A Message from Terry the Manager...

Hi, Terry the Manager here and I am going to be contributing to this site in a number of ways.

I am going to talk about the business and the band giving you some insight into how this whole thing got together and stayed together. I will give my opinion on the members of the band and what I have learned from them over the years. I will talk about the good times and the not so good times. It has been 99% good in my opinion but a couple of times, people let us down and this is my chance to talk about how some people choose to do business. I won't name names and it could be that Rainbow puts a stick in my spokes before I get going!

That's a good place to start. Rainbow. I don't think that I have ever met someone who exemplified the word "artist" more than Rainbow. From time to time we have very long phone calls about business that ultimately go off into "the band" and what it stands for.  The band is made up of very distinct individuals who each bring their own magic to the mix. I honestly think that it took the combination of Rainbow, Sara and Mike to reach success. There was a lot of help from Owen and Jim and OE and Nate and some people who were involved before I came on the scene but there is a chemistry among those 3 that I don't think would have happened with anyone else.

Which is another good place to change subjects. How I got together with the band. Sometime in 2005 I was contacted by Rhim (Jim) asking me if I would talk to his band. They had just come back from a European tour where they had great crowds with a good reaction, but they lost money. And not just a little. As one of the band members described it, they would go into the club owners office after the show and there would be a big stack of money in front of him and he would reach up and peel a few bills off the top and tell them "thanks". When they tried to get more money, the club owner brought out the contract they had signed. ( Like many musicians the contracts they signed meant nothing to them except that they would get paid. Guarantees and "back end" money as well as merch and tour support were all in the future.)

So they returned home very discouraged and in debt. In spite of that, their album,Violet, was selling well and they were gaining in popularity. They had a fantastic website at nothingandnowhere.com  Jim was afraid that the band was going to break up because of the money thing. He asked me to look at their recording contracts and to meet with the band. I had never heard of them or heard their music but I took the opportunity to listen to some of the music on their myspace and I was impressed!

So, one gloomy Sunday afternoon the band came down from Toronto to the college where I taught Music Business and Entertainment Contracts and the first thing I said to them was how much I loved their music and I thought that they should be very successful.  They appreciated the sentiment, but it didn't feel like they were making progress.  It's one thing to play while you are in college and it's another to give it all up and go for the career. Then to find themselves on the bad side of many business deals was very discouraging. One thing I noticed about them right away was that there wasn't one "hothead" among them. They were more discouraged than angry. So, I offered to help them. Not to manage them or run their business etc.... but to see what could be done. The first place to start was with their Recording Agreements. (By the way, I turned out to be the "hothead" ! :)  )

And.... that's a good place to stop. Til next time.

~Terry