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10 Questions with ... Haley & Michaels
October 20, 2019
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BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
Dubbed "artists to watch" by both Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post, Haley & Michaels' Shannon Haley and Ryan Michaels have been working tirelessly to promote their current single, "Hail Mary," to Country radio. But that's not the only place the song - which is the title track from their recently released album - has been getting exposure. It was featured earlier this year in the Netflix film "Walk. Ride. Rodeo," the story of paralyzed barrel racer Amberley Snyder, and a partnership with the San Francisco 49ers has the team promoting the song at games and on its social media pages. They have also enjoyed support from CMT, SiriusXM's "The Highway" and have been featured on numerous Spotify playlists, amassing more than 20 million streams. First signed to Sony/ATV as songwriters, they later became the flagship artist when the publishing company reactivated a long dormant label, Hickory Records, signing them to that label and partnering with RED Distribution. Haley & Michaels wed in 2015.
1. You've had a great deal of success as largely independent artists. Talk a little bit about that DIY model and the challenges of doing almost everything yourselves.
RM: It's an interesting thing. We are independent. We've also had some incredible supporters, like [KRTY San Jose GM] Nate Deaton, and John Marks at Spotify, who a huge advocate for new music. When you have people in those positions that will actually give new artists a voice, it changes the landscape.
[While] we were able to kind of do our own thing, we've had some incredible people step up and support us. We signed a deal with Sony/ATV's Danny Strick, who's the [Co-]President in New York. He was on board and opened a label, Hickory Records, and partnered with RED Music, and still was open to us as artists remaining self-managed and kind of driving it.
Long story short, I think that, as the artists, whether you're signed or not, you're the driving force. It's your career and your music ... For people that are self starters and really passionate about what they're doing, there's the John Marks' and the Nate Deatons, and we found lots of other people in the industry as well, lots of radio stations, that have really stuck their neck out for us and given us a shot.
SH: In some ways it's never been more crowded than it is right now with music and so much talent, so many artists, whether that be on major labels, independent labels, or just completely independent artists. And in other ways it is an exciting time because there are people who are willing to take chances on something new if they believe in it. We've been really fortunate to have a lot of those people support us.
At the same time, it's a grind. We live and breathe it. We don't have a separation between our work and personal life. It's kind of all one thing. The good news is it's our dream, and we are doing what we love. So when we're working, we're passionate about it and we are lucky that we get to do it together. But it is a complete lifestyle.
2. What specifically are you doing for yourselves that an artist signed to a major label wouldn't be?
SH: We kind of are accidentally self-managed. We never intended for that to be our path, but we just started doing what we had to do to keep moving forward. And we've made mistakes along the way. We've been learning. We've been seeking advice from different mentors. We do everything, whether it's advancing shows, or booking shows.
RM: Ebie McFarland is an incredible person and publicist, and she's been with us the whole time. And, we have Matt Malcolm at WME. Really great people. At the same time, just because you have a team doesn't mean that it's their job to do everything for you. What we found is that when you get out there and just make things happen, and help point people in a direction, that's the driver. You can have a team, but it doesn't mean you can sit back and wait for them and blame them if nothing happens. So that's kind of been our motto. And it's been really incredible to have Danny Strick and the folks at Sony/ATV supporting that.
3. You mentioned KRTY's Nate Deaton, who told me he's your unofficial manager ...
SH: Oh, he is. He also A&R'd the album. We don't do anything without Nate's stamp of approval ... He's honest, which is really valuable.
RM: He's been a huge champion, not just for us, but he's one of the people that will stick his neck out for new artists in general ... We actually played a New Year's show when we had just started our duo, and Gary Scott Thomas, who is one of the morning show hosts, heard us and passed the music on to Nate and [PD] Julie [Stevens], and that's how we ended up meeting the folks at KRTY. They played our first demo.
4. What's the history of Hickory Records?
SH: It's really cool. There's a lot of history. It was Roy Acuff's label, and Sony/ATV had the rights to it. We had been working on new music with our producers, Zach Abend and Matt McVaney, and we had just been doing it on our own. And the first person ever to hear the new music was Danny Strick. When he heard it, he wanted to get involved in more than just publishing. And that was where his idea came from to open up Hickory. It originated in Country and we're Country, and so there was a lot of synergy.
RM: We're the only artists on the label. He went to RED Music and partnered, so it's Hickory/RED Music, which is Sony/ATVs new label imprint. He really resonated with our music, for sure. More than anyone, he got it right away. But I think he also understood us as people and understood we're definitely not looking to do everything ourselves, nor can we. But I think he saw the way we do things and he was open to it, which is really rare to have a collaborative relationship with someone that's essentially running the label.
5. Have you done the dance of trying to get a major label deal too?
SH: We wanted to get this thing started on our own, and Danny just felt like the right person to do that with. So we just went for it. We didn't over think it ... This was the first label that we met with with our new music.
RM: Our thought with it was always just to keep our heads down and go. And what we've been finding is that as things start to happen, people start to get in touch with you. I think that our angle and our advice would be to get out there and make it happen for yourself.
6. You've been all over the country visiting radio. Who's booking that for you and how are you getting those doors open?
RM: We've had some really incredible people put their hand up and believe in us and dive in. One of those people is Rick Hughes, who is an incredible radio [promotion] guy. He's worked at lots of different labels, majors and independents. He's someone who we met when we were at another label, and we had so much chemistry and success with him that he dove in here with us. So in this next chapter [of our careers], he's really been driving it. And then we also have the support of Danny Strick and the folks at RED Music in New York, Danny Buch and Michael Chase, that have relationships, and they've been open to picking up the phone. It's the wild, wild West.
SH: We've visited over 120 stations in the past year ... Rick Hughes has been with us for all of the radio visits. We've been going all over the place. It makes no geographical sense, but we go where anyone will see us. It's exhausting and energizing at the same time. It's funny how much energy you have for it when it's your shot.
7. Are you finished with the radio tour now?
SH: The radio visits are ongoing, and we figure they will always be a part of our career.
RM: Something that I think is important to understand as artists is that a lot of the radio programmers are in it for the right reasons because they love music and they want to help and they want to believe, [so it's about] understanding that it's not all about what they can do for you, but what can you do for them? It's a partnership, and if they invest really valuable real estate that everybody wants of their station in supporting you, we're always trying to look at what can we do for them to legitimately support the station and, hopefully, grow together. Understanding that has been really helpful for us.
8. How did your affiliation with the San Francisco 49ers come about?
SH: We wrote the song "Hail Mary" at a time in our lives where we were just struggling in our music career [and] the industry. Doing it ourselves, we started to wonder if we were crazy. So that song came from that place for us emotionally. And we're also diehard football fans. So, at the point in time in a game where you throw a hail mary, that kind of inspired the song. Then we reached out through a friend that knew the Niners.
RM: Specifically, just to preface, before the 49ers we had this call from Sony saying that it had been placed in a Netflix movie called "Walk. Ride. Rodeo." This was before it was a single or anything like that. It was a really incredible, uplifting story, and it got it started. And as we started taking it out and sharing it with our friends at radio, and with John Marks at Spotify, things were happening with it. So we just reached out to the 49ers, the football team we grew up watching. We didn't really expect anything from it. A friend of ours who used to work there told us he was putting a word in, and we just didn't really know if anything was going to come from it. Then we were on a flight and got an email from the President of the 49ers inviting us to Levi's Stadium to meet with the front office. We had no idea of what we were walking into. When we got there, they had the Haley & Michaels logo all over the stadium.
SH: They had jerseys made. I was trying not to cry the whole time because I couldn't believe it. Ryan was mute for the first time in his life. He said nothing.
RM: They asked us if we wanted to perform halftime at a game, and I threw out the date of "Monday Night Football" and they said that would be great. So that happened. And then the team VP, Rob Alberino, asked us if we wanted to make a music video. Then they had us come back out to Levi's Stadium and shoot a new video [for "Hail Mary"].
SH: They built a stage and put it right in the middle of the stadium, and it was just us alone in the stadium at nighttime and our logo was floating up in the sky basically, and they had fog, and it was just a dream come true. That's the performance version. Then they made a version where they inserted clips of the Niners throughout the years of the franchise throwing hail marys at the catch, things like that.
RM: They premiered that on October 7th at the "Monday Night Football" game where we performed at halftime. Within the NFL, the 49ers really started getting the song out there for us and putting it out across all their socials. They've been incredibly supportive.
9. You talked about "Hail Mary" being born out of some adversity you've experienced in your career. Can you talk about some of those tough times that ultimately inspired the song?
SH: We've been doing this for a little over five years now. We've had different moments of difficult times. It kind of goes in waves. It's a roller coaster. But earlier on, we had music out there on our own that, looking back, we probably shouldn't have released. It was more developmental. We hadn't really hit our stride, or found our sound, or captured it on recording. But it did get out there and we had some traction with it.
We started to build a little bit of a fan base, but we were passed on by labels early on. We've had some hard times overcoming that idea that people think we've been around for a while, and they think they know about our music, but all of this stuff is new. Those times can be tough. And as much as we've had amazing people step in early and support us, we've had people that have not given us the time of day, especially in Nashville, and that can be a really tough thing to overcome in this small town. So, moments like that have been inspiring for us creatively. [Laughs]
RM: We've had, as we said, a lot of incredible people put their hand up, and believe in us, and get behind us. And we have had that feeling of -- because we're out there doing our own thing and we released some music early -- people that made their mind up pretty quick and things that we've heard. For example, being on the "TODAY" show with Hoda [Kotb] and singing our wedding song ["Giving It All To You," which] was a Top 10 song on SiriusXM's "The Highway" and sold 50,000 copies and has eight million streams. [After that,] we heard there were some people around Nashville that thought we were just too sweet, singing love songs to each other, and that's [all] we did, when in reality we have a seven-piece band with two electric guitars. That was just one song. So sometimes the good and bad about it being a small town is that once people hear something and then it spreads around ... there's that feeling that people have made their minds up.
So you asked if Sony/ATV has gone to bigger labels to partners, and the answer is it actually just almost feels like there's no point other than just to go out there and make it happen for yourself and see if there's people that gravitate to what you're doing organically.
10. Tell us about your newly released album, which came out on October 4th.
SH: We are so excited. We've been working our whole career for this. It's called "Hail Mary" because we feel like it just represents this whole time in our lives, and it includes the first song that we ever wrote together, called "The Price I Pay," which was a breakup song. We fell in love writing that song, ironically. We have our wedding song, "Giving It All To You," in there, and then a bunch of music that's never been heard.
RM: And a new version of a song of ours called "Drinking About You" that, as we've been going out and meeting radio, looks like it will be our next single. So we're excited to have that on the album as well.
Bonus Questions
1. Your "meet cute" story is adorable. You grew up three miles apart from each other in Northern California, but didn't meet until you both moved to Nashville. Can you share more?
SH: We had all these missed connections. I used to buy my sheet music for the piano at his family-owned a music store, from his grandma and never met him.
RM: I went the high school that was basically in her back yard but got kicked out.
SH: We were both playing with the same electric guitar player, and he eventually connected us and said that we should meet. We met at the Frothy Monkey [in Nashville]. When we met, Ryan remembered that someone had tried to introduce us before.
RM: Our moms apparently had a mutual friend seven years prior that had tried to introduce us and we did, in fact, connect on MySpace. Yeah, I said MySpace. That's right. And we had all these kind of like flirtatious [messages]. It gets worse ...
SH: I was, like, in high school at the time or just starting college, and my dad was running my MySpace page. So my dad was responding to him ...
RM: ... with wink face [emojis]. I was like, "Let's make some music," and he was like, "That would be really great." We never connected though. But seven years later I get this message on Facebook because this mutual friend of ours had introduced us. I called [Shannon] and said, "Hey, I feel like we've done this dance before," and found out we were both from the Bay Area and grew up 49ers fans and fans of KRTY, and both got made fun of for loving Country music.
SH: That was one of the things we bonded over the most. Being from California at that time, Country music wasn't what it is now.
2. So you met at Frothy Monkey thinking you were going to make a musical collaboration?
SH: Yes.
RM: No.
SH: [Laughs] It was for me. I was at the point where I was just so focused on music. I was kind of over men ...
RM: But then she found a boy, and she found out I was completely immature. [Laughs] And I'm also very metaphysical, so I was already kind of there before we met, like all the missed connections [meant] we should get married. And then I was [thinking], "What do I do with my rock band?' And I'm like, "Well, we could break up and then I could start a duo." So while we were just making small talk at first, I was trying to map out how it could all work together. But she wouldn't go out with me at first. We were making music together before she would actually go out.
SH: Then once we started making music together, it got even more difficult for me because I felt so much chemistry in our voices and our songwriting that I just realized if we start a relationship and the relationship ends, then the music's going to be over, and that never ends well. So, it took a little bit.
3. You've played twice on "TODAY." What was the other performance besides when you played your wedding song?
SH: Later that year, they had a cancellation for a Christmas spot, and they invited us to come and sing our Christmas medley on the "TODAY" show. We were on the flight over there and they had a cancellation in the earlier hour and we ended up performing twice that day.
RM: I was the Jew in the hotel room learning "White Christmas." [Laughs] ... They didn't test me on that stuff at Hebrew school.
4. What's the story behind your wedding song?
SH: We were engaged and sat down to write our wedding vows, and accidentally wrote a song instead. We put it out just for fun and really didn't think that it would be much more than just something for us and our family and friends. I walked down the aisle to it. And we got a call. Apparently Hoda [Kotb] from the "TODAY" show was running on her treadmill and she heard the song playing and invited us to come perform it live on the show. So it was a really special moment for us, and surreal singing our wedding vows on the "TODAY" show and seeing Hoda in the corner singing along. It's definitely been the most rewarding thing for us so far that it has just started to become other people's wedding song as well, and connecting with people in that way.
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