The rise of Ripchord

Five years in the business, a larger roster of bands than nearly anyone else, and a deal with J Mascis: can't anybody ask Portland's premier artist management outfit something besides where's the new Rustic Overtones album?

by Sam Pfeifle

RIPCHORD REVERSAL: the management team -- Joel Marquis, Bill Beasley, Jan Albee, and TJ McNaboe -- let some of their clients work the phones for a change. (6gig's Walt Craven, and Shufflin' Tremble's Kevin Kennie, Chris Sedanka, and Dan Bodoff in the background.)

The Stone Coast was packed. The town had turned out for Ripchord Records and Artist Management's fifth anniversary party, and the wall of people around the bar was as imposing as the evening's lineup of acts.

The men behind Ripchord -- Bill Beasley, Joel Marquis, and TJ McNaboe -- were surveying what they'd created.

"I wish J were here," Marquis said. "He wanted to come, but he had an interview with some magazine."

That's J Mascis. The man behind seminal alt-rockers Dinosaur Jr. The guy Spin magazine, playing off Rolling Stone's famous Eric Clapton cover, declared to be God. He's the only member of the Ripchord roster not performing, but remains the cherry on top of one great big double-decker sunday of a year. This may be Ripchord's fifth anniversary, but only one of the acts on tonight's lineup, Rustic Overtones, has been with Portland's premier management company for more than a year. The other acts -- Mascis, 6gig, Shufflin' Tremble, Jeremiah Freed, and Heidi -- have come in a flood over the past 11 months.

But these past few months have not just witnessed Ripchord expand five fold; it's also seen this little company that sprouted up as a vanity label for Rustic Overtones establish itself as an anomaly in the music industry. For a management company this size -- really of any size -- to be shepherding this many acts is becoming more and more rare, as artists seek the comfort of a management group devoted solely to them.

RIPCHORD BY THE YEAR: May 21 1992: Bill Beasley, Chris Jett, and two partners open Granny Killams Industrial Drinkhouse. Feb 1995: Beasley begins speaking with Rustic about releasing their next album. He forms indie label Ripchord Records. July 1995: Bill sells Granny Killams. Oct 1995: Ripchord releases Rustic Overtones' Long Division, Rustic sells-out the State Theater and the USM gymnasium, then begin touring nationwide. May 1996: Joel Marquis joins as publicity head. TJ McNaboe begins management duties. Oct 1996: Ripchord releases Rustic Overtones My Dirt EP. Nov 1997: Ripchord releases Rustic Overtones' Rooms by the Hour, which gains national attention. Ripchord is picked up for distribution in the USA by ADA/Megaforce. April 1998: Rustic Overtones showcase for dozens of labels, including private showcases for Arista Records and Industry giant Clive Davis. Rustic Overtones is wooed by Arista. Dinners, expensive hotel rooms, and general debauchery ensue. Aug 1998: Rustic Overtones sign to Arista Records. Rustic sign publishing deal with EMI and agency deal with Steve Kaul of the Agency Group. Ripchord Artist Management, Bill Beasley, TJ McNaboe, and Joel Marquis, officially signs a management deal with Rustic Overtones. Feb. 1999: Producer and studio time is scheduled for new Rustic Overtones album. Band and label select Tony Visconti, who has worked frequently with David Bowie, to produce debut album for Arista Records. Band travels to San Diego to play the BMG convention. Band hangs out with Puff Daddy, TLC, and Naughty by Nature. Later that month, they are asked to record with Naughty by Nature on their album, Nineteen Naughty-Nine. Summer 1999: Rustic does pre-production for new album, records at Longview studios (North Brookfield, MA) and Avatar Studios (NYC). They meet music legends David Bowie and Funkmaster Flex. They enter Looking Glass Studio with David Bowie to record "Sector Z" and "Man Without a Mouth," which appear later on the Volume Up! EP. August/September 1999: Arista tentatively sets a release date for early 2000. McNaboe hears 6gig mixing a song called "Hit the Ground" at Big Sound. Ripchord expresses interest in 6gig. Marquis gives a 6gig tape to Orgy's tour manager. Ripchord starts getting phone calls about 6gig from Los Angeles labels. Oct 1999: Ripchord is introduced to J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr by Rustic's booking agent, Steve Kaul. At an Indian food restaurant in Manhattan, Mascis decides that Ripchord will manage him. Nov 1999: J Mascis and Ripchord reject a label deal from Time Bomb records. Mascis wants to retain control of licensing the album to foreign territories. Ripchord starts the process of shopping J Mascis's new album to labels. 6gig and Ripchord travel to South Carolina to open for Goo Goo Dolls, at the invitation of Ultimatum records. 6gig and Ripchord are flown to Los Angeles for a private showcase for Rick Rubin, George Drakoulias, and the top brass at American Records. Former Arista A&R guy, Jason Markey, (having moved to American) sets up the showcase. Jan/Feb 2000: Arista releases a promo EP to College Radio. "Volume Up" rises to # 11 on the college charts, making it the highest-charting promo-only EP of all time. Rumors circulate that BMG and Clive Davis are skirmishing. Shit gets weird. Label asks Rustic to re-record several songs with David Leonard in Nashville. They comply. Things get weirder at Arista as it becomes clear that Davis is on his way out. Rustic Overtones' album goes on hold. 6gig showcases in Portland and CBGB in NYC for dozens of labels. March 2000: Ultimatum gets serious about 6gig. Ripchord meets with Ultimatum general manager John Loken and Ultimatum head of A&R Lou Niles, at South x Southwest in Austin, TX. A deal begins to take shape. April 2000: Ripchord begins negotiating deals with European, Japanese and Australian labels for J Mascis's new album. 6gig signs multi-album deal with Ultimatum Records. Spring of 2000: 6gig records new album, J Mascis gets a solid offer from Ultimatum. Heidi opens for Rustic Overtones at TT the Bear's Place in Cambridge, MA. McNaboe is smitten with Heidi. Jeremiah Freed wins Maine high school rock-off; they send Ripchord demos. Ripchord takes an interest in Shufflin' Tremble. J Mascis appears on Saturday Night Live. Summer of 2000: Jeremiah Freed is brought into the Ripchord fold. 6gig gets picked up by the William Morris Agency. 6gig travels to Minneapolis to play for program directors of Midwest rock radio stations. J Mascis signs deals with Ultimatum Records in the US, Shock Records in Australia, City Slang in Europe, Pony Canyon in Japan. Shufflin' Tremble release album, No Gain, which begins to sell at stores around the state. Ripchord and Rustic Overtones' attorney, Frank Cimler, (aided by staff insiders at Arista) begin campaign to gain the attention of Arista's new president LA Reid and his executive staff. Jeremiah Freed go into studio with Spencer Albee, Jim Begley, and TJ McNaboe to produce first demo. IN THE NEAR FUTURE: 6gig album goes to radio late August. Hits retail stores on September 26. Shows with Godsmack, Fu Manchu, and others are scheduled. Shopping begins for a publishing deal. Rustic Overtones play a showcase for the new president and new staff of Arista on August 3 at the Wetlands in NYC. Several tour dates in the south are scheduled with Better Than Ezra. J Mascis' new album, More Light, to be released worldwide in late October. After playing drums on PJ Harvey's new album (and playing a drummer in a new Alison Anders film), he will then travel to Europe to play the POPKOMM Festival in Berlin (Aug 17). Other shows include a festival date with Ben Harper, Sleater Kinney, Sonic Youth, and others, and several sold-out NYC shows with Mike Watt.

As Beasley notes, and as is evident after a quick perusal of the Artist Management Roster, a directory published by California-based Pollstar, "Management groups for the most part are all mom and pop, with only a few that handle a number of artists. If all of this works out, we'd actually have one of the larger management groups." For example, Whitney Houston is managed by Whitney Houston Entertainment, and she is their sole client. For a band more like the Overtones, try Tonic; they're managed by Jealous

Dog Entertainment, who have only one other artist, called Howling Maggie. Gold Mountain Management, representing Tracy Chapman, Bonnie Raitt, and numerous others, and embroiled in the Napster controversy, is the exception rather than the rule.

Billboard magazine writer Ray Waddell explains, "The trend is toward boutique agencies, smaller groups. The artists feel like they get more attention. What you have to realize is that management is a 24-hour-a-day job. You have to put out a lot of fires and be in a lot of places at a time. It requires a lot of dedication, more than any other field in the music business." In fact, Waddell wonders what will happen as more of Ripchord's acts become successful. "One or two may stick, the others may branch off," he says. "In some ways they're hedging their bets. It's unusual for them to grow that fast."

But it seems to be working. As Beasley puts it, "This is one of the few months where we haven't had to worry about paying the bills."

Ripchord blossomed over the last year, but it was the four years prior that made it possible, going back to the 1995 day Ripchord head and founder Beasley, then running Granny Killams, offered Rustic Overtones a two-album deal through a label that didn't even exist. Soon enough, though, the label, Ripchord Records, was born and Beasley found himself the Overtones' manager.

"I put up the posters, did all the booking," he says, "and I really enjoyed putting out the albums." But putting out the band's albums on his own was only going to get him, and the band, so far. Beasley quickly made Rustic Overtones into a Portland phenomenon, but it was going to take a major-label record deal to launch them, and Ripchord, onto the national stage.

While shopping the Overtones around, says Beasley, "I learned about management, I had some contacts that I could ask questions of, and I found I liked it." The shift from Ripchord as a vanity label created to promote Rustic Overtones to Ripchord as an artist management company occurred naturally, rather than being a planned career move, he says. "It just evolved into two separate businesses." Quickly, Beasley realized that he would rather be a full-time manager, guiding a band to success, than deal with the hassles involved in running an indie label. He also realized that he was going to need help.

"The climate of the indie label is too expensive," explains TJ McNaboe who entered the picture with Joel Marquis to help with the Rustic Overtones' management in late 1997. "You need to put a lot of money into a record. Ten to 20 grand to blow it up regionally, which gets really pricey really fast.

"My first year and a half we were basically a record company. But once we signed with Arista, the whole dynamic changed."

The contract they acquired for the Overtones with Arista in June of 1998, which included publishing, tour support, and an advance for their first Arista album, caused a frenzy in the Portland music scene. Articles were written, band members found themselves on local television, their place as local celebrities was cemented. And wherever you looked, there was Beasley, being interviewed and quoted right along with them. No matter how good Rustic Overtones were, it seems that quality promotion was as integral to their success as their well-crafted tunes or up-beat horn section. "We started being a serious band when [Beasley] started being a serious manager," says Spencer Albee, keyboardist for Rustic Overtones. "I trust them with my career."

With Beasley and McNaboe able to focus exclusively on networking, leaving the record production to Arista, the publicity to Marquis, and the books, merchandising, and ticket booking to their newest addition, Jan Albee -- yes, she's Spencer's mom -- their business began to grow exponentially.

Ripchord had a taste for the management biz, and when Arista started to handle some of the Rustic details, Ripchord got hungry for an expansion of their efforts. In August of '99, McNaboe caught a few notes of 6gig's "Hit the Ground," being mixed over at Big Sound Studios, and it was only a matter of weeks before he was handing the band's demo around to studio execs.

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Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com.