Cliff Chenfeld

Born in Albany, NY, Cliff Chenfeld moved to Columbus, OH, with his family when he was 10, developing a lifelong passion for Buckeye football after attending Ohio State, though he remains a Yankee and Knick fan from his days on the East Coast. He met his Razor & Tie partner/co-founder Craig Balsam at NYU Law School, where they shared their musical passion by writing songs - like one called "Razor & Tie" about their mutual dissatisfaction with working as corporate attorneys. The two founded the record label of the same name in 1990, running it as a reissue/compilation company from Cliff's apartment, packaging 20-year-old hits into a series of best-selling albums they promoted on late-night TV through "The '70s Preservation Society," with an appropriately tongue-in-cheek spot that added, "Sorry! Not Available On 8-Track."

The two branched into reissues, then released new albums by Dar Williams, Graham Parker and Marshall Crenshaw, before launching the Kidz Bop series in 2001. The idea was to tap into the tween market - too old for Barney, too young for Britney Spears - by having pre-teens cover the Top 40 hits of the day, a series that has sold over 15 million albums and debuted more than 20 times in the Billboard Top 10, spawning the 24-hour SiriusXM Kidz Bop Radio channel, national tour and a recent UK launch. Razor & Tie branched into music publishing in 2007, scoring chart-topping Country hits with Blake Shelton and Jake Owen, among others. More recently, they have proven a power in the rock genre (and Rock radio, where they are the #1 indie label) with The Pretty Reckless, All That Remains, Starset and Red Sun Rising. In October, 2015, after stints with BMG and Sony for distribution, Razor & Tie entered a joint venture agreement with Concord Bicycle Music to form Razor & Tie Enterprises, LLC, to continue their strategic growth in a rapidly changing industry.

Where did your love of music first come from?

I owe it to my mother, who in 1969 took me to see James Brown on one night and then to the first Clearwater Music Festival on the Hudson River, where I got to meet Pete Seeger and Don McLean a few months later. She was playing me Dylan, Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel and Motown when I was very young. She is still a force to this day and every Tuesday night, as she has since 1970, leads the Ohio State Hillel folk dance group until all hours of the night. I sang a bit when I was younger. I was the song leader/cantor at a very open-minded synagogue in Columbus for three years during college and worked at a record store after graduation. My two main interests were music and progressive politics. But I ended up getting this corporate job and didn't really like it. Craig and I were both looking for something else to do. We started writing songs together, including a mediocre one called "Razor & Tie," about how we didn't want to be lawyers anymore.

Why start a compilation/reissue label in 1990?

We created this thing called the '70s Preservation Society, which got us a lot of publicity and we sold a great many compilations. CDs were first coming out, and people were replenishing their vinyl collections ... those in their 20s and 30s just starting to get nostalgic about their youth. And initially, they weren't even available at retail. It was all mail order via TV. Then we started doing reissues of albums by artists from Arthur Alexander to Merle Haggard. The first new artist we signed was Dar Williams, in 1995, and we had a wonderful nearly 20-year relationship with her.

And then, in 2001, came Kidz Bop, which put Razor & Tie on the map. What was the lightbulb moment?

At the time Craig and I came up with the concept, we each were raising families with young kids. And we started noticing parents getting uptight about their kids, who had been listening to Barney, hearing songs by Britney Spears, Eminem and 50 Cent on the radio. The kids were sort of stuck in between the two. We came up with something that would allow the kids to feel they were listening to contemporary music, while the parents were confident we would appropriately curate the content.

What gave you the idea to have youngsters themselves sing the songs?

We thought it would be more aspirational for the audience, they could relate to other kids singing these songs. Something to distinguish it from the originals. It clearly filled a need for the four-to-10-year-olds who want to feel empowered. It's a way for parents and children to share the decision about what to listen to, a collaborative thing. We've been able to service that market by catering to both parents and kids. It's led to a very successful, 60-city tour, and our own SiriusXM channel. We just launched Kidz Bop in the U.K. We've been able to take that idea and run with it.

You've achieved success in hard rock bands, an area that the majors are increasingly abandoning to the indies.

We see an audience that remains a healthy, if underserved, part of a culture. There are opportunities to reach that audience through live performance and radio, and to be very successful doing so -- if we all do our jobs. We operate like an indie, but with the ambition of a major label. We spend time and have the kind of patience the major labels can't really afford. We've developed credibility that has enabled us to work with a broader group of people.

And now you've established Washington Square as an alternative imprint.

We have indie/alternative acts like The Revivalists, and we've just signed a terrific L.A. band, Magic Giant, who are already off to a great start. We're taking the same skill set and applying it to a different genre of music, too and one that I love.

You have had a great deal of success in Nashville with your publishing company.

Craig has done a great job building our presence there. We have made a serious commitment to writers down there. We have offices there. We recognize that it is an important place for creative people, and it would be crazy not to be a part of it. We've also had some success in the indie singer/songwriter vein as well.

How has the 2015 deal with Concord Bicycle Music been working for you?

From a practical perspective, Craig and I have retained all the autonomy we would want. We run this as an independent label with the resources of a major. We've integrated our promotion department, headed by Kurt Steffek, into Concord's, under Jill Weindorf. And that's a benefit for us. They are happy with us working like we do, and coming to them when it makes sense, on the radio, sales or global side. Craig and I feel very lucky we managed to survive and flourish this long. We did things off the grid; we were never part of the mainstream record industry. But in many ways, we anticipated a great many of the changes - we're right in the middle of things now. There's a whole new generation of people we work with who have no idea what this business was like before, and that's kind of a pleasure on some level. I'm bullish on the future. There are all kinds of way to be successful with new music. We feel more connected now to what we're doing and the way the business is than ever before. The major labels have left us a space to do what we do, and I'm good with that.

As a political activist, does it surprise you how few musicians are trying to create modern-day protest anthems?

The '60s were an aberration in that protest music was also commercially popular. Has that ever happened before or since, where music was such a significant part of social change? Did pop music help fuel anti-prohibition or women's suffrage back in the early part of the 20th century? Not remotely like it did in the '60s. Our expectation, having grown up back then, is that tumultuous political times should be met with protest music, but that hasn't always been the case. Today, pop music is a genre in and of itself and is not heavy on the topical or political. Maybe it's because of the proliferation of corporate sponsorship, the fear of offending someone, political correctness. It's probably made them more cautious and less willing to step out. If our current politics continue like this, I would think it would stir artists and musicians to eventually get the courage to speak out. I just don't know if it will ever be on the scale of Bob Dylan in 1965.