Elliott Rubinson is the CEO of Armadillo Enterprises, the parent company for Dean Guitars, ddrum, and Luna Guitars. Some of the greatest musicians play Elliott’s instruments on some of the biggest stages all over the world, including Dave Mustaine, Michael Schenker, Uli John Roth, Vinnie Moore, and Rusty Cooley.
But Elliot isn’t all business. He’s accomplished on the bass, most recently playing in his new band, Black Knights Rising, as part of the Extreme Guitar Tour which has him playing 26 gigs in 25 days (with a whopping one day off).
Table of Contents
11:41 – If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
5:34 – How did you get started in the music business?
12:50 – Looking back at your career, what stands out to you as your proudest moment?
15:36 – What’s been one of your biggest failures, and what lessons did you learn from that moving forward?
21:55 – Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward
If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
Highway Star by Deep Purple. That’s my song, I’m high-energy, always going, and always trying to take things up to the next level. That song really brings out my mood and spirit when I play it. I would say that song is representative of who I am.
How did you get started in the music business?
I started out life early on as a bass player. At the time, I couldn’t make a living doing it, so I switched gears and I opened a chain of music stores out of my college dorm called Thoroughbred Music. I built it into a fifty million dollar a year entity. It got so big and so demanding that I sold it off and decided that I was going to take a low stance on [Dean Guitars], maybe have six or eight employees and sell a few guitars here and there.
And of course, as we know, nothing stays the same. So the entire business just blew way up. In 2004 we signed Michael Schenker. He had never had a formal guitar endorsement. We built him his first guitar, and I didn’t think he would ever switch from his current company, but he’s never played anything but Deans from that point on.
One day Michael called me in 2009 and said look, I have to finish a tour and my bass player can’t finish, do you know any bass players that can do this? And for some reason, I held up my hand and said, “I’ll do it.” And he said that he didn’t know that I played bass. And at the time, I really didn’t. I had 30 days to get my act together, and I went home and practiced and practiced. I auditioned, he liked it, and after we toured he said, “You’re pretty good, would you like to play with me full time?”
Looking back at your career, what stands out to you as your proudest moment?
For the Dean Guitars perspective, one of the happiest days for me was when Dimebag Darrell came back to Dean Guitars. Dime started playing Dean when he was 14 or so, loved it, loved the brand, never had a formal endorsement with Dean Guitars. Dean was off the radar and one day he called us in 2004 and said, “I play these, I record with them, regardless of what my endorsement is, I gotta come back.”
So he flew down here and he picked up a guitar and he played it and I remember he looked at me and said, “You set this up just for me, you’re a guitars can’t play this good.” And I said look, there are sixty guitars on the wall here, pick up any one of them and tell me they are not all at this level. He went home that night and said alright, I’m gonna think about it.
The next day on stage he was wearing a Dean Guitars shirt and playing a Dean Guitar. We hadn’t even negotiated the ins-and-outs of his contract. Around November 15th, 2004, a few months later, he signed with us. It was a really happy day, only to hear three weeks later he had been shot in Ohio. Bringing him back, certainly boosted Dean Guitars to levels that I never thought would happen.
What’s been one of your biggest failures, and what lessons did you learn from that moving forward?
I was in music retail for twenty years. I was very successful for many years, I had seven stores in places like Nashville, Orlando, Tampa, and Sarasota. Things were just going gangbusters for over twenty years. Around 1995, the Internet came along along with a lot of chain stores. Large stores like Guitar Center. There was a chain store called Mars Music that was trying to make a run of it. I got a lot of competition out of left field, and it really hurt our business, it hurt our margins.
We didn’t react as quickly as we should have. There was a lot of changes and expense cutting we should have done, but we were fat and happy and had been so successful, we didn’t move fast enough. As a result, it either forced us to change the way we did business or to sell, and we felt like at that time, selling was the better option because I had this vision for Dean Guitars. Now with Dean, when the economy changes and we had the downturn in 2008, I was able to move very quickly, make the appropriate changes, and not to keep thinking that things were going to get better by themselves.
This applies to musicians in a few ways. We’ve all seen what’s happened in the music industry. Record sales are no where, the money for recording isn’t there, and sales are incredibly poor. The money is in touring and merch. So musicians need to make the appropriate changes in how they spend their time. How much time am I going to spend recording and playing? Where do I make my money?
I think for most bands, their merch is not really done that well. I think there is a big opportunity to sell a lot more merch. And learn the business. Okay, there are 300 people, I want to make 8 or 10 dollars per head, this is how much I want to do in merch tonight, really make a business of it. Not running out of merch, pricing it right, studying it and seeing how other bands do it, how they display it.
Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward:
Being active online. Keeping some kind of presence online, a Facebook page, a website, something that has to change on a regular basis. If I go back to a website two or three times, and I’m looking at the same landing page, I’m outta there.
When you are touring, you get really worn down and you’re really not sleeping or eating as well. I think going into the gigs where you a) practiced and learned the material, b) and you stay in great physical shape. I’ve seen guys in their 20’s that are so overweight, they can barely make it through a set. If you had to do what I just did for three or four hours a night and you’re not in shape, you’re gonna die.
Get into this inner circle of musicians. It’s hard to break into that circle, but once you’re known as one of those touring bass players, then you are known as one of those guys and you get called regularly. You have to get out, you have to make yourself known, you gotta call people. Get on the on-call lists, so when they do audition people you can at least land that audition.
The best ways to reach Elliott:
Websites:
http://www.armadilloent.com/
http://www.deanguitars.com/
http://www.lunaguitars.com/
http://www.ddrum.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialDeanGuitars
https://www.facebook.com/lunaguitars
https://www.facebook.com/ddrumUSA
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/deanguitars
https://twitter.com/lunaguitars
https://twitter.com/ddrumusa
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