Razor & Tie Music Publishing

Razor & Tie Music Publishing Licensing Division in full force!

Currently on our licensing roster we have the following buzz artists -

The Burning Hotels
http://www.myspace.com/theburninghotels
Dave Doobinin
http://www.myspace.com/davedoobinin
Disappointed by Candy
http://www.myspace.com/disappointedbycandy
The Nobility
http://www.myspace.com/thenobility
The Western States Motel
http://www.myspace.com/thewesternstatesmotel

Make sure to check out their myspace pages for tour dates and more!

Razor & Tie Music Publishing breaks into Top 10 with two songs on R & R Christian AC chart!

Natalie Grant #5 with “I Will Not Be Moved” on the Billboard Hot Christian Songs and on R&R Christian AC monitored charts and 10th Avenue North single by Phillip LaRue new add on the R&R charts!

Razor & Tie Music Publishing signs Broadway singer/songwriter David Yazbek

A true jack of all trades, native New York composter/lyricist David Yazbek got his big break scoring the stage adaptation of the hit film The Full Monty.
He is a two-time Tony Award nominee, whose shows The Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels have played in over 20 countries.
His first album, “The Laughing Man” won the N.A.I.R.D. Award for Best Pop Album of the year.
He is also a Grammy-nominated record producer and an Emmy-Award winning TV writer for the Late Night Show with David Letterman.

Rising star, Phillip LaRue recording news

Captivating singer/songwriter Phillip LaRue has recently completed recording his Tooth & Nail album debut.
Currently being mixed, mark your calendars for his single to be released in Fall of 2008. 

Natalie Grant Charting Radio

Natalie Grant is currently #7 on the Christian AC charts with “I Will Not Be Moved”

Grant’s track “Love Is Hear” also peaked at #2 on the Christian CHR charts.

Currently on tour, make sure to catch this award winning vocalist.

Jul 9 2008 7:00P
LiFest Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Jul 11 2008 8:00P
Verizon Center Washington DC, Washington DC

Jul 12 2008 8:00P
Verizon Center Washington DC, Washington DC

Jul 17 2008 8:00P
Teen Mania - Extreme Camp Lindale, Texas

Jul 18 2008 8:00P
Quicken Loans Center Cleveland, Ohio

Jul 19 2008 8:00P
Quicken Loans Center Cleveland, Ohio

Jul 21 2008 7:00P
Tennessee Temple University Chattanooga, Tennessee

Jul 25 2008 8:00P
TD Banknorth Garden Boston, Massachusetts

Jul 26 2008 8:00P
TD Banknorth Arena Boston, Massachusetts

Jul 29 2008 7:00P
Visalia First Assembly of God Church Visalia, California

Jul 30 2008 9:00P
Spirit West Coast Monterey, California

Jul 31 2008 5:00P
Spirit West Coast Monterey, California

Aug 1 2008 6:30P
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion The Woodlands, Texas

Aug 7 2008 7:30P
Iowa State Fair Des Moines, Iowa

Aug 15 2008 8:00P
St. Pete Times Forum Tampa, Florida

Aug 16 2008 8:00P
St. Pete Times Forum Tampa, Florida

Aug 22 2008 8:00P
American Airlines Center Dallas, Texas

Aug 23 2008 8:00P
American Airlines Center Dallas, Texas

Aug 31 2008 8:00P
Lifelight Festival Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sep 5 2008 8:00P
Honda Center Anaheim, California

Sep 6 2008 7:00P
Utah State Fair Salt Lake City, Utah

Sep 6 2008 8:00P
Honda Center Anaheim, California

Drive By Truckers - do what they do best - ROCK

Currently on tour, make sure to catch these legendary rock darlings.

Jul 1 2008 8:00P
The Garrick Winnipeg, Manitoba
Jul 2 2008 8:00P
First Avenue Nightclub Minneapolis, Minnesota
Jul 3 2008 8:00P
Summerfest Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Jul 4 2008 12:00P
etown at Rothbury @ The Establishment Rothbury, Michigan
Jul 4 2008 8:00P
Rothbury Festival - July 4th Weekend Rothbury
Jul 5 2008 8:00P
80/35 Music Festival at Western Gateway Park Des Moines, Iowa
Jul 30 2008 8:00P
Rockefeller OSLO, Oslo
Jul 31 2008 8:00P
Storaasfestivalen STORAS
Aug 1 2008 8:00P
Storjoysran Festival OSTERSUND
Aug 2 2008 8:00P
Nalen STOCKHOLM
Aug 4 2008 8:00P
Electric Ballroom LONDON
Aug 5 2008 8:00P
Bierkeller BRISTOL
Aug 6 2008 8:00P
Liquid Room EDINBURGH, Scotland
Aug 7 2008 8:00P
Rescue Rooms NOTTINGHAM
Aug 8 2008 8:00P
Academy 2 MANCHESTER
Aug 10 2008 8:00P
Zomerparkfeest VENLO
Aug 12 2008 8:00P
Paradiso AMSTERDAM
Aug 13 2008 8:00P
Vera GRONINGEN
Aug 14 2008 8:00P
PUKKELPOP Festival Hasselt
Aug 15 2008 8:00P
Green Man Festival Glanusk Park, Wales
Aug 16 2008 8:00P
V Festival Stafford
Aug 17 2008 8:00P
V Festival Chelmsford
Aug 24 2008 8:00P
Outside Lands Music Festival - Golden Gate Park San Francisco, California
Sep 13 2008 8:00P
REVOLUTION Ft Lauderdale, Florida
Sep 14 2008 8:00P
“THE REAL BIG DEAL” FESTIVAL Gainesville, Florida
Sep 17 2008 8:00P
HEADLINERS MUSIC HALL Columbia, South Carolina
Sep 18 2008 8:00P
AMOS SOUTHEND Charlotte, North Carolina
Sep 19 2008 8:00P
NORVA Norfolk, Virginia
Sep 20 2008 8:00P
CHARLOTTESVILLE PAVILION w/ Avett Bros Charlottesville, Virginia
Sep 21 2008 8:00P
PIER 6 w/ Avett Bros Baltimore, Maryland
Sep 24 2008 8:00P
MERIDIAN Houston, Texas
Sep 25 2008 8:00P
HOUSE OF BLUES w/ Shooter Jennings Dallas, Texas
Sep 27 2008 8:00P
ACL MUSIC FESTIVAL Austin, Texas
Sep 29 2008 8:00P
VARSITY THEATRE Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Sep 30 2008 8:00P
BOTTLING COMPANY Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Oct 1 2008 8:00P
THE LYRIC Oxford, Mississippi

Drive By Truckers Interview in DCist

Singer/songwriter/guitarists Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley had already been struggling to make music together for more than a decade when they formed the Drive-By Truckers in 1996. As the 1999 live album Alabama Ass Whuppin’ documents, this early incarnation of their band — which also featured drummer Brad Morgan, the only other founding member who has remained amid several lineup changes — was an explosive unit that specialized in bitterly funny slice-of-life alt-country-rock, mostly about working-class or sub-working-class characters (many of them non-fictional), all from the South.

The 2001 double-album Southern Rock Opera was the watershed release that earned the band widespread critical praise and a national fan base. A loose biography of Lynyrd Skynrd that uses that iconic Southern rock band as a kind of metaphor for the region and its myriad racial, political, and economic struggles, the album brought all the Truckers’ strengths together, marrying Springsteen-like characterization and narrative detail to crunchy guitar riffs as hard as anything in the AC/DC catalogue.

The seven years since have been a blur of activity for the band: four more remarkably strong albums, the entrance and departure of third singer/songwriter Jason Isbell, and a punishing touring schedule. The group had planned to spend 2007 taking it easy. Instead, they made a Grammy-nominated record with soul singer Bettye LaVette, then played an acoustic tour, revisiting neglected old songs and road-testing new ones. Most of those new songs turned up on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, the 19-song, 75-minute album that came out in January. Less geographically specific than their earlier records, but no less ambitious, the album has been widely hailed as their best since Southern Rock Opera — the kind of accolade that will probably haunt them for the rest of their career. They celebrated, naturally, by hitting the road. They play the 9:30 Club tonight and Saturday night.

Patterson Hood, like most of the band, grew up in Northern Alabama. His father, David Hood, is a session player whose bass and trombone can be heard on many mid-to-late-1960s hits by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Etta James, and Percy Sledge. Patterson writes and sings the majority of Drive By Truckers songs, having penned a dozen of the new album’s nineteen. DCist caught up with him last night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on his break between soundcheck and the show. (Proof, as if any more were required, that he’s an incurable workaholic.)

Congratulations on Brighter Than Creation’s Dark — it’s one of your strongest records. One of the surprises here is [bassist] Shonna Tucker, who on her third album as a full-fledged member of the band suddenly writes and sings three songs — three really good songs. Where you and Mike surprised when that happened?

Not too surprised. I figured it was inevitably going to happen when she was ready. She was working on a couple of things back [in 2005] when we were doing A Blessing and a Curse. We’d hear her in the back room working on things, and then we’d ask her about it, and she’d say, “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s ready.” We were just waiting for her to do it at her own pace. She’s been writing songs for years. Her songs are great. But she’s had her hands full. [Tucker’s ex-husband, Jason Isbell, announced his departure after five years with the band in April of 2007.]

There’s no shortage of songs, ever. But the timing was right this time. She pretty much came on the first day and played us demos that she had four-tracked in her living room by herself of “The Purgatory Line” and “I’m Sorry, Houston.” We were all just kind of blown away — we were like, “Hell, yeah!” And then she wrote “Home Field Advantage” at the studio, actually during a dinner break. So we got a bonus.

It’s astounding, how much her voice feels right at home with the band.

I love her harmonies. I’d been wanting her to do more harmony singing for a while anyway. So I was glad the time was right for her to step up and start doing it — it’s really added a whole new dimension to our sound. I sure like the way her voice mixes with mine and with Cooley’s.

The dynamic of you and Mike Cooley as dual frontmen is a fairly unique feature of your band. It’s hard to think of another group that has two equally strong, full-time singer/songwriters. You two have been playing together for more than 20 years —was that always the deal, that you two would both write and sing your own material?

You know, it’s funny, because we played together in Adam’s House Cat back in the 80s and early 90s, and in that band, I wrote all the songs. I think Cooley might’ve occasionally sang a song, like a cover or something that he might pull out once in a blue moon, but for the most part, I wrote and sang everything. And I was always telling him, “You ought to write.” He’d say some crazy shit, and I’d say, “You should write that down. You should write a song.” They way he spoke sometimes, to me, sounded like lyrics. And he’d always make some kind of remark like, “Ah, the band’s already got a songwriter.”

By the time we started this band [in 1996], he’d already been writing songs. In this band, it was always an open door: “I want to do as many of your songs as you want to do.”

Hell, I love his songs. He usually writes my favorite songs on the records anyway. Some of my favorite times of the night are when I get to be a guitar player and sing backup vocals on [his] really great songs.

He’s got seven on this album, I think.

Yeah, that’s a record for him. And they’re all so strong, too. Each one of them is kind of a key point on this record.

Right now is a good time. Everything is kind of clicking on all fronts for us. The tour is going real good. People have liked this record. It looks like it’s going to be our best-selling record. It’s funny, because in some ways it’s probably the least commercial thing we’ve done. But it’s really caught on with people.

The title, Brighter than Creation’s Dark — I know it’s a lyric from “Checkout Time in Vegas,” but it’s a mouthful. Some of other titles you considered, like “The Home Front,” definitely sounded more T-shirt-ready.

Urban Bovine Kenievel? [Laughs.] That one came in second.

Well, that’s a very funny line, but song it comes from, “The Opening Act”, is quite somber.

Yeah. I love that. My favorite movies are serious movies that are funny. I think that sometimes the most painful truths are best delivered with a little bit of humor, or at least a sideways glance. Especially on that song, there’re moments that kind of split that difference: “Is that supposed to be funny, or is that not supposed to be funny?” And if it’s not, why am I laughing at it?

To me, that’s how that song succeeds, maybe: the way it blurs the lines.

Since you brought it up, what are some movies that fit that description for you?

Well, Dr. Strangelove is just the best. What’s darker than world apocalypse? And yet it’s one of the funniest films ever made. Some of the humor is really highbrow, and some of it’s really lowbrow. It’s all there.

Ray McKinnon’s short film The Accountant inspired our song “Sink Hole” a few years ago. It’s an Academy Award-winning short film this Georgia guy made, and it’s just phenomenal. It’s about two brothers trying to save their family farm — in some of the most hideous, horrible ways imaginable. It’s a really funny film, with a very biting social commentary going on, not necessarily under the surface, but on the surface. It captures a lot of what I hope our records capture, when they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

I was trying to figure out how you — more you personally than the band, necessarily — manage to pull off that balance of humor and pathos, and I think of big part of it is your candor. I don’t mean only in the songwriting, but just in the way you present yourself to your audience, in your postings on your website and liner notes and all of that. It isn’t confessional, and certainly isn’t the least bit self-pitying — you’re just incredibly open about whatever emotional state you’re in, whether it’s joy or misery, in a way that seems almost at odds with the job requirement of someone who earns their living as a performer. You don’t seem to have much a façade at all.

As the band gets bigger, do you think you might need to put a little more distance between yourself and your fans?

I don’t know. That’s a scary question. Some of the artists I love the most who kind of have their entire careers built on being real people — there’s still a certain amount of persona involved. There just has to be. Bruce Springsteen has to go home sometimes and kick his shoes up and laugh about that guy, that role he’s played, even though I would use him as an example of one of the most down-to-Earth, untarnished-by-all-this-shit rock stars.

Neil Young would be another example: He’s a rich rock star who lives on a ranch bigger than some states, but he’s also extremely down-to-Earth. And his songs have retained that, even though he hasn’t been an ordinary Joe, and he probably wasn’t, [even] when he was an unknown guy with a guitar.

You read the Dylan Chronicles book, and it makes a really valid case for why maybe you shouldn’t let people you don’t know [get] too close. I think he got a little too close at one time, and he had to retreat. I can understand that. But I don’t know if we’ll ever really have that level of fame either, so it may be a moot point. Which is okay with me — I kind of too old to be a rock star now. I’m pretty content if I can maintain and maybe build on this fan base we’ve got. If I’m able to continue doing it, I’m pretty happy. I find making records to be really rewarding, especially right now, while it’s going right. Most of my big ambitions involve records I want to make. [Laughs.]

One of the records you made last year, Bettye LaVette’s Scene of the Crime album, which you produced and the band played on, has been nominated for a Grammy now. Did you choose the songs for her to sing on that?

Hell, no! I’d never choose a Don Henley song! [Laughs.] I had nothing to do with that, nor did did anybody else that wasn’t Bettye LaVette! I personally pitched her, I think, 50 songs, and she shot down every single one of ‘em. Andy Kaulkin from Anti Records — it was his idea to put us together — he pitched her 60, and I think we might have cut two of ‘em.

Some of the shit she turned down was just off-the-hook cool, but she didn’t want anything to do with it.

Well, now you’ve got to name some of the songs she refused.

“House Where Nobody Lives,” a Tom Waits song off of Mule Variations. Neil Young — [sings] “Dead man, lying by the side of the road” — is that “Don’t Let It Bring You Down”?

I wrote four that I pitched, and that she didn’t want anything to do with. Of course, we ended up writing that song together [“Before the Money Came (The Ballad of Bettye LaVette)]. I still can’t believe that happened. Nick Lowe’s “Homewrecker” would’ve been great. As far as the record ended up almost telling a story, that particular one wouldn’t have fit, so as a producer I’d have pulled that one myself. But I’d love to hear her sing it. I mean, God damn, that’s a great song.

The Tom Waits song probably could’ve fit the structure of the record pretty well. And that Neil Young song — Cooley would’ve made it fit.

The other big one was “This Is Love” by P. J. Harvey —

That would’ve been amazing!

I pitched that one to her. I wanted to build it on an Sly and the Family Stone kind of funk riff thing, just kind of tear it down from its original structure. Almost like a “Superstition” Stevie Wonder thing with the clavinet — I was going to get Spooner [Oldham, the legendary session player who is on about 250 songs you would recognize, going back to the 60s] to play the clavinet on that. I had this arrangement worked up that was just smokin.’

I’m ready to buy the box set from those sessions now.

It never happened. She came in, we played it for her, and she’s like, “Hell, no! I’m not doing that shit!” [Laughs.]

Well, by now, plenty of people have heard the story of the Bettye LaVette album that your father, [Muscle Shoals session player] David Hood, played on in the 70s, and then it didn’t come out for 30-plus years. But now she’s had this late-career resurgence. You and Mike started playing together in 1985, and it wasn’t until Southern Rock Opera in 2001 that your band finally started to get some profile. So you guys and Bettye have that in common.

I think that’s one of the things Andy realized. It’s fun to bad-mouth record company people, but every now and then you meet somebody who’s the real deal. And that guy is brilliant. For him to have the foresight to see that pairing — he completely visualized how he thought it would be, and I think that’s pretty much what he ended up with. And that was without knowing any of us! He had never seen us live. He had our records and was evidently a fan, but he’d never seen us, and we’d never met Bettye. But he heard something in our music that made him think that we had that in us. And of course, we did!

We had been wanting to do something like that for so long. That’s, like, a dream project for all of us, to get to work with a soul legend and make a soul record; to put our stamp on that kind of record. Hell, that’s the family business for me, and yet I’d never done it! I was a kid when that was happening. So it was a dream come true. You’ve got to be careful what you dream, though. [Laughs.]

[Andy] saw a certain kindred spirit. He knew we had survived by being this we’re-not-going-to-take-any-shit-off-of-anybody kind of organization. That’s how we had survived for so long on so little, and that was how she survived. The risk he took was that we’d all kill each other before he got a record! I think he thought that the professionalism we all have would be his one saving grace, and I guess it was. Because we can’t really kill each other; we’ve got a job to do. And once we finish the job, there’s no reason to kill each other.

I love Bettye. And I think, in the end, she loves me, too.

She spoke admiringly of the band when she played here in DC last fall.

Once the record was made, she saw that we really weren’t out to fuck her up or fuck her over. The whole time, she was so sure we were going to, I guess because everybody did for so long. It’s understandable. That’s what we had to tell ourselves while it was going on: Bettye is this way for a reason. She’s this way because she’s had to be this way. We’d kind of remind ourselves of that every hour or so. She yelled at us a lot. But I can take that, and I knew we were doing good work.

She didn’t know who we were. To her, we were just a bunch of crazy people she’d been paired with who were going to bury her voice under a wall of guitars. Hell, I picked her up to go to the studio the first day — she hadn’t even met the rest of the band yet — and we’re in the car and she goes, “Well, I’ll tell you one motherfuckin’ thing: If you think you’re going to bury my voice under a bunch of motherfuckin’ guitars like you do on each and every one of your records, you’ve got another thing coming, because I think y’alls guitars suck!” [Laughs.]

She ranted for, like, 20 minutes, the entire drive to the studio. That’s how it started. And I was like, “Honey, you can sing louder than all our amps anyway.” What the fuck? [Laughs.]

Let’s talk about your shows. I know from your liner notes that you sequence your albums very carefully, but when you play, you don’t use a setlist, right?

No. It’s a clusterfuck! But that’s the goal: for [the show] to still be sequenced right, without planning it. Some nights, it don’t work. [Laughs.] Some nights it goes off one deep end or another. I never know when I point to Cooley which he’s gonna take it. And Shonna . . . there’s only two or three ways she can go now, but as we start doing more of her songs in the future, that’ll add another element of surprise.

But that’s part of the fun of it, that sense of anarchy. We’ve been able to retain that as we’ve moved into bigger rooms. There’s maybe a little more professionalism in some aspects of [the show], but hopefully not too much.

We’re a democracy as a band, in our decision-making. But whenever possible, it’s also anarchy.

Well, about that: You guys drink a lot of whiskey onstage. Your shows tend to hit the 2.5-hour mark pretty consistently, and they’re physically very intense — you’re sweating bullets up there. Do you ever sneak offstage to pound a Gatorade or something?

I’m a big believer in re-hydrating yourself. I’m big believer in, whenever possible, pounding some water to balance it out. Otherwise, that shit’ll kill ya!

You guys previewed and worked out a lot of the material from Brighter Than Creation’s Dark on an acoustic, or partially acoustic, tour last year. You’re back to the Big, Loud Rock Show now?

Oh, yeah. At the beginning of the tour [in January], that was a real challenge, because the record was conceived, more or less, onstage during our acoustic show. Electrifying the songs is one thing. But then to apply songs that are this introverted to something as extroverted as our rock show, and have it be true to both, is a weird, delicate balance.

The first few shows were good — interesting, maybe — but they weren’t quite where I was wanting ‘em to be, because we were still trying to find out how to transition these songs into that kind of thing. But about a week or so into the tour, it found its thing in a big way.

It’s morphed into my favorite show that we’ve ever toured behind. It’s really mean.

It always seemed like closing with Jim Carroll’s “People Who Died” was the only sure thing in the set.

That still happens some nights. That song just won’t die. It’s not even our song, but it’s just such a great place to end the night. We certainly don’t do it every night, because that would become a bore, but we do it more often than we probably ought to, just because it’s so fun.

I’ve been covering that song since it was new. That was about the only song they’d let me sing in the band I was in in high school, because nobody else wanted to bother to learn the words. Then Adam’s House Cat covered it, and this band, too, pretty much from day one. Even when we were doing a more country kind of thing, withthe first record [1998’s Gangstability] — upright bass, mandolin, and all that — we still found a way to rock that song out.

Last question: The country has been totally polarized for the last eight years, to a point where we hear the modifier “red state” or “blue state” applied to everything now, which to me seems to reduce everybody to a caricature based on where they’re from. I wonder if many urban or surburban DBT fans have a more nuanced perception of the South than they might’ve before they heard your songs. Is that something you’re conscious of, or that you think about when you’re writing?

Sure. When we wrote our earlier records, none of us had ever really lived outside of the South or spent any time outside of the South. I’m a big believer in “write what you know,” and that’s where we were. And of course, starting with Southern Rock Opera, we were just touring all the time. I’ve spent a lot of the last 10 years all over America — some other countries, too, but especially America.

You can be in Seattle, which is a pretty cosmopolitan, liberal, blue-state American city, but get in your car and drive 25 minutes outside of town, and it could be Georgia with different trees. The accent is a little different. It may be a different industry that’s shutting down. [Laughs.] But by God, it’s the same motherfuckin’ Wal-Mart shutting the local businesses down in every town in America.

Alabama went to Obama by a big margin. The boundaries and the lines aren’t where they used to be.

Luxxury Interview in the San Francisco Chronicle

Electro disco beat popper, Baron von Luxxury breaks his way into the pop world.
“...an edgy and highly regarded electropop artist in his own right, to be sure, but also a behind-the-scenes maestro for the world’s most-heard tunes.”

For every Britney and Lindsay, there’s a Cyrano
By Chris Colin, Special to SF Gate

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

In my embarrassingly juvenile notion of the profession, musicians sit under trees with guitars and cigarettes, scratching hard-won truths into coffee-stained notepads. Periodically a car drives past blaring the latest treacly pop confection, or a passer-by hums the mindless melody from a hot dog commercial. The musician pulls on his Marlboro superiorly; there’s music and then there’s the crap made for money. Hey, another hard-won truth!

My sense of musicianship is obsolete and naive, a teenager’s. Music itself, meanwhile — though marketed to a younger and younger audience — appears to have largely outgrown adolescence. Its creators, its business and its culture increasingly bear the grown-up qualities of pragmatism and savvy commercial sense these days. Bands are market-tested, singers date TV stars in shrewd cross-promotions, and in the case of Blake Robin, sophisticated young musicians who might once have eschewed the mainstream now find it’s the path to both financial solvency and their own creative expression.

Robin’s story begins about a decade ago. At 23, an age when some of us are still learning to awaken before noon, he’d been named director of interactive services for the advertising agency Margeotes, Fertitta & Partners. The quick-witted, curly-haired San Francisco native had begun a quick ascent in the New York ad world, and from there he leapt to Red Hat, the San Francisco software company. Insofar as people actually use the embarrassing word “wunderkind,” this would’ve been a fine time. For a few months, on paper, his stock options were worth over a million dollars.

But there was the small matter of Robin wanting something entirely different for his life. It’s not that he longed for a simpler existence in the woods. Or a purer life among refugee camps and animal sanctuaries. Robin’s about-face was that special variety that involves Britney Spears and Pontiac commercials.

Robin ditched that career path and has spent the last decade remaking himself as Baron von Luxxury, an edgy and highly regarded electropop artist in his own right, to be sure, but also a behind-the-scenes maestro for the world’s most-heard tunes. He makes danceable hooks for the latest teen star, background music for a scene in a TV show, catchy melodies for car commercials, whatever it is that requires a couple minutes worth of memorable, accessible pop tunes. Robin’s alter ego had set out to learn what sticks in the maximum number of ears in the minimum amount of time.

On a recent Thursday afternoon the entertainment juggernaut that is Britney Spears needed a hit for her next album; Robin, who’d been told of the call for submissions, sat at the cluttered desk adjacent to his bed in the North Beach apartment he shares with his wife. I’d come over because I wanted to see the shadow figure behind the flashy, slicker ones I see in the tabloids, the guitar-strumming Cyrano behind pop culture’s assorted de Neuvillettes.

Robin is not the it-boy of pop music. He’s not the single go-to guy for mega hits. Rather, he’s one of many in a vast, highly competitive industry. As such, he’s forever vying for those brief moments of airtime in its various new forms.

“It’s got to map to who she is,” he said, playing a few seconds of his current creation. “Thousands of people will send her songs for this album. Her manager will hand her between 30 and 80, I’m guessing. Then it’s intangible what she’ll connect with. Maybe it’s as simple as a single word in the title that matches her mood that morning.”

The tune Robin will send is a renovation of a song called “It’s Not Funny” which he once played with his band. He’s stripped away all but the chorus. Via subtle tweaks and a slightly funk-ified bass, it’s become dancier, more aggressive. Meanwhile, a writer in Los Angeles has been coming up with new, Britney-appropriate lyrics. The words he sent Robin were titled “Lost Control.”

“I’m o give it to u like a baby gets a bottle,” one line reads. Another: “Move u body let it go / Just like u just lost control.”

Robin, who could produce an exegesis on the reverb on a kick drum in an obscure Marianne Faithfull number, does not look down on the “move u body” form. On the contrary, he enjoys learning its conventions and boundaries, no less precise than those of an ostensibly more complex genre. Robin suggested removing the lines about DJs and clubs — that’s played out, he thinks, even in the derivative realm of pop music. The next step is finding a female singer to re-record the lyricist’s words. On top of Robin’s music. For the purpose of delivering Spears’ people something appealing. So she’ll hopefully record it in her own style.

“Lately I’ve been fascinated by how much your hit is supposed to resemble existing hits,” Robin said. “I’ve been told to make something resemble another song, and it turned out they wanted it very similar. But of course you can’t come too close.”

Another of his songs, Robin’s been told, might be on a shortlist for the next Lindsay Lohan record. If Lohan, Spears or any other mega star were to buy a song of his, he’d receive a few cents for every “instance” of the song — every appearance on a CD, every download, every time it’s played on the air or a jukebox or an elevator. (To get a rough idea of the math, Spears has sold a reported 83 million records since 1999.) If a movie uses it in its soundtrack, that’s more money. Same for a TV show, which brings Robin to a larger point.

“With some obvious exceptions, there’s no money coming from album sales anymore, so artists are aware that TV is one of the only options these days, or a Coke commercial, or an iPod commercial,” he said. “That old idea of ‘selling out’ just isn’t a relevant critique anymore.”

Commercial purity, in other words, is a notion born of a different commercial landscape. With the recording industry in such disarray, the artist does his or her best to get money for songs, even if they’re performed by someone else, with a wholly different style. Those artists who attempt to make names for themselves without such a side gig? Often they’re coming to the business with a trust fund or extremely supportive parents — it’s just too hard to make it with just those Marlboros and a notepad these days.

Robin has a library of over 500 unfinished tracks on his laptop. He has 187 lyric ideas. He has a separate document for title ideas. He has 499 beats. His songwriting process is as varied as the songs he writes. One day a few years ago he heard a New Order song at a bar, then came home obsessed with 16th notes for a while — a song came together that very night. Other times it might take months. He says his process is a combination of spontaneity and planning and sometimes overplanning. Somewhere in there go the various pop formulas he must decide whether to obey.

“Some say the chorus should have the highest note,” he said at one point. He thought about that a moment. “Others say it should have the fewest number of notes.”

Another common trick: Between the chorus and verse, adding a reversed sample of a cymbal crash. (You’ve heard it a million times — sort of a “TSSSSSS” that builds up to the next section of the song.) Then there’s the unresolved seventh chord at the end of a verse, to lead into the chorus (think Beach Boys and Weezer). Then there are certain lyrical buzzwords that, inexplicably, still correlate with a lot of pop song success after all these years: “Dance,” “heart,” “tonight.”

Whatever Robin’s doing, it seems to be working. One day last spring he got a call from the music publisher Razor & Tie Entertainment — the man on the phone thought he might be able to sell one of Robin’s songs to Pontiac. Robin figured it was hot air. A few days later the car company had licensed a few seconds worth of techno-ish and infectious intensity, which it soon featured in a triple promotion with the “Transformers” movie and the “Maxim Hot 100 Countdown” on VH1. Robin asked that the exact figure not be disclosed; suffice it to say he could buy himself a new Pontiac.

He signed a deal with Razor & Tie a few months later: He’ll deliver 12 songs a year for three years, and the company will attempt to sell them to prominent recording artists, have them in the background of a TV show — one of his songs could be heard on an episode of “The Hills” — and generally put them in the hands of whoever needs music. In an era where professional success as a musician is increasingly elusive, the former high school drummer has found a living making songs. For those three years of songs, Robin will be paid a fee “in the low six figures,” plus a cut of whatever sales are made.

All of this allows Robin to make his own music — the kind he plays himself, rather than attempting to sell to others. But the mainstream pop stuff is no lesser pursuit. Indeed, he speaks of it as a kind of minor cultural democracy.

“I like that, in the present, we can all enjoy the same song that we all know,” he said, describing the appeal of the genre. “And in the future we can come together over nostalgia for that song, like when you hear ‘Rock Lobster’ nowadays.”

I asked whether Robin ever had moments, when he wasn’t sure whether the next “Rock Lobster” would be forthcoming, where the old job in advertising sounded appealing. But he explained that he never really knew what ideas would connect with consumers.

“I was just never sure if a certain idea would sell vodka or not,” he said. “It’s different when you’re connecting people with music.”

Natalie Grant Wins 3rd Consecutive Dove Award for Female Vocalist of the Year

On April 23, 2008 the 39th annual GMA Awards were held in Nashville, TN with Razor and Tie Music Publishing well-represented. Natalie Grant received the Dove Award for Female Vocalist of the Year, an honor she has won for the third consecutive time. Natalie was nominated along with Amy Grant, Christy Nockels, Darlene Zschech, Krystal Meyers, Mandisa, and Sandi Patty. Her award in this category has complemented her critically acclaimed release of Relentless in February of 2008. Natalie is currently on a North American tour in promotion of the album. Congratulations to Natalie on all of her success!

Razor and Tie Music Publishing Breaks into Top 25 with Two Songs on R & R Christian AC Chart!

Razor and Tie Music Publishing/Maxx Music songwriter Phillip LaRue’s “Love is Here” from Provident Records break-out band 10th Avenue North makes its way to the #10 slot on the R&R Christian A/C Chart. 10th Avenue North is currently on tour in support of their highly anticipated album Over and Underneath, due for release on May 20th.

Razor and Tie Music Publishing enjoys another success this week with Natalie Grant’s “I Will Not Be Moved” currently charting at #21 (rising from # 25) on the Christian AC Chart. “I Will Not Be Moved” is the second single from Natalie’s album, Relentless, released in February on Curb Records to critical acclaim. Natalie has been nominated for 5 Dove Awards in 2008, including Female Vocalist of the Year as well as Artist of the Year.