Building Your Team: Part 2

As featured in: Performing Songwriter Issue #70, June 2003.  Visit performingsongwriter.com to order back issues or subscribe.

Part 1 | 2

Panel moderated by Fett

FETT, the panel moderator, is the Marketing Manager and Technology Editor for Performing Songwriter magazine. He is also co-owner, with Nancy Moran, of Nashville’s Azalea Studios.

AMY KURLAND is the owner and manager of Nashville’s world-famous Bluebird Cafe that celebrated its 20th anniversary last year. Amy’s been involved in the music business as a manager, industry advisor and much more. Her main role on this panel is as a promoter and venue owner.

CATIE CURTIS is a singersongwriter from Boston. She’s had five albums out independently and on various labels including EMI. She’s had her songs featured on television’s Dawson’s Creek and Chicago Hope, and was a member of the Lilith Fair tour.

JOHN BEITER is a partner at Loeb & Loeb in Nashville. His law practice focuses on entertainment, copyright and trademark law, primarily in the music field. He represents recording artists, songwriters, record companies, music publishers and other parties involved in the music industry.

JANIS IAN is basically a music industry powerhouse in her own right and has done it all many times. Her first record came out in 1967, and she has a tremendous amount of insight into the music industry.

BEVERLY BARTSCH is a business manager who has worked in the music business for 16 years in financial matters. Some of her clients in the past have included Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and Rachael Lampa, as well as a number of corporate clients in the industry. 

Beverly, the role of the business manager is probably one of the least known, least understood. If you could explain what exactly it is you do as a business manager for an artist.

Beverly: I like to think of the whole process as a wheel. The artist, as Janis described, is the hub of it. They’re the center; everything revolves around that hub. The different team members are the spokes on the wheel--you’ve got your lawyer and record label--all those things we’ve already talked about, and the business manager is the rim. Because every decision you make has a financial consequence.

As you grow you may be the hub and you may be the rim both, pulling all that information together, making all those decisions. Then eventually the business manager should fill that role of the rim, keeping all those parts together--growing, making sure you’re getting what you’re supposed to be getting, that you pay the bills you’re supposed to be paying, the taxes you’re supposed to be paying. That person makes sure that all those parts keep working together so the artist part of you can keep going, keep creating, keep doing what you wanted to do and what you do best.

I think there are three different points in your career when you need to start thinking about business management. The first time is when you’re starting your career. Think about it in terms of do you know how to balance your checkbook? Do you keep your receipts? Do you keep your business life separate from your personal life, so that for tax planning you have it in a nice neat little shoebox to give to your CPA. Get that process started, keep that going, and you’ll be much better off in the long-term. The second time you need to start thinking about business management is when you’re gone so much that you cannot keep track of those things any longer. You’re on the road 200 days out of the year, and somebody needs to pay those bills on time. The third time is when things are in crisis and you have nowhere to turn. You haven’t paid your taxes in five years, and now things are really sticky. Needless to say, that would be a good time to start getting some help.

But number one, you have to know your business. Nobody’s going to care about it any more than you do. No matter how much that other team member says they do--they’re making a living off of you. You still have to be your own business manager and your own CEO.

Business management can encompass everything from doing the taxes and paying the bills to making sure every decision you make financially makes sense--making sure that the terms of the contract as a financial responsibility work out, you’re following what you need to do and the others are following what they need to do. And it just kind of makes for a nice check and balance for everyone.

I’d like to know from each of you, if you were to look at an artist’s career from the start, from your perspective and your interaction as an artist or with artists and their team, what is the most important role to add to the team first?

Amy: One of my little-known jobs in the past: I was David Wilcox’s manager the first three years he was an artist, and got him a record deal. I had never been a manager before, but I saw him at the Bluebird, and I said, “This guy could become a big star; I want to be a part of that.” I didn’t know what a manager did, but being a manager sounds good: “I will be as important as he is because I will be in control of his career.” Well, in truth, what he needed and what I became and what any manager should be for their artist at that point in their career-- is everything to that artist; everything the artist can’t do. I booked him, I did his PR, I mailed him his CDs on the road, I tried to run interference with him and the record label. And as the money started to grow, the first thing I was so thrilled we got was a booking agent.

As an artist you really have to look at what the job is that you hate doing the most.Well, it’s gotta be doing the bookings, right? Hopefully you can get a booking agent, but you can’t get a booking agent without a record deal; you can’t get a booking agent without already having people wanting to book you. So if you do have one person on the team they should be able to have a working knowledge of all of that. And the best way to learn about the job is to do it first, and then when you become the manager of that team, you’ll know a little bit about what to expect of the other team members, and what the problems are that they’ll face.

Janis: I think Amy’s right. If you’re going to hire an agent, you should at least know what they’re supposed to do--because otherwise you run the risk that they don’t know what they’re doing, and you can’t check to make sure that they do. And ditto with a manager. I think one of the great things about folk music right now is that, fortunately or unfortunately, so many people have to book themselves, have to be their own road managers, have to be their own sound technicians. But that’s a good thing ultimately because then you know when it’s right if someone else does it after you’ve hired them.

John: Let me just say in terms of who’s the most important, at the beginning of a career, whoever’s willing to sign on and help you is probably the most important person. And Amy’s so right--I’ve been with artists where I’m the first person who’s been contacted; there’s no business manager in place, no manager. Sometimes I get involved because a manager recommended me; sometimes I get involved and there’s already a business manager. The scenario is always different--but at the beginning, if there’s one person, you’re doing more than whatever your hat says you do. I’m not a manager; I don’t purport to be a manager, and yet I find myself sometimes pitching clients in ways that may seem unlawyerly. But if I’m very much into that person, I don’t mind doing that sort of thing. The roles are really blended in the beginning.

Amy: One thing I want to add is the jobs need to be done. You may not have them being done by six different people; you may have them being done by one person. But you still need to know what aspects of your career need to be covered. You can’t go out there and be an artist and say, “Well, I just don’t have time to do PR. I can’t afford to hire a PR person, so I just won’t do PR.” You’ve got to get somebody who’ll cover all the aspects, even if it means you have six jobs being done by one person.

There’s a syndrome among artists that the goal is to get the traditional major-label record deal, and once the artist has arrived at that point, all the work is done, and now it’s time to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all that labor and let everybody do their job. Catie, I know you’ve had different albums out on different labels and tried different approaches over the years, and I’d be curious to know how you feel about that and where you’ve seen some bumps in the road from that philosophy of basically letting people do things and not really knowing one way or another how the communication is going.

Catie: As an artist you always need to see yourself as leading the team. It was kind of funny when I was with EMI, it just felt like this soccer field with all these players running around doing things, and I was on the sidelines going, “Wow, they’re doing all this stuff! What are they doing?” And it was just so strange, like everyone was trying so hard, but there was nobody leading. And I think it was largely my fault because I didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to be on the sidelines. But you know, as often happens, that whole situation ended anyway, and what I feel I got from it was after that ended I got to re-evaluate what I wanted for my career. Now that I’m in the middle of the field because I’m the only one standing--what do I want to do and who do I want to work with?

One of the things that can happen if you’re not the person in charge is that you can get swayed into doing things like adding people to your team just because they’ve been really successful with another artist. And I just want to put out there that that’s the wrong reason to hire somebody because you never know why that artist was successful. It might have nothing to do with that manager or that lawyer, and a lot of times, shortly after you work with them, the famous artist leaves. When you’re putting together a team, talk to all of the artists you can possibly get ahold of who worked with that person, and also talk to venues who’ve worked with that manager, talk to labels and lawyers who have worked with that manager. Talk to as many people on different sides of it as possible.

Something that needs to be brought up is the financial facts about percentages of your income that your team gets, and what percentage you need to keep in order to make a living.

Janis: In our business it’s considered a good average if when you go on the road you can bring home 20 to 30 percent. Think about that. After your expenses, after your commissions, 20 to 30 percent. That is one reason so many managers, business managers, et al, encourage singers who perhaps should not be songwriters to become songwriters. Because as an artist/performer, you are giving 5 to 10 percent to your business manager, you’re paying an agent anywhere from 10 to 20 percent, and you’re paying your personal manager 15 to 25 percent. So assume that 30 to 50 percent of your income is gone before hotels, before band, before transportation. And then think how far $1,000 or even $10,000 a night goes when 50 or 70 percent of it goes right out the door.

You do want to keep an eye on the bottom line because it’s all very well to say you’re going out there for love, but that’s not going to get you a meal or a hotel room at night. You’ve got to make sure you’re not spending more than your life can accommodate. But within that realm is the old saying: It takes money to make money. And there’s a point where investing in a business manager, in a good attorney instead of your uncle who went to school 40 years ago, in a decent management relationship will pay off for you. You’ve got to be willing to take that chance and also be willing to be hardline enough to keep that contract short enough that if it doesn’t work out, you’re out of there without paying for it for the rest of your natural-born life.

There was a point in the ‘70s when Bruce Springsteen was doing phenomenally well, and at the time a standard split [where the artist is guaranteed x percentage of the door after expenses] was between 70 and 80 percent. Bruce’s manager started demanding 90 to 95. Now what that means is that even at Madison Square Garden, the promoter loses their shirt, and at that point the promoter is only putting the act on for the prestige. Like Bill Graham doing the Rolling Stones so he could say he’d done them. He didn’t make any money. Somebody went to Bruce and his manager and said, “You know what, man? You’re driving small promoters out of business, and that’s not good for all of us. “Because small promoters do work on a shoestring.

The people who you hire on your team have to understand the entire music industry and that we all work together, and if all the promoters go under, there is nowhere for us to play. And if all the record companies go under and there’s only indies, then there’s no way to get your music overseas. We all have to work together. Like I said before, we are all in a service business; we serve the audience, we serve the fans, and without that as your primary concept, well, then you really should be in government or politics.

For a pdf of the entire panel discussion, go to www.performingsongwriter.com’s “web exclusive” section to download it during the month of June. Included is ASCAP’s Brendan Okrent talking about working with publishers and what PROs can offer, Performing Songwriter’s Lydia Hutchinson on what to look for when hiring a publicist, Amy Kurland’s criteria on booking someone to play the Bluebird, and much more!

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