MORE FROM THE SOUTHLAND

I just got off the phone with my friend Tim, a sound engineer who now lives in Nashville.

"How are things going?" I said.

Things were fine, he said, then paused: "Except for all the Bush-Cheney signs."

He said there were actually a lot of liberals in the business but they were all intimidated by what Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks. (Yet another argument against media consolidation...) "People still buy their records, but that only makes money for the record company. Their tours aren't selling anymore, and that's where an artist makes their money," he pointed out.

The Dixie Chicks have started to sell more in the alternative market, but there's nowhere near as much money to be made there, he said.

"I was on tour for six months this summer, and me and one other guy were the only liberals on the bus," he said. "It's really conservative here."

He also told me he knows a lot of gay artists and record company people, and they live in fear of it getting out. "It's career suicide," he said. "I mean, you have to know the kind of people buying these records."

Like me, Tim's optimistic about the election. "I think Kerry will win, but I don't know that I believe there'll be an accurate vote count," he said. "We can only hope for the best."

We ended up with (what else?) music biz gossip and baseball. I told him a mutual acquaintance finally got a record deal (we both approved on the basis of talent if not personality), he gave me the inside scoop on a new talent I'd stumbled across ("I went to school with him, I know people who hang out with him. He's... not a nice person," Tim said in his taciturn Midwestern way), and Tim agonized over the possibility of a Cardinals-Sox World Series. (He grew up in St. Louis and went to school in Boston.)

"Yeah, but what a nice problem to have," I said, sighing.
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