Jeanette Lundgren - the “Mom Hen” of Mother Hen Promotions the Direct Buzz (tDB): Do you remember the day that you realized that the music business was your passion and you wanted to pursue it as your career? What was going through your mind at that time? Jeanette Lundgren (JL): This is actually my second career. I’ve always loved music - I sang and played in high school and college (glee club and guitar clubs), and I’ve always had a really good ear. I went into publishing as my first career choice though and worked my way up from secretary to Rights Director, selling all kinds of subsidiary rights to adult and children’s books at a major publishing house in NY for 25 years. I moved to Los Angeles in 2000 to be the film rights liaison for that publisher and then 2 years later the parent company closed all “outside” offices. Around the same time, I became interested in independent releases put out by favorite artists from my teen-hood which led me to meeting some of them (indie artists respond to letters and email whereas labeled artists back in the day did not). Via doing once weekly office work for James Lee Stanley, I started to learn about the indie music business, and that is where I first learned about “Folk Alliance www. folkalliance.org” and “FAR-West www.far-west.org ”. I then started going to see James at local coffee shops, house concerts and other venues … and along the way met other indie musicians who knocked my socks off. It WAS a dream come true. At the same time, Myspace was

MotherHenPromotions.com

brand-spanking-new and I tried my hand at creating and maintaining those sites and that’s when I sorta saw the light. This was around 2003 and 2004. Indie Musicians without the support of a label now had to do it all themselves, from producing to promoting and everything in between. At the same time, the internet was still a little wet behinds its ears and I was good at it. I was sort of on a journey at that point to find out what my next step would be, what with publishing behind me and working interim at a local drugstore chain to pay the bills. There was no question about going back to NY; I wanted to be on the West Coast. When it became clear that internet promotion was not in the daily schedule or even easy for in-

by Dr. T. Roberts

die musicians to manipulate, for my friends, I took it on. I have to say I didn’t at that time know where it was all going, but I knew I would ride it to find out. tDB: You have created a very successful and admired Consulting Firm in the music industry. What are the “Top 3” things you believe have contributed the most to your success… and why? JL: Persistence. Perseverance. And the fact that, when I was in publishing, I generally worked alone to handle 3-4 new book lists per year containing upwards of 15 titles to all markets without forgetting about recent past lists of newly published books. Being in subsidiary rights, I also worked closely with the editors, promotion and publicity de-