Woodstock MusicWorks:
Keeping it Local, Taking it
Global
by Peter Aaron
Starting a record label is always a gamble, but in the 21st century
it seems downright heroic. Or maybe just insane. The advent of the Internet,
with its artist-networking MySpaces, its CDBabies and Amazons, its band-to-fan
and file-sharing websites, and its independent publicists and song-placement
firms, has thrown the music industry into freefall, bringing down not
only mom-and-pop outlets but even retail monoliths like Tower Records.
In fact, in the last several years all of the above have been mounting
steadily toward a critical mass that threatens to render the entire
concept of record labels altogether unnecessary. You know you’re
in trouble when no less than Keith Richards has been spotted cheering
what he terms the long-overdue death of the record industry.
“Well, yeah, it’s true that the industry has totally changed,
and that people now buy 70 percent of their music online—most of it
as downloads, not CDs,” says Paul Schiavo, general manager and
A&R chief of new imprint Woodstock MusicWorks. “But we see
ourselves almost as a ‘boutique label’ that trims the fat
you’d have at a big label and keeps things small and efficient.
Moving forward, for successful labels it’s, going to be more about
those labels partnering with their artists, instead of owning
them, which is how it’s traditionally been.” A musician
himself, Schaivo knows a thing or two about such traditions, having
also worked as a producer and an engineer at Bearsville Studios in the
mid 1990s to acts like Rush, Phish, the Butthole Surfers, Jewel, the
Dave Matthews Band, and others; as a tour manager to Natalie Merchant
and John Mayer; and as a co-founder of the long-running WDST 100.1-FM
Radio Woodstock Mountain Jam festival.
Schiavo, who cites famed ’80s indie SubPop as an inspiration,
launched Woodstock MusicWorks last summer with Hamptons real estate
mogul-turned label CEO Ralph Schiano. “The housing boom of the
’90s was very lucrative for me, and I wanted to invest the money
I made from that in other things,” says Schiano, who also served
as a literary agent and was on the founding board of I-CON, the East
Coast’s most popular annual science fiction convention. “The
Woodstock area has always struck me as having such a great music scene,
and I thought it would great to tap into that. I saw a lot of potential
and it really ignited a fire in me to try to do something creative.”
The label’s first signing is local country rock outfit Mechanical
Bull, which is the brainchild of singer-guitarist Chase Pierson and
features such Woodstock stalwarts as vocalist Avalon Peacock and guitarists
Chris Zaloom and David Malachowski. This past November, WMW issued the
band’s second album, A Million Yesterdays, which has
since been picked up by over 85 radio stations around the U.S. and climbed
into CMJ’s (the industry magazine College Music Journal)
chart of the top 20 CDs most added to college radio playlists. “Working
with [Schiano and Schiavo] has been great, everything I could have hoped
for,” says Pierson, whose band released one self-titled, self-financed
album prior to hooking up with the new label. “For me the business
side of music just sucks to deal with, and having someone else handling
that end has been a tremendous help. It’s really made a big difference.”
A guest appearance by organist John Medeski of Medeski, Martin and Wood
on one of the tracks on A Million Yesterdays has certainly
helped to get the record some attention as well. The
company’s follow-up release is Light & Blood, the
debut by singer-songwriter Bret Mosley, which came out just last month.
A native Texan now based in Brooklyn, Mosley has in recent years become
a de facto Woodstock artist, making frequent trips to the area to perform
locally and record the album. “Everything really took hold for
me very positively pretty much as soon as I started coming up to Woodstock
to play,” Mosley says. “Since then it’s really been
just one angel after another coming to help me out. And [Woodstock MusicWorks]
is a big part of that.” To celebrate the delivery of Light
& Blood, Mosley headlined record release parties in December
at the Bearsville Theater and at a packed Living Room in Manhattan.
In addition to putting out and promoting records, the label has also
taken to sponsoring semi-regular live events at Woodstock venues the
Colony Cafe and the afore-mentioned Bearsville Theater, which Schiano
explains are designed to showcase WMW acts as well as give him and Schiavo
another means of scouting potential signings. Recently, the pair opened
an office in the backspace of the Woodstock Mothership art gallery on
Hillcrest Avenue, from where they plan to oversee the label’s
day-to-day operations and occasionally present intimate performances
and private parties.
“Even though with the Internet so many artists are able to ‘do
it themselves’ these days, most of them don’t have the financial
resources we have to help them do it,” says Schiano. “We’re
able to give our bands the backing of very strong public relations and
lots of tour support. With each of our artists, what we want to do is
to always keep the relationship very personal without interfering in
the creative process.”
And though its very name betrays the label’s deep Woodstock connection,
Schiano and Schiavo don’t intend to limit the pool of possible
roster adds to their own back yard. As this goes to press, the label
is looking at several undisclosed regional and national acts with “large
fan bases,” according to Schiavo. “We want to have a very
diverse range of artists on the label, with national acts, but to continue
releasing albums by local artists, too,” he says. “And
having national acts on the label will help to boost the smaller acts,”
Schiano points out, adding that he and Schiavo are in this for the long
haul. “Really, it’s all about marketing and promoting, which
is what I know to how to do. The way I see it, the music business is
like any other business—it takes 10 percent talent and 90 percent hard
work. It’s all just a matter of persistence.” Mechanical
Bull’s A Million Yesterdays and Bret Mosley’s Light
& Blood are out now on Woodstock MusicWorks. Mosley will perform
at the Bearsville Theater on January 26, opening for the Blind Boys
of Alabama.
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