Chapter 4 #2
But . . . she was a child. It was too much of a gamble.
Apart from the sticky situations you can find yourself in when it comes to contracts and ethical standards at that age, who knew what her work ethic was?
Would she be able to follow through, or would she get sick of the industry real quick and turn into a headache and a waste of my limited time and resources?
Had I been presented with a thousand other talented fourteen-year-olds, I would have turned them down again and again. It was the principle of it.
It’s the only thing I can tell myself to soothe my regrets.
Mike Rosetti, CEO of Tough Grit Records
I threw it away. Didn’t even listen to it. Biggest mistake I’ve ever made.
Mari
Ryan didn’t expect to hear anything right away. We stopped at the post office last, where she mailed the rest of the demos to the producers we couldn’t visit in person, and then—by some miracle—managed to make it back to the hotel without too much suspicion from the Holdings.
“We walked to the 7-Eleven for slushies,” Ryan said when they asked where we’d been. “It was farther than we thought.”
She played the festival the next day and shone as always. Played all the songs on her demo tape along with her favorite covers to enthusiastic applause.
Ryan, her parents, and I were all packing up our hotel room the next day, late morning, when John got a call on his cell. He paced around the room for a signal, and then said, “I’m sorry, you’re who?”
Poor John.
And then he glared at Ryan. He said, very stiffly, “Thank you for your call. I need to talk to my daughter about this.” Then he hung up the phone and said to Ryan, “What did you do?”
She looked at him very innocently. “About what?”
“You know about what, young lady. Why is someone from Madcap Records calling me about bringing you in for a test session?”
Ryan stayed nonchalant, but I saw her eyes light up. “Oh, is that who that was? I sent some demo CDs around town. I thought it was a good idea in case any of them wanted to see me play on Saturday.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Barb. “Ryan, why didn’t you talk to us about this first?”
Ryan had looked down then while I sat awkwardly on the edge of the hotel bed, watching it unfold. I think she did feel bad about sneaking around her parents, but she had known she couldn’t risk them shutting the plan down. Austin was a big opportunity.
“Well, I’m calling them back and telling them we’re leaving town today,” John said.
“No!” Ryan looked up. “Dad, there are no major record labels in Massachusetts—not for the music I want to play, anyway. This was my one chance to see if anyone who’s a real professional might be interested in my music. Can’t we at least try?”
“Ryan, this person could be scamming us,” John said. “He could want something unsavory from you. You are fourteen years old, for god’s sake. There will be plenty of time to try again when you’re older. Right, Barbara?”
“Here’s the thing, John,” Barb said.
“Dear lord.” John sat down on the other queen bed and put his head in his hands.
“We’re here now, it does seem like a pretty unique opportunity, and we can all go to check this thing out. If we get even a hint of something not being right—even just a whiff—we’ll walk. No decisions have to be made right now.”
“And our flight? And work tomorrow?” he said.
She shrugged. “Flights are cheaper on the weekdays, anyway. At least call back and see what they want.”
John looked at her a long moment. Then he handed her the phone and said, “You do it,” and shut himself in the bathroom.
Skip Mcintyre, founder and producer at Madcap Records
Here’s what I always said I wanted, from the very beginning: I wanted fresh.
Special. Unusual.
Madcap was small back then. I broke ground with my partner, Andre, after we’d both quit our jobs at the bigger labels in search of something new.
Different. We knew it’d be an uphill battle to carve out a name for ourselves among those other giants, but we had a few artists on our side who agreed to sign with us, and in those days, the competition in Austin wasn’t quite so fierce.
Significant, yes, but the major labels were still out on the coasts.
And the tech-bro revolution in central Texas was more than a decade out.
From the very beginning, I wanted to find our niche.
Andre and I agreed: We didn’t want to take on just any singer who could work a crowd and carry a tune.
We’d pooled together some decent seed money and decided that if we wanted to compete, we’d cultivate the type of talent that other labels might pass over at first blush.
Quality over quantity, you know? We could afford to look a little closer, take our time.
We were starting to make a little name for ourselves around town for the underdogs we were taking in.
Like Sinclair Dupree, he’s the one who went by the stage name EsDee, the elderly gentlemen from Alabama who made some really excellent hip-hop records.
There was the jazz pianist Candy Elliot and the young rapper Límon from Venezuela.
Eccentrics who could really strut their stuff.
People who had staying power, not just a flash in the pan.
So when Ryan’s demo came across my desk, I stopped to listen. I listened to it five times in a row on that Friday evening, back-to-back. Then I called in Andre.
“It’s a risk,” he said. “She sounds real young.”
I didn’t know her age at that point; I’d asked our receptionist, who said the girl seemed like she could still be in middle school.
But the talent on the CD was undeniable.
Complex fretwork, beautiful lyrics, unpredictable chord progression—you’d think you knew where the song would go next, and then it would take an entirely different direction, just to come back to that satisfying resolution when you needed it.
Sure, I thought someone might be writing the stuff for her.
But if not . . . then she could be something special.
The message that this girl, Ryan, had left with the receptionist was that she’d be playing at Austin Bluegrass Jam the next afternoon. Shit, I didn’t have anything else to do that day. So I thought I’d take a look.
I’ll never forget it.
I got to the Bluegrass Jam around 2:30 p.m., heat of the day, right when everyone’s energy was starting to lag. People were out in that bright sun, mopping their brows, looking around for a cold beer.
And then she comes out.
Skinny little kid with all this huge hair, sparkly silver dress flashing in the light, looking like she can’t even feel the heat.
I felt the mood in the crowd shift at the same moment I started to doubt my little trip out there; I mean, she was young young.
If you’d have told me she was twelve, I would have believed you.
And then she started to play.
It’s hard to explain—it wasn’t that she had the air of an older performer, necessarily, although she did just exude this confidence and self-assuredness beyond her years. Confidence is one thing. But this was a charisma that was all her own.
Our youngest artist on the label at that time was Límon, who was twenty-two, but I’d still seen plenty of kid acts in my day.
I find them hard to watch. They’re cute, fun, sure, but it’s like I can always see how hard they’re trying.
It’s too desperate. Kids just don’t have the experience of artists who have spent decades performing; they really want to be good, and some of them will be good, great, even—with time and practice—but at that moment, they just aren’t there yet.
Ryan, though . . . she belonged up there. I’m sure it took plenty of effort to get up in front of those hundreds of people, but she didn’t look it. She was just having a great time.
I called Andre after I got back from the festival and talked things through with him.
“What’s the harm in waiting a few years?” he asked me. “Why not wait until she gets a little more experience under her belt and then really polish her up?”
“Someone will take her if we don’t,” I told him. “I heard she spread those CDs all around town.” I was on good terms with Studio 22’s tech guy and had asked around a bit.
“You think they’d take a what—thirteen-, fourteen-year-old?” Andre said. I heard the doubt in his voice.
“They will once they see her perform.”
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you,” he answered, and I felt a little jolt of anticipation because I knew he’d resigned himself. “But . . . I know you, and it sounds like you’ve already made your decision.”
I can’t lie. I called the number on Ryan’s CD right after we finished talking.