Passion is driving force behind Indie label success

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Passion is driving force behind Indie label success

Written by John Taylor

Music has always been a highly volatile business, with both opportunity and danger aplenty for all involved. And the playing field is changing all the time.

Music has always been a highly volatile business, with both opportunity and danger aplenty for all involved. And the playing field is changing all the time.

It wasn't too long ago that "getting signed" by a record label was all a band could hope for, and once that signing took place most business decisions would be in the hands of management. But these days "the majors" have little interest in anything likely to sell fewer than a gazillion copies. And technology has made it possible for bands to record and package a thoroughly credible product and market it in ways undreamed of just a few short years ago.

The multinational conglomerates are reeling, unable to cope as yet with such challenges as file sharing, digital distribution, and the seemingly limitless capacity for self-promotion. Pundits routinely pronounce a death sentence on the industry itself. Yet independent labels continue to spring up, filling the gaps that result from corporate indifference to "insufficient" profit levels. And blues, traditionally a marginal music with a relatively small yet dedicated fan base, would seem a prime candidate for the niche marketing these indies are ideally suited to deliver.

And the indie labels are as different as the individuals behind them . . .

Fred Litwin gave up a lucrative career in Sales and Marketing with a multinational computer firm to launch NorthernBlues in 1999. In the few short years of its existence, the label has become a significant player, celebrated for its courage and willingness to take chances on artists decidedly outside mainstream expectations.

A guitar player himself, Fred caught the blues bug in his teens. "I was around 17, in Montreal, and I went to a Luther Allison concert. I really didn't know blues at all at that time, and it just sort of hit me over the head. I realized that's the music I was most passionate about. But along the way I've also discovered folk and jazz and classical, and I think that's why I like to mix things up at NorthernBlues."

"When I started a label I knew I wouldn't have any trouble finding talent," says Litwin. "But I realized that I had to find stuff that was way above average, and hopefully somewhat different, to really stand out in a crowded market of blues labels."

Much of the label's success to date is attributable to Litwin's passion for music that stretches the boundaries of the blues.

"A lot of it just comes as one goes along. My vision - and I'm not terribly comfortable with that term, because again, so much just happens - has evolved since we started. Now I like the idea of mixing genres, doing things that aren't just straight blues."

For Lance Anderson, the impetus to launch Make It Real Records came in part from a desire to address history's oversights.

"I was working as a staff producer at Cherry Beach Sound, doing a number of projects, and I produced a record by Leahy, a Celtic band. It went on to win a couple of Junos. I liked that record, but I simply wasn't interested in recording all the stuff I was offered after that. Yet the people I respected weren't being recorded by anybody. Certainly no one was asking me to record them. And whenever I brought it up with the labels I now had access to, they weren't at all interested.

"So at that point I decided that if I'm going to work on the kind of records I really enjoy, I'm just going to have to do them myself," continues Anderson. "I was tired of having to go and ask for permission, but I figured that if I were to foot the bill, there was nothing to stop me."

Additional inspiration came via the story of Motown records.

"I did a gig with George Oliver in Windsor, and we went to the Motown Museum. We went into that little house where Berry Gordy started that whole thing from. I just admired the way it was all like a cottage industry, and the way Berry Gordy simply wouldn't take no for an answer. He lived upstairs, and he actually used to stuff 45's into their sleeves at his kitchen table!"

When Michael Burke launched Victoria-based Cordova Bay Records (probably best known to blues fans as home to David Gogo), he decided "global" was the way to go.

"We kind of started off thinking that to make it work, it had to be an international thing," says Burke. "So very early on we established a U.K. office. We've since had to close that office but it established a structure for us, and we still have U.K. distribution. We've been going into Europe with individual projects on a country-by-country basis."

Why launch a record label?

"In 1964, I started playing clarinet and programming computers," he recalls. "I did both music and computers until I was 30, and then I decided I had to choose one and stick to it. I picked computers because it was a little more lucrative. And then in 1999 I retired, and decided to spend the rest of my life focussed on the other side."

In the interim, however, Burke had kept his hand in by managing, producing, and recording bands as well as being actively involved with a theatre collective.

Cordova Bay's roster includes, among others, Nanaimo's Gogo, fellow Vancouver Islander Doug Cox, and singer/songwriter Bill Bourne. And while their relatively small size allows Burke to focus and concentrate marketing efforts, it isn't stopping him from seeking additional talent.

"Holger [Holger Peterson, president of Edmonton-based Stony Plain Records, one of Canada's largest independents] is an old friend of mine, and we were sitting around one day having drinks, and I said, 'Okay, I know we compete, but tell me - what should I do?' And he said, 'Don't go for the local, go for the best on the world stage.' So now we're not looking for the best in Victoria, we're not looking for the best in Canada, we're looking for world stage artists."

Niche marketing has its perils, however. While it's unquestionably helped put NorthernBlues on the map, Litwin now finds it somewhat limiting.

"It's made it harder for me to launch something like the gospel CD (2002's Saved!, featuring the Northern Blues Gospel All-Stars)."

And marketing outside one's established demographic means developing an entirely new strategy.

"It's a completely different environment," says Litwin. "The radio stations, the publications we have to reach, it's all new territory! And it 's going to happen again in April when I launch a 'Gypsy Jazz' CD," he laughs.

Still, Litwin remains undaunted by the obstacles ahead. "I'm doing it because it's just such an incredible CD. I just couldn't not put it out!"

Litwin's taste for the eclectic is reflected in his roster. His inaugural launch featured teenage phenoms the JW-Jones Band and Colorado's Otis Taylor, a performer of almost frightening intensity whose starkly disturbing portraits of darkness and despair rendered his NorthernBlues debut, "White African" one of the year's best, though rather difficult, listens.

And he's continued to defy categorization; one of his biggest success stories is that of Harry Manx, whose Eastern influences find him incorporating the exotic sounds of the Mohan Veena, a stringed instrument falling somewhere between a sitar and a guitar, into the blues. Again, hardly mainstream fodder, yet Harry routinely leaves audiences rapturous. And with his third CD (the just-released "Jubilee," a collaborative effort with jazz guitarist Kevin Breit) already receiving rave reviews, it seems Litwin's instincts are rarely wrong.

Anderson is well aware that his oeuvre, too, is somewhat specialized; one of his first projects on Make It Real Records was "2B3," a collection of organ duets featuring seven of the Hammond's finest. Nor has he followed it with anything more commercially oriented; subsequent releases include his own solo piano outing, "Shorthanded," another series of organ duets, and most recently, a disc by the Cameo Blues Band, a fixture at Toronto's venerable Hotel Isabella during the 1980s. Also in the works is a project by Professor Piano and the Canadian Aces, another outfit from the same era.

The observant might note that all of Anderson's artists are "of a certain age."

"Sure, I'd like to find a young act that I could get excited about," he says. "But to me, there's just such a backlog of people in Toronto that should have been recorded but haven't. And I feel that I almost have to clear the decks. I mean, how can I record some young up-and-comer, and then go and face my old friend Ray Harrison (piano player for the Cameos), who's an incredible musician, yet never got the chance to cut a record? Ray's like the Professor Longhair of Toronto, a hugely influential figure. Isn't it a shame no one ever bothered to record him?

"In part, too, it goes back to the concept of Make It Real Records. I'm trying to position myself as doing these real records, with everyone in the same room at the same time. And I have to get people who can do that. It's not that you have to be a certain age to do that, but you almost have to have been from a certain age. People born after, say, 1980, have never had to do that. They've never sat in a room, had a red light turned on, and been told 'Okay, this is a take'."

When Burke is considering whether to bring an artist into Cordova Bay's fold, he looks for three things.

"First, of course, the music has to be good. Second, the performer has to be good. And finally, I have to feel that there's at least some commercial potential there." Yet while he declares that "it all starts with the songs," he admits "I'm really drawn to artists who have the ability to express themselves in more than one medium. If an artist can write well, chances are their songs will be well written too!"

But why, when technology has given artists so many of the tools necessary to market and promote themselves, would anyone still aspire to affiliate themselves with a record label?

"Largely because they can only go so far themselves," maintains Litwin. "There's still an air of legitimacy to being signed to a label, and they need to find an organization that can support them, can get the live gigs and get the print reviews and do the promotion. I've had a large number of independent artists come to me and say 'I just can't go any further. I need somebody to help me'."

Burke agrees that marketing is a label's biggest selling point.

"A label offers a certain level of expertise, professionalism, and skill at getting product into stores," he claims. And he believes it's the indies that can best respond to an artist's needs. "Cordova Bay might have a small catalogue, but we tend to put more into each title. Whereas some labels license international distribution, we're actually hands-on in different countries."

But he insists that the artists have to have the desire. "There are still people out there - and home recording studios play a large part in this - there are people who believe that simply having a record is going to make them a star. I try to find artists who are looking to work their careers, not those who say, 'Hey, we have a record, and now we have it made'!"

Burke says hasn't found Internet marketing terribly effective. "Radio ads have really been the thing for us. Our e-commerce site fills in the retail holes, and it does generate some money, but it's definitely not our strength."

Anderson concurs, but his focus is somewhat different. He compares the current climate with the era that gave rise to Motown. "Right now, the Internet is perfectly suited for cottage industries. I sometimes feel as though I'm driving around the Internet with a trunk full of CD's, much like the Chess brothers used to do. And people respond to it.

I'm selling more records through Internet marketing than I did when I was selling on consignment through HMV." He's not terribly concerned about digital piracy issues. "People who are interested in my kind of music are generally a little older, and they can see the connection. It's a small company, and in a way it's like stealing corn from a farmer's field. Yes, you can do it, but it's not right. And I think they know that."

Litwin's background in marketing has clearly been a factor in establishing NorthernBlues as an entity to be reckoned with. His initial launch was accompanied by a blitz that saw ads in all the major blues media. It appears to have paid off. In its first year of operations, NorthernBlues artists received a whopping number of accolades, including multiple nominations for Handy, Juno, and Maple Blues Awards. Yet despite early triumphs, Fred regards the launch of a record label as a risky proposition.

"It was sheer stupidity," he laughs. "I had to pick the industry that's in the worst economic slump ever!"

Burke too, found some surprises along the way. "Like just how much time I'd personally have to spend on record-keeping. No one told me about that!"

Seems record keeping and risk is endemic to the business of running an independent record label. Yet they persevere, these devoted individuals, driven by the desire to share their passions with us. Surely blues fans - and music fans in general - owe a debt of gratitude to people like Anderson, Burke, and Litwin, as well as Andrew Galloway (Electro-Fi,), Holger Peterson (Stony Plain) and many others. It's their courage and conviction that's brought us all so much great music.

Copyright 2003 John Taylor

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