More on Erin Bode's legal issues

It's been a week since Erin Bode issued an unusual appeal on her Web site and via email, asking fans to contribute money to help with an unspecified legal matter that could put "the future of the Erin Bode Group...in jeopardy." The singer has made no further public statements on the subject since then, but a few clues as to what's really going on have emerged in the last two days.

First, someone has edited the statements posted last week on Bode's Web site and MySpace page, taking the word "defense" out of the phrase "legal defense fund" and substituting the word "support". Why is this significant? We'll get to that in just a minute, but here's a hint: it has to do with the difference between being the defendant in a lawsuit and being the plaintiff.

Second, a online search yesterday of civil court records from St. Louis city and St. Louis County did not turn up any lawsuits involving Bode, the Erin Bode Group, her husband and bass player Syd Rodway or her record label MAXJAZZ. While not particularly significant in and of itself, this does indicate that whatever legal action Bode was referencing has not yet resulted in the official filing of documents in the two most likely jurisdictions for a lawsuit.

Which leads us to the juicier clues, courtesy of a couple of sources who must remain unnamed. I usually am quite rigorous about explicitly revealing the sourcing for everything that appears in StLJN, and have rarely, if ever, used unnamed sources. However, these are not just some random people who happened to call or email me with a "hot tip." They are two individuals I've known for some time; who are in positions to know something about this situation; who have proved honest and credible in the past; and who, as far as I know, have no axes to grind with regard to Erin Bode. They are "anonymous" only in the sense that what they told me for this story was revealed under the condition that their identities remain secret.

I mention this now so that you, the reader, can understand how this information was obtained and, thus informed, make your own judgment as to whether or not it seems credible, plausible and/or believable.

The first unnamed source said that, as posited in the previous post on this subject, the legal matter Bode refers to in her recent statement is indeed a contract dispute.

More specifically, "she's trying to get out of her MAXJAZZ contract, which has 4 CDs to go, and is basically on the verge of suing MAXJAZZ unless a settlement can be reached." The source also believes that Bode "thinks she needs to be on a different label, one that is not so closely identified with "jazz,"" and added that "she has a pretty awful contract and I guess it's gone too far for renegotiation possibilities."

The second unnamed source told me that when the subject of MAXJAZZ came up during a recent conversation about an unrelated matter, Bode said that she was "no longer with" the label and then quickly changed the subject. Now obviously, Bode wouldn't have to raise money for lawyers tif she truly were "no longer with" them, in the sense of having completed or been released from her contract. So this second anecdote seems more an indication of a certain attitude than a statement to be taken literally.

All of which brings us back to that first clue, the substitution of the word "support" for the word "defense". Considered along with the other new information, one reasonably can conclude that Bode anticipates becoming a plaintiff, not a defendant, in a potential legal action.

Still, many questions remain unanswered. For starters, why would fulfilling Bode's contract, disadvantageous though it may be, necessarily put the future of the Erin Bode Group in jeopardy? Bode's albums are credited to her, not the Erin Bode Group, and, as far as I know, she was signed as a solo artist.

Could the specific reference to the Group in her fund-raising appeal indicate some sort of dissention in the ranks, such as band members threatening to bolt if they don't get more money, a greater share of the credit, or some other type of improved deal that is, in turn, being prevented by the specifics of Bode's contract with MAXJAZZ? The recent revision of Bode's original public statement certainly indicates some degree of care and calculation in its exact wording, so this phraseology could be significant.

In any event, a six-record contract (in this example, encompassing two CDs already released and four yet to come) does seem a bit long by the standards of today's music business. And there are many points of potential disagreement in any contract, from advances to royalty rates to artistic control to marketing support and beyond - so many that, without actually reading it, it's impossible to know whether a contract is a "good" or "bad" deal for the artist. Suffice it to say that there's no way to know what Erin Bode's specific beefs with her MAXJAZZ contract might be, unless and until she chooses to tell the world.

Clearly, there's much more to this story than what has become public so far. StLJN will have more information as it becomes available.