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| winn gets a grizzly jamface |
If, a year and a half ago, you'd suggested to the Agents of Good Roots that they were going nowhere fast, they'd have had to stifle a laugh. After all, they'd just finished recording a pumping second release for RCA records at Richmond's prestigious Sound of Music studios. They'd also recently found themselves firmly tucked under the wing of Red Light Productions, the chariot of sophisti-pop uberboy Dave Matthews and quite possibly the most influential management vehicle on the East Coast. This connection alone was putting them onstage in front of audiences 20,000+ people strong. By all measures things were definitely looking up. Why the long face?
All was not syrup and scones in dreamland. Now, a year and a half later, not only have they found themselves narrowly squeezing out of their deal with RCA in order to independently distribute Needle and Thread-- the disc the label shelved and ignored-- but they have just bid their official adieu to the Red Light organization as well.
It is widely discussed how record labels with 200 artists on their roster typically invest their resources only on the top-grossing dozen. Apparently RCA fell asleep on the job after deciding that the Agents' new tracks weren't radio-friendly enough. (A bogus assertion in the case of Needle and Thread, a rockin' little street-wise disc full of funky jams and a healthy dose the Agents' patented intelligent compostitional skills.)
When the tale first got to me it went something like "did you hear that the Agents of Good Roots got dumped by RCA and Red Light at the same time?" Fortunately for the band's sanity, the opposite is true. After experiencing the abject apathy at the top of the industry from their perch somewhere just short of the bottom (the typical entry-level music industry post), the Richmond-based quartet decided they would probably be better off small and happy than huge and... nowhere.
I rolled down to Richmond one mid-summer day to rap with head-Agent Andrew Winn-- the band's spokesperson if not just because his rig sits in the middle of the stage and he does most (but not all) of the singing and songwriting. We hung out on a lovely rainy Virginia evening, chowed some righteous Cuban food in the Fan and finally headed over to Alley Katz where the band had been playing a string of Wednesday night throw-downs.
Winn is a brotherly fellow who took me in right off the bat (even refusing to allow me to pay for my own dinner). He and his visiting brother Gordon (who later sat in with the band for some backing vocals on Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb") shot the breeze with me about his legal battles. Although he was fairly forthcoming about his RCA situation, the Red Light deal was still in contention, so he was a bit more conservative about discussing it. Suffice to say, the management company was not acting in the group's best interest. We'll try to get to the bottom of that in an upcoming article, but here's the story of RCA and apathy, straight from the Agent's mouth:
CRIPSY DUCK Weeeeeeelllll..... I shouldn't have gotten all fucked up last night.
ANDREW WINN Yeah? Where'd you go?
DUCK Aw, I just went to some party and drank way too much... and lusted after people's girlfriends.... to no avail.
WINN Right.
DUCK Fuck.... so let's see... you got outta your deal with RCA...
WINN Yeah, we did, um... thank God. There's a whole lot of things we've learned going through all this... process. What happened is, in our contract, they were obligated to put out two records... or release us. So basically, we put out the first record, recorded the second record, then, once you submit your masters-- your master that you want to put out-- to the label...
DUCK Right.
WINN They have like six months. If they haven't released it or printed it up... then you've got a window of like thirty days to write Ôem a letter and ask to be released-- and it just so happens our lawyer was aware of that. He wrote the letter, also inquiring as to Òcan we sell this record and pay you guys a royalty?Ó-- which they finally agreed to do.
But, you know, they didn't have to do it-- it's just if they didn't do it-- they'd only not do it just to be uncool. Otherwise, at the record label, the master'd be sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. No one would ever hear it, they don't make any money on it. This way, they won't make alot of money on it-- but they'll make a couple thou if we sell a couple thou. So why not let us sell it to our fans?
DUCK So, the way the contract works out is you get the record, they just get a sliver?
WINN We have three years and then we can re-negotiate. Three years, we get to sell the record. We can't put it out with another label. We can independently distribute it, sell it on the web and we pay Ôem twelve percent of what we sell them for. And I think it's totally better.
DUCK That's cool. They paid to record it?
WINN Yeah.
DUCK That's cool.
--Cripsy Duck