Athens’ Blake McDaniel knew from an early age he wanted to be a part of the music world. Through hard work and a “can do” attitude, 40 years later, he has and continues to work with some of the world’s greatest musicians and performers. 

“I remember way back in third grade listening to the radio and listening to the Rick Dees Top 10 Countdown every Sunday and thinking to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to make money doing something like that?’ I didn’t know what that meant or how to do it but I knew if I stayed in music on some level, I would figure it out,” Blake said.

Blake was born in Corinth, Mississippi, the city where his parents were both born and raised. As a youngster, he played piano and as he entered sixth grade, he picked up drums and percussion. As he was growing up, the family moved quite a bit and with each stop they hoped to find a solid sense of community that was similar to Corinth.

Blake attended Grissom High School his freshman year of high school, but the family would soon fall in love with Athens.

“My mom, once a week, would drive me from Huntsville to Athens to rehearse with the Athens drumline after school. They would have after school practices once a week. Athens High School drum instructor Neal Flum would let me sit in with the drumline,” he said.

He continued, “We moved to probably about three or four cities and towns before landing in Athens. We could never find that sense of community. Finally, when we moved to Athens, we could exhale because we finally found that sense of community. I loved it! I loved it! I loved Athens from the minute I began meeting people and began integrating into the band program.”

The McDaniel family reached a decision and moved to Athens in the summer of 1989, prior to Blake’s sophomore year. As the family was moving into their new home, Blake was attending his first Athens High School band camp in Mentone, Alabama.

Blake played in the marching and concert bands at Athens High School, as well as the Huntsville Youth Orchestra. After graduating from Athens High School in 1992, he had several scholarship opportunities, but only one university offered a program in music business. So in the fall of 1992, Blake headed to the University of North Alabama.

Blake performed in the UNA marching band, concert band and the percussion ensemble. After three years, he began to feel “burned out” on drumming, but his love of music and desire to work in the industry never diminished. He chose not to return to the UNA band.

“I started working almost full time as the head of the shoe department at Hibbetts Sporting Goods in Florence, Alabama. That’s where I learned how to sell. I was working and going to school full-time,” he said. “I loved the band. It taught me discipline, how to work hard, to stick to something and work with a team. It was just time for something else.”

Blake earned his bachelor’s degree in music business and went straight into the master’s degree program. He also began working at a new radio station — Star 94. He worked his way from ad sales to writing ads. He also noticed a need for improvement in the station’s news department and brought it to the attention of the station’s owner.

“I complained to the station owner about how I didn’t like the news guy’s attitude, how he treated people, and didn’t think he was good at all. She asked, ‘Do you think you can do better?’I said, ‘I know I can do better,” he said.

Blake read and recorded the news from that day on and the station owner listened to the tape. She agreed with Blake and he immediately became the station’s news reporter on top of his ad sales responsibilities. Eventually, Blake began filling in on the weekends along with a host of other roles with the station.

“That was a great way for me to stretch my creative wings. Then I graduated from UNA’s master’s program, stayed an extra year working for the radio station and then moved to Nashville in 2000. I think someone said that your odds go up tenfold when you are physically in the area you want to work,” he said

Blake took his resume to all the record labels and publishing companies in Nashville and received rejection letters from each of them. Six weeks in Nashville with no job, he was running out of the money he had saved. Desperate for a job, he took his resume to a staffing agency and told them he would take a minimum wage job sweeping floors as long as it was with a legitimate company in the music business.

The agency found a job at Creative Artist Agency. Although he had never heard of CAA, he took the job. His duties were to fill in for the receptionist, file paperwork, call promoters to see how many tickets had been sold and send press kits about artist to promoters.

“I moved from a temp to an agent’s assistance. Then I was looking around and I was watching all these agents do all these contracts and deals and none of them had a clue about law — zero. They would get sideways with a promoter on a deal and it would become a huge screaming match,” he said.

Blake felt he needed to learn about law so he began attending the Nashville School of Law. His goal was to obtain a base knowledge of law. After completing his first year, he felt he had achieved the foundational knowledge he sought. An agent-in-training position came open at CAA. He applied, was accepted and left law school.

As an agent in training, he went into the country side of the business for the first half and rock for the second half.

“We had just started a rock department in Nashville. The agent we hired to start the rock department came over with several artists. He came with Guster, Train and had just signed a new artist playing in coffee houses named John Mayer. After that, he signed My Morning Jacket and Kings of Leon. He got on a run, like a crazy awesome run. They put me with him for my second half of my training,” he said.

When it came time for Blake to become an agent he chose to return to the country music side. He was assigned the Northeast territory where he booked all the artists on their roster in clubs. He was also booking Ralph Stanley and Rhonda Vincent from the Bluegrass genre in his spare time.

“I was able to do Taylor Swift’s first club tour. I was able to do Zac Brown Band’s first club tour. They were blowing up and going nuts. They were on fire selling out everything and I just had some incredible leverage to make amazing deals. It was fun to watch. I was able to just peek in on the front end of their careers just because I was doing the club deals at the time,” he said.

And so Blake was well on his way to living out his childhood dreams, including signing the legendary group Alabama.

In Part 2o of this 3-part series, Blake talks about his journey with the country music giants and other well known artists. Look for this in your fall 2024 Limestone Life.