Followers of Justin Kennedy’s Twitter stream the past few months got a nice indie-2.0 treat: a ride through the backstreets, pubs and record shops of the UK on the coattails of Los Angeles-based indie outfit Army Navy. Fans tweeted and gabbed with the band as they toured in support of their self-titled debut album, released in October 2008.

Sending Twitter updates from the road, from motel rooms, and from wherever they could find free WiFi, front man Kennedy kept followers posted on the band’s crazy, rowdy and sometimes grueling tour through the angled country with pics, jokes and commentary. One tweet spoke of “living off very little sleep, lots of pints, and walking miles every day with all our gear,” evoking images of the band trudging through narrow, rain-soaked alleys, amps hoisted above heads like Vietnam grunts. In reality, it wasn’t far from the truth.

“It was pretty brutal,” Kennedy said through a recent email interview. “The tube is great and gets you all over, it’s just lugging all the gear into the tube and trying to find the clubs was a bit stressful … Next time we are hiring a helicopter.”

At least the beer was good.
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The first time I saw Daniel Earwicker he was tearing through a cover of the Smiths’ “How Soon is Now?” on an old Rickenbacker. He was doing it without vocals, so the screaming lead guitar poured in like a crashing wave. I thought he was impressive for a guy with no head.

The people who watch Earwicker play, in fact, usually only see him from about the shoulders to the knees. That’s because his primary audience is on YouTube, where Earwicker, 36, has established his presence as a self-contained Internet band, complete with a growing base of rabidly loyal fans. (Me: guilty.)

His band is the Primrose League, and the lineup is as follows: Guitar, Daniel Earwicker; bass, Daniel Earwicker; drums, Daniel Earwicker; vocals, Daniel Earwicker. Production … you get the picture. He records on his home computer in the south of England, videotaping himself on each instrument. He then cuts it all together into a homemade music video, featuring himself as all players. As of yet, he has about 14 original songs in his catalogue, which he’s made available in album form to anyone who wants them. And yeah, they’re good.

“I’ve never sent a CD off to a record company or anything like that,” Earwicker said over an email interview last week. “YouTube is the first time I put music out to somewhere that the general public could find it.”

At first, he said, he had only posted a few covers to his channel – a pretty common phenomenon among “headless” YouTube musicians. He only began posting his own material at the request of listeners, never imagining people would start following him.

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