In the music industry, there's no such thing as an overnight success. Behind every platinum album and sold-out tour lie years of hard work. Preparation and practice are essential to reaching the top. Vertical Horizon achieved mainstream success after eight years spent building a strong grassroots following. To the untrained eye, the band emerged from nowhere when their single “Everything You Want” soared to the top of the charts. But Vertical Horizon had a large following long before they got backing from a major label. RCA's added support just gave the group a final nudge. • The band's story began in 1991, when a pair of singer-guitarists, Matt Scannell and Keith Kane, met while attending Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The two hooked up at an acoustic jam session and immediately hit it off. By the time they graduated in 1992, they'd both decided to pursue a musical career. They relocated to Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Calling themselves Vertical Horizon, the duo completed their acoustic-oriented debut, There and Back, which they released on their own label in 1992. • “We only pressed 1,000 copies of that album initially,” says Scannell. “It was more of a memento than anything. But people really liked it, and we ended up selling more than 20,000 copies eventually.” Discovering that they had a strong following in the Washington, D.C., area, Scannell and Kane moved back, setting their sights on expanding the band's audience. After the move, friends in the band Jackopierce invited them on a tour. Encouraged by the response they received, the members of Vertical Horizon decided to make touring a way of life. From then on, they toured consistently, spending two weeks of each month on the road and two weeks at home working on music.

Soon Vertical Horizon landed gigs opening for nationally known acts like the Allman Brothers, Shawn Colvin, Better Than Ezra, and the Samples. Scannell and Kane decided to fill out Vertical Horizon's road sound by enlisting a rhythm section. In 1995 they released their second album, Running on Ice, which introduced Vertical Horizon as a full band. The success of the album made it obvious to Scannell and Kane that they needed to hire a full-time drummer and bass player, so in 1996 they brought bassist Sean Hurley and drummer Ed Toth on board.

Touring constantly and encouraging fans to record and swap tapes of their shows enhanced Vertical Horizon's popularity. Even though they weren't yet signed to a major label, bootlegs of their shows started to emerge on the market. In 1997 the band decided to release Live Stages, recorded in front of an enthusiastic audience at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The album served two purposes: it provided fans with a high-quality, legitimate representation of Vertical Horizon's live gigs, and it showed major labels that the band had a substantial loyal following.

By the end of 1997, Vertical Horizon had sold more than 70,000 copies of their first three albums. Although they could have remained successful and profitable as an independent band, Scannell, Kane, and company realized they needed to sign with a major label to boost their career to the next level. Several labels expressed interest in the band, and in 1998 Vertical Horizon signed a deal with RCA.

The band released its major-label debut, Everything You Want, in 1999. The album, which departed from the band's early acoustic-dominated sound, featured several hit singles, including “You're a God” and the album's title track. The album's tougher, electric-oriented edge better represented how the band sounded live. It also suited the large halls and arenas Vertical Horizon was now playing as the opener for acts like the Dave Matthews Band and Third Eye Blind. Vertical Horizon still plays those large venues — but these days they're the headliners.

As the band prepared for a gig in front of a loyal audience in Winston-Salem, Matt Scannell reminisced about their rise from clubs to concert halls. A true gentleman, Scannell is the rare artist who understands the importance of treating people with respect as they climb up the ladder of success.

You've been very successful at building a following on the grassroots level. How did you accomplish that?

There are so many variables in terms of getting into a new market and actually bringing people into a club. When people don't know who you are, it's very difficult. The first thing that has some bearing on whether you can get kids to show up is the town itself. For example, tonight we're playing in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which is one of our most receptive towns in the whole country. The kids there do a lot of the legwork with us — not for us. They spread the word: “Hey, are you going to see Vertical Horizon tonight?” “What's that?” “Oh, they're great. You have to go with me.” That's a lot different from kids asking if you're going to see Britney Spears. Everybody knows who she is. Artists need to focus their tours so they have a larger proportion of those kinds of towns in their itineraries. If you play places where it takes a lot longer to build an audience, you'll be banging your head against the wall to get kids into the club.

You have to find the right towns for your type of music.

We learned that the hard way. After doing our initial tours, we determined what towns were good for us and which ones were going to take a lot of work. By that time, we had our initial cornerstones for each part of the country. We knew that whenever we went out, we would have to hit, for example, Birmingham, Alabama; Atlanta; Dallas; Houston; College Station, Texas; and Nashville. Those are places where the conditions are great for a live band. People in those towns support live music.

Are college towns particularly good for you?

College towns are the best places to play. College kids look for bands that can be special to them, that they can grow with.

How did you get the word out?

Very early on, we compiled a mailing list. When we'd go to a town, we'd encourage kids to sign up on our list when they were checking out the T-shirts and CDs. It's common knowledge to compile a mailing list, but we treated ours like it was the Bible. We couldn't afford to buy ads in the local papers, and we weren't really sure they'd reach the kids who were coming to see us. We knew we'd reach them by sending an announcement.

How has the Internet affected your mailings?

It's much easier and more economical to do it through e-mail. One thing you need now, which we didn't have when we started, is a great Web site people can visit to find out when you're playing. We're in the midst of drastically updating ours. We used to spend as much as $5,000 a month sending postcards. That was when we were still playing fairly small places. We'd have all of our friends over, and it would be like the stamp parade. Everybody would be licking and applying. At the end of the night we'd take them out to McDonald's. We probably didn't take care of our friends as well as we should have, but that was all we could do. Now we can take them out to two McDonald's meals [laughs].

How often do you play any one town?

Once you plant a seed in a market, you have to return there. You have to be careful, though. You don't want to come back so frequently that people get tired of you, but at the same time you can't come back so infrequently that people forget who you are. Four to six months is just long enough for people to miss you and want to see you again when you come back out. If you come back two weeks later, people find excuses not to show up — it's like living in New York but never seeing the Statue of Liberty because you know you can always go there tomorrow. You need to make it a special event that everybody talks about.

Did you discover any particularly helpful strategies for building an audience?

We put out records and created our own merchandise, which you absolutely must do if you plan to go out on the road. And it has to be good — I see so much bad merchandise out there. You need to have memorable designs, things hot girls will want to wear. When the guys see the girls wearing something, then they want to buy it, too.

You actually encourage your audience to tape your shows.

We've done that since very early on, and encouraged them to trade the tapes. We saw what that did for the Grateful Dead, as well as bands like Phish and the Dave Matthews Band. Kids will create their own organizations for trading tapes. We made it clear that people could tape us as long as they weren't going to sell the recordings. We used to allow kids to make board tapes, but then we found out people were doing that so they could make bootleg CDs and sell them. We can't allow people to plug into the board, but we still let people mic the room.

Did you release Live Stages to thwart the bootlegs?

That was our answer to some of the bad-sounding bootleg CDs people were selling in stores for $40 to $50. If someone is buying a CD of our music, especially at those kinds of prices, we feel it's fair that we receive some compensation for it. Plus we'd rather sell something good for only $12. I hate seeing our fans get ripped off.

Before Vertical Horizon was signed, you were a very successful independent act and sold tens of thousands of records. Why did it take major labels so long to discover you?

It was partly by design and partly due to the fickleness of the music industry. When we came out with our second studio release, Running on Ice, we weren't ready to make the jump to a major label. For some reason it took us longer to prepare for that kind of experience. That was another reason we released a live album. We felt it would be a perfect calling card for the industry when we were ready. We intentionally put “The Man Who Would Be Santa” at the beginning of Live Stages so A&R reps could hear the crowd screaming at the top of their lungs, singing the melody. We knew the reps would listen to the first 30 seconds of the record, so we wanted to let them know that thousands of kids out there knew our songs by heart. It made artistic sense to start a live album that way, but we were certainly aware that we needed to start with the biggest punch we could if we were to generate any interest from an A&R person.

How does it feel to be with RCA as opposed to being an indie?

I liken our approach as an independent band to shooting a BB gun when the other guys have tanks. One of the reasons we signed with RCA is because it feels like a big independent label. It has the bottom line of selling a lot of product, but its mentality is very family oriented. RCA's very interested in our day-to-day lives and how we're holding up through this journey. It's very much like it was back in the days when we were starting our own label and we had a couple of people in an office making phone calls. Now we've got hundreds of people in offices making phone calls, and they're much better at what they do because they're handling very specific tasks. Having an incredible company behind us is really helpful.

Vertical Horizon obtained some incredible opening gigs during the band's early days. Did they help open doors for you?

When you're an independent band and you're growing, one of the things everybody pays attention to when your letter first lands on a promoter's desk is not who you are but whom you've opened for. If you've opened for a band the promoter knows, you've got a better chance of getting a gig. In hindsight, I'm not sure the gigs themselves were all that important. We did one show in Birmingham, Alabama, where we opened for the Allman Brothers. But that was one show, and we had been working very hard in Birmingham both before and after that show, so I don't think it made much of a difference. One-off gigs with artists mainly entitle you to bragging rights for your bio. We made the shows a big deal in our correspondence with booking agents and promoters.

How did you get those kinds of gigs?

I think they just snowballed on us. We had the support of the kids. A lot of promoters who book smaller clubs in towns like Birmingham also promote the bigger venues. When they saw that we could sell out a club, and when they had an act coming into town that needed a little help attracting a younger crowd, they'd throw us on the bill. It helps to develop relationships with promoters, especially in the smaller towns. The music business in a place like Birmingham is interconnected. We became friends with the promoters there, and that has helped us throughout our entire career.

Although the band has attained headline status, you still do a lot of shows as an opening act. Do you have any advice for musicians when they're doing these kinds of gigs?

If you're an opening act, you should always view it as an opportunity. We've done quite a few shows in venues that hold 20,000 people, and they weren't really full by the time we went on. You go out there and you see a lot of empty seats. A lot of bands will give a half-assed effort. What they don't realize is all the people who are out there would fill the biggest club in town three times over, which is three times more people than you'd reach if you were doing a headlining gig in that town. You still have an amazing opportunity, so play your best show. It may not be packed to capacity, but you're still playing in front of more people than you could draw by yourself. You have to remember that your fans are out there as well, and they got there early to see you play. You may be the reason why they bought the ticket. If you're discouraged about attendance, never show it — that defeats the whole purpose of being there.

When you went out with Third Eye Blind recently you had the middle spot between them and Nine Days.

Being in the middle can be a challenge. Our crew got everything ready in about ten minutes, and they got the equipment off the stage in about five minutes. You need a crew that really knows what it's doing.

How big was your crew when you first started touring?

For a very long time we didn't even have a crew. To give you an idea of our orientation, we had a guy selling T-shirts and CDs but we didn't have a soundman. We knew the band sounded good, so we decided to become friends with the soundmen in all the towns we kept visiting. We'd talk with them and hang out with them so they'd become our buds and take a vested interest in how our band sounds. We took that gamble in each town because it was more important for us to sell our merchandise all night long instead of for just five minutes after the show.

Do you carry a lot of extra gear for times when things break down?

I can't stress enough the importance of bringing spare equipment. Anything you can do to make your show run smoothly, whether it's having a spare set of tubes for your amp or having a spare of everything you use onstage — cables, mics, guitars, speakers — is crucial. You don't need to spend a ton of money on a spare guitar. You just need something that can get you through the rest of the set. There are so many great guitars that don't cost more than $400, so there's no reason not to have a spare. And you should always change your strings before each show, no matter what. The six bucks you spend on strings each night will come back to you in spades when you look and sound like a pro onstage. This is especially important when you're playing clubs, because the kids need to feel like they're coming to a real show that's worth every penny they paid to see you. People don't spend their money lightly, so you have to respect that.

What do you think is the most important thing for an up-and-coming artist to remember?

The single most important thing I've discovered, no matter where you start and what level you're at, is that you should always be respectful of other people and show good manners toward them. I cannot tell you how many people I've met on the road, whether they're the biggest act in the world or a band just coming up, who are total assholes. Nothing shoots you in the foot faster than being inconsiderate of others. People won't work for you and go the extra mile when you treat them like a jerk. If you're considerate from the start and show your appreciation for people's efforts by paying them or giving them T-shirts or CDs, it really helps. The smartest thing you can do is give your CD to a soundman, because often he will play the CD in the club between bands. It costs you just $1 to give him something he'd have to spend $12 on. It also helps if you add a personal touch and sign it. I don't mean to sound calculating, because it isn't. It's just common courtesy. I'm astonished at all the people out there who don't understand that. I've seen bands that sell millions of records treat people terribly, but I've also seen that with bands playing their first gigs.

You seem to have an unusually devoted group of fans.

We've had people tell us they'd always support us no matter how many records we're selling. You can't buy that kind of friendship or passion. You don't develop that kind of loyalty by spending a bunch of money on advertising or paying someone a huge salary. Music is not about those kinds of things. It's about a love for music. If you have good karma, it grows and grows, and if you have bad karma, look out. To me, there is nothing more important than being kind to the people you work with.

Chris Gill is the L.A.-based editor of Remix magazine. He is also the author of Guitar Legends (HarperCollins) and has written for several music publications, including Guitar Player, Musician, Guitar World, and Revolver.

Paul Reed Smith Singlecut
James Tyler Classic (with John Suhr pickups)
Fender Relic Stratocaster (with John Suhr pickups)
Taylor K14c acoustic

Marshall DSL 50 head
Cage 4×12 cabinet

Prescription Electronics Germ pedal
Dunlop 95q wah pedal
Dunlop Phase 90
Prescription Electronics vibe unit
Ibanez Tube Screamer
Fulltone Full-Drive
Prescription Electronics custom Octavia
Digital Music Corp. GCX
Rocktron All-Access foot controller
Korg GT-12 tuner

Neumann KMS 105

18×22 bass drum; 8×10, 9×12, 11×14, 13×16 toms; 5×14 bronze shell snare (all with Evans drumheads)

6" Zil Bel; 8", 10", 12" A Custom splashes
10" Efx; 16", 17", 18" A Custom projection crashes
17" Medium Thin Brilliant
18" A Custom crash
18" Oriental China Trash
20" Oriental Crash of Doom (used as ride)
20" K Custom Dry Ride
14" Mastersound Hi-Hats (A Custom top, K Brilliant bottom)

DW hi-hat and double kick pedal, Gibraltar rack

Fender American Jazz Bass V
Fender Closet Classic Custom Shop Jazz Bass
Fender Roscoe Beck 5-string
Lakland 55-94 5-string
Lakland Joe Osborn J Bass
Epiphone El Capitan 5-string acoustic
Zeta Fusion Upright

EBS Fafner TD600 head
EBS 2×10 cab Pro Line 2000
EBS 4×10 cab Pro Line 2000

EBS Octabass pedal
EBS Uni Chorus pedal
EBS Multi Comp compressor pedal
BSS DI
Whirlwind a/b box
Fender PT-10 tuner
Korg DTR-1 tuner
Furman PL 8

Neumann KMS 105

Sennheiser Digital 1000

Paul Reed Smith McCarty
Fender American Standard Telecaster
Guild Peregrine Custom solid-body acoustic

Cage custom 2×12 combo amp

Ibanez TS9 distortion pedal
Dunlop Phase 90
Behringer Composer
Fender Stomp tuner

Neumann KMS 105