Written by:
Sam Slovick
Sultry, sexy singer-songwriter Deborah Falconer; ’80s girl icon and Go-Go’s alum Charlotte Caffey; and the Indigo Girls’ Amy Ray have a few things in common. They are all women who have asserted themselves in the music industry and thrived in that cutthroat world. They have also all evolved as indie record label owners; after starting their own businesses they’ve moved onto the Internet. They’re sisters who are doing it for themselves — and in Ray’s case, for all her friends as well.
The Performer
At 7 a.m. on a Friday morning, a layer of ground fog is beginning to dissipate, leaving behind a blanket of mist on the overdeveloped, hyperirrigated landscape of the Hollywood Hills. A half-written song floats through the air in the kitchen of a 1920s two-bedroom, bi-level Spanish home like vapors from a pie cooling on a windowsill. Shards of sunlight break through stained glass panes rescued from a dilapidated Belgian church that have been propped against a window, painting rainbows on the purple linoleum tile floor.
Deborah Falconer has been up for at least an hour. The lanky beauty is a constant blur of activity in a pair of dark blue Juicy sweatpants and a tank top. She holds a cup of coffee in one hand, a slice of toast with avocado in the other. She checks messages while faxing the paperwork for the re-order of the second printing of her second CD, Brave Like Me, to the manufacturer in Portland, Oregon. Her recent live performance on the magazine show Extra nearly depleted her entire inventory.
“I didn’t even know I was starting a label. I was working with Abby Schneider, a friend who produced my first CD, Untangle, and it just sort of happened,” Falconer says. The former model worked as an actress for directors like Oliver Stone and Robert Altman before finding her voice in a small home studio in Malibu, California.
“I really didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I just knew I was going to make it work. I wasn’t sure exactly how. I had a lot of material and some amazing musicians that I’d been playing with for years. Clark Stiles, another producer I had worked with, had a studio in Portland, so we all headed for Portland and just started recording. By the time we mixed Brave Like Me, I had a label.” She now runs Ravish Records, selling CDs online and in every major outlet as a result of a deal with Oarfin Records, a distribution company in Minnesota.
“I read all the fine print and signed the contract. It’s not like I’m making a million dollars, but I sell a lot of CDs and my product is all over the world. People e-mail me from everywhere from Toronto to Taipei. It’s incredible.”
Booking, promo, marketing, press and mailing all happens in Falconer’s self-contained home office across the courtyard from the kitchen. Needless to say, Falconer’s a busy girl on a tight schedule. This morning’s business itinerary includes finishing lyrics on a few tracks she’s recording in the studio with producer Don Boyette for her third CD, so she can try them out at rehearsal later tonight with her band for an upcoming show at Hotel Café, a popular venue in Hollywood. Before that, she’s going to the gym to work out before lunch with a writer from the L.A. Weekly and, if she can squeeze it in, a quick facial.
There’s also the small matter of her “A” job. Her young son needs to get dropped off at school (8 a.m.), picked up from school (3:15 p.m.), and driven to soccer practice (5:30–6:30 p.m.), “and then there’s library commitment,” Falconer almost forgets to mention as she packs her son’s lunch. She’s talking about the two hours a day she spends twice a week in the library at her son’s school. “You read to the kids and help them understand the Dewey decimal system and how to find books.” Her laughter gives way to a melody and she grabs a pen to jot down an idea in a blank book. “Someone told me that Tom Waits had the library commitment before me.” Falconer laughs again. She laughs a lot.
Most women who start their own independent record labels initially operate on the momentum created by the success of bands they were in. Amy Ray was in Indigo Girls; Aimee Mann, Till Tuesday; Charlotte Caffey, the Go-Go’s; Linda Perry, 4 Non Blondes. But Falconer garnered attention playing high-profile benefits in Hollywood. She’s shared the stage with Elton John, Sting, Aimee Mann, James Taylor and others. “I really like to play benefits. We get to contribute to valid philanthropic endeavors and we get to play. I love that.” She’s played the Silver Lining Silver Lake benefit for the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic with Beck and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Women for Women benefit this past September, the Musicians Assistance Program benefit and more. “I really want to get involved with the American Diabetes Association. … I’ve had diabetes since I was 9 years old, and if there’s some way I can be of service through music there, I would be elated.”
The Librettist
Just around the corner from Falconer’s crib, Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s is working at a fevered pace of her own. She and her sister-in-law, Anna Waronker, started an indie label called Five Foot Two Records a few years back.
“My day starts at 6:15 a.m.,” Caffey says. “If I wake up at 6, I’m too tired. If I wake up at 6:15, I’m OK. I start with 45 minutes of solitude. Astrid, my 10-year-old daughter, gets up and I take her to school and go work out, which is crucial to my well being. It’s really about putting the kids first. Everything else gets dropped if Astrid’s sick or whatever. That’s just the way it has to be. I go to sleep around 11 p.m.”
Five Foot Two has four releases to date: Anna Waronker’s first record, the reissued Neurotica by Redd Kross, an EP by the Steven McDonald Group and a Muffs record. Their next will be a CD by Waronker.
Like Falconer, Caffey says the initial learning curve was steep.
“In 2002, my sister-in-law Anna Waronker was in the middle of writing a record and she said, ‘I was thinking about approaching a small label, and I said, ‘Why don’t we just start our own label?’ We set it up in her living room. The art department was on her desk. The mailroom was in another corner. Her record got a lot of great press … now I can put out a record anytime I want.”
In addition to her label, the Go-Go’s and Astrid, Caffey is working on Lovelace, a rock musical she co-wrote based on the life of Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace.
“It reminds me of the early days of the Go-Go’s [when] I had a full-time job. I’d get off work and go hang out in the clubs and then write.”
The Pioneer
Like Falconer and Caffey, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls has a child as well. Its name is Daemon Records, and Ray gave birth to it in Georgia in 1990. Back in the day, Ray worked at a record pressing plant in Georgia. “I would see these records come by that had local label names on it. It just made me think I could start my own label and be pressing those records.”
The Indigo Girls put their own stuff out before they were signed to a major label. “The trouble was, none of my friends had enough money to sort of put their record out and focus on it,” Ray says. “Have distribution and have posters and bios and promo materials and all that stuff. So we were looking at this void that needed to be filled in my town. I was basically the bank of Amy. Honestly.”
Like other self-made women, Ray keeps busy. “I’m on tour a lot. So when I get up, I do my chores. Whatever I need to do around the house. I usually spend three or four hours on label stuff and then I like to spend a little bit of time on Indigo stuff. At that point, I’m usually sound-checking and playing a show, or if I’m at home I take that time to write— I definitely work a full day. I have three people who work for me. There’s always something going on. It’s just juggling … Indigo Girls, solo music, the indie label and political work.”
What advice does Ray have to offer other women wanting to get into the DIY business? “Right now, I think that the most important things are to make sure you have your digital realm intact. That you understand the importance of the Internet and the importance of how digital promotion works. That’s the number one thing. The second thing is to make sure you have an excellent distribution system. Outside of that, you need to make sure you have good distributors in terms of traditional brick-and-mortar stores.”
An unusual paradigm in the music business, Daemon is a nonprofit entity run by a staff of artists. Ray has been at this since 1990, and her impact as an indie pioneer is indisputable. “We were all a bunch of struggling musicians on the scene and one of us got money. That’s usually the way it works,” Ray says. “You just spread it out. It’s what’s you’re supposed to do.”
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