As the child of musicians and a performer since the age of seven, Savannah Conley has witnessed many deals gone wrong, despite her youth. “Growing up in Nashville, you see a lot of music biz shit,” divulges the 21-year-old songstress. So even though she’d been offered contracts before, she never bit.
Then she played Skyville Live, whose musical director is a friend of her father’s. Besides meeting her future manager at that gig, the performance was uploaded to YouTube, ultimately reaching Atlantic Records A&R Steve “Stevo” Robertson.
Robertson phoned Conley and revealed he’d passed the video to Dave Cobb, who runs Elektra imprint Low Country Sound. “He loved it and wants to meet with you,” she remembers. “What’s your day like tomorrow?” Robertson collected her and motored to RCA’s historic Studio A to meet the Grammy-winning producer.
Conley picked up a guitar and the two made a song request. Once she began, instinct took over and Conley switched to her then unreleased tune, “All I Wanted.” Partway through, Cobb held up his hand and indicated approval. That next week, they flew to New York to meet Elektra honcho Gregg Nadel, where a brief performance sealed the label’s interest. Conley reciprocated, sensing they didn’t want her to be something she wasn’t. As she puts it, “I felt to the core that this was the right thing.”
Last year, Conley was named one of Rolling Stone’s Artists You Need to Know. Tours with Brett Cobb, The Head and the Heart and Anderson East followed. It’s a level of fortune she believes never would have materialized without one simple formula—staying true to herself. “That’s all you’ve got,” she imparts. “You’ve got your music and you.”
Date Signed: December 2017
Label: Low Country Sound/Elektra Records
Type of Music: Indie/Alternative
Management: Johnny Gradone / Hard 8 / Working Group, [email protected]
Booking: Jonathan Levine & Jeremy Shpizner - Paradigm, [email protected]
Legal: Margo Scott - Elektra Records, New York, NY
Publicity: [email protected]
Web: savannahconley.com
A&R: Steve Robertson & Gregg Nadel - Elektra Records, [email protected]
