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A Conversation with Billy Block (continued)
PM: You're on the mainstream Country charts with Hayseed Dixie?
BB: Yeah. Our highest position was 46. We've been in the Top 70 for fifteen weeks.
PM: What's the single?
BB: No single. When I was working with the band directly, I was acting as their manager and label, because they didn't have anybody, and I got them on the first two dates of the Brooks and Dunn tour, and a bunch of festival dates.
PM: Did you think it was going to bust open and sell thirty thousand units?
BB: I thought it would sell ten or fifteen. Easy. By the time it's all said and done, they project they'll sell a hundred thousand. Not a bad start for our little bluegrass project. We also put out a CD by Toni Catlin. She works with us here at the office [and was a PA on the TV show] and was bringing in the roughs. I said, "This is a wonderful record, what are you going to do with it?" She wasn't sure, so I said we should put it on the Western Beat label, and I'll work to create opportunities for you, and try to get it up to the next level, and that's where we are with Toni. [Toni won the songwriting competition at Merlefest this year, and has a definite buzz going on.] We're an artist development label, where people come to us and we raise their profile, and pass them along to someone bigger, and participate in the deal. And hopefully, they all go on to bigger things. We also have the Bum Steers, I'm putting out a compilation CD next week, a 10 year commemorative of Western Beat in L.A., our songwriter showcase out there. And we're talking about doing a Best of Live compilations with Webb Wilder, George Ducas, and others.
PM: And what about artist management? Are you formally managing Kevin Gordon, for instance?
BB: Well, kind of. We haven't signed a deal yet, it should happen this week. But I'm a big fan of Kevin's, and it's hard because we're such good friends, and I'm trying to help him with his career. But artist management is something we're still just beginning to get into. Kevin and I are in the final stages of discussing it, and if we don't do it, we'll still be close friends, and I'll continue to help him.
I've got a new record coming out with The Raphaels, with Marcus Hummon and Stuart Adamson. Marcus, as you know, is a great and successful songwriter here and Stuart is the excellent lead singer of Big Country. That'll be out in September, CD release party on Western Beat in October. It's a great acoustic pop record.
PM: So Western Beat will include some of the pop.
BB: Well, when we say "...none of the pop," we mean Country pop.
What I'm trying to do is bring the margins to the mainstream. I want this music to become pop music. If Toni Catlin becomes the next Shawn Colvin, I'm all for it. And Kevin Gordon, I see him as a male Lucinda Williams. His first single, in fact, is a duet with Lucinda. I see him on a par with John Hiatt. So we're an artist development label, and I think we'll be moving into music publishing soon.
PM: I'm surprised you haven't had your hands in that game from the start. What's the reason?
BB: Well, we have a publishing venture, it's just that...
PM: I mean actively, pitching songs and landing cuts.
BB: It's a really time intensive, labor intensive endeavor. It's a little too risky right now in terms of risk vs. reward, but it's coming. It will be a natural outgrowth of what we do. We're a multi-media entertainment company. We have the monthly magazine, usually 20 or so pages of information and marketing material about the artists who are playing the Western Beat shows that month. We have a website that's had over a million people on it in the last year and a half. We do a live webcast of the show every Tuesday. We have two radio shows. We have the Western Beat Roots Revival Show every Tuesday night currently airing in different cities around the country. We have the WSIX radio show every Sunday night from 8 to 10. We have our live show at the Exit/In every Tuesday night, and are planning some special concerts. We're talking about going to Atlanta to do another Western Beat, we've done it in Chicago, we've taken it to Texas, and we'll continue to take it wherever we can. I'm currently signing with Buddy Lee Attractions, with Paul Lohr, who's the agent for the Dixie Chicks, to do a 25 city tour next summer, that would be a Western Beat style Lilith Fair. A lifestyle and music event that will, hopefully, feature some of the marquee artists of the genre. We'll tie that in with the television and national syndication of the radio show next year.
PM: That's a big one.
BB: So that's what we're projecting in the next year. A new television series, a national tour, and the creation of Western Beat as a lifestyle brand. Our demographic is ages 25-54, very educated, upwardly mobile, music for baby boomers, basically. I think that's an audience that's been neglected and needs to be served, and has plenty of disposable income.
PM: It's the juiciest market out there, and the music industry has not really found a way to reach it.
BB: That's exactly why we do what we do, to try and tap into that market. We've been successful on a local level, so we want to take this model, and apply it on a national level.
PM: Well, if anybody can do it, you can.
BB: I'm looking for what I'd call accelerated growth funding. We have a tremendous business plan that illustrates how each division of Western Beat operates, where the money will be allocated and how we will grow each division, and how each division of Western Beat is a vertically integrated entity with phenomenal cross marketing opportunities.
PM: If you think of anything we've forgotten to mention, give me a call.
BB: Thanks, Frank. It's an honor to be featured on our 10th anniversary.
check out more Lawson Little photographs
