The Suffers’ Kam Franklin on success as an indie musician [Exclusive Book Excerpt]

Artists advocate and author Emily White is about to publish the 2nd Edition of her “How to Build a Sustainable Music Career & Collect All Revenue Streams,” and to celebrate, she’s sharing an exclusive expert – an interview with Kam Franklin of indie powerhouse The Suffers.

Out in 2024 via publisher Hal Leonard, the new edition of the book is available for pre-order now here and includes a free 3-month Artist Plan from DISCO.

From the book’s Foreword: A Conversation with Kam Franklin of The Suffers

Kam Franklin is a force to behold. Kam and her seven-piece band The Suffers began in Houston, rising up in their local scene and have since amassed a loyal following that spans the globe. Kam has built an empowering career that defines sustainability and sat down with Emily White to chat for the Foreword of the forthcoming 2nd edition of White’s Amazon #1 best-selling book, How to Build a Sustainable Music Career & Collect All Revenue Streams. Available for pre-order here and out later this year with Hal Leonard.

Emily White: How are you?

Kam: I’m doing really well. I’m working on a few projects right now including my first solo debut album, which I feel like is a good time. I’m working on the fourth Suffers album. And I’m working on a second release for this other project I have called Bayou City Comeback Chorus. So I’m busy, I’m ready, I’m happy, and really just at a state of balance as an artist and a human being that I haven’t been at before.

Do you have an email or and/or text list?

Kam: The Suffers have both. For my solo side, because my team is a lot smaller and a lot of it is just me – I do have the mailing list because that was the biggest takeaway I took from the book’s first edition: owning my data. And I am learning. Mailchimp gets my money right now while I’m figuring it out.

For sure. If it’s helpful, I’m preaching a lot on Community.com for texting. It was built for music. I just had their Head of Music, Erica Fagundes, on the book’s podcast and I was really impressed.

How are you feeling about social media lately? The last time we spoke you were pretty burned out from it. But that can ebb and flow. So what’s the latest in the social media world with you?

Kam: I still don’t like it. I don’t like markets that aren’t fair. And the music industry – if only we had the balls to go on strike for real. But it’s not going to happen.

That’s a whole other conversation! I am so with you.

Moving on to every musician’s favorite topic, “Get Your Business Affairs Together and Fair Compensation.” Do you have an attorney? And if so, how often do you work with them?

Kam: I have two attorneys. I have one for my more simple partnership agreements and questions. I do that because her rate’s a little more affordable and she’s a musician, too. She actually donates a lot of her time to an arts’ legal organization that we have here in Texas called TALA (Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts). I know that quite a few other states have similar programs if you’re an artist and have no money but need a legal consultation. I paid her for my work-for-hire agreements that I use all of the time and partnership agreement the band has. Then I have another attorney if I’m doing like a record deal—well I’ve never done, like, a traditional record deal; all of my record deals have been licensing agreements.

You were so smart to put that band agreement together, which like you said, wasn’t fun, but it’s essentially a prenup (prenuptial agreement). No one’s like, “Yay, let’s do a prenup!”

Kam: If you quote me saying how much it sucked, please put it in all caps and italics because it FREAKING SUCKED. It was horrible.

But it was worth it.

Kam: Yeah, thirteen years later, it’s still worth it. And it’s an investment in self when you do that—because it’s a marriage if you’re working in a band. But when you have a song, I think it’s more comparable to having a baby. The agreement, that’s the birth certificate for that song. The splits, all of that, that’s the social security for that song. And you can’t get checks unless you do what you’re supposed to do on the paperwork side.

Perfect segue into, “Music Publishing Isn’t Scary or Confusing + How to Land a Sync Placement.” You mentioned that BMI is your performing rights organization?

Kam: Yes they are.

The first step is signing up with a performing rights organization, like you are with BMI in the United States… though I’ve been meeting way too many artists, mostly students and young people, that aren’t signed up for a performing rights organization (i.e., ASCAP or BMI in the U.S., PRS in the U.K., etc.), because they’re scared and they don’t want to “sign their rights away”—which is not only not the case, but if you don’t register your songs within two and a half years or so, you never get that money!

How do you collect on your music publishing beyond that?

Kam: We have a pub[lishing] admin[istrator] that we work with.

Awesome. This is really important, and not that you need to be spending time doing this, but to preach to fellow songwriters asking questions, if someone is just signed up for a performing rights organization (ASCAP, BMI, PRS, or the PRO in your country) and are NOT collecting on their music publishing in any other way—THEY ARE MISSING MONEY! You are getting that money through your admin publishing deal though—yay! For folks that don’t have access to an admin publishing deal, I really love Songtrust to collect on one’s music publishing in full because it’s open to everyone.

Do you have a publicist and if so what has your experience been like working with PR (public relations)?

Kam: I think that I’m probably one of the few artists that can say I’ve had successful campaigns both with and without a publicist. But the campaigns that I’ve had without a publicist have been a different type of work. I don’t like working without a publicist when it comes to my bigger releases because I feel like the reason you hire a publicist is to gain access to their contacts and resources. I’m not saying that I don’t want to do it every time I do a release. But sometimes I’m not doing a release that I want the same audience for. Though I’m not saying that that’s what my publicity or any PR firm would do. But it’s just a different type of release and sometimes the money’s not there. And if I know the money’s not there, I know, okay, these are the things I did on my last campaign and that means I’m going to be writing to journalists myself.

I also want to mention that folks should add Boomerang for Gmail to your emails or any form of email tracking, because then you can see if your emails are getting read. And if they’re not getting read, it might be going into spam.

Not enough artists are sending these emails. Everyone is scared, and it’s a huge issue.

Kam: It’s nuts. I was telling my manager, Meredith, this woman from The Orchard sent an email on the Women in Music email list saying, “Hey, come to Houston—I’d love to meet with y’all!” So I respond, and she sends the happy-hour information. She said she had 53 RSVPs for this and I was the only person that showed up! Four people from The Orchard—are you kidding me? I can’t even get this meeting in New York. Wow.

Guess who they’re going to have a relationship with? You! They’re going to have the relationship with you, not the 50+ people who RSVP’d. You are so talented, so it’s not to take anything away from that. But that’s the classic “80% of success is showing up.”

Do you record your shows even if it’s just audio?

Kam: Yes, we do it a lot. We don’t record every single show; I wish we could. It just depends on what it is, where it is, how much control we have—like if we’re at a festival. But if we’re at a venue, we can do that.

Great, and then what do you do with that content? I feel weird calling your live music “content,” but you know what I mean.

Kam: It is content. We do whatever we want with it – which I say that not to be sassy, but I say because artists should do whatever they want with it. Like, do not sit on it. Sometimes we’ll just take the video and not use the audio so that we can clip it and make live sizzle reels for upcoming tours. Sometimes we’ll take the music so that we can use it as practice guides for any subplayers that we have or train somebody up. We use them as ways to review ourselves. And sometimes we use it as content. Like, we might not share the whole show, but maybe we’ll put a song on Patreon and say, “Look, we’re not going put this on Instagram or Facebook because those people aren’t paying for that and y’all are supporting us.”

Along those same lines, how can folks reading this best support you?

Kam: They can best support me by going to either kamfranklin.com or thesuffers.com.

Perfect. Kam, thank you SO much for your time, unless there’s anything else you want to add?

Kam: I’ll say “happy creating, and keep showing up for yourself” to whoever is reading this. That’s it.