Cranked Up Artists Hitting the Charts

By Misty Cryer

Locals following the rock scene have likely noticed the Cranked Up promotional label for artists with songs climbing the charts. The man behind this label is one of our own—Curtis McKinney. He is no stranger to the community, as he is a well-known radio personality and promoter of concerts and events. Cranked Up Records is his latest venture, and it is going well.

“I was born in Chicago,” said McKinney. “My family moved here when I was, like, three. I grew up in Carlsbad and have lived here most of my life.”

When asked when Cranked Up Records was started, McKinney said, “Well, it’s been kind of a culmination of the whole Cranked Up brand.” He said it started with the radio, with Brad Hennington as a co-host, which resulted in a syndicated show nationwide with about 200 radio stations. “That kind of led into concert promotion and things like that; we did concerts all over the United States,” he said.

McKinney said he started to lay off doing concerts so much when his mom and dad got sick. As a caregiver with his wife Melissa, he decided to take a break and spend more time in Carlsbad. “I wanted to kind of shift gears and get into more on the label side of things. That’s when we decided to build the studio about a year ago,” he said.

“We built a full-blown recording studio, and we started Cranked Up Records,” said McKinney. “We’ve done really good work in the industry, and a lot of people know who I am from the concert and the radio stuff,” he said.

“I won back-to-back, years ‘23 and ‘24, for Best Specialty Show on Radio in our market with KWMW 105.1 FM,” said McKinney. “I’m still doing that show 7 p.m. to midnight, Monday through Saturday,” he said, adding that, sometimes, his co-host covers.

“No one really knows this, but I also won DJ of the Year and Interview of the Year a few years ago with NMBA,” said McKinney. Other nominations include DJ of the Year in Las Vegas at Radio Contraband, DJ of the Year in New York, and DJ of the Year in Los Angeles at the LA Music Awards. “Those were all for rock,” he said.

McKinney was also nominated as DJ of the Year at the Texas Country Music Awards in Fort Worth, TX, for country music. “My co-host, Brad Hennington, was with me on all of those—best dude I know,” he said.

Cranked Up Live (13 years syndicated radio on 200 stations), Cranked Up Country (three years syndicated on 100 stations), and Cranked Up Country Nights (currently in SENM on KWMW 105.1 FM) are all a part of the radio ventures of the Cranked Up brand, according to McKinney.

McKinney feels fortunate that Virgin Music Group partnered with the label. “You know, they’re one of the biggest—if not the biggest—global distribution company there is,” he said.

He owns Cranked Up Records but considers Kenny Campos, the engineer there, a partner. “He’s been here with me from the beginning; he’s a big part of it,” McKinney said.

He also said his wife, Melissa, helps so much.

When the label got started, McKinney said he didn’t know what to expect. “I put a really good team together and felt really solid with it when Virgin came on. It made us credible from the beginning; we weren’t just some fly-by-night place,” he said.

“We have Adam Garcia out of Lubbock, TX,” said McKinney. Garcia is one of the heads of the Texas Tech University Videography Department, he said, adding that he does the music videos and video shoots for the label.

“I’ve got John Hoogeveen from Canada,” McKinney said. “I’ve got some scouts out there that work for us, and John happens to be our Canadian Rep,” he said.

“There are just fantastic musicians up in Canada, and a lot of American labels don’t want to mess with them because you have to deal with the work permits and visas to bring them into the United States. It’s a little more difficult, but after I started seeing the talent level up there, I was like, my God, these guys are fantastic,” McKinney said.

The first band was Paisty Jenny, who has been a band for a long time. “They had been dormant. We signed them and put out two of their songs. Right now, I’ve got them at No. 18 on the SMR rock charts, so they are doing really well,” he said.

“We signed a band called Kaos Bender out of Las Vegas, and I think they’re sitting at about No. 28 on the chart right now. We’ve got two bands charting, which is huge,” McKinney said.

“We just did a deal with Brandon Jordan and Scott Bartlett—Scott was the lead guitar player for Saving Abel; he’s seven times platinum,” said McKinney. “We’re fixing to release their first single in about six weeks,” he said.

“I’ve got a couple of really good country guys out of Canada coming in; it’s really starting to gain traction,” said McKinney. “I’m just blessed that it happened so fast,” he added.

“We’ve got Levi Hart; he made a run through Nashville in the past. We’re bringing him back in; he’s amazing,” said McKinney. “We’ve got Scott Owen up there. He kind of puts you in the mind of Jason Aldean. Both of them are just fantastic,” he said.

At one time, McKinney planned to go to Nashville before deciding to start Cranked Up Records in his hometown. “There’s nothing we can’t do here that we can do there,” he said.

McKinney said it has been nice. “Carlsbad is a great town, and I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of success here; people here have been very supportive,” he said.

“You know, one of the cool things about it is I can bring these guys in and maybe we play a little acoustic show like over at Cal’s or something,” McKinney said. “We did that with Scott Bartlett and Brandon the other night. It was packed; it was a good show. They can see the Caverns while they are here and see some of what Carlsbad is—because it is a destination,” he said.

The hardest part, said McKinney, is figuring out the travel plans. “We have to fly them into El Paso or Roswell,” he said.

“Everyone has been pretty open about coming. We’ve got the studio here, and we’ve got a bunch of goats and chickens. It’s a real, calm vibe. When they are in the studio recording, they can go out and pet a goat and relax,” said McKinney, adding that all the goats are pets.

McKinney said there was a learning curve. When they started going into television, they learned it is expensive. “Some bands don’t have $10,000-20,000 budgets to release something to television,” he said.

Due to this, McKinney said he and Adam started to develop a streaming platform. “It’s called Crank Cast. It is basically TV,” he said. “We are beta testing it now. When we launch, we’re going to have 25 channels,” he said.

The streaming platform is free to the public and will include three dedicated music channels: country, rock, and hip-hop and rap, said McKinney. It will include shows with hosts and channels like Fox, Weather, Comedy, and Kids Channels. “We’re in the process of finding show hosts now,” he said, “We made a deal with YouTube and others,” he said.

“I actually talked with Chad over at the Chamber about doing a Carlsbad channel,” said McKinney. “I wanted to do that because this is our hometown, and I want people to kind of see where we are and what it is about,” he said.

“This business is really cutthroat,” said McKinney. He explained that a lot of times, these bands are run over, and they are really taken advantage of. “Being that I’ve been on every aspect of it over the last 20 years—from janitor to promoter, I have kind of seen all of that. So, when Kenny and I started doing this, we wanted to do it differently, so the bands aren’t taken advantage of and we could offer them things that other labels couldn’t.”

McKinney said that is kind of their philosophy. “We’re just kind of running it like that, and we’re going to see how it goes; so far it’s working,” he said.

“It’s so funny because when we kind of got rolling, everybody told me I was crazy,” said McKinney. Now, with a band in the top 20 and a band in the top 30 that he thinks will make the top 15 or even the top 10, he said, “You’re talking about our bands that we’ve signed in Carlsbad, and they’re up against guys like Jelly Roll. It’s a really awesome feeling to just know that we’re hanging with that, and we’re right here in Carlsbad.”