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major labels are
cutting staff and crying about piracy, independents are signing acts
that matter, building a catalogue, using the internet as
a marketing tool, and servicing
real fans." Now it looks like the attitude is really turning against
the major labels. How has your attitude changed over the last year
toward independent labels and major labels?
Mark Willis, Atlantis Music Conference:
Relevancy. Being in the industry, and being a manager of acts
myself, this shift in attitude has really come from the experiences
that we as owners of the conference have dealt with on a daily
basis, and the experiences that our artists have had. Also I think
it's been a shift in philosophy as far as our conference is
concerned. I think in the early days of the conference back in '98
and '99, being as we were 95 percent unsigned talent, we didn't get
a lot of love when it came to press or sponsorship. And of course in
struggling to survive I think we latched onto the "selling dreams"
thing a little bit too much.
A lot of success has come out of the conference over the years. But
I really began to step back from it because a lot of the bands who
got signed, with or without our help and assistance in being what we
are as a conference and as a platform of discovery, some of them
went on to great success, and some of them didn't. And I really
began to understand that the philosophy behind the conference needed
to be education. We needed to empower artists with different
viewpoints and let them use us as a tool to make their own
decisions. Three years ago we stopped saying how many bands have
been signed after they played the conference. That was one of the
things I just stopped doing, and really started trying to empower
education. And that's what we are.
When I started this thing in '98, I did it because in going to CMJ
and South by Southwest and the Foundations Forum [a heavy music
conference in Los Angeles] back in the 90's, I was upset at how
little representation was actually there from the Southeast. You'd
have 800 bands at South by Southwest, and two percent were
Southeastern artists. And I was going, "We have such great talent
here, we have such great venues here, we have such great
infrastructure here for music." But in '98 I couldn't kidnap any
major label people to come here in search of artists. Well, now
that's changed. On any given weekend in Atlanta there is some sort
of important showcase going on. Labels are now coming in and setting
up offices here and taking advantage of the great pool of talent
that exists in this area.
The independent philosophy has really come about just by watching
what's happened in the industry. Some of the ideas [of the
independent labels] are brilliant. They'll go and sign a band and
give them a $50,000 recording budget, and then they'll give them
$100,000 in marketing funds. And they'll say, "You, the band, will
spend this money in marketing, because you being on the road, you
being in touch with your fans, you being at the grassroots level,
are going to know better than we, sitting in New York or L.A., how
to best market your band." That kind of philosophy is working, and I
like it. And I'm doing everything I can to now let artists know that
there is an alternative to going and signing to a major and hoping
in the eight weeks following the street date of your record that you
sell enough to recoup the half a million dollars that they put into
you -- or you're gone.
BG: I'm somebody who's into bands. I'm into music, and I don't really
pay that much attention to the business aspect of it. As an insider,
can you give me your overview of what's taking place in the music
business right now?
MW:
I think the trend is to stop getting into these wars where a record
company is not going to be interested in a band until three other
record companies are interested in the band. And they get into a
bidding war and then they throw so much money at it that there's no
chance of success. I think that they're realizing that you've really
got to attack this thing one record at a time. You put out a record,
work it for a year, tour it, put out a second record, work it, tour
it for a year, put out a third record. Longevity. The industry had
really gotten to the point where they would only sign singles -- it
was a completely single-driven market. For many years they have only
been signing artists [based on] one song.
Now, the labels want to blame it on downloading, and I'm sure that
has some degree of effect on the loss of sales. But I also think, to
a greater degree, that people got tired of spending $17 for a Chumba
Wumba record that had one song. And so they've gotten beaten up, but
only because they became what they despised. We as consumers got too
smart for them, and we stopped buying all these records for these
singles because we could just get it off the internet. So now what's
happening is you're seeing a lot of movement toward this
Instant
Live type movement where you can go to a concert and get a cd that
night of the performance that you just saw. I think that's smart,
and I think it's making bands have to be better.
BG: Are a lot of bands doing that these days?
MW:
There are a lot of groups beginning to do it because it's now
becoming more and more available in more and more venues. Clear
Channel has this service in a lot of their venues now. Whether you
like Clear Channel or not is not the question. The answer is, it's
giving consumers something that they want, a memory of the show that
night right there in their hand, for not a lot of money. And not a
lot of time spent waiting for it when it's done... the technology is
actually pretty amazing. And it's forcing the bands to have to be
better, and I think that's a win for everybody.
BG: You talked about the difference between '98 when you first
started doing this and today when there are more labels that have
set up shop here, that are tapping into the pool of talent that we
have in Atlanta. There doesn't seem to be much awareness of the
talent in this region beyond the R&B and Hip Hop talent, and I guess
the Indie bands in Atlanta get a lot of press. But do you think that
there is an awareness that right now the state of Georgia is a
musical hotbed?
MW:
Yes, and I'll tell you what's driving it. Groups like
Crazy Anglos
and
Heavy Mojo. Groups like
JaD
[pronounced jade] and
Nuclear
Saturday. These bands are all showcasing in New York, in L.A.
And those showcases are coming here. Labels are flying in to see
them. It's happened with all these record companies in the last two
months, and it's happening right now. A lot of this is going to
culminate at Atlantis. So I do think that there are music industry
decision makers who are in other parts of the country looking at us
as a hotbed right now.
BG: Could you go through the bands you just mentioned and make a
comment about each one?
MW:
Heavy Mojo and Crazy Anglos are kind of in the same genre. It's a
bit of the rap/rock thing that has been done, but these are young
guys who are coming at this and they are very, very good. The key is
they're putting their own spin on this. Heavy Mojo is driving a
scene right now with this style of music. Crazy Anglos is doing the
same thing. What you're seeing at their shows are a lot of other
artists. That's what the rock scene in Atlanta has been suffering
from is lack of interest. Our rock scene has been flat-lined for
years, and I think it begins and ends with the artists. If the
artists don't care enough to go out and see what's happening in
their own scene, neither does anybody else. And none of them have
been doing that. I credit Heavy Mojo and Crazy Anglos and The
Phamily...
Second
Shift is another one. What you're seeing is a lot of these
artists supporting one another. And the interest from the artist is
energizing the fans who are non-musicians to come out and see what
the interest is all about.
JaD... they've been compared to Sevendust, but there's a little bit
of Sevendust and there's a little bit of Lenny Kravitz. That's the
point is that you can't really categorize them. They are their own
sound. The last two shows I've been to had hundreds of people. Now,
I can count pretty much on one hand the bands in Atlanta who can
draw hundreds of people on a consistent basis. There's not that many
of them.
BG: It's hard. I have a lot of friends in bands, and they're all out
there just struggling, working as hard as they can to market their
shows. Getting 100 people out is great.
MW:
You're absolutely right, and I want to tell you, it all comes down
to the songs. And it all comes down to, how good are these bands?
You can only get your friends and family out so many times, at a
show that you may or may not have sold tickets to, to get a good
crowd in Atlanta. Beyond that, if you're going to see any success
and begin to increase your draw instead of see a decrease in it,
it's all in the music. It's gotta be good. You've got to be able to
walk out of these rooms after seeing these local bands with a song
that sticks in your head with some sort of chorus that you remember,
that you're humming a day after you've seen the show. That makes you
want to go back. That's what we've been missing. [We've had] great,
great musicians who were more interested I think in playing for
themselves than they were in collectively writing great songs.
Because that's universal.
BG: And you're seeing a shift toward that now?
MW:
Definitely, for the first time since the early days of the
conference. It was around 2000 where I felt like it really started
to get bad, where our level of talent really just stopped
increasing. I'm seeing thousands of band submissions from all over
the country. I can tell you that I had more John Mayer wannabe's
than ever before. To give you an example we have performing artists
from 25 states in the conference this year, and four countries. So
I'm getting a taste of what's going on in probably at least 40
cities. So I can tell what the trend is by what I'm getting this
year. And of course the trend would be, hey John Mayer seems to have
had a lot of success, so we're going to get a lot of that.
BG:
You mentioned the 25 states and four countries that you have
showcasing artists coming from. Yesterday when we spoke briefly, you
talked about the wealth of talent from the city of Atlanta. I wanted
to mention a couple of bands to you that are my tips for showcasing
bands that you should see, and then I want to get your tips for
Atlanta bands that I should check out that are showcasing. I don't
know if you've heard the band
Ill Mic. They sound
a little bit like Lenny Kravitz and one of their songs sounds kind
of Rage Against the Machine. Shon, the vocalist, is a musical
visionary and Ill Mic is one of the reasons why I have a great deal
of cockiness about the Atlanta music scene right now. I think we
have a phenomenal amount of talent. Another band is
Hognutt, which
is an incredible heavy band that just did an album at
LedBelly
Sound Studio. The sound of that album is just brilliant. And
there's actually a band from Nashville, Luna Halo, which sounds a
little bit like Jeff Buckley but they make music that you can really
nod your head to. I think those guys are going to be huge.
MW:
If you want to know my picks, I think one of the strongest nights we
have is at the Star Community Bar
this year on Friday night [July 23] with
Lights
Out, The Tom Collins,
Dropsonic,
David
Roland and a fir-ju well.
I mean, that's a huge friggin show and that's just one of 45 that
we've got going on.
BG: Have you added any new venues this year?
MW:
We're doing Vision
this year on Thursday night, our gospel shows are in the
Renaissance, [and we've got] the Star Bar and the
Five
Spot in Little 5.
BG: I haven't been to the Five Spot.
MW:
It's some of the best world music you'll ever see. It's all ages,
there's no charge to get in and we have some amazing groups playing
in that room.
BG: Another trend that was spotable last year was that Atlantis seemed
to shift away from being exclusively a rock conference and to
embrace the hip hop and urban scene in Atlanta. Is that continuing?
MW:
It is definitely continuing. We began that trend in '99 and it has
increased exponentially every year. We never wanted to bang our drum
that we were something that we were not. So we felt it was important
as a conference to get the industry here, the industry that could
make a difference in the success of our urban artists. This year we
have some pretty amazing people that are coming in and doing this.
We've started the
Ultimate
Urban Music Showcase this year in conjunction with
Radio
One. That was a six-month process with four preliminary rounds
at Vision where every night we had a winner selected by industry
judges. In the end we ended up with four winners and one wild card
which was voted on over the internet. All of them are being flown in
for the Ultimate Urban Music Showcase which is going to be on
Thursday, July 22 at Vision.
And I think when you begin to see that we have Bryan Leach, the V.P.
of urban A&R at TVT; KP, the V.P. of A&R from Sony; Mike McQuary the
CEO of Brash Records; Jimmy Maynes, the senior V.P. of Jive and
Zomba; Max Siegel, who's the president of Verity Records; Brian
Postel who's A&R at Interscope Records, you begin to see the
relevance of what we're doing for our urban artists. To me, as a
conference, we're colorblind. We're looking for the best unsigned
talent. It doesn't have a lot of marquee value, but that's what we
do. It doesn't matter if it's jazz, world, acoustic,
singer-songwriter, rock, metal, urban, rap, hip hop, R&B... that's
what we look for year-round. And that's what Atlantis is, it's just
four days of that.
BG: I like to consider myself a big advocate for the rock scene in
Atlanta. I think it's underrated, I think it's underappreciated,
it's definitely undercovered and I'm sick of bands having to move
somewhere else to try to find an audience. The labels are here...
what's it going to take to get an audience for all these great rock
bands that we have?
MW:
I think it all comes down to better music. I've seen people who will
do some ridiculous things to see a band they want to see. If it's 30
miles east of Atlanta in a cow pasture in the rain, if it's a band
that they're excited about they are going to go see it. But this is
a big city, and I think the artists have to understand the business
of this. It is marketing. You can have the greatest songs in the
world but if you show up on stage looking like you just came from
work, you don't get another chance to make a first impression. And I
think too many artists, the first thing they do when they come up
with three songs is they rush into a studio and do a recording, and
then they go have a cd release party. And then six months later they
hate those songs, but that was their first chance to make a first
impression. What we as a conference try to do is help educate young
artists on the process.
Like I said, you can't say that the crowds aren't going to come if I
can go to a JaD show and I can see 300 people, if I can go to an
American Devils show and I can see 200 plus kids always. These bands
have worked hard, and they play smart. They're not playing every
week, they're playing out of town, they're honing their skills and
they are very carefully picking and selecting the shows that they do
and making sure that it makes sense for their audience. If they've
got a younger audience, it's an all ages or 18-and-over show, and
it's no more than once a month. Maybe it's once every three
months... makes them want more. And all the time, they're working
the internet, they're letting the kids know what's going on and
they're personalizing things. That's the secret to it. I managed
Stuck Mojo for their entire career, and we were one of the first
rap-metal bands in the country, doing it in 1989 way before
everybody else was doing it. We signed our deal in '94 and started
touring the world in '95, sold half a million records, and after
every show those guys were the last ones to leave the venue. They
did 300 shows a year. They never got any radio to support what they
were doing, but it was that personal connection they had with every
person who came and paid to see them. And that's where we're trying
to educate the young artists of today. It's a necessary tool.
BG: Judging from last year's Atlantis and getting to sit in on all those
panels, it's definitely an education. What would be the don't-miss
panel this year? Anybody who is in a rock band that's trying to do
something, what panel should they definitely not miss?
MW:
You probably don't want to miss the How I Wrote That Song panel with
Three Doors Down. Because that's the key, writing songs. I don't
know what schools you can go to that don't cost twenty or thirty
thousand dollars where you can actually learn how to write a song.
Where do musicians learn this? Well, here's an opportunity to sit
and listen to the guys from one of the biggest rock bands in the
world today talk about how to write songs.
That to me is a don't-miss panel. If you're a rock artist and you're
trying to learn how to better yourself, you go to that panel. Go to
the touring panel. I love all our panels... you can learn about how
to distribute your own record at our Final Frontier panel. You can
learn from the producers the smart move in the studio, when to go
into the studio, what the producer's role is on our multiple
producer panels. We have four A&R panels. If you want to know what's
going on, that's the place to go. Don't miss the keynote with Steve
Gottlieb, because you're going to hear the philosophies behind the
man who is driving the biggest independent ship out there.
BG: One of the panels is De-Pressed: Does Media Coverage of Music Really
Influence People Anymore? That panel asks a question. What is your
answer?
MW:
Yes.
BG: And how so?
MW:
I know that when I was a kid, if I was reading an article and I saw
a quote from one of the people that I listened to who said "I heard
this band and they were great," I would go buy that record, just off
the quote of somebody I respected. And I think there are those even
with our own staff who question that. Does it have the same
relevance today to have a feature in Vibe or Creative Loafing that
it did 10 years ago? What you've got is a lot more competition and a
lot more filtration in the market. You were asking how to get people
out to shows. Well, you've got to give them something that competes.
Look at any downtown Atlanta schedule on any given weekend, and how
many things are there to do? A myriad of things. So I think press is
important, and I think it does continue to sell records.
BG: Is there anything else that you can tell me about what's going on at
Atlantis this year?
MW:
Atlantis is a great, great opportunity if you are trying to further
your own career. If you're at that point where you're managing
yourself or booking yourself and you don't come to this event, then
you can't be that serious about your career or you don't know what
we're about. Where else are you going to be able to hand your cd or
shake the hand of somebody that you can't get on the phone year
round? We have a job fair on Thursday [July 22} and I'm not sure if
any other conference does that. We're a platform of discovery
whether you're looking for a job, looking for a producer, a booking
agent, a manager, a record deal, or you're just a fan of music and
you just want to go to the shows. I think the struggle over the
years is when people hear "conference" in our name, they don't
understand that this is open to the public. You can buy a wristband
and go to 18 different venues for the same price over the three
days.
Yes we have the Lost Prophets, Midtown and 18 Visions, which is a
big show... all major-label signed acts. We do have those shows, but
it's also like the Macon Braves or the Greenville Braves. It's being
able to see Chipper Jones before Chipper was somebody. It's being
able to see John Mayer in the back room of 7 Stages three years ago
in a room that held 35 people three years before he's headlining
Phillips Arena.
BG: And playing at the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame with The Police.
MW:
Exactly. And that's what Atlantis has done, and that's what it's
about. We're an educational tool, and the bottom line is it's up to
you how you choose to use it.
AtlantaShows.com would like to thank Atlantis Music Conference
founder Mark Willis for taking the time to give us a preview of
this year's event. Visit the Atlantis website to
purchase a three-day wristband
(which gets you
into all the Atlantis showcases for $30) or to
register for the full conference.
Watch for our day-by-day coverage once the conference begins.
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