Musician With High Ideals Makes Climb in Business

Michael Tomlinson is a music business phenomenon--a performer who is building a successful career from a part of the country far outside the traditional entertainment centers of power. Even more remarkable, the Seattle-based singer/songwriter has done it at his own pace, learning the difficult financial lessons the old-fashioned way--by starting his own record company--and insisting upon maintaining his personal integrity every step of the way.

Often described as the first “New Age singer,” the 35-year-old Tomlinson appears tonight at the Universal Amphitheatre. A self-taught, late-blooming musician (he began to study guitar at the age of 22), he moved to the Northwest from his native Amarillo, Tex., in 1984. His breakthrough came from an original song titled “The Climb.”

“I thought I was doing something totally uncommercial with that piece,” he said last week in a telephone conversation. “I wrote it after I read a story about a man with one leg who had climbed Mt. Rainier. I thought it was an incredibly inspiring story, but I intended the song to be just a gift between two people. I truly thought that it would never be heard beyond that.”

Tomlinson was wrong. He gave a tape of the song to a Seattle radio station, KEZX, where it quickly became the station’s No. 1 requested tune.

Realizing that there was a market for his music, Tomlinson assembled a group of new material, recorded it in an eight-track studio (usually used only for demonstration recordings) and released it on his own label, Desert Rain.

To his amazement, the album, “Run This Way Forever,” took off like a shot, with 7,000 sold in the first month in the Seattle area alone. In the next year, it sold 50,000 copies around the country.

“To my knowledge,” explained Tomlinson, “that’s the most an artist-run label has ever done. Part of the credit, I feel, should go to (radio consultant) John Sebastian, who heard the album, called and asked me to send a copy to the seven or eight stations that he had at the time.

“These were widely ranging stations--from Anchorage to Baltimore to San Antonio, really spread out. Well, at every one of those stations, after they got the album, I had the No. 1 requested song of the year. That made it pretty clear to me that I could reach more than just one little pocket of the country, and more than just one age group.”

Last year, Tomlinson followed through on that thought by signing with nationally distributed Cypress Records. His first release, “Still Believe,” included a single titled “Run This Way Forever” that topped out at No. 12 on Billboard magazine’s hot adult contemporary chart.

Tomlinson is pleased by his growing prominence, but not surprised. He may not have been certain how and when his career would begin to surge, but he had few doubts that it would.

“I know this sounds pretty ridiculous for a kid running around Amarillo to have said, but as soon as I started to write songs, I became convinced that I would have worldwide success. You know how some people are sure when they see someone that they’re going to marry them, and some people know when they see a city that they’re going to live there?

“Somehow, I knew when I wrote my first song that I was going to make a career out of music and become successful all over the world.”

A good part of Tomlinson’s appeal is his ability to make such a seemingly categorical statement with such ingenuousness that one accepts on face value. Guile is clearly not part of his personal style, and he is determined to conduct both his professional and artistic lives with simple, straightforward honesty.

“I have a lot of trouble,” Tomlinson explained, “saying things in my songs that I can’t follow through with in my life.

“I have a number of songs about friendship, for example, and being willing to respect someone’s changes and what they want to do with their life, regardless of how it affects me. So how can I sing songs like that, about friends and then go out and treat, say, someone I’m doing business with like dirt?

“I’ve never liked the phrase, ‘Hey, this isn’t personal, it’s business,’ he continued. “I believe it is personal. You can’t be friends and business associates and then, at times, drop the friendship when it’s convenient to the business. I just don’t believe that, and I’m not going to live my life that way.

“I like to think that the music business--like some other businesses in this world--is getting more open and friendly. And I hope so, because if it isn’t, we’re really in trouble.

“But even if the business doesn’t change, I’ll be the same. I am what I am, and what you hear in my music is what you get in me.”