March 14, 2017

Meet Gaz & Zoe Jones of TBP Musician’s Services

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gaz & Zoe Jones.

Gaz & Zoe, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Back in 2006, Gaz and I gave up our professional careers in the UK – he, as a Sales Manager, and me as a solicitor (attorney) – to move to LA and pursue our dream of opening a music studio.

As a long-time solo artist, session artist, band member, recording engineer, and producer, Gaz had a really clear idea of how to make a studio that musicians would love. I had recently received an inheritance from my deceased grandmother, and we used those funds to engage a top studio architect, Gary Heathcote, and an internationally respected acoustical engineering company, Veneklasen and Associates, to design our dream studio. We were able to secure a Lease of a beautiful commercial unit in Santa Monica, which had an outdoor courtyard area that was absolutely perfect for or clients to relax with their band, or hold a band meeting. We fell in love with Santa Monica, and the unit, almost immediately. We loved the mellow, beachy, creative vibe of the area, and we had noted that while Santa Monica, Venice and Malibu appeared to be full of musicians and artists – both professional, and hobbyists – there was an extreme lack of facilities and a lack of a focal point for the musical community in the area.

Designing and constructing the studio was a long and arduous process which continued throughout 2007 – going way over budget and time-scale, of course – as we worked part-time jobs in the UK to try to support ourselves, sold off our cars and all our possessions to pay the bills, and struggled to obtain US visas.

We did eventually get our visas, and moved to LA in mid-2007 to oversee the final stages of the construction. By this time, we had spent all our available funds and the construction still was not completed. Survival was really difficult for us at this point. However, our phone rang almost constantly with inquiries from musicians who were thrilled to hear that a new studio was opening in their area. Interest was at a fever pitch by the time we opened in April 2008.

Our mission from the outset was to create a small, hands-on, family-owned business with a personal, charming, non-corporate, quirky, even old-fashioned feel. We have been so sad to witness the decline of small business in all areas, and we both feel that it has been detrimental to our society and culture, and we were determined to make a stand for small business, believing that charm and attention to detail would always triumph over corporate gloss. We wanted to make a real contribution to society and to the local area, providing a focal point to build and support a close-knit community of artists. We wanted to build more than just a business. We also wanted to ensure that we provided services that were accessible and affordable to musicians of all levels, from the grass-roots up, and not simply cater to big-spenders, as so many companies in LA do. Our business was not primarily about profit, but about music, community, and soul.

The studio was hugely successful upon opening and we learned that we had judged the situation correctly – people were thrilled to have a musical home in their area. We could have sold every available space two, if not three times over. The studio earned 5 star reviews and quickly became one of the best-reviewed musical facilities anywhere in Los Angeles. We played host to many celebrity clients, as well as novice artists and even high-school kids. We reached out to many local music businesses and developed really strong relationships with them. Just one of our many community projects was the “TBP Calendar”, a calendar which we put together, with sponsorship from many local music stores and venues, to promote all of us and promote the music scene on the West Side of Los Angeles. The calendar sold out. We also booked numerous live music events all over the West Side, assisting both local artists, out-of-town artists, and local music venues in the process. Our business was thriving and we were living our dream.

Around 2012, we began to notice changes in the local area. Increasingly, small independent businesses were closing down and being replaced by what appeared to be small businesses, but upon inspection, turned out to be owned by large corporations. Our rent was increased in that year. We also noticed many residences being demolished and replaced with construction projects installing extremely high-priced apartments and office spaces. One such was in fact the neighboring lot to our building. Around this time, we had a discussion with our business neighbor, a fencing company, owned by a gentleman who had been running the company for more than 30 years. He expressed his concerns about the new apartment building, and his concern that the occupants, who would be paying more than $100,000 per annum in rent, would not want to see “an ugly construction yard” and construction workers hanging around the area, and that he feared that this would eventually cause problems for him.

Over the next few years, we noticed increasing changes in how ourselves, and our customers, were treated by persons in the local area. There was no longer a warm and friendly atmosphere, where locals would greet my husband and I in the street and inquire after our business. We began to get dirty looks in the street, as did our customers. Customers began to tell us that they were leaving the area since it was getting increasingly expensive, and creative types were being drawn into other communities such as Silver Lake which were actively trying to encourage and build a creative community. As large companies and expensive apartment buildings moved in, Santa Monica began to feel increasingly hostile towards musicians and artists. Several very well established music industry businesses in the area closed down over the next few years – a big music store as well as several live music venues – and several established music management companies moved away from the area, and we witnessed a serious downturn in business. It was also around this time that we began to notice a marked change in how the management company for our building were talking to us. They had become notably less cordial in their dealings with us and I remember saying to my husband that this was possibly because “we are operating in hostile territory now”. Around this time a new neighbor moved into the unit next door to us, within our building, and we received a noise complaint. By this time we had already been operating for 6 years without any issue. Our attorney responded with a request for more information about the alleged noise, so that we could assess the work needed to address the problem. However, we received no response and no further complaints. In addition we had personally assured the neighbor that we would take care of any issue and that he should let us know immediately if he had any problem.

By 2015, our business income had been cut in half, while rent prices in the area continued to climb. When our Lease renewal came around in early 2016, our landlord informed us that they were only going to give us a 1 year renewal, instead of the usual 4 years. We were pretty sure at that point, that their plan was to either greatly increase our rent after a year, or to get rid of us to make way for a new, higher paying tenant. Around this time, two other business owners whom we knew in the Venice area – a pro-audio rental company, and a cafe – had told us that they had lost their business premises, as their landlords wanted them out to make way for new tenants. We naturally feared the same would happen to us.

During the year following that renewal, the management company began to hound us on an almost daily basis with petty issues, and complaints about our customers and staff, and increasingly restricted what we were able to do at the property. In particular, we were told that our clients were no longer allowed to use the courtyard area for waiting, band meetings etc. and had to “pass right through”. They would not be allowed to stand near the front of the building either. We had been doing business for more than 8 years at this point, without issue, and the courtyard waiting area had always been a central aspect of our business and was a primary reason for us choosing the location. It was clear to us that the reason for these restrictions was that our clients were now considered “inappropriate”. During this year, the next door neighbor also moved out, and after he had left, we were informed by the management company that he had made “a string of complaints” against our customers – AFTER he had left. We pointed out that since we were not told of these issues at the time, we were not aware of any problem, and that of course we would have tried to address these matters, if we had known that they existed. This was particularly difficult for us since the management company gave us very little detail about what the “string of complaints” actually appertained to.

In early 2016, another new neighbor moved into the unit next door. The guy was hostile towards ourselves and our staff, starting from the very first day he moved in. On the first evening, after having a friendly conversation with my husband in the courtyard, he complained to management – COMPLETELY falsely – that ourselves and our clients were “partying, playing loud music and doing drugs” in the courtyard which was a 100% untrue allegation in all respects. Within a few days, he had openly stated to my staff members that he was “getting your recording studio” and that he had decorated his own unit in the same colors as ours “so it matches when I take your place”. He was completely unashamed and brazen in these statements and seemed really confident from the outset that he was going to get his hands on our premises. Because of this, I have strong suspicions that he had already done a deal in advance with our landlord, that he would take over our premises if the landlord got rid of us, and it’s possible that he even offered a bribe to achieve this. The guy’s manner, and speech, clearly indicated that he was a bully with a gangster-type mentality towards business. Over the next few months, he made our lives hell and our business virtually impossible to operate. He employed a couple of well-built guys and these people would constantly come out of their unit and approach my customers as they entered the building, demanding to know who they were and what they were doing, and being generally intimidating towards them. This was obviously extremely stressful for our customers and staff. He also installed a security camera in order to film our customers in the courtyard. He did not have permission to do so, and since our business had numerous celebrity clients, it was completely unacceptable to us, and our clients, that an unknown third party was recording them while they were working on a project in pre-production. We complained to the management company, who did nothing to stop his illegal surveillance, and of course, this very quickly had an impact on our business. During this time, the neighbor also got into a confrontation with our other neighbor in the building, was unpleasant and aggressive towards him, and also threatened to “take his place” and stated his intention to “take over the entire building”. Both ourselves and our other neighbors informed the management company of this, and of course, they did nothing to protect us. In addition, this guy made numerous noise complaints about us, some of which we are certain were fabricated since he himself was playing very loud dance music in his unit at the specified times. Our attorney again requested more information in order that we could address the complaint correctly, and again received no response to his requests. We had also verbally informed the management company that we would need to obtain equipment and take numerous readings in order to ascertain the exact acoustical work required.

However, the management company instead chose to instigate eviction proceedings against us in June 2016. We fought, but lost, and were forced to close our much-loved, much-respected business, into which we had poured our hopes and dreams, ten years’ worth of blood, sweat, tears, and sleepless nights, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, representing everything we had in the world – on September 5th 2016. Not content with this, our landlord made it abundantly clear that, instead of us removing the construction work which we had paid for, he now considered our studio to be his property and we were not even allowed to remove what we had built. Since it was a custom-built studio, his desire to keep it for himself could not have made it more clear that his intention all along was to deprive us of half-a-million dollars’ worth of construction and keep that for himself. It also strongly supports our supposition that he had already made a deal to give the studio to the new neighbor, since obviously a fully-fitted music studio is a very specific commodity to trade. The agreement had always been that the studio would be removed if we left, but the landlord’s willingness to drag us through court, incurring $10,000 in legal fees, clearly shows that it was not only about getting us out – since we had offered numerous times to remove the construction and leave quietly, without the need for court proceedings – his ultimate goal was to get the studio, not to get us out. Not only did he take our business, our livelihood, our investment, and our dreams, he took the actual premises for himself, and then we had to pay his legal fees that he incurred in suing us to get our place! And all of this, after we had agreed to leave quietly. To add insult to injury, they forced us to submit to an inspection where they went all around our studio deciding what items they would keep for themselves.

It’s not an understatement to say that the whole experience was literally like having someone kidnap and murder your child, in order to sell the corpse to your next door neighbor. My husband and I will never recover from this experience.

Has it been a smooth road?
Asides from the trials and tribulations already mentioned, we discovered that staying alive in the music industry, is a matter of constant hussle, and a matter of constantly applying charm to keep the wheels of business turning. Artists are among the most difficult people to work with, and earn a living from, and doing so requires an unlimited supply of patience. The future of your business depends on the artist going away feeling great, and a lot of the time, you have to make serious sacrifices, and go the extra mile, to make sure that is happening. To every artist of every level, their art is as important to them as curing cancer, and when you are in the business of music production, the last thing anyone needs is a “reality check”, so you have to make sure that practical difficulties are solved quickly and unobtrusively without intruding on the artist. Also, dealing with artists of any type is famously akin to herding kittens, so working in this industry requires a lot of tolerance, a lot of attention to detail and a lot of micro-management.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
In the wake of the loss of our studio in Santa Monica, we have sought the means to still provide services to our customer base which was so hard-won over the course of ten years. We still receive inquiries about production and pre-production services on a daily basis. In addition, we have fostered many close ties with our colleagues in the music industry over the years, and we sought to still continue the process of community-building, and fostering music creation – the values that ourselves and our business have always stood for.

That is how we came up with the idea for our new mobile app – Jam Spot! – which is currently in development. Jam Spot! will hook musicians up with rehearsal space available in their area – whether it is hourly-rental or monthly-rental space, whether equipped or unequipped. Jam Spot! will enable musicians to search and compare all commercial music rehearsal spaces available in their local area. But also, Jam Spot! will go further – as well as formal commercial rehearsal studios (which are sadly scarce, due to many of the issues which we already discussed), Jam Spot! will list ANY spaces which a prospective Jam Spotter wishes to make available to musicians – for example, a shed, garage, spare bedroom, warehouse space, or back yard, even if it does not have musical equipment, can be a Jam Spot! Now, almost anybody can make money on an hourly basis by renting their spare room, shed, basement or attic to musicians to practice in. Also, musicians who already have a monthly-rental (“lock-out”) studio for their band, may wish to make some extra money to cover their costs, by renting their lock-out to another band for a few hours. Similarly, musicians who already own a home studio will be able to make it available, for some extra income. In all cases, providers of Jam Spots will control their own hours of availability, pricing, restrictions, and bookings accepted. We believe, in the modern environment which is increasingly hostile towards musicians and music-related businesses, that Jam Spot! will be the future of music rehearsals and pre-production services.

Jam Spot! will also list recording and other production and post-production services, although the primary emphasis will be on rehearsal and pre-production.

All bookings can be made through a Jam Spot! app with just one click, using a pre-registered payment card – we have taken all of our knowledge of musicians, and how they want to rehearse, to create an application that provides all the functionality they want.

Jam Spot will also allow both customers, and Jam Spots, to upload pictures and write reviews, and will allow musicians to search for and chat with other musicians in their local area – Jam Spot! will be a social network, not just a booking system.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Our experiences in Los Angeles, as business people, have been absolutely horrendous in many respects. We have already discussed in detail the snobbery and hostile attitudes from both landlords, and many persons in the local community, towards artists and musicians – even successful ones. As the city becomes increasingly corporate in demeanor, the character and charm is declining, and this is something we have noticed extremely sharply over the past ten years, and has also been remarked on almost constantly by our clients, colleagues, friends and associates. As mentioned, this has led to many, many musicians leaving Los Angeles over the past five or six years, and many of those remaining are now concentrated in certain areas and have deserted formerly creative centers such as Venice. Massive efforts need to be made to preserve small businesses, and especially businesses related to music and performing arts, which are in jeopardy all over Los Angeles.

In addition to our own experiences, we have heard of many others who have had similarly poor experiences with greedy landlords, in both commercial and residential property, and this seems to be a particularly huge issue in Los Angeles. Over ten years of living in this city, in six different locations, we have NEVER had a satisfactory experience with landlords, who charge sky-high prices, but consistently do not do renovations to their properties, or do work in the cheapest and shoddiest manner, and who make not the slightest efforts to protect or respect their tenants. I can literally and in all good conscience say that on every Lease which we have signed in this city – whether commercial or residential – seven Leases in total – we have been treated like absolute garbage.

I certainly would not recommend Los Angeles for anyone to start a small business, the way things currently are. In addition to the sky-high rent prices, I have to say that almost every time we have had to use a professional service of any type, whether legal, accounting, repairs, or frankly almost anything, we have been ripped off, over-charged, misdirected or let down, and that also goes for almost everyone we know… everyone has had similar experiences. It took us many years to find decent people to help us with what we needed. It gets very tiresome after a few years. In addition to that, our business bank account has been defrauded TWICE and our personal account once, in the space of a few years. We’ve had stuff stolen from our studio, had stuff stolen from our house, had a string of dishonest house-mates who ripped us off, and finally, had a gangster steal our whole business, with the assistance of our landlord. This city is literally full of criminals, con-artists, charlatans, shysters and frauds, and you have to be really tough to survive here.

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