Ingram Hill
Southern Pop Signs To Hollywood Records
After selling thousands of records independently, Ingram Hill has signed with Hollywood Records. The result of much hard work has brought excitement to the Memphis band's members.
"It's a great feeling to have worked so hard and have someone believe in us enough to invest lots of money and time to try and make us huge, famous, and rich rock stars," lead singer Justin Moore said.
The band will continue what it has been doing for the last three-plus years: "tour like crazy, shake hands, kiss babies, and just keep trying to spread the Ingram Hill love," Moore said.
The band's raw, down-to-earth sound has found its way all throughout the west to states including Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas. For fans in New Jersey, the chance to catch them live before their potential radio success occurs at the Saint on 601 Main Street in Asbury Park on March 9.
While being signed to a label may bring the perception that overnight success is around the corner, that is not the case. Inking a deal means more work is forthcoming.
"We'll eventually probably have a lot more radio stuff to do," Moore said. "More waking up early for morning shows, and probably a lot more phone interviews. Nothing we can't handle."
Hollywood plans to re-release the band's current compact disc, "June's Picture Show," on February 24, along with some extras not present in the band's initial D.I.Y. release of the record last year.
"The record has been re-mastered, so it sounds way better," Moore said. "There's new artwork, and we'll have multimedia extras that you can only get from actually purchasing the album."
The band hopes to use the label's expertise to expand its audience. "The label has people that are staffed and trained and very qualified in many different departments, whether it be marketing, radio, creative, [and so forth]," Moore said. "So, instead of us trying to do all these business things that we're not exactly specialized in, we now have people that really know what they're doing, and can concentrate solely on that one job."
This means Ingram Hill can focus its effort on its music.
"We get to concentrate more on writing great songs and playing great shows," Moore said. "It just takes a load off our shoulders. We just have to trust the label to do their jobs well, and from what we've seen of them, I think they'll do just that."
Even though interest in signing the band was drawn from other labels, Hollywood seemed like the right choice.
"Hollywood just showed so much enthusiasm and just true, heartfelt excitement about us," Moore said. "We did have interest from other labels, but none of them just felt right and gave us the vibe that Hollywood did. I still haven't met one person from Hollywood who doesn't seem genuinely excited about us, and you can't force that on people. And when you have that much excitement, it's hard to think that these guys wouldn't work just as hard as we do to make our careers into what we want."
[ Website: www.ingramhillmusic.com ]
Josh Davidson has written music feature articles for Jersey Style and served as the Jersey Shore rock columnist for Steppin' Out Magazine. Other music writing credits include Aquarian Weekly, Jersey Beat, Backstreets and njcoast.com. He has written free-lance for the Asbury Park Press' Community Sports section and has written featured articles for its news section, as well as covering campus news and sports weekly for the Signal, the College of New Jersey's (formerly Trenton State College) student newspaper. He has worked as a staff writer for The Independent, and his work for Greater Media Newspapers has also been published in the News Transcript. He is a former beat reporter for the Ocean County Observer who presently is a news writer for Symbolic Systems Inc. supporting the US Army's Knowledge Center. His music writing covers a vast range of topics, from the current cover band craze, highs and lows of the original scene, to the early days of the Jersey Shore rock scene in Asbury Park. He is also a musician, having written hundreds of songs as a singer/songwriter, and playing them out as a solo/acoustic artist. He has also played with cover bands, including It Doesn't Matter, and several original bands, including as the guitarist for the solo project of singer/songwriter Dave Eric. He continues to work on solo material and is presently the guitar player for Jersey Breeze.
