On a Sunday afternoon this past January, singer Rachael Price watched a group of young girls perform a Martha and the Vandellas song on a stage inside a large barn in northwestern Massachusetts.
The barn was part of the Institute for the Musical Arts, a music school for girls, and Price was in residency for the weekend. When the group finished their song, Price enthusiastically complimented them and then gave them tips on how to improve. She appeared as excited as the girls, who were thrilled to receive advice from an artist who has been singing since she was 5 years old, and who is currently fronting Lake Street Dive, one of the fastest-rising pop groups of the past year.
The two women and two men, who met at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, have signed to Signature Sounds, and the group's sudden success could potentially launch the Northampton, Mass. enterprise into the pantheon of iconic regional independent music labels like Seattle's Sub Pop and Mississippi's Fat Possum, or going back further, Detroit's Motown, Chicago's Chess, and Memphis' Sun.
Last year, nine years after Lake Street Dive was formed, the group attained sudden mass popularity when they posted a YouTube video of themselves on a Boston street corner, playing Michael Jackson's “I Want You Back.”
The video attracted more than one million views, and was further boosted by a Tweet from actor Kevin Bacon saying how much he loved the music.
The band began touring extensively and, as word spread, famed producer T-Bone Burnett invited the group to take part in the Another Day/Another Time concert for the film Inside Llewyn Davis at Town Hall in New York City, a concert that was recorded for Showtime television and included stars like Elvis Costello, Joan Baez, Patti Smith, and Jack White.
In its review of the concert, Rolling Stone called Lake Street Dive the “unexpected show stoppers.” Some listeners have likened LSD, as they are sometimes called, to a modern-day Beatles.
This year promises an exponentially wider audience for the group. Just a few weeks ago, Lake Street Dive made their first live television appearance on the Colbert Report to promote their new Signature Sounds CD Bad Self Portraits, and they have also appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman.
“Lake Street Dive is the perfect storm,” says Jim Olsen, owner of Signature Sounds. “They have distilled a wide variety of influences into an original sound, they are all star musicians without being on star trips, they're good looking, they have a great sense of humor, and they come off as the nicest people you'd ever want to meet, which they are. So their audience runs the gamut from very young to baby boomers. The sky is the limit with them.”
Olsen has been involved with music for a long time. Before he started Signature Sounds, he worked as music director at WRSI, now known as The River, the local Northampton radio station. This was over 20 years ago.
The station broadcast “Home Grown,” a music show that featured local artists from the burgeoning valley acoustic folk scene. In the early 1990s, Olsen decided to produce some compilations of these artists' music to raise money for the Western Massachusetts Food Bank. That effort eventually led to the creation of Signature through a partnership with Mark Thayer, who ran Signature Sounds Recording Studio in Palmer, Mass.
“It wasn't that long ago,” says Olsen, “but it was a very different time - before iTunes or any of the digital services existed. So we made our releases available on CDs and pre-recorded cassettes.”
They started out with regional artists and regional distribution. “We got to know a lot of artists because they'd stop by the radio station before a local live performance. So at first that is how we found artists to sign.”
Having no prior experience running a label, they kept the operation small and local, enabling the business to survive without investing too much money. After a period of time, word got out, and artists outside the area began contacting Signature.
The duo attended events like the Americana Music Festival and Conference and the Folk Alliance International Conference,” he says, “and that's how people found out about us.”
“Our artists would also tip us off about artists they'd hear on the road,” Olsen adds. “We added some Americana music, some bluegrass, some blues-oriented music, and some roots-shaded pop, if you will.”
Signature Sounds' roster grew to include artists like Patty Larkin, Josh Ritter, Chris Smither, Eilen Jewell, and Lori McKenna. Within about a year and a half, the label was successful enough to sign a distribution deal with Koch, a national distributor, their first step toward becoming a national and international company.
“We see ourselves as a first step in an artist's career,” says Olsen. “We work to get new artists' music out there, get them on the road, and take them to the next level.”
To this end, Signature has become a full-service company for its artists. “The artists generally do the recording on their own unless they want us involved, but we collaborate on a plan for the recording and what songs are going to be recorded. We then support each release with retail and digital distribution, publicity, tour support, radio promotion, and Internet promotion through social media, videos, etc.
“The common denominator among all of our artists is that they are out there on the road continually making new fans and building an audience.”
While not specifically a music publisher, Signature Sounds also works to get their artists' music into films, television shows and other media. Currently, the company has five people on its staff, and interns are hired when needed.
One perk of Lake Street Dive's success is that other Signature Sounds artists can be given great exposure by going on the road with them as opening acts. Such has recently been the case with Signature Sounds artists Miss Tess and the Talkbacks.
While the Internet and digital distribution have had a great impact on the fortunes of many major labels, the effect on Signature has been minimal, allowing the company to smoothly transition into the digital world.
“Because of the genre of music we record,” says Olsen, “much of our audience is older and tends to buy CDs, and with our artists on the road a lot, we sell a lot of CDs at concerts. So I would say our sales are about 50 percent CDs and 50 percent online.”
Olsen says that the lower prices of online offerings has also not been a problem. “The overhead for putting music online is very low - it's just a folder of files - so while the gross income from digital is lower, the profit margins for CDs and digital are pretty much the same.”
Olsen is involved in additional musical ventures that have synergies with Signature Sounds. He has been booking acts for the Green River Festival in Greenfield, Mass. since before he started Signature Sounds, and last year he opened the Parlor Room, a club on the first floor of the building that houses Signature Sounds' offices.
“I used to run Signature out of my house,” he says, “but it was a rural setting that was difficult for our artists to get to.”
After looking around, Olsen found a small brick former button factory on Masonic Street, just off Main Street in downtown Northampton. He hung a large sign out front displaying a giant retro-style microphone.
“The space is larger than we need, so we renovated the first floor and created a live music space,” Olsen says. The Parlor Room holds about 10 concerts per month and showcases both Signature Sounds acts and other acts of all kinds, from Tuvan throat singers to classical music.
Olsen is very excited about what is happening with Lake Street Dive, but he sees no great changes in the way Signature will do business in the wake of its growing success.
“We will support Lake Street Dive as we have been doing up until now,” he says. “Fortunately, these days in the music business you don't need a major label to achieve great success, and Lake Street Dive is a band that very much wants to make it on their own terms.”
He pauses.
“There was never any grand plan when we started. I never looked five or 10 years down the line and said, 'I want to do this.' Part of the key to our success has been to be flexible, to keep our ears to the ground, and to follow our instincts.”