Image via WikipediaNote: This is an interview I conducted with Clint Black on Tuesday at the Los Cerritos Community News. Clint opens up about his life, his ups and downs, how music has changed in the past 25 years, and why he loves playing at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts! Visit the LCCN Interview with Clint by clicking here. Also in this clip is Brian Hews, Publisher of the LCCN! Thanks Brian!
Cover of Clint Black
Image via Wikipedia By Randy Economy
Los Cerritos Community News
Staff Reporter
Nashville, TN
Clint Black is busy this summer writing, performing, and spending as much time as he can beating the heat of Nashville by splashing around in his pool with his 10 year old daughter Lily and wife actress Lisa Hartman-Black by his side.
“I have been with my nose to the grindstone writing, developing some new projects, and doing the dad thing,” Black told the Los Cerritos Community News on Tuesday.
“Lily (his only child) is 10 years old now and doing great, working on some new water tricks this summer like, kick dad off the float,” Black snickered. “I am still trying to get the water out of his ears from being in the pool on 4th of July.”
The multi-Grammy Award winning recipient will one of two headlining acts to kicking off the 2011-12 season of the famed Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts next weekend July 16, and 17. Black will hit the stage at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 17th.
Appearing one day earlier before Black, and kicking off the new CCPA season will be “Dick Fox’s Golden Boys,” featuring three of the most popular teen idols of the late ’50s and early ’60s including Frankie Avalon, Fabian Forte, and Bobby Rydell.
Black, who will be turning 50 next year, says that much has changed in the music industry over the past two and a half decades from when he first came onto the scene, and some of it has “not been good” for artists like him.
“We have had great advances with that have made the business both good and bad. Music wise we have seen the natural evolution of styles that we have always seen, but the technology has really hurt the record companies to the point where it is harder and harder for them to make a profit, which really hurts the artist,” Black said.
He said that artists usually make their money being on the road at concerts and performing at live shows. “But when you do an album or record it usually takes years before you can see a profit, then when you bring in the piracy issues it can’t really hurt an performer or band in the long run.”
“The issue of piracy is huge in our business,” Black said. He told the LCCN that the best way his fans can show their support is to buy cd’s, dvd’s and disks in nationally established retail stores such as Target, Costco, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy, and more importantly “see it in person.”
“When I started getting successful in the 1980’s the internet was just getting started,” Black said, and he said that the future will continue to be new challenges for the next generation of musicians, bands and solo acts. “The recording industry is in terrible, terrible shape and I think it has a huge impact on music culture,” Black said.
He also acknowledged that after working with and for music companies in the past, his effort to venture out under his own label did have initial success with the signing of “Little Big Town,” who has since left him to work with music giant EMI. Black said that even EMI is struggling in these hard economic times. “We couldn’t have picked a worst time to open a record label he said.
Black will be on tour during the next several months, and he can’t wait to get to Cerritos.
For the rest of the LCCN Interview with Clint Black goYOUR CITY TV at the LOS CERRITOS COMMUNITY NEWS!
