way, and that’s very exciting to me.
The cons, for me, are that we’re less
about developing what we used to call
catalogue artists and ending up with what
I call disposable artists. We have much less
development at the major label level, and
that means artists are trying to develop
themselves, or it falls to producers and man-
agers, and there’s less funding and guidance
and support for artists to develop properly.
Major labels are essentially curators now, or
librarians. An A&R with great taste used to
be able to sift through all the stuff out there
and say, “This is going to go somewhere
and this is not,” and then invest in making
potential, how much of that has fallen
to you and your peers at this point?
When you’re deciding which projects
to take on, to what degree do you need
to consider the long-term potential for
something, and what you might need
to contribute to help it get to a level
that you can all be proud of?
DB: That’s a huge part of it. It’s fallen now
to more experienced band managers and
producers to do that very work, and we find
ourselves in a position of trying to help an
artist develop even more than we did.
In the “olden days,” [laughs] when you
band manager to shoulder most of that.
When it comes to developing bands
or producing or anything, I don’t make all
the right decisions all the time and don’t
have the best insight all the time, but I have
some, and if you’ve got a group of people
with certain insights that can work togeth-
er, that can be really strong; you can parse
between all of them. But as a producer, you
can only do so much, and then have to let
them go and move on to something else.
PS: Then specifically to the less-
established artists you might be work-
ing with, what are some of the boxes
DAVID BOTTRILL (RIGHT) WITH
STEPHANE SOTTO & ELSIEANNE CAPLETTE
OF ELSIANE IN STUDIO A AT TORONTO’S
REVOLUTION RECORDING
that happen. Now, it’s just sort of a barrage
of new music, and trying to find the little
golden nuggets is often quite difficult, and
we’re left with … I don’t know, we’re left
with disposable artists and artists that prob-
ably could have used more mentorship to
develop.
PS: That’s interesting, and something I
wanted to touch on before getting that
insight from you, but if I understand
properly, using the metaphor of a good
A&R person being something of a filter
to identify which acts have potential,
and then help nurture and develop that
28 PROFESSIONAL SOUND
were given a baby band to work with, there
was a lot of other support out there to help
them with their development and to have
stronger mentorship, both from the labels
and management. And there were often
arguments and battles within that, but that
kind of process helped in a way. They’d be
able to take advice from different sources
and be able to come up with their own
conclusions of where they wanted to go,
and it would be sort of an amalgam of all of
this proven expertise, and the band would
develop something for themselves with the
advice and consent of all parties involved.
Now, it’s down to me and maybe a young
they need to check for you to get excited
and think you could bring something to
that project and help it realize at least
some of its potential?
DB: I think it’s important, if you can, to actu-
ally see somebody live; that’s a real indicator
for me. These days, you can do demos and
polish them and tune them and time them
to where, if you’re just hearing a demo, you
really don’t know what you have. I still like
the demos that come from a tape record-
er in a corner while the band’s playing. If
you’ve got that, there’s no hiding.
Then, I think it’s important to at least