- Place – London, England
- Time – 1992
- Artist – Toby
The next eighteen months would relieve me of both my sanity and $50,000.
The first six months was spent negotiating the deal with Toby’s family and their lawyer, his father had to sign the deal on Toby’s behalf as he was only sixteen.
The contract length would be for five years with options at the end of each year.
During first year there would be many trips to and from Louisiana.
I took my wife Sue to meet Toby’s family and we attended several more gigs.
I flew Toby and Baloo to London so we could go into the studio and make some tracks.
We recorded a number of titles looking for the magic single that would enable us to obtain the major record deal.
The mixture of the computer rhythms and live instruments coupled with a few Cajun lyrics really turned the tracks into very commercial songs and went far beyond my expectations.
I explained to Baloo we should put out a single ourselves to create interest, saying this track would be from Toby’s forthcoming album.
Baloo quickly replied,
“That won’t work, Toby hasn’t released the first three albums yet.”
I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, I’m guessing not.
The Record Companies
Armed with this wonderful new material, I managed to arrange meetings with the heads of almost every major record company in the UK.
I was selling this idea as a whole package of something new, for a PR company it would seem like a dream scenario.
As well as a new sounding music the idea had an untapped history of Louisiana, Cajun food and song lyrics that used Creole language.
Sadly they didn’t share my enthusiasm but each rejection made me more determined to make the project successful.
One record company MD said to me,
“I love the music and the idea, but how do we pigeonhole him?”
“How did they pigeonhole Elvis, The Beatles, David Bowie?” I asked.
“That was then, this is now,” he replied.
After several of these encounters my perseverance eventually paid off and finally secured a deal with a record company.
Unfortunately I was eleven months into my contract with the artist, to pick up the second year option I had to pay fifteen thousand dollars, which I didn’t have.
My only option was to fly to New Orleans for an urgent meeting with Toby, Baloo and their lawyer.
I wanted to let them know I would need a small extension to my contract whilst I completed the paperwork with the record company.
I arrived in New Orleans on the 10th of October, it was a Sunday.
That evening we all met up and went out for dinner, we discussed the fabulous news that a major record deal had finally been offered.
All seemed well.
The Lawyer Meeting
The next morning Baloo and Toby were to arrive at my hotel at 10:30am, we would leave together for the 11:00am meeting at their lawyer’s offices.
At 10:45am there was no sign of Baloo.
I phoned him at home and to my astonishment his wife informed me he had gone straight to the lawyers for a 10:00am meeting. I was furious and jumped into a cab to the lawyer’s office.
On arriving at the meeting, I could feel the atmosphere in the room. It was dark and I smelt treachery and greed.
I raised the issue of the meeting time but Baloo denied we had arranged to meet at the hotel and was also adamant that he told me the meeting was at 10:00am.
I told them I would need a six-to-eight week extension on our contract whilst I completed the deal with the record company and was told by the lawyer,
“This was something I would need to discuss with my clients.”
With my blood boiling I said, through gritted teeth,
“Well, you’d better discuss it with them now. I have flown in from the UK to sort this out. I’ve also spent the last eighteen months of my life on this project plus I’ve re-mortgaged my home to the sum of $50,000 to make this happen.”
It was decided there would be another meeting later that week on Friday afternoon.
Feeling very despondent after the meeting I returned to my hotel, checked out and took a cab to New Orleans airport.
I phoned my wife Sue from the airport saying I was coming home immediately as I was convinced they were going to screw me.
Texas Bound
Sue, as always, calmed me down and suggested that, after all the time and money we had put in, I should stay until Friday and attend the meeting.
Not wanting to stay in New Orleans I took a flight to Austin, Texas and booked in to the Embassy Suites Hotel, somewhere I was very familiar with and liked very much.
Although I had many friends in Austin I didn’t feel much like socialising so I stayed in the hotel until the Friday morning then checked out and returned to New Orleans
I arrived at the lawyers office and went into the meeting.
After an hour or so of discussion I was assured everything would be fine. Everyone said they understood the amount of time, effort and money I had put into this project and we should all forge ahead.
I flew back to the UK realising it was over. Even if we did continue on as planned the trust had been broken.
My contract with Toby was due to run out on the first day of November.
Right on time, on the morning of the 1st of November I received a call from my lawyer and he hit me with the news.
“Kenny are you sitting down? I have just received a fax from Toby’s lawyer stating they no longer require the services of Mr. Denton and that they will go ahead and sign with the record company direct.”
I was very hurt but not really that surprised, the greed had set in and the inevitable happened.
I sat down and reflected on what had ever possessed me to embark on such a ridiculous adventure with such ridiculous people.
There many other uncomfortable situations I had in Louisiana.
Lunch with a difference
I recall one particular afternoon, after having lunch in Lafayette with Baloo, he wanted to drop in and see a friend of his.
We arrived unannounced and entered the house, there were several guys in the living room.
It felt like we had interrupted some sort of meeting.
I was offered a coffee and asked a series of stupid questions,
“Does it ever rain in England?”
“Had I ever met the Queen?”
Then one particularly unpleasant character asked,
“Do you have black people in England?”
“Yeah” I replied,
”Do they cause all the trouble?” he continued,
“Some do, some don’t.” I answered.
He looked me straight in the eyes and then said,
“I’m a racist, I hate all blacks”.
Feeling very uneasy, I really didn’t want to spend another second in this house or with these guys.
When he then asked me if I would like a refill for my coffee I declined, saying I had to get back to my hotel as I was waiting for an urgent phone call and I beat a hasty retreat back to the car.
On the way back Baloo, who you could be sure that he would say something amazingly stupid everyday, said to me,
“Hey Kenny do you know how to tell a good Cajun woman?”
“No idea” I said with a due sense of indifference,
“Man, she can look at a field of rice and tell you how much gravy it would need.”
From Louisiana to London
In the end
The conclusion to this adventure was that Toby did sign the record deal and he did go on to record the album with his band, but he left out two crucial ingredients, the modern computer-techno style and me.
They got their advance and spent the rest of the money making an unimpressive, run of the mill, Cajun album which was never released in the USA and only scraped a few low-level European releases.
Toby to this day is probably still playing chicken bars around Louisiana and as for Baloo?
Well, who knows?
Sorry, I meant to say, who cares?
When you sign to a major label you claim to have inked the best contract ever, you mention artistic freedom and a guaranteed 5 album deal.
When you get dropped you INSIST that it was the worst contract ever and you asked to be let go.
Not all gigs are straight forward
Various shor,t hopefully funny stories
One funny night, how somethings just never go right
The start of a wonderful journey
A night to remember
One cool guy
Let the nightmare begin
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related