Music: Breeze Hill’s Success Breaths Life Into Woodstock Sound

The Internet, which didn’t even exist a decade ago, is changing everything. Take the music industry for example. It used to be that if you started a record company, your chances of competing with “the majors” were slim to none, no matter how good your product. The big boys had the big bucks, and they used them to stifle competition. A small label had no chance of getting their tapes and CDs in the stores, much less getting them played on the radio. All of that’s changed now, thanks to the influence of the World Wide Web. These days, if you can’t find a deal to get your music distributed, you can sell it yourself in cyberspace. With a little luck (and a little marketing savvy), you might even find yourself becoming a force to be reckoned with.

If all of this sounds a bit far fetched, take the case of Breeze Hill Records, which operates out of a modest office in the New England village of Litchfield, Connecticut. Until August, 1999 this label didn’t even exist. Now, only two years later, they’re selling records world wide and their product is on the shelves of such industry giants as Tower Records. However, they got their start marketing their product themselves, directly to the consumer via the Internet. It didn’t hurt, of course, that they had a little help from lady luck along the way. Their first release, “Live on Breeze Hill,” was a solo album by a member of one of the most legendary groups from the sixties, the Band’s bassist and singer, Rick Danko.

Everybody who’s old enough to remember Nixon and Watergate remembers the Band, the group that gave us such great songs as Stage Fright, Up On Cripple Creek and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Their brand of funky and folksy rock featured lyrics that spoke with the unmistakable voice of the common, blue collar North American. Because they recorded from their home base near Woodstock, New York, their unique grassroots style has, over the years, become known as “the Woodstock sound,” which is now the audio trademark of Breeze Hill Records.

How this all came about seems to be a series of coincidences. Quentin Ryan, the 42 year old founder of Breeze Hill and great-grandson to Johnson & Johnson’s founder Robert Wood Johnson, first met the Band back in the late 1970s while in Los Angeles working in the television industry. In the 1990s, he renewed his acquaintance with Danko and engaged him to perform at his 40th birthday party. That birthday performance, with a single added “studio” song, was released as the album “Live on Breeze Hill” in 1999, and Breeze Hill Records was off and running.

This recording was the first solo album by Danko since 1977, making the release something of a major event to the Band’s still loyal following. Unfortunately, however, Danko died of heart failure in December 1999, just months after the album was released. At the time, Danko had a second solo album, Times Like These, almost completed. Ryan worked closely with Danko’s widow, Elizabeth, and producer Aaron Hurwitz, to complete the project, which was released last September to generally good reviews.

Getting the aid of this particular producer was also something of a coup for Breeze Hill. Hurwitz, also known as “Professor Louis,” is a singer and keyboardist who produced three albums by the Band in the 1990s, and is considered to be an authority on the “Woodstock sound.” With the Crowmatix, a quintet from New York’s Hudson Valley, Hurwitz released Over the Edge, a solo album, on Breeze Hill last fall. That album features a version of the Grateful Dead’s Scarlet Begonias and a rendition of the Band’s Endless Highway. Another album by Hurwitz and the Crowmatix is due to be released in March.

In addition to Danko and Hurwitz, Ryan and Breeze Hill have managed to coax Garth Hudson, the Band’s reclusive keyboardist, to make his first ever solo album. The album, The Sea to the North, was released in March.

But having great talent, and even good reviews, doesn’t necessarily spell success in the music business, especially when you begin by marketing your product through an unknown web site. Again, luck combined with a keen marketing sense has made the Breeze Hill venture a success story for all David’s who would have the nerve to go against Goliath.

“We’ve sold more than 30,000 (CDs) in a little more than a year,” Quentin Ryan recently told Reuters’ writer Matthew Lewis. Sales have come from such distant locations as Portugal, Kenya, Sweden and Tasmania. “The Internet definitely helped us in the beginning and is still helping us reach customers.”

According to Ryan, about 40 percent of his company’s total sales have come from it’s web site, with the remainder coming from traditional record stores. “I know that hundreds of record labels come and go,” he said, “but I think with the right marketing we'll be profitable, and will be able to stick around for the long haul.”

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