For more than two decades, the
Yellowjackets have stood on the front lines of jazz,
mixing funk, swing, Latin, gospel and blues while
earning critical praise, Grammys and an international
fan base along the way.
But in 1999, the band found itself in a dubious
position for the first time in its storied career:
Warner Bros., its home for four years, decided not to
renew the band's contract, a decision based on
bottom-line numbers, not artistic differences.
After shopping for a new label for a few years
without much luck, the bandmates took the road
increasingly traveled by artists seeking more control of
their music: They financed their own CD and sold it on
the band's Web site.
"Mint Jam," a double live CD released in 2001, was a
unique success story on many levels.
The CD earned a Grammy nomination (the band's 11th
overall) and a four-star review in Down Beat. The group
got a ground-floor education in the business of CD
marketing and distribution without yielding a cent of
profit. And, perhaps, most important, the experience
gave the band a shot of sorely needed self-esteem.
"I feel the band is a little more in the driver's
seat, not just waiting for things to happen and at the
mercy of just taking whatever offer someone extends,"
keyboardist and co-founder Russell Ferrante said in a
phone interview recently from his San Fernando Valley
home.
The Yellowjackets launches an American tour on
Tuesday with a six-night stand at Catalina's in
Hollywood as the band's first studio recording in five
years, "Time Squared" (Heads Up), lands in stores this
week.
The idea to self-finance a CD and sell it over
cyberspace came from Ferrante's wife, Gerry Puhara, a
small-business owner who'd already harnessed the Web for
her retail clothing company. Meanwhile, the band --
bassist and co-founder Jimmy Haslip, saxophonist Bob
Mintzer and newcomer Marcus Baylor on drums -- had built
up a kitty of cash over the years.
Friends with Internet expertise gave pointers on Web
design and strategy. The band hired a publicist. Fans
bought the CD.
"We're not rolling in money, but in a short time, we
paid back everything we spent and paid everyone in the
band a royalty," said Ferrante, 51. "And we learned a
lot about how it works, where that $20 goes, how it's
divvied up."
Warner Bros.' decision to drop the band did bruise
egos, Ferrante said. But it was not about artistic
differences.
Times had changed. So had Warner Bros. A
corporate-driven overhaul had swept out the creative
team that signed the band. A new regime was in charge.
"They, of course, wanted us to make a recording that
could get played on the radio," Ferrante said. "We tried
to fold that into what we do without really doing
something that wasn't keeping with the band's path and
interests.
"But I think the reality was, our contract, when we
signed back with them, was a good one, and it called for
them to give us a lot of money and the marketplace no
longer was in line with that," he continued. When the
new artistic team came in, "they really had no stake or
history with the band, looked at the bottom line, looked
at the numbers and just determined that it didn't make
sense."
Ferrante, however, won't diss the label. Differences
notwithstanding, Warner Bros. invested in the
Yellowjackets with marketing and promotional campaigns
that put the band's name out in the public arena,
Ferrante said.
"They helped build the name of the band and we
couldn't be doing what we're doing now quite as easily
had they not invested a lot of money and helped make
people aware of our music," Ferrante said.
Which is why, ironically, the band decided to go back
to a label. "Time Squared," the band's 16th album and
first studio date in five years, was just released on
Heads Up, an independent label based in Cleveland, Ohio.
It features all the signposts of Yellowjackets
material, blending swing and funk, acoustic and
electric, tweaked by rhythmic invention and
international esprit.
The material continues to demonstrate the band's
empathy for global and political issues, environment and
family, with songs named for Ferrante's and Haslip's
daughters ("Claire at 18" and "Gabriela Rose,"
respectively) and Sept. 11 ("The Village Gait").
The decision to return to a record label began during
the push to sell "Mint Jam," when the band licensed
international distribution to the company. "It's kind of
like we were dating," Ferrante said with a laugh.
Ferrante chalked up the decision to a "unity of
opposites" mentality. "For everything, there's something
good about it and something that's not as good,"
Ferrante said. "When you sign with the record company,
you do benefit from their promotional efforts that are
done on your behalf. It just raises the profile of the
band, even though we're making nowhere what we made when
we sold it ourselves.
"I guess we figured at this point, it would be
helpful to have someone really beating the drum for the
band," he said. "But it's nice knowing if worse comes to
worse, we can continue doing it ourselves."
On the Net:
www.yellowjackets.com.
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