Biography

ATLANTA BASED INDIE LABEL TURNS HARD INDUSTRY EXPERIENCES BY FOUNDER BEN ROWELL INTO AN EXCITING ENTERPRISE DEDICATED TO ‘DEVELOPING ARTISTS MUSICALLY AND GIVING THEM A CHANCE TO SUCCEED FINANCIALLY’

Backspace’s Diverse Roster Of Artists, Including Mark Gaignard & The Also Ran (Former Lead Singer Of Gainesville, Florida’s Big Sky) and Bluesman/Street Musician Guitar Red, Record At The Label’s State Of The Art Project Studio And Are Distributed By The Orchard

It’s happening everywhere in the music industry these days. Eager to get their music out there to the masses, ambitious independent DIY artists are launching labels, finding their own distribution and are collectively establishing a new model by which everyone’s doing business in the latter 2000s.

Aligning with their business partner Mack Lindsey, the dynamic husband and wife team of Ben and Kimberly Rowell is leaping full force into the fray with their exciting and eclectic new Backspace Records, an Atlanta based indie label dedicated to, as their mission statement reads, developing artists musically while giving them the chance to succeed financially. Rather than growing Backspace as a niche label, their goal is to have a roster of diverse artists and niche each one of them.

The twist is that Ben Rowell didn’t launch Backspace to help promote his own band—in fact, he did it in the aftermath of Big Sky’s breakup after 12 years as one of Gainesville, Florida’s most popular rock outfits. Big Sky sold over 50,000 units and enjoyed what Ben—their rhythm guitarist and key songwriting contributor– likes to call “mid time, not big time” success, being part of several national radio campaigns while performing regularly everywhere from Miami to New Orleans to Boston.

In later years, Big Sky experienced what a lot of groups go through as they’re trying to move to the next level: hard financial knocks due to poor and crooked management. Rowell saw himself, his bandmates and too many other artists being abused by their labels and managers, and decided his two options were to either become jaded and quit music, or turn that anger and frustration into the next chapter in his unique career.

The choice he and Kimberly made is great news for the indie music world in general and specifically for the handful of unique artists that Backspace is beginning to present to the world: rocker Mark Gaignard & The Also Ran, young Atlanta based singer/songwriter Brandon Swift and Guitar Red, a veteran bluesman who has made his living for years “busking” (the cool, British term for “street performing”) in and around downtown Atlanta.

As the former lead singer of Big Sky, Gaignard was an obvious first choice for Backspace’s opening roster; the label released his highly anticipated debut We All Need Lies digitally on August 5. Guitar Red’s debut Lightnin’ In A Bottle came out July 29. As of early August, Swift’s album is 80 percent done and Ben anticipates a late 2008 release. Ben is a member of another unique outfit on Backspace called The Baby Grands, which writes and plays what he calls “alt-rock for kids that won’t drive the adults crazy.” Backspace is also gearing up to releasing Big Sky’s critically acclaimed 2003 album This Monstrosity digitally for the first time. The label is in the process of re-releasing all six albums in the band’s back catalog, including the currently available 2000 album Live At The Sapphire.

“In some ways, the idea behind Backspace Records came about by accident,” Ben says, “I got together with Mark to record some new solo material to see what we could do with it. A friend of mine heard that I was working with Mark in the studio and asked me if I could record some songs with this up and coming kid named Brandon. My business partner Mack was a big fan of Brandon and wanted to invest in his career, so I suggested, ‘why not start a label?’

“Our mission statement has changed somewhat since we put together our first business plan,” he adds. “At the start, we wanted this to be a label based on singer-songwriters whose vibe was stripped down and acoustic, but the more things evolved, the more it made sense to open the roster to include a wider range of artists and styles.”

Kimberly, who gave up her longtime position as a high school guidance counselor to run the business end of Backspace Records full-time, continues: “Anyone who starts a label is always asked about profitability, and there are always many risks involved. There’s something here that really drives us to reach our goals, and part of that is the stories behind these incredible artists we are privileged to be working with. If you know Mark and Guitar Red’s life stories, and some of the hard times they’ve faced, you’ll understand how badly we want to succeed for them. We can help fulfill the dreams of these artists just by providing the kind of guidance they never had before.”

“We found Guitar Red (aka Billy Christian Walls) by accident,” she says. “Our friend Dean, who also found Brandon, called us and asked if we were interested in recording a blues artist. Our concern was that many most so called blues artists just aren’t very authentic. He took us to where Red was performing on the street. The guy has been homeless for years. We loved him, sat him down and he played ‘Chain Gang Blues,’ a partly autographical song for us. When Ben told him we were going to record him, he started crying because he’s in his mid-40s and had never had a shot to do an album before. His is a very inspiring story, and we’re lucky to be part of it.”

Another inspiring element to Backspace is that a portion of the label’s profits will go towards organ donor organizations. The motivation behind this is that Lindsey, the Rowells’ business partner, is a recent heart transplant recipient. Ben says, “Mack has a big heart and he just got a new heart, so we’re just trying to give back.”

One of the very practical ways in which Backspace plans to have quicker profitability than most young labels is doing all the recording in-house. Over the past few years, the Rowells and Lindsey have expanded Ben’s ever-expanding project studio into a state of the art small facility that is geared towards achieving classic sounding recordings. Hardcore audiophiles will be interested by some of the equipment he’s been using in producing the projects for Gaignard, Guitar Red, Swift and The Baby Grands, a gathering of tools that puts his studio on par with some major facilities that charge thousands for the same work.

The Backspace Studio has Neve, API and A-Designs mic-pres and EQs, and Universal Audio, Roll Music, and Drawmer compressors. “I tend to use time-tested recording techniques. For example, on vocals I use a Peluso 2247 microphone or a Neumann TLM 170 into a Neve 1073 and a Universal audio 1176 or LA3A. And when I mix I have access to all of my outboard gear, so I rarely use plug-ins.” Backspace also has a nice collection of instruments for their artists to use such as Neve 1073 pre-amps, two API 312 pre-amps, a Universal Audio 1176 compressor, a Universal Audio LA3A, a Neve tape emulator, a vintage 1977 Kawai upright piano, a selection of ten guitars (Rowell was once sponsored by G&L and Lace Music) and four vintage guitar amplifiers including a Matchless Superchief 120 and a blackface Fender Bassman. The studio’s flagship digital piece is the Prism Sound Orpheus, a FireWire interface for sound production that is ideal for recording, production and monitoring and analog summing. Ben describes it as “the Rolls, Bentley or Aston Martin of project studio recording interfaces.”

Currently, Backspace Records is focused on doing digital distribution through The Orchard, which will make its products available on over 400 sites, including iTunes, Rhapsody and emusic.com. A limited number of CDs will be pressed of each product to sell via amazon.com, bestbuy.com and at the company’s own website. In these early stages, and considering the current consumer trends of the industry, the company is more interested in putting its money in promotion and marketing than doing conventional brick and mortar retailers.

“The most exciting aspect of the Backspace Records venture for me is having the opportunity to create these projects for great artists like Mark and Guitar Red from the ground up,” says Ben. “When you’re at the mastering and pressing stage, it’s fascinating to look back and realize where the songs were at the beginning and how far they’ve come. It’s a very satisfying feeling for all of us to feel that they’re as strong as we were hoping for and with the right production. It’s fun for me to participate in every aspect, as producer, engineer, arranger and co-writer, and on many tracks I had a chance to play guitar and keyboards. Running the creative part of a label like this means I get to participate in every step of the process.”

Kimberly adds, “Starting and running an independent label is both scary and gratifying, and it’s kind of a fun sort of anxiety that hits you when you don’t know what’s going to happen but you’re committed to seeing it through. After watching Ben go through so many trying times in the later years of Big Sky, I love seeing him making music and enjoying it so much again.”