Chron: Yao Ming song turns fun hobby into a hit

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Yao Ming song turns fun hobby into a hit
By DAVID KAPLAN
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

It's just a hobby.

Pals Chance McClain and Kevin Ryan write funny songs about Houston athletes -- absurd, whimsical bits on anything from a third-string Texan quarterback to Astro Daryle Ward's waistline.

"We write 'em fast, record and never perform 'em again," McClain said. "After our little chuckle, we move on to the next one."

But they're not letting go of the Yao Ming song.

When they produced a playful tribute to the rookie 7-foot-6 Chinese Houston Rocket in Ryan's home studio, their only hope was that it would get played on a local morning sports talk show.

Now it can be heard at Compaq Center where thousands shout out the chorus in unison. They've signed with a record label, and various distributors are fighting over exclusive rights to their soon-to-be-released CD, aware of its international potential. China has many millions of Yao Ming fans.

These accidental capitalists wrote the song for fun and inadvertently hit pay dirt.

Their Cinderella story carries a lesson. If at the outset they tried to profit from the song, it probably would have gone nowhere.

The moral: Do what you love, give it away, see where it goes.

While the approach they stumbled upon may sound heretical to hard-bitten entrepreneurs, it just may be the wave of the future in the music business.

Their album, Greatest Hit, will go on sale Tuesday and can be ordered at their Web site, pulltabmedia.com. Once they sign with a distributor, they hope to sell it worldwide. The CD features the Yao Ming song, other tongue-in-cheek sports tunes and a catchy rock song.

They create music under the name PullTab but have never performed live. In a month or so they will perform the Yao Ming song, a.k.a. It's a Ming Thing, at a Rockets game.

They landed their record contract in backward fashion: The first thing they did was get their song played on the radio. For most musicians that only happens after playing gigs in bars, cultivating a big following and getting lucky enough to sign with a record company.

But McClain, 30, and Ryan, 29, have a unique musical port of entry. As soon as they create a song, they can get it played on SportsRadio 610 with John and Lance & The Morning Crew, a morning sports talk show hosted by John Granato and Lance Zierlein.

Among those who listen is Andy Ware, the Houston Rockets' Internet marketing specialist, who brought the songwriters to the attention of the Rockets organization.

It is a rush, McClain said, to be in Compaq Center with 15,000 people singing the song.

There is nothing like hearing a bunch of strangers sing "something you came up with driving on the 610 Loop," he noted.

Ryan works full-time as a graphic artist and lives in the FM 1960 area. McClain is a residential real estate appraiser who lives near Briar Forest.

The Yao Ming song is addictive and uplifting and seems to have a special appeal to young children, if e-mails they get from parents of toddlers are an indication. Its repeated words get their attention like the Barney song, McClain maintained.

His 2 1/2-year-old daughter Abbey wakes up singing the chorus: "Yao MING -- Yao Ming, Yao Ming, Yao Ming."

Ryan's 20-month-old daughter Molly knows about 10 words, two of which are "Yao" and "Ming."

They might produce a Chinese language version of the Yao Ming song and are searching for "an urban-sounding person who speaks Mandarin," so far with no luck.

McClain and Ryan credit the radio sports talk show for inspiring them and serving as an artistic incubator.

The irreverent show is relaxed, and Granato and Zierlein are funny. The engaging hosts encourage their listeners to be entertaining, too.

"Send us a funny e-mail or have some kind of goofy schtick and you're gonna get on," Granato said, "as long as you've got some creativity."

The more talented callers become featured attractions.

One caller, whose identity is kept secret, does a brilliant deadpan impersonation of former Texas A&M University football coach R.C. Slocum and comes on weekly to be interviewed.

McClain and Ryan contribute songs to the show whenever the Muse strikes. One number, Air Bull, a mock homage to former Rocket Matt Bullard and sung to the tune of Big Bad John, made a splash in 2000 and also got played at Rockets games.

Recently, they composed a song about the Houston Texans' third-string quarterback Mike Quinn. Like McClain, Quinn is an alum of Stephen F. Austin University, where the mascot is a lumberjack.

McClain noted, "I heard from his mom, and she likes it."

McClain and Ryan have known each other since childhood. Ryan is the musician of the group and McClain the lyricist.

In 1999, they began writing comedy bits. Once they got their first song played on the radio, they became obsessed with their hobby.

McClain sometimes made midnight runs to Ryan's home to work on a song, which annoyed their wives, who became concerned that the hobby was interfering with their jobs and personal lives.

"This is just corny," one wife said, "what are you doing?"

What they were doing was laying the groundwork to become part of something big.

Minutes after Steve Francis picked the lottery ball that entitled the Rockets to pick Yao Ming as the No. 1 overall NBA draft selection, a song entered McClain's consciousness: He chanted the Chinese athlete's name to the tune of the traditional Ole soccer song known everywhere.

McClain quickly called Ryan and sang him an early version of the song. Ryan was unimpressed.

McClain then sang it to his wife, Kearstin McClain.

"Whatever," she said.

But the next day, she woke up singing it, and when the song was being played for the first time on the radio, McClain could hear Granato say to Zierlein, "This is good."

The Rockets thought so, too, and they received permission from the songwriters to play the song at Compaq. They do not pay them for its use.

John Leach, the Rockets' assistant manager of game operations, said that playing it at Compaq is great promotion for the Yao Ming song and should boost album sales.

Of course, the song would not be a hot commodity if Yao Ming had not blossomed into an exciting player.

Before the season started, Yao was a very tall question mark. Many pundits predicted he'd be a bust, but he has proved otherwise.

The songwriters realize their fates are tied to Yao's athletic performance.

"What would a blown ACL do to our sales?" McClain quipped.

It's a good thing for McClain and Ryan that the Ole soccer melody is a standard and no one owns it. It is public domain.

McClain and Ryan's strategy of first giving their music away may be a wave of the future in the record industry, according to Dan Workman, president of Sugarhill Recording Studios in Houston.

"There is a big paradigm shift in the music business," Workman said.

Traditionally, musicians first perform their songs live and try to reach an increasingly large number of people to get the attention of a record company.

However, the music world realizes it has to change in part because of the Internet which makes it so easy to download music.

McClain and Ryan did not set out to make money from their music. Nevertheless, Workman is impressed by their accomplishment, which was to "go about things totally backwards, cultivate a market by giving it away, which created a huge buzz."

"They didn't try to carefully control the entry of their product," Workman noted.

In comparison, many musicians are stingy with their artistic property and extremely protective of their work, and Workman will sometimes tell them, "If you're not famous, chances are they're not going to steal from you anyway."

Giving one's product away to create consumer interest is a long-standing business marketing practice.

In the music business, Workman said, other artists are trying something similar: They offer their music free online and hope to make money by charging for live performances.

The troubled music industry should welcome new approaches, Workman said.

CD sales have been down by double-digit percentages the last two years. Not many businesses can sustain that kind of decrease, he said.

The traditional method of landing a major album contract is often hard on musicians, Workman said.

"When they sign you, they pay you a big advance, but then you are in debt, $500,000 or much more," he said.

McClain and Ryan are debt-free. Along with sales from CDs, they stand to make money from publishing rights, which generate income when another musician records their songs.

Typically, each time their songs are played on TV, radio or at a live event, they receive a royalty.

The duo does not have an attorney, but McClain said they do have use of their record label's attorney.

When told that the songwriters are using the record label's attorney as their own, Workman roared with laughter.

"That's a little too trusting," he said.

Joey Wright, president of Reel Connection Records, said that if the duo gets big, they will need their own attorney -- but at this stage "it's not necessary."

He noted that the standard royalty rate is about 12 percent of an album's retail price, and McClain and Ryan will get more than three times that amount.

As an independent record label, his relationship with musicians is more like a partnership, Wright said.

Wright signed McClain and Ryan on the condition that they stop giving the Yao Ming song away on their Web site. Now they provide a 45-second sampler of the song at pulltabmedia.com.

Perhaps not the most aggressive of entrepreneurs, McClain said he still has the urge to give the song away and noted, "If everybody knows the song but nobody buys it, that's OK."

The experience has been very interesting, he explained.

Songwriting was more fun before it became a business, McClain said.

"Once you introduce the factor of profitability, it turns into stress," he said. They're feeling deadline pressure for the first time.

Their lives have changed dramatically. Just a month and a half ago, McClain was laid off from his oil-field product sales job and feeling down on his luck before getting his real estate gig. Now he and his pal are getting calls from CBS and MTV.

On the inside, they may not be any different, though. They're still two fun-loving guys with full-time jobs, and they still call each other "dude."

But because of the Ming thing, a new world has opened up. Maybe they didn't plan on it, but McClain and Ryan might actually be entrepreneurial pioneers.

"China has always been this big mysterious place," McClain observed. "Yao Ming is the first mainland Chinese guy we've known. To us, he represents China, and to China he represents the West.

"I think we're on the cusp of something."