Country’s Declaration of Independents

Other indies have also hit it big in Nashville: Curb, home to LeAnn Rimes, and Clint Black's Equity Music Group, which boasts platinum-selling Little Big Town, among them. Two more Nashville indies were announced this week, including John Michael Montgomery's Stringtown Records, but it's Big Machine that is clearly out ahead. Just two weeks ago Big Machine announced the launch of a sister imprint, the Valory Music Co. (The name is a variation on June Carter Cash's first name, Valerie, just spelled a little … manlier.)

One of Valory's first artists is Jewel, the 30-million-album-selling pop songstress, who says she has waited years for the chance to put out a country album. But don't think she's just being trendy, or that it's all those years of living with her rodeo-cowboy boyfriend, Ty Murray, in Texas that have rubbed off. Jewel has always been more than a little bit country; while she was growing up on a homestead in Alaska without running water or electricity, she was singing and playing country music. "We never bought groceries except for sugar and salt," she says. "It was all gardening and vegetables and canning and jamming. In the pop world, I really had to quit talking about my childhood, because they didn't understand any of it," says Jewel. "They'd be like, 'Was it a hippie commune?'" But in the country world the same stories could make for the perfect hit song.

In fact, the very themes in the songs of country music—hard-luck living, risk-taking, love, and blind faith—are often the same attributes needed in the business of country music. Jewel recognizes the risk of turning down lucrative direct-distribution deals from Wal-Mart, Starbucks and Target. "I took a gamble. I went for the long-term thing and took a risk on it," she says. "Only time will tell if I was foolish or not. But as far as any of the labels go, Scott's was the one that I was most excited about. We're both hungry and trying to make this work." Her new album was recorded over two days in Nashville and will be released in June next year. And just how deep are those country roots? "Some of these I wrote when I was 16," she says of the songs. "Old cowboy waltz music that has yodeling in it."

While each new week brings either alarm ("the death of the record industry!") or the next "new" business model (like Madonna's $120 million deal with Live Nation or Radiohead's pay-what-you-feel strategy), the only the real constant in all of this is that there isn't one. Borchetta knows it sounds earnest, or, in his words, a bit "Pollyanna," but what's working for him in the business of independent music is the same skill needed in music in general. "If you listen," Borchetta says, "people will tell you exactly what they want—whether it's a business relationship or a consumer relationship. It's pretty obvious when somebody likes one of our songs or they don't."

© 2007