The Manager’s Corner- January 2014

Tim Wenger | January 1, 2014 | 0 Comments

by Chris Daniels

I’ve managed my own band for 30 years. I’m in the Colorado Music Hall of Fame and we have 15 albums out so far. It’s been a fun career and it keeps developing. And despite the amazing changes in technology, success in the music business is built around some tried and true elements: great music & performance, really hard work and timing (often mistaken for luck). The book I wrote for my UCD class on artist management is called “DIY: You’re Not in it Alone” and that is exactly what you need to understand … there are a lot of us out there doing everything we can to survive…learn as much as you can from your peers.

We are headed into the “awards” and “conference season.” The mother of them all in conference world is South By Southwest (SXSW) and the Big Daddy of them all is The National Academy of Recording Artist and Sciences – (NARAS) better known as “The Grammys.” What, if anything do you learn from these or from the CMA’s or the Americana Music Awards (held in September in Nashville) or the Triple-A Radio Music Conference held here in Boulder every August? For that matter what relevance does it have to you if Taylor Swift wins a Grammy…”it’s all bullshit anyway!” Right? Not really.

While it’s true that a young artist who is not signed to a strong independent label or a major label has little chance of making much of a buzz that the ‘big boys’ will hear … it’s no longer impossible. You have to be very organized, very driven and most of all have a “product” that is capable of really standing out – meaning BOTH salable and interesting because it’s fresh.

Recently I’ve been watching the country music business because of two seemingly unrelated trends that are shaking the place up. One- “Bro-Country” is led by possibly the biggest selling song “Cruise” in country history. Two short years ago Florida Georgia Line got the attention of SIRIUS/XM before they had a record deal. The satellite radio started pumping the song in May 2012 and now about 18 months later they are signed to Big Machine and have 40 million YouTube hits…and then came the Nelly remix collaboration and “bam” we are talking mega cross-over hit. There are two managers there, behind the scenes, who will, no doubt, get some serious shout out for their creativity in putting these two different artists into the hottest selling song of the year. That’s creativity on the business side. And it’s created a “young party” country guy that is a new person. His truck is not old and funky, it’s got a ‘lift kit” and is as tricked out as any of the rides in hip-hop and the girls are every bit as hot. Serious, thoughtful music? Hell no. Seriously, successful music, hell yes. But most of all on a major music business level it is the kind of thinking that is fresh, different and, I hope this year, will get rewarded for being down right fun.

On the other side of this is the resurgence of great women in country music and my favorite is Brandy Clark. She is a seriously gifted guitar player and her wit is both poignant and cutting. “I got in my head that my goal as a songwriter was to write songs for people who didn’t write songs,” Clark told Neda Ulbaby on NPR in a story called “Songs for Drinking and Thinking.” Clark, who has been working in the writing trenches in Nashville for the past few years, was a critics choice for the 2011 SXSW — and her current album 12 Stories may be the quintessential opposite of “bro country” yet I guarantee you will see here on some of these award shows.

So what is the take away? There are three basic ways to make the most of festivals like SXSW, (a) as an unknown, go to learn, make connections and immerse yourself in the business (b) if you have a showcase make sure that your manager, publicist, band members and entire team “work” the festival as hard as you can (c) follow up… you are going to make connections and follow up on all of them. As far as the award show world goes, I advise the same. I was up for a Grammy in 2013 and so I went to the “show” and walked the red carpet etc. I learned an incredible amount about the structure of ‘big” music business and it’s paid off all year long in connections for selling songs to TV and movies and in connections with conversations and guest lectures for my CU Denver classes.

It’s easy to get caught in the cynicism and over the top exhibitionism that has become the daily bread of our 30-second news cycle (it used to be a 15 minute cycle). But resist the urge and look at what you can learn at awards shows and conferences – even right here in Colorado at Westword Music Showcase and Root 40 Music Expo coming in April. By doing so you will gain some valuable info. Trends like ‘bro country” will not last forever but collaborations like Nelly and FGL are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to innovative ideas. Who knows, next you may see String Cheese working with EDM artists to create Jam Band Electronic Dance music!