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Dave Rose- Deep South Entertainment · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite pieces of advice is be the person you needed when you were younger.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Considering how much of my past life was installed in the music business, I needed somebody like my next guest a whole lot.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Dave Rhodes is the CEO and co-founder of Tooth South Entertainment, a full-service artist management firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Over the years, he and his company have managed some of the most notable artists in the business, including Bruce Hornsby, Stryper, Laney Wilson, Marcy Playground, Lyft, Sixpence None the Richter, and much more.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am proud to welcome Dave to the podcast today.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: As we take a deep dive into the music business, there's a lot for you to learn.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mic.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, if you follow any music content of any type, I know that the algorithms of TikTok have shown you my next guest.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Dave Rose is the CEO and co-founder of Deep South Entertainment.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a wonderful backstory, but even more importantly, he has some of the best advice I have ever heard come through TikTok.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you, a lot of what I talk about on my show kind of falls in line with the whole idea of be the person you needed when you were younger.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, I needed a Dave Rose when I was younger.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I needed a Mike Clark, this version of Mike Clark when I was younger.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: But Dave, welcome to the show.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being here, man.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mike.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Quite the introduction.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, everybody needs a Mike Clark when they're coming through the business.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: So without any further ado, why don't you take this opportunity, introduce yourself, and let's talk a little bit about your origin story because it's very fascinating and the roster of artists that you worked with, fantastic.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've worked with some great folks over the years.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I got started a little bit like you, Mike.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I started by playing in bands.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And probably much like you, I was making every mistake possible.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I mean, I I was making them all.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, at a time when I was doing it, probably similar to when you were in the kind of the mid-90s, um, and into the late 90s, there was really no, it was really hard to find information um about anything.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't, you know, even if you wanted to hear what a bad band in Topeka, Kansas sounded like, you had to go to Topeka, Kansas and and stand in a room and listen to that band.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right now you can do searches.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really interesting coming up how you really didn't know what the rest of the world was doing.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you knew what you saw in magazines and like a little bit on you know TV, but in the 90s it was really tough to understand where you were.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if that was a good thing or not.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I wholeheartedly agree.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit like the Wild West in a roundabout way, too, because things were all over the place stylistically.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um genres were kind of cross-pollinating with one another.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was a different flavor of the week.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's a theory that I've floated around for a long period of time about why the music business as we knew it kind of fell apart, and that theory has to do with the fact that there were more one-hit wonders in 1998 than any other year in music history, and it kind of makes you wonder where the state of the business was at that point in time.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm probably responsible for a few of those.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's go down the roster and how you got into this side of the business.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was playing in bands and I was having very marginal minimal success.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, you know what?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't get a record deal.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, well, you know what?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just start my own record label.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna uh my my big grand plan, which was not a plan at all, was to sort of take my band and stick them in the middle of a compilation C.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Compilations were big in the 90s, um, and put my band right in the middle of all these other kind of rising regional acts.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, and and we ended up on that very first compilation having one of the biggest hits of the 90s, which was a song called Sex and Candy uh by Marcy Playground.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we were the first to release that song, and um through that sort of 95 to 98 period, we ended up having like 17 acts going to sign major label deals, like Five for Fighting, and I mean the list goes on Butch Walker, Athenaeum, Sister Hazel, kind of all the stuff from that mid to late 90s, we touched in some way.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: But what what was not getting a record deal was me.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was not getting a record deal.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I pretty quickly realized like, okay, I'm better, I think I'm better at selling music, at sort of the marketing of music than I am, obviously, than I am at making it.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I transitioned into um into the you know, this this really went full force into creating a label because previously when I first started, I was starting a label just to sort of self-serve my band.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I realized that's not gonna work.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when I did realize that, that was great because I really dove in headfirst to the business of it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But right around 1998, a little thing called Napster came along, um, which was a real eye-opener for those of us in the record business.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So even then, I had the foresight to say, okay, if I'm gonna stay in the music business, it probably shouldn't be records right now.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It should be something else.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we took a few of the artists that were on our label and converted them to management clients.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and from there, we just started managing, and we've been a management firm ever since.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Our roster has included a lot of a wide gamut of artists ranging from um Bruce Hornsby, the piano player, to Laney Wilson, the uh Grammy-winning country artist, um RC Playground, Sixpence None the Richer, Lit, Parmely.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my I've been with 20 some years, I've been with the 80s hairband Striper, and they're just one of my favorite bands to work with.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're so fun.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so it's kind of all over the map, uh stylistically.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, here's funny thing.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You and I have such strong parallels because I did the same exact thing.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: 2004, 2005, I got a group of all my buddies' bands together, and we did what we called, we didn't call it a record label, we called it a co-op to where we would just co-promote each other's shows, we would book together, but of course, it was all about structuring events, not just a you know, headline gig down here and all these same bands open up.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we did the same thing.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: We did a compilation CD, we farmed it all over the Midwest, we booked shows throughout the Midwest, and it worked out really well because the whole idea was a strength in numbers approach to you know dominating a really crowded market, especially since that was kind of the dawn of my space and the first entry into social media.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for context here, Mike, what what style of music were you playing?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because different genres operate differently as far as collaborations and soap.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because I think about the gamut of my career.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I started off in a nine nine-piece ska band that used to open up shows for Slipknot back when they were a local band, and then I kind of migrated.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I did the rap rock thing, I did the kind of an incubus sounding thing, and then the band that I was doing at the time I started the co-op was kind of a throwback Guns N' Roses, like let's bring back guitar solos type gritty rock and roll band.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the band was called Regan Era, and um Regan Era?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like Ronald Reagan.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, but um, but yeah, it and you know, I had a few other genres kind of follow after that project came to a close, but there was we had representation from all other facets of popular rock at the time.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: We had one band in particular that was like tailor-made for the MySpace audience.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they were kind of a pop punk emo type band, and you know, you just had to throw them on stage and the marketing did itself.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there there were a lot of bands at that time that were like that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I really was 2011 from your part of the country.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were from right around the city.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 2011's from Omaha, yeah.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because they were really like they were that was they were just killing it at that time.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely, but you know.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and that kind of leads me to um a question for you in particular, as somebody that has managed artists, as you traversed the um Napster model into the early days of social media, how did that impact the business for you managing artists that were you know had relatively decent sized hits at the time?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know what's funny with management?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Management is sort of in a in a very simple, in the simplest of terms, artist management is just helping artists.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what I've learned 25 years of doing this, I mean, it's wild to think.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I first started listening, consuming music, it was cassettes and vinyl.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And now sort of vinyl is back again.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: But but through all of this, I have seen cassettes, vinyl, CDs, downloads, free downloads, streaming, um and then back into, you know, back into sort of and now AI.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um manage, you know, navigating all of that, the one thing that stayed constant was artists need help figuring it out.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just figuring it out.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um because it's you know whether it's Napster, whether it's CDs, whether it's no matter where it is in that gamut in now AI, um it's confusing, it's hard, and you need help.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I people ask me a lot, a lot of students and people just wanted to get in the music business.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get started in the music business?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tell them the same thing.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Go go to a show, go to any show, local band, any local band that you might like, any genre, and after the band plays, walk up to them and say, I like what you do.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: How can I help?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: What can I do?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: How can I help?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that's what I did.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it started with like, oh, you know what?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're playing Saturday and we need somebody to sell our t-shirts.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: We we stand by the things.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we're playing next Saturday.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: You want to come out early and help us unload the van?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, I'll be there.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it just just get in there and help.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's kind of so it did affect the business.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just affected it all in different ways.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's not as if it's not as if artists have you know, certainly the Napster period was tough on the record record business.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, streaming is tough on the songwriter.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's tough at different pockets of the industry at different times.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: But through it all, they, you know, they need help.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: In in the context of that help that they need, are you seeing bands making the same mistakes now as they did 25 years ago, or are the mistakes different now?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, of all the questions I've been asked, that's my favorite.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love that.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've never um I've never put that to thought.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, in some ways it's similar.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you look back to going back to the Beatles and into like current superstars of today, one thing that they have in common is this incredible perseverance.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: There is no plant B.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: They they are doing this and they are this is it.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is it.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is all they're doing.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for the most part.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's exceptions to every rule, but for the most part.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the mistakes so the mistakes are similar in the sense that you know, kind of this quest for success and giving up too soon or not seeing the needle move quite like you thought it would, so you give it up.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, the the common mistakes I've seen throughout the years really have to do with not paying attention to how people perceive you and your music.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's really hard to do though, because it's personal and it's very personal.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And subjective.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And subjective, and you know, my career, I I wrote a book called Everything I Know About the Music Business, I Learned from My Cousin Rick.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it came out about 10 years ago, did really well.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But the premise of that book boils down to my cousin Rick was 10 years older than me, and I was a little kid, and I went to his house and he had this wall of vinyl records, like thousands of them.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I come over to his house, he had just gotten a new stereo, and he said, Dave, I want to play you this new record.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes to this wall of records and he pulls down a record, and it's the first Boston record.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and he's going through it, really, you know, talking about the liner notes, talking about the recording process, talking about the members of the band, just really diving in deep.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember then as a super young kid thinking, you had a thousand records on that wall.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: What made you pick that one?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: That well, you could have played me anything.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: You picked that one.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So my point has always been the artist: make music that is so undeniably brilliant that when people have thousands of options to share with their friends, they're gonna pick yours.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And back then it was a thousand albums on the wall.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a hundred thousand songs per day being uploaded to Spotify.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let that seem.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's yeah.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard that stat?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's what's happening.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Between 60 and 120,000 songs per day are being uploaded.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: How the heck are we supposed to consume all of that?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the point being is make music that of those hundreds of thousands of songs make people want to tell other people.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because they will.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, back in the day it was a MySpace post, you know.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Back in the day it was pulling down an album and sh well, back in a long day, it was pulling down the album and then making a a bootleg cassette recording of it and passing it around to your friends at school.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's, you know, whatever, sharing a link.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So being a timid observer, taking a step back and looking at artists as they're just starting out on the regional scene or the local scene, something along those lines.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: For you, just as an observer, casual observer, what is more frustrating to watch?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: A really stellar band with a poor marketing plan, or a really green band with a fantastic marketing plan?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know we've seen both.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'll take the stellar band any day because marketing we can fix, you know, marketing we can we can fix.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: In some ways, you can fix the music, but it's a little more that's that's a little more something that comes a little, I don't know, I don't want to say you're completely born with it, but in a lot of cases you're born with.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a there's a conceptual form of chemistry that you either have or you don't when you work with certain configurations of people.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that was something that I had to learn the hard way throughout all of my time.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, there were some earlier bands that I was in that I look back on and I'm like, that band should have never seen a stage ever, or that iteration of a band should have never seen a stage ever.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now I'm going to be asking you that band name so I can YouTube and find clips a little bit later.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: But but the thing is, it's timing is such also such a big deal in the music business.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are in a market that's white hot, like it's hard to keep yourself off of a stage from time to time, even if your project isn't fully prepared.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's weird because you make those mistakes even if you're not fully aware of the fact that you're making a stake, mistake in that moment.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I tell bands all the time, like you might not have you might be in a situation where you just haven't written that song yet.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're you know, a lot of times it is just the stars aligning at the right time with the right, you know, right song, right lyrics, right.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of the numbers of artists that have been around for 10, 15 years before their first song broke.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you and I met on TikTok, and I love that there's a world now.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think here's my take on the music business.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think 2024 is the best time in the history of music to be in the music business.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just do.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's other it's got lots of problems.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: AI, Spotify payment system, lots of problems.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But could you imagine if I were to come to you, Mike, and your band in 2003, four, or five and say, you know what?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: I could put you on a platform where someone in Indonesia can hear your music and like you and become a fan, and you don't even have to go there.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Someone in Topeka, Kansas can listen to your music and like it and become a fan, and you don't even have to go there.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they can play your music millions and millions of times as much as they want.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Could you imagine if I would have said to you back then, like, hey, there's gonna, you know, I mean, what a great thing.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yet somehow between then and now we tend to complain about it a lot.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we tend to complain about the problems with TikTok, the problems with Instagram, the problems with Spotify, but still, to those of us from that remember, it was virtually impossible to get someone to hear your music outside of your immediate region up until fairly recently.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say fairly recently, I even mean like Facebook and Instagram really didn't do that well in the beginning.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you had to go out, and first you had to find your fan on Facebook, then you had to convince them to follow or like your page, then you had to hope that Facebook would actually show them anything you cared to share.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So still, even in that early stages of social media, finding a fan was hard.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether it's TikTok or YouTube Shorts or Instagram reels, we have algorithms built to find our people.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: You and I, for example, probably would have never met in another time frame.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely it is.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: But that's that's a great kind of segue to my next question is how would a new artist kind of traverse some of the harder to juggle algorithms right now?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when TikTok first burst out, it seemed like much like the 90s, it was the Wild West.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but now it it seems like it's a a little bit.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: More intense and a little bit more controlled by the platform than say it even was a year ago.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So how would a new artist, you know, shake up that algorithm so they get noticed?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, one of the things that with social media that I find the one of the biggest mistakes I find is forgetting the social part of social media.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of new artists, and I'm not picking on anybody in particular, but a lot of artists in general sort of view this as media, not social media.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore they'll they'll share their song, they'll share their content, they'll share their music, they'll share themselves.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: But not interact.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say interact, I don't mean respond to someone commenting on your your music.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's easy.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean going out and finding friends.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's TikTok and TikTok, for example, as an example, is the equivalent of the the live music venue of of 2002 where you would have to go out and meet your friends here.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you wanted, if you were into, you know, heavy metal and you wanted heavy metal friends, you had to go to a heavy metal show to find them.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: The trouble I'm seeing now is we're putting all this stuff out there, but we're not going out and finding our friends and talking to them, like, you know, hey, this is cool, or I love your t-shirt, or I like your song, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the way to crack these algorithms to me, I mean, there's a lot of certainly a lot of technical tips and tricks and and and and strategies that are important, but the most important thing is interacting with people who would be like-minded to what it is you're doing, whatever that is.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that reminds me, it a very quick anecdote.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day when I was practicing music, I had these neighbors across the street, and this actually brings us all full circle.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Every week, we would practice three times a week.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Every week, the police would show up at my house with you know, without us, you know, we were expecting it.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: We knew it was gonna happen, we knew which neighbors were calling the police, and time and time again, they would come, they'd listen to us play for a few minutes, and the police would be like, Oh, you guys are fine, you guys are fine, and then they would leave.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to pull a trick on the neighbors one time, and all my buddies came over for band practice.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: We ordered pizza, we sat around and watched Chappelle show and ate pizza and drank beer.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't even turn our instruments on.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like clockwork, the police showed up absolutely, because the neighbors had complained about a noise complaint.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I was standing in my front yard and we're all just having a big old laugh about this, and I asked the police officer, I said, What can I do to prevent this from happening?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he gave me this piece of advice that I've carried for the rest of my life with me, and it's like, if you want people to invest in you, you need to invest in them first.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I have carried it with me my entire life.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So bringing what you were saying full circle, I've had a few younger bands on the podcast recently, and talking to them about the trajectory of their career, it seems like a lot of newer bands are more concerned with creating communities around their project as opposed to chasing that big record deal and that big release.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And is that something you're also noticing?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is, absolutely.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the collaboration, the community, uh, I mean, you know, no disrespect to my friends in the record business, but we are not far away from the traditional record label model being completely obsolete.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's already fairly obsolete.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: In certain genres, it still matters.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for the most part, yeah, most new artists don't even want a record label.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I I love that.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: They they want a community, they don't, they want, you know, they want a team, a people, you know, friends.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love seeing that.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do too.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: I do too.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's crazy because you think about the year that we had the pandemic era, 2020, 2021.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Feels like a lifetime ago.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Also feels like just yesterday.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: But like a lot of smaller venues were going out of business, and then it seems like in the past two years, all of a sudden, a bunch of new venues are popping up all over the place to the point where I even look at my old home area of Omaha and I'm like, man, is the market getting a little bit crowded, or were people really that entertainment starved for that period of time that they didn't have that as an option?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess gonna say, I I attribute that to that same sense of community for sure.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, as we talk in New Orleans, there's a convention for Niva N IVA, which is the Association of Independent Venues.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was not that was created during the pandemic to bring um venues together.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it it is beautiful to see kind of venues re-rising again.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating that they survived.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: They would not have survived without help, but it's just amazing that we still have live music venues.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: What blows my mind is I think in the last year alone, we've had three larger to mid-size venues open up in the Omaha area to the point where we do have choices every night of the week where we have three or four big shows to choose from, and our city is not that big.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's great.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: I love seeing it.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's uh what's interesting about post-pandemic touring though, is it is very hard for artists in the sense of we have even though venues are back on the rise, we still have fewer venues in 2024 than we did in 2019.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um yet every band that was you know in their basement for two years during the pandemic, they're all wanting to tour now.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you have two issues with touring right now.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: One, you have more acts wanting to tour than there are venues to hold them.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um two people can't go see that much music.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it was back in 2018, 2017, 2019, your favorite big amphitheater band would tour maybe once every three years or whatever.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when you take a three-year pandemic or a two-year pandemic, that means they're all gonna be touring in that year after that, which means fans have to make some tough decisions, which has really been tough for everybody from the big acts to I mean, I bought I bought tickets to see the Eagles day of show recently.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: When in history could you do that?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like never, right?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, right?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's no that's no slam on the Eagles.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's they're still selling out.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that people have more options and it's tougher to sell tickets.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in a lot of ways, what's interesting is people are really waiting to the last minute because during the pandemic, they got tired of buying their tickets and seeing their favorite show rescheduled time and time and time again.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So finally they just said, you know what, I'll just wait, wait until the last minute.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm oh another great segue is the idea of oversaturation.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just recently the Black Keys canceled their tour, and if you looked at some of the size of the venues that the Black Keys were booking ahead of canceling that tour, they all respect to them, they might have been a little bit too large a size of venues considering the saturation of the touring market right now.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's on the the big macro level.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to take it down to the micro level, a piece of advice I used to deal out to younger and newer bands all the time was treat every show as if it were an event.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, yes.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: You do not want to play your home market any more than once every six week six weeks and treat it as an event.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maximize your audience all in one shot while you can.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Promote the hell out of it, advertise it really well, but make yourself look like that valuable commodity that they can only see once in a while, and that'll carry you through for a good period of time.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are some advice that you have that's similar to that?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I even go so far as to say, like, give the event a title, like call it a festival, call it a thing, call it whatever.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Bring in a you know, a charity that's dear to your heart and like uh make it a whole thing.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean, I had a band say to me, and and you know, all of this too relates to the size of market that you're in.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're in you're in Lincoln, right?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm in Lincoln, I'm in Lincoln, but I'm from Omaha kind of both.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: So Lincoln, you know, even once every six weeks might be a little much.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I might go once every three months in a in a city of that size.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the like I had a band in a similar size market say to me, I said, How are things going?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, they're going great.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've got 20 shows this month in our, you know, in our hometown.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and this was an original band.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a cover band that's playing like you know, background music.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Man, I you know, I hate to tell you, but that's a tough you you you can't get all of your friends and fans out 20 times in a month.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get them out barely once a month.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I mean, touring is strategic.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what's funny about TikTok and Instagram and all the stuff going on right now, the reason for playing live, there's really about only one reason.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this a little bit depends on the genre, but for the most part, across genres, the main reason to play live is for fun.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make you a whole lot of money, and there's a whole lot more ways to get fans.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm meeting I met a kid the other day who's probably 17 years old, millions and millions of streams on Spotify, maybe, yeah, millions, hundreds and millions of streams on Spotify.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I called him about possibly playing a show at a at a festival that I was involved with.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I got him on the phone and we were talking and talking about his career, and he got hundreds of millions of streams, and I said, you know, like to invite you to play this festival.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this pause in the conversation, and he said, What do you mean?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like live on like like on a stage?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does and he's I could see that he never really thought of this.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, How does this work?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like give me a band?
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or like how does what is how does what how do you play live?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, wow, that's interesting.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we started talking it through, and at the end of the conversation, he was super cordial, but he was like, Yeah, I don't think playing live is gonna really be my I don't think I'm gonna do that.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, that's really interesting.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, you know, telling some friends about that, and they were like, yeah, you know, he's he's getting his dopamine rush from the likes and the shares, and the and you know, he's not getting it from the same way a lot of musicians get it from stage.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love I come from a school that I love live music.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it can create lifelong fans.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen that in bands like The Grateful Dead and like bands throughout history, but it's not necessary.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so my advice is if you're gonna tour, if you're gonna play out, it's gotta be super strategic.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, making an event, making a you know, do it a thing.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: But when I see these bands getting in a van and going and playing for 25 people night after night after night, it's fine.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that better quickly turn into a hundred people the next time you come to town.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you know, I've heard this story a lot.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've been going to, you know, we've been going and playing Cincinnati for the last six years.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: We go there every six months, and we still have the same 20 people showing up.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then why the hell are you still going to Cincinnati?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's better ways to get fans.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, and furthermore, figure out why those 20 people are not telling their friends about you because that's what's happening.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Something's not connecting.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: In this post-pandemic world, I know a lot of the big name bands that I've had on the show and I've talked to uh a few times, they are adapting a new touring model to where they're not on the road for six months at a time.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is kind of like the whole satellite show concept.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be on the road from Wednesday through Sunday, be home Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday the next week, and then we'll do another run.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost kind of like the weekend warrior thing, but for original musicians and well-established musicians.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was another uh happenstance of the pandemic, if you will.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Does that concept, combined with everything else that we've discussed, lend itself to the idea of retailing music being important again?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I saw a video you made the other day, just a spoiler alert, talking about how important it is to have physical copies of media again and how merch is important again, where for a long period of time you just did it and a lot of times sold it at cost just to circulate your name out there.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it it is kind of important again, isn't it?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: Physical product of music is insanely important.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in that same post, I say, because you can't autograph a stream, they gotta have something to touch, and you know, um, yeah, but you know, it it's it's it's interesting.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I saw a stat the other day that said only 37% of vinyl that gets purchased gets listened to.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: So people are still, of course, listening through Spotify and Apple, but they want that merch item because vinyl sales are at an all-time high.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've got two acts right now selling cassettes on the road.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's how much of a just like, you know, and these aren't like nostalgic acts, these are new acts selling cassettes that um yeah, physical product is is hugely important, and it's really crazy to me how many people are buying CDs.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it just came back.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it's it it's a little bit genre related, you know.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: Country music sells more CDs than you know other some other genres, but people still buy CDs.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I didn't even have a CD player for a couple of years.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I've got I've got a 15-year-old, uh, 15-year-old son, 17-year-old daughter, I got twin 17-year-old stepdaughter, so I've got three girls the same age.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they are all into the vinyl thing right now.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like if I have my kids with me and we want to do something, I take them to the record store and let them pick out a couple of records.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting you brought up that stat because now that I think about it, I think a lot of their vinyl is still sealed.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like they haven't even broken into it yet.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a very, very interesting stat.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you uh uh I'm I'm impressed even more that you were able to take the time to talk to me today with four kids.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's four teenagers no less.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they the at the this teenage years, they want nothing to do with dad.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: It'll all come back around.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've got an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, so I am I am dreading the teen days.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: I I was looking forward to it when they were younger, and now I miss the younger days.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I miss the days when they were eight and five for sure.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I'm soaking it in.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a book coming out uh this month.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh six success in today's music business is what it's called.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Can I do this?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk a little bit about the book.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, the book is interesting.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm open to a page here.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's very short, kind of um, so it's a each page, you can kind of just open it and pick one.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Each each page has a tip for today, and it has something specific to do today.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of a big overarching career tip, like you know, something to do with your career, and then something tangible you should get done by sundown today.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I wrote the book really, man.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: This this is my second music business book, my third, third book, but um I wrote it really with sort of the TikToker in mind.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, in 60 seconds or less, you can get you can just randomly open a page and get some tangible advice to move your career forward that day.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I'm I haven't studied this, I have no data on this, but I personally find myself reading long books less and less than I used to.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I that makes me sad to say that.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me wonder if all of this social media has made me has somehow messed with my attention span to be able to, you know.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself sometimes uh it's hard to watch a two-hour movie.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, and and but this book was written with this sort of mindset of like I don't have a lot of time, I got 60, 90 seconds, uh, you know, let me let me find something to do today.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: But if you complete the whole book, it's 101 steps.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you are gonna find in that time frame your life is very, very different.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, I love that.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Bringing it all full circle.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Be the person you needed when you were younger.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is, man.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I want this is this is this is my Mike Clark right here.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is in I love that.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Dave, my favorite closing question that I ask every single one of my guests, no matter who they are, is what's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I love that.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I tell my kids all the time to be kind.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we were talking just last night about a Mother Teresa quote.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds very cliche in a time like this, but um I was teaching my eight-year-old about Mother Teresa for some reason, and she's got a quote where she says, If if you want to make the world a better place, it starts with a smile.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so yeah, that's kind of my you know my advice to make the world a better place.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it seems really simple, but just be kind.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: We just need more, you know, we've got a very divided world, very divided country, very divided times like I've never seen before.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, kindness wins always.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Love that.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've been so I got a question for you.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Of the many times you have asked that, what's something that has stood out that someone said?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember any any advice that someone gave that not one thing in particular, as much as it is odd, the types of responses I get.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: You would think that I would get kind of crickets if I'm asking a professional fighter that same question, but they tend to give me some of the best, most well thought out answers to that question.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of attribute that to you know, cognitive bias.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like we go into a conversation with somebody thinking we're gonna get one thing, and then we get pleasantly surprised by the other thing that comes out on the other side of it, which goes to the whole idea of don't ever judge a book by its cover, like open the book and read it, you know, spend some time living in it, spend some time in somebody else's head.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a lot of what the foundation of this podcast is all about.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: I tell my friends and everybody, my podcast is a Trojan horse.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: You might think that you're listening to a conversation with a musician or a conversation with a fighter, but what you're listening to is a conversation with another human being that's experienced some things.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you're not interested in what their background of expertise is, listen to this episode because you could learn something about yourself in the process.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's what's funny.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're getting ready to get off this episode here.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I've listened to a lot of your episodes, and I'm looking at a second screen with all of them up on my screen here.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm now gonna go through everyone and fast forward to the end so I can hear this advice of every single one of these folks.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm seeing some advice on here where I'm like, I gotta find out what you know, what Ben Curtis has to say here about that, you know, or whatever.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: What did you tell all my listeners where they can find you and follow you at?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thanks.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can get me.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: The best way is deepsouthentertainment.com.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's sort of my company's page, and you can spiderweb your way through to uh finding me on TikTok or Instagram or anywhere else.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I will, of course, tag Dave in all of the promo for this episode.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: He is one of my most favorite follows on TikTok.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me smile every time I come across one of his posts.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: He always has great words of wisdom for all of you, whether you're in the music business or not.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Dave, thanks for doing the podcast today, man.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: The world's a much better place with you and it, my friend.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mike.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot for having me.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Once again, I want to thank my friend Dave Rose from Deep South Entertainment for joining me on the podcast today.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: I could nerd out about music business stuff for hours.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you follow Dave Rose Deep South on TikTok, deepstouthentertainment.com.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: Check out his new book.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's awesome to watch this episode on YouTube.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you are being generous with the follows on social media today, give Caught on the Mike a follow on all social media platforms.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you give me that five-star review on all the podcasting platforms, and subscribe to Caught on the Mic YouTube channel.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can visit me at www.cotonhe.com.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: And for guests and other inquiries, email me caught on the mic at gmail.com.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Caught on the Mike with Michael Clark.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Michael Clark.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you.