Ask any girl and she’ll tell you that size does matter…when it comes to playing a guitar. I can vouch from experience that trying to get my smaller-than-the-average-rock-god’s hands around a full-size axe presents quite the challenge, but thankfully one women set out to make sure that ill-suited equipment doesn’t prevent the future Joan Jetts and Joni Mitchells of the world from reaching their full musical potential.
Tish Ciravolo’s Daisy Rock Guitars have been providing young girls and women with guitars and basses made to suit their body types since 2000, and the brand has seen nothing but growth ever since. Ciravolo took some time out from rocking out—and raising two daughters—to talk to LA Music Blog about how she got her start in the music industry, what inspired her to create Daisy Rock, and what the company will be bringing to the guitar world in 2010.
Let’s start with when you realized that music was what you wanted to pursue as a career.
That would be the early ‘80s. I was living in Los Angeles, locked in a closet trying to learn how to play bass by myself. Buying my first bass, taking it back the next day ’cause I couldn’t play it, and getting something really small that I could play. Auditioning for bands out of the blue, just trying to figure out how to fit into a band. I think one of the first bands I was in was the Ragdolls. That’s gotta be late ‘85, ‘86? [LAUGHS] It was a long time ago. I was on stage at Raji’s one night when I was like, “This is the coolest thing ever. This is what I want to do.”
I was in a band called the Velvets before I hit my heavy metal days. We were like a female version of The Psychedelic Furs. It was an all-girl band, and we played all those clubs that don’t exist anymore: Scream, Raji’s. I didn’t ever think, “This is how I’m gonna make a million dollars,” but it was really fun at the time because no girls were doing it. It was exciting because it felt like we were starting something, like we were a movement, like a girls-against-the-boys kind of feeling.
What was the first indication that you’d want to work on the business side of the industry?
It’s what I knew. I played in over 300 bands from ’85 to ‘98. The last band I was in was a band called Ultraviolet. We had won the Grammy Showcase at the Dragonfly, and that put us in front of a couple of labels. At that time, there were only two girls in the band, so we had two girls and two guys, and they passed on signing us. I had been down that road so many times, and that was the last time. I wasn’t a session player. Usually people survive those moments because they’re in a couple of different projects at the same time, and they’re making money. I had only just played in bands. I just wanted to get a record deal, make a record, and go out on tour. I got that close again, and it just didn’t work out. That’s when I went, “Okay, this has been fun.” [LAUGHS]
I didn’t give up music. I just decided to take a different look at it. I got to the point where I was like, “I’m gonna take a different route. I’m gonna have a baby.” When I got pregnant with Nicole and became a stay-at-home mom for the first year, my husband and I were in a band called Stun Gun. We still recorded and put out music, but it was by no means like, “I’m gonna go out and tour, and we’re gonna get a record deal and this is how I’m gonna buy a house.” It just didn’t translate that way for me anymore. I still had the drive because it’s the music business and that’s what I had done for so many years. I just redeveloped it.
I worked at A&M Records before I got pregnant, so I had always worked in some facet of the music business. One day I was a legal secretary, and then one day I managed a club. I had done so many different things that it’s the only thing I knew. I worked at Duke’s Coffee Shop next to the Whiskey for a couple years. That put me in touch with a lot of people in the music business ’cause all the bands come through and tour the Whiskey and the Roxy. I worked at the Roxy as a cocktail waitress before, so it was my ‘hood. [LAUGHS]
So I have Nicole, and my husband takes over Schecter Guitars as the president. It was a three-person operation, about $100,000 a year, and they were basically a parts company. I ended up doing whatever I could help him do. I had worn so many hats that I could do everything from accounting to sales to shipping. Anything that he needed help with, I stepped up and helped—that’s what you do in a relationship.
So I started working at Schecter, but at the same time I weirdly wasn’t working at Schecter. I was just helping out. I didn’t have an official title—I was just helping make the business work. They closed last year at well over $20 million, so he’s taken this company in the last 11 years and just made it blow up. They have 36 people working there now. It’s a completely different animal than it was back then, but at the time, he wanted Schecter to grow, and he was looking for a way to put the company on the map for guitar players.
I was watching him having meetings with factories and luthiers and trying to figuring out how to sell to the dealers. It was a real boot camp for me in the guitar business. Then Nicole did this drawing when she was a little over a year old. I looked at this little daisy she had drawn and put a neck and headstock on it and thought, “God, that could be something for her. We should make guitars for girls.” I started thinking, “What if she walked into a music store and there were girl guitars for her?” She wouldn’t have any of the experiences that I had had walking into a music store and having guys always say to me, “Who’s your boyfriend in the band?” or not being sound checked at the FM Station because we were the girl band.
I had all these different memories of not being treated well in the community and having such a chip on my shoulder and such an attitude. All the girls just had this attitude. What if that’s not her experience? What if she walks in and it’s like, “What band are you playing in? And what tour are you going on?” It came from such an organic place for me. It wasn’t ever like, “Let’s start a girl guitar company and then we’ll make money.” It was more like, “Let’s give her a different experience in her life than what I had.”
It was just a simple thought. It wasn’t a business plan. It wasn’t, “Let’s go out and change society.” It was a simple thought for my daughter. I didn’t know I was having a second daughter at the time, but I thought it would be so great for my first daughter if there was a daisy on the wall at Guitar Center when she walked in or something that was pink that spoke to her that said, “I want to play guitar.” I wanted every girl to look at something and think, “I could do that,” instead of looking at a guitar and going, “That seems really hard” or “My brother does that.”
So now the company has grown, you’ve been open for 10 years, and you’ve worked with some amazing musicians. Could you tell us about a few?
The first person that contacted me was Wanda Jackson. She was just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last April. She was the Queen of Rockabilly. She had heard about the company, and I gave her a guitar literally out of the very first batch I had made. She has been so sweet. She toured with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and everybody in the ‘50s and the early-60s, and then she stopped playing the guitar ’cause it hurt her hands. She just didn’t find it comfortable anymore. When I gave her our Pink Pixie Sparkle Acoustic and she started playing that, it didn’t hurt her. It was really great for her to feel like she had a resurgence in her career as a guitar player. Being able to bring that guitar out on stage again for one or two songs when she plays live was important to her. For somebody of that sort of musical legacy to say, “You really brought music back for me” was very touching. I’m very grateful.
Fast forward to us working with the Bangles. Vicki, Susanna, and Debbi all looked at our guitars and were like, “Let’s make our signature series. Let’s make a guitar that we like.” They were very adamant that it had all these really cool features, but at the same time they really wanted it to be at a price point where girls can afford to pay for it. It’s not a thousand dollar guitar, in other words. It’s not something that’s completely unattainable for young girls to go out and play.
Part of the problem with some of the companies is that if you’re a professional player, you can go out and spend $15,000 on guitars, but beginner players can’t do that.
The Bangles are really conscientious of that because they’re a very high-brow touring band. They’re awesome if you have a chance to go see ‘em play live. They have such a great all-girl band—they were at the forefront of that whole movement. They know that they’ve got anyone from a 10-year-old girl to a 50-year-old woman in their audience that’s going, “Oh my God, I should play guitar.” They’re definitely speaking to this audience, and they can do that through a guitar that we’re making for them, a financially available guitar.
You guys have been sponsoring some events recently as well.
Oh, yeah. I think we supported 26 different all-girl rock and roll camps last summer, but on a monthly basis we’re involved with anywhere from 10 to 100 different events. If any girl out there is interested in music, we want to be involved, and that drives my staff really crazy. [LAUGHS] I understand that. Beyond that, we are gonna donate to anything having to do with breast cancer ’cause I lost my best friend to breast cancer nine years ago. We’re gonna be involved with anything that’s gonna help children. We always pick all these really great charities. I want people to understand that Daisy Rock is there and that we really want to help support these issues.
At this point in time in the industry, it’s hard to be able to support like that, but it seems like you guys are still growing even in this economy.
The first ten years have been amazing, and we’ve only just begun. We just had our highest month in sales ever in December. That’s incredible in today’s economy. It tells me that there are more girls out there that want to learn how to play guitar, and Daisy Rock is their guitar of choice, which is the greatest thing. Being the only girl guitar company is the greatest thing, but it’s also letting us know that we’re finally reaching out there and that they’re finally hearing about us.
If you’re a girl and you’re sitting in Minnesota or Wisconsin and you’re thinking “Maybe guitar…” then I’m trying to get to you. I’m trying to help that girl realize that she can get a guitar from us and that we can support her. We’re a conduit resource for all of these tweens that are trying to figure out how to play in bands and how to pick up the instrument, how to tune it, what a strap is, where to buy your first amp. We are the go-to source for that. If I’ve been able to build that in the last 10 years, then think—there’s probably six or seven hundred more bands out there that are girls. I can’t imagine what we’re gonna do in the next 10 years.
So what does Daisy Rock have planned for 2010?
We just kicked off the year with this humongous NAMM show. It was my 10-year anniversary, so I had a tiara on and I had a sash made that said, “A Decade of Daisy Rock.” I wore my prom dress every day so that people would understand that I was celebrating my 10-year anniversary. [LAUGHS] We had a place in our booth where you could get your prom picture taken for the NAMM show 2010.
We have a lot more really wonderful things planned for the year. Our goal is always to get more girls to learn how to play guitar, so we try to be a part of all these different events that help get that concept out there. South by Southwest is gonna be big for us this year. We’ve got a couple events that we’re doing down in Austin in March. I usually do a yearly Pretty in Punk festival. Last year we did a tribute to the Runaways, where the Bangles got up and played some Runaways songs at the Roxy. We sold out, which was really awesome because all the proceeds went to the Tiana Teegarden Memorial Fund, which is in honor of a little girl who died of brain cancer when she was 10.
As far as guitars, I think we’ve got 16 new models this year. We’re always trying to help a girl find the kind of guitar she’s looking for, so we’ve got everything this year—from our Extreme Metal guitar for the metal girl, all the way to our Serenade Parlor Acoustic for the girl who might just want to hang out at home and play. We started our new Exotic Wood series, too, which are beautiful. Zebrawood, our Butterfly Bubinga, and our Spalted Maple that we came out with this year with the butterfly bridge are just gorgeous. These are more for the higher-end, touring acoustic girl singer-songwriters. We’re trying to get in with all the events that we can, and be part of any event out there that’s sponsoring girls in music.
What are some projects that you’re currently working on outside of Daisy Rock?
My band sASSafrASS is gonna record a CD this year because now that we’ve been together for years, maybe we should make some history out of it. We’re very excited ’cause I haven’t recorded in a long time.
What advice do you have for young musicians who want to get into music in the current industry?
Don’t get discouraged and just do it. I think the smartest advice I got was from a friend of mine when I first started playing bass. I didn’t know how to go about it or what it meant. I remember it just being all in my head, and then a really good friend of mine said, “Just shut up already and just do it.” You sit down, and you pick up the bass, and you practice, and you find friends, and you play. You go out and you write music. You just throw it into the universe. I think it’s so positive that if you’re creating anything, and you’re throwing it into the universe, then the universe is gonna answer you. So just don’t get discouraged, and if you’re a girl and you have any questions, or if there’s anything that you come up upon that you need help with, always feel free to send us an email. If we don’t have the answer, we sure do know a lot of people in the industry that might be able to help you.
And what email would be the best for them to reach somebody at Daisy Rock?
Probably artistrelations@daisyrock.com.
Final question here. What advice do you have for people looking to get into the business side of things?
I think it’s all about relationships. It just depends on what the business is you want to be in. You have to find out what it is that you like to do. If it’s breaking bands, then you should put yourself in a position where you see people doing that. The best thing you can do in this business is to get a mentor who’s doing something you think you want to do.
Also, there are a ton of different organizations out there you can join to build connections and relationships within the industry. Los Angeles Women in Music is a big one for me. We have a lot of other partnerships and links of people that we work with that we put on our website. Also, in this business, people move and do all kinds of different things with their lives. I found this from being in the business over 20 years. You never know if the person that you’re hanging out with today that’s working as a cocktail waitress somewhere could be the next head A&R person at a label. You never know where people are gonna land. That’s why I think that friendships are a really great idea.
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