Blair Clark, CEO + Director of Marketing & Strategy at Brooklyn Basement Records, manager of Ron Pope & Miko Marks
Do you even need a manager when streaming is king? How can you market to all the streaming platforms? Rissi and Blair talk about their experiences on both sides of the streaming issue. Listen to this if you want your music in everyone’s ears.
Blair Clark took a circuitous route to her career in music. While maintaining a full-time position in advertising in New York, she began managing Ron Pope on the side, shaping his career as it began to take off. She slowly took on a larger, more central role in Pope's project - helping with everything from merchandising and website design to fan engagement initiatives and album production. Proving herself to be an invaluable asset, Blair quit her job in advertising to manage Ron full-time in 2012 and added other acts to her roster shortly thereafter. Her current roster includes Ron Pope, Miko Marks, & Emily Scott Robinson.
In addition to her work as a manager, Blair co-founded Brooklyn Basement Records in 2015. The label was built around a DIY mentality and strives to take the knowledge garnered via years of success in the indie music sphere and apply it to the careers of each artist BBR partners with. With the needs of today's artists in mind, BBR has begun to function as a marketing agency for a growing roster of artists that want to retain ownership of their masters, but need the support of a team behind their release. In 2021 she was named to the board of Directors for Rainey Day Fund, which supports historically excluded & underrepresented artists in the roots and Americana space.
About Rissi Palmer
Photo: Chris Charles
North Carolina musician Rissi Palmer's gift lies in reaching across musical boundaries. While she made her mark in Country Music, she is equally at home in R&B music, bringing the entire spectrum of popular music to bear on music she calls “Southern Soul.” She began singing and dancing professionally at age 16 and has performed from The White House to New York's Lincoln Center and the Grand Ole Opry. She appears regularly on CMT’s Hot 20 Countdown. Her radio show Color Me Country with Rissi Palmer is on Apple Music Country and the Color Me Country Artist Grant Fund supports new country artists of color who are just beginning to build their music careers. For more information on Rissi Palmer, please visit RissiPalmerMusic.com.
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This program is presented by PineCone - the Piedmont Council of Traditional Music, a Raleigh-based non-profit that celebrates musicians and the region's diverse musical heritage with concerts, facilitated jam sessions, workshops, youth programs, and the annual festival IBMA Bluegrass Live! powered by PNC. For more information, visit PineCone.org.
Content developed and facilitated by Rissi Palmer and Triangle ArtWorks through ArtSwell - professional development designed to serve North Carolina artists and arts administrators in all arts disciplines and stages of career development. For more information, visit TriangleArtWorks.org
This program is made possible in part by Come Hear NC, an initiative of the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, proud to support professional development for North Carolina’s rural musicians, important culture-keepers of our state’s rich musical legacy. For more information, visit ComeHearNC.com
