Hey, young Nashville band—want a major-label deal? Read this first.

In a widely circulated essay titled "The Problem With Music," producer Steve Albini, best known for recording Nirvana's In Utero, describes the mental image he conjures when he thinks of a band about to sign a record deal. It's a trench 4 feet wide, 5 feet deep—and it's filled with shit. An industry shill stands at the end waving a fountain pen and a contract. Nobody can read the contract, but that doesn't stop anyone from clamoring for it:

The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the lackey says, "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke." And he does, of course.

Some 20 years later, young rock bands are still swimming that trench. The old industry model of excess may have changed, but it's still a story of big promises, sold-out shows, famous meet-and-greets, six-figure advances. And then, inevitably, it is the story of silence. Phone calls not returned, a revolving door of executives, labels merged, records shelved, bands dropped—or sometimes, deals negotiated for months that fall apart before the band has even signed.

In Nashville, it seems, every band is always talking to a big shot. Word gets around fast that this band is showcasing for Warner Bros., while that band just sent their demos to Interscope. The cheap-seats perception is that if you can just get that deal, you can distribute your record, tour, win hearts and minds, etc. Ostensibly, the only problem is getting your music in the right guy's hands.

But if the Nashville curse used to be that no local rock band could snag a record deal, then perhaps now the curse is that they can. Because for each of the bands included here, the deals came easily—arguably too easily. In each case, it was staying afloat afterward that proved most elusive. Here are four cautionary tales of bands that for whatever reason, to paraphrase the old song, seemed to get everything they wanted—but lost everything they had.

Take De Novo Dahl, whose manic kitchen-sink pop inspired a write-up on the indie blog You Ain't No Picasso for their song "Shout." That in turn put them on the radar of David Basin, an A&R dude for Roadrunner Records. Though the label was better known for an argh-metal roster that included bands like Nickelback and Slipknot, Basin was spearheading a new direction. He'd recently signed seminal garage band New York Dolls and the campy cabaret pop act Dresden Dolls. He wanted De Novo Dahl to round out their modern rock dollhouse.

The band and manager Aaron Hartley were initially skeptical, but they liked that Roadrunner had an indie mentality with a major's money. And it didn't hurt that Basin played bass in a punk band. He flew to Nashville and wooed the band at Rumba, where, over drinks and plantains, he told the band "Shout" was a surefire hit. Then he dangled an irresistible carrot, asking them to name the dream guy they'd want mixing their record. Their choice: Flaming Lips producer Dave Fridmann. Basin said no problem. Then he maximized his cool cred by going with the band to Springwater to catch a local rock show.

Soon after, DND had an offer for a six-record deal, with an advance around a hundred grand. "We hoped it would give us the resources to do what we were already doing, just on a grander scale," says bassist Keith Lowen. "The reality was they were excited, and then they weren't."

Lowen had already watched a major-label deal flop—in 1998, on Sire with the Nashville pop trio Lifeboy when he was 18. Literally signed in high school during study hall, the teenage band had to sue the label to get their record back, spending five years in limbo. Lowen had also just read Albini's treatise on shitty record deals, so it wasn't like he didn't know the industry he was flirting with.

"I thought, with us, it's going to be different," Lowen says.

It wasn't. They got an inkling of that when they played for the label for the first time at the 2007 CMJ festival. It was on Halloween at noon, and not only had the band just woken up, but they chose an odd costume selection: they dressed in Christmas finery. Christmas for Halloween—get it? The label didn't. They also didn't get the raw indie-rock band in front of them—they'd expected a glossy pop outfit from the single.

Roadrunner hedged, quickly amending their initial offer by saying they'd also need 25 percent of the band's publishing. The band agreed, though in retrospect Lowen says it wasn't exactly a sign of good faith. At the time, they chose to see it as a minor hiccup.