George Ducas Gets Back to Business

Every record label in Nashville has the difficult balancing act of supporting its stars while simultaneously growing its newer talent. Pay too much attention to your stars, and the new singers can’t gain a foothold on country radio. Support the newcomers too much, and the stars may fall out of favor in a competitive market.

This is the situation in which George Ducas found himself during his time with Liberty and Capitol Records. His debut album, released in 1994, blended unapologetic country tunes like “Teardrops” with songs like “Lipstick Promises,” which had a ’60s Orbisonesque vibe. The former reached the lower end of the country charts, but the latter was a certified hit. With his talent, looks and interesting back story (that of an economics major turned banker turned country singer) should have been enough to solidify his place in country music. Unfortunately for him, he was a newcomer on Capitol Records in the Garth Era.

“Garth Brooks was extremely hot at the time; he was bigger than The Beatles,” Ducas recalls. “Any time that happens, it throws everything up in the air a little bit. That’s not to say it was a bad thing, because he sort of kept the lights on at Capitol Records for a long time, but it threw schedules around quite frequently.”

The lead single from his second album got pushed back until after Brooks rescheduled his single release date, which meant that Ducas’ album, “Where I Stand” was delayed for several months, finally coming out in 1998. None of the follow-up singles to “Lipstick Promises” caught on with radio, and Ducas and the label parted ways soon after. While it’s now been about 11 years since Ducas released an album, he’s been very much a part of the country music scene, writing hits for Brooks himself, as well as George Jones, Sara Evans, the Randy Rogers Band and many others.

Stay-at-home songwriter

Ducas’ songwriting career actually fit his life perfectly. As the father of a 6 year-old boy and an 8 year-old girl, he’s been able to stay involved with the industry, and occasionally tour, while focusing on being a daddy during the formative years.

“I didn’t want to be rolling around on a tour bus and miss those young years, because you never get those years back,” he says. He jokes that this summer has been filled with swimming camps and football practices.

“I’m torn, because I love being a dad, but I also love the road and playing music. I love making records and marketing and promoting them,” Ducas says. “The other thing I really miss when I’m at home is that I really don’t gain a lot of material as a songwriter being home all the time. The songwriter aspect complements the artist aspect and vice versa. For me, the two go hand in hand, and without one, I’m not as good at the other.”

About a year and a half ago, Ducas and his wife had a conversation about their career paths. With the children spending more time at school and less time at home, they decided they could resume the careers they’d had before the children came along. Ducas’ wife, a business major, took a part-time job as a way of easing back in the workforce, and he went out and made a record.

Certainly, the country landscape has changed dramatically since the mid-’90s. While Ducas acknowledges that the industry has taken on a lot of pop aspects, from production to the shelf life artists have, he also notes there are more avenues to get music to the audience than ever before. He also points out that, unlike other eras that were dominated by guys in cowboy hats or women with navel rings, the country landscape is broader than ever.

Through all the changes in the music, Ducas has managed to consistently write hit songs. One of his earliest cuts, “Just Call Me Lonesome,” was written with Radney Foster and was Foster’s first single and solo hit in 1992. Most recently, the Eli Young Band took “Always The Love Songs,” a song written with David Lee Murphy, and made it a Top 10 hit that also reached #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

“It was actually going to be on this independent record of mine I went and made about a year and a half ago,” Ducas said. The record somehow made its way into the Band’s camp, and it ended up appearing on their major-label debut last year. “You never know the benefits of going to make a record”, Ducas says. “Part of the motivation was to set my songs apart as a songwriter, and hopefully get a couple of cuts with it too. The record’s still not out, but thanks to the Eli Young Band, I have a Top 10 on it already,” he says, laughing.

Iceberg ahead

Ducas’ album may still be unreleased, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Last year, he joined a new, independent label in Nashville. After a year’s worth of fanfare, preparation and work, the label folded without having released a single song.

The album started in December 2007, when Ducas opened some concerts for Sara Evans, for whom he and Foster had written the hit song “Real Fine Place To Start.” After one of those shows, he struck up a conversation with J.C. Lestorti, a music fan, erstwhile singer and a seemingly successful businessman in the cabinetry industry. That conversation led to several other long phone conversations about the music business.

“One thing led to another, discussions sort of ramped up, and this guy had thought of both releasing his own music–he was a crooner in the Frank Sinatra mold–and he also wanted to start a label with his trappings from his successful, or so I thought, cabinetry business,” Ducas explains. The cabinetry business had actually gone bankrupt in 2005.

Ducas introduced Lestorti to several music executives who had been left looking for work in the current Nashville economy, and soon WhiteStar Entertainment Group launched with industry veterans like Carson James and Walt Wilson as part of the team. If there was any indication that this business was not going to end well, it was in the name of the company itself. After all, the White Star Line was the company that owned the Titanic.

“We laugh about it all the time now,” Ducas says of himself and his fellow WhiteStar survivors.

As the first and flagship artist to the new label, he prepared his album for release and toured more than 70 reporting country music stations across the country, playing his songs and his songwriting cuts. Radio personnel were wined and dined, and Ducas was successfully re-introducing himself to the industry after more than a 10-year absence. The fact that paychecks and business expense reimbursements started getting delayed did start to raise some eyebrows.

“All the questions started coming to me, because I knew this guy before anybody,” Ducas explains. “A number of people had repeatedly told him how much it was going to cost in terms of an initial investment to get a product out there and have a chance at turning a profit or breaking even, and how long the pipeline was. Unfortunately, he never batted an eye.”

The first single, “Walk Through This World,” was set for release in the middle of January 2009. Four weeks before that, though, the label folded, with many of the employees left unpaid. A lawsuit has been filed by several former WhiteStar employees and contractors against Lestorti for almost $2 million.

For his part, Ducas was paid in full for his album, and when several session musicians weren’t paid for their work in re-recording the single, he paid them out of his own pocket. He does not consider Lestorti a con man.

“I think he was so passionate about the music he was almost delusional, really,” he explains. “If not exactly that, he was darn close to it. It’s a shame and a sad case, because a lot of people really worked hard at it and rolled up their sleeves.”

Moving ahead

Ducas still owns half the rights to his unreleased album, along with Lestorti. However, rather than having any more business dealings with the man, he’d rather re-record the songs and add on some new ones that he’s written lately.

“I don’t have a timeline, but I’m working on that as we speak,” he says, noting that WhiteStar was meant to be a vertically integrated company, with oversight over not only the music but also the publishing, the booking and the merchandising. When he signed with the label, he had to shed himself of all other representation, so among the first goals is to find a booking agent and get back out on the road to build up his fanbase again.

“You have to connect with the audience and build a community, and the best way to do that is playing music live,” he comments. As far as actually releasing new music, he has more options than ever and is trying to decide on the best approach to market and promote it, preferably before the end of the year. Along with several Nashville-based options, the native Texan has the option of taking his music back home.

“I played a show in Austin, and all my buddies were there for Radney Foster’s 50th birthday party,” he says, describing the show as pure unabashed Lone Star beer and music. “It was myself, Pat Green, Jack Ingram, Kevin Fowler, whom I’ve been doing some writing with, and countless other Texas artists. It made me think that one of the ways to go might be to start in Texas and release a single just in Texas and Oklahoma, and grow it and build it from there.

“I’m a Nashvillian through and through, and for all its trials and tribulations, I love Music Row and am very ingrained with the songwriting community here. But I am a Texan, and maybe that would be a natural way to relaunch,” Ducas adds.

He says that his new music is more diverse than his earlier albums, now that he has more life experience and is more comfortable writing about a broader array of subjects. He also says he doesn’t take his music quite as seriously as he once did.

“I used to think I could actually change people’s perception of what was good in music and enlighten them somehow in three minutes of a song. That’s really no longer my intent,” he says, noting that most people turn to music as an escape from their daily grind. “I just try to write stuff people can enjoy and let their hair down, and then maybe speak to them about matters of the heart.”