We recently connected with Liza Carbe and have shared our conversation below.

Liza, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

(Just to let folks know, both Liza Carbe and Jean-Pierre are being interviewed and giving their different perspectives on answering these questions.)
One main way that we diverged from the industry standard was that long ago, we decided to do as much of it ourselves as possible. This was for a variety of reasons:
1) Our music was instrumental and technically somewhat demanding so we knew that no one would see us as a “cash cow” to invest in – we, being Liza, myself, and Incendio co-founder Jim Stubblefield, wanted to do our own thing.
2) Prior to that, we had written for television and produced CD’s for ourselves and others. We threw ourselves into production to learn every aspect we could, not by going to school, but by using our ears and learning everything we could. This was 25 years ago, before there was the kind of ubiquitous support for self-starters that there is now.
3) We knew that “seizing the means of production” gave us the opportunity to write and produce our own music without relying on anyone else, and would teach us the real value of studio time, pre-production time, and all the little facets that end up costing a lot of money in the end.
4) We also decided that we were going to learn how to book ourselves, because we didn’t want to rely on agents, and they weren’t exactly throwing themselves at a young instrumental band. But we knew enough from going out there and playing ourselves that there were people who loved our music.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We are co-founders of a music group called Incendio. We have 11 albums and 2 dvd’s available internationally, and over 110 million streams across Pandora, Spotify, and all other platforms. As a duo, we’ve written production music that has been placed in literally thousands of shows and commercials, including “Law and Order”, “Breaking Bad”, “Bridesmaids”, “Burn Notice”, and many more. We have also scored for various media including the History Channel and Animal Planet.

Liza has been playing guitar since she was 9 years old. She went on to get her degree in classical guitar and classical voice from Cal State Northridge – she always wanted to be a professional musician. Upon graduation, she picked up the bass and soon joined the rock band Vixen to tour across the United States. She also toured with Leon Patillo of Santana. But it was during her time with Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsay Buckingham, playing guitar for him on his first solo tour, that she met her partner, JP Durand.

JP Durand got his degree in economics from UC Berkeley and was considering law school. But he had been a guitar player since the 7th grade, studying piano before that. Meeting Liza provided the spark for him to realize a long held dream to actually be a professional musician. He is a self-taught musician with a great ear, and thus strongly complements Liza’s talents. They met in a Steely Dan cover band and threw in their lot together.

One of our first challenges was being offered the opportunity to write for Paramount’s Entertainment Tonight. It’s a classic story: JP thought that perhaps we did not have the equipment to get the job done. Liza turned to him and strongly expressed that “someone else is going to do a crappy demo, and they will get the gig – let’s try this with what we had”. So with one ADAT, a Marshall JMP-1 preamp, an Atari computer and a Alesis HR-16 drum machine, lots of guitars, basses and good ears, we did the demo and got the gig! We went on to do 300 minutes of music for that show, that subsequently went into the Paramount library and was distributed throughout their shows at the time. Of course our studio grew during that time. It was an amazing experience, and we learned so much along the way.

While starting to compose for music libraries, Liza started to perform with a guy named Jim Stubblefield. Interestingly, our band Book of Storms and his solo work had both been selected by Music Connection as “artists to watch”, totally independent of each other, sometime in 1993 or thereabouts. Jim needed a bass player. But more importantly, he had thought that he loved to play shred electric guitar but that folks would probably not come in droves to listen to that at some small club. However, if he switched to nylon-string guitar, he could still play complex pieces but with a latin and world music flair. It was a great idea, and Liza understood it while she was playing with him. JP started to tag along and then began to jam with the group. Between Liza, myself and Jim, there was a synergy of direction and passion for this style of music. We got signed to PARAS Recordings and put out two-well received albums with them. Then we released the “Intimo” album and live “Dia y Noche” album indepedently, then two albums with New World Music out of England. Every release since then has been an indie release and we have navigated the murky waters of independent music for 30 years, moving through CD’s, the end of the old music industry, the death of CD distribution, Napster, MySpace, ITunes, and everything in between, to our current paradigm.

Through all this, providing an explosive live show with lots of intense guitar playing has been a priority. This has included learning how to book, learning how to play complex songs live, and continually improving our sound and presentation. We have also had to push ourselves as writers, producers, engineers, and players. The three of us have always been very involved in understanding the business of music: publishing, masters, registration, performing rights organizations (PRO’s) and such. And then eventually, learning how to navigate social media, streaming services, as well as video and audio recording and editing of our shows. Liza and I actually put some of this know-how together in a book called “Thrive and Survive in the Music Business”, released on Amazon.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

There are many instances of self-reliance to break through problems.
JP – We have been around as Incendio for 25 years – we started in 1999 and released the first album in 2000. That was with the core quartet – the three founders and drummer Joe Shotwell. In 2005, Joe’s wife got a great offer to work in the wine industry, and left for Napa. He amicably gave notice, which was kinda scary since we were still a young band and eager to make an impression with somewhat unique and hard to play music. Between the time that Joe left and we started to play regularly with our friend, session drummer Nicole Falzone, is a period that I disparagingly call “the wilderness years”. Out of necessity, we took new shows as a trio, which we had never done, and it really drew us together in terms of rhythm and execution. We also played with wonderful drummers who were not destined to stay long, but adjusting to their rhythms and approaches was a challenge that again galvanized the band in a way that would not have happened if we had stayed with Joe. By the time we hooked up with our friend and longest-serving drummer, the fantastic Tim Curle, the three of us were simply better and tighter.

Liza – we had initially been signed to PARAS Recordings in 2000. Label owner Jim Snowden was instrumental in signing the groundbreaking duo Strunz and Farah, who were and are the standard-bearers for our genre. By the time we were signed, the musical landscape had changed tremendously and Snowden was facing his own problems. So, where it seemed like we had so much momentum in those first years, and had gotten in listening stations, end caps, we felt like we had a good trajectory. But when all that ended, as the label started to fold, we found ourselves on our own. We had to rally and figure out how we were going to move forward without a label. Both Jim and us had released music independently prior to being signed, so we knew most of the mechanics, but now had a group with an established name and sound, and were extremely hungry to keep the momentum going. And that is exactly what our early 2003 release “Intimo” did – it let our fanbase know that we were going to continue. Then we proceeded to write and release eight more albums, two with New World Music out of England and the rest on our own. As a side note, all these years later, we are now playing shows with a special guest: Ardeshir Farah, that same guitarist from Strunz and Farah.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

There were two cornerstones to building a reputation. One, we decided early on that we would “make the market”. We did not want to feel confined to the LA market alone, and knew that we wanted to play nationally, and internationally, and that would take some investment. I (JP) am a blues guitar player at heart and a lover of punk music. A few of my favorites, the Minutemen and Black Flag (amongst so many others) just got in the band and did it, didn’t complain, and had their feet on the ground across the country. Many musicians, many sidemen, many composers just don’t want to do that. We did that, all while we (Liza and JP) kept up a writing schedule for music libraries as well as servicing production clients. We were spinning so many plates at any given time, but we feel that we never let the music suffer. We always worked so hard to play well, to have great sounding guitars and systems. Even little things, like standing up playing (which doesn’t seem like a lot, but was for us since the parts were so demanding) were evolutions, and our audience noticed.

Two, in deciding to “make the market”, we didn’t turn our nose up at any gig. We played everywhere, anytime. So we ended up playing a lot of concerts to every conceivable demographic, projecting both joy and technical prowess. So as we played to folks and their families, we began to see young people growing up, and now bringing their kids. And some of those same kids from every generation have told us, “I play because of you guys”, or “I learned this from something you said in a school presentation”. A lot of our heroes, like say guitarist Allan Holdsworth, are not household names, but they are “musicians’ musician”, and without being aware of it, we have become that for a lot of folks, a band who is an “influence”. That is just super-gratifying and reinforces our reputation.

One last thing we consciously did, JP established long-term great relationships with presenters and folks booking venues. So we can often go back through the years to different markets, in some cases, becoming “regulars” at venues where the directorship has changed, or even when the director has passed away. If there was an agent between us and the venue, we would not have established this same relationship. So the notion of “reputation” also has to do with the management and booking of the group, the thoroughness of prep for touring, and the delivery of a great show once we get there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://incendioband.com/ and https://carbeanddurand.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/incendioband and instagram.com/carbeanddurand
• Facebook: facebook.com/incendioband and facebook.com/carbeanddurand
• Youtube: youtube.com/incendioband and youtube.com/carbeanddurand

Image Credits

Jack Sneddon
Brian Tillis
Shawna Sarnowski
Robb Hirsch
Jim Stubblefield
Jean-Pierre Durand