As music’s retail presence withers, MTV and VH1 turn ever further from music video programming, and radio continues hacking away at itself, searching for the one vital organ that will finally bring about its own richly deserved death, we’ve been increasing our coverage of artists who find success with alternative methods, either via Internet outreach, or innovative commercial deals, or — in the case of singer/songwriter Sanders Bohlke, “a manager, a booking agent, and a lawyer, but that’s about it.”

I first heard Bohlke’s work when I was working on my interview with One Life to Live music supervisor Paul Glass. Though our discussion focused mainly on the artists Glass has booked to perform on the series (a list that will expand to include Lionel Richie in September), Glass also uses a fair amount of songs for the show’s ever-popular musical montages. Most of them are by artists who, if they aren’t exactly established, still have some kind of label backing, but that changed when Bohlke’s “The Weight of Us” popped up on One Life’s May 22 episode: (more…)