Sonic Unyon: Taking on the flip side

Long-time musician Wayne Petti has taken a role with Sonic Unyon that sees him managing artists through the new SUM Artist Management, while growing the label, and pitching in with the evolution of a musical empire. 

The juggernaut that is multi-faceted Hamilton-based independent music company Sonic Unyon keeps expanding, more than 30 years after its humble beginnings as the indie record label Sonic Unyon Records.

Perhaps best known to the public in the Hamilton area as the force behind the very popular annual summer street festival Supercrawl, Sonic Unyon now works as a venue operator, live events producer, record label and artist management company, presided over by co-founder and CEO Tim Potocic.

Its newest initiative, launched in April, is SUM Artist Management. It's a new arm of the company dedicated to representing and developing artists and identifying and opening opportunities to them. In the past, Sonic Unyon Records had taken on a management role with some of the artists on their label, with local roots-rocker Terra Lightfoot and shoegaze band Basement Revolver being two notable examples.

The creation of SUM Artist Management entrenches and expands Sonic Unyon’s work in this sector, with the management roster having grown significantly. 

“We’re about constant evolution. As a label, we’ve signed newcomers and longtime favourites as well as bigger bands like Danko Jones and Big Wreck. All of that is super exciting and some of the best music we’ve ever released,” Potocic asserted in a press release.

“At the same time, this is not an industry that rewards sitting still. It’s a challenging time and a tough landscape, but opportunities still abound. We’ve always believed in the value of our artists, and artists more generally, so artist management is the natural outgrowth of that.”

Recruited by Potocic to take the helm as both director of artist management at SUM Artist Management and label operations for Sonic Unyon Records is Wayne Petti. That name may already be familiar to music fans, for, since the early 2000s, Petti has had an impact on the Canadian scene as frontman and principal songwriter for highly-regarded Oshawa-based roots-rock combo Cuff The Duke.

Over the past decade, as that band took an extended hiatus, Petti detoured into artist management, first on his own, with artists including Jenny Berkel and Hamiltonian Dan Edmonds, and then with Straight & Narrow, the Hamilton-based management company whose roster includes one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, The National. 

Petti now finds himself at Sonic Unyon, a music company and record label he has long admired. In the SUM launch press release, Petti recalled that, “As a young musician, Sonic Unyon offered not just great music but also an inspiring example of the impact of DIY creativity. They’ve always been consistent with artist-forward commitment, so extending that to artist management certainly isn’t a pivot. It just makes sense.

“And all the relationships they’ve forged over the last three decades – and of course those I’ve developed as a musician and artist manager – all come together to really make this project sing.”

To get the lowdown on his career change and new roles at SUM and Sonic Unyon, HCM sat down with Petti for a beer and a chat at Merit Brewery, a short distance from Sonic Unyon’s headquarters at Bridgeworks, one of the live music venues it operates (Mills Hardware and Sonic Hall in Guelph are two others).

Petti tells HCM that he actually started at Sonic Unyon just over a year ago. “The plan was to see if we could get another artist or two on the management side, and then it felt right to make the announcement about SUM. Sonic Unyon is a company that has been around 30 years. Like anything in art or life or business, there are always ups and downs. It is fun to be part of a resurgence now.”

SUM launched with a highly diverse grouping of artists as its clients. That list includes the aforementioned Lightfoot and Basement Revolver, plus Polaris Prize-winning musician and composer Owen Pallett, American feminist performance artist and electro-rocker JD Samson (Le Tigre), Hamilton retro cover band Born in the Eighties, multi-instrumentalist and composer Michael Peter Olsen, and three bands at the forefront of an Indigenous wave in Canadian rock, Zoon, OMBIIGIZI and Status/Non-Status.

"I’ve been involved in artist management for close to 10 years now,” says Petti. “I have a unique perspective on the music business having both experienced what it’s like to be a recording artist and everything that goes along with that, plus experiencing working with artists and helping to guide them through their own careers. I’m very much an 'artist first' type of manager. I don’t chase things just for the money. I want the artists I work for to feel supported. I’m just there to help facilitate their vision and goals artistically."

He only recently started working with Zoon, OMBIIGIZI and Status/Non-Status, calling them “incredible artists, creating music that is unique through a perspective that is equally unique and refreshing.”

Petti began managing internationally renowned auteur Pallett eight years ago, while working at Straight & Narrow, and he retained Pallett as his client after his time at that company wound down. 

“Working with an artist of Owen’s calibre has opened many doors,” Petti says. “He has worked with so many amazing artists, whether it be from touring or their string arrangement and film scoring work. It was Owen who introduced me to JD Samson of Le Tigre. Like Owen, she has been venturing into film scoring and was looking for some help behind the scenes.”

The inclusion of those two acclaimed artists on the SUM Artist Management roster certainly boosts the new initiative’s profile and broadens its musical range. Petti reflects that “when I came in with Owen, I wanted to be able to assert that you didn’t just have to be on the Sonic Unyon label for us to manage you. We were looking to manage artists who are on other labels as well. Owen has been on (prestigious UK label) Domino for a long time. Ombiigizi are on Arts & Crafts and Zoon is on Paper Bag Records.”

To Petti, having a varied group of artists is a real asset. “If you have too much that is the same, you are always pitching the same thing. To me, eclectic rosters make things a little easier, as opposed to ‘oh gee I have three singer-songwriters who all do a similar folk thing. One gets a tour that another one thinks they should have got. Things like that.”

Petti takes an art and artist-first approach and  is not afraid to criticize peers who don’t. 

“I think where the industry gets a bad rap is where they try to over-control and egos get involved. I don’t like things like sunset clauses (whereby a music manager gets a share of the artist's revenue after the management contract expires, for 18 to 24 months on average). To encumber an artist like that just feels morally wrong.”

Petti is working with Potocic on potentially growing the stable working with Sonic Unyon.

He tells HCM that the label is seeking to shortly sign one major Canadian band that he can’t publicly name, and that “there are some newer bands we are keeping an eye on, too. These days, it is harder to pull the trigger on a new group, as the margins are so narrow on the label side in this age of streaming. But Sonic Unyon has always been about new bands and taking risks too, so that is something we’re doing.”

Citing platinum-selling rockers Big Wreck as an example, Petti says well-established bands and artists are also a target. “The major labels here are doing less, so that opens up a lot of opportunities. These are bands that already have a fan base, so you can project roughly what they can sell.”

Petti is organized in the way he handles his twin roles. “I try to divide up my day to spend a certain amount of time on each artist, to get things sorted,” he says. “The label is busy right now as we have a lot of releases coming in the fall, then that’ll dip in the summer. Certain days I’ll just have label meetings, but I’ll always take artists’ calls.”

On average, he commutes from his home in St. Catharines to the Bridgeworks office three times a week. For family reasons, he moved with his wife and two young sons (now 11 and 9) to St. Catharines from Hamilton at the end of 2020, after having moved from Toronto to Hamilton in 2014.

He recalls his time living in Hamilton’s Gage Park area with great fondness. 

“Our neighbourhood was amazing. We became really close friends with (fellow musicians) Mark Sasso (Elliott Brood), Dylan Hudecki (a contributor to HCM) and others. I grew up in Oshawa, a blue-collar factory town too, so I felt right at home here. To me, Hamilton has a unique spirit to it. It is big enough to have a symphony, a football team, an art gallery, yet it is still community-oriented and it feels like a small big city. I completely loved that and still do.”

Petti’s hiring by Sonic Unyon has reportedly allowed head honcho Potocic to focus on big-picture issues. “Along with my colleagues, I have taken a lot of the label side off his plate,” says Petti. “Tim is very much in the loop and we constantly keep him updated. As you know Sonic Unyon has a massive live music side as well, and that’s a big part of Tim’s focus. That is much more time consuming in that he needs to be at those events and shows more frequently.”

Petti hints at more official announcements from Sonic Unyon soon, involving new events (on top of Supercrawl, Because Beer and others) and other out-of-town venues, so the company is certainly not resting on its hard-won laurels.

Sonic Unyon's recruitment of Petti continues the company's tradition of having respected musicians in major roles. That is fitting, given that Sonic Unyon co-founders Potocic, Mark Milne, and Sandy McIntosh were bandmates in Hamilton rock band Tristan Psionic.

As director, production & booking, Matt Paxton handles Sonic Unyon's work on the live music side, booking Bridgeworks, Mills Hardware, Sonic Hall, Supercrawl, Because Beer and more. He is also a singer/songwriter and leader of fine local roots-rock outfit Matt Paxton and The Pintos.

It could well be argued that having professional musicians rather than career industry executives/bean counters in such key positions has been a factor in Sonic Unyon's longevity and success.

In the midst of his busy schedule, Petti found time to get Cuff The Duke back together to write, record and release their seventh full-length album, Breaking Dawn, last fall. That was their first full album since 2012’s Union. “It was long overdue to scratch that itch. It was a huge time gap that just snowballed, and what I thought might be a four years max hiatus, turned into a decade.”

Watch Cuff the Duke!

He’s already thinking about another CTD record. “I was just texting with (bassist and co-founder) Paul Lowman over the weekend. He’s a phenomenal guitarist who always has great instrumental riffs and progressions, so I asked him to send those for me to write to.”

Petti would like the next album to be more of a group endeavour. “Breaking Dawn was 100 per cent my songs and I rather steamrollered it. I’d like us all to write songs for the next one. I think it’ll be more of the cosmic country vibes as the songs that are there will lend themselves nicely to that.”

Given other work priorities, Petti has no great expectations for Cuff The Duke. “It just feels nice to hang out with my friends and play music,” he says. “We are way more selective with shows, not just grinding it out. The shows make sense and it’s a great hang, plus now my kids are old enough to come to some of the shows and that’s nice.”

Looking back on his body of work that encompasses Cuff The Duke plus solo albums under his own name and as Grey Lands, Petti is proud. “We worked hard and we always tried to make the records we wanted to make. I now bring that to the table with the artists I work with.”

Having paid those dues also benefits Petti’s roles as an artist manager and record label exec. “I think all the artists I work with have respect for that journey. They appreciate that I know how it feels to be on the road for weeks on end, to play live shows in an arena or a shitty club with no one there. I think part of my happiness in my role now is that I’m proud of what we did. It is a nice balance.”