Executive Interview: Ron Burman — President, North America, Mascot Label Group

It takes two: The smartest record labels know that success doesn’t just depend on signing great artists – they have to make equally smart choices in the executives that steer a band’s career.

Mascot Label Group has chosen most wisely. A longtime force in Europe but a relative newcomer in the US, Mascot selected Ron Burman to be at the helm stateside, naming him President, North America in 2013.

Ron Burman is in his element at Mascot Label Group’s HQ in NYC.

While Burman may not be a household name, at least one band that he signed as Senior Vice President of A&R at Roadrunner Records certainly is: Nickelback. The Canadian rock group may be a band that people love to hate, but plenty more love to love them – to date, they’ve sold more than 50 million albums worldwide, ranking as the second-best foreign act of in the U.S. of the 2000’s (the Beatles were #1).

Burman’s prowess in guiding that act to 50X Platinum status, as well as scoring hits with myriad other artists, proved to be a killer resume-builder for what came next. After the ongoing recording industry shakeout forced Burman out at Roadrunner, Mascot recognized that he’d be a major asset for meeting their own global ambitions.

What happens when a hitmaker A&R man becomes a label head? Burman let us in on the challenges and opportunities of this highly desirable gig – including how he picks studios, producers, engineers, and mixers as well as artists – in this exclusive interview.

The last time you spoke with SonicScoop, you were SVP of A&R at Roadrunner. Now you’re President, North America, of Mascot Label Group. What happened to get you from Point A to Point B?

I was at Roadrunner for 15 years doing A&R, until Atlantic/WMG purchased the other half of Roadrunner in 2012 and laid off a majority of the staff. They closed our New York City offices, and I had to figure out what my next career move would be.

Ed Van Zijl, the owner of Mascot Label Group reached out, and said he wanted to build the Mascot Label Group brand in North America. I thought it sounded like an interesting opportunity and a promising challenge for me.

With your track record of making hits, I would have thought that you’d be “untouchable” when it came to layoffs at Roadrunner. Why wasn’t this the case in reality?

It seems like every major label acquisition of an indie label, throughout history has resulted in the major label gutting the indie, and keeping the highest-selling artists and assets. Unfortunately they often discard the staff that discovered and helped break the artists. This is often a cost cutting exercise; it’s just a fact of life that I think every industry has to deal with.

Roadrunner was supposedly bought for its street cred and culture and lifestyle, in addition to its assets of great bands. Once we were fully acquired, they figured there was a lot of cost savings they could take out of the bottom line.

To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. Monte Conner and I, the two main A&R guys, expected that to happen. It was just a matter of when.

You became a part of Mascot in 2013 – how did that come to pass?

Subsequently, Ed, who owns Mascot, reached out to me and I reached out to him, kind of at the same time. I had heard he was looking for someone to build the label and brand in North America and staff up.

Ed had been a part of Roadrunner in Europe in its beginning years – he started working there, in Holland probably about 35 years ago. When he left Roadrunner he bought a blues label called Provogue, one of our main labels.

Then he started Mascot, we were in contact, and the rest is history. When I came here, Mascot had been open for two years – we had repertoire and indie distribution, but I had to find an office and physically start almost from scratch. I hired Lorraine Caruso to be VP of Promotion and Marketing, and basically we’re a small 4-person staff. We’re all wearing a lot of hats, being scrappy, and trying to make things happen.

It’s pretty exciting – it’s sort of back to my indie roots in a way. My history is more indie/alternative, but my first job in New York City after graduating FSU I was a booking agent for all blues and reggae acts at ABC, Associated Booking Corp., booking artists like BB King, Albert King, Bobby Blues Bland, Millie Jackson, The Wailers Band, Yellow Man, and many other legends of Blues, Reggae and R&B.

Then I went on to form Stretch Management, managing and tour managing seminal NYC art punk bands Alice Donut, Ultra Bide’ and Drunken Boat, doing it very DIY before I went on to book CMJ Music Fest and then Roadrunner.

What kind of label is Mascot, and what attracted you to working with them?

Mascot Label Group is the overall umbrella, and then underneath it there’s four imprints: Mascot Records, Provogue, Music Theories Recordings, and Cool Green Recordings.

The main draw for me was that Ed, the owner, had a really good reputation for having a lot of integrity, and wanting to work with artists who are real touring artists. It’s about marketing around touring, not just a hit. Hits are nice, and we want them, but whereas major labels are all about radio, we’re more built around touring, building artists, and not just throwing it at a wall. That said we do have the ability to break a band at radio given the right hit song…

This is an exciting opportunity to build something – manage the repertoire and support, but at the same time build a brand. It’s always been a dream of mine to run a label. It’s a small label, but in Europe they’ve been around for 25+ years, and we have a lot of established acts over there including: Joe Bonamassa, Gov’t Mule, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Black Label Society and Jonny Lang, and many others. For the world we have JJ Grey & Mofro, Beth Hart, Robert Cray, Robben Ford, Shaman’s Harvest, Sonny Landreth, Leslie West, No Sinner, Neal Schon, Steve Lukather, Flying Colors, and many others.

Five-time GRAMMY winner Robert Cray resides on Mascot.

Is there a common thread between the artists on Mascot – what makes a band the right match for the label group?

I’d say the common thread with all of these acts is that they’re all legitimate touring artists, and they are all pretty much guitar-driven – no matter what the genre is, that’s something they have in common. That’s not to say we wouldn’t sign somebody who’s not guitar-driven, but that’s the way our current roster is.

And we’re actively broadening the styles we work with. When I got here, it was primarily blues, blues-rock and metal. Now we’re doing some active rock, some alternative rock, and more roots jam-based music as well.

Why is guitar so exciting and important in music?

It expresses soul. Whether it’s rock, blues or metal, guitar is a vehicle to pour out emotion and soul in a way that is often much more raw, and unprocessed.

What’s the difference between being a label’s SVP of A&R, and its president? How did your past label experience help you, and what have you had to learn on the job?

In the past, I was primarily doing A&R. I’m still doing A&R, but now I’m helping to build the brand, making sure we meet our sales projections, building the staff, hiring new employees, hiring a new distributor — which is ADA now — interacting with the publicists, managers, lawyers, our headquarters in Holland and all those other components of running a label.

At Roadrunner, it was primarily A&R responsibilities, which I still do, but maybe more of the other things on any given day.

It’s a tremendous opportunity for me to learn new things, and apply all of the experiences I’ve had in my career up to this point. It was also fortunate because Ed gives us the freedom to do our thing. He doesn’t micromanage us — he trusts us, but he’s also there to support and give some guidance when needed.

You’ve talked about who’s currently on the label. What’s the A&R philosophy of the label moving forward – who are you looking to sign next?

Things that we look for in general are acts that have a history of activity, and are active as touring artists – preferably acts that can tour and have toured internationally and already have established somewhat of a fan base.

They have a following, infrastructure, a manager, an agent – they have a team… We can help them build on that. Some of these acts have been on other labels before – not baby bands by any means. But we can give them extra attention that a major probably doesn’t have the time for. Maybe on a major label they were deemed not to have large sales numbers, but on our roster we can do more for them, because we don’t have a ton of acts.

And what do you personally look for in the artists that you sign?

Somebody who’s charismatic, who is captivating live and in control of the audience, who is a great musician who writes great songs – which has been a thread throughout my career. And some one who has that intangible it…

“Ol’ Glory” by JJ Grey & Mofro has been a big mover for the label.

For example, I signed the artist JJ Grey & Mofro. This is his seventh album, and his first with us. The guy is amazing, he’s very charismatic, a real story teller and captivating front man. He has sold out Irving Plaza here many times. His album, Ol’ Glory, came out on February 24 and debuted at #1 on the Billboard blues chart. It’s doing really well with AAA radio and he just played the AAA non-com convention in Philly at the World Café.

I also recently signed Galactic from New Orleans. I was a fan of theirs for several years. I used to see them live all the time, so when I heard they were available I got excited. They sell out four nights in a row at Brooklyn Bowl, with a big fan base all over America, and they’ve got a new album coming out July 17th called Into the Deep. Again, amazing live band, serious performers, amazing musicians.

And the group Shaman’s Harvest is a great rock band from Missouri. I was a fan back at Roradrunner and really wanted to sign them. They have a new single that just came out called “Dirty Diana” that is starting to react at Active Rock radio and is currently # 2 on the iTunes Metal Songs chart…and they’re touring with Black Stone Cherry right now and then will be supporting THEORY of a Deadman, and will be playing all the major summer rock festivals and touring through out the fall.

Shaman’s Harvest

I also recently signed Sonny Landreth, a legendary southern blues guitarist that I’m excited about. His album is called Bound by the Blues, which is coming out in June.

I’m also pursuing a bunch of other things that I can’t talk about. It takes longer than you think, because were a lesser-known label in America. For some younger acts I have to do more work and more convincing that we’re a viable place for them, because they don’t necessarily know us.

That’s part of the challenge of building a label and our brand – you hope you have a couple of successes. That helps you grow things. We’ve had success with JJ Grey & Mofro, and Beth Hart and that’s helping us bring some other artists in.

In what ways is Mascot a traditional label, and in what ways it is non-traditional?

I think that we’re a traditional label. We provide all of the services expected from a label: marketing, promotion, PR, radio, the art, creative – everything. But were much more than that, we help get tours, promotions and other opportunities.

One of the things we have that a lot of other independent labels don’t have is an international reach, because we’re European-based and we have offices in seven countries. A lot of our artists can go to Europe, and might even be bigger there, and we have a lot of relationships with promoters, press and the media to elevate them. Many of the bands on Mascot were previously on labels without much tour support overseas — they could release an album internationally, but not promote it.

Do you make decisions involving audio pros?

I do make those decisions some times. A lot of our established acts come in with their teams – producers, engineers, mixers, mastering engineers, that they’ve already worked with. If they have a productive relationship, you might not want to change that.

But if a newer act comes in and want some recommendations, sure. I have tons of relationships with producers, engineers, mixers, writers, that I’ve had great success with over the years. You try to share those and make a better record.

I’m not looking to be solicited blindly by studios or engineers. But if someone looks at our roster, and feels they have something that might be akin to what fits our repertoire, I’m interested to know more.

Have you found that the right production, engineering, and studio team makes a difference?

Absolutely – they’ll bring out the best in the artist. They’ll bring their technical expertise to an artist, and help them to know how songs can be improved, lyrically or sonically or anything else. I’ve seen average songs become amazing songs, even smash hits in the studio, and I’ve seen a good song become shit too! (Laughs) That’s from overproducing, but that’s a different subject.

What’ a no-no for marketing yourself, as a producer or artist?

No hype. Everyone has to have some tangible examples of things that would make sense, based on what we do here. On the flipside, I’m not looking for clones of things that I’ve already worked with.

Galactic’s “Into the Deep” drops in July.

What are the most important changes that you see coming next for the music industry?

Streaming has obviously changed music, and I think it’s going to change a lot more.

The record industry is sort of grappling with the changes. For a while, digital downloads have been the answer to declining CD sales. Now digital downloads are declining, and streaming is increasing, and we’re not able to monetize that enough to overcome the lack of sales. However you can get new exposure for music, and hopefully with enough momentum lots of people will want to stream it and potentially buy it, and then it will amount to something.

It’s an ever-evolving business, and the model is changing more and more rapidly than ever before. Vinyl is selling more and more now than it has in years, were seeing it grow and grow, but it hasn’t made up for what’s been lost.

While the medium within which people listen to music is changing, the marketing and promotional channels are enhancing what’s possible. Meanwhile, print magazines, where we used to do a lot of promotion, are declining rapidly. We’re having to adapt to those things. But the live performance is still there, and still a vehicle for an artist to sell music and related items in a large way.

Social media is something we’re tapping into to go direct to consumers, to spur dialogue, activity, and engagement between artist and their fans.

It sounds like there’s plenty of opportunities and challenges to keep you stimulated.

Yes, there’s still tons of great music out there. It’s about what we think can grow and what we can bring value to. We have got to be much more discerning than before, because we want to add to the equation of the artist: bring value, and help grow their brand.

I’m very excited about where Mascot’s going, and the label’s potential in North America. We definitely have a vision, and I feel like we’re moving in the right direction to cultivate it. It just takes some time to build a label and get the brand mass recognition.

I feel really fortunate. My dream was to come to NYC and be in the music business. I’ve been here for almost 30 years now, and I’ve been doing it. Mascot is not like any job I’ve had before – this is very different, and it’s very fulfilling.

— David Weiss

Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.