Interviewed by Shannon West
April 2007
Being in the music business these days is an ongoing lesson in survival. You have to be flexible, fast on your feet, able to roll with the changes. When the next door opens you have to be willing to bring the skills you already have and learn a set of new ones to go with them. Bud Harner is a perfect role model for navigating the chaos with skill and class. He's done everything. He started out as a drummer, touring with some big name acts including a long stint with Barry Manilow. The rhythm section from that band became Uncle Festive, a popular contemporary jazz band during the late 80s and early 90s. From there he went into working as a promotion person for their label, Mesa/Bluemoon. He moved to Verve and added more responsibility, then into A&R at GRP. When GRP started phasing out their jazz department he segued into management with Chapman and Co. which has an impressive roster of smooth jazz artists that includes Peter White, David Benoit, Jeff Golub, Rick Braun, Mindi Abair, Gerald Albright, Jeff Lorber, Richard Elliot and Paul Brown. At a time when layoffs and cutbacks are the name of the game Bud is a true inspiration. As one of our early interviewees said, if you find that you can't do something in one place you just have to find another way to do it. Serendipity helps but the foundation for those encounters is the work you've done to get there. Music matters and it's critical for talented people to hang in there. Serendipity helps but the foundation for that is something you create yourself. Fans are always interested in finding out more about how it works behind the scenes and who better to talk to than someone who has done it all.
SV: Let's go back to the beginning. Like when you were a little kid banging on pots and pans and your mom said “my kid's gonna be a drummer!”
BH: (laughs) That's about it. I grew up in the Washington DC area in the Virginia suburbs through high school, and then I went to college in Illinois. I actually went to Nashville first to be a drummer, then after about a year and a half I moved to LA.
SV: Did you go to college for music.
BH: I went to a college called Millican University in Decatur Illinois. I went there because of the jazz band. I had read about them in DownBeat Magazine and that’s the whole reason I went to this college. I was a Psychology major actually. The music program only offered a teaching degree and I wanted to be a player. I played in the jazz band, which is where I met Jim Culbertson. He was a trumpet player in the jazz band and we got to be good friends. Brian was born while I was in my senior year. After that I went to LA and kicked around town, played in a couple of big bands, and the quick synopsis is that I got my first national gig with a country singer/comedian named Jim Stafford.
SV: “Spiders and Snakes” and some other really funny songs that were hits. Did you play on any of those albums?
BH: No that was before I came into the picture. I toured with the band later on. Then when I was playing in Vegas with Jim Stafford I met this guy who became Paul Anka's music director and I got a gig playing with him.
I played with him for a few years and eventually ended up with Barry Manilow for about ten years, all the way through the 80s.
SV: If you want to talk showmanship and professionalism that's about as good as it gets.
BH: Yeah. I learned a lot from that experience. I respect him a lot. He is a great musician and a consummate professional as far as putting together a show. To this day he's probably bigger than he's ever been. Pretty cool to see him still so strong after all this time and we've been in touch over the years here and there.
SV: Your band, Uncle Festive, came out of that touring band didn't it?
BH: In '86 the rhythm section started getting together when we weren't on the road and playing for fun. We were playing little clubs around LA and one night at a gig in Westwood a guy named Jeff Weber came in. He'd been producing records by David Benoit and Tom Scott and guys like that. He came up to us and said, “Let’s make a record.” Just out of the blue, he came up to us while we were on a break. His thing was to record live to two track. You'd go in and record live in the studio and it would go right in to this digital recorder. There would be no mixing, no overdubs or going back and fixing things. It was all done live. So that's what we did. The first couple of Uncle Festive albums were done live in the studio.
SV: You recorded them on a two-track machine. Then people like me went out and bought them on cassettes. At least it wasn't on eight-track.
BH: That’s right. As a matter of fact our first record was called “Money's No Object” and we had a different deal for the CD than for the record and the tapes. Then it evolved and we ended up doing six albums. Barry really liked it. He'd do a spot in the show where he introduced the band, and when he came to the rhythm section he talked about us having our own band, and we'd play a part of a song. We opened for him at the outdoor sheds. He'd have us go out and do 30 minutes which was pretty cool. He did an album called Swing Street that was jazz oriented and we had a spot on that album too. So Uncle Festive was really a fun band. It was sort of fusion leaning music and into the early days of the smooth jazz format. There was a station in LA called KKGO that would play Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald and mix that up with Pat Metheny and the Yellowjackets. That was our first experience of getting on the radio. Ron Pedley, the keyboard player, still plays with Barry Manilow.
SV: The first time I talked to you I was doing radio and you were doing promotions for Mesa/Bluemoon. You were working your own record, which I though was pretty gutsy.
BH: That’s kind of how I got into that side. I would book the gigs for the band. If we were on the road with Manilow and had a night off I'd find out what the jazz club was and book the band there and try to get an interview on the local jazz station. That's how I got into this side of things. It would be great because the crew guys would help us. We'd go to this little club that held 150 people and this gigantic semi truck would pull up in front with guys unloading our gear out of the back.
SV: This jazz band with four guys in it pulling up in a semi. If you hadn't been on the Manilow tour you'd be in a van and probably spend some nights in it too.
BH: We did that too. When we were not on the road with Manilow we'd book our own little tours and that's when we drove the vans and stayed in the cheap motels. We didn't care. We were excited to be doing our own thing and have people come out and see us. It was a fun.
SV: Uncle Festive did some label hopping too before you got to Mesa/Bluemoon.
BH: We went through a few labels. The second album was on Optimism, some of them were on Denon.
SV: You had a lot of practice with labels coming on and going under and all that stuff that happens all the time now.
BH: I had actually started working at Mesa Bluemoon before we got signed to the label.
SV: How did you end up doing that?
BH: It was in 1990. I had been doing the Manilow gig for a long time and had kids along the way. I was looking around for something I could do that would get me off the road.
SV: So you could see your kids before they left for college (laughs).
BH: Exactly. Someone told me about Jim Snowden, who had started the label. He was looking for an in-house booking agent. All of his acts were pretty new and didn't have agents. Since I booked the gigs for Uncle Festive he figured I could book gigs for other acts too. Then after about six months the promotion guy left so Jim told me I was going to start doing promotion. That's how that started. That's a lot of being on the phone trying to get airplay.
SV: Which can be a tough job as it is and in your case one of the albums you worked was Uncle Festive. So you had to listen to people tell you why they couldn't play it.
BH: Yeah. It was kind of tricky and awkward at the same time but I was working everybody else's stuff too.
SV: Did you get a lot of rejection? Both the Uncle Festive albums you ended up doing promo on did well on the charts.
BH: Definitely. People were pretty straight with me. We had a #1 single on the last album, which I co-produced but didn't play on. Only on the MAC report though, which doesn't exist anymore.
SV: That's probably because I wrote for them. Drove them right under. We had more charts and a lot more information sharing with MAC, Gavin and some of the smaller sheets.
BH: Along the way Jeff Golub came on board, so did Rick Braun. Brian Culbertson was about 19. He was in college in Chicago. He'd sent me tapes over the years and I'd listen to them and give him some tips. This one particular tape he sent in was so good I took it down the hall and said we’ve gotta do something with this, and it turned out to be his first album Long Night Out. I ended up going to Chicago and hanging out with him in his funky college apartment with the roommates and trucks driving by outside and working on this record in his apartment.
SV: I remember going on the air and telling listeners that here was a guy who recorded his first album basically in a dorm room when he was 18. Makes you feel like an underachiever for sure.
BH: That's how I met those guys and did that album.
SV: How about Rick.
BH: He was playing with Rod Stewart. I think Jim went to a Rod Stewart concert and that's how he got interested in Rick, then Rick suggested Jeff. It was all so new and different and developing back then. Steve Chapman, who I work with now, came along about that time. He was managing Al Stewart and was friends with Jim Snowden. He had an office in our suite of offices. That's how he met Rick and Jeff. There were some interesting other things we did. We had an acid jazz group called the Jazz Hole and a Triple-A type act called Boxing Ghandis. The promotion side of things really clicked for me and that's what led to the opportunity at Verve.
SV: You went to Verve in promotion, not A&R?
BH: I was in promotion. At Mesa/Bluemoon we had an A&R committee of four guys so I had some experience with that but when I went there I was a promotion guy. I started as a western regional promotion guy and everyone else was in New York. After about two years Rachel Lewis, who was the head of promotion, moved into the sales side and I ended up heading the promotion department sort of by default. I became VP of promotion.
SV: Were you working retail too or just radio?
BH: I was working radio. I was working a lot of formats – jazz, triple A, A/C, smooth jazz.
SV: Let's do music biz 101 for our readers. What does a promotion manager do?
BH: It's different at different companies. The most normal way is that you would be part of the promotions staff.
As a promotion manager you might deal with a particular format. Let's say you were the smooth jazz promotion manager. You would be the person who called the radio stations. You'd co-ordinate any work you did with independent promoters if the label used them. If a radio station wanted to do a promotion like a concert or a giveaway or interview you would work with setting that up. You'd do that, whereas the VP of promotion oversees all the various formats and makes sure everything is clicking the way it's supposed to. That's when you get into time liens and budgets. As you move up the ladder it becomes more involved with things like deciding what formats to work a song in, choosing the single, deciding how much money to spend in the promotion process, can we send them out to visit radio stations?
SV: Wow, you're really talking back in the day when there was money to spend.
BH: Up until the last two years actually. Even two years ago we sent Mindi Abair out to do a promo tour.
SV: She's so personable and talented she's perfect for that.
BH: She's great with that. She would go on the air and do an interview and take her sax in. She did the after work parties with a local guitarist we would hook her up with. It has to be an artist who is willing to get out there and do that.
SV: These days it's career suicide to not be willing to do the extra stuff, but it's hard to get the budget and route someone.
BH: By '98 I was the VP of promotion and we started hearing rumors of a merge because Universal was going to buy Polygram, Verve was a division of Polygram. Universal had GRP and since they were doing the buying I figured the GRP promotions staff would take over, which is pretty much what happened. Fortunately for me I got a call from Tommy LiPuma who was the chairman of GRP.
SV: He just called you. Wow.
BH: I'd met him a few times and been on panels and things with him. Out of the blue he called me and said he was coming to LA and wanted to get together. We ended up spending an afternoon talking about music and that's what led to the A&R spot. He had asked me if I would be interested in anything besides promotion and I'd said A&R. About a month later he offered me the A&R spot. I ended up there for seven more years.
SV: And we're back to music biz 101. What is an A&R person's role?
BH: A&R stands for artists and repertoire. In the old days the A&R guy was almost like the producer. They look for talent and oversee the recording projects. The A&R person might find a producer or be involved himself, but no matter who produces it they are involved in the whole process: the hiring of the musicians, booking the studio time, working with the budget, the time lines, choosing material. Does the artist write? Is he willing to co-write with others? Does it make sense to do some covers?
SV: It pretty much comes down to the A&R person.
BH: It does. Of course the artist is a huge part of it. It's really working closely with that artist to put together what will be the best record for that person at that time.
SV: You have to be cognizant of what that artist can do, who they are, and where it can sit commercially so it can get played and sell.
BH: Exactly. I'll use Mindi as an example. I had approached Mindi a few years before we signed her. I saw her play with Jonathan Butler and I was pretty knocked out. I literally tracked her down. I found her number through the musicians union and called her. She explained that she was about to go on a massive world tour with the Backstreet Boys and she'd be out of the picture pretty much for the next year. We said we'd keep in touch and a couple of years later we get a package of demos from her. There was just something about the demos that grabbed my boss and me at the time, Ron Goldstein. We set up a meeting with her and her managers. We made the decision to sign her just after the meeting. We hadn't seen her play except for me seeing that Jonathan Butler show. We just knew there was something there. After we made the decision to go for it we started the process of thinking about how we would make the record. I put her together with several different producers and had her write, experiment, record some tracks and stuff like that. But it always kept coming back, to me; to this one guy she had worked with and known since college, Matthew Hagar. They had worked together in Mandy Moore's band. There was something about the stuff she did with him. It had this alternative lean to it. It didn't sound like everything else. “Lucy's” was one of the demos. I went back to Ron and told him that I kept coming back to Matthew. We went in and recorded two real tracks, then we listened and we said let's go and do it. We did the whole album that way and we got to be pretty successful with it.
SV: Pretty successful? She's one of the few new artists to break through.
BH: Believe me, that was a big question going in. How is smooth jazz radio going to accept this? It had an edge to it. It wasn't the typical R&B leaning track. So again here we go with the radio experience. I actually went out myself and flew around to different cities and played this stuff for some of the programmers. I think in that kind of situation they appreciate someone taking the time to do that. They liked it and they went for it. “Lucy's” became a big hit, and in a world where we talk about declining sales and does radio really sell records here's this song that
hit the airwaves long before anybody know what she looked like or what she was like live and when the CDs hit the stores they sold.
SV: That song jumped out. It was catchy, it sounded different and that really stood out.
BH: To this day that's the quandary. How do you make a record that sounds different enough to stand out but will still get played on the radio.
SV: You and I had talked about that before when you were saying the same thing about Jeff Golub. You wanted to do a cover that was different and interesting and didn't want the album to sound like everything else. But you want it to get heard. It's a quandary but what's the solution? Euge Groove had a big hit with “Get 'em Goin'“ which was as far from relaxing mood music as you can get and the audience loved it. Mindi's “True Blue” was a really foreground song. It works if you can get that first toe in the door.
BH: That's what it's always been for me and I bring this up all the time at conventions. “Lucy's” and that Praful song, “Sigh” was another one. He wasn't a big name, he hadn't done any touring. But that song getting played on the radio sold over 80,000 units just based on the airplay. It stood out. That's what we have to do. We've got to find things that are different and will stand out, but still fit the format. I understand that it has to fit the format but it still has to stand out if it's going to get noticed and sell.
SV: You were in A&R and then started producing?
BH: I had a little experience with Uncle Festive because we pretty much produced the later albums ourselves and by the time they did the last album I had stepped out of the band but I went in the studio to co-produce the record with them. I had that experience. When they gave me the A&R job they asked me if I could produce a record and of course I said, “Well sure I can.” I literally came up with my friends from Uncle Festive, John Pondel on guitar and Ron Pedley on keyboards, and came up with this concept called Kombo.
SV: I loved that CD. You put that together to show that you could produce an album?
BH: Yeah. I told Ron about the idea that nobody had done a Hammond B3 focused project in this format and he loved that. So did I, so I was racking my brain trying to figure out who I know that can play B3.
SV: You came up with the idea before you came up with the cast!
BH: I did. Then I remembered that Ron was an organ major in college and John is one of the best guitar players out there. They were into it. It worked out well. The first record actually did pretty well. The second one didn't do too well so that was the end of it. I feel like on the second one we tried to make too much out of it where the first one was really pared down. The first one was just drums, upright bass, guitar, and keyboard. The second one we added horns and strings. I think if we had just stuck to the original sound instead of adding all of that.
SV: Over thinking can do you in.
BH: It was really fun though and I'm really proud of it.
SV: I didn't know that's how it came about. I even heard a song from it on the air on Jones Network a while ago.
BH: Anyway, that led to co-producing with Jeff Golub. We did three albums together. I did a project called Action Figure Party that was a lot of fun. Rick Braun and I co-produced some things together. Then I got into the Luther Vandross projects with Rex Rideout.
SV: This was a brilliant idea that worked beautifully. How did that get started?
BH: It was really Rex's idea. Luther had the stroke and Rex had worked with Luther and was friends with him. Luther really liked a lot of the smooth jazz artists and had worked with a lot of them. He came up with the idea. Our feeling was that we had to do it in a really classy way and involve his family so it wasn't exploitative in any way. We went to his mom and Rex was actually able to go to the rehab place where Luther was living in New Jersey and play the record for him. Which was amazing. He smiled and Rex said that when Rick Braun's version of “Dance With My Father” came on he started singing along, which was really something. We did the big concert in New York. We were really proud of it.
SV: How did you pick the songs and the artists?
BH: We came up with a plan. We wanted to mix it up with the instruments first of all, so we picked out artists. Dave was a natural choice because he had worked with Luther. That became an angle. If anyone had an association with Luther we'd try for that. We had Kirk (Whalum), of course, who played on every Luther record.Dave, Paul Jackson Jr. played on the Luther records. We got Brian Culbertson because we felt like this was a young up and coming guy. Same with Mindi, we wanted some newer, younger artists involved. We just sat down and put it together and everybody was so great.
SV: That album had a really gracious vibe to it. It just felt good.
BH: It really came together great and the reaction was really positive. We were really happy that Luther got to hear it. Then Volume 2 came from the reaction being so strong for the first one. So many people asked if we were going to do another one. We decided to do another one and get a group of artists who weren't on the first one. The one we stuck with was Kirk and his track ended up being a really big hit.
SV: Between the release of Volume 1 and 2 GRP kind of came apart. That label meant so much to people who had been into this music, especially if you had been for a long time. Suddenly you hear that artists are getting cut and people on the business side that had been there for a long time are going.
BH: It was a frustrating time. Over the last year that I was there I could feel that coming. The decision was being made to drop smooth jazz artists and pick up artists in other genres, mainly *Triple-A.
SV: That seemed like the same road twice to me because Triple-A is my other favorite genre and I see it facing a lot of the same challenges as smooth jazz as far as not much airplay being available and taking a total backseat to youth driven pop hits at the retail level. Those artists have adapted to change a little faster but it's easier to be grassroots when you can tour with just yourself and your guitar.
BH: I made every effort to make everyone at the label aware that if you look at the Triple-A chart and look at the artists who do well in that format but don't cross into other formats the sales are not really as good as smooth jazz sales. I guess the feeling was that the potential would be greater to cross over into other formats and get more media exposure with vocalists. By the time I was given my notice I wasn't shocked or anything.
SV: By then there weren't many jazz artists left.
BH: Just Brian Culbertson and Mindi.
SV: It was like what we went through with Warner Bros. a few years before.
BH: I left and the next year that's what they really worked on, developing these new signings. It was a struggle and at the end of last year 2/3 of the staff was let go. It was a rough time for everybody and I felt bad about it. The company is still going and they are still looking at new signings and doing things and I wish them the best.
SV: That's why you're such a great story. Business happens the way business happens and you can't take business related changes personally. You have to move forward, get creative, be fast on your feet, and be willing to adapt and learn new stuff. That's pretty much the story of your life.
BH: (laughs) That's true. When that happened I was feeling like wow, I've been at Verve for 10 years. What am I going to do? Thankfully someone that became a very good friend to me, Suzanne Berg, who was head of promotions at Verve, asked me if I wanted to do the independent smooth jazz promotion for them so I did work Brian and Mindi's singles for them. That really helped me a lot. Then Rendezvous brought me in as an A&R consultant for a short time. Then that ended. (laughs)
SV: Time to get fast on the feet again.
BH: There you go. Then I've known Steve Chapman since the Mesa/Bluemoon Days and we're friends and he'd ask me “why don't you get into management?” so when I left Rendezvous he jumped in and said let's go. So I've been doing this for about three months now and I'm liking it. Then Mindi made the decision to come in with us so now I'm managing Mindi, Jeff Lorber, Paul Brown, and Jeff Golub. I hit Jeff Lorber at a great time too because just like we were talking before about doing something different, his new album is something different and the single is different. It's very acoustic and beautiful. I love it, it's classy, and working it at radio is interesting because again, you have to convince people to go for something different and it's looking really good right now. I'm happy to be involved with that.
SV: You've had several instances where you had to teach yourself something really fast.
BH: Pretty much in every case. I was told all of a sudden that I was going to do promotion now. OK. All of a sudden I was told, “You’re heading a promotion department at a major label.” Ok, I can do that. You're going to do A&R now. OK. You're going to produce a record. I can do that. You just say OK and do it. (laughs) While I was at GRP I brought in Golub, Richard Elliot, and Gerald Albright and Down to The Bone. It was fun. Fortunately for me I still get to work with some of the great ones.
SV: Looking at the business climate now. If you look at radio realistically is there still a potential for breaking new music and new artists?
BH: I'm a glass half full kinda guy. I still believe that if you have something exciting and fresh that's really good you can make it happen. If you're coming with something new that sounds the same as everything else I think that’s much more difficult. You might get it on the radio but what's it going to do?
SV: What would you tell somebody who was trying to get into the business at this point in time?
BH: The first thing, if you're an artist and you're trying to break into contemporary jazz or smooth jazz, and I've told many people this, is that you have to find a distinctive voice. You've got to find something that makes you stand out. It's a very difficult thing to do but people have done it. When people submit new projects to me I get told that this guitar player sounds like Norman Brown or this sax player sounds like Boney. We already have one of those. You might fit the criteria to get on the radio but it's not going to sell records if you don't have something that makes people turn their head and go “What's that?” That's what happened with “Lucy's” and on “Sigh.” That's what I'm looking for and that's what a new artist has to do in this world. They've got to come up with something unique. It's not easy but you've got to!
* Triple-A stands for Adult Album Alternative. It originated as a progressive format for adult listeners that played a lot of new music that leaned toward the mature side pop/rock. Since deregulation, with corporate ownership as the norm these stations have tightened their playlists but there are some excellent AAA stations on the web, and some survivors with that indie spirit still broadcasting. One of the heritage stations is WMVY, which is now streaming at www.mvyradio.com.
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