Q’s With Paradigm’s Tom Windish On Launching Wilder Records And Co-Founding Livestreaming Concert Series Home School

– Executive Meeting
Tom Windish with the namesake and head of A&R for Wilder Records on his head.

The Windish Agency, in many regards, set the contemporary template for what an independent agency looked like with brilliant A&Ring, a cutting edge roster (which has included Aphex Twin, 2ManyDJs, LCD Soundsystem and way too many others to name here) while fostering the careers of several arena headliners (see Billie Eilish, Diplo and Alt.J) and top agents.

Tom Windish launched his agency out of Chicago in 2004, after nine years at The Billions Corp, and built it into a national agency with offices in L.A., New York, Chicago and the Bay Area before he partnered in 2015 with Paradigm Talent Agency, which subsequently acquired it in 2017. These days, the 47-year old entrepreneur, like so many in the business, is diversifying.

Last fall, well before any of us had spoken the words COVID-19, Windish launched his own Wilder Records, a label named for his 18-month-old son. More recently, Home School – a weekly live streaming concert series Windish co-founded in conjunction with KCRW’s Chris Douridas and Bandsintown – made its debut. The weekly streamed series features three handpicked artists for a short recorded live performance and Q&A every Tuesday (5 p.m. PT at Homeschool.bandsintown.com) All this while continuing to be an agent. Pollstar caught up with Windish to discuss his latest endeavors.

Pollstar: How are you holding up?

Tom Windish: I’m really using the extra time to take ideas I’ve had before, focus more energy on them and figure out what are the big opportunities. At this point you could almost, at least in touring, imagine if there were no rules. Imagine if the way things were done for the last 30 years, there was nobody who said, “Well that’s the way it’s done.” How would you do it differently?

As usual, you’re steps ahead – didn’t you pivot to a label with Future Classic well before the pandemic?

I was working on that for a while. The first record came out late last year. It just happened to be that the second record was scheduled to come out the first week of the lockdown and I was like, “Well, I’m just going to put it out. What am I’m going to do?” And I just launched Home School online.

What was the first record you put out?

It’s this guy named Sam.Sts. There’s a playlist on Spotify called Wilder Records and it has the six releases so far. I’m really proud of them. I’m really into the music and I’ve got more coming.

How’s it doing?

It’s not about money. The reason I started it was that I was spending time waiting for the labels that weren’t signing artists for a couple of years. They were waiting for the data to come in and catch up. So I was like, “Wait a sec, why am I just sending this to labels saying, ‘You should sign it,’ when I could put it out?” I also intentionally didn’t think like, “What’s the business here? How am I going to make money?” I just wanted to put out singles and do it and learn. What do you do when you put out a single? How do you do that? How do you get good at it? Do I like it? And now I’m starting to think about what’s next.

Is it hard that you can’t put your artists on the road?

I think it would still take quite a while with these artists because it’s early for them but maybe their success would be faster. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons I’m doing School Night online as a show. We did our first one last night. It’s called Home School and I’m going to definitely slot them in.

– Debut Debut Release
Sam.Sts, a 19-year-old Indiana native, put out Wilder Records’ first release with the song “Applesause.”

How did it go?

It was great. The lineup was awesome. Jensen McRae, Nana Adjoa, who’s an artist on my label, and The Marias. The model is that we’re going to have paid subscribers who get exclusive access to it and really with them, I’m going to personally ask people and so is [KCRW DJ] Chris Douridas and say, “Subscribe to this thing. Buy a couple subscriptions.” We’re taking the money and paying the bands, so think of it as patronage. We’re creating something that’s important for an ecosystem, a place for these new artists to play. So people like Daniel Glass [founder of Glassnote Records] and A&R people are like, “Oh, yeah. I’ll give you 100 bucks a month. No problem.” And then after a week it’s free, it goes on Twitch and YouTube. We partner with Bandsintown. I’m hoping that next week the episode gets 10,000 eyeballs, which is way bigger than what School Night ever did. It’s been really fun so far. We’re booking artists from all over the world. We don’t have to deal with visas and figuring out when they can afford to come to LA. It’s just like, “Wow, you’re awesome. Do you want to play? Send us this file.”

How many people showed up last night?

200. I was very happy with that. I think in this day and age we just had to get going. Next week, I hope 250 come. The week after, 300, whatever. You’ve got to build and start someplace and be consistent.

You have a brand of sorts. Windish became synonymous with quality music and you had some superstars come out of there, too. Are these projects playing off that brand essentially?

Yeah. I mean, I know everyone is online streaming performances. But I think consumers want to go to a trusted source or like, “Oh Tom or School Night or whatever, they’re going to have good stuff.” In the Windish days, I didn’t tap into the actual public enough. I want to have more of an ecosystem around us. So it’s not just Domino Records and Secretly Canadian and the artists themselves, but come here if you like cool new shit. Check it out.

The Home School e-mail you sent out was the most I’ve seen you speaking directly to the public – was that a new experience for you?

Pretty much. I’ve been a little more active on social media just learning and spending time on it.

There’s something about the name Windish, it’s memorable and people drop it almost as if they’re in the know.

I named the label Wilder after my son.

That’s sweet.

I like the name Wilder Windish so it all kind of plays off each other. I got the label now and I could see another Windish branded thing.

Your next child will need a good name.

Yeah. Thinking about names.

How old is Wilder?

18 months.

In terms of Home School, where did Jensen, Nana and The Marias perform? Were they at their homes or at a venue?

Nana was at a venue in Holland. Jensen, I assume it was her home or someone’s home. And then The Marias was definitely at home.

– Don’t You Know It’s A School Night?
The digital flyer for the Aug. 25 premiere of Home School.

It was two women and a female-fronted band – was that intentional?

No, it’s just the way it worked out.

It’s interesting your biggest superstars, Lorde and Billie Eilish, are women.

If you look at who’s on the label, it’s very diverse. Which is something I’m being more intentional about. In the Windish days I didn’t really think about that, it was just like if it’s great, book it. And now it’s something I pay more attention to.

Billie did the Democratic National Convention from here in Topanga, were you there?

I wasn’t there, no, but I was aware of all of it.

It was so well executed how the performance of “My Future” dovetailed with her animated video; they did a great job.

It was cool. She’s awesome. It’s crazy that there’s not 50 artists of her caliber or even 10 that are saying the same thing.

Are there more initiatives coming from Tom Windish?

There’s a lot more coming