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Bruce in the Reverb Room


A Conversation with Bruce Robison (continued)

PM: So as a small label owner here--

BR: Yeah.

PM: By the way, it's an unbelievable studio.

BR: Oh, thanks, yeah, I like it.I wanted to have a nice place. I'm a bit of a music buff, a music historian. When they were making great records they used to make them in studios, real studios--

PM: Real studios.

BR: --with lots of knobs, and places to pee and everything.

PM: Yeah, right.

BR: So that has been my indulgence after this songwriting success that we've had.

PM: Now, did you build all those great angles into that room?

BR: Well, I had a guy who come up with it. There was a guy from Los Angeles who--

PM: What's his name?

BR: His name is Larry Smith.

PM: An acoustic designer.

BR: Uh-huh. And so he designed every little inch of it, all the surfaces and everything. And it sounds good, like it's supposed to. It's a lot of fun being in there. It feels to me like a real professional place.

PM: Yeah. Real old school.

BR: It's supposed to be, yeah.

PM: So I thought at first that it must be for working on your songs. But when I walked in a while ago, I met [indie engineer] Joe, and he was working on a record for the band Transit War--

BR: Yeah. Well, it's also my feeling about the studios that in the old days when they made great records, whether it was the Beatles, or a million other things that the studios really knew what they were doing before those guys ever walked in the door. And so we'll have to learn. We'll have to really know what we're doing. And if we want to make the type of music that I want to make, we'll have to make a lot of mistakes and some lousy records and some good records, and some mediocre records, and then maybe we'll figure out what's going on.

PM: Right.

BR: So that's the idea.

PM: Like Country Sunshine, I thought Eleven Stories was a great record. But the curse of advance copies, of course, is that they come with no credits.

BR: Well, thank you. Yeah, I know what you mean about the credits...

PM: So maybe we could run down some of the contributors, and describe one or two of them on the way.

BR: You bet. We tracked some of the songs in Nashville, and took advantage of those players there that are the best in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Let's see, Randy Scruggs played acoustic guitar and banjo. And Jamie Oldaker, an old Tulsa guy, played the drums. And Spencer Campbell was on the bass. Al Perkins on the steel.

PM: Spencer Campbell, wow. He's great.

BR: Yeah.

PM: And Al Perkins, of course.

BR: Yeah, Rolling Stones records--a million different recordings.

PM: Yeah.

BR: And Kenny Vaughan on the guitar.

PM: Oh, yeah, a good buddy of mine.

BR: Yeah. And then down here we used a lot of my old cronies, and they got some of the guys from my road band. And then I always have Kelly singing on everything. And so I just kind of go here and there, do different things.

PM: A great bunch of tracks.

BR: Thank you, thank you. Good players.

PM: So as a small label owner, is there anything you might say about where you think this crazy little business is headed?

BR: I don't know. We might dabble into sort of a singles sort of a thing. There are certain market forces, I think, that are similar to those back when they would release singles, a similar sort of thing.

PM: Oh, that's interesting.

BR: Or more like two or three tunes, whether you want them to be an EP, or whatever.

PM: Yeah.

BR: But I think back in the old days, with Stax, or Motown, or whoever it was--

PM: Yeah, radio releases, yeah.

BR: Yeah. And now it's kind of a similar thing. You do it on the internet, and you see what can start a fire. You see what bands resonate with people and stuff, to invest the money on it. You work on an album, you work on it for a few months, you mix it, you spend a bunch of money on it, and then you just try and promote it. And so in this day and age, I'm not even sure why we still do that. It's neat to have a cohesive bunch of songs, but beyond that there really isn't the same reason to do that. Everybody is on the web downloading stuff. So what we want to try and be is just real agile. I don't know where it's going, but it's going somewhere.

PM: It's going somewhere, that's for sure.

BR: And it ain't staying the same.

PM: It's not going where it was because that's broke.

BR: Yeah. And so I am excited to be a part of whatever that is. And I guess anybody would agree that it's about digital files that are distributed over the internet.

PM: Right. So you guys are doing downloads.

BR: Yeah, sure. And who knows how long it's going to be until that's almost all you do? I don't really know.

PM: I think it's coming a lot sooner than anybody--

BR: Probably so. And a lot sooner, especially, for guys like us, that you might lose a few sales if you don't distribute, but you're not going to lose that many, and you might spend $10,000 trying to distribute big records everywhere to try and get a couple hundred extra sales.

PM: Right.

BR: So we don't know how it's going, but I think it's probably good for the music. I'm hoping it's going to be good to bring some of the power more down on where the artists are and where the people who write and sing and play the songs are able to get a part of the rewards.

PM: Well, you're high profile enough, Bruce, where you should be able to like put out some iTunes exclusives and stuff like that. You guys doing that?

BR: See, we just got the studio up and running, so now it's really just--and I was working on this record, and we really didn't do anything before we got the record. But I want to do all those things now.

PM: Of course.

BR: I was waiting to get this record out, and then after that I wanted to do some different things. I want to release podcasts, exclusive songs, giveaways--I mean, we want to do all that stuff. And we are just now getting things up and running.

PM: Right. And there's only so much time.

BR: Yeah, yeah.

PM: Who is managing you?

BR: I don't have a manager.

PM: You need one of those, right?

BR: Probably? I don't know.

PM: I mean, since there's only so much time, that's what they're good for.

BR: Yeah, I know. I have problems. I'm afraid I'm unmanageable.

PM: [laughs] Well, a lot of managed artists are.

BR: Yeah.

PM: And managers are frequently a pain in the butt, agreed.

BR: And they take a lot of money.

PM: They take a lot of money.

BR: And they take it off the gross. And so even--

PM: Of course, they don't take publishing unless you cut the wrong deal.

BR: And so it just depends. With management, it just needs to make sense. Management needs to be getting you opportunities that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

PM: Right.

BR: And both Kelly and I have been in a position lately where we haven't been exploiting our careers at all. We haven't put a record out in four years, and we've just kind of been at home with the kids, writing songs. And so we have a touring career that--even with a good manager you're going to end up resenting it after a while if they're just like going, "Oh, there's a gig? Okay. Let me call Bruce. You want to do that?" "Okay. Yeah, we'll take that gig." Give him about fifteen percent of the gross.

PM: It's ridiculous.

BR: Well, at some points, it is. But you just have to be getting something. Managers, they serve a real purpose.

PM: Yeah, and managers will tell you, "If you're not making fifteen percent more as a result of my being here--"

BR: Well, that's the easy way of saying what I'm trying to get at. And I'm sure I'll have a manager again, but I look way too much behind the curtains to--it doesn't give me any pleasure just to tell people, "Oh, I got a manager, you want to call them." I'm more the guy that says, "What are you doing for me?"

PM: [laughs]

BR: So I don't know. I'm just getting crusty.

[laughter]

BR: I'm on the edge of forty.

PM: Yeah, I hear you. Are you just on the edge of forty?

BR: Yeah.

PM: That's all you are. That's unbelievable.

BR: Well, thanks for saying that.

PM: You're just a kid, my man.

[laughter]    continue

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