Tim Brantley builds a fan base in Birmingham

Tim Brantley, courtesy of Seth Cohen PR

If you’ve tuned into Live 100.5 in recent months, I can almost guarantee you’ve heard Tim Brantley’s debut single, “Damage.” The track has been one of the station’s top requested, proof of Brantley’s quick popularity in Birmingham.

That popularity has led to the Birmingham-exclusive release of his debut CD, Goldtop Heights. The only place you’ll find that physical album is at Barnes and Noble in Patton Creek; the digital album is available on iTunes, but the official release date isn’t until April 7. Brantley will play a free in-store show at that Barnes and Noble location at 7 p.m. on Jan. 23. He’ll also play on FOX6 News at noon on Jan. 22. Birmingham Box Set caught up with Atlanta resident Brantley during a recent phone call.

Birmingham Box Set: Although it’s available digitally on iTunes, currently fans can only find physical copies of Goldtop Heights at Barnes & Noble in Patton Creek. Why did y’all decide to go this route?

Tim Brantley: As of now, it was kind of an exclusive thing because Dave Rossi at Live 100.5 kind of played the record before everyone else and was hip to it, before anyone really knew it was coming out. We’ve tried to cater to that and have the record available there. The exclusivity never hurts.

… The song “Damage” was their No. 1 song for about two weeks. I think they’re starting to play some other songs now. I think it’s been received really well so far. It’s still young there, as it is everywhere.

I think the whole point of releasing it as a digital download and then a couple of stores having physical copies is to try and build some excitement and kind of gauge what’s out there for us.

BBS: You’re not the first Atlanta-based artist to find quick success in Birmingham. John Mayer is perhaps one of the most famous examples of a musician building a fan base here first.

TB: I’ve tried to kind of analyze it and try to understand why that is. I just think that it’s a smaller city and the market’s not necessarily saturated as it is in Atlanta.

You can’t really compare Atlanta and Birmingham. Atlanta’s 10 times bigger and it’s pretty much the hub of the Southeast at this point. [In] Birmingham, people have a genuine appreciation for music—not to say that people don’t here. But I think people appreciate it more there than they do in other parts of the country. They really soak it in.

In Atlanta, there’s a few different groups of really hardcore loyal music fans. It’s not as big of a fan base as you think it is here. There are some loyalists. It’s a really spread out city too, you can’t get anywhere in 10 minutes. It just doesn’t work that way. … It’s just not that easy. You can leave at 7 o’clock at night and you have three major sports franchises here.

Don’t get me wrong, the people that are really popular here in Atlanta, people go to the shows and don’t complain. But for a new artist it’s a little tougher.

BBS: You’ve played Birmingham a couple of times already. What has the reception been like?

TB: It’s been great. The cool thing about playing in some of these cities surrounding Atlanta and the Southeast is you feel like you’re close to home. There’s just a sense that these people are in your neighborhood. You don’t feel like you’re playing to your family like you do in Atlanta, but you feel like you’re playing to a cousin or something. … It feels good. … It feels right.

BBS: We know Birmingham loves you—how has it been going in other markets?

TB: I went to a lot of cities that I never played before on this last tour. It was about a five week tour around Thanksgiving and Christmas time. I played in a lot of the Northeast markets that I’d never played in before, and the Midwest, and it was a great response. It was really an introduction for me in a lot of these places. Everyone seemed to really embrace it. It was a good experience for me to get out and try to play in front of some people and see what they thought about it. I’ve really been stuck in the Southeast for a couple of years now. I haven’t really had the means or the ability to get out.

BBS: Let’s talk about the music itself. This is your debut album. How long has it been in the works?

TB: I recorded for a year, a little over, a year and a month. I started in March of ’07 and ended in April of ’08. The record is going to have been finished for a year before it comes out [laughs]. But I hear that’s typical turnaround these days, so who knows.

It took a year and the first six months was a lot of trial and error, a lot of trying to help it get its legs under it and understand what it was going to become. The second six months was like a furious race to the finish. The first six months was really just a lot of tinkering and trying out songs and a lot of trial and error on my part because I did produce the record. So a lot of things were a lot harder than they would’ve been if I’d left it up to someone else. There was a breaking point in the middle where I figured out exactly what I wanted it to be, and I went with that.

BBS: Why did you decide to produce it yourself?

TB: A variety of reasons. I think the biggest reason, any other band out there will tell you when they’re recording, if they’re recording with someone else, there’s always time constraints. It may be very loose but there’s always time constraints. I wanted none of that [laughs]. No one was rushing me.

I’ve recorded a lot of songs before this, obviously, and most of the time in the end was never truly happy. I always felt like if I had spent more time or more detail on the song or the lyrics, I felt like if I did it, it could be better. I knew if I took my time with it, it would be better than if I did it in a short amount of time.

BBS: What’s ahead for you?

TB: You know, I don’t really have any expectations right now. I think it’s wide open. I have hopes but they’re so vague as to what it really is to me. I’m definitely a guy that looks ahead. I’m always looking ahead. I hope that I can continue to do this for a living, that I can reach my music and reach more and more people.

… I hope that people can connect to the things that I’m writing because they’re very personal to me and very important to me. Without trying to sound self important, they’re just important to me. I hope people connect with it, and that it’s the same way as when I hear a song for the first time. … I just want to try to pass that along, that’s all.

Listen to more of Brantley’s music on his MySpace page, or purchase the full album on iTunes or at Barnes & Noble in Patton Creek. Brantley expects to tour nationally in conjunction with the April release of Goldtop Heights; watch his MySpace and website for dates.