When Jeff Blue walked into the Whisky a Go Go in 2004 to grab a beer and check out a band, both man and music group were searching for their next big break.
Their meeting in Blue’s office the next day would be the beginning of a two-year-long gamble to shape the band from an East Coast indie act to The Last Goodnight, a pop-rock group still reeling after signing with Virgin Records in 2006. Their first major label record, “Poison Kiss,” comes out Aug. 28 but not before a show at the Henry Fonda Theater on July 6. They will open for Rocco Deluca & the Burden.
The transition from indie to major record label is a risky venture for everyone involved. For Blue, the artist and repertoire representative who found them, it means shelling out big bucks and investing years in an act that may never pan out. And for the band, it means trusting the judgment of a stranger in order to be one wobbly step closer to making it big.
“I told them, “˜Look, there is no ego in any of this. If my boat sinks, your boat sinks. If your boat is sinking, my boat is sinking,'” Blue said.
“We were kind of naive in a way,” said the band’s lead singer Kurtis John, from Blue’s home office in Hollywood Hills. “We were like, “˜We’re going to be signed like tomorrow. We’re going to be signed when we meet him,’ But that’s (just) the beginning of a new sort of session that we entered, this session where we were just writing and recording and really finding out what works.”
But neither The Last Goodnight nor Blue was starting from scratch, but both were searching for a new beginning.
The Last Goodnight, previously known as Renata, had a strong regional following from its home state of Connecticut, touting your typical met-in-high-school-and-jammed beginnings. They eventually scored air time from East Coast rock stations, won a couple awards from a local indie weekly newspaper, opened for major artists such as Lifehouse and Avril Lavigne, and even gave a song to teen drama “Dawson’s Creek.” But the band still lacked the visibility that comes with a major label, relying heavily on MySpace and word of mouth to get its name out.
Blue had signed major acts such as Macy Gray and Linkin Park and was executive producer for Linkin Park’s “Hybrid Theory,” which sold in excess of a record-breaking 14 million copies. But Blue left his position at RCA Music Group in 2004 and was looking for the next project to boost his career.
“When I (first) saw them, I didn’t think they had the songs, but there was an energy and a texture in Kurt’s voice that was really appealing to me. I just thought it needed to be realized in a better form and developed,” Blue said.
Next came months of creative collaboration between Blue and the band, bouncing between Connecticut and Los Angeles despite money troubles, retooling their sound, and paring down their 120-plus songs for a demo tape to pitch.
As Renata, the band’s sound drew comparisons to Coldplay and Counting Crows. They had a heavy guitar and drum presence that gave way to John’s raspy voice. But in developing The Last Goodnight, the focus shifted to sweet piano melodies for more up-tempo tracks and brighter lead vocals.
“Kurt would come, and he’d spend about three months, and then we’d do some demos, and we were like, “˜This is it. This is our last batch of demos. We have no more money to do this,'” Blue said.
But just as the musicians were starting to feel cornered, they found the vital piano riff that would lead to their eventual album’s title song, “Poison Kiss.”
“Once you find you have one great song, another one is going to come, and it’s going to be better, and you don’t think you’re going to top it,” Blue said, “Then all these songs start evolving, because now you’ve found your niche, you’ve found your sound, you’ve found your grounding place.”
The band pitched their demo tape to major labels, with Virgin the only company to pick them up. Next came three months of recording that began in late 2006, the next year running to mix the album in Miami in March and master it in New York City in April.
With Blue as their producer, the process became increasingly refined, recording songs only to tear them apart. Songs were reconceptualized, morphing from hot rock-out tracks to tragic pop ballads.
With the album set to hit stands, John finds it hard to realize how The Last Goodnight leaped from its indie roots ““ producing, promoting, doing everything themselves ““ to having a whole team behind them.
“I never really realized how we got here. If you really think about it, you have to have good music,” John said. “It has to be real. It has to be something different. It has to be marketable. But then it’s who you meet who believes in you, and it’s luck. It’s all luck.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misattributed a quote to Jeff Blue, whose title was incorrect as well. Also, “Hybrid Theory” sold 14 million copies, not 24 million, as an earlier version of the story stated.