Whether it was David Roth’s recent entry for The Classical about ill-advised athlete-run labels or the amazing news that Kyle Turley’s ensemble had been chosen to perform following last night’s New Orleans Bowl — possibly the most coveted gig on the sporting calendar next to playing one of Austin’s two competing Roller Derby promotions — I couldn’t help but look back on Turley’s initial label investments, long before his own recordings were zooming up the Billboard Heatseeker Chart (For Vaguely Hank III-Inflected Wallet-On-A-Chain Metal).  Turley, who recently touted himself as an replacement for Hank Jr. on “Monday Night Football” (“I think I would be a pretty fitting choice if they are throwing names in the hat..I definitely know my talents there, and I have a lot of great music and I have proven myself as a song writer, seems like a pleasant enough fellow, but who knows how his sensibilities might’ve developed  were he an acolyte of Jeff Clayton rather than say, Phil Anselmo?  The following is from CSTB, Sept. 14, 2006 ;

Looks like Trevor Pryce will have a bit of competition. In addition to calling Bryant Gumbel “a fucking moron”, Chiefs G Kyle Turley (above, right) shares his independent label plans with Sports Illustrated’s Michael Silver.

Silver: Speaking of cash, what’s up with your music career?

Turley: Well, I’ve started a record label, Gridiron Records, and I’m planning on kicking some ass. I had a lot of downtime when I was out for those two years, and I’d made a lot of friends in the music industry. I hooked up with this guy named Mikey Doling, who had founded a band called Snot out of Santa Barbara. They had played Ozzfest and were gonna be huge but the singer got in a car crash and died, and that was that.

Mikey’s a killer guitarist, and he and I would see these phenomenal bands in Hollywood that were still unsigned, and that set the wheels in motion: ‘Dude, we need to start a label.’ So, now we have our own MySpace page, and we’re signing three kinds of bands: rock, hard rock and super-heavy. We have this band called Harebrain Scheme that sounds sort of like death metal mixed with the Beatles, 311-style reggae and Queen. Fred Durst heard them and was blown away; they’re gonna be all over the radio. And we have a super-heavy band called Asesino that’s like the Mexican Slayer — all the lyrics are in Spanish, and the musicians all dress up as different characters. It’s awesome.