Then there are those that never quite get off the water. In the middle of a cruise with a lovely South African couple, a rowboat approached carrying members of the pop band Chester French. They circled us, declared their fame then jumped on the gondola, crying out, “This is a pirate takeover!” (only with an unprintable modifier starting with “f” between “pirate” and “takeover”). Apparently they were shooting a music video. The situation struck me as slightly uncomfortable, until a week later, when a YouTube search of “Central Park gondola” brought up a hit titled “Chester French Postpones My Marriage Proposal.”

Read the whole article HERE.

-Chester French

But pick up the issue!

(also, our Pitbull cover is coming soon! Thanks for your patience everyone!!)

Just wanted to let you know about this AWESOME article written by Paul Boutin about us that appeared in The New York Times.

Click here to see the article on their site and check out the full article below the cut.

A Band That Knows Where the Money Comes From

Chester French.

Chester French isn’t your typical rock band. Singer D.A. Wallach and multi-instrumentalist Max Drummey met as freshmen at Harvard, where lanky, longhaired Drummey majored in social anthropology and twee, preppy Wallach graduated as the top student in the school’s African-American Studies program. In the video for their best-known song, “She Loves Everybody,” a pretty girl punches the stuffing out of the two helpless weaklings, leaving them bloody-nosed among their broken guitars and drums.

Wallach and Drummey, who eschew leather and spandex for bowties and croquet mallets, were signed to Interscope Records just as they graduated two years ago. An album released in April, “Love the Future”, has made the duo upcoming stars, albeit not superstars.

But besides the fans drawn to their music, Chester French have amassed a following by spending hours a day networking online. Should you encounter the band on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Twitter or any of the other social sites where they’ve set up shop, you’ll be encouraged to sign up at chesterfrench.com as a V.I.P. for the band’s concierge service. What you might not realize is you’re adding yourself to a database at Salesforce.com.

Wallach told me in a phone call from the band’s current tour that he and Drummey aren’t kidding that they see their fans, not themselves, as the V.I.P.’s. “Traditional record labels looked at music listeners as fans who were supposed to get in line to get an autograph,” he said. That worked, in Wallach’s view, when radio and TV were dominated by a few supersize broadcasters. “When the Beatles played ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ seven million people saw it,” he said. “But today, there’s no channel available that will deliver that size an audience. In this day and age, it’s about having a relationship with the people who listen to us. The relationship with someone who likes our music is much more of a conversation than it would have been, even in the ’90s.”

Instead of giving interviews to reporters or dropping by radio stations, Wallach spends most of his time online, going through an average 100 to 200 e-mail messages a day. “We respond to every single e-mail we get,” he said. “I do an hour in the morning and an hour at night. A lot of them are just, ‘I wish you’d come to my city,’ and we’ll write back, ‘Us, too.’ We try to keep it personal and intimate. So it’s not just ‘Dear Friend.’ It’ll be, ‘Dear Paul, thank you for coming to see us in Baton Rouge. We’d really like your ideas for how we can spread our music around in Baton Rouge.’”

The band doesn’t think twice about its embrace of upside-down Internet economics. They eagerly share their music and videos on social sites, in hopes of growing a much larger fan base that will eventually spend money on them. “We gave away an album for free,” Wallach said, “and that was the single largest driver of new fans that we’ve done.” They honestly believe giving away copies of their CDs gets them heard by others who’ll go out and buy a copy.

But in rock, talk is cheap. So I went and signed up as a Chester French fan coming in from MySpace to see what would happen. A few hours later, I got an e-mail message from Wallach: “I’m delighted to personally welcome you to our V.I.P. Concierge Service. As a 48-year-old male in San Francisco with an average of 274 friends on social networks” — Salesforce is able to glean these stats from my e-mail address — “you’re an ideal ambassador for our music. Let me know your best mailing address so I can send you some copies of our record for you and your friends!”

Three days later, I was eagerly handing out a few of Interscope’s promotional copies of “Love the Future” to friends, who were tickled to get the specially labeled discs. I’m not sure if Chester French will make any money from my handouts, but pushing the band on my coworkers was something rock ‘n roll is supposed to be: Fun.

You can read the full interview here, but check out this section, where Max talks about making new music for Chester French:

DH: Speaking of: Max, you like to experiment with instruments. Have
you been doing that lately?

MD: One thing I just started doing that I’d never done before is working with samples, which my interest in instruments kind of kept me from doing. The way I look at it, that’s building your own instrument, taking a sound that you find and making it your own. And it’s way cheaper than buying more instruments.

DH: What sorts of things have you been sampling?

MD: I’m mainly taking a sound and figuring out a way to play music with it. It’s more a sonic thing and less of a music-phrase idea. So far I’ve sampled strings, throat singing, this Argentinian tango song from the 40′s. Just sounds that I haven’t heard before and can
re-purpose for whatever musical idea that I have.

-CF

Guess who’s an LOLcat?!

MAX!

You know you’ve made it when people are making LOLcat pictures about you. CF fans… make more of us with our pictures and send them to ICanHasCheezburger.com!

-DA & Max

Here’s Bryce’s video again for those of you who forgot:

And here’s hypebot’s write up:

“It’s no secret that there is promotional power in giving away music, but just slapping a FREE banner on a web site doesn’t cut it anymore.  Free is everywhere.  But what if the free music was on a CD given fan to fan with no strings attached?  That could get pretty expensive…unless the fans do it for you.

Free fan created CD’s os exactly what indie band Chester French is encouraging fans to do with a video series about an an uber-fan who “burned tons of copies and gave them out to everyone he knows (and a bunch of people he doesn’t!)”. Through the videos, “Bryce wants to teach you guys how to be the Ultimate Chester French Supporter, just like him.” Then the bands asks, “So, how did you guys promote the mixtape?” Brilliant.

But the band doesn’t just embrace “free” with fan burned CD’s.

Of course, there is the requisit amount of free content to listen, watch and interact with on The Chester French web site. But there’s also more:

“Please join the Chester French VIP Concierge Service below to receive a VIP invitation to the next Chester French show or party in your city. We’ll even send you a free mp3 of the “She Loves Everybody” Clinton Sparks Dance Remix.”

Note that the band doesn’t shout “Join Our Email List” and it’s “Membership in the Chester French VIP Concierge Service”, and it’s free to join plus you get a free remix in exchange for your name, email address and zip code.”

Bryce’s video also got great coverage on TechDirt and got a great mention from our friend Ian Rogers, on his Twitter account.

This is the kind of thing that keeps us completely energized because it’s making listening to music FUN again.

We’re currently working with Bryce on the next few episodes of Lessons In Endurance. Stay tuned!

-DA & Max

About a month ago, we had an intimite acoustic set at the Steven by Steve Madden store on the Lower East Side of New York. The filmed the set and some interviews before hand, with the lovely Allison Hagendorf and Mr. Steve Madden himself.

Well the videos, photos and music are now online on the STEVE MADDEN CHESTER FRENCH MEDIA PLAYER (CLICK TO LAUNCH).

And yes, Steve Madden is a real guy. And he’s actually a really cool dude.

(via Giant Step)

-DA & Max

We played Chicago earlier in the month and Jennifer Boyer from The Dead Hub came through, took some killer photos and did a dope write up of the show!

Check out her review:

Chester French’s single “She Loves Everybody” was my first introduction to their music. However, it was Blink-182’s bassist/singer Mark Hoppus who lead me to that song. Mark posted the music video for “She Loves Everybody” on his official blog himynameismark.com, and thus my love for Chester French began. I trust Mark’s opinion regarding music more than anyone’s, so if Mark likes Chester French and recommends to check them out, you can bet I will be taking a listen. And that’s exactly what I did. Thank you, Mark Hoppus! How crazy is this: Blink-182 is taking Max and DA out on the road with them for Blink’s summer tour! Therefore, I will be seeing DA, Max, AND Mark (and Tom and Travis) on August 4th in Milwaukee (DA’s hometown) and on August 15th in Chicago. Needless to say, I am stoked! Make sure to come and see Chester French on tour this summer if you have yet to catch the boys live. If you weren’t there, I’ll fill you in on what the guys performed in Chicago last week while opening for Lady Sovereign:

The Jimmy Choos

She Loves Everybody

Bebe Buell

C’mon (On My Own)

People

Neal

Hella Good (No Doubt cover)

DJ Clinton Sparks was in the house working the sound for Chester French’s short set. Too short, in my opinion. I wish DA and Max could’ve played every song on their new record. Pretty soon, they’ll be out on their first headlining tour and you bet your ass I will be there! More photos of DA and Max after the jump. Keep in mind that currently, Max is going through his Marie Antoinette/Kurt Cobain phase…

Jennifer, men used to wear powdered wigs too, you know! Pearls, on the other hand… that’s straight up Marie Antoinette.

CLICK HERE to see more sweet photos from the show.

-DA & Max