Morris Higham Management

CLIENTS: Kenny Chesney, Old Dominion

HIGHLIGHTS: Kenny Chesney’s Blue Chair Bay Rum, self-funded, created from scratch and the biggest independent spirit launch since Casamigos.

Old Dominion’s four #1s, headlining dates and readying their second album.

THOUGHTS ON THE “NEW” NASHVILLE:
It’s good and it’s bad. The financial model has shifted so much; the creative producers who are finding acts early and then curating their “sound” and songs are asking for these long-term agreements, saying “I’ll get you a deal within a block of time.” And they’re taking 10% in many cases. So young artists are looking at paying out 50% of their income in commissions, especially with 360 deals.

For the labels, it’s the question of how long can they sustain with the earnings—because of streaming—now equating to pennies on the dollar? Country isn’t global the way hip-hop is, but our acts tour; it’s how the artists pay the bills. It used to be labels brought the acts to us, ready to go to radio. This model has, in some ways, taken the gamble away from the A&R departments. It’s bespoke for the artist, with the writer/producer creating a sound or a collection of music that is the artist. And it’s not bad in the sense that Kenny was a writer, and he came up though the publishing system with a real sense of what a song was; he could go from publisher to publisher looking for songs, which a lot of these acts can’t.