I find and develop bands for a major label. People often ask me what a typical day looks like for someone who does what I do. The truth is there isn’t a typical day. Each day is very different from the next, each day is unpredictable…
A couple of months ago I flew to Chicago to meet an artist that a friend of mine told me about. He sent me her music over iChat one afternoon, and I instantly loved what I heard. It took me back to early nineties-era Liz Phair or Sheryl Crow. The attitude was cool, the lyrics (which she also wrote) were mature, and the song itself sounded like something I would listen to regularly. It sounded like something everyone would listen to regularly. He then told me the artist’s age…ELEVEN. I couldn’t believe it. Given the caliber of music I would have put money on her being in her early to mid-twenties with a lot of song-writing under her belt, but nope-ELEVEN. I had to see for myself so I quickly booked a trip to Chicago to meet her and her, well, parents (I can honestly say that this was the first time I met an artist that was interested in working with whose parents were my age). I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got to there, but it turns out she was the real deal. She had a solid voice live, she was a good guitar player, and she had that “it” factor that we all look for, but can’t quite place our finger on what “it” is.
I made arrangements with my boss to help fund some new recordings over the summer. If we liked what she and a couple of producers came up with over the ensuing months, we would move forward on an actual record deal (basically we did a demo deal).The recording of these new demos started last week, and I went up for a couple of days to see how things were progressing.The artist’s grandfather owns a ten-bedroom, ten-bathroom mansion on a lake somewhere near Madison Wisconsin (an hour and a half from Chicago). Her family turned the basement of the house into a temporary studio so she and her friends could hang out and do summer-type things while putting in some work in the recording booth. The place was unreal; heated indoor pool, speed boat, movie theater, the works. The best part about the trip though, was the people that were staying there, well okay, it was actually the indoor pool, but everyone there was really great too, and that’s actually the downside of my gig. When courting or developing an artist, it’s easy to get close to the team around them as well as the artist themselves. The problem is that nine times out of ten, we don’t end up working together for one reason or another, so from the moment I tell someone that it’s just not going to work out (“it’s not you, it’s me”), the awkwardness sets in, and suddenly the people I’ve been developing a friendship with are back to being strangers or at least distant acquaintances. Not too dissimilar from breaking up with a girl and still trying to be friends, it just never works out. I wish it didn’t happen (and truthfully, sometimes it doesn’t), but that’s the reality in which I live.
I have no idea where things will end up for the eleven year old prodigy in Chicago. Hopefully the demos she’s working on will be mind-blowing, and we’ll all live happily ever after. More than likely though, they’ll be really good, but fall just a little short of where they need to be (she is after all eleven, so there’s still plenty of time for her to develop), and we’ll part ways, and the friends I made at the rad mansion in Wisconsin will go back to simply being people I once met. Sad, but ninety percent inevitable...the ten percent chance that it will work out is what keeps me going.
-mm
Twitter: @musicmanblog
Comments