Dr. Dream’s Rx for Growth: Selling Shares

David Hayes, the founder and president of Dr. Dream Records, is offering a piece of his alternative-rock dream--for a price.

To expand the Orange-based record company, Hayes is seeking investors willing to buy $50,000 shares in the label. The aim, Hayes said Tuesday, is to raise $1 million in capital. So far, he said, he has raised about half the money from nine investors--”people I’ve worked with over the years, who have always been interested.”

Until now, Dr. Dream has been strictly a family-owned business, launched six years ago with funding from Hayes’ father, Robert, who owns an Anaheim insurance company. The younger Hayes, 30, said his father has pumped about $1 million into Dr. Dream over the years.

With the additional money, Hayes said, Dr. Dream will expand its release schedule and try to raise its profile.

“I want to make a bigger impact on the Orange County and Los Angeles music scene,” he said. “The only way you can do that is with more capital, to put out more records and do more promotion.”

Hayes said Dr. Dream has issued nine new releases this year, a total he would like to see rise to 30 albums per year within two years. To sell those records, he said, the label will do “a lot more national advertising,” including buying time on MTV in various local markets and beefing up its advertising in alternative music magazines and campus newspapers.

Small, independent labels frequently find themselves short of cash because of slow payments from record stores and distributors. A busier schedule of album releases would mean a more reliable stream of income for Dr. Dream, assuming that the albums sell well. Hayes said Dr. Dream also has been developing its mail order sales, another move designed to improve cash flow. This week, Dr. Dream installed a toll-free telephone number for customers to order albums.

An infusion of investors’ money won’t lead to bigger recording budgets for Dr. Dream bands, Hayes said. The company’s philosophy, with some exceptions, is to keep production costs extremely low, so that it can turn a profit on limited sales. He cited Don’t Mean Maybe’s new album, “Real Good Life,” as an example: Hayes said the album cost $4,500 to produce, and has already turned a profit a month after its release.

Robert Hayes, who shares the label’s financial decision-making with his son, said Dr. Dream had been approached over the past two years by investors interested in putting large chunks of money into the company.

“We pretty well rejected them,” the elder Hayes said. “We needed to grow and gain some experience, and I think we’ve done that. We don’t necessarily have to have this (the new investors’ money) to continue to be successful. But if you’re going to take it to another level, you’ve got to double the volume of records you put out.”

Hayes said he and his son will retain a controlling interest in Dr. Dream.

While it expands as a record company, Dr. Dream is phasing out its retail record store. Hayes said the Dr. Dream record shop on Orange Plaza, which opened two years ago, will close after selling off its merchandise. A liquidation sale began this week.

“I need to devote all the time and energy and money” to running the label itself, Hayes said. “I’m trying to get my fingers out of other pots and keep them where they belong. I might stick my gnarly head up and do retail some other day.”

DR. DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS: Dr. Dream is putting together an album of Christmas songs by bands on its roster, to be released next month. Dubbed “The White Christmas Album,” a limited edition of 500 to 1,000 copies will be sold via mail order.

Selections include Joyride performing “The Little Drummer Boy,” the Cadillac Tramps doing an Elvis Presley song, “Santa’s Back in Town,” and Don’t Mean Maybe’s interpretation of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

The Swamp Zombies will sing “Mr. Heat Miser,” culled from the children’s cartoon show “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t,” Food for Feet will render “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” and Walking Wounded will cover the Merle Haggard weeper, “If We Make It Through December.” Jeff Beals and the Super 8 Project will offer an original song, “Sleepy Santa.” The album also includes tracks by two other Dr. Dream acts, Black Watch and Tiny Lights, and a rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” by the Dr. Dream staff.

BRANCHING OUT: Changes are taking root in Burning Tree, the Orange County-Los Angeles rock trio that debuted last year with a strong, but commercially unsuccessful album of power rock full of ‘60s influences like Jimi Hendrix and Cream.

Bassist Mark Dutton left the band recently to form his own group, Loaded, which will play its first show Thursday night at Bogart’s in Long Beach. Burning Tree’s new bassist is James Ashhurst, a former member of Broken Homes.

Besides breaking in a new bassist, Burning Tree also is about to go shopping for a new record company, according to the band’s manager, Warren Entner.

Entner said Wednesday that Epic Records has agreed to release Burning Tree from its contract after the band, unhappy over how its first album was promoted, asked to be cut free. The revamped lineup of Burning Tree, with holdovers Marc Ford on guitar and Doni Gray on drums, has two upcoming shows in Los Angeles, at English Acid on Oct. 23, and Coconut Teaszer on Nov. 2.

On its first album, all three members of Burning Tree wrote songs and took turns on lead vocals. According to Dutton, there was pressure to narrow that approach after the album failed.

“It might have been too many cooks. The first record was a mishmash of all our styles. We thought that’s what our edge was” over other hard-rock contenders. “But the record company couldn’t accept that,” Dutton said. “They tried to whittle it down, saying we had to focus more as far as our sound goes, when we wanted to spread out. It started getting too corporate.”

Dutton said he considered staying with Burning Tree for one more album while also developing his new band, which he started recruiting several months ago. “It just felt right to leave,” he said, adding that he departed on good terms with Ford and Gray. “If I’m going to commit (to Loaded), it’s got to be 100%.”

Dutton said his new band, which shares a name with a classic Velvet Underground album, is “more of a Faces-type thing,” in which he sings but doesn’t play an instrument. Dutton said the lineup includes lead guitarist Kurt Carson, formerly of the Orange County band Medicine Man, as well as a rhythm guitarist originally from Finland and a female bassist and drummer. Dutton said he also plans to add a piano player.