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It's the sort of "discovery tale" that happens more in movies than in real life. A young artist from Bermuda dreams of a future in Christian music. She writes songs and even produces an independent project that wins some local awards. Aware that signing with a record label is an important future step, she identifies the one she would like to work with above all others: Gotee Records. She sends Gotee a few demos, knowing they're probably just getting filed (or thrown) away.

Ayiesha Woods

Some time later, while attending school studying songwriting for a music business degree, she and a group of classmates took a look at the songs of tobyMac. The next morning, he happens to call her house.  "My mother took the call. When I got home she said, 'Ayiesha, some Toby Mac guy called,' and I was like 'Waaaahhhh!'." Fast forward three years. Ayiesha Woods is no longer an unknown talent, but a Grammy nominated artist with Gotee preparing  to release her second album.

Woods smiles today as she watches her career unfold. "It's all about timing, and it's all about God really orchestrating things in our lives. I have to laugh because it seems like this thing has been going on for a minute. The years are going by so fast. It's been an amazing journey and God has really been doing some great things." The Gotee story, and the reasons Woods singled out the label as a top choice, predate her journey by about a decade; it's an equally fascinating tale of God's provision and timing.

Rewind to 1992. Three guys in Nashville share a love for music. Though they have diverse tastes they sport the same cropped beards and hang out together enough that people start calling them the "goatee brothers". Todd Collins is a percussionist and hands-on producer with a bent toward hip-hop. Joey Elwood is another producer focused on melody and concept. And the third is a guy by the name of Toby McKeehan, aka tobyMac, who also happens to be one third of the breakout group dc Talk. "At that time, there were very few labels, if any, focusing on music that will affect our generation," tobyMac told Billboard magazine. "I wanted to do a label that focused on a generation."

That's a fairly grandiose idea for a label that started almost unintentionally. Together they form a production team and start working with a young R&B trio called Out of Eden. When shopping for a label is unsuccessful, the three decide to form their own. Elwood recalls, "We all collectively said, 'Let's just give this a shot.' At the risk of sounding unprofessional, it was a very naïve entry into the business. We basically learned every day, on the job, because we had no training for what we were doing, other than we loved music and we produced music. That was the entry point. Three naïve guys, a willing band, and some really good songs."

Thus Gotee Records was born, the name intentionally misspelled ("We didn't want to be known as "the facial hair guys," says Elwood). The early days were challenging, and the three men struggled at times to figure out the nuts and bolts of the business. "Oh man, there were so many things we didn't have a clue about," Elwood recalls. Mostly the operational stuff, like how to set up a record in order for it to be sold in stores, with things like UPC codes and ISRC codes, or knowing the Soundscan numbers and how to pay royalties—all the things that people just don't really know."

As their on-the-job training continued, the new label expanded to reflect the diverse interests of the founders. Within 12 months, three other acts were signed: Christafari, GRITS, and Johnny Q. Public. Elwood notes that the first four bands filled four different music categories. "We looked at is as four legs of a chair: reggae, R&B, rock, and rap. It was very unintentional. They all came to us in different ways, and we loved the music of all four."

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