Ed Green started in radio, but then moved on to a successful career in promotion, eventually landing at Capitol, where he became SVP/Promotion until his 2010 departure. After he started his own company, Green Marlin Entertainment, Red Light Management asked Green to come aboard as Head Of Promotion at the end of last year, an expansive role that reaches across the label and management rosters. Green recently talked to FMQB about the changes the last two years have brought to him professionally and the industry at large.
By Jack Barton
Ed Green
After starting his career at then-Rock WYSP/Philadelphia, Ed Green moved on to a successful career in label promotion, starting with Geffen Records and eventually landing at Capitol, where he became SVP/Promotion until his 2010 departure, when things got really interesting. After starting his own company, Green Marlin Entertainment, Green began not only working records, but managing artists and taking on a broader view of the business. All that led to Red Light Management – home to a thriving, multi-format roster, as well as the ATO and TBD record labels – asking Green to come aboard at the end of 2011 as Head of Promotion, an expansive role that reaches across the label and management rosters.
With just a few weeks in the new gig under his belt, Green sat down with FMQBto talk about the experience of working at major labels, the decision to start his own company, and why he was so ready, willing and excited to join one of the largest and most diverse management companies in the business today.
Talk about the career transition you went through after leaving Capitol Records.
I decided to start my own company and started working with major league artists. The first client I had for my new company, Green Marlin Entertainment was Zac Brown Band, and worked his record, pushing it out at Triple A which we had some success with. We did get the record into the 30s at Triple A, which was a pretty good accomplishment. We also crossed that track over to Hot AC, where the record actually peaked on the chart inside the Top 30. We had him opening shows for Dave Matthews Band and audiences found out he’s not a down-home, cowboy hat wearing, Country guy. He’s more of a Southern Rock, Jam band guy. His live show is definitely an amazing experience, and the programmers at Triple A who did see him did give us some support.
Which brings up one of the challenges in getting music on the radio today; the limitations we build into genres and formats.
I agree. “Civilians” do not really look at format. They look at bands, they look at artists, and they look at them as something that they like and embrace. To thinks that your audience would not relate to somebody who has been embraced by the Jam band crowd like Zac, just because he is embraced at Country radio, doesn’t make sense. With three guitar players, it’s a Rock band. They’re out there playing covers of Rage Against The Machine songs. They’re playing songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” on stage, and it’s not the “Yee haw!” Country show, it’s a Rock show. But the format thing gets in your head. You know PDs are thinking, “Is this his audience? What do they think?” But all those lines are getting blurred because there’s so much that’s appealing to listeners across formats.
How do you break through that?
It’s just about information and delivery. It doesn’t matter what format it is, you try to make your point by delivering vital information that you would think the program director can embrace and reflect on to question his initial judgments.
You show them YouTube clips of the show, and get them to look at the kids going crazy. You give them information to try to question their initial thought of “I can’t play a tune from a Country artist,” moving them to, “Well, maybe I can make it fit; maybe I will give it a shot. Then you work off of that; you try to get your record on, especially a new artist.
What made you make the plunge into starting your own multi-faceted business?
I’d been through so many different labels and so many different mergers, and the idea of being at another label, waiting for that hourglass to turnover – for another investment banking company to come in and then put time over your head to when they’re going to either sell or merge with somebody else – is extremely stressful. It really is hard to go through, and when you’ve gone through it three times in five years, it’s constantly a waiting game. You see how it affects not just yourself, but everybody else, and it’s a lot of pressure. It’s something that some people deal with well and some people don’t deal with well. It affects job performance, morale and the health of your family life, everything. It’s very hard.
So when I left Capitol, and all the drama that went along with all that, I wanted to try to do my own thing. I wanted to always be in management. I had an artist who was on Jive who was in between managers, a girl named Amie Miriello, who was in a band called Dirtie Blonde. She had her own solo record and started a band called SO & SO; she’s a really great Singer/Songwriter. I met her at Bonnaroo, she knew I wasn’t doing anything, and she asked if I would be her manager. I had never been a manager before, she said it didn’t matter. She wanted somebody she could trust who will always have her best interests first. She was going to start playing some shows in L.A., and start to build something. So I got involved with her, and then I started doing some promotions. Zac Brown Band was my first promo client and then I hooked up with Paul Foley and the Decca Records folks. They had nobody running their promotions, so I started quarterbacking all of the Decca artists and all the Decca projects. Then I would take some outside projects on the side, and before I knew it I had a promotion side and a little management side going, and it’s fun and challenging, without having all of the politics and other things hanging over your head at a label. It’s much more liberating. It lets you really deal with radio and just have one primary focus of just doing your job, whether it’s on the management, promotion or marketing sides; you can literally just do what you love. That’s what I wanted to do, and it just evolved from there.
What other new discoveries had you made along the way?
I also got to really dig into another format that I hadn’t been deeply exposed to before, which was Triple A. I love what Triple A stands for. I’m a Bonnaroo kind of guy and I love Singer/Songwriters and I love great music and I love great performing artists. Being from the Pop world, I had been dealing with the hits of the moment. But at Triple A you’re dealing with different kinds of artists. Artists with a little bit more soul; artists with a little bit more creativity; artists that aren’t afraid to push the box open, and that was exciting for me too.
Can you delve a little deeper into the comparison of working Triple A versus Pop formats?
When I started really digging in there, I found that Triple A radio has an extremely loyal core base of listeners. I also found the program directors at Triple A are extremely passionate music people. They are, for the most part, people who have been in programming a lot longer than people who have been in programming in other formats. They’ve had decades of experience, whether it’s (KFOG/San Francisco) PD Dennis Constanine or (WXRT/Chicago PD) Norm Winer or (KINK/Portland PD) Chris Mays, they really can draw on a wealth of knowledge and experience to know how the format has evolved. As a newbie, I did have conversations with them and dig into their expertise and get some insight into extremely success radio stations.
These are people who are still music fans, still passionate, and still go to shows. I learned that they’re very, very deep into the music part.
All of those experiences led to your current position as Head of Promotion for Red Light Management. Are your responsibilities limited to the ATO and TBD label rosters or are you working across the entire management roster, as well?
It’s really three-fold: Red Light Management, ATO Records, TBD Records. For instance Dave Matthews, who is a Red Light management client, goes through RCA. We’re working in coordination with the staff at RCA, and our staff will help them where they need help. I’m going to be a liaison between the management company and the major label, and that’s for all our artists, it doesn’t matter what format it is. We have so many diverse acts that Red Light manages and I’m here to help, and our staff will be here to help on the major label side. Then we have ATO Records and TBD Records, which our staff will be responsible for.
This is part of a growing trend as more and more management companies are creating promotion departments. Why are managers now making this investment?
Labels have extremely limited budgets, whether you’re talking about radio promotion, publicity, marketing, tour marketing. Even the A&R budgets have all been sliced and cut back. So from that perspective, the management companies are taking control, where as before the labels had a lot of the control of what’s happening with the artists. Management companies have their own in-house marketing people; their own publicity people in-house. On the promotion side, we are looking to enhance the promotion our artists would get at the major label side.
What are the most compelling and exciting opportunities that drew you to Red Light?
I loved the artist roster and a lot of the people I worked with over the years ended up going to Red Light on the management side. When they called to say they were interested in putting together a promo team – for one of the biggest management companies in the world to call me – it was something that I had to really take seriously. It was an honor.
Talk about some of those artists.
Red Light Management has some amazing artists. They have Dave Matthews, Amos Lee and Phish, to name a few, and they continue to bring new artists in.
I’m, so excited about a couple of things, starting with The Alabama Shakes. It’s a band from Athens, AL and the first time I actually saw them perform I was blown away. We have a great artist here that I think people are really going to be able to dive into. The Shakes harkens back to cool, old school sensibilities. The live performance is phenomenal. The record they made is kind of a cool, stripped down version of something you would hear in the ’70s, but in a modern, up-dated vibe. I’m very excited about The Shakes.
The White Rabbits made a great new record that I think people will be totally into. We have a new Rodrigo Y Gabriellacoming in the first quarter, and a new Singer/Songwriter, Elizaveta, and just an awesome roster with too many amazing acts to mention. So every week there is something new coming, and it’s going to be that way for most of the year.
[eQB Content by Jack Barton]
