'Tracks' Leads Kortes To A Deal With Bar None
Jim Bessman
Billboard Magazine
August 3, 2002

NEW YORK-Mary Lee Kortes was reluctant to tackle Bob Dylan's 1975 album Blood on the Tracks at Soho club Arlene's Grocery (Words & Music, Billboard, Jan. 26), but the resulting live album with her band, Mary Lee's Corvette (originally released on her own Leonora Records earlier this year), has brought her a new record deal--not to mention a new manager and booking agent.

Kortes, whose acclaimed previous album True Lovers of Adventure came out on Wild Pitch in 1999, has now signed with Weehawken, N.J. based Bar None Records, which is re-releasing Blood on the Tracks Aug. 13. The Koch-distributed indie looks to release Kortes' band's next album next year.

Meanwhile, Kortes has also signed with Mike Maska of Big Hassle Management, and she has a new agent in Mike Leahy of Concerted Efforts, both based in New York.  She's preparing a short tour for the end of August, and she will also go out in September and October.

Kortes' heightened career activity is largely due to heavy Internet response to the disc's initial release. "I sent it to dylancoveralbums.com; it got a good review, and it got posted on other sites," says Kortes, who also credits notice from Billboard and radio airplay by veteran New York air personality Vin Scelsa for spreading the word. "I started getting e-mails from Iowa, California, Italy, Sweden, and Japan and was pretty astonished that people had gotten to my Web site."

The disc was even picked up by Dylan's official Web site, bobdylan.com, which has it on the home page with an upload of "You're a Big Girl Now."

Kortes quickly learned the nuts and bolts of Internet marketing, and among the increasing orders that came in was one from Bar None head Glenn Morrow. She says, "He called a few weeks later and wanted to license it and hear the next record."

Morrow notes, "I love the idea. Hearing the songs sung from a female perspective brought a whole new twist to a classic record. The fact that it's a live recording and so 'in the moment' is very much the way Dylan makes records."

Lincroft, J.J., NPR-affiliated non-commercial triple-A station WBJB music director Jeff Raspe agrees that covering Dylan is "a pretty petrifying situation to put yourself into. But she and her band more than pull it off. From 'Tangled Up in Blue' to 'Buckets of Rain,' they simply pay homage to one of the rock era's most classic of 'classic' albums by one of history's finest songwriters."

Kortes--a guitarist/vocalist who is joined on Blood on the Tracks by guitarists Andy York and Rod Hohl, bassist Brad Albetta, keyboardist Andy Burton, and drummer Diego Voglino--was originally eager to perform the album when she learned that the club hadn't found anyone to cover it at one of its three-part "classic album nights" last fall.

"Martin's Folly was going to perform After the Gold Rush, and George Gilmore was doing the Band's (self-titled) 'Brown Album,'" she recalls, "I called Owen Comaskey over at Arlene's and naively said, 'I'm your man!' I don't know if nobody else wanted to do it because it was too daunting, because I then realized just how many of the words I actually knew--which was fewer than I thought. I started practicing and practicing, and I thought, 'Who am I kidding? It's too difficult to memorize all the words and sing them in a way that's not an imitation but has emotional impact.'"

Overcoming her impulse to back out, Kortes decided to learn to play harmonica three days before the gig and after one full band rehearsal went though with it. It was midnight on a rainy Sunday, two hours later than scheduled.

"I was afraid it would be horrible, but it ended up being glorious--one of those nights where magic happens," says Kortes, who had fortuitously given the sound man a cassette for recording the show.

"It's amazing how she's taken these songs and pulled the real cohesive melodies out of them," says Fred Osuna, owner of Laser's Edge Compact Discs in Birmingham, Ala., who will promote the album in listening posts and with Dylan product.

Bar None is pursuing programs aggressively at retail, says Morrow, who hope also for "an NRP story" and anticipates great press response. "People have heard Blood on the Tracks a million times," he says, "and suddenly your hear it again--but it's new."

Having heard four new Mary Lee's Corvette tracks that "sound like hits to me," Morrow adds that the Dylan disc is the first half of a "great one-two punch" for Magda Lane Music (ASCAP) writer Kortes at Bar None.

"We'll introduce Mary Lee through the Dylan record," he says, "but she has a body of work that's very strong right now and we'll unleash on the world next year."