Tommy Keene – HuffPost 9.13.13

Mike Ragogna: Tommy, what advice do you have for new artists?

Tommy Keene: Hmm. Don’t be too hasty making decisions that you might think are completely obvious choices. When you’re younger, things are going so fast and it’s really difficult sometimes to take in all these things that people are telling you to do–everybody from managers to record label people to band members. There were times in the past when I made a couple bad decisions when I felt pressured into going a certain way, and in my heart, I knew I was doing the wrong thing but I just ceded to people. Believe it or not, being agreeable, sometimes labels you as being difficult. I would say to just be true to yourself and don’t let anyone influence your opinions too much, even if they’re people in power or who you think have the power to do what you want for your career. They’re just as much doing a guessing game as you are. There’s no set manual for being a rock ‘n’ roll singer. Maybe this isn’t advice to people, this is something I wish I would’ve taken more seriously as far as standing up for myself, I think. Stand up for yourself.

MR: Yeah! That sounds like good advice.

TK: Don’t be influenced too much by people who you think are in complete control of your career. Even though they pretty much are and they seem to be, you just have to stand your ground and really, when it comes down to it, say, “This is how I feel and this is what I want to do,” and then, you’ll be labeled as “difficult.” [laughs] You can’t win, is what I’m saying. Everybody always blames stuff on the artist. Everyone passes the buck, it’s never the manager’s fault. The record company’s never at fault, they just say, “Oh, well, the record didn’t sell, what were we supposed to do?” It’s funny because, back to this A&R guy who signed me, he came up to me at one point after the record was out with this illuminating, brilliant observation, which at the time, I just thought, “Maybe you’re right.” He said, “The record business is like politics. People vote with their money,” i.e. they buy your record and that’s the way it works. Well, yes, per se, but what he didn’t take into account is that the candidate with the most money and the most promotion to get his name and views and his platform out there has the best chance of getting the most votes or selling the most records. So that little adage came back to slap him in the face. The more you promote a band, the more people get exposed to it, the more people are going to buy the record. So in the end, his analogy really didn’t work because they get behind certain acts that they think are an easy sell, like Guns N’ Roses and such, and I was a more difficult sell and they pretty much gave up too soon.