Stratford, P.E.I., musician making new kinds of hits

In his cool basement recording studio in Stratford, P.E.I., Craig Dodge sits surrounded by guitars, recording gear, keyboards and several other instruments.

He pulls up a cut of music of his to play, and the voice is very familiar.

But it's not his, it's Mike Wolfe, the star of the TV show American Pickers, talking about a motorcycle he's in love with.

Dodge's part in the production is the romantic music in the background, setting the right mood for the scene.

That's what Dodge does:the musician and composer creates short themes for everything from video games to TV shows to sports programming, all done in his basement.

Worldwide hits

He's no rock star, but his music has been heard by millions.

"Here's one from Pawn Stars, and that just went into syndication last week, which is great because you get money every time this plays across the world," Dodge explains.

It's just a simple beat, but it's turned out to be a real winner for Dodge.

"That's been licensed in about 50 different shows," he told Island Morning's Matt Rainnie. "It's been licensed for soap operas in Latin America, which is funny, then they translate them in France, and put the same music in there, and they replay them again. Yeah, that track's been in a lot of shows."

And each time it plays somewhere, he gets a few dollars more.

"I work with about 30 or 40 different publishers and music supervisors, so they send me what are called briefs every week, and it will give me a rundown on the show they might be pitching to, the style of music they're looking for."

He'll submit some music, and if it doesn't get used, that's okay, it's still ready for another show or game, for another time.

Thanks to the explosion of the 1000-channel TV world, the video game industry and all the online content, there's no shortage of buyers out there.

"I've got some real stinkers, I know that," he laughs. "Toddlers & Tiaras, I always joke about that. My wife tells me not to talk about that one. I've done a lot of cool A&E shows, I've done NHL Network, NBA basketball, they used a lot of my music last year, CNN was cool, Disney was probably the killer one."

Early break

Dodge got in early on the music explosion.

"I've always been writing music, and I've always had some sort of studio set-up," he said. "I did my first video game in 2007, and I went to a conference in San Francisco, my wife and I, and spoke to a lot of people that were in the business out there.

Dodge told the music supervisors and publishers that he was available, and after a couple of successes, the requests snowballed, he said.

His work for TV shows alone numbers over 120, and in over 100 countries.

Holland College course

Now he's passing on that expertise to other P.E.I. musicians, through a course being offered at Holland College.

"I'm a big fan of educating people," he said. "I know how hard it is to make money at music, and now you can do it independently yourself, you don't need record companies, it's not like the 70s or 80s or 90s even.

"This course at Holland College is great, there's a nice variety of people in there. They're not just students either, there are people from the community, that's part of the mandate," said Dodge. "It's hard to make money when you're playing for $50 or $100 a night in a bar in the middle of January. You don't feel motivated a lot."

Dodge said for most musicians, composing for TV and video wouldn't be a main source of income, but it could be a part of their overall revenue stream.

With today's technology, he said it's just as easy to access this work from P.E.I. as it is from New York or Los Angeles.

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