I’ve been around the record business a long damn time.
Long enough to watch it change. Then change again. And every time somebody tells you the latest change is gonna “save the music business,” you better check and see who the hell they’re talking about saving.
Because it usually ain’t the little Blues man.
One of the biggest changes was streaming.
Streaming opened some doors. No doubt about that. An independent artist can put a record out today and somebody around the world can hear it tonight.
That’s pretty amazing.
But something else happened.
The little blues artist used to have something he could put in his hand and sell.
A CD.
He could sell it at the show. Sell it out of the trunk of his car. Sell it from the house. Sell it directly to somebody who heard him play and wanted to take a little piece of that music home.
Ten dollars here. Fifteen dollars there.
That mattered.
Take enough of those sales away and you cut pretty damn deep into blues music.
Because the big boys might survive another change in the record business.
The little man might not.
So Why Does Blues Music Still Matter?
That's easy for me.
The blues is open expression from one heart to another.
That's it.
You hurt? There's a blues for that.
You love somebody who don't love you back? Hell, we've got a whole department for that.
You broke?
Lonely?
Happy?
Horny?
Mad at the world?
Lost somebody?
Found somebody?
There's a blues for any of it.
And as long as human beings have feelings and need some way to communicate those feelings to each other, the blues is going to matter.
That's why I don't really think of Fat Mule Records as trying to preserve the blues.
The blues don't need me to preserve it.
It was here before me, and it'll probably be sitting on somebody's porch long after I'm gone.
What I want to preserve are the records. The people. The moments.
Because every once in a while somebody walks into a room with something worth putting on a record.
A song.
A voice.
A story.
A moment in somebody's life.
And once you capture that moment, it becomes part of history.
That's still magic to me.
That's Why Fat Mule Exists
Technology has made recording music easier than it has ever been.
But making a living from that music?
That's another damn story.
You can throw your music onto the streaming services and hope people find it. And streaming certainly has its place.
But streams don't pay much.
Especially when you're talking about independent blues artists who aren't doing millions and millions of plays.
So I keep coming back to something we've known in the blues business forever:
You have to get closer to the people who give a damn about the music.
Direct to fan.
That's the lifeline.
That's what I'm trying to build with Fat Mule Records & Mercantile Company.
Make records.
Tell stories.
Sell some records and merchandise.
Introduce people to artists they might never hear otherwise.
And, most importantly, create a direct connection between the people making this music and the people who still care enough to support it.
I'm not trying to build the next giant record company.
I'm trying to build something that gives the little man a fighting chance.
Maybe Fat Mule can help an artist make another record.
Maybe we can capture a song that otherwise would've disappeared.
Maybe somebody discovers an old bluesman they'd never heard before.
Maybe somebody buys a record or a shirt and that little bit of money helps keep the whole damn machine moving another mile down the road.
That's enough reason for me.
Because when everything gets reduced to streams, algorithms, playlists, followers and numbers on a screen, it's mighty easy to forget there's a human being standing on the other end of that song.
Fat Mule Records exists for that human being.
The little man.
The songwriter.
The picker.
The singer.
The somebody who's still carrying a song around inside them that deserves to become part of history.
I figure somebody ought to throw that son of a bitch a lifeline.
Might as well be us.
What about you—what's one blues record, artist, or song you damn sure don't want the world to forget?