The first – you know, the first step to any – to putting someone in your team, I think, is the music lawyer. I think that’s the first person the artist needs to get and I feel very strongly about that because number one, a really good manager’s not gonna be interested in your ass unless you have some kind of success. And music lawyers, you can’t – like, they can’t sign you up for a period of – a term. They can’t sign you up for years like a manager can, so you can fire your music lawyer on a phone call. Of course we prefer a letter for the file, but, you know, you can essentially get rid of them. You know what I mean?
And it’s – and they also – the music lawyers, since they’re – they see a lot of deals on the time, they’re involved in the merchandising and the music and the publishing and the touring and, you know, they see everything. They tend to be able to open up doors for you, you know, leading you to a manager, you know, which would be the next step. So if a music lawyer helps you grow and opens up doors for you, then maybe, you know, the next step is getting a personal manager who really is the CEO of the artist’s enterprise. You know, it’s like once the manager comes aboard, then the lawyer has someone to really take direction from as far as, like, where the artist’s career is going.
You know, ‘cause the personal manager is involved in anything from, like, you know, playing racquetball with Jay Leno to get you on a show, you know, and helping the booking agent route your tour. Like, where you gonna tour, down south, you know, the Midwest, you know? Oh, it looks like we have a lot of airplay, you know, in the southeast so let’s do, you know, a tour through the southeast. That’s all the manager’s job, so – and then, you know, the booking agent is the third part, the third member of the artist’s team and in California, you know, agents, what they do is book gigs. That’s what they do. I mean, the agents in the film industry broker the deals. That’s kinda like, you know, the music lawyers do, you know, are – real – are the deal brokers in the music industry, you know, whereas in the film industry it’s the agents. It’s just the opposite here.
And then the fourth member of the team is the business manager, which is really a fancy word for an accountant, you know, someone who does accounting and stuff in the music industry and is familiar with our vocative industry customs that make no sense to anybody including us; so four people, the music lawyer, the manager, the booking agent, the business manager.
Well, it used to be real easy back in the day because if your tape was good – your demo tape was good, a music lawyer could be able to get in, you know – would like the sound of that depending on what your preferences are. I’m like a classic rock chick, so I tend to go towards the rock singer/song writer-type things that have – you know, I like that. I can maybe send it to record companies and try to get the artist a deal and things like that. It’s not that easy anymore. You know, now I tell artists even if I might – I might be flipped over somebody’s music and absolutely love it, but what I have to tell an artist is, “Look,” you know, “You have to – you know, what are you doing for yourself? If you’re sitting home on your couch eating grapes and Doritos, writing your Grammy speech, you’re not helping.” You know, that can’t work anymore.
Like, they have to do – they have to meet me half way. So I have to see that an artist is actually touring, promoting themselves, has a huge online presence, which is really, really important. So I get calls everyday from artists that wanna, like, be a – you know, want a music lawyer, get a record deal and as they’re talking to me I’m Googling their name. If I can’t find them on MySpace, Craigslist, any of the MP3 sites, forget it. I’m just like, “Okay. Love your hair. Hope you win.” You know? I don’t want – you know, ‘cause I know that that artist is not doing the things that they need to do because if I call a record company, an A&R person and said, “Hey, you know, Joe Blow from Denver, Colorado, you know, sells out the Bluebird Theater, you know, in six hours,” and that A&R person goes – does the same thing I would do, Googles the artist and sees, “Oh my God. They get, you know, a zillion hits on MySpace. They’re on all these great MP3 sites and they have a great – they have fan sites all over the place, you know, they have street teams.” You know, then all the sudden people want – are interested in that artist.
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