Country-music management team Chris Kappy and Lynn Oliver-Cline are showing the Nashville establishment how to build an old-fashioned country-music career in a 21st-century way. With Luke Combs, they turned their focus away from the typical country-album-release models and radio promo cycles and toward social media and streaming. (Before Combs had a record deal, his song Hurricane accrued a million streams.) While this kind of strategy is common in pop, its groundbreaking in country, where physical product plays an outsize role and things have been done the same way for decades.
Some people are a little freaked out, saying, Its like the wild wild west. Nobody knows whats really going on,' says Oliver-Cline of the increasingly volatile country music business. No, we know whats going on, but its all in how you use it to your clients advantage.
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Kappy and Oliver-Cline, who met in the Nineties while working with Hootie and the Blowfish and Sister Hazel, take their cues directly from Combs fans, down to involving them in the process of picking which T-shirts to sell. In early days, if a song resonated online, the managers would rush to release it like the smash ballad Beautiful Crazy, which was originally being held for Combs upcoming second album but ended up on the deluxe edition of his 2017 debut, This Ones for You.
To establish a trusted channel of communication between artist and listener, Kappy who learned the ins and outs of fan engagement during his 15 years at music-cruise company Sixthman created a Facebook group and christened it the official place to talk all things Luke Combs. Then he quickly put Combs himself in front of the fans by live-streaming impromptu performances, building on the Vine videos that Combs relied on early in his career. They just want to see Luke sing. So wed go live at rehearsals, at his hotel room, in our office. I wouldnt even give him a chance to say no, Kappy says. By doing that we were letting the fans in behind the curtain early on.
Their detailed, collaborative spirit is an approach thats more often boasted about by an artists team than practiced. They may say, Were all about the fans, but theyre not, says Oliver-Cline. From the beginning, we put our money where our mouth is.
Yet for all their digital savvy, Kappy and Oliver-Cline are most at home on the road with their clients, mingling with fans and noting which songs are connecting. Says Oliver-Cline, Were definitely not making decisions from the desk.