COMBO’s president and fearless leader Barb Dye!
A BIG Thank You goes out to Ryan Chrys for pointing Voyage Denver in COMBO’s direction. Much appreciated, Ryan. And you can also find an article on Ryan there as well! Here’s the link:
http://voyagedenver.com/interview/meet-barb-dye/
On the site, you can find it in the Inspiring Stories series at the top of the homepage as part of the Denver collection.
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Today we’d like to introduce you to Barb Dye.
Barb, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I have always been interested in music! Started taking viola lessons at the age of eight, went to guitar then piano. Ended up playing 14 different instruments, none of them very well except for the drums. I played drums in a rock band in high school and we entertained at U.S.O. shows all over Colorado & Wyoming. I majored in Geological sciences in college and minored in Music. Many years later, I was co-director of a stage play at the local high school and I heard a band practicing in the band room. I encouraged them to enter the local Kiwanis Club Stars of Tomorrow show and they won. They asked me to be their manager and I was hooked! I eventually went back to college and found an Entertainment Management degree at the University of Colorado – Denver and went for that. In 2002, I joined the Colorado Music Association (n/k/a COMBO).
In July 2005, I was elected president, a position I’ve been re-elected to since. I have tried to respect and utilize all the talents of our board members who all do something special in the “business” of music – photographers, sound engineers, artist management, marketing, talent, lawyers, and more. I am always on the lookout for unique artists because I love the management side. And I love networking and connecting people with the services they need to succeed in show business. I have been a judge for many contests (Kiwanis, Country Showdown, various clubs’ contests, Miss Colorado, etc.) but always try to talk to the contestant to tell them what area I thought they could use improvement in so that they could get better at their craft. In recent years, I have come to see how important songwriters are to the music industry and have tried to encourage that talent.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
So many struggles. Mostly the lack of payment or low payment for your services. So many people seem to feel that people who work in the music industry should not be paid. Bands are getting paid way less than they did 40 years ago, even 20 years ago. And they no longer get to play five nights a week and are lucky to get to play Friday and Saturday nights. No wonder so much talent has had to resort to uploading videos to the internet or to auditioning for television talent shows!
And with areas like Nashville’s Music Row being demolished, you can no longer “beat the streets” to try to get someone to listen to your demo tape. While it sounds like a great opportunity, it seems like so many people have developed “music services” on the internet but most of those want to charge you a fee — but they don’t tell you that the chances of you getting “discovered” that way are zilch — as they have thousands of other artists trying to get someone’s attention.
We’d love to hear more about your organization… [continue reading]
Read the whole article here:
http://voyagedenver.com/interview/meet-barb-dye/
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