On December 30th, 2007, I received a message on YouTube from a rather cryptic username, which read:
I am at Atlantic Records. Love to speak.
Can you send a phone number?
Who was this? Was it legit, or was it someone pretending to be at Atlantic Records? Or if it was someone there, was it someone with any power? Hesitantly, I replied to the e-mail with my e-mail address and phone number.
I was wary about all of these e-mails through YouTube; keep in mind, I had received a lot of weird messages because of the 6 million views we received on our 12 Days video. Many of these contacts were blatantly just wanting to put our music online "for a small fee." Many people claimed to have big connections in the music business. One guy even directed me to his "resume" which was his MySpace page, featuring a large professional photograph of himself, headshot-style, wearing a lit-up Bluetooth headset. His e-mail got deleted as soon as I saw that photo.
So, a year ago today, January 1st, 2008, my cell phone chimed at 8am, waking me. I groggily grabbed it to read the following message from a name I didn't know:
From: Kallman, Craig
To: Stine, Randy
Sent: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 8:03 am
Hey Randy,
Happy New Year. I will reach out today or tomorrow if that is cool.
Craig
I replied "Today or tomorrow would be fine. I look forward to speaking with you." and fell back asleep for a few more hours.
Later that afternoon, now with a name to Google, I decided to investigate this Atlantic Records contact, this Craig Kallman. I found a Wikipedia page about him. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Kallman). My mouth was hanging open. Could this really be who is going to be calling me? As I'm reading this amazing bio about the Chairman & CEO of Atlantic Records, my cell phone rings...a New York City area code. I answer, it's him. It's Craig Kallman. The name which didn't ring a bell for me initially now has me nearly holding my breath on the phone.
He brings up the YouTube video, and asks about getting the guys together for a new album. He mentions concerts, CDs, DVDs, iTunes, even our own TV show. I was so excited I nearly attempted one-armed cartwheels while on the phone. Then my heart dropped - I realized that he must have thought the 1998 video was current, and that we all still sang together, and we were 21 years old. I say, "Do you do realize that video is 10 years old, and we're all approaching 30?" He replies by listing the guys' names and the cities they currently live in. I began to wonder if Craig has friends at the FBI. We decided the best next step was to meet in person. He gave me his cell phone number, and his assistant's number, and we planned to have dinner in LA in a few days.
I immediately called Dan Ponce, who by that point, was tired of my updates on how many views we had on YouTube. I told Dan the story, and he didn't believe me at first. After re-telling the conversation to Dan, we both flew to LA, and had dinner with Craig. We liked what Craig had to say, and he wanted to meet everyone, so we reconvened in NYC a week later with the full group.
We sang two songs in the Atlantic Records offices in New York City for all the executives. We got the green light that very day, and after finalizing the contract, began rehearsals, recording, and you know the rest...
Here we are a year later, with an album that ended up as #1 on Amazon and iTunes, broke the Top 50 on the Billboard charts, and sold over 100,000 copies. We toured North America, sang the National Anthem at the Vietnam Wall, a Packers Game, a Cavs game, and made national TV appearances on Fox & Friends, TNT's Christmas In Washington, Dr. Phil, WGN, CNN, ABC, ESPN, and NBC's The Today Show.
It's amazing what can happen in a year. Clearly none of this would have happened if it wasn't for Craig taking a chance on us, as well as the entire team of people at Atlantic who worked on our album. We have made some incredible friends at Atlantic this year, and I cannot wait to work with them all again for album #2 in 2009. The people who believed in us have inspired us to really push ourselves. Last, but NOT least, are you, our friends/fans who have supported us SO diligently, and really helped spread the word about our music and this Christmas album. From YouTube, to MySpace, Facebook, to here, our website; we owe many thanks to those of you who are reading this right now. You watched the YouTube videos, you bought the albums, you told your friends to listen to us, you gave the CDs as gifts, you came to public appearances and concerts. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't begin to dream what I'll be blogging about a year from today, in 2010.
Randy