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press
clippings
Sound of
success
Home Grown Music getting the word out
By Phil
Glynn The Business Journal
From the July 12, 2002 print edition
MEBANE -- Something is going on down in Lee Crumpton's basement that may
have seemed impossible to independent musicians a few years ago. Four
guys,
employees of Crumpton's Home Grown Music Network, are making a living
doing
what they love -- distributing good music and promoting the bands that
make
it.
Home Grown Music works out of Crumpton's home in a quiet, rural spot in
Mebane on behalf of member bands that pay a fee for Network services.
Russ
Weis, a manager of member band Strangefolk, says Network helps musicians
as
it "grows between the cracks of the corporate cement."
The Network's member bands' music is an intriguing alternative to that
of
the popular record industry. Home Grown Music works mostly on behalf of
"jam
bands." These bands depend heavily on touring and are grouped
together more
by their common fan base than a shared sound.
The genre is growing. The Bonnaroo music festival drew 75,000 jam band
fans
to Manchester, Tenn., in late June.
This music may be "adventurous," as Crumpton calls it, and its
popularity
may be growing among young people, but those involved see little of the
wealth pulled in by hot pop musicians. Still, Crumpton views his work as
a
refreshing departure from a formulaic radio standard.
"We know we're not going to sell a million records," he says.
"We just want
to help the artists grow and grow with them."
With 70 member bands, Home Grown Music distributes CDs and accessories
wholesale to record stores across the country and to customers via its
Web
site. Crumpton and the Network's employees -- Brian Asplin, Bryan
Rodgers
and Edwin Vaughan -- also hit the road each summer, selling their wares
at
music festivals all over the East.
Offering management advice, connections with performance venues and an
online forum where vital information can be exchanged, Crumpton believes
the
Network greatly increases the quality of life for bands that might
otherwise
be struggling.
Part promoter, part producer, part distributor, Home Grown Music also
seems
to be part hostel. The Disco Biscuits, a nationally recognized act that
sold
11,000 tickets in January in a four-day tour through New York,
Philadelphia
and Worcester, Mass., spent the night in Crumpton's living room when
passing
through Greenville for a show in 1999. Crumpton said a number of other
bands
have also experienced this hospitality.
That kind of personal attention is part of a philosophy that grew from
Crumpton's own experience. The 31-year-old knows the difficulties of
balancing the need to make money and the desire to innovate within the
music
business. Crumpton began to see these two interests diverging during his
career in radio.
"The formula of commercial radio is awful," he said.
From the booth to the basement
As a disc jockey for WSFL 106.5 in 1994 in Greenville, N.C., Crumpton
began
feeling bored and constrained by the uniformity of the music getting
airplay. So he went looking for the bands he thought deserved a chance.
Later that year, he became president of a small, independent record
label
owned by one of the bands he had been promoting on his radio show.
In 1995, he founded Leeway Productions. More heavily involved with
musicians
than ever, Crumpton began to see more and more people struggling to
balance
their creative and financial interests. So he started spreading the idea
of
bringing independent bands together to pool resources and ideas.
Crumpton began contacting venues for bands and advising them on their
business practices. This effort became the Home Grown Music Network in
early
1995. And with the advent of the Internet, Crumpton saw the opportunity
for
Home Grown Music to take off.
Starting with a dozen bands, Crumpton has made selectivity the standard
with
Home Grown Music. Home Grown Music charges member bands a $300-a-year
fee to
serve as a sales outlet for their work as well as help them connect with
venue owners for touring acts.
"We're very picky about who we accept into the network," he
says, adding
that hand-picking bands made it tough starting out. "It has limited
the
growth potential, but if we'd have just let in any band, the Home Grown
Music Network wouldn't mean as much."
It took the network two years to begin turning a profit and Crumpton
admits
he was worried, initially, that it wouldn't pan out. His worries were
compounded by the fact that the startup funding was all his own. The
network
has had offers for outside capital, but Crumpton said the deals always
involved giving up more control than Network employees saw fit.
This independence is part of Home Grown Music's product, a reason the
band
Strangefolk has been with the Network for years.
Manager Weis says Home Grown Music, the "perfect antithesis"
to the major
record industry, can take on a starving artist and turn him or her into
a
"semi-comfortable artist."
"(The Network) means the difference between surviving and
thriving," Weis
says. "Thriving as in making a living and making beautiful
music."
He says Crumpton and company have a system that works. The results are
reflected in the company's reputation as well as its bottom line. Sales
are
growing by more than $75,000 a year; 70 percent of that comes from a
thriving wholesale operation.
Leeway on its way
Concentrating on what works has kept the Network on track since 1995,
but
that hasn't kept Crumpton from branching out. Having always enjoyed the
record business and wanting to complement the Network, he recently
founded
Harmonized Records.
Dave Watts, drummer for the Colorado-based band The Motet, says he has
full
confidence in the Network's ability to make his new record company a
success.
"They're already set up to make it happen," Watts says, noting
the
distribution system already in place. The Motet's new release,
"Live," will
be coming out on Crumpton's Harmonized Label this month.
Crumpton believes the record label will fill a important gap in Home
Grown
Music's strategy.
"The weakness in our business is that when bands went to the next
level,
they moved on," Crumpton says.
He thinks by combining a label with the current distribution operation,
Home
Grown Music will be able to keep bands after the Network helps them find
the
limelight. Unfortunately, he adds, he loses more bands because they
break
up, not because the artists head for greener pastures.
This summer, Network employees have often been out on the road, working
crowded music festivals by selling the CDs of their member bands and
spreading their reputation.
Yet while they say they enjoy getting out of Crumpton's basement -- home
to
the Network since 2001 -- the comforts of Mebane suit them fine. In
fact,
the low-key, rural setting is a good fit, and doing things differently
is
central to the Home Grown operation.
"I'm proud to be doing what I'm doing because I'm not doing what
all the
other corporations are doing," Crumpton says.
And he hopes to be doing it forever. Taking in the view from his back
porch,
a peaceful, verdant panorama that seems to represent all that Crumpton's
vision has become, he says, "This is where my passion is."
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