Label Change Quotes

I have had the good fortune to experience both the limelight and the traffic light as a musician. I did my first recording on my own and it was available at concerts. The second to seventh were released on small and then large labels. My eighth to 14th were done under my own steam once again, but with the benefit of the Internet.

My whole team, it wasn't about putting the album out, it was about getting off the record company and going independent or going to another label. To the point we were like, 'Listen, just take 'Lasers.' You can have whatever percentage off the next ten records I do for the rest of my life. I just do not want to be here anymore.'

It's not an uncommon event for artists and labels to part ways - Patty Loveless, Vince Gill both did - and it often happens for the better.

We'd been on Geffen for a long time, and I think we felt that we needed a change. I just don't think we felt very close to the people at the label after all this time or that they understood what we were trying to do. I don't have any regrets, because at the time we signed with Geffen, it was the right thing to do.

You'll never call him Fifi again.

My manager was Buddy Glee, who put me together with Mike Curb, and was basically the idea to bring some soul to the label and bring something different to the label besides the Hank Williams situation.

I was fortunate enough to have gone through the major label process and kind of have the inside scoop on some things, some information I wouldn't have normally had. To go from a major to an independent, I don't think it's an easy transition.

I spent a long time experimenting, saying, 'Here's a record that's free, or $5 if you want a nice version or $250 if you'd like a really nice coffee-table thing.' Everything felt like the right thing to do at the time and then six months later would feel tired. And I would feel tired. So that's one reason for returning to a major label.

I didn't suddenly become conservative. It was only the label that changed.

Of course you want to keep making good records, but I think there were certain aspects to the indie rock situation at that point where we were pushing the envelope a little bit too far. We weren't happy with the distribution we were getting, and a few other things. So for a lot of ways it made sense for us to jump to a major label right then, and it made sense in terms of challenging ourselves to put ourselves in new situations.

To make a label change is a difficult time because there is that lag period between the product you had out and the next project you're going to make on your new label.

My contract with mercury PolyGram Nashville was about to expire. And I never had really been happy. The company, the record company, just didn't put any promotion behind me. I think one album, maybe the last one I did, they pressed 500 copies. And I was just disgusted with it. And about that time that I got to feeling that way, Lou Robin, my manager, came to me and talked to me about a man called Rick Rubin that he had been talking to that wanted me to sign with his record company.

Many artists would want a major label. But, if someone made you big, it doesn't mean they're no longer good enough when you get big. If you want to add, add. But don't get rid of your original team.

When I started out, I was what they called corny. After a week in Nashville they were calling me hillbilly.

Equal Vision seems to be doing really well. A lot of these major labels are just imploding and becoming indie labels, anyway.

It's odd, because 'Mad Men' was the first long-form TV thing I ever did. I'd done loads of independent movies, but after that, it was 'TV actor.' You go, 'When did that happen? Everything else has been erased?'

Leaving your old record label doesn't have to be a stall in your career. It's like new life being breathed into it.

Originally, after 'Tambourine' came out, another record was supposed to come out, but I had issues with my record label at the time, which was Interscope. We couldn't agree on a record, so that took some time. I had to leave them and find a new label.

It's funny to be in rooms where you were originally referred to as 'The Shakespeare Guy' and to suddenly be in the position where you're 'The Blockbuster Guy.' That's a pretty unusual turnabout, I must say.