“We’re not an independent label. We’re a pissed-off startup. That’s what I call it,” says producer Joey Moi, one of the three chiefs of Big Loud Records, along with Seth England and Joey Moi. It’s good rhetoric, but at the very least, Big Loud gets to be both those things, when they’re not being mistaken for a major, with a level of success that includes the biggest male artist in the music business, Morgan Wallen.
Ask the three principals which labels that preceded them were most inspirational in Big Loud’s path, and they don’t cite any of the most obvious Nashville antecedents. Instead, England quietly walks over to his shelf and pulls down what is apparently the personally most treasured piece of physical music product in his office: a Motown boxed set that came in a package shaped like the house at 2648 West Grand Blvd. in Detroit, where it all began.
“Hitsville USA,” he says, naming the boxed set he’s proudly holding up. “I obsessed over the Berry Gordy story…
“But I had read stories of folks for years. It’s not just Motown. Craig would say A&M…” (Early in his journey to becoming a label head, Wiseman was signed to Rondor Publishing, a division of A&M, as an up-and-coming songwriter.) “I mean, it can come in all shapes and sizes, like John Janick and Fueled by Ramen,” England continues. “Just from an entrepreneurial side of things, I’d give a shout-out to Clive Calder and Jive Records and Zomba [Publishing, the mecca of ’90s boy bands]. As a nerdy student of the game, I found there was something to be learned about his strategy as an entrepreneur when it came to his global distribution deals.
“But Motown… One time I was in Detroit and they let me take a tour of the building by myself, and it was a day that just changed me forever. You know, we were already on our cultural path, but it really just reinforced for me that you don’t have to be the big major label in the big building to do something that they even envy. And Motown was a very much a Smokey Robinson company too; Smokey had just as much insight and effect on what was going on, and I think about that all the time.”
Which ties directly on how Big Loud Records was founded 10 years ago and built upon the earlier foundation that was Big Loud Publishing. England says Motown’s mojo — and or his own company’s — is “hard to harness and really hard to create. But you’ve gotta do it by including the songwriters and the creators. You know, we have a staff lunch here in the record label building, and sure enough, our songwriters in sweatpants start coming through and filling up their plates, and they’re on staff too. That’s got complexities to it, but more times than not, the supernatural happens because of it. And the artists and songwriters end up becoming often best friends.”
In fact, England continues, “Morgan and Ernest [the songwriter-artist who goes by a single name] met in the hallway of Big Loud, and they sat down for an hour and realized they played against each other in high school, in two back-to-back state championship games. They reconnected in our hallway, and now they’re creatively inseparable. And that just wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t create that environment much like Motown, A&M and others.”
Of course, a huge point of pride is that they literally own that environment. “We are absolutely and adamantly independent,” says Wiseman. “In early days, even as a publishing company, I turned down many, many, many, many offers, to stay independent. We’ve remained independent. And of course there’s things we have to do, distribution deals and ancillary things. And we’re very good friends with Universal staff and work with them some. But nobody owns us. Nobody finances us. Everything has been out of pocket. People ask, ‘How’d you start your label?’ Well, we all put in money, and nobody got a paycheck from this label for frigging years. With other guys around Nashville, their whole idea of ‘here’s how you start a label’ — ‘well, first you gimme a million dollars, then…’ No. Guess what? If you wany yo do an independent label, you’re like any small business, you get paid last, and so you don’t get paid at all for a long time.”
Says England, “I can say to Joey, I agree, I’m a pissed off startup. I don’t care how big we get — if we ever lose that, then we’ve lost the mission. … (Big Machine founder) Scott Borchetta is his own kind of entrepreneur too. Through the prime Florida Georgia Line years, we were helping steer that ship [when that duo was a Big Machine management client, signed to Big Machine], I bet I went to a thousand marketing meetings in his building, so I got such a close front-row seat. And he himself was a pissed off startup. Not to speak for him, but he was offered many times to go take the keys to the big building — you know, ‘Which major one would you like?’ — because of his skill set and resume. But I think in his very fabric, he enjoys being the chip-on-his-shoulder entrepreneur, because he gets up quicker out of bed for that.
“And so there was a lot to be learned from Scott in the early days. The only difference is, he didn’t have a publishing company, originally — but if you look now, they have one of the most competitive publishing companies in town. He just did it a little bit in reverse, but kind of got to that destination all the same. He’s got a great development engine there. And yeah, he’s definitely a pissed-off startup.”
What they feel makes their label so different is that it was basically founded atop an already successful song publishing company. It’s no coincidence that two of their more thriving artists, Hardy and Ernest, are country music Supermen — sorry, touring headliners — who still double as mild-mannered songwriters by day. Wiseman was a country writing titan before he became a label mogul, and still gets his hands dirty, as it were, co-writing with relative newcomers. Even recent signee Miranda Lambert gets involved in co-writing songs for other artists. And Morgan Wallen has been known to write 2-3 fresh tunes a day if that particular writers’ room is a fruitful one.
“On our business cards, it all says ‘publisher’ first,” says Moi. “And that stat wouldn’t exist — and Morgan wouldn’t exist — without all of the great songwriters and collaborators that have come along the way. To me that’s the nucleus, and we’re just trying to be as close to the nucleus as we can, and push it in the right direction and use it for our advantage. But there’s dozens and dozens of really great kids that have shown up along the way and offered their best ideas and best moments for those projects.”
Wiseman: “And because Morgan is so brave, [songwriters] will say, ‘Oh my God, I can say shit that I was never supposed to say in a song. In fact, if I don’t say it, I’ll never even make the cut for Morgan.’In fact, one of our dear friends that used to write for us and has a bunch of Morgan cuts, when the album was over, told me, ‘Man, writing is hard when I’m not writing knowing Morgan is out there to listen to it. God, man, it’s just so boring.’ And I was like, how proud that we’re a part of that, where these songwriters are just going, ‘That’s what it’s all about.’”
It would be tempting to call Big Loud Records the house that Wallen built — his success has been that oversized in an environment where fewer superstars are coming along, let alone ones who are breaking records for No. 1 chart streaks. But it’s more the house that songs built, and Wallen just turned it into a castle.
England says, “Another superpower Morgan has is he’s such a self-starter. We don’t have to call him to say, ‘Hey, are you ready to make some music? Are you feeling creative again?’ Our text thread with Joey this morning was a very active thread and it was Morgan excited to get going; he’s written eight or 10 things [for the next record following “I’m the Problem,” the chart-dominating 36-song collection that came out in May]. He’s intense when he is in that mode too; he’s all-consumed with it.”
Moi adds with a laugh, “I got a terrifying text message from him just a few weeks after [‘Problem’] was released: ‘Man, I think I’m ready to start cutting more songs.’ The record just dropped! He is ready to go, and I’m going, ‘All right, let me get this calendar sorted here, buddy.’ As soon as I got that text, I was like, ‘Uh-oh, shit… time to get going again.’”
But that’s how it goes in Hitsville, Tennessee.