STUDIO CITY (CelebrityAccess) – Cary Baker is closing up shop. As of March 18, after 42 storied years in the business, he’s shutting down Conqueroo, the music PR firm he founded in 2004 and is officially retiring.
Baker tells Variety, in an exclusive, “I’ll be done with music publicity. I think that I’ve really kind of covered it after 42 years. You know, working for six labels, many Grammys, many, many Americana Awards and many, many Blues Music Awards, and attending 30 SXSW and 20 AmericanaFests. I just really feel like I’m ready to switch gears.” To what, Baker doesn’t quite know. He may venture into writing books while in retirement, though Variety reports he hasn’t settled on anything specific … yet.
“I’m 66 and I’ve never been to Europe, and I consider myself kind of under-traveled in general, because I’ve just never really had the time. It’s been my trademark to start work every morning at 6:30 a.m. in whatever time zone we’re in. And after working really seven days a week all this time, I’m exhausted. Finally, during the pandemic, as I said, I had a moment of reflection and spoke with my wife, Sharon, and I think we decided that, yeah, let’s do some math, and I think we can maybe pull this off, oddly enough. So on the spring solstice, March 21, life will be different. I don’t know what it’s like to go to a matinee on a Tuesday, or LACMA on Wednesday. So I’m kind of excited and terrified at the same time, he tells Variety.
Conqueroo’s official slogan, “Music publicity since 6:30 this Morning”, is what Baker has lived by but after the press release he’s drafted goes out next week, he tells Variety he will sleep in … or atleast try to sleep in. “I’m a bit of an insomniac, so I actually wake up quite a bit earlier, anyway,” he says.
“My last project is an album of rediscovered music by 1930s bluesman Son House that he recorded in the ‘60s, coming out on Dan Auerbach’s label. I decided that would be a very me kind of project to go out with. There’s also an Omnivore release that day, April March, a kind of Franco-American pop sensation, and then the Hoodoo Gurus the week prior, so those are really my last three ever,” he says.
Other clients have included Ruthie Foster, Van Dyke Parks, Dan Penn, Kinky Friedman, Peter Himmelman, Swamp Dogg, Marshall Crenshaw, Janiva Magness, Nils Lofgren, Willie Nile, and many others.
