Jolyon Petch, the Melbourne producer who Australian Idol alum and session singer Reigan Derry claimed refuses to credit her vocal work on his cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’, has broken his silence about the claims in a lengthy post to Facebook.
After Reigan alleged the New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based producer published the cover of the 1977 smash hit — which included her vocals, without her written consent in a formal contract — Petch took to Facebook, saying “there are two sides to every story”.
“Dreams was never released without Reigan’s consent. And we had come to an agreement to credit her,” Petch wrote.
“Over the lockdown, Reigan & I had worked on a number of covers under the same commercial terms. Reigan was aware her vocals were a paid session, to be released and at no time have I ever received an invoice from her that stated “Demo”.
Reigan was never concerned with any of these covers, never asked to be credited, and only in the past 7 weeks has Reigan raised it with me with the success of Dreams, and well after I had paid Reigan what was agreed upon last year.”
Petch went on to claim that with ‘Dreams’ and other cover songs he had recorded with Reigan, she was paid for a session and discussed working together on more tracks.
He also said that he’s credited Reigan as the vocalist in interviews, was “keen to involve her more across ‘Dreams’”, and has “taken Reigan’s calls and responded to her messages right away”.
Petch claimed that he tried to further resolve the issue of crediting her on the track “without everyone expending more in legal bills”, but Reigan wanted to leave communication to their legal teams.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CWpqT1fJVOO/
As for locking down his Instagram account and social media, Petch said he has been targeted by Reigan’s followers, which have allegedly escalated to death threats.
“At every stage over the past few months we have been trying to work with Reigan and her legal team to come to an agreement, accommodating precisely her recent demands (including ongoing royalties and feature credit) even though a deal was clearly made last year,” he continued.
“We thought we’d reached an amicable commercial resolution 2 weeks ago- so that she would be recognised at the ARIAs, across DSPs and YouTube, but we have been waiting for Reigan to sign the agreement.
“So I’m really surprised Reigan took this path on the eve of the ARIA’s when we had already agreed to settle this matter.”
Yikes, this is getting messier by the day.
