It’s been a good month for the Belleville Outfit. So far, they’ve performed on the nationally syndicated radio show Mountain Stage and been nominated for a “New and Emerging Artist” award by the Americana Music Association. This week, things heat up with the release of the sextet’s second disc, Time to Stand. They bring a bucket of hot swing to Waterloo Records this afternoon at 5pm, and burn down Momo’s on Saturday night.
When I reviewed Time to Stand for their appearance at this year’s Old Settler’s Music Festival, I was curious about a mention in the liner notes about an “Adopt a Song” campaign. I asked vocalist/guitarist Rob Teter to explain what that was.
“We were in limbo between whether or not we wanted to get into a record deal,” he relates. “It’s not like there were tons of offers but there were a few. Basically we felt like we had done so much work on our own for the first record that it wasn’t an easy decision to give all that up. We were ready to record during that whole time, so it stalled the whole thing. It became really overwhelming, but we finally made the decision that we were going to make this record by our own means. It was there and we didn’t want to wait any more. We kicked around some ideas. We didn’t want to take any investment from some fans.
“Actually, my mother came up with the idea of ‘Adopt a Song,’ just not in its final form. She said, ‘What if you asked people to sponsor little pieces of the record through donations?’ We typed up a proposal letter, put it up on our website, and sent it out in an email blast. We had a huge response. We asked for two thousand dollars per song and you got a house concert from us and couple of smaller things like being mentioned in the liner notes. It wasn’t an immediate hit, but it came rolling in. Eventually we sold all 13 of the songs that are on the record and raised enough money to, at least, get some product in hand.”
Support came not only from Texas, but California, the band’s former home base of South Carolina, and Colorado. “We’ve done three or four house concerts already,” Teter explains. “We’re driving through Colorado next week and going to spend a Sunday at someone’s house. They’re having a barbecue in the afternoon and we’re going to sit around and pick, that’s all he wanted.”
Other artists have been creative in getting support for recording projects from their audience over the years. Sara Hickman’s Necessary Angels comes to mind, but the Outfit’s solution to a common problem seems unique. It also, according to Teter, saved the band.
“Adopt a Song didn’t cover everything,” he claims, “but it got us to a point where we had a new CD to sell and we retained ownership of it. That makes it much easier for us to stay on our feet as a band. If it hadn’t happened, we’d be stuck. We could have signed a deal, but there was nothing that was that attractive. It was huge for us. Now there’s a joke inside the band where we’ll go, ‘Adopt some hotel rooms, adopt a tank of gas.’”
This article appears in May 22 • 2009.