Meet Bret Bassi of Gold Firebird

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bret Bassi.

Bret, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started out playing music in school because my parents made myself and each of my siblings try an instrument. They didn’t force us to continue playing, but wanted us to have a lot of experiences. I wanted to play the trumpet but when I went in to take the test to determine if I could be a trumpeter, I had to sing back some scales and melodies and sounded more like a dying bird than someone who could play a pitched instrument. Everyone quickly discovered that I was a drummer. I ended up playing drums through middle school, high school, and then in college. My undergrad degree is in music as a drummer/commercial music major. I started playing in rock bands maybe around 11 or 12 and had my first gig at the Logan County fair in fifth grade. I thought from there on out I was going be a drummer in a band and that that was going to be my career. One version of my band eventually got a manager, I started talking to some record labels, and we began playing weekend runs and little festivals and things, and I quickly realized that spending the next several years in a van with a bunch of smelly dudes was not going to work. I wanted to take a shower every day and sleep in my own bed at least most nights. My whole purpose for this path was to give back to kids the kind of great music that had gotten me through all of the tough times when I was younger. As that dream fell apart I became rudderless. I knew I had to do something in music but didn’t know what nor how. Living in the Midwest there wasn’t really much of a direction or opportunity to work in music so I ended up going to grad school and got an MBA. I had the really amazing opportunity to build that into a music business focused degree by doing several independent studies and working with the heads of each of the departments to build the curriculum that I needed it to be to be successful in the music industry. As soon as I was out of school, I moved to Chicago and worked in radio promotion for a very short time and have been managing artists ever since. In the radio promo company I worked with all of the major labels to help them get their artist’s songs on the radio and was lucky to work with artists like Maroon 5, Deftones, The Mars Volta, Britney Spears, Cohered and Cambria, Snoop Dog, and many others. Radio promotion is a racket! After 18 months there I met my mentor and wonderful friend, Roger Jansen, and moved to the management side full time. I started out working mostly with rock and alternative bands, eventually moved into managing writers and producers, and in the last 10 years or so, work on a lot of pop music. I am lucky to have an incredible roster of people that have worked with Chappell Roan, Cage the Elephant, Weezer, Kaskade, Alan Walker, Slipknot, Alice In Chains, Finneas O’Connell, Beyonce, and many more household names. This year my wonderful mixer client, Justin Hergett and I will each receive our first RIAA Diamond Records for his work mixing Ashe’s brilliant song, “Moral of the Story.”

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I take the position of ‘if there weren’t bumps on the way, did you actually end up anywhere that was worth getting to?’ There have been plenty of bumps along the way. I had mentioned before, I thought I was going to be on the performing side of music rather than the business side. That was a big challenge because it forced me to reconsider my identity. When anyone has that kind of big change, it can hit hard. That was basically a time of mourning a dream that was no longer going to be possible. Those questions of identity still pop up from time to time.

From there, artist management in general is not the easiest path. We are the hub of everything that happens in an artist’s business and career and generally the last person on the team to get paid. Much of the job is making a lot of investments in artists, people, and projects, and in building relationships. Those things often don’t pay off for years down the road, if ever. It’s always this juxtaposition of short-term work and long-term investment and it is gratifying in the end but there’s always a certain level of pressure that comes along with each project. Add on top of that technology and how it has drastically changed the strategy on how to break artists and you’ve definitely got some things to think about!

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Though I dabble in bits and pieces of other parts of the music industry like publishing and music synchronization, my business is built around artist management. I have a roster that’s generally about half artists and half songwriters, producers, and one mixer. I can say confidently that my team has worked on several of most peoples’ favorite songs. What I do in the broadest terms is build careers for creative people. The day-to-day of that is basically acting as a CEO of a bunch of small businesses that are made up of the artist and the artist’s team.

Much of the music industry has moved towards technology and data and away from the creative aspects of what used to be common on the business side, and those are the pieces of the puzzle that I fill in. Artist development is my favorite part of everything I do. For example, I’m working with one of my artists right now to rebrand her project and that goes from sonics to visuals to styling and each of those creative components. Even at the record label level many of the creative aspects such as A&R have been removed, so I am in an interesting position to replace some of those roles. I often get involved in the songwriting, in the production, in the arrangements of the song, and can offer a 40,000 foot view of creating the complete package that an artist would eventually take to release.

Do I have a pile of gold and platinum records? Yes. Are those the accomplishments that get me up in the morning? No. When I think about what I’m most proud of it really comes down to my artists being happy in their lives, getting the experiences that they want out of their creativity, and them feeling fulfilled as they share their art with the world. Sometimes those things are much more challenging than a billion streams.

What were you like growing up?
I think I was mostly a pretty typical small town kid. I was constantly caught somewhere between wanting to rebel and wanting to be accepted. I knew with utter certainty that I was going to get as far away from my home town as possible and that a 9-5 was not my destiny. By middle school I had caught the music bug and, while I still played sports and participated in other extra curriculars, music was everything. It was the glue between my friends group (many of whom I am still close with all these years later), it was how I spent my evenings (either playing or listening), it was my go-to for every childhood emotion from the wins and celebrations to the failures and depressions to the mundane…there was constantly a soundtrack. I was a kid that had a strong few friends but also floated from group to group. I was a walking juxtaposition. Played in the band and on the basketball team, was student body president but also didn’t make much effort to be in the in-crowd, accepted by most people but kept my real friends group small. Education was stressed in my family but my brother and sister both outshined me in that department. Music was my way to have my own thing and make my own lane.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.goldfirebird.com
• Instagram: @bretbassi
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6kuo5OP2smveK9LlWrdbJA?si=2ca7fe5082a0443b