She Sends Songs Into the Skies
Picture President Bush jetting in Air Force One toward tense meetings with Asian leaders and keeping tabs on the Middle East. Then imagine the weary commander in chief, looking for a musical respite, pulling on the headset at his seat and hearing ... “Last Stand in Open Country” by Willie Nelson and Kid Rock?
It could have happened--that song, along with “You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave)” performed by Tom Petty and “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” from the Soggy Bottom Boys were among the tunes playing on board during Bush’s travels in February. They weren’t intended as veiled messages, just part of the famed aircraft’s music menu, which is cooked up by Mississippi-born songwriter Tena R. Clark and her employees.
Clark, who speaks in a honeyed drawl, began her music career as a drummer in clubs but is now chief executive of Disc Marketing Inc., an unusual business based in a converted Pasadena fire station that puts together music to market products (Toyota, General Mills and Coca-Cola are among the clients), but also has what might be called federal properties on the pop music landscape. Clark has just written a new song, “Way Up There,” intended to help NASA rekindle its romance with young America, and she says she is also discussing some business with the U.S. Army.
More intriguing, she and her employees have had a contract since 1998 to program the music that is piped through headsets aboard Air Force One and Air Force Two for the president, vice president, their aides, security, guests and the press. As Clark puts it: “I joke with people all the time: Who does the most powerful man in the free world listen to when he’s flying? Us, Disc Marketing. It is interesting.”
There’s no way to tell which songs the president actually listens to, but Ronnie Schiff, the Disc Marketing vice president overseeing the aircraft programming, says some special preferences do trickle back. The classic soul and blues channel that Clinton specifically requested, for instance, was jettisoned when Bush’s team took over the plane. New selections of show tunes and film soundtrack songs were added for the current administration.
Clinton had a hearty appetite for music (he asked that the songs be changed out more often than every two months when he had a travel-heavy schedule) and gave more feedback. “The current administration, of course, with everything going on, hasn’t really been telling us as much,” Schiff said. So Schiff and company are left to divine what the president might want. They’re now putting together an all-Texas music channel for Bush.
They also have some fun. If Clinton tuned in the classic rock channel in May 1998, for example, he might have heard an obscure song by a familiar voice: “Fantasy of Love,” by the oft-troubled first brother, Roger Clinton. Air Force Two, which carried Vice President Al Gore, had a staple selection from Paul Simon: “You Can Call Me Al.”
In recent months, if you picked up an Air Force One headset you could have listened to the Keith Richards version of the Hank Williams song “You Win Again” or flashbacks tracking Sting’s career. On his way to opening Olympic ceremonies in Salt Lake City in February, the president also could have checked out a classical music salute to the Games or settled for a survey of Nashville’s newest hits.
The Air Force One work is only a sliver of the business done by Clark’s company, which also programs music that can be heard by the millions of United Airlines passengers who fly each month. The business finds 85% of its revenues, though, by creating enhanced CDs as new-tech marketing tools for corporate America, ranging from Betty Crocker to Victoria’s Secret. An example would be the ECD fashioned for Target that had music and fun content for kids but also contained information on the chain’s toy selection and a link to buy the items online with just a mouse click.
Those accounts pay the bills, but the project closest to Clark’s heart at the moment has only netted $2,500 so far. That’s the standard NASA honorarium paid for artistic works, in this case the song NASA will use as the theme song of its yearlong “Centennial of Flight” celebration beginning in December. NASA approached Clark, whom it had heard about through her work on movie theme songs and heart-tugging R&B; tracks for Dionne Warwick, Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight and others.
“I was in New York in the back of a taxi and my assistant called and said, ‘I have NASA on the phone,’ and I said, ‘Nasser? Nasser who?’ and she said, ‘No, NASA, the rocket people,’” Clark recalls.
The lyrics of “Way Up There” are of the heartfelt variety, and while to cynics they may sound like a high school junior’s poetry, for many a mainstream music fan they might recall the soaring epics favored by singers such as Celine Dion. The chorus: “Way up there/Where peace remains/Where silence thunders and angels sing/Imagination and amazing grace/brings us closer to our home in space.”
“We wanted to reach out to newer populations of people,” said Bert Ulrich, curator of NASA’s arts projects. “And what Tena came up with is a beautiful, inspirational ode to the centennial, and we’re thrilled.”
Clark grew up as the daughter of a colorful Mississippi political power broker and stumbled bright-eyed into the music world with the reckless aplomb of a true naif. At age 12, she lingered outside a Las Vegas showroom to introduce herself to her hero, drummer Hal Blaine, and, impressing him with her enthusiasm, found herself a mentor. Later, after reading songwriter Hal David’s name on an album jacket, she called him up, and he too offered insights to the youngster and kept tabs on her career.
She has written jingles (she was co-writer of “Have You Had Your Break Today?” for McDonald’s) and theme songs for films (“Hope Floats,” “Where the Heart Is”), and about four years ago she saw in her start-up company a chance to marry her music skills with marketing savvy.
“When I was younger I didn’t know enough to be scared, and now I’ve been through too much to be scared,” Clark says with a shrug. “If I’ve learned one thing it’s that whether you’re marketing something or trying to make a movie that connects with people, nothing works better than emotion. And nothing creates emotion better than music.”