Going All-Out to Grab an Ear : Marketing: Fledgling musicians are now paying to make CDs in a bid to attract a recording deal.

Hank Easton wants a career as a jazz guitarist more than anything. So instead of mailing recording companies the usual cassette “demo” tape, he upgraded his calling card and produced a $14,000 compact disc.

“I’ve gotten lots of nice feedback,” said Easton, who split the cost with his father, a doctor. “Even the companies that turned me down said they like it a lot. They just aren’t looking for anything. I’ve gotten about four letters.”

Easton, 27, hasn’t landed a record deal yet, but he is getting airplay on KIFM (98.1), the light-jazz station. His album has also done well in local music stores, selling more than 400 copies.

“It’s kind of like you just have to know someone high up in the recording business to get anywhere.”

John Brechler, a San Fernardo Valley jazz buff, understands well what Easton and artists like him have to go through.

Brechler once headed the small jazz label Sea Breeze. He now works for Interplay, another small jazz label.

“If the people are totally unknown, they will have an awfully tough time,” Brechler said. “Yet the way to become known is to put out an album (yourself), then combine that with personal appearances.”

He agrees with A&R; (artists and repertoire) people at other recording companies who said they rarely discover new talent from demos.

Brechler has never received a self-produced CD, but he said a CD would be more likely to get noticed.

“It wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. The (A&R;) person would naturally pay more attention. That might get it listened to. Its success would still depend on the music, though.”

Several other San Diego bands are also banking on demo CDs or cassettes as their tickets to recording contracts.

Acoustic jazz band Common Ground, including top local saxophonist Steve Feierabend, is about to send a four-song cassette to 20 recording companies that specialize in mainstream jazz.

Guitarist Peter Sprague, who has recorded for Concord, is currently without a recording deal. He is preparing a demo cassette of new songs.

The Subterraneans, an electric jazz band, has spent $5,000 recording several songs at a local studio and plans to have a demo cassette or CD ready soon.

Reel to Real, a light-jazz group that frequents KIFM’s “Lites Out Jazz” nightclub circuit, has spent $10,000 to put nine songs on 1,000 CDs and 1,000 cassettes, due in November.

Saxophonist Mark Lessman convinced seven investors to pony up $18,000 to produce 1,000 CDs and 1,000 cassettes. (The price difference can be laid to studio time.) Lessman has been shopping them to record companies since late last year, so far without luck. But he has found a Los Angeles music industry pro who wants to help him produce and market another CD. Like Easton, Lessman has gained airplay on KIFM.

Compared with demo cassettes, CDs are still rare, according to the A&R; people who screen fresh talent at recording companies. The high-tech discs require expensive digital recording techniques, and CD copies from a master tape cost more than cassettes.

A&R; people receive anywhere from four or five to several dozen demo tapes and CDs each week, and most labels record only a few new acts each year.

“I average 40 to 60 a week,” said Carl Griffin, director of artists and repertoire at GRP, the prosperous New York label that is home to such established musicians as guitarists Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton. “We record five or six new artists a year. I believe I owe it to the new bands to at least listen to the first song on their tapes. Knowing how radio people listen, I give them until the chorus--if they don’t have it together by then, I go on to the next.”

At the moment, Griffin is looking for the label’s next guitar star, the next Ritenour or Carlton. Easton sent a CD, but Griffin doesn’t remember hearing it.

“Tell him to send me another one,” he said.

Capri Records in Denver, which counts San Diego flutist Holly Hofmann on its roster, receives about five tapes a week, according to company owner Thomas Burns. The mainstream jazz label puts out seven albums by new artists each year. Common Ground hopes to be among them soon.

“The worst thing about getting all the tapes is you get so many that are good, you can’t put them all out,” Burns said. “The artists on the label are people I’ve heard at one point or another. I first heard Holly Hofmann at a club when she was going to the University of Northern Colorado about nine years ago.”

Griffin said self-produced cassettes and CDs aren’t his major source of new talent.

“Mostly a contact will hip me to a band, or, if I hear a demo and get excited, I want to see them play. Playing live helps sell albums. If they can’t perform live, what are we doing? The live performance has a lot to do with our ability to sign an artist.”

The odds may be stacked against them, but the musicians move ahead, even in the face of failure. Saxophonist Larry de la Cruz, a member of the Subterraneans, has high hopes for the group’s demo, despite a major setback he experienced while with the local band Flight 7.

A white knight came to the group two years ago and volunteered to finance and market a CD. He put up $30,000, and the CD called “Sky High” was good enough to get national airplay on light-jazz stations and a distribution deal with Optimism, a Los Angeles company.

Then the investor disappeared, the relationship with Optimism fell apart, and today the band doesn’t even have the master tape. Eventually, the group disbanded. Members decided they couldn’t afford an extended legal battle and many took conventional jobs to support their families. Drummer Don Schoenberger, for example, works as a plumber.

“I’m really, really bitter about this,” he said. “I wouldn’t really blame any one person. I personally don’t believe that any group stands much of a chance. Fattburger is the exception.”

Fattburger’s fourth album, “Time Will Tell,” was released last year and has sold more than 100,000 copies, making it a bona fide jazz hit. A fifth album, the new “Come and Get It,” is already gaining radio play.

How did the group first land a recording deal? By producing a cassette in 1984, then playing high-visibility dates in San Diego and Los Angeles to support it.

No recording contract came immediately, but a year later the band had sold 10,000 copies on its own, enough to get signed by the small Golden Boy label in Los Angeles. The band now records for Enigma, a much larger label.

Meanwhile, Easton and the others wait and hope.

“I won’t be able to record again in the near future without a recording deal,” said Easton, whose CD exhausted his finances. “If I don’t get a deal, I’ll just keep pushing it, keep playing, and hopefully I’ll make it some day.”