Bet on Yourself: KEM on Building an Independent Music Career (Episode 90)

Make Music Your Business.

He is often called "R&B's best kept secret," though Nomad disagrees: if you don't know KEM, you have been sleeping under a rock. One platinum album (KEM: Album II), two gold albums (Kemistry and Intimacy), three Grammy nominations and five number one singles, including "Love Calls" and "Nobody." And a journey from homelessness and addiction to sobriety that gave life to his music.

Nomad has worked with KEM in the studio and on stage, and in Episode 90 of The Career Musician they talk about how KEM built an independent music career from the ground up, selling CDs out of his trunk in Detroit, before Motown ever called. Here are the lessons.

Five songs, all night long

KEM sang in a wedding band for four or five years, and he has deep respect for those players: four sets a night, then up for the day job. But when it came to his own artistry, he only played his own songs. At the very beginning he had five or six originals and a quartet. First set, the band played them as instrumentals with solos. Second set, KEM sang them. The restaurant turned over, and they did it again.

Nomad called that separating church and state: covers pay the bills, and your artistry stays your artistry.

Let the people drive it

KEM recorded a live album at a coffee house in Detroit, then decided he didn't like it and shelved it. Copies got out anyway. Soon he would hit the first few chords at a show and the audience would start singing the song before he did. They had been vibing to the recording he thought wasn't good enough.

He re-recorded the songs, put them out on his own label, pressed the CDs himself, sold them from his car and on consignment, and got radio play. Packages went out to labels, but they weren't waiting on anybody.

"We put the music in the hands of the people. The people drove everything. If you have something that people dig, industry will follow."

KEM, 19:28

Bet on yourself first

KEM financed his first album on an American Express card, joking that they had mistaken him for somebody with good credit. Under the joke is the real point.

"If you're not willing to put everything that you have, put your credit, your FICO score, your money, your resources behind your dream, then why would you expect anybody else to sign up for it?"

KEM, 16:50

And he did his homework. He knew his songs were intellectual property. He learned what BMI was, set up his own company, and got his own barcode so every sale scanned back to him. Publishing checks started coming in and helped fund the next record. No MBA, just one foot in front of the other and someone to call for what he didn't know. As Nomad put it, the methods have changed since the early 2000s, but the principles are the same. That is Make Music Your Business.

Your record sits next to everybody's

When KEM made his first album, he pictured it on the shelf next to whoever was out. It had to be as good as Babyface's record, Luther's, Anita's, Lionel's. The competition starts when you are making the record.

He does not call that perfectionism. He calls it process. He edits his own vocals, the drums, the bass, whatever it takes until he likes what is coming out of the speakers. And if he doesn't love a song, he doesn't even finish it. Nomad's takeaway as a session player: when you are on someone else's date, your job is to facilitate their vision, however painstaking it gets. Everything you do is an audition.

The audience wants you to win

Touring with your own name on the sign is a whole other thing, KEM says. You are responsible for filling the seats. On his first tours he sat at his keyboard in the middle of the stage and sang the songs people had been playing at their desks and in their cars. No dancers, no light show.

"The audience bought the ticket because they want you to win. They came to see you win... You're starting off with a leg up."

KEM, 24:41

Over the years the show grew, with dynamics that peak and settle in the right places, because he wanted to be able to go on before or after anyone. Even on a bill after Babyface, which, he laughs, isn't fair. His only plan, he says, is to keep getting better.

Let your yes be yes

KEM's first advice to young artists: be honest about your motivation. Just because you can sing doesn't mean you are supposed to dedicate your life to this. If you hear all that and still want it, then it chose you. Then educate yourself (he is rereading Don Passman's music business book) and value the people around you right now. One book he read put it simply: stop trying to connect with Irving Azoff; the most important person to you right now is the guy who can fix your microphone.

Then the code he lives by:

"Don't chase gigs. Let your yes be yes and your no be no... Pay people what you owe. If you can't pay them, tell them you can't pay them... Return phone calls. Don't make promises that you can't keep."

KEM, 35:32

If he tells Nomad he will do the podcast at five on Thursday and Oprah calls for five o'clock, he can't do it. He has chased the bigger thing before and come away with nothing. The goal: when your team leaves the building, people ask when you're coming back. That is Low maintenance / no drama and Work begets work in the same breath.

The takeaway

KEM's fifth Motown album, Love Always Wins, came out in August 2020, with Nomad on guitar on a couple of tunes, including the duet with Toni Braxton. He also started a foundation to support the kinds of shelters and organizations that helped him through the darkest periods of his life. Nearly 20 years after Kemistry, the principles are the same: bet on yourself, learn the business, let the people drive it, and keep your word. When you are ready to go after the next opportunity, start with the free Get the Gig guide.

Get the gig. Keep the gig. Build the career.

Watch on YouTube or find every episode on the TCM Podcast page.