Music

I began my career in the music business in NYC at the Upper West Side location of legendary Tower Records. After stints working Arista, Warner Music, and even directly for the Chairman of TimeWarner, Inc., (during which time I bore witness to that historic merger from a lofty perch), I found my niche as a creative in music publishing. For two years in LA, I worked for Diane Warren, perhaps the most successful songwriter of the last fifty years. Though I could "work a room" with the best of them and there was no dearth of starry, glamorous nights, I was all about the music. My greatest passion was advocating for songwriters and getting their work recorded. I loved overseeing collaborations and, even though I did not write songs myself, I think I was appreciated for having an intuitive sense of how to care for and communicate with writers and their needs. Natalie Cole called me her “human jukebox” and I leveraged my far-ranging knowledge of popular music to educate younger artists and create creative opportunities for existing copyrights or singers who needed just the write song. I met nearly every singer I respected and even worked with many of the greats.

The appearance of Napster in 1999 and the concomitant explosion of illegal downloading and file sharing, instigated a seismic shift in the music industry’s business model and, at least for the first few years, a shocking percentage of attrition industry-wide. Indeed, the record business as it had existed structurally since the 1920s, was one of the first casualties of the digital revolution. Though I was doing the same things I’d always done to make it rain, it didn’t seem to work. I pushed harder and harder until I was spinning like a whirling dervish trying to create the next auspicious opportunity; then maybe not so auspicious opportunity; then maybe, any opportunity at all. After two years of this, I sort of collapsed in place in total exhaustion: bewildered and defeated.  

When I came to, I began to reinvent myself as a writer: from exploiter of copyrights to writer of copy. If it weren’t for what I now affectionately refer to as "the brutal contraction of my record business career,” I may have never learned one of the most important lessons of my life. You see, in the music business, there was no such thing as pivoting because plan B was always “push harder.” When the jobs dried up I doubled and trebled my pushing. When I was up to plan “L" or M and still pushing without creating the desired outcome, it occurred to me that there were other words that started with “P.” Instead of “pushing”I began to “pivot.

Sex and the City Theme

I executive produced the remix of the Sex in the City theme by Groove Armada.

Natalie Cole Leavin’

I executive produced and did the A&R work for 8-time Grammy winner Natalie Cole’s Leavin’ album. The late singer was nominated for a Grammy for the album’s first single “Daydreaming.” Here is the title cut, a cover of Shelby Lynne’s “Leavin’.”