Gillian Welch Joins the Mom-and-Pop Label Crowd

Gillian Welch is a singer-songwriter with a history of strong critical support and a loyal fan base, and she just got a huge career boost from being featured on the unlikely hit soundtrack of old-timey country music from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

So as a free agent without a record deal, she was in a position to name the label she wanted to be on.

She named it Acony Records.

Welch is following such artists as Aimee Mann and Ani DiFranco in turning from major labels to release her own recordings. Having left the Almo Sounds label after parent Geffen Records folded into Interscope two years ago, she decided she didn’t fit in the current label climate focused primarily on mega-hit acts and plagued by corporate mergers.

“It was difficult to point to even a major label and say, ‘Yes, I will make that my home and I think I can be there for five, 10 or 15 years,’ ” she says. “I don’t really want to be in the record business. I just want to make records. But ultimately, [starting a label] seems the way to deal with the record business the least.”

Acony, named for a flower and co-founded by Welch and collaborator David Rawlings, officially debuts with her third album, which she hopes to release in July. The pair is finishing it at the famed RCA Studio B in Nashville--where many of Elvis Presley’s hits were recorded. While bare-bones musically, this album finds her stretching some songs into longer, more haunting narratives than she’s done before.

Acony will also reissue Welch’s first two albums, 1996’s “Revival” and 1998’s “Hell Among the Yearlings,” of which she was able to retain ownership. Each has total sales of more than 100,000, and both continue to sell in small but steady amounts.

But Welch is not interested in trying to build a mini-empire by signing other artists, preferring to keep the venture at the “mom and pop” level, she says.

To help out, she recruited other refugees from the major-label world, including former Almo executive Pam Hughes and former Geffen publicist Jim Merlis, whose new independent firms have been contracted to handle marketing and publicity, respectively, for Acony.

That mom-and-pop approach is perhaps fitting for her rustic, folk-inspired music, but will it work in the modern music world?

Music business attorney Michael Ackerman, who has fashioned many independent record deals for artists, says that the mom-and-pop approach has its pluses and minuses. Among the latter is the lack of promotional muscle afforded by the majors, as well as the ability to keep cash flow steady without a full roster of releases.

“But if she can sell 100,000 on her own, she’ll make a lot more money than she would with a major or an independent label,”Ackerman says.

That sounds fine by Welch.

“I’m sitting here telling you that [consistent sales of 100,000] represents a career,” she says. “That isn’t nothing. I’m a musician, and that’s how I support myself.”

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BEAUTIFUL WINNER? The movie “Crazy Beautiful” crosses cultural lines with its romance between a rich white girl (Kirsten Dunst) and a Latino boy from East L.A. (Jay Hernandez). The soundtrack will also attempt to cross those lines as the latest attempt to give a superstar rock en espanol act a shot at a U.S. pop audience.

The Chilean band La Ley, which won the Grammy for best Latin rock album in February, doesn’t get the critical respect of Cafe Tacuba or Jaguares, but it’s among the most popular rock acts in South and Central America, as well as in the U.S. Spanish-speaking market. (It sold out the Greek Theatre last year and is booked to return there Aug. 11.)

It’s also just taped a Spanish-language MTV “Unplugged” installment, with an album to be released this summer. In June it will also release “Every Time,” its first English-language single, which was recorded in connection with the film.

A Spanish version of the song “Siempre,” produced in Los Angeles by the Dust Brothers, is also to be featured on the film’s soundtrack and is a good bet to be a hit in Latin America. But La Ley frontman Beto Cuevas (who spent 11 years in Canada and is fluent in four languages) says that he actually wrote it first in English after being commissioned for the project by Mitchell Leib, Hollywood Records’ senior vice president of soundtracks and A&R.;

“Our lyrics talk about worldwide things, not things that only happen in Latin America,” Cuevas says. “So why not use different languages to give away your music?”

But while Latin market-originated pop acts (Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias) have had huge success in the English-language world, rock en espanol stars (Cafe Tacuba, Mana) have had little impact outside of the Spanish-speaking audience. Hollywood’s Leib believes this could be an exception.

“The dynamics of crossing over are the same as for anyone to have a hit,” he says. “You have to have a hit song. It has to reach through the radio and touch your heart or support whatever emotion you’re going through. La Ley has given us one of those hope-and-love and hang-on-to-your-dreams songs.”