I often get asked by clients about the best way to find a great
manager. It is no easy task attracting a manager who can really
deliver. I recently met Emily White of Whitesmith Entertainment at
the New Music Seminar and, having heard her speak, I realized that she
was very familiar with the business and was damn good at her job.
Whitesmith Entertainment handles Margaret Cho, Alina Simone, Sydney
Wayser, Family of the Year and others.

Emily started her music business career as an intern for Amanda
Palmer of The Dresden Dolls and began working as The Dresden Dolls’
tour manager. Before starting Whitesmith Entertainment with partner
Keri Smith Esguia, Emily worked with artists like Paolo Nutini,
Keller Williams and Amanda Palmer (when she went solo). I decided
to ask Emily about what she was looking for in prospective clients
and about how artists build businesses in general.

Musician Coaching:
I get artists often asking me how to find a good manager. Along those
lines, what makes a client attractive to you for management? How do
you go about client selection?

Emily:
For one, I don’t want to care more about the artist’s career than
they do. An artist needs to be passionate about their career and
have already displayed a willingness to work. We [Whitesmith
Entertainment] tend to go after artists that have more than one
thing going on.

Margaret Cho, who we manage, is a comedian, an
actress, an author and has a music album coming out. Another client
we signed a few months ago named Alina Simone approached me and she
had a book deal in place, an album done and lots of press and tour
dates lined up. So we also look for artists who need something or
who have an existing business that needs managing.
I get artists approaching me all the time but we’re not miracle
workers. It’s not like I alone can make tours happen without the
artist having already put the time into their own career.

Musician Coaching:
Speaking of tour, what would be your advice for artists just starting up looking to break out of their home market or just building a following
locally?

Emily:
Oh gig swaps definitely – Trading an opening slot with a band
in your market for an opening slot for them in a market where they
draw well. It’s so easy with the internet – start looking for bands
in other cities on MySpace and reach out to them, you know?

Musician Coaching:
What I did in my band’s home market was befriend the one guy
who started booking my band’s gigs and asked him what a good match
for my band and I convinced the promoter to let me in for free and
hand out flyers and meet the band and network that way. I met great
local and regional bands that were a good fit for my band. It also
worked when asking about bands in the next town over.

Emily:
I can’t stress enough how getting shows is about 80% artist
to artist and only 20% from people like us [she vaguely gestures
back and forth over our green tea that has gotten cold]
there is always this assumption that “if I get an agent I will get
all these tours…” For example Trent Reznor saw an early Dresden
Dolls video on MTV2 and it was he who put them on tour with Nine
Inch Nails.

Musician Coaching:
That was my experience playing on a local level but you have
seen this all the way up to major acts like NIN?

Emily:
Oh yea, I mean our (The Dresden Dolls’) management had good
relationships with NIN’s management so I mean having good executive
relationships helped but ultimately that decision came from Trent
Reznor.

Musician Coaching:
So you would say artist networking then is very important?

Emily:
Totally! I mean Amanda (Palmer of The Dresden Dolls) was
always great at that. We would be at European festivals and I would
come back to the trailer and there she would be chatting with Elvis
Costello…Good girl!

Another artist we work with, Sydney Wayser, was at the Wanderlust
festival. She’s 22, totally brand new and this was one of her first
big festivals. I told her “your job is to go out and give your CD
and chitchat with Andrew Bird and Jenny Lewis and all your favorite
people that are here.” Sydney is shy, but she did a great job. So
that is much more effective than me talking to Andrew Bird or me
talking to Andrew Bird’s manager or anything like that.

Margaret Cho is another great example of effective artist
networking. She had a list of about thirty to forty artists she
wanted to work with for her upcoming album. Keri and I reached out
to artists that we knew and all of their managers and followed up
but eventually we exhausted our resources as managers. Margaret and
I went to Bonnaroo together and I told her it that what we needed to
get out of attending Bonnaroo was her sealing the deal with artists
directly and she absolutely did. Yes, we had been talking to the
Decemberists but when she was trying on sunglasses with them at the
Kaenon booth and told them about her album…that’s actually how that
happens. I think artists definitely need to establish those
relationships.

Musician Coaching:
Bringing this back to a more local and regional level, would you
say that for bands just starting out that approaching the big local
band is acceptable? For example in the case of your artists, who
tend to be artists with a great deal going on, are they willing to
give out advice to smaller bands if they are approached?

Emily:
Sure. Amanda was open to it. There is nothing wrong with
approaching a big local artist. I mean, I hesitated in approaching
The Dresden Dolls in 2003 because they were a big local band and I
figured they were doing fine but when I met Amanda and I said “I
intern at WBCN and write for this magazine and I’m a music business
major. Let me know if you ever need help with anything,” her
response was “Can you please come over tomorrow?” You’d be
surprised. Even bigger bands always need help.

Musician Coaching:
Good one. Changing gears, I often get approached about music
licensing for artists on their own. You’ve had some success at
that. Where does that come from? Is shotgunning stuff at music
supervisors of any value?

Emily:
Most of my bands are a little too weird for that. The Dresden
Dolls got some placement in the show Weeds and in a commercial in
Austria. I think with regard to licensing the placements Moby got
cracked it wide open and it became acceptable and not selling out
and it’s great exposure so people began to flock to that.

Musician Coaching:
The moment things seemed cracked open for me was Led Zeppelin’s
music in a Cadillac commercial.

Emily:
Yeah, that is an awesome way you can get exposure and make
money. It’s an ideal route but everybody is onto it so it is
incredibly competitive. As a result, it’s just not at the top of my
priority list. I do have some incredible relationships with some
music supervisors and people that shop songs but, again, some of my
best successes with that has been music supervisors who are fans or
again from the artists themselves.

Musician Coaching:
Going back to building something and having people come to you?

Emily:
Yeah. For example, Family of the Year [a band Whitesmith
just picked up for management in the last week] already had two
films interested. Granted, one of the members is an actress but the
band is very licensable. In general, most of my artists are a bit
too unique. I mean, when it happens, it happens and when it happens, it
can REALLY happen and pay well and do well but it is just such an X
factor. It’s a hard thing to count on.

Musician Coaching:
Tell me about what you think are must dos for artists out there

Emily:
Email list is absolutely number one, data collection. Having your own
website is key, using Google analytics which is free, fanbridge is
free to start an account and have an email list… All the stuff is out
there, you just have to have it organized. It definitely helps to
have a web savvy friend.

Musician Coaching:
With all the online tools now do you utilize the online feedback
on MySpace etc for song choices or single choices from the fans? Does
that kind of feedback ever determine what winds up on an album?

Emily:
Not yet, but it could. I think if we did it that way there
would have to be a promotional tie-in, some kind of contest.

Musician Coaching:
So back to basics again, if you were to start over from scratch
with an artist, what would you do? What would be the plan?

Emily:
I am so lucky to be doing that with Family of the Year right
now. I have this amazing music that they self-recorded so we are
literally starting from scratch. We booked them a few shows in L.A.
and we are bringing them in for CMJ. We started growing the email list
after taking names from their old band’s mailing list.

Musician Coaching:
How are you growing that?

Emily:
The social networks, pen and paper at the merch stand. It
also helps to have a cute intern go around the room and ask for
emails. We also set up a Google voice number so that people can
text in email addresses. We used to just call out a crew member’s
cell number from stage and get email addresses texted to them.

As for the real basics of band business, they were already
registered with BMI but we have registered the new songs. We are
figuring out what domain names to buy and getting Google analytics in
place. I mean we had the MySpace page up first. It’s kind of a one-
sheet for a band. Here’s the music, here are the tour dates, here’s
the email list etc.

Musician Coaching:
I look at having a MySpace page as being in the phonebook and
not usually much more important than that but, then again, you have to
be in the phonebook.

Emily:
Yeah and that is something that is easy for a band to set up.
We are cleaning up all their web properties and we are going to
release a digital EP in September.

Musician Coaching:
What is your philosophy on getting fans on MySpace? Is that
something you actively seek out?

Emily:
We absolutely do seek that out, in particular with Alina
Simone because she is at home writing for the next six months and
she’s shy. She’s on Twitter but not on it as much as other people.
I’m having someone I work with reach out to fans of similar artists
(PJ Harvey, Cat Power) and asking them if they have heard of Alina.
We feel she needs it.

Musician Coaching:
Thanks so much for taking the time to sit down with me. I’d be
thrilled to know more about Family of the Year as the story develops
so please let’s have them check in or you check in again soon!

Artist / Executive Interview: July 09’ Alex Lasarenko

Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with a friend and client of mine Alex Lasarenko. Alex has been making his living at writing and recording music for over twenty years and now runs his own studio making music for commercials, film and TV. You may or may not have heard of Alex but you have heard his music as it has been featured in dozens of films and national TV commercials. I thought I would sit down and ask him a bit about how he built his business and started making a living in music.

I met Alex in his studio Tonal in the West 20s… I sat down and started the tape recorder just after explaining what my artist coaching service was about and that I was looking for him to offer helpful advice to the struggling musician. Without having really started the interview he said:

Alex: “you have to believe that what you are doing is the right thing to do. Because there will be a ton of people telling you what you do is just shit… It really is a rollercoaster ride…which is a problem if you don’t like rollercoasters”

Music Coaching Question: So I guess bring me back to the beginning to how your career in music started…

Alex: Well I’m from Ohio from a family of working class immigrants so there was nothing in my background that suggested that moving to New York was the right thing to do. I was getting a degree in piano performance. There was nothing in my cards that said I should move to New York and start a band.

Music Coaching Question: But that’s what you did?

Alex: Yes I moved to New York and started off paying keys and writing all the music with a partner Chris Ocasek who would write all the lyrics. We started in a band around age 21 and got signed to EMI / Manhattan records by Bruce Lundevall. Bruce was probably the nicest gentleman and a great first person to meet in the music business. It was an excellent experience. Someone must have thought something of what we were writing. I think it was partly that and partly that EMI was looking to exploit Chris’ lineage (Chris is Rick Ocasek’s son).

Music Coaching Question: What did you guys do up until the point of getting signed?

Alex: We were always writing music and playing out locally. Since I was classically trained and Chris wasn’t it was an interesting combination. Performing live was never my favorite I used to get very nervous or sick.

Music Coaching Question: So Touring musician was never your first pick of careers?

Alex: No, and the band was never set up to be like that it anyway, it was more like a studio project. The label wound up trying to take away what the band was and wound up trying to promote the record we made as the Chris Ocasek project. I wound up suing the label. So very early on I learned how to stand up for myself. I wound up winning and got the courts to prevent the record from being released as something that it wasn’t.

Music Coaching Question: Wow, I didn’t realize that.

Alex: It was an interesting experience that uh…you can be this kind of flakey creative artist but it is the business of art and the art of business…the two are intertwined no matter what you think, whether you like it or not.

Music Coaching Question: So you were in your early 20s and you were signed for a year or a year and a half and I am guessing the lawsuit ended that?

Alex: Yea

Music Coaching Question: And the left you with a degree in Piano Performance and living in New York.

Alex: Yes, the producer of the record that Chris and I made was Jonathan Elias and he got so sick of the whole label’s behavior he left so I wound up doing the whole record myself with an engineer

Music Coaching Question: Was that your first time behind the board?

Alex: Yes – Jonathan left to do a Duran Duran record after the problems started to surface with the label and I wound up producing the EMI record myself. You know, sometimes you get thrown into the deep end of the pool and you either sink or you swim. I always knew what I wanted to do musically, that came naturally so it was easy for me to get it done. When the lawsuit happened I wound up broke and I had a half an onion and I would literally sit in the lobby at Elias studios twelve hours a day waiting on their client meetings to be done so I could go in an eat something that was left over- that was how I ate for 4-5 months

Music Coaching Question: So tell me about Elias studios-

Alex: Elias was a large commercial music house, at that time it was on its way down as Jonathan has lost some interest in it. Jonathan’s brother told me if I was going to sit there all day I might as well write something so I did and it wound up winning some business for the studio. I wound up writing several pieces of music that won business for the studio and after six months they made him the creative director of the company.

Music Coaching Question: From Eating leftover food in the conference room to creative director in six months, not bad…

Alex: (laughs) yea it was $25,000 a year. For me, that was Huge! It was amazing I could afford socks; I could afford to eat and get a shared apartment. And I just worked my ass off…
Music Coaching Question: So for you it was your songwriting and the production and engineering skills you picked up along the way?

Alex: Yep, working on and producing commercials was a great lesson because I would do that from 9:30 in the morning until nine at night and then I would work on an album until early in the morning.

Music Coaching Question: Did you ever have any thoughts of going back to band life?

Alex: No after the lawsuit it was kind of over…but it was a great experience to learn that you can’t let people take advantage of you. And every time I have let me guard down or didn’t go with my gut instinct on that I have gotten burned.

Music Coaching Question: Gothca. So one of the reasons I wanted to interview you Alex is one of the questions I get most often doing what I do is “can you get my music into film and TV and video games?” Now you are someone who makes you living on creating custom pieces of music for those kinds of things. Do you have any advice for people on how to get their music placed in those kinds of situations?

Alex: Well it’s a different kind of a business (creating custom music vs. licensing tracks off of an existing album)…Making an album is a full time job, marketing it is a full time job…and it’s usually a thankless and unappreciated job…but I think it would be hard I don’t know what to tell you if you have one album’s worth of material…. Most people respond better to a body of work unless you have a hit- that makes it easier. When we license music it is because we have a library of material to choose from…

Music Coaching Question: Does having more material help do you think?

Alex: … I think content is king. If you have great success with a band and get traction then whoever you are working with will be able to get it in front of music supervisors…if you ant a long term relationship with music in movies and TV then you have to meet and talk to as many music supervisors you can and get to know them and what kind of music they use…I’ll talk to anyone, it’s interesting what you can learn when you are willing to talk to anybody.

Music Coaching Question: How did you cope with the jaded attitudes you likely encountered when meeting music supervisors as a composer just getting in to the business? Is there any advice you can give about getting heard by these people?

Alex: I made a decision that I was going to devote five years to scoring a movie. What I had to do was create music that was worth being in a movie. I think that nobody would take me seriously unless I had music that they could hear visually – music that they could see being part of their project. Our studio tends to score entire films rather than just portions of films, which is rare. What I have noticed that music supervisors tend to work within a certain budget. Some do 25-50 million dollar budget films

Music Coaching Question: Of course the music budgets for those films is considerably less…

Alex: Oh, considerably less…and then there are other music supervisors that do 1-10 million dollar films. I’ve noticed that when these music supervisors step up into the next category up they tend not to return your calls (laughs)…I guess their feeling is that they are now at a higher level…
When it comes to licensing and music supervisors I think that anytime that you can talk to somebody and get your music in front of them I mean what’s the worst thing that could happen- they say no? I mean you are going to hear no a lot in this business… And you have to be dumb enough to believe that they are wrong (when they say no)…I know that sounds stupid but when someone says no you have to believe that they are wrong and you are right.

Music Coaching Question: I am sure that you know a ton of people who you came up with and played with who are no longer in the business- they either heard no too many times or couldn’t hack it and got straight gigs…

Alex: Well some of them actually went on to be pretty big too…

Music Coaching Question: Sure…but from what you have seen from those who made it who have either continued to make a living at music or have gone on to be hugely successful is there a defining quality that leads to that enduring success?

Alex: I never chased the glamorous portions of the business so it was easier for me to stay in the business…but the people I know who fell away were not able to adapt they were unable to move past their niche. I know a woman who was one of the best oboe players in the world in my opinion and she no longer plays, she takes botanical photographs now.

Music Coaching Question: So the ability to adapt…?

Alex: If you are the best oboe player in the world and all of a sudden there are 3,000 plugins with great oboe sounds that don’t require a real person to come in for a session then…you’re in trouble. Ten years ago I used to file 300 AFM contracts per year. Last year we did two… I’ve had to adapt to, you have to make do what you have these days.

Music Coaching Question: Any other advice…

Alex: Well, while I everyone was out doing coke in the 80s I was in the studio doing work during the day and making time for my own songwriting at night…it’s a lot of work to make a living this way… You can always write music on your own but if you want it to blossom into something epic or beautiful or cinematic you have to keep the hamster wheel going… I would get Pneumonia and I would still go to work, work has to get done…

Music Coaching Question: How did you know you were doing the right thing?

Alex: The best thing that happened to me was a corporate coach came into Elias and asked me with no one else around – “what do you want?”… I gave him the corporate line but he asked again- no – “what do you want”…. What I wanted was to win an academy award for bet original score… all this shit fell away when I realized what I wanted.

Music Coaching Question: you are lucky that your day job supports you in your goal
Alex: absolutely…you know someone is always throwing shit at you but you have to always believe that what you are doing is worthwhile…

Music Coaching Question: Your skill that kept you in the game has been your songwriting and applying that to corporate needs- how did some of your peers use their skills to stay in the game, was it session work or waiting tables or…?

Alex: Yes, Session work, people that do custom studio work like I do… I mean everyone is having trouble but…I don’t really know, I do know some great players. We all have to do the odd job here and there. The motto at tonal is we will talk to anyone, we will do anything…

Music Coaching Question: Do you get calls for sound a-likes?
Alex: no, we don’t much anymore, rates have come down most people can afford the originals…you also have tons of small studios looking to break in who will work for free.

Music Coaching Question: would you warn someone against doing tracks for free?

Alex: My feeling is if you are doing music for free, what do you think of yourself? It’s a business, we provide a service. This whole notion that you have to demo for free for an online free when agencies are still charging their clients a lot of money. People often ask me “should I do this track for free?” and I always say – “do you think you are worth nothing?”

Music Coaching Question: Enough said about that…

Alex: it’s a nerve wracking moment in business right now…everyone is walking around like a zombie…in the end if you believe what you are writing is great it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks

Music Coaching Question: One final question- Would you do anything different?

Alex: No, no regrets.
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You can check out Alex’s work @ http://www.tonalsound.com