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Rockie Lynne’s Road to a Major Record Deal
By Julie Blake
If you are looking for a sure fire formula to achieve music success, you’ll find it here. Rockie Lynne has lived in the best of both worlds; as an Independent Artist he sold over 50,000 CD’s and now his music career is at a whole new level thanks to being signed to Universal South. Rockie even shares the magic note that landed him his major record deal.
For Rockie it has always been about his passion for music and his fans. As he will tell you “I wasn’t looking for a record deal, I was looking for people who cared about my music.”
As long as Rockie can remember, the dream of music pursued him from deep within his soul, so he could not imagine pursuing anything but music. When he was in the 7th grade he mowed lawns all summer and saved up enough money to buy his first guitar at JC Penny. He considers that day the beginning of his life.
By the time he was 12 years old, he was playing in honky tonks and learned first hand how destructive alcohol can be; it was then he decided not to drink. Music came first and nothing was worth risking what he loved most.
In high school he began playing in bands. “We had a million different names, we were always getting fired. They wanted us to play cover songs, but we played my songs.” But that didn’t stop him, within a few weeks he would book the same place with a different band photo.
In a never ending desire to grow and make better music, Rockie would shoot for being the worst player in the band, because being the best player in the band, leaves you nowhere to go or grow as a musician. He practiced all the time up to 8-10 hours a day when he could.
Out of high school he joined the Army, which Rockie says “turned out to be the most shaping experience of my life on so many levels. I learned perseverance, self-discipline and respect for self and others.” Serving in the military also paid his tuition at G.I.T (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles).
After G.I.T he participated in one of the many cattle calls that promised a record deal to the winner, in which his band ended up as one of the last 2 standing. When his band didn’t win, he packed up his truck and headed east until the road ended at Myrtle Beach.
That road eventually landed him in Nashville in the early 90’s where he scored some great jobs playing guitar for country acts. But, by 1994 Rockie wanted his music to have more personal expression, so he left his career as a guitar player for hire and started his solo career as the front man. He hit the road again playing solo gigs in “bottom tier clubs” and selling CDs he had recorded himself with his TASCAM 88.
He played his original songs from the beginning of his solo career and toured the whole country which meant they would only get to a place twice a year. Rockie recalls “The first couple of times, people would write Lynyrd Skynryd songs on a napkin, but by the third time in, they’d be asking for my songs. That was an incredible feeling.”
But Rockie had a secret weapon against the napkins – he wrote a “shut-up-and-listen-to-me” song called “Super Country Cowboy.” As Rockie tells it, “I was playing clubs that usually had cover bands, so in order to play my music, I had to get the guys who were headed to the stage with Lynyrd Skynyrd and “Boot Scoot Boogie” requests written on their napkins to shut up and give me a minute.” Only a “Super Country, Evangelic, Rock-A-Billy, Psychedelic Cowboy” could demand that kind of respect and attention.
After touring the entire country, Rockie began to realize that in order to build a loyal fan base he would need to choose a region to focus on. Rockie’s “light bulb moment” happened in Minnesota while listening to a local band that was introduced as Minnesota’s “best country band.” They took the stage and started singing “Achy Breaky Heart” with a “Minnesotan” accent. He then realized that nobody was moving to Minnesota to build a music career. “There’s a market for anything if you are willing to find it” says Rockie, and he saw this as an opportunity of a lifetime.
So, in 2000 Rockie packed up again, leaving his band behind and ended up in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. Over time and logging 200-300 dates a year, he reached his goal of building a solid regional base of fans in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Iowa and selling over 50,000 CDs along the way.
The real secret to Rockie’s success lies in how he treats his fans. His goal at every performance is to wrap his arms around his audience and make them feel welcome. “You can never stress enough how grateful you are that your fans came to your show” says Rockie. He made sure that there was always a welcome note on every table at every performance asking for phone numbers and addresses (now it’s email addresses). He would even call his fans at home to invite them to his up coming shows.
Rockie also stresses the importance of ALWAYS having CDs to sell. He would personally go around and ask people in the audience “would you like to buy my CD?” Eventually he made enough money to hire a staff to handle the sales. And he made it a rule to never give away his CDs for free. He reinvested his profits right back into the show by upgrading the sound systems, adding lights and special effects.
“I never did this with the purpose of getting a major label record deal, but I knew I had gone as far as I could go without one. It is a blessing to do what you love, I’ve always been happy, but I’m not satisfied. I would like to sing my songs for as many people as I can. There are 280 million people in the United States. I just need one million of them.”
The magic note that landed Rockie his record deal with Universal South was an actual note taped inside his guitar case that read “Play every night like its Carnegie Hall and one day it will be.”
It was an ordinary Friday night gig at St. Patrick’s Tavern in Prior Lake, Minnesota, only that night it was a blizzard and Rockie’s van got stuck in the snow about 80 feet from the door. This would have been the perfect night for him to scale back the equipment as he was a one man show when it came to setting up (he only paid his band to show up and play). But, Rockie read the note he had placed in his guitar case and found the motivation to spend hours hauling in everything down to the last light, (which he would have gladly done had it been Carnegie Hall).
Good thing he read that note, because that was the night that Bruce Larson, who worked in sales & marketing for Warner Bros. was destined to “discover” Rockie. Bruce was there for dinner and on his way to the restroom he poked his head in the lounge and was immediately struck by Rockie’s performance “He was playing in front of about 75 people that night, but with all the music and energy that was pouring out of him and his guitar if could have been a coliseum of 75,000” Larson commented.
Having spent his last twenty dollars on a round of drinks, Larson asked the woman selling Rockie’s CDs for a complimentary copy; she refused not believing he was for real. She did however, take his email address and passed it on to Rockie. “I sent Bruce a CD but I didn’t think much about it. I was pretty disillusioned with the business side of Nashville; I had been down there a few times and didn’t have any luck with it.”
Larson invited Rockie to his house to play more of his songs. Larson sensed something bigger than the distribution deal he originally envisioned. And Bruce was able to get a copy of Rockie’s CD into the hands of Kevin Law, the Executive Vice President of Universal Records. “Kevin was the first A&R guy who heard my music and got it” says Rockie.
Larson immediately flew Rockie to New York and spent hours in Law’s office playing him some of the 120+ songs that he had written. “At the end of the day he asked me if I could stay another day because he wanted me to play for Doug Morris. It was all feeling a little bit surreal at that point.”
Rockie was signed to Universal and moved to the Plaza Hotel for the remainder of his stay in New York. “Though I had been making music almost my whole life, all this happened so fast. I felt like Alice in Wonderland falling through the rabbit hole. I went out on the balcony of my room; it was a beautiful September night in New York City. It overlooked Central Park. Can you imagine the feeling? I could not believe what was happening. It was unbelievable.”
To Rockie, signing his record deal was a chance to have more fans to “wrap his arms around” and an opportunity to write and perform better. And even now with his record deal, he writes music everyday and if he doesn’t practice at least 2 hours a day he feels like he is cheating himself and his fans. Rockie is looking forward to never “arriving” or being satisfied; his passion to become more and give more to his fans fuels his music and soul.
Rockie was pleasantly surprised to discover that all the stories he had heard about backstabbing in the music business were not true. And, he didn’t need a record deal to feel like a success; he was a success and that’s what led him to a record deal that he was totally prepared to take full advantage of.
The Roots of Rockie’s Success
- Play your own music
- Play all the time
- Always have music to sell
- Wrap your arms around your fans and make them feel welcome
- Be prepared (He had 120 professional song demo’s ready to ship within 24 hours of the request).
Rockie never wavered on his commitment to his music. He gave himself no other option than to succeed at music, record deal or not. He has fans that still religiously go to every show in Minnesota, even if they have to drive hours to make it. This alone is massive success according to Rockie.
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