Yoshi Ikegami, President, BOSS Corporation, at the entrance to the Roland Nashville Artist Relations Center.
On Wednesday, June 27, 2018, Roland held a grand opening celebration of its new Nashville Artist Relations Center, located within Love Shack Studios in Nashville’s Music Row neighborhood. The event, which was attended by leading members of the Nashville music community, included a ribbon-cutting ceremony that also kicked off Roland’s activities around the annual Summer NAMM Show in Nashville. Founded to serve the needs of current and prospective Roland artists, the new center will be a hub for a variety of activities, including product support, social media initiatives, interviews, sessions and unique streaming events, photo shoots, gear demos and much more. The A/R center is staffed with personnel specializing in Roland and BOSS equipment, and the center is under the direction of Brian Alli, Roland’s vice president of global influencer relations.
The facility’s co-location within Love Shack Studios will give Roland especially close access to the artists, producers, engineers, instrumentalists and music business professionals who often work in Nashville’s Music Row and Berry Hill neighborhoods, which are well-known as a hub for state-of-the-art recording studios and as a close-knit community of top music talent.
The opening of the center is part of an updated corporate artist relations strategy, following closely on the opening of a Roland Los Angeles Artist Relations Center in May. This ongoing initiative will bolster Roland’s global network, with a similar facility in London (at Metropolis Studios) to better serve Roland’s artist community. These facilities join other Roland artist relations centers in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada; Berlin, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan.
Julian Raymond, senior vice president of A&R and staff producer at Big Machine/John Varvatos Records, a Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated record producer and songwriter, who was instrumental in working out the details for the facility, noted, “I am honored to be associated with Roland and their state-of-the-art products and technology. Having the new A/R center here in Nashville will really connect our great musical culture with the iconic Roland brand.”
“The goal of all Roland and BOSS artist relations is to support our family of artists on numerous levels, and our new Nashville artist relations center will help reinforce our commitment to the artists, engineers and producers in Music City,” stated Alli. “When we approached Love Shack and explained that we wanted to better serve the market, they opened their doors for us, and we aim to have a positive impact with the Nashville community. The response to Roland coming in to Nashville has been really exciting, and we are looking forward to engaging with the ever-growing artist community from all genres of music. Additionally, we are grateful for our friends at Love Shack Studios and the Big Machine label for being instrumental in making this happen.”