Features
By Brian Mansfield
When John Rich and his three fellow godfathers of Nashville's now-famous MuzikMafia started playing no-cover Tuesday-night shows four years ago, it seemed that Nashville couldn't have cared less about them. Each of the four had lost jobs, record deals, or publishing deals. Rich had left the country group Lonestar in 1998, shortly before the group recorded its career record, "Amazed." He also had learned that he'd lost his short-lived solo deal. Kenny Alphin - aka Big Kenny - had found his pop deal with Hollywood Records over before he ever put out an album. Cory Gierman had been laid off from his music-publishing job, and one of his signings - a rock singer/songwriter named Jon Nicholson - had been cut loose as well.
The four out-of-work friends lugged couches upstairs to the tiny, second-floor venue called The Pub of Love, six blocks northeast of Nashville's Music Row nerve center. They set up speakers on folding chairs and lit candles to create ambience. Billing themselves as the MusikMafia, they preached a gospel of "music without prejudice" and began to play. It didn't matter much what they played - country, certainly, but more than that - or even who played, as long as they could hold an audience.
"The first couple weeks, there's 20, 30 people that show up," recalls Rich. "After about 90 days, there was three or four hundred people."
As word of mouth spread, the MusikMafia 35 shows outgrew that club, then another, then others. Flash forward to the present, and MusikMafia acts have sold more than 6 million records.
Gretchen Wilson, whom Rich met while she was bartending at the Bourbon Street Blues & Boogie Bar in Nashville's Printers Alley, has gone quadruple platinum with her Here for the Party album on the strength of such hits as "Redneck Woman" and "When I Think About Cheatin'." Big & Rich aren't far behind, with the singles, "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" and "Holy Water," propelling their Horse of a Different Color disc to double platinum sales.
The MusikMafia crew has its own realitytelevision show (CMT's MusikMafia TV) and its own label, R.A.Y.B.A.W. Records, an acronym for "Red And Yellow Black And White," from the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children." Nicholson and MusikMafia member Cowboy Troy, whom Kenny calls "the only 6'5" black rapping cowboy in country music," have record deals. Singersongwriter James Otto - actually the first MusikMafia act to release an album, before Wilson - was released from his first label only to find himself pursued immediately by two other labels.
Rich, in particular, has become one of Nashville's hottest commodities. He's currently producing at least four records, the follow-ups for Big & Rich and Wilson, plus the debuts for Nicholson and Cowboy Troy. He's also written songs for Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and others.
Nashville, such an industry town, rarely generates underground scenes of any commercial consequence. Even the vaunted "Outlaw" movement of the 70s was in large part the brainchild of then-RCA Nashville chief Jerry Bradley, who compiled previously recorded tracks by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter and came up with country music's first platinum album, Wanted! The Outlaws.
To find a street-level scene that made as big an impact as the MusikMafia already have, one might have to go all the way back to the late 50s and early 60s, when Tootsie's Orchid Lounge was a between-set watering hole for Grand Ole Opry stars and a hangout for songwriters like Harlan Howard, Hank Cochran and Willie Nelson.
If Rich and his fellow MusikMafia members might not make such lofty claims themselves, they probably wouldn't shy away from them, either. As musically different as Big & Rich, Wilson, Cowboy Troy and the others are, they all possess an incredible level of self-confidence. And self-promotion has been key to their success. Wilson's "Redneck Woman" immediately established a tough-chick, modern-day-Loretta- Lynn persona with country fans. Big & Rich's elaborate, vividly colorful videos have enhanced the duo's image as much as they have the songs.
"They really do believe that what they do is special," says Warner Bros. Nashville chief Bill Bennett. "And they don't tiptoe in to try to do it."
Over the years, the MusikMafia godfathers have picked up a colorfully eccentric entourage consisting of folks who didn't seem to fit in anywhere else. There's Troy, who met Rich in a Dallas nightclub during the earliest days of Lonestar. There's Two Foot Fred, really 3'2" Indiana entrepreneur Freddie Gill, whom Rich encountered at Fan Fair.
Performance painter Rachel Kice creates abstract works of art during the shows. In addition, a whole crew of musicians are now rising through the MusikMafia ranks, including rapper Chance, soulfulgrass singer Shannon Lawson and Mista D, whom Rich met early one morning singing on a Nashville street. "Pitboss" musicians from those early club dates and Max "On Sax" Abrams, Brian "The Bare-Chested Percussionist" Barnett, smooth-scalped blues-rock guitarist Dean Hall, now accompany the more successful acts on tour.
In this world, "Mafia" stands for "Musically Artistic Friends In Alliance." It's an alliance that crosses musical and corporate boundaries.
"We're all buddies," Rich says. "We ain't going to stop being friends. So the whole philosophy, which is a great, beautiful thing, is bleeding up into the upper tiers of Music Row. It's making people have to think differently."
"It's the forest, is what it is," says Big Kenny. "It's the forest and the trees. If you've got enough trees standing around you, man, there's just something to hold you up all the time."
That "family" mindset has served the MusikMafia well during its early years. Looking ahead, it could also be the key to greater success for a long time to come.
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