Paul Raucci started Raucci Entertainment fresh out of college. At that time he had one act signed up on the label, a young woman named Mere he’d found singing at a coffee shop near the downtown campus of Virginia Commonwealth University whose croony sound was a cross between Pat Benatar and Norah Jones. When her first CD hit the local record stores, someone at RVA Productions invited him out to lunch.
By the end of that hour, Paul was shaking hands with Lewis Mason to close a deal that signed Raucci under RVA’s umbrella, which included not only music but also local photographers, filmmakers, and writers in the hope of making Richmond the New York of the South. Lewis is a hard man to pin down—he isn’t much older than Paul, but he has a keen business sense and a very abrupt way of dealing w
