10 Questions with ... Jesse Barnett

BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:

I left my job as a copywriter in 1994 to work at A&M Records as the assistant to JB Brenner and Mike Rittberg (the position opened up when Cheri Oteri left to pursue comedy full time). They taught me the ins and outs of calling radio, and in 1997, I moved to New York to co-run the promotion department at Hybrid Recordings. At the end of 1998, I was laid off and a few months later, Michael Ehrenberg brought me on as a partner at Outsource Music, introducing me to the world of independent promotion. I left there in 2003 to work with Chris Stacey at Vector Promotion, an indie company which also served as the in-house promo department for Vector Records and Vector Management. In the summer of 2005, I left to hang out my own shingle under the name Right Arm Resource.

1. What got you interested in the record business?

One of the reasons I went to Emerson College is that I could be on the air as a DJ within weeks of walking onto campus. I was involved in WERS and WECB for four years and walked out with a Radio minor by accident because of it. I initially pursued a career in my actual major and got a job at a big ad agency but became bored and spent a year-and-a-half sending out over 120 cold resumes and cover letters to radio stations and record labels using a record industry directory in an old issue of Pollstar that was given to me. I had interviewed for two other jobs at A&M before JB took a chance on me.

2. What was your favorite station to listen to when you were a kid?

Live 105 came on the air when I was in high school outside of San Francisco and had an immediate impact on me, with The Quake and KRQR before that. The very first memory I have of listening to the radio was "Car Wash" and "Kung Fu Fighting" on WABC on my red transistor radio when I was a kid in Teaneck, NJ.

3. You've been in the indie business since 1999 and started Right Arm Resource in 2005. How have things changed over the years?

The crux of the job is still the same – be a partner for your clients and team up to expose new music. What has changed negatively is the sheer volume of things you're competing with, but on a positive end, there's an influx of new metrics that we can use to tell a story, even incrementally, beyond an artist selling x-number of tickets or cds in a specific week.

4. What's the best advice you received before you decided to venture on your own?

Before I decided to go out on my own, I asked Sean O'Connell at Creative Allies for any advice on running your own business. He said to come up with a mission statement that you could base all of your decisions off of – one that would drive the ethics of the company. Months later, I told him I couldn't come up with one but instead I created three rules that I wrote out and live by: 1) Don't work records that suck. 2) Don't fuck over your clients. 3) Make tomorrow's money, not today's (i.e.: long term relationships that lead to repeat business, not one-time influxes). 17 years later, I'm happy to say I've stayed afloat by sticking by them.

5. What are some of your biggest challenges as an independent promoter?

Programmers are strapped for time, and they've got more records to consider than ever before. When the pandemic started, a lot of folks switched to working by email and text, but I still prefer the old-school music call whenever possible. I think you can explain more about a project that way and have a back-and-forth conversation, but I get the fact that the instant short-form way often works better in terms of schedules. Hence the reason for the constantly updated website, newsletter, Spotify playlist and Dropbox – provide as many places as possible to get the info and music out there in case we don't speak one on one.

6. Things are changing rapidly in our business. Were it up to you, what would you change in our "system" to give your bands a better shot?

When BDS incorporated the influential non-comms into their Monitored panel a number of years ago, it opened the door for developing and "cool kid" bands to make a splash onto the charts and get noticed by some of the more conservative and chart-driven commercial stations. With Luminate's switch to Mediabase, I'm hopeful that they'll expand their current AAA panel, so it ends up representing what this format truly looks like across the board. Without that and some version of what the BDS Indicator chart was, it may leave a gaping hole in terms of some of these artists being able to show growth.

7. What do you view as the most important issue facing radio today?

It has always been staffing, especially at smaller stations. Programmers are wearing too many hats, working too many hours, and getting paid way less than they deserve.

8. You've usually got a camera with you at conferences – how did that start?

I took up photography in 2012 when my wife and I decided that I was too stressed out and needed to find a hobby that would force me to leave the house. A couple of years later, I had it with me in Boulder, brought it to the Hill one night, and started shooting the bands just to learn something new. From that point on, I've made sure that I ask for a photo pass for every conference I go to. Because AAA has so many developing artists, I've had the opportunity to shoot a lot of artists early on in their careers, and a few that I know I'll never get that close to again.

9. Do you do non-music photography?

I have a backdrop setup in my house so I can do headshots here, plus I shoot a bunch of senior portraits for local friends, and I'm the de facto house photographer for the youth theatre company that my wife is the president of. I do a decent amount of landscape shooting as well when it's not too cold out. My favorite ongoing project is my "beach blurs" where I shoot on Cape Cod beaches while panning the camera in a long exposure (Instagram: http://instagram.com/jessebarnett).

10. You recently became an empty nester. How's that going?

Very well, I think – ha. My son graduated college in May and got his dream job working on Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for Insomniac Games. My daughter graduated high school in June and is in her first semester at Emerson working towards her BFA in Musical Theatre. At first, I thought I'd notice how quiet the house was, but I quickly realized the biggest change is that I didn't need to be. I'm the first one up and moving around every morning, and I used to keep the volume down, so I didn't wake my daughter – her bedroom is right above my office. Now I can throw on music while I'm making my morning coffee.

Last Non-Industry Job:

I wrote Hot Wheels commercials.

First Record Ever Purchased:

I can't distinguish between what I bought and what I glommed off of my older brother. All I know is it was likely purchased at Village Music in Mill Valley, California.

First Concert:

Taken to: The Tubes at the Greek Theatre in LA in 1979. By choice: Bill Graham's Day On The Green in in 1982 with Journey, Santana, Toto, Gamma, and The Tubes.

Favorite Place To Travel:

Italy. My wife and I have been there four times and are mentally doing the logistics of what it would take to go for an extended period of time while still allowing me to work.

Do you have a favorite charity (charities)?

The Alzheimer's Association (https://www.alz.org/). My mother started showing signs of dementia at 64 and was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at 67. She went into assisted living at 70, memory care at 72, and long-term Alzheimer's care at 75 after suffering a mild stroke. It's a horrible disease.