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Mike Renaud aka “Parkside”
March 5, 2021
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Mike Renaud aka “Parkside”, is the President of Hidden Pony Records & Management, one of Canada’s premiere talent development companies. As one of Canadian’s top music managers, Parkside has been responsible for discovering and developing some of Canada’s best known and musically important, as well as emerging artists including Sum 41, The Dirty Nil, Jeremy Fisher, Elbow, The Greenhornes, The Raconteurs, Jillea (recently signed to Universal Music), radio-ready alt rockers Kadeema, Country singer Ryan Langdon, ‘post-grunge and glam pop’ act The Effens, and Moscow Apartment.
He’s spent the past two decades in the Canadian music industry, building some of the country’s best known and musically important acts. Mike has demonstrated his abilities to identify raw talent, build momentum and then capitalize on that energy. His many accomplishments prove a thorough understanding of all the phases of an artist’s career from initial stage development, the recording process, team building, marketing initiatives, effective touring strategies, online promotions and strategies, synch and licensing as well as merchandising. Parkside’s independent spirit and out-of-the-box ideas became the foundation for his “Authentic Voice Philosophy” which has resulted in 20+ Juno nominations for his artists.
You’ve had quite the storied career, breaking in as an intern at the legendary Aquarius Records in Montreal. How did that internship set the table for everything that has followed?
It was my first “big break” and a huge lesson in being at the right place at the right time. At the time I had moved to Montreal and was playing drums in Parkside Jones and needed a reason to avoid getting a real job. I decided to go to Trebas Institute which was a career college specializing in the music industry. After graduation, I had volunteered to go to Toronto for Canadian Music Week to assist Trebas with a workshop they were sponsoring with the legendary recording engineer Bruce Swedien. I’m fairly certain I made my own way to Toronto and found my own place to stay, but I got a free badge to the conference as payment and soaked in everything I could. I got to hear Mr. Swedien talk about making “Thriller” and then met one of my future mentors, Rene LeBlanc, later that night at the hotel bar. He was a Trebas graduate and was also in charge of Artist Relations at Aquarius Records as well as Tacca Musique. I got back to Montreal and politely harassed him for about 2 weeks until he finally started letting me mail out packages. Rene was the consummate artist development person and taught me a lot about how to manage a relationship between artists and labels.
You were very influential in the early days of the careers of exceptional Canadian exports Sum 41. What was your role in helping them get to the next level(s)?
Even though the band would call me their Canadian A&R, I was functionally more their product manager. Legendary exec Rob Stevenson was their A&R and deserves all of those accolades. I really became the point of contact for all things Sum 41 at the label in Canada and was lockstep with management, the band, as well as their product manager at Island/Def Jam, Livia Tortella. I’m the same age as the guys so it was like having a best friend on the inside. Dave Brownsound is the godfather to my daughter so I had a very direct line to the band. I also share the same sense of humor so that helped a lot, since they used humor so effectively in their career. I would say that beyond the normal duties of a product manager, what I did best for them at the time was to re-assure the suits that we wouldn’t get sued and create as normal an environment for them when they came home.
Explain what it was like when the video for Jeremy Fisher’s song “Cigarette” went viral in 2007, when viral was just becoming a ‘thing.’
This was the age when there were maybe 4-5 videos on the front page of YouTube and then every 2-3 hours a new one would appear. If your video landed on the front page it was instant views. The process of selection was a secret (at least to us at the time) and we were transitioning Jeremy’s career from being on Sony Music to signing with Aquarius Records. Jeremy has always been industrious out-of-the-box thinker and set his mind to learning stop motion animation. He made the video for “Cigarette” on a budget of $50 and all of his time and we released it to promote the single. Our digital marketing person was a fellow named Tyler Bancroft who somehow managed to get it onto the front page and my phone and email blew up. In a matter of days, Jeremy and I were flown to New York where we met with a bunch of labels and ultimately signed a deal with Wind Up Records outside of Canada. I remember being in Montreal and presenting a 1,000,000 views plaque (lol) to Jeremy in front of the Aquarius team and Steve Herman, who was running The Agency Group at the time. After seeing how we handled the attention and turned it into a deal, Tyler would call me a few months later when his own band was mentioned by Perez Hilton in his blog. He was being inundated with requests and I would go on to manage and put out records for his band Said The Whale for over a decade.
As someone who evaluates talent for a living, what are some of the things that you immediately look for in deciding if the artist or group who has come to you has a legitimate shot to be a ‘next level” performer?
It’s always been the same for me: talent, songs, performance. I also tend to like artists doing things a little differently and who work extremely hard. Jeremy Fisher rode his bicycle across North America for a tour, made his own videos, and is now about to launch a children’s animated television show in conjunction with the producers of Corner Gas. The Dirty Nil played over 500 shows in 5 years before we even started thinking about commercial radio. Both of these artists have talent, songs and are amazing performers and they are some of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. That goes for our entire roster.
What role did the legendary Canadian record producer and promoter Donald Tarlton (aka Donald K Donald) play in the way that your career has unfolded?
Donald continues to be one of the most important people in my life. There’s no one I learned more from or who granted me more opportunities to live my dreams than Donald. While working for him at Aquarius, I was always allowed to be myself, express my thoughts, and was always introduced to everyone as an equal. He took me to my first CIC conference (Pollstar) in Vegas. The first day he introduced me to Irving Azoff and Marsha Vlasic, took me to the Paris hotel for a show, and then taught me to play blackjack and left me with about $500 to play. He woke up in the morning to find me down $100 at the same table and took me to breakfast. Not a bad 24 hours.
I traveled all around North America with him as he gave congratulatory speeches after retiring from concert promoting. I knew at the moment that I was so fortunate to be hearing his Rolling Stones/Celine Dion/Guns and Roses stories repeatedly. After he sold Aquarius/Tacca to Unidisq, I decided to take up golf so that I could have a reason to spend more time with him. I proudly told him I was taking lessons and the next day a huge box showed up in my office in Hamilton. In it was a full set of clubs, balls, shoes, markers… all put together so thoughtfully in a bright pink golf bag. Donald became my partner in Hidden Pony for over a decade after I was hired as A&R for V2 Records/ Canada. He always cheered me on with the enthusiasm of a proud father and still does to this day. I couldn’t have been happier to tell him that we had landed the Mercedes Benz Masters Golf Tournament commercial for The Dirty Nil last year. Golf + Rock And Roll = Donald.
A few years ago, I could see that his appetite for staying in the business was waning. This coincided with an opportunity for Hidden Pony to be partnered with Gary Slaight and Slaight Music. Donald made that opportunity possible and it’s propelled us to much greater heights as a company. I owe everything to Deke.
There are so many “Donald Disciples” working all over our business. It’s truly a badge of honor to be a member of that group.
Talk about your “Authentic Voice Philosophy” and how The Dirty Nil was able to put that idea into action that yielded such amazing results.
The philosophy was actually born as a result of the work I had done with The Dirty Nil. I had been traveling the world with The Nil working on their first record “Higher Power” and we were always having discussions about how to get rock music streaming and how to get our socials going. We would engage new contacts, bands, and fans on these subjects and then report back our findings. We studied how Metallica and Kiss built their fan bases, and then tried to think about how we could apply digital techniques to re-create those efforts. We asked ourselves why EDM and Hip Hop were streaming so well and then started filming and broadcasting the band as much as we could. We started thinking of ourselves as a television network programming shows for our audience. The band found their authentic voice and then were set to start broadcasting it. When the band was ready to release “Master Volume” we were locked and loaded. We were ready to start thinking about radio and US publicity and that’s when we brought on Dave Lombardi at in2une and Rebecca Shapiro at Shorefire for radio and publicity respectively. Dave and I ran up Said The Whale’s song “I Love You” on a US Alt commercial a few years ago and he fell in love with the band. He’s been a driving force on the project ever since. Rebecca was Jeremy’s publicist back in the “Cigarette” days and we’ve worked on and off for almost 15 years. I thought of Shorefire because The Dirty Nil would stand out on their roster, but that it would also sort of legitimizing the band in a certain segment of the music industry’s eyes. I also know how amazing both Rebecca and Dave’s teams are and how hard they work for their clients. Once they were armed with a content arsenal that spoke authentically about who the band was and why they were here, everyone was able to start the process of getting their contacts to fall in love with the band.
After the “Master Volume” record cycle, I was commuting to Slaight Music in Toronto when I was compelled to open my notebook and sketch out a vision from my brain. I got to the office and made a crude design that I now use as my first step in our process. I matched the thought process behind the image with analytics and case examples from different artists. It seemed like it all made sense. Through my consultancy with Slaight Music, I had been introduced to Jillea (@whoisjillea) who had released a few songs but was a bit stalled. I asked her if I could try this out on her and we sat in my office for a few sessions. While sifting through her modest socials at the time, we realized that there were small signs of life whenever she would post herself Cosplaying. I encouraged her to go for it and she’s now one of the hottest Cosplay artists in the world, +100K fans on Instagram, headlining Fan Expo’s around the world, being hired by Disney, and is about to release new music with a fresh contract from Universal Music/Slaight Music. We’re proud to represent Jillea as management. Most recently I did the process with Theo Tams and encouraged Theo to be more confident in using his authentic voice. Theo was a previous winner of Canadian Idol, which sat around him as a bit of an albatross, half of which may have been his own perception. Theo started using his amazing singing voice and his authentic voice together and is now +50K Tik Tok followers this month and we can see the small translations to his other socials. We’re releasing new music now as his label which feels exciting and fresh and there’s no one we’re rooting for more than Theo Tams.
Obviously, the pandemic has wreaked havoc with all aspects of our businesses. What have been some of the “outside the box” things that you’ve done over the past year that have been beneficial to your artists?
When the pandemic hit, The Dirty Nil was just in the beginning stages of making “Fuck Art”. We had to fly their producer John Goodmanson home to Seattle the night the borders closed. Luckily we’ve surrounded ourselves with an excellent team of believers and managed to continue finishing the record. We were now faced with how we were going to release it. We set up the first single called “Done With Drugs” with our very supportive label Dinealone Records and we needed to make a video. I knew that a local production company called Soundbox Productions had a bunch of gear set up in a warehouse getting ready for a busy stadium tour season. I got in touch and the next thing you know we’re making a video – totally socially distanced - with a tour lighting rig. We sent the track to the radio and it was met with a positive early reaction.
I was talking to Dave Lombardi and he mentioned that it would definitely help if some bigger artists took notice and we got some buzz that way. I tried to think of who we knew and then I remembered I had received a Cameo for my birthday the previous year. I spent $100 and sent Mark McGrath a message to see if he would review our video for the track “Doom Boy” that had just been released. A few hours later I got this!
I knew we had gold. I quickly figured out my budget and sent out about twenty messages. Almost everyone sent a video back: Hasselhoff, Gilbert Gottfried, Sisqo, Rick Neilsen (“You guys might play Surrender better than us”), and a lot of smaller lesser-known Cameo artists like Squeezy Jibs and competitive eater Badland Chuggs. Perez Hilton trashed the song and told us we should be more like Machine Gun Kelly. We all played along and created some great social media activities for the video. I owe Perez two thank yous it seems.
The Nil is also known for their amazing live show and not being able to use that tool has been a difficult challenge. Our current single “Blunt Force Concussion” was being launched and we wanted to do something to partner with some clubs in the US that we loved and the stations that had been playing us so far. We shot 14 unique 40-minute sets on green screen and called the tour “Dancing To Thrash.” We put the band in the club and ran the whole thing in partnership with the stations as if it were a real show. Merch bundles and ticket packages and press releases – ticket giveaways. It was lucrative for the band, and everyone involved loved it because it felt like something “normal.” We’re planning the second leg “Guaranteed Destruction” right now. We may play The Tokyo Dome!
We’re also working on a customizable album cover where people can put their own pet on the cover of “Fuck Art.”
You’ve been a force in all the phases of many artist’s careers over the years. For you, what are the most important parts of the creative process?
Respecting other people’s processes is the most important part of a collaborative creative relationship. Knowing when to edit and not edit yourself. Knowing when and how to listen and when to stick to your guns. Those are the balances in my own creative thoughts.
What are some of the things that you’d still like to accomplish?
I’m on track to managing the biggest Rock & Roll band in the world, as well as the biggest Children’s entertainer in the world. I won’t stop until that happens.
I also get to see first-hand the impact Gary Slaight and Slaight Music have when it comes to supporting not only the music industry here in Canada, but also so many sectors that are in dire need of help. I’d like to continue to help his philanthropic efforts in any way that I can.
Who was the first artist that you worked with hands on that got played on the radio and what was it like when you heard the song on the radio for the first time?
It must have been Serial Joe’s song “Mistake” and I was probably thinking about how excited I was for them.
And since it’s hockey season—we gotta ask…who wins the Cup this year?
I’m an anomaly here because I spent so much time in Montreal and Toronto that I cheer for both. It’s pretty sacrilegious to say that so maybe don’t publish my email address.
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