For more than a decade he has worked tirelessly, building a solid enterprise and developing a large, loyal clientele across the Upper Midwest.

More recently, he's taken his wares online and gone into diverse new interactive venues.

Now, as he promotes a new product release, his thoughts are about getting bigger, taking an already strong regional brand and going national with it.

The aspiration is familiar to many small-business owners -- even if singing, writing songs, recording albums and touring nonstop aren't.

Brian Leighton, leader of veteran Minnesota rock band GB Leighton, wants to take his brand national. While his concerts are a must for diehard fans, Leighton's entrepreneurial efforts are likely to strike a chord with the business crowd.

He's no Jimmy Buffett, who has built a business empire around one song. But Leighton seeks a bigger profile, while balancing his artistic and commercial aims.

"I've maintained a career for a while," Leighton, 37, said in an interview last month on the eve of the release of "Shake Them Ghosts. "To think of it as like some multimillion-dollar company, I'm not there yet. I'm definitely striving to get there someday."
 

Brian Leighton (standing on the bar) of the band GB Leighton
licensed the use of his name for a new nightclub,
GB Leighton’s Pickle Park in Fridley.
The club is full of rock memorabilia, including
an oversize, overhead reproduction of his guitar
Photo Credit: Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

The flag on the wall at GB Leighton’s Pickle Park
in Fridley was a gift from a Minnesota Air National
Guardsman who often listened to GB Leighton music
while flying missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Photo Credit: Glen Stubbe, Star Tribune

Leighton has run his band in business-like fashion for years. He plays three to five nights a week primarily in the Twin Cities area but also ventures outstate and plays in Chicago, Milwaukee, Des Moines, Fargo and other Midwestern cities.

He has set up two corporations -- one for touring, which pays regular salaries to the five musicians and three crew members he employs (providing them unusual security in the music world), and the other for his merchandise and albums.

He also has licensed the use of his name and a song title for a new nightclub, GB Leighton's Pickle Park, which opened in June in Fridley. The decor includes memorabilia of rock stars, including Leighton, and a 32-foot-long replica of his guitar on the ceiling over the main bar.

Leighton will perform at his namesake locale eight times a year. He also hangs out there frequently, dropping by from his nearby home in New Brighton.

Club Affiliation

Tom Tomaro and Mike Tupa, who own the club with general manager and minority owner Amanda Kranz, are longtime Leighton fans.

Tomaro said he has seen Leighton's band pack clubs since he tended bar while he was in the entrepreneur program at the University of St. Thomas. A bar owner for the last 12 years, Tomaro said it's taken several years to persuade Leighton to do business and to find the right place.

"Having the GB Leighton brand to open a place like this is essential," said Tomaro, who has other locations in mind for future Leighton clubs. "Because I had watched Brian operate for so long, I saw that he was a good businessman, that he ran a professional business."

Leighton has sold close to 80,000 albums over the years, all independently, never having signed with a major record label. He estimates that he has sold 5,000 copies of "Shake Them Ghosts" at his live shows, and thousands of others at retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Snyder's Drug Stores.

 
The new album also is available from his website, www.gbleighton.com  and as a digital download from the iTunes Music Store and other services linked from his site.

Fans also can go to his website to sign up for his second annual tour to Acapulco this January, booked through Bianchi-Rossi in Golden Valley. More than 150 joined him for performances at the Hard Rock Cafe and other venues and poolside chats last winter, and more than 200 are expected next year.

"The biggest key to it comes down to fan base," said Leighton, who aspires to connect with fans the way his idol, Bruce Springsteen, does. "I've been fortunate to have fans who enjoy what I write, they can't wait for more albums, they love the merchandise and they go to the shows. Some of them go to every show. Some of them follow us to Mexico."

In the last year or so, Leighton signed with a new personal management company, North Carolina-based Murphy to Manteo Music Management, whose partners managed Hootie & the Blowfish to national prominence in the 1990s. Leighton had been without a manager for some time, but decided he needed some direction.

"I needed somebody to help me get beyond this point here," Leighton said. So far the focus has been on doing things to make existing fans feel special, and to attract new fans to his rootsy, Midwestern rock, which draws comparisons to John Mellencamp.

The primary lure is "Shake Them Ghosts." Leighton traveled to Nashville to work with top songwriters on what he said was his strongest collection of songs for the new album.

His management company arranged for renowned producer Don Dixon, who has worked with R.E.M. among others, to oversee the recording. Superstar drummer Kenny Aronoff, who has recorded with Bob Dylan, joined Leighton for the sessions.

Said Leighton's manager, Rusty Harmon: "Brian and the band just recently embarked on a southeastern swing which included Nashville, Atlanta, Charleston, and Charlotte. We will get him back to that region about every six months and hope that what he does in the Twin Cities will translate there as well."

'Long-tail' economics

Minneapolis-based entertainment attorney Ken Abdo said Leighton, a client, "is occupying a rarefied place in the world of independent popular musicians. He is a member of a very small club of bands that has a regional following for his original music and that consistently is employed within the region for over a decade."

As unusual as that is, Leighton also has the distinction of being the rare independent artist represented by both a national agency that books his shows and a national management company, Abdo said.

Because Leighton has never signed with a major record label, he has retained control of the primary sources of revenue in the music industry: recordings, songwriting royalties, merchandise and touring.

Leighton's new album might not sell in the millions, but because he has control of his material, he benefits from the "long-tail economics," Abdo said, earning him a higher percentage of revenue over a longer period of time from the tens of thousands of albums he does sell.

"Like any good shop owner, he has paid attention to the details," in running what amounts to a wholly owned business, Abdo said.

And like many shop owners, Leighton also could succeed on a greater scale, Abdo said.

"I'm certain that's what management's objective is, to increase his world, to enlarge his artistic and commercial world," Abdo said. "Brian has the artistic and entertainer wherewithal to be much bigger."

The expert says: John Sailors, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, said any performer or performing group is a brand. Leighton's difference is his awareness of that and "what seems his very professional discipline in managing himself and his group as a business."

Leighton needs to know what consumers -- his fans -- associate with him as a brand before he can make the most of his expanding career, Sailors said. Unlike the more typical struggling artist, "he can afford to be judicious in how he chooses to grow," Sailors noted.

One example for him to consider, Sailors said, is how a brand like Red Bull developed, growing through guerrilla marketing tactics -- low-cost, unconventional marketing tactics that get maximum response with minimum resources.

The idea, Sailors said, is "to grow on the basis of the buzz that you've generated among a particular target customer."

Another way for him to extend his brand, Sailors said, would be seeking to have his albums distributed through Starbucks, which now has its own music label and satellite radio channel.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Woodbury.