lelle

once upon a time while i was attending college to learn all kinds of inapplicable stuff, i discovered how much i loved music.
first things first, i started doing promotion for local bands long before i realized people were paid to do “promotion.” soon thereafter a friend gave me an article from "rolling stone" about major labels hiring college students to build their presence on college campuses. immediately i took out all my cd cases, put them on the floor, flipped them over and started looking at the names on the back to see which label i wanted to be a college rep for. my favorite bands like blur, superstar, sinead, jesus jones, emf, adorable, slowdive were all on emi records. i started calling emi. (are you reading this jc?) more to the point, i harassed emi. for months. finally, after tracking down the head of alternative radio promotion for emi at his hotel while he was in town on business, he gave me a job and i started working for emi, for free. six months later, when i still hadn't asked for a cent, they started paying me. it was about 30 dollars a week. i had to have three jobs to support my emi habit. that was long ago when college reps mattered and college radio was where everything started and alternative radio was still alternative. i worked for emi throughout college, covered shows from columbus to detroit, called radio daily, hit every retail store in a 500 mile radius, and then moved to la to work for a start up company called maverick.
maverick was successful because maverick was being birthed by a group of people who weren't music industry people, so by that very nature we did things differently: we were small, unique, passionate, inspired. we had 5 people in the promotion department covering all formats across the country. we never took no for an answer (thanks for teaching me that ms. trahan.), we never took anything for granted, we lived for our bands, and we broke bands that way. i fell in love with rule 62, summercamp, jude, alanis, deftones, prodigy, me’shell. maverick lasted six and a half years for me, and by the time i left, i had more seniority than anyone other than the owners. i covered the country. i covered four formats. i moved to boston. i moved back to la. then i moved back to boston when island def jam called.
idj was everything you expect from a huge label, good and bad. i thought i needed a bigger label to grow as a promotion person, and moving from a smaller label to a bigger label seemed a logical choice. it worked well for a little while. i was excited about the bands on island, but hated the attitudes exhibited as a result of the gangsta culture on the def jam labels. i thought the trade off was endurable. the biggest difference was the amount of "product" we never touched, discussed, dealt with that had been signed to the label. frankly, i never got over being shocked by the amount of music we didn’t work, just because. i fell in love with bands that just sat there. truly, the nature of the beast. . .sign to a major and see where you land. probably not on the priority list. every time that happened i lost part of myself because it was happening to me, not just the bands (rubyhorse and palo alto are top of mind) but also to me, because i cared so much. who would have figured that trying to do what was best for the artist was so rare in the music industry? and who would have figured that being passionate enough to talk about it was a crime? i was always on the wrong team. i was Team Artist. as hard as i tried, and i promise you i tried and tried and tried i never understood major label speak. note to miserable industry types: if you don't speak passionately, if you don't live passionately, please, don't speak about music at all. and stop signing bands. you are wrecking lives.
idj and i divorced after four years. i should have seen the signs; i didn't. they got the kids. it broke my heart.
i wasn't sure i wanted to be in the music industry because the music industry wasn't about music, duh. i took a year off. i traveled. i learned to sleep again. i stopped listening to music. slowly, mindfully, i started to remember why i chose the vocation i did all those years ago. ultimately, out of the dust i created something i could be proud of, a boutique artist development company called Tummah, pronounced toom-mah.
today, artist development is lacking, at best, or nonexistent, at worst. what Tummah wants to accomplish is smart, creative, passionate marketing campaigns that make sense for individual bands in order to take music directly to their smart, creative, passionate fans. what we want to do is generate enthusiastic music fans, not single buyers. when you know your fans, really know who it is that buys your music, when you aren't afraid to be exclusive, you can establish an infrastructure for the life of your career; you determine how to market yourself, you determine the longevity of your career because you know your core. when you establish your brand directly, you cannot lose. Tummah grows with you, and we do it because we are passionate about you and what we do. i've never been happier in my life because that feeling in my stomach is back! it is the same feeling i had when i bought my first teenage fanclub concert ticket, the same feeling when i saw snow patrol play in glasgow to a sold out crowd, the same feeling i get when i discover something by accident like, small sins, and that feeling i wake up to daily cause i'm working with WAXAPPLES and they get it, they are defining it every day. i'm giddy, again. i hope whatever you are doing in your life makes you feel the same way.
more information about what Tummah offers at www.tummahllc.com
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