Life Lessons with Shawn Kyle:

Interview with Ross Childress

Appearing:
June 23, 2007
Skippers Smokehouse, Tampa

Ross Childress was a founding member, lead guitarist, and co-songwriter of internationally renowned rock band Collective Soul, until personal differences lead to his departure in 2001. With over eight million in record sales in the USA alone, an artist of his experience has a unique perspective when it is time to start over from the ground up. With a new body of music being written and recorded under the innocent working title Starfish and Coffee, REAX asked Ross to give some advice for less experienced bands and songwriters that want to take it to the next level. 

As an experienced musician that came from being a local band in a small town to a multi-platinum selling group are there any insights that you can give to those just getting started?

1.  Some basic things… band names for starters. If you find that someone else has the band name, or you can't get a webpage (URL), or someone else has your (birth) name, unless you want to spend lots of dollars on legal, pick a band name that no one else has and go with it… something completely different.  Take Nirvana for example. They had already picked their name and released something on Sub Pop. Then, they are huge and sign to Geffen. There was another band with the same name from years before.  The original Nirvana (60's flower power group) sued them and then they had to pay something like 100,000 to keep the name. So, make sure you have an original name that no one else has.

2.  The next thing would have to be communication between the band members. You have to be able to talk with each other, and not keep any resentments or bad feelings.  Unless you can work with your band members by talking it out, the bad feelings will only grow as success grows. You have to be able to work things out in the beginning stage. As long as you're a team and you have it together, there will be no stopping you. 

3.  As long as you keep it together, keep at it, and keep banging on the industry door, then it will open sooner or later. Get the music on a form of media! Get out a real CD, and get a lawyer.  Currently my lawyer and I are concentrating on getting management.  I am better at playing music than representing myself as a business. I need a manager first and then I can start shopping out my album to the labels. Nowadays you can put something out by yourself. Some people are successful to an extent and some people have great success, but a label has the infrastructure set up already to get you into many different markets. They have the ability to get the music in more people’s hands. There is only so much you can do yourself as far as the business aspect goes, but the labels have it already set up.

4.  You have to be realistic and still be true to yourself.  You have to know who you are musically, where you are going, and what the scene is in the music marketplace. By knowing yourself and knowing your band, you can take a step back and see what place your style fits and then go in that direction.  There are also bands that can charter their own territory and make their own way in the business by cutting a new path, but in that case you also need to know what you're really up against.

www.myspace.com/starfishandcoffeeonline