Forget Love--All They Really Need Is Health Insurance

The Recording Artists Coalition’s fight against the seven-year contract statute and the music business’ losing battle against downloading may get the headlines. But to thousands of musicians, there’s an urgent issue that could prove the catalyst for organizing into a cohesive body: health insurance.

That’s the belief of Jenny Toomey, an independent musician and executive director of the Washington-based Future of Music Coalition.

“A few years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts tried to substantiate how badly artists were living,” she says. “They looked at incomes of nine different categories of artists.”

“Dancers were lowest and musicians just above,” she continues. “Median income for musicians was $30,000 a year, and those are people working two jobs to meet household expenses.

“They’re cash-poor and time-poor, so it’s not surprising that they’re not easy to organize. But activism teaches that you start with what people need, and musicians need health insurance.”

To that end, Toomey--who in addition to being an artist (her double-CD “Antidote” was released recently) ran the Simple Machines label for eight years--is spearheading a project to research musicians’ insurance needs.

She’s conducting a survey to get the ball rolling. Interested musicians can participate in the confidential venture via the coalition’s Web site at www.futureofmusic.org/research/healthsurvey.cfm.

More than 2,500 musicians have already filled out the survey, but Toomey is hoping many more will, especially those without insurance coverage. The coalition is also working with a clinical psychologist researching health issues associated with musicians--such as hearing loss, substance abuse and the effects of grueling tour schedules.

Toomey acknowledges that insurance is available for many musicians via two unions, the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, with most record companies contracted to pay first-year fees for all signed artists, and the American Federation of Musicians.

But many other musicians don’t qualify for membership in either union, while others choose not to join.

“I have always told my musician clients when they sign a deal to go join the musicians’ union so they can get insurance,” says Michael Ackerman, a Los Angeles attorney who represents independent and major-label acts as well as independent record companies. “Few have joined. I think a lot of them aren’t really aware of it or think that the union isn’t for them.”

The Future of Music effort is picking up support from various quarters, including two organizations involved in artists’ rights issues--the Recording Artists Coalition and United Musicians, the distribution channel for independent releases formed by Aimee Mann, Michael Penn and manager Michael Hausman.

“It’s a universal issue that affects all musicians,” RAC President Don Henley says. “I have every confidence in Jenny and her organization. We’ll be working with her to determine the answers to these questions. We’ll be providing if not all the funding [for the survey], then a substantial portion of it. It will cost about $100,000--a bargain.”

Says Hausman, “Fortunately, most of the artists I work with have insurance through AFTRA. If you work enough, you can get that. But it’s frustrating that musicians not getting the right work can’t get those benefits, and it’s great that Jenny is trying to sort it out.”

FAMILY BUSINESS: Perhaps Anna Waronker was destined to go into the business end of music. The former singer of That Dog is the daughter of DreamWorks Records executive and former Warner Bros. Records President Lenny Waronker, whose father, Si, owned the old Liberty Records label. But rather than team up with her dad, Anna Waronker has partnered with her sister-in-law--Go-Go’s guitarist Charlotte Caffey--to start a new label.

Called Five Foot Two Records (for their height), the label will be distributed by independent Oglio Records and will debut in early summer with Waronker’s first solo album, which features some Waronker-Chaffey collaborations.

“I’ve observed the music business from almost every angle,” says Waronker, 29. “And with Charlotte going out with the Go-Go’s again in recent years, we came to the conclusion that we had to be in control of our own fate.”

Waronker and Caffey are related by their marriages to, respectively, Steve and Jeff McDonald of Redd Kross. “It really is family,” says Caffey, 48. “Anna and I started writing together and it was so easy it was scary.” Caffey says she had been getting bored by new music she was hearing, but found herself excited by Waronker’s demo recordings, as well as some she heard by Kim Shattuck of the band the Muffs. She realized this music would not be a comfortable fit in the major-label world.

Plans include a re-release of Redd Kross’ “Neurotica” album, a new Muffs album and, in 2003, to mark her 50th birthday, Caffey is hoping to compile a collection of unreleased songs from her 25 years of songwriting.

And yes, Waronker did go to her father for advice about starting the label. He was very supportive, but not on the same wavelength. “He said, ‘Well, do you have any hits?’” she says. “I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Do you have $10 million?’ ‘No.’ And then I realized that we were in different worlds.”

BRONCO BUSTER: Football player Trevor Pryce, the all-pro defensive tackle of the Denver Broncos, is going into the music business--but trying to avoid being a cliche. Rather than making a glorified vanity album as a rapper, as many athletes have done, he’s launching his independent Outlook Music Co. label with a May 28 release by Wilkesboro, N.C.-based band Roman Candle.

The album, “Says Pop,” is not hip-hop at all, but singer-songwriter rock with electronic beats. Pryce is planning to make a trip-hop-style album, but says his primary interest is to build a label with a strong, independent base that will serve as his career after his playing days are through.

SMALL FACES: After last year’s “Timeless” tribute to Hank Williams on Lost Highway won the country album Grammy, MCA Nashville is planning a tribute to Patsy Cline with a similarly eclectic--though all female--lineup. Two tracks have been recorded so far: jazz singer Diana Krall on “Crazy” and longtime Cline acolyte k.d. lang contributing “Leavin’ on Your Mind.” The album is due in the fall

Michael Penn and Aimee Mann are planning several special performances of their Acoustic Vaudeville concerts to be recorded for a live album. The shows will take place most likely in late May in Hollywood (exact dates and location to be determined), with a select number of tickets to be sold via the Web site of their United Musicians company, www.unitedmusicians.com....

L.A. musician-producer the Angel is designing a Web area for Sony’s Screenblast (www.screenblast.com). Called Digital Soundclash With the Angel, the site will feature music tutorials, remix and editing tools, and feedback and advice from the Angel on tracks submitted by users.... Sweden’s A Teens, who started as an ABBA cover act, have now tackled Elvis Presley, with a version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” It will be the first single from the group’s new album, “Pop Till You Drop,” due June 18, and will also be heard on the soundtrack for the Disney film “Lilo & Stitch.” ... Exene Cervenka’s new band, Original Sinners, has finished a debut album, due June 25 on Offspring singer Dexter Holland’s Nitro Records label. The band features guitarists Sam Soto and Jason Edge, and former Distillers bassist Kim Chi and drummer Mat Young.

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Steve Hochman is a regular contributor to Calendar.