Billy Gro – Thoughts on Less Love, the music industry, and Snow White Trash

The single Snow White Trash (Trump’s Americans) by the Oklahoma Rock band LESS LOVE is angry and it is loud. With a uniquely strange video that has been nominated for a Los Angeles Music Video award and a growing range of airplay interest in the “censored for your protection,” radio-edit version of the very explicit song it is beginning to appear this might be the breaking point for a band that has just spent 14 years in artist development.

Enlightening us on his own personal experience with the band Billy Gro took the time to speak candidly in a recent letter to the editor.

Billy: Any time I am called upon to discuss music, or the industry built to sell it, I feel like I am discussing a beloved relative that has died. Sorrow, difficulty in forming cogent thoughts about the matter, and memory probably clouded by nostalgia muddle my attempts at discussing it.

I joined Less Love many years back [2006] initially as a way to assist Sky with some recording, arrangement, and sometimes songwriting. Intermittent meetings slowly evolved into a full-on band experience, complete with Less Love, and my passion project Wondernaut, sharing studio space, practice space, members, and more. Sky always had a nascent vision for what he wanted, and I tried to always help bring it forth. I often felt like that while he heard a symphony in his head, I was transposing nursery rhymes on a baby’s first keyboard. While I think Sky was often satisfied, I often felt adrift trying to help craft songs.

This is one of many things where Sky and I think differently. I always relied on manic inspiration, perhaps too heavily. Sky had a more workaday approach. “Inspiration is for amateurs,” said Chuck Close. Sky said treat it like a full-time job. And it worked for a while. We produced some good stuff. One of the overarching problems was that of finding a reliable singer.

In my formative years, I developed a worldview about so many facets of life that turned out to be just plain wrong. Among them, the average person was a passionate connoisseur of music, and that musicians strongly desired to play in bands for a living. Neither of these is true. Tied into this is that Less Love had difficulty keeping singers around. Sky had always gravitated to wanting a female singer, and a lot of them came and went. Dilletantes that liked the idea of singing in a band, but no real interest in the practical reality of it. I was trying somewhat hard to get Wondernaut off the ground, so I didn’t really want to be Less Love’s main singer. Sky had his own reservations.

In the middle of all of this, the music industry and music fandom were changing. People stopped buying music. People stopped caring about music. But then again, I don’t think they ever cared about it in the first place. To the average person, “Let it Be” is no more profound than “Shake It Off”. Music was something to simply be enjoyed in a cursory manner, not pondered upon. I had for most of my life mistakenly thought differently. Despite that, people came to care even less for music when it all became free on YouTube and streaming platforms. Simple economics. Unlimited supply equates to less demand and less value. Quality control plummets. “Paper plates vs. china” to paraphrase Dave Pensado.

This shift in the music industry was a little soul-crushing to me. I am something of a dreamer and my dreamworld came crashing down. A lie I told myself. A reality I turned a blind eye to. A cultural shift that saw rock music become virtually ignored, and music, in general, become homogenous and generic. I find it ironic that in an era when people are rabidly clamoring for diversity, that there are fewer songwriters contributing to Top 40 music than at any time I can remember. And the millions of other songwriters out there clamoring for attention are all stymied by cultural groupthink.

Around the time that Spotify became free on phones and my blossoming realization flowered, Sky was trying to write music and prepare for the next phase of Less Love. In my self-imposed grief, I lost the will to contribute anymore. The music industry was dying. Rock was dead. Maybe I was a bit too needy for validation from the world. What was the point of writing music anymore?

While I helped out in the studio as much as I could, I couldn’t really summon the desire to do it anymore. Touring, press, performances? I lost my desire. Even for my own project. But I gave my best effort at the time. I think?! Despite it all, I still cared about music and trying to help my friend and bandmate.

I remember working on “Snow White Trash” in this period. Sky had a vision for the song. I tried to help facilitate it. A particular drum beat. Guitar tone. Solo. I tried to help with vocal exercises and harmonies. I feel like it came together pretty well. I loved the offensive lyrics and how it would make people squirm when they heard them or when we discussed them out loud. Puritanism runs deep in America regardless of your political bent. We brought in several musicians to try to lend a voice to particular parts. A few different drummers if I remember correctly. I think I played the bass. Sky had long before had most of the guitar parts hashed out. It was just a matter of guitar tones and overall vibe. Making sure we didn’t let it devolve into the pitch-perfect nonsense that dominates earbuds these days.

And when Sky showed me his idea for the video, I heartily laughed out loud. We seldom see eye to eye on many things, but we definitely share a love of particular kinds of humor. The subtext of the chameleon and the subtle movements in the video relating to the music. The idea of people having to look at a near stationary image for several minutes in an age when attention spans are ridiculously stunted. Goddamn, it made me laugh!

Eventually, I grieved enough, but both Sky and I gravitated towards new phases in life. Around the same time, we both decided to leave America for more foreign locales. Sky to the Philippines, me to Russia. And we arrived at our destinations to learn that people outside of America still seem to care about rock music. So, while we are separated by thousands of miles, I still feel a part of Less Love. And I will always try to contribute if I can. I will do what I can in Russia, he in the Philippines, and maybe we can find that audience that the numbed-up, dumbed-down masses of America couldn’t provide.

Kenneth

Kenneth is a proud native of sydney, born and raised there. However, he pursued his education abroad and studied in Australia. Kenneth has worked as a journalist for almost a decade, making valuable contributions to prominent publications such as Yahoo News and The Verge. Currently, he serves as a journalist for The Hear Up, where he focuses on covering climate and science news. You can reach Kenneth at [email protected].