Zoe Keating is well and truly on her own

January 09, 2014|By Chrissie Dickinson, Special to the Tribune
(Claude Shade, )

If Amanda Palmer is the reigning queen of do-it-yourself musical success, avant garde cellist Zoe Keating is a DIY duchess. The one-woman orchestra is also a one-woman business who acts as her own manager and arranges her own interviews.

Is Keating going to hire an actual publicist one of these days?

"No, of course not," she laughs, calling from a San Francisco bookstore where she's doing some shopping with her three-year-old son Alex. "I just prefer to do it in person. That makes it organic and natural and real. I understand people hire publicists and send out press releases, but I've never done it. For better or worse, I know what's happening or not happening."

Keating, 41, uses a foot-controlled laptop to record live samples and build intricately layered instrumentals as she performs. A former member of the cello-rock band Rasputina, she also played on Palmer's debut solo album. Keating has been featured on NPR, had her music reach No. 1 on iTunes classical music chart and was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

She's also an artist who consistently throws back the curtains on a working musician's life. An accessible social media presence, Keating has more than one million followers on Twitter. In a series of tweets in December, (she posted a play-by-play account of her touring travails during one hectic day on the road. Delayed at the Toronto airport for five hours and booked to play in Atlanta that night, she tweeted constant updates.

Keating made the Atlanta show by the skin of her teeth. Her devoted fans in the audience, apprised on Twitter of her earlier troubles (including an airport debate over an unforeseen $200 charge on checking her cello), proved a forgiving lot.

"They all clapped when I arrived at the venue," she laughs. "I had my big winter coat on because I'd just left Toronto in a storm and arrived in Atlanta where it was really warm. I set up all the gear in front of them. I said, 'I'll be right back, I have to get my costume on.'"

Born in Canada, Keating began playing cello at the age of eight. After college she worked at a software startup in San Francisco while harboring a dream of music. She was living in a warehouse with some fellow musicians and programmers. One of her housemates made music software. Over time she began to fuse her musicianship with high tech.

"There were a lot of gadgets laying around the house," she recalls. "It was a natural progression for me to plug the cello into the computer to see what would happen. I started out using a little looping pedal with the cello, but I found that limiting. Software was more flexible, even though it was more unstable. Pretty soon I was using software to record the cello and it kept getting more complicated. For a while it seemed my set up was changing every week."

She quit her day job ten years ago and launched a full-time career in music. A feature on NPR and a gig as an opening act and accompanist for the British artist Imogen Heap gained Keating crucial exposure. She put her music on iTunes, and it began selling without benefit of a record label.

She has earned enough income from her music to buy a house in a small town in Sonoma County, California. Her husband, a graphic designer, left his job to be the stay-at-home caregiver when the couple's son was born.

"I don't think my life would work if I didn't have a partner running the house," Keating says. "I'm really lucky to have that. We've been together since 1998. We've always had this agreement that life is long and things will change for us. For now, it's working out for me and it's more efficient for him to be supporting me as a househusband. Later down the road it may be the other way around."

Keating has become one of the more vocal artists when it comes to the business of music. This past September, she wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times that detailed the nuts and bolts of her indie career, the rise of subscription streaming services and her success with iTunes.

Last year in The Atlantic magazine, she revealed her recorded music revenue. Her pre-tax income for six months was more than $84,000. The majority of it came from iTunes downloads. The streaming services Spotify and Pandora accounted for only tiny slivers of the financial pie.

"It's all about information," she says about her decision to go public about her earnings. "There's this shame around money. But without knowing that information, it's hard to make change. The same is true for the growing income inequality. I've been heartened to see all the discussion around minimum wage. In the music world there's a void of that information. I always feel compelled to speak out, for better or worse. I'm glad that some other artists are doing the same. I think it's making a difference."