RS: One of the label groups that you have is Track Works Records.
Gary Salzman: Track Works Records is my label with Ray. It's a house
label, with a lot of underground stuff. It's got some stuff that's too
poppy for Ray but, you know, that's because he's a DJ, and he wants to
get out there and DJ. He's very concerned about being cool enough. We
have this argument on a consistent basis. But he's doing some great
things and we're putting some stuff together that's really good –
Speaker Box is on Track Works; Sun in My Face, the Ray Roc record, the
Roc Project, is on Track Works. Cece Penniston and David Morales' mix
of Cece Penniston's "Shame, Shame, Shame" is phenomenal, and that's
on Track Works. We're building a group of DJs who tour with the house
sound, not go backwards but move forward, and do radio music as well
as underground. Ray is the resident DJ for over a year now at Webster
Hall, so he plays consistently and tests the records to see what
works, and what doesn't work. That's really how we find out a lot of
things that work for Track Works.
RS: You also work with Chris Willis. What's your role in that?
Gary Salzman: The co-manager of Chris Willis was Bill Coleman. Chris
is the writer and vocalist for David Getter, and that's just been a
fantastic project. David's a fantastic artist. He's got a very good
manager in the UK, Caroline Prothero. His team knows what they're
doing. They're good to work with, and Chris is a fantastic writer.
He's a real talent. He comes out of Gospel music and he's got this
massive voice. He has a real sound and a real idea of where he wants
to go, what he wants to do. We've done some pretty interesting things
with him by splitting up the publishing by territories. He's working
with a very big major publisher, BMG Music for Europe, but he's also
working with a small publisher, Michael Bretler and Eric Beal and
Peter Bernstein, here in the US, so we can get the best of both
worlds. He's doing a Gospel record, he's doing dancer records, he's
writing with people. He's truly expressing everything that we want to
do and that I talked about earlier, about when you get an artist who
wants to be an artist. I'll worry about the touring and the money. He
wants to make records, and he's truly a fantastic artist because he
wants this, he has visions, and he allows Bill and myself to shape and
mold some of those visions into some very successful, creative
inventors. He's doing a lot of different things.
RS: Tell me about someone new that you found that you're working with.
Gary Salzman: I found a lot of stuff. One of the things that I'm
really excited about – and I'm really excited about a lot of it, so I
don't want any of the people that I'm working with to read this and
go, "He didn't mention me," because that would be horrible. But I'm
really excited about André Freeman.
RS: Who is?
Gary Salzman: He's a writer and vocalist and a producer from LA and
he's absolutely fantastic. He has a song called Super Star Disco
Queen and another song called Sooner or Later. He is a real writer,
with twenty-seven hundred directions he wants to go in. He's got a
nice, big voice, an interesting, interesting artist, good on stage.
I'm very excited about working with him. I'm going to really break his
stuff next year, and am very excited about that. There's also a lot of
other new stuff in development. I'm very excited about Sylvia Tosa,
who we're doing Head Over Heels with, and we've just got fantastic
Warren Rigg productions and another fantastic Ray Roc mix. She's
absolutely a phenomenal live vocalist, a great, great live performer
and she's so different. She does vocals for the Trans-Siberian
Orchestra, and then does stuff with dance music. She's also an
incredible artist to be working with, and there are the new things,
like the new record with Martha Wash, which is absolutely one of my
passions. I think she's one of the best artists I've ever met in my
life.
RS: What is something you want to say to all the dance music
lovers out there?
Gary Salzman: Fly me to LA. No, I don't know what you say to a group
of people that is just about as diverse as the earth. I don't think I
have anything I want to say to them. Have a good time, enjoy it. I'm
not a prophet, I'm a manager.