KAY CLARY kay@commotionpr.com
Kay Clary, owner of Commotion PR, left college in Wisconsin to move to Nashville. Completing a degree in Business Administration/Music Business from the city's Belmont University was her goal, but searching for rockabilly bands was her passion. "I didn't find any," Clary recalls, "until Jack Emerson invited me to the first Jason & the Scorchers show."
That evening, the ball seriously began to roll for Clary. In no time, she had joined Emerson (who passed away in 2003) and his partner Andrew McLenon in the then-new Praxis International Records (later Praxis management). At Praxis, Clary served as Director of Artist Development (aka "the glue"), eventually advising and steering the careers of not just the now-legendary Scorchers, but also clients such as the Georgia Satellites, Webb Wilder, Steve Forbert, Billy Joe Shaver, and others. Because Praxis artists often operated on exacting budgets, Clary necessarily became expert in forging media excitement using grass-roots approaches. Jay Orr, the former Tennessean music critic, once called Clary "a bulldog in ballerina slippers."
Growing up in New Jersey with access to some of the best radio stations in the country coming out of NYC and Philadelphia in the '70s , Clary was hooked on music from an early age. "I remember getting a clock radio for my room around the age of 10 and hearing stuff on AM like "Do You Know What I Mean" by Lee Michaels and getting too wound up to fall asleep. Later as a teen living in Wisconsin , she worked in a record store, quickly being promoted to buyer. At the University of Wisconsin, before transferring to Belmont, her studies may have suffered because she bartended at Merlyn's, an early punk/new wave Madison club where she heard performances by The Specials, 999, Johnny Thunders, and life-changing others.
"No question," Clary says, "I've always been drawn to music. And I've always fed off the energy that can come from it. In the beginning, I was a rocker -- although I do remember swiping my dad's Johnny Cash and Everly Brothers albums when I moved out of the house. And then my years at Praxis really helped educate me how amazingly soulful country music could be."
Clary founded Commotion PR in 2002; Previously, Clary had joined first AristoMedia and then Front Page Publicity. At those companies, she oversaw national media campaigns for clients such as Radney Foster, the Kinleys, Tammy Cochran, Johnny Cash's 70th Birthday campaign, Down From the Mountain tours, and Sony/Legacy's 'American Milestones' reissue series, as well as representing Country Radio Broadcasters. Before that, after Praxis faded in 1993 , Clary headed up Hybrid Vigor, where she publicized and created niche marketing campaigns for Steve Forbert, Billy Joe Shaver, Ron Sexsmith, the Hoodoo Gurus, and others.
Clary, the mother of two teenage daughters, resides in Nashville. Now as then, when certain music reaches her ears and excites her, she can't sleep at night.
KAY CLARY