[Text by MacKenzie Ryan] What musician can turn up her nose at every major record label that eagerly offers her a contract, manage her own production team, keep a firm grip on the steering wheel of creative control, and ultimately have a top 100 record?
Though the answer may be a name you haven’t heard — Ingrid Michaelson — chances are you have heard the redheaded siren croon on Old Navy commercials and primetime television shows like ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and VH1’s “You Oughta Know.” Now, the 28-year-old singer-songwriter and graduate of Binghamton University is one of the headliners of Hotel Café Tour, and will come to Ithaca’s State Theatre this Wednesday, March 26.
Michaelson was sucked into the tornado of indie music fame after a music licensing company discovered her MySpace page. Then came soundtrack bids for “One Tree Hill” and phone calls from the music director of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Four of Michaelson’s tracks made it to primetime. “Keep Breathing,” a slow, emotive song, played through the last six minutes of “Grey’s Anatomy” season finale, one of the most-watched television moments in 2006. That night, Michaelson and her lyrics topped Google’s search list. Her iTunes sales spiked, and Michaelson’s presence became increasingly impressive as more and more people purchased her music online.
The catapult didn’t stop there. Last summer, the singer performed on “Good Morning America,” Fuse TV and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. In the fall, Old Navy featured her song, “The Way I Am,” in sweater commercials. Her album, girls and boys, reached stores in mid-September, and intermittently broke into the Billboard top 200 — a major feat for any unsigned act. Since the album’s release, it climbed as high as #63 on Billboard’s charts. It is currently at #75. This month alone she appeared again on “Good Morning America” as well as “Live with Regis & Kelly.” Carson Daly and Conan O’Brien also featured her as a guest star.
“I didn’t really choose to have my music broken into television,” Michaelson says. “It just happened. It definitely was a very effective way to get a lot of people to hear it. Television is quite lucrative.”
“I think I sort of fell into this,”Michaelson laughs. “TV made it easy for me to excel… I think it’s pretty cool. I’m doing this without the aid of anybody, financially. I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur before this.”
Michaelson takes an unconventional approach to her career. Not only is she still unsigned, Michaelson says she’s not even interested in seeing her face on billboards or her name on the marqees.
“For right now, I feel like I made it past the point where I need a label,” Michaelson explains. “I need to go a lot further, but I’m happy where I am. I can finance everything myself. I’m not doing three-bus tours.”
So, does all the profit go to her pocket? Well, sort of. “A lot of it goes back into everything, like marketing and manufacturing,” says Michaelson. “I have to pay my staff: management, publicists, everything like that. A lot of it goes back to the machine. In theory, it all goes to me. Starting a business, I have to spend in order to get it back.
For example, getting my CD on the Powerwall at Best Buy will, in turn, get people to buy my record,” she says.
Responding to the ever-present question of will-you-or-won’t-you-ever-sign, this former Staten Island suburbanite says, “I go day by day, month by month, and access where I am now. But I don’t see it in the near future.”
For artists who are singing in clubs and trying to generate buzz around their names, Michaelson says getting discovered and signed to a major label is a great accomplishment. But for those like her who are already writing their own material, producing records, touring, and supporting themselves, it’s not always necessary. “Why wouldn’t a record label want to take my record and own that? That’s not my thing,” Michaelson says. “Now that I’m here, why am I all of a sudden going to hand over the reins and say, ‘Hey, you’re going to make 75 percent of what I make?’ No, that’s not cool.”
Most major media have run stories on Michaelson’s alternative marketing approach. But many of their portrayals of Michaelson have missed the boat because they focus on her status as a soon-to-be-signed artist. “People do take notice of this idea of me doing it by myself, but it will get old and boring,” she says. She says people constantly ask her, “When are you going to sign?” to which she thinks to herself, “Don’t you get it?”
Despite her independent roots, there is no long-simmering anti-industry angst in Michaelson. In fact, she shrugs off this kind of resentment and accepts it as the reality of big business. Michaelson admits, “I wouldn’t advise my friends not to sign to a label,” adding as an afterthought, “but for some people it’s not the way to go.”
She says the industry’s marketing mold, previously imposed on many niche musicians like her, is also changing.
“Smaller artists have always been on labels,” she contests. “The mass populace just didn’t dig them as much. Industry people are smart. They know what they’re doing…. Labels are not going to put a lot forward unless they know they have the sure thing. Business, it’s what it is. You just have to find a way to work in that business to the best of your ability.”
Still, Michaelson has faith that artists are getting business-savvy. Industry execs, as a result, aren’t jerking around their musicians because of it. “You need to be careful about what you’re singing and singing away,” she says, offering her caveat to the yet-unsigned.
She cites Jack Johnson’s profit sharing deal with Universal Records as an example of the evolving partnership between musicianship and record label executives. “Artists know more now, they’re not kept in the dark,” she says. “It’s going to be harder for us to be taken advantage of, because artists are more aware of flaws in industry.”
The future is bright for this boot-strapper with a Binghamton theater degree. For the next six months, Michaelson says she will tour aggressively. She is also preparing to release a new album on her Cabin 24 Records label late this year, or in early 2009. This July she will open several shows for the Dave Matthews Band,and representing the largest venues, and crowds, she’s ever experienced.
“I kind of have this shot at fame and hadn’t really had much touring under my belt,” says the songwriter. Michaelson participates in the “round robin” performances as a featured artist on the Hotel Café Tour, which she claims to be an ego-free, “big mish-mash of singer-song writers.”
Michaelson is smiling about the return to her “old stomping ground” next Wednesday. “I love that part of the country,” she says without an ounce of sarcasm. “I love the grayness and the cold and the rain.”
The Hotel Café Tour will come to Ithaca’s State Theatre this Wednesday, Mar. 26. The show will feature Ingrid Michaelson, Cary Brothers, Josh Radin, Meiko, and Priscilla Ahn. The show begins at 7:30pm.