What's in a Label?: Brash Music

I walked out of the midtown Atlanta offices of Brash Music with an armful of eclectic CDs, feeling a bit like a bandit and thinking, "Now that was completely different." For the previous hour I had been regaled with stories of the heyday of Atlantic Records in the 70s, heard names like Stones and Zeppelin dropped in routine conversation, wondered if the Dove Award sitting on a file cabinet would be more effective as an emergency can opener or a self-defense weapon, and heard an intriguing and sometimes alarming outsider's perspective on the Christian music business. I knew then that Brash, the fifth label we've covered in this series, would be the one that really gets people talking.

At Brash Records, secular music came first. Bands like Sister Hazel and Collective Soul were around in the early days and as acts were added, Brash paid less attention to musical genre and more to the quality of the music itself. Consequently, the current roster includes everything from rap (Explicit Lyrics stickers included) to folk to bossa nova to, yes, Christian. Brash found Christian music—or was it the other way around?—when a demo CD by Christian artist Aaron Shust found its way into the trunk of the car of the label's CEO, Mike McQuary. He popped it into his CD player while driving around one day.

 "I was on my cell phone," McQuary remembers, "and I heard this song playing, and I'm thinking, That's kind of a catchy song. I wasn't really paying attention to it. The second song comes on, and I'm thinking, That's pretty catchy too. By the time I got off my cell phone I was on the third song, and I was thinking, This is pretty interesting, and then I thought, Wait a minute, did he just say 'God'? I think this is a Christian record!' I went back to that first song, and listened, and there was no mistaking, this was a Christian record. But it was catchy, it was interesting."

Mike 'McQ' McQuary

McQuary's next action would dictate the course of events that would lead to Brash becoming Billboard's No. 7 label in Christian music: he recognized the CD as Christian music, and he pitched it to his staff anyway. 

With no introduction, no back-story about how he had come across this music, McQuary played the CD at the label's weekly new music pitch session. "Halfway through the first song, everybody's heads are nodding, their toes are tapping. Then somebody said, 'Wait a second, is he talking about God, or talking about a girl?' Then they said, 'Wait, this is Christian music. We don't know anything about Christian music.' I said, 'Do you like it?' They said, 'Yeah, but it's a whole different world.' I said, 'You know what, I didn't know anything about any genre of music and how to market and promote it a few years ago. How is this any different? Let's do what we do. Let's go see him play, let's meet him.'"

That meeting happened, and more meetings, and Shust became a quiet trailblazer: the first artist on the Brash roster making explicitly Christian music. McQuary, who goes by the ultra-cool moniker McQ, knew Shust would need people behind him who knew the Christian music world, so he went online and "looked up the biggest Christian artists in the world and who their managers were." That led him to Michael Blanton, who's worked with, well, the biggest Christian artists in the world—Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith, for starters.

Management, publication, and radio promotion were added, a strategy was developed for Shust's first album and singles, and the song "My Savior My God" became the absolute success story of 2006, the Dove Award winner and top song of the year. Just like that, Brash Music became a major player in the Christian music world.

Not an oxymoron

Brash has a motto that they take very seriously: "Music business does not need to be an oxymoron." There's plenty of business in their background. McQ was the president of Earthlink during the dot com boom when a fortuitous meeting with Apple's Phil Schiller got him thinking about music. "He showed me their plans for the iPod. He said, 'We've got this music player, but there's no place to go and get digital music. Does Earthlink want to play a part in providing that?'" When the Earthlink board decided they were not a content company, McQ resigned, and decided he could figure out the music business before the music executives could figure out the Internet business. McQ got significant help when he joined forces with Steve Jones, who brought 26 years of major label experience, much of it working alongside the legendary Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic. Jones has worked with so many major artists he can't recall them all, and their names attest to his varied musical tastes: Genesis, Foreigner, Yes, Twisted Sister, Hootie and the Blowfish, Kid Rock, INXS, T.I.

Through the last of those years, Jones had also witnessed unprecedented change in the industry. "In my latter years at Atlantic, I didn't realize how unhappy I was. It got to a point where the way we needed to do business needed to change. That change was happening out in the street, and the guys in the home office would ask what's going on. I would tell them what I'm seeing on a daily basis, the kids in the music stores who would look at a CD just to find music to go download. [The label executives] were completely ignoring it, because it didn't fit with how they wanted things done. They didn't understand why a record would sell a million copies its first week, then half that the next week."

The label that thinks music and business can go hand in hand has developed into a place that just does things differently. They listen to every proper demo CD that's sent to them. They make money alongside their artists, but sometimes they lose money alongside their artists, and they work with the artist to decide what a good investment is. They are in it with each artist for the long haul, and they don't quit until the artist quits. And they have a lot of fun.

Chris Sligh

Chris Sligh, Brash Music's second signee in the Christian genre, notes, "It's amazing how many record label people don't really like music very much. Steve and McQ are actually into music. That's the thing that I love about Brash, that the guys actually love music. They're in the business not because they can make money, and they have been successful and made money in it, but they're in it because they love music and they want to see the best product hit the market as possible. We're not always going to succeed, but they give you the freedom to try to make great music."

One Sligh guinea pig

Sligh has become the label's human guinea pig, since he's willing to try out everyone's crazy ideas. He'll be touring with Shust using an unusual economic model: the two artists will be performing without the typical monetary guarantee. There will only be a small suggested donation at the door, and even that will get you a copy of a Chris Sligh CD. "We're not going to make any money off of that," says Sligh, but he believes strongly that the music industry will have to change, and he's willing to lead that change.

"We're back in the days of Keith Green and Larry Norman," Sligh pontificates. "You have to give people a reason to buy into Christian music. We're back to the 70s. The whole thing with Christian rock stars has run its course and we're back to the very beginning, when you have to go back and prove to people that Christian media, in general, is worthwhile."

Shust is excited about the throwback concept as well. "It almost goes back to the club idea, you split the door with the club. The artist gets a percentage. A little old school. This works on a small scale, why can't it work on a big scale?"

Michael Gungor Band

It's apparent that Jones and McQ have learned a lot about Christian music since that Shust demo, and they've recently signed their third artist, the Michael Gungor Band. A controversial song called "White Man" is part of the group's debut for Brash, Ancient Skies. Brash seems to relish the controversy, and I think they have a nascent desire to shake up the whole industry. McQ recalls the nervous faces when he stepped up to the microphone to accept a Dove Award. That speech passed without incident, but this year the label's tossing around ideas about a potentially raucous Dove Awards after-party, complete with a house band and open mic. 

When the American Idol people refused to allow Sligh to use his own name or image, even to release his band's CD that was completed before he was on the show, Brash released the CD anyway. Sligh's image was still unmistakable in silhouette, and his name was changed to "Chris FOXX" in the liner notes, a not-too-subtle jab at the television home of Idol. How very, well, brash.

A cool collaboration

What do the label's artists think of their unusual home in the industry? All are overwhelmingly positive, and it's clear that all have formed strong personal relationships with the people at Brash. Gungor says that working with Brash "feels more like a collaboration to make good music than simply a business partnership. They have been really cool in giving me space as an artist to be who I am."

Shust goes a step further and relates some of the more philosophical implications of working with a secular label. "It's good for me, it's stretching for me to be able to think outside the Christian bubble. I grew up in the church, I went to a Christian college, then I graduated and it wasn't long before I started working for a church full-time. It was a prayer of mine around 2004, that God would introduce me to some normal people. Let me live life around people who don't talk Christian-ese, church-ese all the time. It wasn't a couple of weeks after I prayed that prayer that the Brash record label option came up.

Aaron Shust

"I enjoy just hearing different perspectives that are so contrary outside of the church, which oftentimes just make a lot of sense. It's refreshing. It keeps me on my toes. Even inside the church, our doctrinal beliefs will rise to the surface before you know it, and you need to be sharp about what you believe, and dogmatic about what's worth being dogmatic about, and flexible about what's not certain. You have to decide what's worth fighting over, and what's not.

"Maybe to a greater degree or just a different degree, when I'm out with them, it's good for me to hear what they talk about, and what's important, and what's truth, and what's worth being dogmatic to them, people who don't necessarily (some do, some don't) go to church every Sunday, and just to remind yourself, these guys at Brash have great things to offer, and great wisdom to share, and so often as Christians we close our ears to anybody who doesn't happen to go to a church. I've learned that wisdom is wisdom, and all truth is God's truth. Otherwise, it's not true. If it's not God, then it's not true, and if it's not true, then it's not God. It's been really good for me, actually."

Christian music 'greed and backstabbing'

For their part, with so much experience in secular music, the guys at Brash have a unique vantage point on the rest of the Christian music industry, and they have some stirring observations. "I expected a kinder, gentler industry," says McQ, "but it's not. It's the same. It shocked me: the same sort of greed and backstabbing that goes on as in the rest of the music world."

Steve Jones

Jones concurs, and adds that, "overall, it is more judgmental." He notes that people in Christian music seem quick to brand music as "non-Christian" even though it may have a very compelling spiritual message. He also believes that people tend to be less aggressive in marketing in the Christian world.

Unfortunately for budding Christian musicians, the guys at Brash note that a lot of the music that's sent to them is just not very good. They comment that musicians from two specific genres seem to have a falsely inflated sense of their own abilities: Christian music and rap.

The business model in Christian music is different as well. The pair point out that it's harder to get Christian artists in mainstream stores like Target, Wal Mart, and Best Buy. The presence of Christian bookstores is an obvious difference but, says Jones, even those stores "are getting download fatigue now. They're not buying as many CDs." McQ believes that Christian music is about two years behind the rest of the world in the piracy pinch.

In the grand scheme of things, though, there are as many similarities as differences. "Ultimately, it's the same world," Jones notes. "If you have a hit song, it will find its way. Just give it a platform to launch, and a song will find a life of its own. Then make the path as obstacle-free as possible."

Not surprisingly, in the end, for Brash, it's all about the music.

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