you know, from years being on the road and touring you realize… you know this as well as anybody, it’s hard work first of all, it’s not just a walk in the park
TAJCI
And it’s not glamorous as people think.
JAMES
Yea. Picture showing up to this, A-list venue, right? And you walk in in your sweatpants, you’ve been on the road for 12 hours… I mean that’s that’s glamor for you, you know. That’s why you have to wear sun glasses, to hide the bags under your eyes…
TAJCI
It’s hard.
JAMES
Yeah it is hard and you’re giving so much, you know… For me to go on stage and perform and to… you’re an entertainer. Yea, you are a storyteller you’re an artist, you are all these things, but at some level you are just an entertainer, right? That’s kinda the the peg society puts you in that shelf on the wall, whatever…
And so you’re expected just by default in that position, to be effusive to give a lot of energy, and that’s tiring, it’s a lot of hard work. But then to go on the road and make a living doing that, that’s a totally different paradigm, right?
I mean you’ve got this component, okay that’s fine and good, great for the hobbyist and whatever, that’s fine. But then you try to merge the business side of it together and you’re trying to make a living doing that…
And some are better than others at it and sometimes you have to spend years perfecting that balance and figuring out how that works. Building your audience, learning how to communicate and how to manage all the details of going on the road. And it’s very expensive to go on the road and tour.
So you know as technology has moved forward, our comfort level using it has advanced. We saw a really big opportunity in the live streaming space to say, hey why don’t we use this technology and allow artist to connect with their fans around the world wherever they are and to do it whether there are: at their home, the beach, whether they are on tour and wanna let their fans join them on tour, you can remove that barrier of place and geographic location and say join from anywhere. It’s still live experience.
TAJCI
It is…
JAMES
We’ve definitely want to be clear that we’re not trying to go the
YouTube route where it’s like, yea, put your videos up, everything’s on demand and this and that. There’s still value, high value in the live connection.
There something different about it and there’s an energy… We have… we allow live chats during the shows and there’s an energy in that chat room. We had family reunions happen in there, we’ve had people connect that hadn’t been connected for years across continents.
TAJCI
It actually… I find it’s even more intimate than in a venue setting, where I can’t possibly you know… I mean it’s too big… and after the show I’m gonna go backstage… I mean, I do go to sign CDs and stuff, but this is even more we can connect and like you said, it’s hard work and this allows us that connection.
JAMES
There’s a lot of these colliding perceptions you know that artist is perceiving one thing and it’s that alter ego perceiving others perceiving you sort of thing… and it’s trying to figure out how you live within that sphere but do it in a genuine way and how do you be more real without trivializing everything.
That’s the fear that artist would have, you know, if you’re used to doing produced shows, you spent a lot of time producing an album, all the stuff.. Well it doesn’t make any sense to record something on my smartphone and them send it out to the world on Soundcloud and say: Yea this is the raw-cut you know.
Some artists really engage with that and they really appreciate that, but others not so much. We like to have this, we like to hold something back. There’s this facade almost that we want to maintain and I don’t think that that’s necessarily a problem, I think the artist and the fans both can interact with each other as long as everybody understands what the engagement level is supposed to be.
But we find that a lot of artists and fans at least what I see, as if you’re looking for more of that personal engagement and you do know that this person is not just what’s on the Billboard magazine or the album cover or or their Facebook page.
It’s not everything that we always present to the world. It’s deeper than just that. And that’s where LIVE can really transcend.
TAJCI
Yes and I love that… that’s why I wanna thank you again for giving… giving the world this opportunity, you know, to… the opportunity to be more of who we are have the opportunity to say look let’s connect on intimate level even across the oceans even… especially now when we are getting so detached and you know.
And places like, this is, the Studio 4150 in Nashville… I did an event here with Scott Mulvahill. It is a great place so if you are guys in Nashville, this is the place!
JAMES
Beautiful
TAJCI
Yes! And so, it’s Gigee.me and if people want to connect with you, they can find you?
JAMES
You can find me online and of course: “GreatChurchSound.com . That’s another way to find me, so
TAJCI
(whispering)
GreatChurchSound.com. Important!
JAMES
So either of those. If it’s not music you are into, stream and things like that again, we are facilitators for the technologies
so whether it’s an education event, nonprofit, anything like that we help out with the streaming side of bringing that community aspect together.
TAJCI
Music is the greatest connector, and now as you’re building communities that’s a part… it’s same piece, isn’t it?
JAMES
So I think… me being a drummer… it’s kinda tough to play anything in person just kinda on the spot without feeling a little awkward, but I’m a facilitator in so many ways, and being a drummer you are facilitator for other things around you, so…
But we can certainly play one of the music videos my best friend David Boone you know has put together. We worked together for over 20 years playing music together and he’s done some pretty incredible work over the last few years…
So there’s a song called “Taillights” that we could feature and really it’s a story about in the music videos you see a couple coming together and engaging with each other in a very real and genuine and human level and it’s exciting to see that in the background of this story, of this song and experiencing the fullness of life and not worrying about your social status, your economic status, your you know trials and travails from
yesterday.
It’s living now. It’s living with what you have and living a full life with that.
TAJCI
Wow… thank you so much! Thank you for bringing us all together… It feels like that’s the story that you bring to our world. Thank you!
JAMES
Happy to be here.
TAJCI
Really, thank you!
SONG
“Taillights”
Artist: DAWNS
Written by: David Boone (Singer-Songwriter and Gigee co-founder)
Website: http://dawnsiscoming.
YouTube video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
down by the train tracks
down on the dark side of town
I saw you dancing
you wore your boots and your gown
now my feet don’t touch the ground
now my feet don’t touch the ground
I won’t touch the taillights
they’ll never find what we’ve found
move to Montana
and lay our burdens down
and our feet won’t touch the ground
and our feet won’t touch the ground
down by the river
won’t have to make a sound
build you a fortress
our love will not be bound
and my feet won’t touch the ground
and my feet won’t touch the ground
and my feet won’t touch the ground…
when you come around
I won’t touch the taillights
they’ll never find what we’ve found
I won’t touch the taillights
they’ll never find what we’ve found
they’ll never find what we’ve found
TAJCI
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