Michael Blanton: Shaping Music Legends and Navigating Industry Evolution

00:03 - Speaker 1 Hey, this is Michael Blandon and I'm striving to be a giant in the land of entertainment and content development that could have a great influence on our culture and our world. 00:15 - Speaker 2 I'm Brian Boyd and today, on Conversations with Giants, we are speaking with producer and artist finder. I'm not sure what else to say. He's an amazing guy, michael Blandon. Michael has a decades-long career in the music industry, you know, finding artists like Amy Grant, michael W Smith, many, many more, and this conversation you're going to hear dives deep into the state of the music industry, where it used to be, where it's going the resurgence of retro and going back to legacy artists and more, and even a funny story here and there today. So here we go, michael Blanton on Conversations with Giants. 01:03 My guest today is Michael Blanton, a music industry legend, and we're so happy to have him here on Conversations with Giants. You might know him because he helped launch Amy Grant and Michael W Smith, amongst other artists, and he's produced a lot of amazing iconic songs. You know them, friends, awesome. God El Shaddai, baby, baby, baby, baby's been recorded and covered a bunch. I think too, hasn't it? I think so. Place in this World, and he co-founded Union Records, selling over 70 million albums, and he's even worked with books and authors and TV shows. These days, michael is still discovering new talent and working with some legacy artists. We'll talk about that in a minute Direct from Nashville area, Tennessee, my friend Michael Blanton. 01:53 - Speaker 1 Hey, michael, welcome to Conversation with Clients. Good morning, glad to be with you. This is great. 01:59 - Speaker 2 Yeah, this is a lot of fun. Well, we mentioned a few songs there in the beginning, but you have a career in music. Give me a. Who is Michael Blanton? 02:08 - Speaker 1 Who are you? Yeah, michael Blanton is the. He's the oldest of five siblings from Texas, grew up under a dad who was a dentist but always loved music and always thought it would be fun to be in music. Came to Nashville in my college years and literally could not get hired. Went back to Texas after taking a couple of rounds of working at Opryland and trying to chase the music industry, mostly because I was not a great performer player. I did not play guitar or bass or drum or anything piano really well, I was just not dedicated to that. But I went back to Texas and got involved in the Chamber of Commerce, thought you know what, I think I'm going to work with people and I think I'm going to run for office, maybe run for governor of Texas at some point. That was kind of on my agenda when I got called by a record label that said, hey, would you consider coming to work for us now? And I was like now I mean, I'm back in tech. How did they find you? 03:11 - Speaker 2 Is it? 03:11 - Speaker 1 Well, because of my time, I'd been two years in Nashville trying to make things happen and uh, and so people were going, hey, you ought to contact, uh, this guy, michael Blanton. And uh, when they found me, I was texas at the chamber of commerce. Wow, so so you knew you wanted. What was your first job ever? Let's wait, go way back. You're in high school. Whatever, this is my first job is. I worked for a heating and air conditioning company. I was up in the, in the ceilings wrapping, uh, uh, wrapping air conditioning pipes with plastic. It was the worst job ever. It was terrible. 03:49 - Speaker 2 That's funny. Yeah, my first job was uh of any sort of real job was making pizza in tacoma, washington, at shaky's shaky's pizza parlor no kidding so hats off to shaky's's Pizza Parlor, indeed, indeed. So you get this call and they're like hey, you got to come back to Nashville. We want you to do what. 04:12 - Speaker 1 Well, this company, this record company, was actually out of Waco Texas and I was. I didn't know that much about them, but they invited me to come down. I went down and did an interview and literally didn't hear from him for another three months after the interview. So I assumed it didn't work. And I was the executive director of civic affairs for the chamber of commerce in Abilene Texas. I was in charge of the 200 celebration of all of Abilene Texas. So I was like I'm pretty happy where I am. 04:42 But then they offered me a job to come start in April and that was a week after my wife and I got married and we moved to Waco Texas. So, yes, it was a record label in Waco Texas that was in the middle of kind of doing more kind of gospel stuff, which I had not really grown up on gospel I'd grown up. So I was like, okay, but I'm, I'm now in the music business. So it was, um, it was starting a new marriage, starting a new career. And it didn't take long for me to convince them to go. You, you cannot run a music label career from Waco. I either need to go back to Nashville or I need to go to Los Angeles from waco. 05:26 - Speaker 2 I either need to go back to nashville or I need to go to los angeles so at that point you, you made a move. 05:34 - Speaker 1 I'm a year into it. They they allowed me to move back and I moved to nashville because I had more friends there and had more acquaintances. So I loved la. I actually loved la at the time and always thought I would move out there. But once we got to Nashville as a new family, starting working with this label, then that was kind of the beginning of that's where we're going to be and I was not doing country. I was I'm still the pop kid trying to kind of work with artists, new artists, and one of the girls the very first girl that I really worked with that I knew her as a young teenager was Amy Grant. 06:08 - Speaker 2 Wow, so. So let me ask you this real quick. Let's get into the Amy Grant story. But why is why do you think Nashville is such a hub for music? When? When did that occur? Is that? How did? How did Nashville become the place? 06:21 - Speaker 1 that we've seen be found. 06:24 How did Nashville become the place that we've seen and found? Yeah, I'll tell you. The reason Nashville is the hub for music is because of the songwriters. All the songwriters were here. They came here more for the country, and the bluegrass and the Americana, but ultimately all great songwriters wind up putting a foot in Nashville. All great songwriters wind up putting a foot in Nashville, no matter if they're, you know, from London or LA or Chicago or New York. That might be their home, but they've got to have a leg. They wind up wanting to co-write with some of the greatest songwriters and of course, the songwriters are here. So music business and producing is done around the world in many places, but the Songwriter Hub is still Nashville. 07:08 - Speaker 2 That's cool. So I remember, as a younger person, having cassette tapes, and for those of you who don't know what cassette tapes are, I guess go to Google, go to Google. Yeah, but always on the cover, below the picture of the artist and I'll let's talk about Amy Grant for a second it said Blanton, or Blanton and Errol it. Your name was there and, um, I read your name for dozens of years, michael. So so, so you, you're in you're in. 07:44 You're in cassette tapes all around the world and, of course, you moved on to CDs and digital. We'll talk about that in a second, but uh, so tell us about, about Amy Grant. What a career she uh. She just even recently produced another, another, uh, retrospective album that came out Uh tell us about how that relationship happened. 08:06 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it was, I was. Uh. The truth was, when I was in Nashville working for Opryland, I was dating her sister, her second oldest sister. She's the youngest of four and I'm dating her her second oldest sister and and we just became good friends and she started saying, I'm I'm writing some music. And I was going oh, that's great, and she's. She's hanging with one of my, my very, very best friends, brown Bannister. And I was going, oh, that's great, and she's hanging with one of my very, very best friends, brown Bannister, and Brown is kind of an emerging engineer producer and Brown starts to. 08:34 about the time I moved back to Texas. Brown is kind of working with her in the studio and then all of a sudden another good friend of ours, chris Christian, brings her cassette to the record label that I'm working with and goes OK, I think we're going to work with this young girl. And so here I am. I'm the A&R, junior A&R director at this label called Word Records. 08:58 - Speaker 2 And I was a nobody there, Honestly. 09:00 - Speaker 1 I was a nobody. I was a nobody there, Honestly, I was a nobody and in fact I had worked with. The real artist that really broke me open at the time was an artist by David Meese was his name. And so when Amy Grant got signed, I said, oh, I know her, I dated her sister, I know Amy very well and they said, great, you're going to be her A&R director. I said, perfect, I'd be happy to work with her. 09:25 So that's kind of how Amy and I got started. So I became her A&R director, which back in those days, an A&R director was critically important because A&R literally decided the direction of the recording, the songs to be recorded, the packaging, the photos. I mean A&R was a critical, critical piece and a lot of people always wanted to be A&R but a lot of people would fail miserably and they'd be like they don't know how to pick the songs or something and they would be done. I literally had a great opportunity to do that for Amy all the way through for the next 30 years. That's where I became her executive producer on all of her projects. 10:07 - Speaker 2 So when that first album came out I believe it was self-titled, if I recall, yeah. Did you know that you and Amy and your team know that this was going to be a career that would just have an amazing trajectory? 10:20 - Speaker 1 No, not at that moment. In fact, that first album, before we changed it, we did kind of a gritty album cover because I mean she was literally like 17 years old and we were trying to make her look older rather than younger. So we kind of made this kind of textured-looking photograph and the songs on there were pretty sweet. They're nothing earth-shattering. There's nothing earth shattering. But the next three albums on Amy. The next album that we did was called Father's Eyes and I had found a songwriter by the name of Gary Chapman who had written, and so I found that song and said Amy's got to record this song. And that was probably the spark that kind of began people going who is this girl? Where'd that come from? Um, the next album was called um, oh gosh, uh, there was. It was uh, it was amy sitting in a studio and I can't remember the title immediately right now. But there was a third album and um, and I'm still working as the A&R director at the label and Never Alone was the name of the album, just now that it's occurring to me. So you know I did three albums on her At the same time. 11:33 I'm doing this album on David Meese who the label had told me we are going to drop, and so he's got one more album. Go make an album on him. So I went to David Meese and I said look, they're going to drop you, let me make an album on you. That's different than what you've done. He said well, what do you mean? I said I want to make you a pop like a pop singer. And he went now what? So I got Brown Bannister. 11:56 We went in the studio, made an album called I Can't Believe it's True. I dressed him up in a red jogging suit and he sounded like one of the Bee Gees when he sang. I was like you're like Andy Gibb, and we made this album that I mean it was the first time at the Word Records that they'd ever received any kind of pop radio support. So that album got radio airplay. And I'm telling you, brian, I literally went from a who is this guy that did this, I mean from a nobody to a somebody in like two weeks, because that had never happened at this label. They'd always gotten kind of religious radio response. 12:39 And here I am getting pop radio on a kid that they were gonna drop. 12:43 So, it relaunched David's career. And then here I am, working on Amy. At about that time, amy's brother-in-law, dan Harrell, and I decided to it's time to form a new company called Blanton Harrell. And so in 1980, we launched Blanton Harrell. Amy was our first client and, um, I, I, you know, I, you know, I did. I kept doing for her what we had always done, what I'd always done. 13:07 I was her A&R executive director and the first thing I did I said I want to put, put you with a band. I'm gonna put you with a band from Memphis called DeGarmo and Key. And at that point they were, they were kind of a Christian rock band which was not a was not a thing in the music industry. Christian rock was not. It was kind of happening on the West Coast. Larry Norman and Randy Stonehill were kind of rock edges, but they were not. It was not a big deal. 13:37 But when I put Amy, who was this little folk singer, excuse me, this little folk singer with this rock band from memphis and we did a live album, you would have thought I had literally, uh, blown up the world. I mean, we put out that album and uh, and I, you know the. The thing I will tell you is I put them on. There was a thing called christian artist seminar, amy and de gar, 2,500 people up in Colorado, and I'm just thinking, man, we've made a great album. Because I grew up on pop and rock music I mean that's where I came from so I'm thinking, just a killer, it's gonna be a killer album, breakout album, and we're playing for 2,500 people. We're up in Estes Park, colorado. She plays the first song and there is no applause. Now, I don't know how many of your listeners have ever been to a concert where, after no matter how bad it is that there's not some some bad applause, but there was no applause so the song ends. 14:39 The band stops and it's just and then I'm sitting there going now, what, what, what's going on? She played the next song. Same thing, no applause. By the third song, I'm going. Okay, these people do not like that. 14:53 Amy Grant is with a rock band from Memphis. This is not, and I'm I'm literally waking up to the uh, to the fact that in this audience on this night, to the fact that in this audience on this night, on this day, they do not like it. Now, amy being a phenomenal communicator, of course she kind of wins the night later by telling everybody I'm trying to make music that will relate to my peers. Dan Harrell and I literally go. I think we need to get out of here. We left her with our tour manager, got in the car, drove back to our hotel and I sat there and went. What have I done? I mean, I thought I was a good A&R guy. What have I done? And I told Dan that night. I said I need to make an album on Amy, that there is no question who and what she is, and from that we went. 15:44 I went to find songs that would make a huge difference and the next album we made on amy grant was, uh, age to age. We recorded up at caribou ranch, which was a, an iconic pop recording facility up in colorado, where the beach boys, elton, john, chicago, it all recorded which was a dream of mine to record there. And we went there and we recorded this album and on that album was this massive song called El Shaddai and it was phenomenal and that album came out in the spring of 1982. And it was the first album in that genre that actually went gold, ultimately platinum, and it was the for a quote unquote Christian artists. It was the first time it ever happened. Was that next album? 16:35 - Speaker 2 Wow, so that's, that's when you knew you. You were on the right track as far as music style track. Okay, good, that's great, is is. Is the fact you mentioned a minute ago about about your David Meese project and how it crossed over onto pop. Is that, is that critical? Is that important? Are are? Are you trying we're still back, you know, talking a few years ago, but are you trying to produce tracks that that do crossover or are you trying to stay in a certain genre? How important is that? 17:06 - Speaker 1 No, I think. I think I was just trying to go. For me, growing up, top 40 had always been kind of the the uh, the monitor that you look at. And I was going we've got artists and songs that, if we produce them right, uh, that would be super candidates for top 40 radio. So my, my marker was to go, let's go make music that can go top 40 radio. That was what really mattered in the music industry whether you got a Grammy, whether you got anybody paid attention to you. So I was not trying to protect the genre as much as I was trying to create great product that would be recognizable on pop radio. And nobody had really done that from the gospel genre that I had been planted in. So that's why the timing was great. I'd love to say I was all this great genius, but I just think timing was everything. And Amy was the perfect artist. She was beautiful and she knew me well enough to trust me. So whatever songs I pick, um, uh, she would go. Okay, that's fine, let's go, let's go make it. 18:12 - Speaker 2 There's another artist that that you mentioned. You mentioned in your bio, michael W Smith. Um, he's. He's had quite a career too, hasn't he? 18:21 - Speaker 1 Yeah. So Michael came in and so about the time 19, right after that breakout album on Amy, he is&H called me and said can I come play you some songs? I said, sure, come play me some songs. So he walked in, started playing me some songs and and I'm going, wow, this kid's got such a great sense of melody. And the more he played, I said, look, if you'll go back and work on, I picked out a couple of songs that I was particularly interested in. I said if you'll go back and write 10 or 12 songs like this, we'll put you on our label. Well, we didn't have a label. 19:14 I was making all of that up and I'm telling you he went back. And he came back a couple of weeks later and said what about these? And in that batch of songs was a song called Friends, friends Forever. And I looked at him and went, okay, I could let Amy Grant record this song and it will be, it'll be, it'll be one of her iconic, biggest songs. I mean, it was just a high school, college, you know, remember song. And I said, oh, we can start your album and put this on your album and start your whole career. And he said, okay, whatever you want to do. 19:49 And so we literally started Reunion Records with Michael W Smith recording Friends Are Friends Forever, and it was. It blew up. I mean it just it took off like a rocket ship, and right at the same time that Amy was taking off with all of her music. So it was, you know, it was phenomenal. Kathy Tricoli came right behind that and we recorded for her, and it was the two of them together. Reunion Records took off like a rocket, just like Amy did. It was amazing. 20:21 - Speaker 2 That's a lot of fun. So it must be great to see an artist and see the potential and then watch it just explode. 20:29 - Speaker 1 That must be incredible, yeah no, and I think you know, uh, blanton harrell, as a management production firm, uh, reunion records was the newbie on the block. Um, uh, we literally were the first to really take that. Going back to your crossover point, we really uh, enhanced, developed and produced that, that crossover thing. And so, uh, there were some other artists that were getting some, some notice, but, um, but nobody was going after it quite on the level that we were doing at reunion and at Blanton Hero. 21:03 - Speaker 2 I did some research. It looks like Friends has been covered and sampled a bunch of times, so you must be proud when you see something that gets covered by another artist. 21:15 - Speaker 1 I mean I love it. At one point, of course, I signed Rich Mullins not long after all this, and Rich was just another iconic, great, great songwriter and he between his song Awesome God. Michael Debbia's, friends for Friends Forever and Amy Grant El Shaddai at one point at least in our genre, we had the top three songs of that, the biggest historic songs in the genre, which was just amazing. So it was a special. It was a special time to be doing that. That's awesome. 21:49 - Speaker 2 I love music. That's really cool and I think music plays an important part in all of our lives. You'll hear a song and it'll take you back to a place or a location or a smell. Does that ever do that to you? Do you hear a song? 22:03 - Speaker 1 Oh, absolutely, my wife would tell you right now. I mean, I still go back and play ambrosia, um, or the eagles and I go back because you know or the fleawood mac. Even today, the minute the fleawood mac song comes on I'm I am the reason they are so infectious, because every song has a groove to it that literally if you start grooving a moving, and so I was affected by all of that tremendously. There was a producer out of the pop market that I I was particularly fond of, named Michael Amartian, and Michael produced, I mean, a pop hit in in 30 decades. He was like one of these iconic, great producers that I eventually got to meet and work with and and got to work on on Amy Grant's Heart in Motion project. 22:54 - Speaker 2 That's cool. Yeah, we talk about music that does something to you. Back in 84, I was driving across the country with my dad from Tacoma to Oklahoma to go to college. Oh my. 23:07 - Speaker 1 God. 23:07 - Speaker 2 We were in a Datsun hatchback and listening to the radio and a Huey Lewis song came on the radio and I'm pretty sure it was called stuck with you oh yeah, yeah. And my dad maybe changed the channel of the radio because it was too much rock and roll. 23:24 - Speaker 1 I love it Too, rock and roll, I love it too, too rock and roll and uh. 23:28 - Speaker 2 So when that song comes on the radio, I think of my dad. 23:31 - Speaker 1 You know those types of things, oh, yeah, 100 yeah that's yeah, there's some beatle songs that came on that my mom used to go do you hear what you're singing? I was going, I'm not. I'm not really paying attention to lyrics, mom, I'm really into the music and I think that that became one of my giftings when I started with Amy is. I always came back to it's about the music, it's about the melody, how you produce it. Yes, the lyrics are important, but we don't call it the lyric business, we call it the music business. Interesting and the music business is the is the art of creating great music and lyrics, but it's a music doesn't do something to you. It's not, it's not really the win yet. So, um, that's that. That was always kind of one of my mottos. 24:18 - Speaker 2 That's awesome and I'll. I'll tell you I I was a DJ at the roller rink in high school, and that's when. Thriller, the Thriller album came out. 24:30 - Speaker 1 Oh, of course, and boy did I play that LP over and over again. That was him. That was him. 24:37 - Speaker 2 So next time, if there's anybody who has a roller rink, then he's a DJ. You're in. Yeah, I'm in. Michael will bring the vinyl and I'll do this dj. 24:45 - Speaker 1 I love it well, I, I became fairly good at creating these cassettes. Going back to cassettes for my friends, yeah, putting songs together. So it had phil collins and michael, and then it would have a killer, amy grant or michael debbie a song on there that blended into it. Because once again, my whole goal was we got to make music that would fit in the middle of pop radio. I mean, I wanted, I wanted us to win Grammys. 25:08 - Speaker 2 So when you put on Spotify or Apple Music today, what, what kind of stuff do you listen to? 25:14 - Speaker 1 Well, today, you know, because I'm still in the discovery land, I put on probably new artists that constantly I'm being introduced to, probably new artists that constantly I'm being introduced to. People say, hey, can you listen to this? Or people are constantly sending me links to new artists. So I'm always looking for new things. I don't really go and just sit and enjoy Spotify like a go back to my old stuff. I go to Pandora, honestly more than anything, and Pandora has a they've got a unique algorithm system that they pick up on what I'm listening to, what I like to go back to, and so when I put in Pandora and put in Tears for Fears and it pulls up, everybody wants to rule the world, I'm going to go back to you. Or, um, uh, oh, god, mike and the mechanics when they all, all you need is a miracle. Yeah, those kind of things. Just they take me back to events in my early years of loving music that really were game changers that's right, and those are two great songs, by the way. 26:21 - Speaker 2 Yeah, and tears for fears out. They've been out on tour. 26:24 - Speaker 1 Oh, I know, I know. 26:25 - Speaker 2 Yeah, we should go again. 26:29 - Speaker 1 Let's go Actually. Well, everybody's coming back on tour. It's kind of a. It's kind of a legacy yeah, Run now. Things are coming back in in great way, so I love that. 26:43 - Speaker 2 Let's talk about that. I think there is a resurgence of interest in in legacy music, legacy artists, um, I've seen more vinyl being produced, lps by artists, yeah, artists, yeah, yeah, um, why do you? Oh, even in in pop culture, on tiktok, we're seeing, you know, uh, the fast food restaurants from the 80s and 90s becoming popular again applebee's and red lobster. There's a whole thing about that on tiktok. Why do you think there's such an interest in the younger folks, in interested in the in the retro stuff? 27:17 - Speaker 1 well, look what, look what happened. So music developed technology-wise where people literally I mean kids, and I do say that word a lot, so slap me around if I say literally too much but kids literally can go into their, their dorm room and make their own music because of technology, record their own music, and then there's no collaboration. They can, they can be by themselves, make music, put it up on Spotify and, as a result, spotify and Apple are inundated with just new artists coming from everywhere. The difference is from the 60s, 70s, 80s, even the 90s, is that music was all based upon groups that were collaborating, creating the best music, and so, as a result, I think the songs were better back in the 70s and 80s. 28:02 So now we have TV shows like the Voice and American Idol and America's Got Talent. 28:08 Now we're seeing kids come along and when they do their new music, every now and then there will be a breakout, but almost always the new artists being discovered are going back and sing, singing legacy songs. They're going back and singing songs that we remember and they're blown away and we all go that. That connects because it was a. It was such a radio phenomenon that when a new voice records an old song, legacy song. We all flip out going oh my gosh, that was such a killer song, such a great Gil Collins song, that was such a great Eagle song. But now, because new kids today are pretty much trying to do everything on their own rather than collaborate, I think the song quality has gone down. And on top of that, the amount that's coming into Spotify and Apple it's just overwhelming. There's no way to go really listen to all of the great music that probably is right underneath the right underneath the waterline. We just can't find it because there's so much of it coming in. 29:09 - Speaker 2 Right. So you played drums, you said right. 29:12 - Speaker 1 Well, I tried, let's just go with. He tried to play drums. 29:15 - Speaker 2 Okay, so you and Phil Collins ever, ever jammed together. You guys ever get. 29:26 - Speaker 1 No, I did tried to play drum, okay, so you and phil collins ever, ever, jammed together. You guys ever get. No, I did get to see phil collins play in washington dc at a concert, and it was right, as he was his back and his uh was becoming so bad he actually had to sit down to sing all his lead vocals. His son, though, came up and started playing. Yeah, and uh, oh, yeah, uh. 29:38 There was one time when, with amy, we were going to record her album, we went to montserrat, which is down in the caribbean, and, uh, we were checking out because of caribou, I'd always thought we've got to go record at the best studios. There was air studio that was down in montserrat, so we flew down there to go explore that, and they said come on in, there's a, we're recording here. But they explore that. And they said, come on in, there's a, we're recording here, but they're taking a break, they're gone to lunch. So I said, well, who's recording? And they said, uh, uh, phil Collins is recording, and or he's producing Eric Clapton. So we go into the studio and Eric Clapton had 20 guitars in there, and we got to see the studio. We never did record there, but Phil Collins was producing Eric Clapton had 20 guitars in there and we got to see the studio. We never did record there, but Phil Collins was producing Eric Clapton and it was phenomenal. It was just an incredible moment. So making me think about Phil Collins brought back that that memory. 30:29 Yeah, no, that's awesome, one of the greatest of all times. 30:33 - Speaker 2 How important are collaborations in today's music? I see a lot of artists today who are collaborating. You know it's such an artist featuring such an artist and they're trying to collaborate. Is that something that's always been a trend or is that something that's relatively new over the last you know? 30:47 - Speaker 1 10 years. I think the featuring is new. The collaboration I'm talking about is when Crosby, stills, nash and Young all sit around in their house out in California and started singing together and went, wow, we sound pretty good and they collaborated on writing their songs together. Now in Nashville there's collaboration every day. There's songwriters collaborating, turning out songs. They're just writing songs and then the top five 10% of artists will go pick I want to record that song. They find songs from the collaborators. 31:21 But the collaboration I'm talking about it was not only collaborating on lyrics and melody ideas. They were collaborating on vocals, harmonies, and that kind of went away because people started going well, I don't want to, I want to. Like I said, the younger millennials started recording everything and doing it all on their own, even singing their own background vocals. So the beautiful harmony of vocals was kind of not being replicated because it was like I'm going to do everything in my closet at my dorm or at my home and I think I'm pretty good and there are some people that are phenomenal, they're so good, but the art of A&Ring is not. I mean, artists today don't really look for an A&R guy, they look for maybe a producer that can help them. 32:08 So you know it's changed a lot. The game has changed a lot, but it's also diluted the impact of music. So today I would say music is not as impactful as it was back in my early days, the 80s and the 90s, because music has become visual. Everything's either on TikTok or on YouTube. If you put out a new artist today, you have to go visual, and that was not the case back then. So today if I go looking for a new artist, I go to YouTube or TikTok before I go to Spotify, because they typically will have something up so I can see them singing live or recording and that's kind of become the new thing. So everything has become much more visual. Music will never go away, but it's really kind of secondary to the visual. 32:53 - Speaker 2 Are you happy with that? Are you happy with the state of music and the way things? Have not changed anything. 33:04 - Speaker 1 No, I mean back in the day we made a great living I'll call it, you know paying our, our electric bills by by the amount of um, you know, because of cds and ticket sales. Now, today, with spotify, we don't sell cds anymore because sets have kind of made a comeback. Lps have made have certainly made a comeback, lps have made have certainly made a comeback, but there's not a big royalty that goes to everybody on that anymore. So the big money is still now in ticket sales and so you've either got to get into that top 10% of ticket sellers or you're you're literally kind of going and and making your $200,000, $500,000 on the road and hopefully you can survive on that. It's definitely a different game than it used to be. 33:46 - Speaker 2 So if we all go to Spotify right now and play Baby Baby, maybe you'll get a penny and a half or a couple pennies. 33:52 - Speaker 1 I'm hoping, maybe maybe Well it goes to the owner of the master and it goes to the owner of the master and it goes to the writers of the songs, but it's not enough for anybody. I mean, you've got to get millions of streams Right, really create any kind of revenue that you can go pay your bills with. 34:13 - Speaker 2 Right. 34:15 - Speaker 1 So it's all changed. Yeah, it's changed and I think it'll come back. I think there's right now there's a resurgence coming back to music. Uh, that is kind of refreshing. I I actually am hoping that cds have come back and that people will want to get go and spend time with. You know my 10, 12, 15 songs on a on an album again, because now we've gone to so much single streaming, uh, that you know I can. I can break an artist today with one song. They don't even have to have an album, but we could create one song and release it and make it happen you've got a legacy artist you're working with now. 34:52 - Speaker 2 They're called the archers, yeah, and their names are tim, jenice and Steve their family. They sing together. They've been singing for many, many, many, many years, yep, and you're doing something interesting with them with their new project is you're releasing a song at a time. 35:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, we are Not the whole album. 35:14 - Speaker 2 What's that? Tell me a little bit about that project. 35:17 - Speaker 1 Well, the whole thing was, they reached out to me and said can you help us? Partly because I had signed them to reunion years ago. But Tim Archer reached out. He and Cynthia, his wife, said we would really like to have your A&R executive production skills, and so they engaged me to help them build this 50th anniversary project. And it's a killer album. It is a Grammy worthy recording. It is. It's that great. It's called Legacy Live and it's it's kind of recording the best of the best of what they did in the past, which I think is actually a model that you're going to see a lot more of. 35:54 But in the world today, the best thing you can do is, you know, even back years ago you'd release a single on a new album and we've kind of took that approach on this one. We released a medley of five of their songs and it's phenomenal. It's just, it's a great medley and we're actually trying to get it nominated for a Dove and for a Grammy Award even this next month. We're kind of working all the game for that, but the album will actually the full album will be released tomorrow, on the 22nd of July, and hopefully, is that right? I think that's right. No, maybe it's the 22nd of August. I think I've misstated. It'll be the 22nd of August, sure, but it's a full recording. And, man, it's just a phenomenal recording on a legacy act and, and I think it's important for legacy artists that are, who are living longer, who've made great music, to go back and honor their great songs and their past. And, man, I'd love to see that happen a lot more so. 36:57 - Speaker 2 So if there's a legacy artist out there that wants to know what to do, maybe they should reach out to you. Would you like people to reach out to you? Do you want to give your contact info? 37:06 - Speaker 1 No, I'd love for any artist. In fact, I work with younger developing artists and legacy artists. So, yeah, if there's a legacy plan out there, I would love for them to reach out to me, and they can simply reach out to my email address, which is the best. Michael at Blanton ENTcom. 37:23 - Speaker 2 Well, we'll put that in the, uh, in the, in the show notes this is conversations with giants, and we're talking with Michael Blanton from the Nashville area in Tennessee. 37:34 Uh, a decades, uh, famous producer of music. And I tell you what, michael, you have had a real big impact on the world of music. There are songs playing right now all over the world that you had a hand in and it's really impressive and thank you for all you do. If our artists today you mentioned this a little bit a minute ago in the world of writing books, there's a thing called self-publishing right, you may not get a publisher, you just self-publish. 38:07 You go print your own books on Amazon. Is that what artists are doing today? Are they self? Is that what you call it, self-publishing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 38:21 - Speaker 1 No, in fact, I'm working with authors as well. I've got three or four authors that I'm working with who do self-publishing and because publishers like record labels, they don't really want to sign you. If they like your music or they like your story, they are waiting for you to get a million followers on TikTok or YouTube or on your social media. If you get a million followers, they're going to go. Okay, enough people like them. It might be worth taking a risk to do that. That's really different than the way we used to do it. The great A&R directors back in the day, the great producers like the Quincy Jones who worked with Michael Jackson I mean that collaboration between producer and artist, a&r director and gosh you know gosh I'm thinking about John Kolodner that was at Geffen was a phenomenal A&R director that you know. Those collaborations, they just don't happen anymore. So now you got people coming along going okay, I want to make my own music. How do I get there? And I go. Well, you either got to go, develop your social media and get a million followers, or you just got to create your music and trust that something you're going to do, if you do it well, is going to go viral. Speaking of viral. 39:28 There was probably the greatest moment for me in all the music I did which is kind of crazy it was with Baby Baby. You mentioned that a while ago, and Baby Baby was after Amy had done, I mean, a phenomenal album called Lead Me On, but it didn't really get the pop airplay. She looked at me and she said just make the album on me, a pop album on me that you want to make. And so I've worked. I decided to work with three producers which hadn't really been done at that time, and so Brown Bannister, of course, was my go-to, but I brought Michael Amartian in and I brought in Keith Thomas and I worked with all three of them. But I didn't let them work together. 40:10 And Baby Baby was a song that Keith Thomas had. He'd written the melody but there were no lyrics. So I brought it to Amy and I said you need to work on this song. This is a hit song. Well, the weird thing is she did write on it. She just had a baby, so she would dance around the kitchen, started singing baby, baby, and so we recorded that song and made it one of the songs on this new album called Heart in Motion. Well, I'm telling you, when we were getting close to finishing A&M Records, which was our label at the time, jerry Moss wanted to pull that song off of the album and I mean, keith Thomas and I were freaking out, so we both started working on what do we need to do to save this song? And we started. I started reaching out to Aretha Franklin and I said, well, if Aretha Franklin sings it with Amy on here and she'd already had a number one hit with uh uh, with uh uh, what's his name from Chicago, the next time I fall in love with Peter. 41:14 And so I'm going, if we can get, and Keith and I were both working to get Aretha to sing it and before we could get Aretha confirmed to sing it, one of the A&R guys at A&M took the song Baby Baby and sent it to his big radio, top 40 radio friend down in San Diego and they decided to put it on the air without telling the label. And they put that song on the air and it exploded. I've never seen a song explode like I mean all of a sudden, around the US, around the globe. Baby Baby started taking off like a rocket and it was something else that happened. 41:54 That album wound up having five songs in the top ten, four songs in the top ten, all from each one of the producers, from Keith, thomas Brown, bannister and Michael Amartian and it was nominated at the Grammys for the Best Pop Album, best Pop Recording, best Pop Female Artist, best Song of the Year and Best Producer. We had five pop nominations that year. That was incredible. We did not win because what won that year was Natalie Cole singing on a video with her dad, nat King Cole. 42:31 - Speaker 2 Unforgettable, that's right. 42:32 - Speaker 1 That did everything yeah. 42:34 - Speaker 2 It's hard, yeah it was awesome. Yeah, I literally just heard Baby, baby the other day at a grocery store playing in the background. It gets a lot of airplay in grocery stores. 42:47 - Speaker 1 I think Well, my kids and I, we all have a thing going that every time we go to the grocery store they're playing Amy or one of my reunion songs, yeah, and we all tape it. We do a selfie and send it to each other. Going, here we are. Here's one of the songs playing again. So I know exactly what you're talking about. 43:03 - Speaker 2 I love it. We're going to wrap up here in a second. You're busy and I do appreciate your time today, michael, my pleasure. But is there anything in the vault, any sort of a funny story that happened in the studio, where you something just you can't believe it happened, like a anything that just fell apart or somebody popping in? Is there any sort of a moment you look back and you say I should tell me? 43:29 - Speaker 1 brian. Oh, there's so many things I'm uh. Probably the first thing just popped in my mind is, which is not a big noteworthy, but it kind of became a big thing here in Nashville Amy was recording one time, was starving and started eating potato chips. Just started going I got to eat and so she's trying to record a vocal. Well, you know what? The oil from the potato chips helped her voice so much that she started going. Oh my gosh, this is like a, this is like a miracle. Find. Well, that started spreading around the recording studios. Amy Grant said eat potato chips before you record. So literally for a, for a season of life there people would come up going, hey, I'm eating my potato chips. I mean it's amazing and it really did help Amy's vocal on a recording one time, which was amazing, that's great. 44:20 - Speaker 2 You know, you reminded me, on Netflix there's a show out called the Greatest Night in Pop and you have you seen it? It's about the. 44:30 - Speaker 1 We Are the World, oh yeah, oh my God, yes, of course. 44:34 - Speaker 2 And it came out in 2024. And it came out in 2024, but it's the untold story of how you know, 46 of the biggest pop music stars got together and recorded the world. So I suppose if someone's interested in hearing more about the legacy artists and seeing them all, you've got to watch that Netflix special, really great. 44:56 - Speaker 1 Special, yeah, it's a great documentary, really great. Of course, quincy Jones was probably one of the quintessential, greatest pop producers. David Foster, they were all, I mean, those icons I was chasing. I was trying to go, man, if I could ever work with them or get them to work on music. And we got close with David Foster to work with Amy, but we never quite got there. 45:18 - Speaker 2 Well, that Peter Cetera song, by the way, was a great track. The Next Time we Fall in Love 100% Great song. That's still a great track. Well, michael, what a pleasure to have you on the Conversations with Giants podcast. My pleasure. We could clearly dive into so much more. We talked a lot about legacy and we talked about the future of music. Is there any question we didn't talk about? Ask you today that you'd want to. You'd want to touch on. 45:48 - Speaker 1 No, I just think. In the world that I'm in, content has become key, obviously look at the multi-channels of visual display music and the joy for me, even at my age and my years of doing this, is still to be able to go developing new content, whether it's music or film, or whether it's a book or whatever the content is. If I can help create music that can bring hope and joy and encouragement for us to be the best and better people, that's what I'm going to do. I love that. 46:21 - Speaker 2 Well, we're going to definitely put all your contact information in the show notes and if you want to reach out to Michael, you can email him in his email address, which will be in the show notes. And, michael, honestly, we're so thankful you took time out to be on our podcast today. 46:36 - Speaker 1 Thank you so much, my pleasure. Thank you, brian. Thank you so much my pleasure. 46:44 - Speaker 2 Thank you, brian. Thank you very much. This episode of Conversations with Giants is brought to you by CCB Marketing, a global marketing agency helping brands and organizations grow through smart strategy, bold, creative and powerful digital execution. Learn more at https://ccbmarketing.net.