The genesis of madpot

The process of writing songs involves a lot of trial and error. These trials are typically recorded on a “demo tape”, where the song is listened to again and again to identify how the song/recording can be improved and expanded upon. (To not go through this process would leave a lot of potential on the table, hence would be an “error”).

When I was at the peak of my songwriting game at around 2009, I was recording around 3 demos a week. Many of these demos were simple “scratch” recordings using a 4 track tape recorder. The purpose of these recordings was to capture the “song’s DNA”, the basic melody, rhythm, and structure of the song. The goal of the demo would be: if someone were to hear this recording, would they have an accurate idea of what the song is supposed to sound like, so from there the recording quality and takes would improve when it came to recording the “actual” recording.

So in other words, demos are recorded so that a song’s potential can easily be heard, planned, and realized.

Over the years I have experimented with many different styles of music, though if I had to say one common theme among my musical projects, it might be “If Woody Guthrie had a drum machine”. I came of age musically as hip hop was entering its 1990s Golden Era, and so even when I was working in more of a folksy tradition, the rhythm and experience of hip hop was an integral part of everything I composed musically.

One day after I had recorded a demo and played it for a friend of mine who was one of my greatest music collaborators, I remarked “this song has mad potential”. Mad of course meaning “unbridled”. We soon started using the phrase to describe a lot of what we were doing, and soon enough, we shortened it to “madpot”.

Originally we had ambitions to start a record company and call it “madpot records”, but once we started taking stock of what was required to make a successful record company, that idea went by the wayside.

Years later, I met Bianca. At that time I knew very little about what went behind throwing successful events, but in her I saw that event production/experience design could be just as much an artform as the music I was producing, though the parameters and tools were very different. Bianca helped me to integrate with her own madpot projects such as Counter Crawl - a DIY art event she helped facilitate where folks rode by bike to spaces with artists in residence as an all-day festival. Counter Crawl was done as a non monetary based collective community event that offered a ton of inspiration and experimentation by everyone involved.

Creative collaboration between B+L came very naturally, and as we worked together, we began informally calling the work we were producing “madpot”. We worked on a lot of projects from the jump, things like well produced “music shows” that included film screenings, a documentary project capturing the life of Houston’s Mid-Main neighborhood, to high concept New Years parties with a surreal bent. Our canvas was the experience.

Our collaborations got more and more ambitious, and the first project to be informally named madpot was:

Clory Martin: The Live Album.

That project epitomized so much of what madpot had been about, and was a precursor to what madpot would eventually become.  Clory Martin: The Live Album included a live album recording (and all of the rehearsal required to pull that off successfully), lots of marketing and promotional collateral and media, the successful authoring of a kickstarter campaign, a film recording of the live album taping, securing and right fitting the rooftop of a favorite venue to hold the recording, editing of the audio and video, “printing the final product” to both a CD album as well as a DVD release, and all of that including custom photography. Did I mention that in addition to producing all of this material, I also performed with Clory Martin at the show?

Many years would go by with Bianca and I working in our own lanes, her in event production, myself in film and video, but our collaborations became more frequent and artistically rooted in our personalities.

We all have our experience with the surreal era of the pandemic in 2020. That era doesn’t need an introduction or much elaboration, but what it did provide for madpot was an opportunity to merge the need that Bianca and her colleagues in the events industry had (needing to continue creating experiences but not having a safe avenue to do so) with my technical video experience and equipment. By May of 2020 we were starting to book multi-day conference experiences from our home studio, using the expertise and network Bianca has cultivated over the years and delivering with the technical know how and gear that I had accumulated. We saw great success with those ventures, and so we took that opportunity to finally formalize our working partnership into B&L Creative Group.

Thankfully, our work was able to shift back to actual filmmaking and in person experiences as the toll of the pandemic waned. Though looking back, it seemed appropriate that we would turn something so terrible in that pandemic and find mad potential in the new direction it would offer.

Madpot evolved from a one liner about mixtapes to B+L productions and now to a collective of artists, creatives and experts who team up to harmonize and create great work.