Album Capsules
by Mark E. Waterbury
Unwritten Law - Live Music in High Places
Click here for the review
Erik Norlander - Music Machine
Click here for the review
Evanescence - Fallen
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Q-Ball - In Space
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The Codetalkers with Col. Bruce Hampton
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Cider - Sugarcoat
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Carrie Newcomer - The Gathering of Spirits
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Big Fat Jam - Welcome to Wonderland
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Agatha Crawl - Insolence
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Steve Gibb - Zig Zag
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Crossroads: Pat Kim - Unwritten Law's Bassist
by Mark E. Waterbury
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Industry Profile - Jim Pitulski - President of Inside Out America
by Mark E. Waterbury
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Unsigned Musician Spotlight: Erik Norlander
by Mark E. Waterbury
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Scott Turner's Song Publisher's Perspective
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Music Biz Opportunities
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Music Industry Marketing Showcase
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Copyright 2004 by Music Morsels, a Serge Entertainment Publication.
Editor: Sandy Serge
Contributing Columnists/Writers:
Mark E. Waterbury, Scott Turner
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 TM© May 2003
Unsigned Musician Spotlight: Erik NorlanderBy Mark E. Waterbury
Artist Name: Erik Norlander
Musical Genre: Progressive Rock
Birthplace: Hollywood, CA
Current Residence: Woodland Hills, CA
Years In Music Biz: 20
Number Of Cds Sold: 70,000 of two previous releases
Size Of Fan Base: 100,000 worldwide
Web Site: www.thetank.com
Email: eriknorlander@thetank.com
 MM: When did you start playing music professionally?
EN: In high school I started playing in bands, and I started doing session work for other bands as well as jingles and commercials. I was starting to make a living at it at a pretty young age, and I figured even if I could make a modest living at it that was what I wanted to do. Music was something I had always loved and really motivated me more than anything else. I thought it would be great to make a living doing something I loved to do so much.
MM: Have you always been a songwriter as well?
EN: Yeah, about every album that I've worked on in one way or another I've at least done some writing, and on my three solo albums I did all of the writing.
MM: What was behind your forming Think Tank Media?
EN: Back in the early 90's I had a band called Rocket Scientists, and we were just coming out of the pop metal era. Our songs were a bit more complicated and artistic and not so boneheaded singsong stuff. But we continually tried to dumb the music down to try to get a record deal. We made it sound more commercial and simple and we actually got some label offers but they wanted to push us even more simple and commercial and even tried to replace our singer who along with me was one of the chief songwriters. That was not what we were into, so we went back into the studio and decided not to cater to the industry so much. We recorded a whole album and pressed up a thousand copies and sent them to all the usual suspects. We also sent copies to all these underground fanzines and fan groups. We had an overwhelming response from the prog rock community that was still there and had been into bands like Marillion, Dream Theater and even Rush. There was a big underground movement and we received a lot of praise and support from this community and were encouraged by them to really stretch out and go more artistic and progressive. We sold those thousand copies in no time at all, and I basically formed Think Tank Media as a vehicle to release that album and try to get us a record deal with a larger company. What started as a real mechanical entity turned out to be a real practical platform to release albums. And here I am ten years later with a vibrant mail order business, label partners and three different territories we license our albums to.
MM: Does it seem like prog rock is easier to sell in Europe than in the States?
EN: Definitely. I used to think it was just northern Europe, but we've actually seen really good sales in Italy and Spain as well. The prog movement kind of gets combined with the goth metal movement, there are a lot of fans of both styles.
MM: Why did you feel the States are slower to pick up on prog rock?
EN: I think that the major labels have inundated the music stores, radio and TV with their mass market product - corporate rock bands that have one of two strong songs that are played over and over and really crammed down our throats. It takes up a lot of space and radio and television. That makes it harder for less commercial, more artistic music to get through.
MM: So what do you feel bands that are less commercial and more artistic have to do to get noticed in the States?
EN: First you have to accept that you are never going to have the sales that a commercial artist would have, that's just the nature of things. You have to persevere and stick with it and keep on doing it just like any business. I released my first album about ten years ago and in that time I have produced or recorded around twenty albums for myself, for my wife Lana Lane and for other artists. And only now am I really starting to get noticed in the States. If I had given up two years after I started most people would never know who I was. Because I was able to persevere and make a living off of foreign markets it is allowing me to get notice in my own country. It's taken a lot of work, working seven days a week and a lot of eighteen hour days.
MM: In 1997 you released your first true solo effort, "Threshold." What made you feel that was the time to do that?
EN: I had done two albums with Rocket Scientists and two albums with Lana Lane as well as working with other people. I really tried to write and play for those projects as a keyboardist, not soloing through the whole album and taking a back seat basically. At the same time I had all these songs and ideas inside me that I wanted to bring out, and I figured the best way to do that would be to make an instrumental rock solo album with just a trio of keyboards, bass and drums. I had all these pieces written and we recorded the album and it was almost a fun thing. I never thought it would really sell but when it came out, it was really embraced by the prog community. Then my second solo album "Into the Sunset" had vocals and guitars on it and definitely had a more progressive metal and European influence.
MM: Talk about your upcoming release "Music Machine."
EN: With "Into the Sunset", I realized that the evolution of prog rock had come to include metal, and bands like Dream Theater had really paved the way for that progression. Taking bands like Yes and E.L.P. and combining them with elements of Metallica and Black Sabbath. I really got into albums of those types and tried to do that on "Into the Sunset." I got a lot of my heroes to play on the album and tried to make it the catharsis of what I was into and listening to. When it came time to do "Music Machine", I wanted to fuse "Into the Sunset" and "Threshold." There was quite a dichotomy between the two albums and different people seemed to like the different elements so I wanted to bridge that. I didn't want to alienate one set of fans over the other so I really worked on combining the ambient lush electronic styles with the modern heavier styles. And that concept became "Music Machine" and it came out better than I could have imagined. I had a list of musicians I wanted to work with on it and a list of alternates in case the first choices were not available, and all of the original choices decided to do it.
MM: What do you feel it took to get you to the point were your career has enough credibility that you can get so many top players to play on your album?
EN: It's sort of a two fold answer. First you have to be good; you can't just be a guy with an attitude and a guitar writing songs in your bedroom and expecting the greatest musicians in the world to come knocking on your door. I was making albums for seven years and learning a lot about songwriting, production and engineering, and of course, working on my playing, trying to be as great as I could. By the time I was able to attract these musicians I was releasing albums for a while and was starting to build a reputation of my own. A lot of these people heard of me already, and others had been introduced to me by other associations I made over the years, and that was the case with a number of the musicians on "Music Machine." It's really a question of building a rep and then building relationships.
MM: What are some of your marketing plans for "Music Machine?"
EN: We have our web site, of course. We have our mailing and e-mailing lists, and we have a distribution company that we work with. We do try to use the internet as much as possible, getting on as many web sites as possible and utilizing a network of journalists. It's really a grass roots effort in that respect. I also do a lot of technical work for music companies such as Alesis and Line-6, and I've recorded music for them as well. I try to use that as a guerilla tactic to get my name in the trade magazines. And when you release an album in multiple territories, in Asia and Europe and South America, you get a lot of cross promotion between those areas and it usually finds its way into the U.S. A lot of indie record store owners and mail order catalogs will hear about it that way. We try to connect all of those partners and elements as well.
MM: Do you feel that "Music Machine" has the potential to take your career to the next level and why?"
EN: I really do. I think it is the best album I have done to date and contains all the elements that represent me, where in the past, you haven't seen the whole picture of what I am all about. I'm very proud of that. This is going to be the first album that will be released world wide with a good campaign in all the territories. It's getting the proper send off and I'm really excited about that.
~~~Watch for Erik Norlander's CD release "Music Machine" toward the end of May, 2003! See Erik Norlander perform as a special guest with Kelly Keeling & Sun at 14 Below in Santa Monica, CA on May 15!
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