Dynamic indie-rockers Calhoun have just signed a deal with Fontana Distribution, the indie sales, marketing, and distribution arm of the largest music company in the galaxy, Universal Music Group.
(Universal Music Group Distribution, according to its web site, has been “the market share leader for the past seven years” and distributes the music of artists from such diverse major labels as Interscope, Lost Highway, Island Def Jam, Hollywood, Motown, and many more.) The deal is non-traditional in the best sense of the word. Calhoun will retain copyrights on all of its material and also a lion’s share of the financial returns. Fontana “will work radio as well as retail,” said Calhoun frontman Tim Locke. “So, you know, we help, too. It’s a co-op, a partnership.” The deal is not with Calhoun specifically – distribution companies don’t distribute bands but albums.
It’s with the indie-record label with which Calhoun has recently chosen to work, Artist Garage, home of Angels & Airwaves and the solo project of Band Of Horses’ Tyler Ramsey, among others. In early September in United States and Canada, Artist Garage via Fontana will begin distributing the band’s most recent album, Falter.Waver.Cultivate, the stellar follow-up to the band’s equally stellar sophomore effort, an eponymous LP released in 2006. Talks began last spring around the time of the annual SXSW Music Festival in Austin, where Calhoun played a sanctioned showcase. The band signed on about a month ago. With the recent addition of a new publicist, Locke thinks Calhoun has “all the tools in place to give it a real shot.”
Plus, Artist Garage was co-founded, in 2007, by Jayne Simon and Mike Regan, who boast more than 50 years in combined industry experience, having worked in senior positions at big-time labels such as A&M Records, CBS/Sony, Geffen, and MCA. Simon and Regan’s “knowledge and ability to anticipate is ballistic,” Locke said.
Check out www.myspace.com/calhoun and www.fontanadistribution.com.
