Studio Spotlight – Darian Wigfall of FarFetched Sound

Hailing from St. Louis, Missouri, FarFetched is one of the
Midwest’s most exciting music collectives. Founded by renowned producer, visual
artist, and filmmaker Damon Davis, FarFetched and their roster of artists have
gained national and international attention, with features on National Public
Radio and collaborations with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

Darian Wigfall, FarFetched’s Director of Operations and a Sweetwater
customer, recently chatted with us about the benefits of joining a musicians’
collective and FarFetched’s latest venture, FarFetched Sound, a recording
studio and production workspace. In August of 2020, Darian was the recipient of
Sweetwater’s Monthly Gear Giveaway, and he lets us in on what it was like to
win the giveaway and how he and the other members of the collective are putting
the gear to good use!

You joined FarFetched in 2013, two years after it was
established. What brought you to the group?

In 2011, Damon had started FarFetched, but I had another
company called Versatility Media Group. The thing about St. Louis — and I’m
sure this happens in other cities, too — it’s just like, when you’re
disillusioned or something, you start your own. You’re like, “Oh, I’m going to
do it better than everybody else doing it,” you know? But I noticed that, in
St. Louis, it was just making our scene weaker. So, I had just come to the
conclusion that I wanted to collaborate with somebody that was on a similar
wavelength. Damon and I had met months before I joined FarFetched. We traded
stories back and forth about things like what email services we used, you know,
because we were friends. In 2013, Damon said he was going to form an executive
team for FarFetched, and I was one of the first people he thought of to
include.

What inspired FarFetched to embrace a collective approach
rather than the traditional top-down model used by most record labels?

You know, I came up in the golden era of hip-hop. Back then,
you saw many rappers working together underneath record labels. Even though the
labels didn’t always treat them well, it was worth it because they were making
money. But, starting in the 2000s, that model shifted to where artists were
getting no money. The labels weren’t even getting that much money because of
the internet, and iTunes, and all of these other things for which they didn’t
prepare. So, we just saw that it’s probably best to be in a collective. We
looked at everything from Judd Apatow movies to the Roots, the Wu-Tang Clan,
the Dungeon Family in Atlanta with Outkast and Goodie Mob, and even the Seattle
grunge scene in the ’90s. In those examples, there were a lot of different artists
working together to make each other better. Especially in St. Louis, if we band
together economically, we can pool our money and make a bigger impact than if
we’re bootstrapping on our own.

How do you connect with artists?

Typically, we find artists by going to shows and checking
them out. Because if your live show’s good, we know that your recorded music is
always going to be fine.

FarFetched has a very eclectic lineup. But, if you had to
define the FarFetched Sound, what would you call it?

I would say experimental electronic. Most of our artists
produce through some sort of digital audio workstation, whether it’s Ableton,
Logic, or something else. However, many of our artists also play traditional
instruments. Another word I like to use to describe FarFetched is “interdisciplinary”
because everyone does so many different things. It’s never just straightforward
music. There’s a lot of very intentional blending of genres and blending of
jobs. There’s so much content to create, and we’re doing it ourselves.
Specifically, my partner Damon Davis makes music, directs films (including the
award-winning Whose Streets?), sculpts, paints, and writes books and
children’s books. I’ve also written a book, and I DJ.

In your role, how do you help to support and nurture
artists in the collective?

There is a number of things that I’ve done over the years.
The first thing I did when I came in as a manager was to prepare everybody
mentally for licensing their music. Licensing music is one of the first things
artists in the industry can do to generate income. However, most young artists
are not in a position to get licensed, and, even if they are, they may not get
the money they’re supposed to. So, that was one of the things I preached.

Additionally, in my role as a manager, I work one-on-one
with artists on the “basics,” which can sometimes be glossed over. For
instance, if you’re going to record in your room at home, maybe put up a
blanket so that there’s no echo — little stuff like that. If you want to be
self-sufficient and sound professional, there are simple things you can do,
which just take a little more time and effort. All of those things are now
codified into what we call the FarFetched Tool Kit for Do-It-Yourself Musicians,
which I’m currently putting together as a book. FarFetched artists will get
this for free as a benefit for being in the collective, and we’re also planning
to sell it at a reasonable price to nonmembers.

Recently, the collective launched its own recording
studio, FarFetched Sound. Can you tell me about that?

We’re coming up on our 10-year anniversary, and FarFetched
Sound is really the culmination of those 10 years. We really needed the studio.
You know, in every music biopic or documentary, the level-up moment is when the
artists have plenty of time in the studio to create!

We ran a venue for about a year, and, when it closed, we
were shifting into another partnership with a business incubator called
TechArtista, which is geared toward creative businesses. They bought a space
that was actually an old, converted church, and they asked, “Do you want to put
a full studio in here?” And I said, “Yeah!”

There was a lot of work soundproofing the space, but we finally got it to a place where it’s workable. Damon and I and everybody else in the collective were set on having a specific sound for the room, not one that was completely dead or flat — and it sounds really good! With this studio, I think we’re going to be able to make some great music together. We also have a pre-production room that we call the “Think Space,” where you can go if you don’t have your track fully together. We’ve collected a bunch of gear over the years. So, if you want to borrow an Ableton Push or an Akai MPC One, you can take it to the “Think Space” and work on your track. Then, we can go into the studio and finish the production.

In August 2020, you won the Sweetwater Monthly Gear
Giveaway, featuring a studio production package from PreSonus that included a
selection of Shure mics. How has that helped in getting FarFetched Sound up and
running?

That was wild! I’ve never won anything like that before. The PreSonus production package completely gave us a head start on everything. If we didn’t have the Sweetwater package, especially with the mics, we would not be here yet. The Shure SM7B was one that was on our list, and that was included with the package. Now that we’ve finished up the sound treatment, we’re looking at adding some more equipment, like the Focusrite OctoPre and the Warm Audio WA73.

What’s on the slate for FarFetched in 2021?

There’s going to be a lot of new music coming out this year, as well as livestreams from the studio. Prologue 10 (a compilation of FarFetched artists) is coming, and we’ll be putting out 10th-anniversary content all year.

Conclusion

With over 20 artists on their roster and still growing, FarFetched is a major creative force in St. Louis with several of their artists gaining national and global exposure. To learn more about the FarFetched collective, check out wearefarfetched.net. And make sure to dig into their deep catalog of exciting experimental hip-hop and electronic music at farfetched.bandcamp.com.

Find More on inSync
The post Studio Spotlight – Darian Wigfall of FarFetched Sound appeared first on inSync.