from:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0451/041222_music_resourcecenter.php

Tapping In
Local music-industry pros offer valuable lessons
at the Musician's Resource Center.

by Laura Cassidy

From left: Shawn Rogers, Sam Beam, Ben Gibbard,
and Eric Bachmann.
(Laura Cassidy)

FOR ASPIRING songwriters with indie-rock and folk
leanings, Eric Bachmann of Crooked Fingers, Sam
Beam of Iron and Wine, and Ben Gibbard of Death
Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service carry
considerable cachet. So it wasn't surprising
when, on Tuesday, Dec. 14, about 90 young writers
and musicians filed into the VERA Project's main
showroom and filled the folding chairs—and then
some. As moderator and Musician's Resource Center
founder Shawn Rogers cracked a joke about the
various styles of facial hair sported by the
panelists, it also wasn't surprising to watch the
audience collectively take out its notebooks and
pens.

This was the ninth such free-of-charge panel held
at the VERA Project and moderated by Rogers, who
holds three titles at Sub Pop Records: vice
president of international marketing, creative
director of TV and film licensing, and A&R.
Having moved to Seattle in late 1999 to assume
just one title at the label, Rogers left a
community-oriented music scene in Chapel Hill,
N.C., but says he found an equally supportive one
here. Because of his experience in the music
business (he managed bands like Archers of Loaf
and worked at Mammoth Records and other
labels)—and his willingness to help others—he
quickly became the de facto go-to guy when bands
signed to or affiliated with Sub Pop needed help
navigating things like entertainment law,
distribution, taxes, and publishing credits. In a
way, by starting the Musician's Resource Center
in July of '03, Rogers was practicing preventive
medicine. By producing a panel every six weeks or
so, and by making himself and his library of
music business resources available at the VERA
Project in between, he's satisfying his urge to
be involved in a process that he loves while
cultivating growth in our music scene.

"All of this is stuff that bands need to know,
but they don't always know that they need to know
it until it's too late," Rogers says of his
panels. Because so many new and newly signed
bands make their way to him eventually anyway, it
makes sense to distribute this business
information before musicians get down to the wire
with negotiating contracts and start frantically
seeking advice.

BACK AT VERA, Roger's segment of the discussion
is over and he's opened the floor to questions. A
woolen-hatted self-described new songwriter says
he finds that often, after four-tracking ideas,
he comes back to them the next day to discover
that he's really just rewritten someone else's
chorus or cribbed a chord progression from a song
he loves, and he wants to know what he can do
about it.

"I don't know what you're talking about, man,"
deadpans Bachmann, and his co- panelists crack
up. Beam, a former film teacher who talks without
moving his mouth so that his deep, low,
Southern-drawled dialect seems to come straight
from the coarse curls of his beard, offered that
by keeping the focus on the process rather than
the end result, the problem of constantly
suspecting oneself of forgery might not be so
crippling. Gibbard recalled a friend who recently
brought out the old saw that there are only so
many chords, and they all agreed that songwriters
are bound to borrow from those they admire.

Rogers told me later that, as evidenced by the
popularity of that night's all-songwriter panel,
there's nothing as valuable to struggling
musicians as a working musician's perspective on
things. For future discussions —even those
concerned with less-than- creative topics—he'll
make sure that in addition to local professionals
like lawyer Michael Barber and national booking
agent Ali Giampino, at least one recording artist
is on hand to offer his or her point of view.
Forthcoming panels, co-sponsored by the Pacific
Northwest Chapter of the Recording Academy and
held at VERA, will concern topics like how to
actually put DIY ideals into practice (how and
where to make bulk CDs, how to get those CDs onto
retail shelves) and how to get your music on the
radio (a particularly dense topic, considering
the current state of media consolidation). Rogers
also plans to revisit some of the issues handled
by previous panelists. Seattle has no shortage of
experienced professionals from all sides of the
equation, and Rogers seems to have no trouble at
all getting them signed on.

Although the Musician's Resource panel nights
started in a side room at VERA and have grown big
enough to warrant a move to the main space,
because the panels don't qualify as shows that
can be listed in music calendars, it's been
difficult to get the word out to the city's
up-and- coming up-and-comers. If you or someone
you know is interested in joining, e-mail
musiciansresource@....

lcassidy@...