So. Hi there. *cough*. Okay.
So, at that show last weekend, on the 13th, Andrea from Daemon Records was there. This was no surprise, she lives with Lee, and even apart from that I’ve met her many times and she’s been at shows before. She’s the one who, awhile back, asked if I’d like the label to feature Slumberland on the their site and sell it there, which they did for three or four months. After we played I sat for a bit with her and pretty much the rest of Gentle Readers during the last set. At one point she leaned in and asked if I would mind if she played the rough mixes of the new stuff for the label (which she had heard since Lee was rehearsing to most of them the week before), and would I mind talking with them at some point about the CD.
This, for those of you scoring at home, was where I quoted That Thing You Do!… “I don’t know… I’m reluctant to sign anything that has to do with my music…”
So, I sent her a copy of the songs on Monday (Lee only had a few of them). I sent her an email to let her know they were in the mail, and she wrote back asking if we could get together at some point during the week so she could ask me a few things that she knew Amy (Ray, she owns the label) would want to know. I met up with her after work on Wednesday at Eddie’s Attic. I had actually written out a short list of things I was trying to accomplish, which I repeat now for your enjoyment and ability to mock later…
- a decent chance to be heard
- build a fan base
- play Largo in LA
- licensing for film and TV
- make a living
- get “Little Plum” to Jodie Foster
- get “Jeff Lynne” to Jeff Lynne
- national reviews
- airplay
- tour with someone, opening or in their band, I don’t care
Though, really, my goals can be summed up more succinctly: I want to be able to release a CD and play out, and make enough back so I can release another CD, ad infinitum.
She wanted to know about my availability to tour out of state, to which I responded that touring solo is not much of a problem, but if she meant with a band that was a much tougher animal. This did not seem to deter her. She told me a little about the label, how they structure deals usually, it sounded pretty similar to the deal I had with M Records with the last CD, they recoup their costs and then money gets distributed percentage-wise. They don’t do tour support but would be happy to advise and give me contacts. Everything discussed was kept fairly vague, I think on both our parts. I don’t think I really quite grasped what was going on, or at least whether it was serious or just sort of a getting-a-read-on-me kind of thing. She said Amy would be in town Friday for a meeting, and she’d play the CD for her then, and she’d try to let me know something afterward. The gist seemed to be that they had an interest in talking about doing something together, but that it was up to Amy in the end. She also said that, even if nothing came of it, I was welcome to come by the label and make use of the resources they had, databases, that sort of stuff. Which seemed very kind to me.
Thursday I went to see Gina (M Records). I had set up this meeting the week before, because I was trying to start lining up everything I needed to do to release the next CD, and I wanted to pick her brain about what we did last time, and what she was doing for weaklazyliar’s new CD. It didn’t seem to me that what happened Wednesday had really altered that, and I didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t assume that I still needed to figure all of these things out and work under the assumption that I would still be releasing the CD by myself.
Yeah, there’s more, tomorrow morning.