PR Spotlight: Vince Edwards (Metal Blade Records)

Welcome to another exciting week of music industry insight and advice on the official blog of Haulix. We have a variety of features planned for the days ahead, and today we are kicking things off with one of the most requested label features to date. If you have any questions regarding the content of this blog, or if you would like to learn more about the promotional distribution services we offer, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

The time between Christmas day and New Year’s Eve is often the slowest of the year for music industry professionals. After months of long hours and hard work the majority of our fellow industry folk take the final weeks of the year to catch their breath and prepare for the year ahead. We spoke with the individual highlighted in the piece below just hours before his holiday break, and after learning about how he spends his days I think you’ll agree his time off was well-deserved.

For the better part of the last decade Vince Edwards has been the leading the marketing and publicity efforts at Metal Blade Records. Like many, he got his start in his local community before finding a door to the music business through college radio. By networking and continually pushing himself and others to do more Vince gained the attention of one of the industry’s strongest companies, and ever since graduation he has been fortunate enough called that place home. We asked him how he did it, and in the interview below you can learn from his journey.

If you would like to learn more about Vince and his effort at Metal Blade, we highly recommend following the label on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this article.

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H: For the record, state your name, job title, and the company you call home:

V: Vince Edwards, Metal Blade Records, loosely Marketing/Publicity.

H: We like to start off these pieces by learning a little bit about your life before the industry. When you think of your earliest memories with music, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

V: I would say the most formative things…I grew up going to concerts with my mom. I met Alabama when I was in the fifth grade, so I was exposed to music pretty early. Then in middle school I heard Metallica at bowling club. Yes, I was in bowling club and it was fucking awesome, but I heard Metallica and thought, “Well, this is for me.” And yea, ever since then.

H: You started your career at WSUP in 2004, correct?

V: Yea, I did college radio while in school and from then on I essentially went right into the music industry. I played in bands and I did some show booking, but it was really college radio that was the gateway. The other stuff was good resume fodder.

H: You hosted your own show in college. What can you tell us about the programming offered by Vince Edwards in college.

V: I worked there for three years, and for two of the three years I ran the entire station. I was there for a year and then was immediately elected to program director and music director. The station was actually a legitimate format station, in that during the day it was a format DJs had to sell as a professional DJs. It wasn’t one of those free-form college stations where people just play whatever. I built clocks, which in radio are essentially where you format out an hour of time and what types of songs play when. So we actually trained people to be DJs.

The heavy metal show was basically a lot of the new shit. Whatever was new was whatever we did. I’ve been giving the new guys a hard time because they’re still using the stuff I made and I graduated like six years ago. Guys, make some new shit.

H: So how did Metal Blade come into the picture? Did you meet them through the radio show?

V: Yea, absolutely. A lot of people do not realize college radio is one of the biggest gateways into the music industry because when you’re at a good station that reports to CMJ and is really communicative with the music industry you end up knowing who those people are. My last three years at college I made connections with pretty much every label and radio promotions company, so when it came time for me to graduate it just-so-happened that the person who used to be at Metal Blade told me to send a resume because they were starting to look for someone new. My resume was all black, with blood splattered across the top over my name and that apparently stuck out pretty hard. They hired me from a couple of phone interviews, which I thought was pretty insane, so I moved across the country and here I am.

H: You are a bit of a rarity in the industry. Not many people can say they have been at the same job since graduation.

V: It is really rare. There is a lot of turnover in the music industry, but at Metal Blade for whatever reason there isn’t, and I guess that is probably because this is one of the sanest places to be. A lot of the people here have been here for a long time and that’s because we love it. [Brian] Slagel is really fun guy to work for, and we sign some cool bands, so why not stick around?

H: You have been in this position for over half a decade at this point, making it the longest job you’ve had in your life. Do you feel like you’ve become a full-blown adult?

V: I was thinking about that the other day and I hope not.

H: You mentioned playing in bands before. Do you still play music?

V: Nah, it’s too much of a pain in the ass out here. One of the big problems with LA is that nobody has a basement, and if you want to practice you essentially have to pay to rent a space. It’s just too much of a pain. I looked at a bunch of bands a while ago, but a lot of groups out here have delusions of making it, and I would rather just play in a band for the fun of it.

H: Without going too in depth, can you give us a general overview of a typical day in the office for you?

V: A general day in the office starts off with email, specifically from Europe because I get in early enough to correspond with them. A lot of physical press stuff, emails from bands, and then from there, like a lot of people in the music industry, it’s a lot of reactive/proactive work. We are pitching people on things and reacting to people coming to us seeking things. Then, for me, I have added on to that and have started building a lot of tour admits and videos. Right now I am working on a music video, and I just finished up a Between The Buried And Me tour teaser. I am always bouncing between two computers, using after effects and checking emails.

H: Do you have your own intern?

V: No, we actually do not have space for an intern right now. We have been in this space for three years and we keep saying we are going to make space for an intern, but we never do.

H: So, no internships at Metal Blade right now?

V: Yea, not right now. I desperately need an intern, but I always end up doing everything myself. We are at a point now where we are so hands on with everything where we know if we had an intern come in we’d spend a bunch of time fixing whatever they fucked up. It takes a lot of time to figure out the ins and outs of what we do. Just the curve of figuring out who manages what bands and who from each band you need to ask things takes a heck of a long time to learn.

H: So to give a little hope to the aspiring metal professional, what advice would you offer?

V: Just do it. It’s like any other art. I look at it like trying to be an actor or artist and you just have to do it. Nobody that is important in metal right now went to college for it. The big booking agents came up booking shows in their local communities. All the people that run labels just started doing. Slagel dropped out of college to start the label in his mother’s garage. You just have to jump into it. I explain it to people by saying that if you’re asking how to get into the music business then you’re already behind because you clearly do not get it. You just have to do it. Everyone has a local scene, and if you don’t then you have to create one because to get noticed in music, regardless of genre, someone has to know you’re out there doing something in order to get excited about working with you. If you’re just saying you want to work in the music industry, who is going to go to bat for you and say “yes, this person is hirable.”

H: Metal Blade has been using Haulix to handle your promotional distribution for a long time. Can I ask what it is you like about our platform?

V: Haulix is the easiest system we’ve ever used. It works. Everything from importing content, to creating releases, to sending releases to people is so self-explanatory that it doesn’t take more than one or two emails to get someone who is terrible with computers to figure it out. Also, being able to see who has and has not accessed our content is great. Sometimes we send albums out months in advance to advance and being able to know who has downloaded it makes easier to know who to follow-up with. That aspect alone makes it a great tool for us to use.

H: You have been with Metal Blade for a while and seem very happy with your position. Do you have an ultimate career goal you’re working towards, or are you more ‘in the groove’ at this point in life?

V: I’m kind of in a groove right now. I think a lot of young people in the music industry are very cognitive of the fact we are very fucking fortunate to be here. I compare it to a professional sport in that working in music is something only a few thousand people get to do professionally, and the entire internet is telling us we’re doing it wrong.

If you’re young and in the music industry you know the facts. Things can change very quickly and as a result young people cannot be above doing anything. The old school guys may think “I’m not digging through that Excel spreadsheet or calling contest winners,” but as a young person in the music industry you cannot be above anything and you have to do a lot. We are all building our resumes, but right now I am in the groove and I do not plan on going anywhere. That said, I have learned so much by doing all these things that the idea of looking for a new job is not as terrifying as it once was.

H: 2013 ends in just a few days. What can you tell us about Metal Blade’s plans for 2014?

V: A couple of big releases. We have Whitechapel, Behemoth, and Cannibal Corpse coming. We also have some new bands, like Destrage from Italy, which is a band I signed that fucking kicks ass. They’re like a Protest The Hero, Between The Buried And Me, and Every Time I Die hybrid. Look for more on them next year.

James Shotwell