The Big Chat – Chris De Bank founder of Not Saints, the UK’s only sober not-for-profit record label
James Armstrong interviews Chris De Bank, the founder of the UK’s only sober not-for-profit record label Not Saints
We love to share stigma-reducing initiatives that we can be inspired by and support.
We recently spoke to Chris De Bank the founder of the UK’s only sober not-for-profit record label Not Saints about his recovery, the music business, his label, and his experience of stigma.
Chris has been the driving force behind Not Saints for 6 years, creating a model and a vision for the organisation and wider societal change.
Chris is a man with energy and ideas. The vision, diversity, and talent behind Not Saints directly counter the lazy stigmatising tropes of addiction and recovery.
First Question for Chris - it seems to us the act of just existing as a sober record label and showing recovery is possible, that there's talent, ambition and a high-quality product is challenging stigma. Why did you start the label?
I worked in music for a long, long time. I started my career as a bass player in bands when I was 15 in the mid-90s and around that time started drinking and using drugs myself. It was the 90s, everybody was at it. It was TFI Friday and the Gallaghers were on the front page of the news every morning.
At that point it was fun and it felt glamorous to be drinking and being a musician. So, I played in bands for years and then went into the promotions and management side of things.
The first time that someone pointed out that I may have a drinking problem, I think I was 23. Someone said to me you're an alcoholic. And I was like, I'm 23 I can't be an alcoholic.
I moved to Brighton when I was 25 and things just escalated from there. I became very entrenched in the grass-roots music scene, doing bits of managing and promoting. I was using a lot of drugs and alcohol, being out all the time. And it just got progressively worse.
When I was 30 I decided to go to university. I managed to scrape through that, but my drinking had become out of control. Student loans on Tuesday afternoons when no one's about, I’d just go down the pub by myself.
By the time I was 35, I’d had enough. I was living in a room above a pub, desperate and destitute. Unemployable, no relationship, no money, always behind on my rent.
It was just horrific. I had all this experience in the music industry and even though I tried to work hard to build a career for myself, I never quite got there because every time I got an opportunity, I’d just cock it up. I finally went into treatment and got myself sober.
I started engaging with some local creative charities that worked around addiction and mental health, and what I saw were these incredible musicians who were just not getting any chance to play. They couldn't go down their local and play for pints or go on stage at a local venue because there's always a beer bucket backstage and people were just really struggling.
They were only getting to play a little recovery cafe gig, maybe once a month for two songs.
These folks had been playing music their entire lives, they're incredibly talented musicians, and nobody's getting to hear them apart from the same 15 or 20 people every month?
By this point, I’d gone back into working in the industry as a booking agent and I saw for the first time how intrinsic and interwoven drinking and drugs are in that culture.
I went to the Great Escape in 2018 and I had a miserable experience. I’d finished working as a booking agent at this point and was hoping to make some new contacts.
I'd go to a networking event, and it would be “here’s the Wi-Fi code, free drinks all afternoon, off you go”. I walked in, it was just packed with pissed people, everybody was pissed.
For someone in recovery, it was horrendous. I was only about 18 months sober at that point, and it was just horrible. I thought “I can't have a career in this”.
On the last day, I was watching a panel with Imogen Heap and she was talking about DIY. Suddenly the idea came:
“What if we just did all this differently? What if we worked with studios that don't have a beer fridge that doesn't have people smoking weed outside? What if we worked with venues that are sympathetic to what we do, not just the artists, but the community in general? What if we included the growing sober community as well?”.
So, I jumped straight into it. I think I did about a year's worth of work in three months. I suddenly had a purpose and a reason for living. It was going to be the only label in existence that does what we do, and it seemed like such a no-brainer.
You’ve got people like Amy Winehouse, the whole 27’s club. All these incredible musicians have died through substance misuse. How many people have a drink and drug problem? So why isn't there a label that looks after them?
The first year we did a crowd-funder and managed to raise £10,000 which was incredible. However, it only lasted about six months and then it was like, “OK, what do we do now?”
We started applying to the National Lottery and Arts Council and we just kept going and going.
You also run live events, how did that come about?
We always did events in Brighton. It’s part of my background and musicians like to play live so whether it was a record launch or a community event it has always been part of what we do.
We like to use unique spaces, whether it’s in the middle of a market, upstairs in a café, or a community space, we always try to make it interesting.
One thing that came out of the pandemic was looking at what we do as an organisation and realising that the events were always a positive thing. It was getting musicians in recovery on stage in front of their community and in front of people who were interested in getting sober.
We embarked on a 2-year project to work with communities around the UK to set up their sober events. We worked with lots of different organizations around the country and helped set up six different community groups that are still running their events to this day.
People can buy your records, and come to your events, how else can people support you with funding?
We're struggling to find funding at the moment. We spent four months last year putting together a whole new strategy and plan for what would have been 3 years of solid financial funding. Everything with the application was positive.
However, on the 10th January, we got a phone call saying “Sorry, it's not happening right now”. It was a bit of crushing moment.
We’re OK, just scrambling through at the moment like everyone else, but if your readers would like to help, we’ve got a GoFundMe going on right now https://gofund.me/26f1529a
I understand you also do events management.
Yes, we are available to run events for other organisations. We’re currently working with Essex Recovery Foundation right now, putting together a small festival. That's keeping us busy haha. If you need a sober event though, we are the team for you!
We're keen on giving people employment opportunities and new experiences so we bring individuals from the recovery community on board whenever we can. I think it's invaluable when you have had years of addiction and you just don't know what to do with your life.
Maybe you can't go back to being a chef or a sales exec or whatever it is that you've done with your career. We can give people these new experiences. It may just plant the nucleus of what the future holds for them, and I think that's a key thing.
Do you think the wider music industry is supporting people with addiction needs?
There are lots of conversations happening around mental health right now, and one of the biggest challenges we face (certainly for people in recovery), is having addiction as a mental health issue. Everyone is investing time and money in mental health but because addiction is under that umbrella people don’t talk about it or they can avoid it. It feels like if they talk about mental health, they're fulfilling their obligations around recovery and addiction. And it doesn't do us any justice at all.
How many people are self-medicating for their mental health with drink and drugs? How many people are refused mental health treatment because of their addiction? They're told to go and get sober first, then come back. I've seen it time and time again. I think it's great that people are willing to talk about mental health and I encourage it, but addiction doesn't get brought into those conversations, it’s still a dirty word!
Is there a sense that the music industry has done well out of romanticising addiction?
Without a doubt, but who owns that? It's a question of accountability. There have been so many deaths and so many tragic stories that if the industry turned around said “Look, we've behaved badly”, they’ll be holding their hands up to hundreds of deaths, and thousands of failed careers because they haven't acted in a morally appropriate way. I think that's part of the fear of it.
The music industry has done well but, there's a history of not looking after musicians.
Times must change and it’s my experience that they have a bit, in the last six years. Conversations have shifted, and things have changed for the better, but it's still not moving fast enough and it's certainly not moving in a completely transparent direction.
How does what you do aid recovery?
We have a policy of not working with artists for at least 6 to 12 months into their recovery because we can’t invest and make that commitment until they’ve committed to themselves first. They've got to be sober and working their specific program of recovery first.
We're not a service. We're not a fellowship. Individuals need to find their way with a fellowship, SMART Recovery, counseling, or whatever it might be. Artists need to commit to their recovery before we can commit to them.
We aid recovery through the opportunities we provide and the experience and knowledge we can bring to the table. We can give real experiences in music, helping musicians to realise their potential and stand by them in an industry that isn’t safe for recovering addicts. We can give them a platform to tell their stories through the medium of music and share their truth with the world.
We’ve seen again and again people we work with who have come from nothing saying how their confidence has grown, how they have faith in their abilities, and how connected they feel in the world.
There’s a lot of talk in the public sector about impact measurement and helping as many people as possible. I get that, I do, but if one person can come from addiction, from the gates of hell, and become a confident, inspiring, and dependable member of society and their community, then surely that is a 100% success rate.
Obviously at the moment funding is an immediate aim, but what's the broader aim?
There are musicians all over the UK that we’re desperate to work with, from Manchester to Bristol and beyond, but we just don’t have the resources or funding at the moment, so that is our short-term aim.
Long-term, I would love to have a residential studio where we can bring artists from around the country, and eventually the world. They can come to spend time at the studio and just be creative. We’d also create a thriving recovery space. Just kind of bring everything into one core location really that people can ring up and say “I want to come down and mess around with some song ideas”. And we can say “Come down. We've got this place for you”.
Basically, we just want to expand the creative recovery community in the UK and make it more cohesive.
I’d also like to develop an App. So, if you're going to see a gig you can send a message on there saying “Is anyone else going?” You can meet up with a group of sober people, go to an event, and have that experience, surrounded by your peers, form bonds, and friendships, with music as the great universal glue that brings us together.
And what can music venues do to be more inclusive?
I'm not naive, music venues are never going to stop selling alcohol because it's the biggest profit margin, and nobody makes much money out of the tickets. It's the alcohol sales.
We’re never going to change that, but could we have a sober area within the venue? Perhaps a dry bar as well? Can we do something like that? I think we can make subtle changes to the industry. It just means better welfare, and comfort for a person who is sober, going to a gig.
I feel there's that normally that tipping point around 9pm to 9:30pm when the mood in the room changes, everyone who's drunk doesn't care because they're part of it. But as a person who's in recovery, I sense it, and quite often, I'll leave.
I went and saw Sleaford Mods a few years back at the Brighton Dome and about 10:15 I left, I just didn’t like the mood. I paid £30 for a ticket, but I felt I had to leave because it wasn't comfortable for me. I'm sure it's a common experience for anyone in recovery.
If we can just make subtle changes, it all works toward reducing the stigma.
We should open the conversation around addiction and recovery. We could start to make those little changes, so we can have a healthier, happier, more inclusive society.
I know nothing's going to change in my lifetime, but if I can just leave the notion of an idea that things can be different, then that’s the Not Saints legacy.
So I guess the final point is to ask how members of the Anti-Stigma Network, or anyone else, can engage with you?
Well, you can donate to our GoFuneMe, and I'm also happy to receive emails from anybody. If you just want to check us out, check out the artists that we work with. All the streaming links and videos are on our website. You can also support us by following us on social media.
If people want to get in touch, please do. Anyone that is interested in working with us for events, or who has got lots of money then please email me and say hi.
Website: www.notsaints.co.uk
Socials: @NotSaintsUK
Email: chris@notsaints.co.uk
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/26f1529a
