The atmosphere filling the air of Rick’s Caf‹¨e Americain smells of an amalgam of cologne, must and beer. The temperature, a tepid 75 degrees, causes sweat to form on the brows of the people standing around the bar and near the stage.
Onstage stands the opening band for Rick’s Tuesday night entertainment: Starkville-based rock band Young Agent Jones. At the foot of the stage sits, stands and occasionally sways a crowd of various ages, many here for the sole purpose of seeing the band.
Young, middle-aged, teacher and student alike share the area as Young Agent Jones deals out its unique blend of rock ‘n’ roll herbs and spices. Jason Jones and Todd Rowan share guitar and vocal duties, Ben Hodge takes care of the bass and Mike Yeager carries the beat as the band earns its pay by producing notes.
The mood exuded through the music fills the air with an energy that seems more tangible than that produced by a radio, and to the naked eye, it looks as if the band may be getting, as Dire Straits puts it, money for nothing. The surface value of four guys onstage having fun does not accurately portray the amount of time and work that go into running a successful band.
“If you can get four or five decent gigs in a week, you can make a decent living off of this,” frontman Jones said. “But since there are only a few places that have live music in Starkville, it’s tough.”
This means hitting the road makes up a large part of maintaining a career as a band member. Getting as many shows in as many towns as possible offers the best course of action for a band looking to publicize itself, and this business plan has been followed in different ways by the musicians in Young Agent Jones.
“We are pretty much self-managed,” Jones said. “We find out through our friends about cool bars to play or we go through the Internet. We’ll call a place and figure out who the owner is or who books the bands and then work from there.”
Getting a show at a venue outside of the usual local places can be aggravating.
“Basically we harass people,” drummer Yeager said. “Sometimes we will keep calling until we can work something out.”
This is not the case in every instance of booking. Often more formal means of requesting shows can be used.
“If a place hasn’t heard of us, we typically have to send them a promo package with CDs and stuff like that in it,” Jones said. “Hopefully, they’ll look it over and then say, ‘Hey, you guys are cool, you should play here.'”
But acceptance does not usually mean that the band will automatically play a big show. Shows often have to build up at a venue before the owners will let the bands play on weekends, which pay anywhere from $250 to $300, as compared to a range of $150 to $200 on a weekday.
“We’ve had to get our foot in the doors of a lot of bars the hard way,” Rowan said. “A lot of places, like The Nick in Birmingham, won’t let you play a good show unless you start off by playing a lousy show on a Monday night for barely any money just so they can figure out how you’ll do on a big night.”
The farther a band travels outside of its scene, the harder it becomes to be received by venues. If a band like Young Agent Jones manages itself, this becomes even more difficult.
“Agents can get you into places that you would almost never be able to get into yourself,” Rowan said. “Some places work almost exclusively with agents, like Rick’s here in town. We talked about getting an agent, but we’d have to give them money and that doesn’t really work for us,” he said with a laugh.
Doing enough advertising and self-promoting can go a long way, as evidenced by Young Agent Jones’ growing popularity in several cities in the Eastern United States.
“We have followings now in a bunch of places,” Rowan said. “Jackson, Gulf Shores, Hattiesburg, Memphis, Birmingham. We only do self-made, self-promoted tours. You have to get out there and beat the streets and get shows. Once you’ve played somewhere enough, people finally start remembering your name.”
“We’ve played some really small places, though,” Jones added. “We played at a bar in Morgantown, W.V., and we don’t even remember the name. On our promo kit it just says ‘Some Bar.’ All they wanted us to do was play ‘Country Roads’ by John Denver, which is apparently the West Virginia state song or something. They did not want to hear the Young Agent Jones.”
Consistent bartering for shows can yield good results. If enough gigs are played in a week, band members can make enough to live on, though they may cut it close. This forces the band members to find other outlets for earning income in their hometowns.
Yeager manages the Copy Cow in Starkville. He also records and produces music in his self-made studio in his house. Hodge works as a bartender and also plays bass for another band, the Millicents. Jones recently relocated to Florence, Ala., where he is putting his communication degree to work for a broadcasting group.
“I’m in sales,” Jones said. “I sell time for local businesses to advertise on for all the radio stations in our cluster. My actual title is account executive, which is hilarious. I have my own office and computer and a chair that’s comfy and squeaks when I move.”
But of the four, Rowan has managed to make a career almost solely based around music. When not playing shows with Young Agent Jones, he teaches music lessons, emcees the open mic night at Dave’s Dark Horse Tavern and plays there on Tuesdays.
“I’m just a musician now, thank God,” Rowan said. “I’m doing what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m working in the field.”
The band itself continues to move along at a steady pace, a nice recovery from a sour deal given to it by the producer of Young Agent Jones’ second album. Working with others in a creative field can be a precarious situation, as evidenced by the outcome of the band’s experience.
“We just didn’t really see eye to eye,” Jones said. “He just wanted to pop something out that would sell and kind of appeal to the teenybopper crowd. We ended up getting into a lot of arguments, and eventually we quit working with him. He still has the rights to our second album, and he won’t negotiate with us about it.”
The band, which has been around since 1996 with Jones as the only consistent member, remains unhindered by this unfortunate turn of events as it takes steps toward recording its third album in Yeager’s home studio. The current stability within the band keeps the members confident that they will stay together for quite some time.
“We’re working on some new songs that we’re hopefully going to use to help us get into New York and the College Music Journal Music Marathon,” Yeager said. “A lot of record label people will be there for college and indie-rock kinds of things. We have to put some songs together and send a promo. Getting a label deal would be a great step in the right direction.”
Youngagentjones.tif, caption: Sean McLaurin | The Reflector
Young Agent Jones plays at Rick’s cafe on August 22. The band opened for touring group Family Force 5 with an hour and a half of energetic rock.