Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is founder and chairman of Bandit Lights,
Speaker 1: Michael Strickler, but he also is a driving force behind
Speaker 1: a new organization called the Entertainment Association. Michael, what is that? Bob?
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for having me and thanks for
Speaker 1: asking the question. Uh. Many people know me and know
Speaker 1: who I am now because the last two and a
Speaker 1: half years I've worked with Congress to affect change and
Speaker 1: get financing basically for our industry. But what is the
Speaker 1: Entertainment Association? Probably the most important thing that we will
Speaker 1: do that we need to do as an industry. And
Speaker 1: here's why. What I discovered first and foremost in the
Speaker 1: last two and a half years UH in Congress is
Speaker 1: that this industry holistically has no voice. Two and a
Speaker 1: half years ago when I began my journey and last
Speaker 1: week when I'm still in my journey, what you hear
Speaker 1: every day is go away. You have no voice, because
Speaker 1: what did we as an industry do when the pandemic began?
Speaker 1: The Restaurant Association WIN is one, the Airline Association WIN
Speaker 1: is one. All of the other industries that you would
Speaker 1: think of automotive. They went is one one voice you
Speaker 1: didn't have in the restaurant situation, the waiters fighting, the cooks, fighting,
Speaker 1: the clean up people fighting the suppliers. What did entertainment do?
Speaker 1: We went in a thousand canoes. They all went in battleships.
Speaker 1: We went in a thousand canoes. There were so many
Speaker 1: voices that the senators and the representatives did not even
Speaker 1: want to deal with us. So that brought me to
Speaker 1: the moment that I realized, we've got to have a
Speaker 1: unified front, just like all these other industries do. And
Speaker 1: it's it's much bigger than just music. Anyone that needs
Speaker 1: to gather a crowd to our no living would qualify
Speaker 1: as being in the entertainment association. And that's basketball, baseball, football, ballet, hopie,
Speaker 1: Indian dancing, children's UH Dance ensemble, you name it, anyone
Speaker 1: that needs a crowd. When the country shut down, they
Speaker 1: had no voice. And as I went through my endeavors,
Speaker 1: UH it was really the small people that got hurt
Speaker 1: the most. All of the cultural organizations around the United
Speaker 1: States that promoted regional or or or in some cases
Speaker 1: even national UH dance troops and and cultural things, they
Speaker 1: had absolutely no voice, and we've got to correct that
Speaker 1: because their bottom line, there's just no voice before Congress
Speaker 1: other than a thousand voices, and the thousand voices before
Speaker 1: Congress do not get heard. Okay, let's go back to
Speaker 1: the beginning. It's March. Obviously your company is affected by
Speaker 1: the shutdown. How do you get involved in this whole
Speaker 1: money from the government lobbying voice thing? Another great question, Bob.
Speaker 1: I've got a degree in business and degree in law.
Speaker 1: Started in the show business at age twelve, but along
Speaker 1: the way, I've done a number of things Politically. I
Speaker 1: ran the Chamber of Commerce here in Knoxville for four years.
Speaker 1: I'm on the board of directors at the local hospital.
Speaker 1: UH lobbied for the university at the state and the
Speaker 1: federal level, and I know a lot of politicians. So
Speaker 1: I had this weird background that never came into play,
Speaker 1: and I used to wonder, why do I have this
Speaker 1: weird background. Well, on March thirteenth, which was a Friday,
Speaker 1: Friday thirteen, that was the day that Live Nation a
Speaker 1: g n C double a NFL, all of those people
Speaker 1: said we're done, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve.
Speaker 1: When that happened, I picked the phone up and I
Speaker 1: called Marcia Blackburn, who was one of my two senators
Speaker 1: who I've known for forty years. And I also called
Speaker 1: Lamar Alexander, by other senator, and I said, what do
Speaker 1: we do? Help us? Help us, you know, we we
Speaker 1: need some help politically. Uh, And so we began the
Speaker 1: conversation Lamar when I called him, you know, we spoke
Speaker 1: a bit, and then I called him back on Sunday
Speaker 1: and he was with Stephen manuch In, the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Treasury at the time, and Lamar put the cell phone
Speaker 1: on speaker and I explained to manuch In what was
Speaker 1: going on. And he said, well, surely you have contracts
Speaker 1: and I said, well, you know, yes we do, but
Speaker 1: so what And he goes, well, surely these people are
Speaker 1: gonna pay you. And I said that's not the way
Speaker 1: it works now now, Manute and I don't know what
Speaker 1: you know about him, but he was in the movie
Speaker 1: business and he made a lot of huge movies you
Speaker 1: can google. And he made a whole bunch of those
Speaker 1: action thrillers in the eighties and early nineties, so he
Speaker 1: understands entertainment. And I said, Stephen, you don't get paid
Speaker 1: and he goes, we'll sue them, and I said, the
Speaker 1: first time you sue somebody is the last time you
Speaker 1: worked with him in in show business. And I think
Speaker 1: he knew that. And his comment when I got through
Speaker 1: explaining how our industry works was he paused a moment
Speaker 1: and said, what a stupid business. You know. That was
Speaker 1: kind of how it started. So they began introducing me
Speaker 1: to other people. Now I knew some other people at
Speaker 1: the time. Okay, let's let's just go back for a second.
Speaker 1: Your two senators, how do you literally know them? You
Speaker 1: get a call back, you gotta pick up right away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got their cell phone numbers. I knew Marcia before
Speaker 1: she was in politics, and her first job was running
Speaker 1: the State of Tennessee's Tape and Film Commission, which promotes
Speaker 1: movies and television within the state. And uh, I was
Speaker 1: on the that board, and I worked with her and
Speaker 1: set up a Knoxville Tape and Film Commission. So we
Speaker 1: worked hand in hand in her first what you would
Speaker 1: call political job, and then from there she became a
Speaker 1: state representative in the state senator and then the US
Speaker 1: representative in the U. S Senator. So we go back
Speaker 1: forty five years. Lamar Alexander is actually from this area.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, he's been in federal government forty
Speaker 1: five years. But along his journey, uh, he was the
Speaker 1: president of the University of Tennessee. He was the secretary
Speaker 1: of Education. You know, he did a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: So I knew him locally as he grew up. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had both their cell numbers, and they're
Speaker 1: what you would consider friends. Okay, So Minutan says, it's
Speaker 1: a stupid business. What happens next? I told him there
Speaker 1: are stupid things about it, and Marcia and and uh,
Speaker 1: Lamar immediately began helping me with introductions. And one person
Speaker 1: led to another. And uh, in my life, I have
Speaker 1: had the good fortune to meet a lot of people
Speaker 1: which have led me to other interesting people. Uh. Jimmy Haslam,
Speaker 1: who owns the Cleveland Browns, is a good friend of mine.
Speaker 1: His family owns Pilot Flying J the truck stops. That's
Speaker 1: the sixth largest private company in the United States. So
Speaker 1: I called up Jimmy, and Jimmy introduced me to Rob Portman,
Speaker 1: the senator from Ohio, h Barry Switzer, the Oklahoma football coach,
Speaker 1: and the Dallas Cowboy coach, dear dear friend of mine
Speaker 1: for years and years and years. So I called up Switzer.
Speaker 1: He introduces me to the Arkansas UH and the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: senators UH and and so on and so forth. I
Speaker 1: would call people. I knew that that new people who
Speaker 1: would introduced me to people, And suddenly I'm talking to
Speaker 1: senators and representatives all over the United States and we're
Speaker 1: gathering steam and UH. Eventually that led me to UH
Speaker 1: Senator Todd Young from Indiana, and the Senator Young had
Speaker 1: written a bill along with Senator Gold from Colorado called
Speaker 1: the Restart Act. And if you trail back in history,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if you're aware, but but the
Speaker 1: Restart Act, we an entertainment launched a really impressive thing
Speaker 1: back in two thousands, which we called regular Restart. We
Speaker 1: lit two thousand, eight hundred buildings in the United States
Speaker 1: at the same time on the same night, and it
Speaker 1: ranged from uh Niagara Falls to the Empire State Building
Speaker 1: to the Seattle Space Needle, to half of the buildings
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, UH, to stadiums all over the United States.
Speaker 1: And then you move into little towns and we had
Speaker 1: people in the same night all over America donating their time,
Speaker 1: their equipment, and then we had a live webcast that
Speaker 1: the cameras you know, we switched from this city to
Speaker 1: that city, to the next city to bring attention to
Speaker 1: the fact that this industry needed the Restart Act past.
Speaker 1: Now you may say, what's restarting? Why did you back
Speaker 1: at Well, I spent February, March, April, May, June, July
Speaker 1: all the way through to December being the driving force
Speaker 1: behind Restart. There were ninety two out of a hundred
Speaker 1: Senators that signed on to restart. There were three hundred
Speaker 1: ninety House members that signed on to restart, and restart
Speaker 1: was not for our industry. Restart simply said any small
Speaker 1: business which has less than five hundred employees and suffered
Speaker 1: a twenty five percent reduction and income in any one
Speaker 1: quarter in would get from the government forty five percent
Speaker 1: of their two thousand nineteen income. The only exclusions were
Speaker 1: you couldn't be in the adult entertainment industry and you
Speaker 1: couldn't be publicly traded. So this was a broad based
Speaker 1: bill that that would help all of American business. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure Bob that that you noticed as this went on,
Speaker 1: you had restaurants in trouble, and I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of businesses were in trouble. We'll restart was going to
Speaker 1: be the vehicle. So the day that I go first
Speaker 1: testify before the Senate December, uh, I'm giving my spiel
Speaker 1: and and and it was a two and a half
Speaker 1: hour Senate testimony and Q and A. Everybody said, Yep,
Speaker 1: we're gonna pass it. We're gonna pass it. And long behold,
Speaker 1: they didn't pass it. And to this day, no one
Speaker 1: can give me why other than uh, Todd Young had
Speaker 1: kind of backed off of it in November. To this day,
Speaker 1: I don't know why. And his girl. Every senator, senators
Speaker 1: and representatives are are the entertainers. Uh, their staff are
Speaker 1: the songwriters. Their staff hands them a sheet before they
Speaker 1: go into a meeting or before they go into an event,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a one pager that gives them
Speaker 1: the high points. And unless they're invested in it, they
Speaker 1: kind of get the high points and go in and
Speaker 1: do the spiel and then they move on. Most people
Speaker 1: don't understand that the average senator and or representative have
Speaker 1: between eight hundred and four red bills that they're dealing with,
Speaker 1: So how much attention can they give anyone. Uh. I
Speaker 1: believe that Senator Young was all in on this bill,
Speaker 1: and I think that he was at some point, but
Speaker 1: he had a girl that that was his chief songwriter,
Speaker 1: if you will, well, she left at the end of
Speaker 1: November and went to work for Rob Portman. And what
Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time was when she left,
Speaker 1: the bill left. If you know what I mean, this,
Speaker 1: this was the person. This was the engine that drove
Speaker 1: it all. So when when she disappeared, her name was
Speaker 1: Anne Gordon. When when Anne disappeared, the engine disappeared. There
Speaker 1: were two engines to that bill. One was me and
Speaker 1: the other was Anne. I didn't even know she'd left.
Speaker 1: So here I am before send it, testified and pushing
Speaker 1: this darn thing, and you know, the heart's gone out
Speaker 1: of it on the on the Senator side, and it
Speaker 1: just laid there and died. And and at that point
Speaker 1: in time, I was also in a parallel fashion working
Speaker 1: to make sure it's what started out to save our stages,
Speaker 1: uh and ended up being called s v o G
Speaker 1: Shuttered venues, operators, grants got passed, And in my testimony
Speaker 1: I pushed for both of those. And the analogy that
Speaker 1: I used was that s v O G UH was
Speaker 1: needed and was landing on the beach in Omaha, but
Speaker 1: we needed to get to Paris. So once we landed
Speaker 1: with s v O G and taking care of the
Speaker 1: venues and the venue related people, we then had to
Speaker 1: go up the cliff into Paris. And how did we
Speaker 1: do that? We did that with restart and when I
Speaker 1: left that that that that evening, I knew we had
Speaker 1: gotten both of them passed, and in fact, they told
Speaker 1: me we had, and I've got the congressional record. It
Speaker 1: tells you in there that they're going to be passed.
Speaker 1: But then it didn't pass. So then I shifted all
Speaker 1: my attention to save our stages, s v O G.
Speaker 1: And that's that's how it begun. Okay, save our stages. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm not taking any money from that. I don't own
Speaker 1: a venue. But it seemed like at first the money
Speaker 1: wasn't available, and then if you weren't early, you didn't
Speaker 1: get any money. What was going on there? There was
Speaker 1: a whole lot of steps and missteps from the beginning
Speaker 1: in execution, which led to UH misunderstanding Again. I became
Speaker 1: the voice for all of live entertainment, and I ended
Speaker 1: up with an email chain at one point three million people,
Speaker 1: and that I still have it. That email chain included
Speaker 1: not only traditional live show people, music people, if you will.
Speaker 1: But I ended up advising the Screen Actors Guild, the
Speaker 1: Director's Guild, the Producers Guild, the Broadway League, the National
Speaker 1: Association of Broadcasters, International Association of Venue Managers and own
Speaker 1: and international associations, Affairs and Expositions, the rodeo people. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just got bigger and bigger, the air show people,
Speaker 1: and every day I got another group that that that
Speaker 1: looped in and I put all of the names into
Speaker 1: my email things. So I became the go to guy.
Speaker 1: And when that bill started, they excluded UH. The first
Speaker 1: thing that happened was the SBA came out with UH
Speaker 1: frequently asked questions. And at this time a lady named
Speaker 1: Barb Carson was running the s B, A lovely lady,
Speaker 1: very cooperative, UH, a lot of help. So I guided
Speaker 1: them through the fact that why are you excluding fairs?
Speaker 1: Because there was this big push that if you didn't
Speaker 1: have any venue and if you didn't sell tickets, you
Speaker 1: couldn't have any money. And and and the frequently asked
Speaker 1: questions that first came out pointedly said that fairs, rodeos
Speaker 1: and festivals couldn't participate. I had a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: festival people that I talked to, include including Danny Wimmer
Speaker 1: and all of his people at d w P, great people,
Speaker 1: uh and and and uh, Gene Cassidy up at I
Speaker 1: f E, a lot of great people. Well, we worked
Speaker 1: really hard for about three months, and we got him
Speaker 1: over the hump. And so they slowly said okay, okay, fairs,
Speaker 1: fares can come in, Okay, rodeos can come in, and
Speaker 1: then eventually, okay, festivals can come in. So so in
Speaker 1: the first three, four or five months we got those
Speaker 1: people in. But the only exclusions, and you have to
Speaker 1: read the law were adult entertainment and publicly traded companies.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, these frequently asked questions just
Speaker 1: just started putting boxes that weren't there in the law.
Speaker 1: They just weren't there. So I began to point out
Speaker 1: to them, that's not what the law says. Well, Barb
Speaker 1: Carson left and Isabella Gusman came in. And Isabella Gusman
Speaker 1: had a very strict and narrow view of this law,
Speaker 1: based on a lot of conversations that she had had
Speaker 1: with other people, And there were those who believed that
Speaker 1: that the money in the program UH wouldn't cover anybody
Speaker 1: outside of the initial round, and people think it was.
Speaker 1: There are two thoughts. One, most people, including the senators,
Speaker 1: thought that this money was for everybody. Why is that
Speaker 1: because the message was broadcasting Give it to the venues
Speaker 1: and it will trickle down to everybody. Well, that's simply
Speaker 1: not true. The venues didn't open forever and ever. But
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just for venues. If you go read UH,
Speaker 1: Save our Stages, it's pointedly for for independent venues. In
Speaker 1: other words, Live Nation and A G had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this, absolutely nothing to do with it. So
Speaker 1: it's for independent venues, managers, agents, and promoters. So those
Speaker 1: people were included. If you were not in one of
Speaker 1: those four groups, you were on the outside looking at
Speaker 1: And that goes to your question. So there was a
Speaker 1: whole lot of confusion, which which you know, led to
Speaker 1: me counseling people, sending people copies of the lead of
Speaker 1: the law, UH, doing notes and whatnot. And we never
Speaker 1: really changed Isabella good Usman's mind. You know, she she
Speaker 1: never relented. And and then the darned software crashed, and
Speaker 1: this happened, and that happened, you know, and it took
Speaker 1: four or five months to open up. And then when
Speaker 1: it did open up, the initial ask was for fourteen
Speaker 1: million dollars. Well, after I testified and I told him
Speaker 1: in my testimony, take care of all of us, they
Speaker 1: put sixteen point to five million and by billion in
Speaker 1: the excuse me, and uh again it's in the congressional record.
Speaker 1: My name is in there, and it says after my testimony,
Speaker 1: they put another two point five billion in. Well, fast
Speaker 1: forward to when it shuttered about a year ago. It
Speaker 1: shuttered with about four billion dollars in it, and then
Speaker 1: they gave some second rounds and they did this and
Speaker 1: they did that, and it ended up with guess what,
Speaker 1: two billion sitting there. And that two billion is still
Speaker 1: sitting there. That's the money that was for the other people,
Speaker 1: which should have included radio and television and and you know,
Speaker 1: people supporting service, people like myself. Uh. But but it
Speaker 1: was never open to those people. And and and that
Speaker 1: is why I wrote another bill called the Music Act,
Speaker 1: which stands from music under severe income crisis. You have
Speaker 1: to have a good an acronym. And uh, we dropped
Speaker 1: that over a year ago with bipartisan support, and it
Speaker 1: just hasn't gotten passed yet. We couldn't get it into
Speaker 1: the omnibus bill because Rand Paul wouldn't let it come
Speaker 1: out of the Small Business Committee because Rand Paul wants
Speaker 1: all money claud back. And but he's now not on
Speaker 1: the Small Business Committee, and uh, we're reintroducing it and
Speaker 1: we hope to get it passed in Q one of
Speaker 1: this year. And I don't know what you know about legislation,
Speaker 1: but the big thing that stops any legislation is funding.
Speaker 1: What they call pay for us. When you have a bill,
Speaker 1: you're technically supposed to have a pay for This doesn't
Speaker 1: need to pay for Why there's there's two point two
Speaker 1: billion dollars sitting in sb o G just sitting there. Now,
Speaker 1: what are we fighting. We're fighting reallocation, in other words,
Speaker 1: take that money away from us and give it to
Speaker 1: save the whales or whatever the cause may be. So
Speaker 1: for the better part of a year, I've been fighting
Speaker 1: to make sure that that money a doesn't get reallocated
Speaker 1: and be that we passed the Music Act and get
Speaker 1: that money to the people in the entertainment industry that
Speaker 1: have been left behind. So everybody who qualified and who
Speaker 1: applied ended up getting money. Over the hoops you had
Speaker 1: to jump through rough how did it play out? Practically?
Speaker 1: Great question, and and know everybody that that that should
Speaker 1: have qualified didn't get money. And here's why the hoops
Speaker 1: were incredible. Uh, the things that they made everyone do.
Speaker 1: We're we're studying Lee stupid. Uh. And probably what exacerbated
Speaker 1: did it was the s b A had never administered
Speaker 1: a program like that, it's not what they do. So
Speaker 1: they just basically brought people a step above manpower in
Speaker 1: to be reviewers. What you you know, because you're in
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry. Very few people understand how the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry works. So now you've got these reviewers looking at
Speaker 1: this data, reading these answers. It might as well have
Speaker 1: been nuclear physics. And then they had to make value
Speaker 1: judgments Okay, this person does or this person doesn't. And
Speaker 1: so so the reviewers had absolutely, absolutely no ability. Even
Speaker 1: myself to this day, people in this town think that
Speaker 1: that bandit Lights does all the Rocks shows in Knoxville,
Speaker 1: and that's how it works. Well, it's not how it works.
Speaker 1: You sign a contract with an artist and follow them
Speaker 1: and trying to explain this industry to anyone would take
Speaker 1: a month. So you have all these great people that
Speaker 1: had no knowledge of the industry grading the papers, if
Speaker 1: you will. It would be like me grading a nuclear
Speaker 1: physics test. I wouldn't have a clue. And there was
Speaker 1: no one answer because the answers were esoteric. And uh
Speaker 1: So there were promoters that didn't get money. There were
Speaker 1: managers that didn't get money. There were venues that didn't
Speaker 1: get money because they weren't skilled enough to execute this
Speaker 1: monolithic set of paperwork. And they are still out there,
Speaker 1: and these are people I'm still fighting for. Uh. The
Speaker 1: bulk of them did. But the odd thing was the
Speaker 1: only qualification was that your entity lost at least in
Speaker 1: any one quarter. In well, I think everybody lost at
Speaker 1: least in one quarter. But then when you take a
Speaker 1: really small entity, uh that has no ability uh to
Speaker 1: to do this this very sophisticated paperwork, when you get
Speaker 1: to that moment, that poor entity didn't fill it outright
Speaker 1: and didn't get any money. So fast forward to today,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get it reopen, not only for the
Speaker 1: people that were flatly denied the money, but but for
Speaker 1: the promoters and the managers and the agents and the
Speaker 1: business managers. A lot of business managers didn't get any money.
Speaker 1: How do you think they felt? Uh, most of the
Speaker 1: TV people didn't, most of the movie people didn't. Wedding
Speaker 1: planners didn't. Uh. All of the ethnic organizations across America
Speaker 1: that I spoke about didn't. Uh. Just a lot of
Speaker 1: folks didn't. But but but even if it were open
Speaker 1: to them to answer your question, the paperwork was so
Speaker 1: onerous that that it kicked most people out. Okay, assuming
Speaker 1: you got money, was it a loan or a grant?
Speaker 1: It was a loan that could be turned into a grant.
Speaker 1: There was a uh for each of the categories you revenue,
Speaker 1: a promoter, a manager, or an agent. There was a
Speaker 1: list of things that you could and couldn't spend the
Speaker 1: money on. And UH that wasn't really the tough part,
Speaker 1: because it was pretty pretty broad. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I think almost everybody, if not everybody, that
Speaker 1: got alone did convert it to a grant because they
Speaker 1: were so very very forgiving. And what you could spend
Speaker 1: it for. You couldn't spend it for political contributions. Uh.
Speaker 1: You couldn't buy real estate with it you couldn't pay
Speaker 1: off a pre existing loan. Uh. And that was really
Speaker 1: about it. Other than that, you could do about anything. Okay.
Speaker 1: The obvious question is it bend at Lates get money? No,
Speaker 1: we we did not. Uh. The when this all began,
Speaker 1: think about think about a war. Now, bear in mind,
Speaker 1: I was never mean, I was never nasty. I was
Speaker 1: I was always polite. But but you know, in a
Speaker 1: wartime situation, who do they shoot at first? The guy
Speaker 1: carrying the flag. You know, that's certainly back in the
Speaker 1: you know, back in the old days, that the guy
Speaker 1: carrying the flag and battle got shot first. How was
Speaker 1: the guy carrying the flag? I was a guy that
Speaker 1: was on the phone daily with the s b A
Speaker 1: and with Isabella Gooseman and with all of her people,
Speaker 1: not being ugly but pointing out daily uh. And in
Speaker 1: the present again never accused it if never ugly, never mean,
Speaker 1: but just when that's not what the law says. You know,
Speaker 1: they are an administrative agency. Their function is to take
Speaker 1: the law and apply it, not to interpret it. And
Speaker 1: they interpreted it. Okay, Bandit Lates is not a public company,
Speaker 1: is it. No, we're not public and we're not in
Speaker 1: the adult entertainment industry. Right, So why didn't you get money?
Speaker 1: Because they said, we are a supporting service company, and
Speaker 1: then they're frequently asked questions. They said, support and service
Speaker 1: companies can't have money. So how did bandit late to
Speaker 1: make it through the shutdown? H. I am very fiscally conservative, UH,
Speaker 1: and UH hoard cash. So we are the only company
Speaker 1: in the industry that I'm aware of globally. We have
Speaker 1: three hundred employees and we laid nobody off. We gave
Speaker 1: no pay cuts, we didn't reduce benefits. I bet on
Speaker 1: my people because I knew whenever this ended, whenever we
Speaker 1: got to the other side, I wanted to have my
Speaker 1: team together because I knew that the strength in any
Speaker 1: company is the people. And I got great people. And
Speaker 1: I knew that if we shut down and laid people
Speaker 1: off and gave pay cuts and did those kinds of things,
Speaker 1: which which everybody else did because they had to. Uh.
Speaker 1: I knew when we got to the other side, I
Speaker 1: would have this great team still with me. And guess
Speaker 1: what we did, so when the world crank back up,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have having to hire people. I don't mean
Speaker 1: that negative toward any of the people that did. Uh,
Speaker 1: there probably aren't. There's probably no one in live entertainment
Speaker 1: is fiscally conservative and debt diverse and cash have as
Speaker 1: I am or was because we went through you can
Speaker 1: imagine what it costs for sixteen months to pay three
Speaker 1: hundred people, uh info with benefits and all of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: if we shut down today, how much longer can you
Speaker 1: keep open the doors? You know, I asked that question
Speaker 1: December of excuse me February of because you just don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the industry was at zero income. A lot
Speaker 1: of people in the industry. You know, you heard the
Speaker 1: word back in the early days, remember pivot, pivot. You know,
Speaker 1: I said you did this, and you did that. We
Speaker 1: did a lot of strange things that brought in a
Speaker 1: little bit of money. We were very fortunate that the
Speaker 1: company has to operating pieces. One is the live show
Speaker 1: piece with the Garth Brooks and Alice Cooper and Widespread
Speaker 1: Panic and Jimmy Buffett and Carrie Underwood and all these
Speaker 1: Barry Mantle, all these wonderful artists. Uh, and I was
Speaker 1: shut down. We have an integration side that does venues worldwide.
Speaker 1: You know, we put lights and illumination things, and all
Speaker 1: kinds of venues and museums and things that didn't stop
Speaker 1: because all those contracts were let. And and and that's
Speaker 1: a funny point because three or four or five months
Speaker 1: into COVID, when New York and l A were totally shut,
Speaker 1: we had three jobs in n y C in New
Speaker 1: York City, two jobs in l A, two jobs in
Speaker 1: Dallas and and they were union control jobs. And it
Speaker 1: was so funny because you never heard this. Those jobs
Speaker 1: never stopped. And and and the legal forces that would
Speaker 1: come in and try to shut a job, they came
Speaker 1: in once and and and the powers that be on
Speaker 1: that job site just kind of looked at him and said, nah,
Speaker 1: we're not shutting down. And that was the end of that.
Speaker 1: So that a continued. Right. Acts got money, okay because
Speaker 1: they have a road crew under what bann or did
Speaker 1: they get the money? Very few artists got money. And again,
Speaker 1: what I'm telling you, Bob, is not opinion. It's it's
Speaker 1: I worked eighteen hours a day and still do for
Speaker 1: two and a half years talking to everybody. Uh, clearly
Speaker 1: you had you know, your A level action. Madonna's your weekend,
Speaker 1: your Garth Brooks, your your you two's you're rolling stones.
Speaker 1: These are people that could actually shut down hibernate and
Speaker 1: b okay, very few people are at that level. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you got everybody else. Uh, everybody else, to one
Speaker 1: degree or another, struggled mightily. And the perception from the
Speaker 1: public and the perception from Congress was that all stars
Speaker 1: are wealthy, and that all stars should pay all their
Speaker 1: people go away. I mean and I heard that every day.
Speaker 1: Go away. You work for these really famous people. What
Speaker 1: they don't realize is small handful of really wealthy people
Speaker 1: in entertainment. Then there's everybody else and and uh so
Speaker 1: those people struggled. Most None of the big acts got money. Really,
Speaker 1: none of the sort of next level acts got money. Uh.
Speaker 1: The few artists that did get money, many of them
Speaker 1: worked with me. And I'm not going to name names,
Speaker 1: so that wouldn't be fair. But but they worked with me,
Speaker 1: and I would walk them through the paperwork. And most
Speaker 1: of them were what we would call legacy acts. You know,
Speaker 1: big acts in the seventies and eighties that still sell tickets,
Speaker 1: still do quite well. But a lot of the legacy
Speaker 1: acts did get money. And uh, most of them when
Speaker 1: they would get their money, Uh, most of them would
Speaker 1: turn around and pay their crew, which which was really neat.
Speaker 1: You know that they wouldn't just keep it. They wanted
Speaker 1: it to pay their crew. And uh, you know that
Speaker 1: that was very very admirable. Uh. And I'll name one
Speaker 1: act because I think I'm close enough with the act
Speaker 1: to to do this. And and you know, part of uh,
Speaker 1: Toby Mammos Alice Cooper. I mean, Alice jumped in there,
Speaker 1: got p p P. Even before p p P, he
Speaker 1: kept his people paid. I mean, what a guy. You know,
Speaker 1: Alice has perceived as the guy with the makeup and
Speaker 1: all that he is, But Alice is one of the
Speaker 1: nicest guys in the world. He's you know, he's a guy,
Speaker 1: you know. And he was one of the artists that
Speaker 1: just said, Hey, I'm taking care of my folks. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. And then they got some p
Speaker 1: p P and then they got the second round of
Speaker 1: p p P and they took care of their people.
Speaker 1: But but there were a lot of legacy acts that
Speaker 1: did that through p p P but but not sp
Speaker 1: O G. But again, there were a small handful of
Speaker 1: artists that did get s v O G money. Because
Speaker 1: I walked him through it, and a primarily legacy. I'm
Speaker 1: unaware of what we would call a big act that
Speaker 1: got in the s v O G. Money. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're the ring leader. Are there any other Michael Strickland's
Speaker 1: in this world? Or was it everything on your shoulders? Uh?
Speaker 1: From the holistic point of view, it was just me
Speaker 1: when this, when this whole thing began, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that literally no one else in the show business that
Speaker 1: I knew or met had any experience in politics or
Speaker 1: in lobbying. And I thought along the way, well, people
Speaker 1: will join me, and eventually I would talk to people
Speaker 1: and they go, well, I can't do that, but I've
Speaker 1: never done that. I don't know what to do. And
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, no one directly joined me. Now,
Speaker 1: having said that, hundreds of thousands of people indirectly joined me.
Speaker 1: Each time I would send out a newsletter, which was
Speaker 1: two times a week, three times a week, I would
Speaker 1: send out a link. Right, your Congressman, Wright, your senator,
Speaker 1: write this letter, do this thing, make this phone call.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of thousands of people sprung into action. So you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't me. I was just sort of the guy
Speaker 1: carrying the flag and the first big initiative we did
Speaker 1: was was read Alar Restart, which was phenomenal. But but
Speaker 1: then we went through NAM National Association of Music Merchandisers
Speaker 1: and Joe Lamond and the great people there, and uh,
Speaker 1: they put up a website and we got hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people to go onto the website and it
Speaker 1: automatically sent letters, you know, to your senators and and
Speaker 1: and representatives and whatnot. And we had a bunch of
Speaker 1: initiatives like that, so it started out really broad based.
Speaker 1: And then then we then we began to focus on
Speaker 1: state by state, region by region. And yes, I had
Speaker 1: millions of people that made this happen. Where it would
Speaker 1: disintegrate or fall apart would be twofold one. When people
Speaker 1: got money, many of them said oh, I'm good and
Speaker 1: walked away from the cause. Uh. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing was people just lost their heart and they walked away.
Speaker 1: So I shifted from from leader to cheerleader and trying
Speaker 1: to keep people's spirits up. And I'm still in that role,
Speaker 1: but was two and a half years later. If you're
Speaker 1: one of those folks that haven't gotten money, it's probably
Speaker 1: very hard to maintain hope. But as human beings. That's
Speaker 1: all we have is hope. And so my role has
Speaker 1: been to keep people pumped up and and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: at first I thought that some of these big entities
Speaker 1: could and would participate. But then the principles that these
Speaker 1: huge entities would explain to me. You know, we're publicly traded,
Speaker 1: you know, we we can't we can't legally be go
Speaker 1: involved in this kind of a thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I never thought about that, so but but I can
Speaker 1: tell you that. And again I'll use a name. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of misconceptions, and I'm not getting into
Speaker 1: the politics of whether you like or dislike Live Nation
Speaker 1: or a g or oak View or any of the
Speaker 1: big boy companies. But but Michael Rapino was more engaged
Speaker 1: and more involved and did more things quietly behind the
Speaker 1: scenes for the good of the industry than anyone because
Speaker 1: Michael knew how vertically uh integrated this industry is, and
Speaker 1: he knows that it's in the best interests of Live
Speaker 1: Nation from you know, all of the downstream people if
Speaker 1: you will to survive, because you know, if if if
Speaker 1: like the Chana Tower, if the bottom two thirds collapses,
Speaker 1: the big piece on top is in Trouble and and
Speaker 1: Michael and and and I and uh Ja Marciano and
Speaker 1: Corn Capshaw and Charlie Walker at C three uh and
Speaker 1: uh two or three other people UH conversed regularly. Uh
Speaker 1: Wayne Forte Uh you know the the agent. Uh. These
Speaker 1: people were also heavily involved. Uh. And we have these
Speaker 1: weekly conversations and daily emails. And these people did stuff
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. Yet none of them benefited from it.
Speaker 1: But but they wanted to help the industry. And people
Speaker 1: will never know that. And a number of times I
Speaker 1: have talked to people who had a very negative opinion
Speaker 1: of some of the big folks. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you don't realize these these guys and gals were out
Speaker 1: there fighting for you. Uh. And they found that hard
Speaker 1: to believe. Uh, but I'm here to tell you it
Speaker 1: is true. Uh. It's amazing. So what's the status of
Speaker 1: the Entertainment Association right now? And what is the pitch
Speaker 1: to people? What I began doing November one of last
Speaker 1: year and I'm going to do through April the fifteenth
Speaker 1: of this year is Uh. I have already done hundreds
Speaker 1: of zooms and personal meetings and phone calls. I've done
Speaker 1: to date fifteen public speaking events to larger crowds like
Speaker 1: the one I did it Aspen. Uh. I'm going to
Speaker 1: post Star to speak, and next month I'm going to
Speaker 1: NAM to speak. I've got some other sort of large things.
Speaker 1: I'm spreading information, which is why I appreciate what you've
Speaker 1: done here today. Uh. And I'm going to continue to
Speaker 1: do that. And then I email people the PDF file
Speaker 1: and and I'm listening to people, and I'm having a
Speaker 1: lot of conversations. And I already have through conversations with
Speaker 1: entertainment people as well as with political people. I'm shaping
Speaker 1: a vision of what this might look like. And and
Speaker 1: bear in mind, this involves the NFL, the NBA, major
Speaker 1: League base anybody that needs a crowd. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: going back into the early days, I was going home
Speaker 1: one day and Wayne Fordy called me up and it
Speaker 1: was ten o'clock at night and I was headed home.
Speaker 1: And this is right, remember right when the COVID shots
Speaker 1: first came out, Wayne said, hey, you know what we
Speaker 1: need to do? And I said what Wayne? This was
Speaker 1: his his idea. He says, we need to stand up
Speaker 1: all of the venues and make them places to get shots.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, how would we do that? And
Speaker 1: he goes, Corn Capshaw has already doing it. So what
Speaker 1: do you means? Well, Corn's got an old shopping center
Speaker 1: there in Charlottesville and he's you set up whatever he's
Speaker 1: set up, and and he's helping the community and people
Speaker 1: are getting jabs at the and now your kiding and
Speaker 1: he went and now I said, well we could never
Speaker 1: do this. He goes, yeah, And we had this great conversation.
Speaker 1: So I hung up and called Corn right then and
Speaker 1: Corn said, yeah, that's what we're doing. You know, we're
Speaker 1: doing these shots here in Charlottesville. So I told him
Speaker 1: what Wayne had said. Well, him and Wayne had already
Speaker 1: talked and and uh and and that that whole group
Speaker 1: I mentioned to talk. So literally, in three days time,
Speaker 1: uh Rapino agreed to offer all of the Live Nation venues,
Speaker 1: Marciano all the a G venues. Uh. I called up
Speaker 1: Jimmy Haslam and within a day I'm talking to Roger
Speaker 1: Goodell and I had all the NFL venues and uh
Speaker 1: then uh Ruten Smith, who who owns he passed away
Speaker 1: last year. He owned eleven NASCAR speedways. He hooked me
Speaker 1: up with Frances and we had all all of the
Speaker 1: NASCAR speedways and and and and all these other So
Speaker 1: in four days time, we had all these venues all
Speaker 1: across America. Was it was amazing how people came to
Speaker 1: the table and offered their venues up to give shots.
Speaker 1: And and that was because of this this community that
Speaker 1: we had and these people simply saying yes. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, and you saw it on the news,
Speaker 1: we had all these shot clinics. I went up to
Speaker 1: the speedway in Bristol, the Bristol Motor Speedway where they
Speaker 1: have the Bristol five, and NBC interviewed me up there
Speaker 1: because that's when it was just starting. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was just amazing to watch the synergy of how all
Speaker 1: these people could and would work together. So I'm sitting
Speaker 1: at my desk one day and my cell phone rings
Speaker 1: and it's John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods. And he
Speaker 1: introduced himself and he said, I've got more refrigerator tractor
Speaker 1: trailers than anybody in the world. I want to offer
Speaker 1: them up to all the uh thevaccine around. So I
Speaker 1: immediately connected him with Jeffrey Zentz, who at the time
Speaker 1: was the COVID czar in White House, and John provided
Speaker 1: the uh, the tractor traders to haul the the vaccines
Speaker 1: around and and John and I became great friends, and
Speaker 1: all of that became tremendous friends. And and Rapino put
Speaker 1: his people to work when this that initiative started, and
Speaker 1: we sent a letter to the president. You may have
Speaker 1: seen it, and it's it's signed by Live Nation and
Speaker 1: a G and all those entities that I mentioned to
Speaker 1: the President saying we're here to help you. And and
Speaker 1: it was the power of Live Nation and a G
Speaker 1: in the NFL and all these big names. Uh, that
Speaker 1: thing that letter broke on the on the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's pretty big to get something of
Speaker 1: that nature in the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: But but again, that was the power of these people
Speaker 1: making these things happen. And we moved forward with that
Speaker 1: team ever since then and and got all the vaccines distributed. Okay,
Speaker 1: but today the world has opened up today anyway, what's
Speaker 1: the pitch to meet for someone to become a member
Speaker 1: of the Entertainment Association? And if they do become a member,
Speaker 1: is there going to be money involved? How's it all
Speaker 1: gonna work? That's why I'm having conversations. There is what
Speaker 1: I call my belief. I don't want to own it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to steer it. I don't want to
Speaker 1: control it. I just want to make sure we do it.
Speaker 1: Here is my belief today, and it hasn't moved, this
Speaker 1: core belief. No, I don't think you build it by
Speaker 1: having Uh all these people pay ten dollars pick a number.
Speaker 1: According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, we are
Speaker 1: a one trillion dollar industry with ten million people. That's sizeable. Uh,
Speaker 1: restaurants are are Restaurants are a six hundred almost a
Speaker 1: seven hundred billion dollar industry with five million people. So
Speaker 1: we're ish twice the size of the restaurant industry. But
Speaker 1: what do they have that we don't. The National Restaurants Association,
Speaker 1: you know, they have a voice on the hill. Two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, all of what we would call entertainment gave
Speaker 1: two million dollars political contributions. That counts Live Nation in
Speaker 1: the NFL and Major League Baseball and everybody else. So
Speaker 1: what's what's the pitch here? The pitches? It will never
Speaker 1: work if we have to have an organization in a
Speaker 1: structure and people giving money and people keeping up with it.
Speaker 1: I believe we're gonna end up with an organization seated
Speaker 1: in d C in a lobbying firm, uh, that represents
Speaker 1: our goodwill and the major players, the big organizations within
Speaker 1: this industry. There is a number and and I think
Speaker 1: that number was asked when you were an Aspen and
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to answer it here, but
Speaker 1: but there is a number where if you take these top,
Speaker 1: say twenty large entities, and each one put in X dollars,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a line item on their budget, yet
Speaker 1: it would be enough money to fund operations. And what
Speaker 1: are operations? Operations very simply are You're gonna have to
Speaker 1: give some level of funding to one hundred senators. That's
Speaker 1: the most elite club in the world, the U. S. Senate.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to give some level of money
Speaker 1: every year to one hundred senators and probably twenty five
Speaker 1: House members representatives, the people that are on the right committees.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna be making annual donations to probably a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five people. You're gonna have to pay
Speaker 1: some amount of money, obviously to the firm to do
Speaker 1: the lobbying, and all of a sudden when you go
Speaker 1: in and sit down and talk to them, which I
Speaker 1: have done for two and a half years, when their
Speaker 1: guy or gal picks up that piece of paper and goes, huh.
Speaker 1: Entertainment Association. They give us fifteen thousand dollars every year.
Speaker 1: Send them in, whereas what we went through now was
Speaker 1: the Rodeo Association. Send them away. I mean we had
Speaker 1: no voice. No one had a voice because no one
Speaker 1: you know, whatever you think of politics, uh, And you've
Speaker 1: probably heard me say this and ask me that there
Speaker 1: is no red or blue, there is only green, and
Speaker 1: and that's that's not a funny statement, that's the truth.
Speaker 1: It's it's all about the money in d C. And
Speaker 1: if you're not doing something uh for a politician, they've
Speaker 1: little reason to do anything for you. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean that negative or ugly, but we have to create
Speaker 1: this entity and it has to have one purpose. And
Speaker 1: you can't vary off this because there's only one thing
Speaker 1: that brings everybody that needs a crowd to make a
Speaker 1: living together, and that is to either prevent and or
Speaker 1: deal with a future shutdown period into report. We can't
Speaker 1: go beyond that because the minute you wander away from that, well,
Speaker 1: what about ticket pricing or you know, ten thousand issues.
Speaker 1: Some people would before that, some people would be against that,
Speaker 1: but we're all needing to deal with potential shutdowns. And
Speaker 1: again right now, there are several conditions that people in
Speaker 1: Congress want to shut us down right now. There are
Speaker 1: people in Congress that don't believe we should be having
Speaker 1: crowds right now. There are people in Congress that believes
Speaker 1: if any act of war anywhere in the world happens,
Speaker 1: we should shut down. Thank nine eleven, you know, the
Speaker 1: country shut for five days after nine eleven. Uh. There
Speaker 1: are people in Congress right now that think we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be having public gatherings today because of the social unrest
Speaker 1: that's going on. So, you know, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of what we would call fringe thoughts out there in Congress. Uh,
Speaker 1: left and right, red and blue about shutting down and
Speaker 1: what if one of those takes hold. You know, what
Speaker 1: if one of those takes hold. There are two industries
Speaker 1: that were totally shut live live in entertainment and cruise lines.
Speaker 1: And cruise lines. You know, that's that's a handful of
Speaker 1: companies and they all went to the sauties for money.
Speaker 1: So that's their solution, and that's why they're not really
Speaker 1: in this conversation. But for us, we are tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of little and big companies that need a single voice,
Speaker 1: and we need a plan, and we need an agreement
Speaker 1: with Congress, and we need a voice with Congress to
Speaker 1: first prevent and then second and or deal with a
Speaker 1: future shutdown. And that's pretty much it. It's it's a
Speaker 1: real simple it's a real simple process. And and anyone
Speaker 1: that that takes the position it will never happen again.
Speaker 1: Did you ever think it would happen the first time? Okay,
Speaker 1: playing Devil's advocate here, your heart's in the right place.
Speaker 1: You've done a lot of work, but it's seems pretty
Speaker 1: amorphous to me. How do we nail it down and
Speaker 1: make it happen? First and foremost, it's talking to as
Speaker 1: many people as I can. And again that's why I
Speaker 1: appreciate this offer, uh, in this opportunity, Bob, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people are going to hear this, UH, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's winning hearts and minds one at
Speaker 1: a time. But but the ultimate, the ultimate god to
Speaker 1: achieving this or the decision makers in the largest firms
Speaker 1: at the highest levels believe it or not. Sports leagues
Speaker 1: are probably the easiest because they have a league. If
Speaker 1: you get to buy in from Roger Goodell, you've got
Speaker 1: the NFL. All of the sports leagues sit in that situation.
Speaker 1: So most of the sports things are are actually easier.
Speaker 1: But when you get into all of the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of people in entities within the traditional live entertainment
Speaker 1: music and that kind of a thing. Yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: the big boys, the Live Nation, day a G, the
Speaker 1: c a A, the William Morris, the Oak View, you
Speaker 1: know those people. But then there's so many other ones
Speaker 1: aren't there. And if if if the top twenty firms
Speaker 1: can understand this and can agree to this and and
Speaker 1: confunded this, then there's this, then there's this mechanism that
Speaker 1: will take care of everybody. And and no one firm,
Speaker 1: no one person can control it. Can can be the person.
Speaker 1: And that's why I say it's got to have a
Speaker 1: single focus. You. You can't wander off into other causes
Speaker 1: because then other people will say, well, you know, company
Speaker 1: X is controlling this and they're going to pass legislation
Speaker 1: to benefit themselves about whatever. No, the whole thing has
Speaker 1: to be focused on what do we do to prevent
Speaker 1: and then and or deal with the future shutdown? And
Speaker 1: and I've have for a lot of talking. I've got
Speaker 1: some pretty good ideas of a very effective path, and
Speaker 1: I'll share this with you. Uh. This is the first
Speaker 1: time I've said this publicly. Most people don't know, but
Speaker 1: the United States is cut up into UH sectors and
Speaker 1: UH the FEMA has cut America into sectors. And FEMA
Speaker 1: issues five year contracts to each sector, to construction companies
Speaker 1: to do remediation. In other words, Katrina non eleven, those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. When not eleven happened, they didn't go
Speaker 1: out and get bids to clean it up. A good
Speaker 1: friend of mine, oddly enough, had the contract for for
Speaker 1: New York. So when the towers came down, UH Phillips
Speaker 1: and Jordan's the name of the company, they went up
Speaker 1: to New York. And they're still up there doing remediation.
Speaker 1: But that deal was struck before that Katrina deal was
Speaker 1: struck before that. And that's what the government has done,
Speaker 1: UH for for national emergencies, for for for dealing with
Speaker 1: things of that nature. They have five year contracts for
Speaker 1: every area of the country so that they're not chasing
Speaker 1: bids at that moment. I believe our solution lays in
Speaker 1: something like that. I believe that that we get a
Speaker 1: lobbying firm and that we have conversations with the federal
Speaker 1: government that if indeed they ever shut the country down again,
Speaker 1: here's the plan for those of you in the live
Speaker 1: entertainment sector. Whatever that plan is, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: get it done. Now, let's get it in paper. Now.
Speaker 1: It's almost an insurance policy. Uh. And the federal government
Speaker 1: has done that in many other areas. It's it's not
Speaker 1: just in the in the recovery area. And again I've
Speaker 1: had this conversation with legislators, uh, and and they're all
Speaker 1: kind of given me the you know, the the positive
Speaker 1: head Bob. Obviously that has to be funded. But uh,
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning of COVID, and I think
Speaker 1: you know what I'm about to say, Uh, you couldn't
Speaker 1: turn the TV on that you didn't see sympathy for
Speaker 1: restaurants and gems. Restaurants and gems, restaurants and gyms, never
Speaker 1: for entertainment. Why you work for rich pop stars, they
Speaker 1: should take care of you. Everybody eats at restaurants. A
Speaker 1: lot of people go to gyms. A lot of sympathy
Speaker 1: for those two UH fields. There was no sympathy for us,
Speaker 1: none whatsoever. But they do now know. And indeed, going
Speaker 1: into the inauguration, when when uh, when when UH Trump
Speaker 1: went out of office and UH Biden came into office.
Speaker 1: I got together a bunch of industry leaders and I said, guys,
Speaker 1: here's what we need to do. Let's just refuse to
Speaker 1: do any production services for anything to do with the inauguration.
Speaker 1: That'll get their attention. And one company, including mine, did that,
Speaker 1: and we all sat in the meeting and everybody, we
Speaker 1: can't do that. Why we had just come out of
Speaker 1: ten months of no income and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you've got this, you know, two million dollar contract to
Speaker 1: do whatever the show is. Nobody would not do that.
Speaker 1: My company did that field of flags. If you saw,
Speaker 1: you know, all those thousands of flags down the mall,
Speaker 1: that that was bandit lights. We lit those flags. We
Speaker 1: got paid very well for it. It was a C
Speaker 1: three production. Uh. It was a big, big, big thing.
Speaker 1: And I have to say I didn't walk away from it.
Speaker 1: But would I have walked away from it if everybody
Speaker 1: else would have? Yes, I would. But but nobody wanted to,
Speaker 1: and I get it it was economic, but those are
Speaker 1: the kind of moves that we're gonna have to make.
Speaker 1: I think it will take the better part of a
Speaker 1: year and a half to two years from today to
Speaker 1: get us all together, to get a lobbyist and to
Speaker 1: work with Congress to them up with a plan. Because
Speaker 1: we were the only people that were shut down. We
Speaker 1: didn't have takeaway, we didn't have delivery, we didn't have
Speaker 1: a muted version of being open where we could keep
Speaker 1: people six ft apart. It just doesn't work for what
Speaker 1: we do. So I think we can come up with
Speaker 1: a solution. Uh, there's there's a lot of bright minds
Speaker 1: out there. It's going to be a private public partnership
Speaker 1: to figure out that solution. I'm willing to spend whatever
Speaker 1: time it takes. Everything I have done in two and
Speaker 1: a half years, I've personally funded every airplane ticket, every hotel,
Speaker 1: every plane flight, every meal, every everything that There's no
Speaker 1: organization behind me, there's no funding behind me. This is
Speaker 1: just the right thing to do. And and and that's
Speaker 1: that's my mission, is to keep having these conversations. Okay,
Speaker 1: the music business, other than the big corporations is a
Speaker 1: very street business, and a lot of entertainment is run
Speaker 1: by an intimidation. To what degree were the sports leagues
Speaker 1: and all these other things to what did we were
Speaker 1: they open to you? What what do you mean open
Speaker 1: to me? They would say, oh, that's that guy you
Speaker 1: know in entertainment concerts. That's a fraction of our income.
Speaker 1: We have our own people. We don't need it, you know.
Speaker 1: The you're kind of leaving out the interesting part. The NFL,
Speaker 1: the NBA, and uh, the MLB had phenomenal and college
Speaker 1: football and college basketball had phenomenal television revenue, so you know,
Speaker 1: they had a model that, Okay, we know we've got
Speaker 1: this phenomenal money just from TV. But having said that,
Speaker 1: an NFL stadium that was empty with the protein plane
Speaker 1: getting phenomenal TV money is one thing. But putting the
Speaker 1: fans in the butts. Uh. The incremental revenue just in
Speaker 1: the ticket sales is in and of itself, is not
Speaker 1: that much. But it wasn't just the fans in the
Speaker 1: seats that was missing. The fans and the seats drove
Speaker 1: merchandise sales, drove beer sales, drove food sales, drove sales
Speaker 1: within the city. You know, people coming and staying in hotels,
Speaker 1: and in many cases the people that own those teams
Speaker 1: have interests in real estate and restaurants and other things.
Speaker 1: So there is a bigger net loss, and it's primarily
Speaker 1: the big proteins. When you get into the semi pro
Speaker 1: and and and and a lot of the other sports.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not television revenue money. So those people
Speaker 1: are on board, and they're listening to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: even the big people are listening on Yeah, I get it. Now,
Speaker 1: how much let's assume we've created this house, how much
Speaker 1: revenue would go to say, and I'm making this up
Speaker 1: in NFL are Alive Nation or inn a G. There
Speaker 1: are all kinds of laws, There are all kinds of rules.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of regulations that will probably prevent
Speaker 1: those people from directly benefiting from any kind of federal
Speaker 1: funding because they're all out there. Uh. Having said that,
Speaker 1: the buildings around it, the stadiums, the restaurants, the things
Speaker 1: that they may or may not have a vested interest in,
Speaker 1: will all benefit. And and therein, you know, is why
Speaker 1: it would work. Uh. And finding employees, you know, as
Speaker 1: you know, when they opened back up all of these
Speaker 1: sporting arenas and whatnot. They couldn't find people, They couldn't
Speaker 1: find ticket takers, they couldn't find janitors, they couldn't find
Speaker 1: people that work on the field. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just so upside down and still is still is. You know,
Speaker 1: the people problem hasn't recovered. So there are so many
Speaker 1: economic plays, uh, you know outside of just the pure
Speaker 1: gives some money to a great big to the NFL. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's so many wins around the NFL because the NFL
Speaker 1: and the NBA and Live Nation and Age, all these big,
Speaker 1: big people they know they don't exist without the echoes
Speaker 1: system around them, and supporting that echosystem around them, uh
Speaker 1: is necessary to their survival. Okay, we're back up now
Speaker 1: presently looking in hindsight, how many people left the business?
Speaker 1: Companies went out of business? You know what was the
Speaker 1: attrition factor? Did most of the people muddle through? The
Speaker 1: great question? Bob? And again, what I'm about to tell
Speaker 1: you is not a not a theory. This comes from
Speaker 1: talking to one point three million people for two and
Speaker 1: a half years. About thirty of organized entities within the
Speaker 1: live entertainment industry are gone. Now that they're just gone.
Speaker 1: Most of them were small. You know there was a
Speaker 1: mom and pop shop that did this, that or the
Speaker 1: other thing, and and they just went away. Will they
Speaker 1: be missed? Would anybody know the name of the company
Speaker 1: and say, hey, that comes And probably not, But tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, some of which spent their entire lives.
Speaker 1: I had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman from southern California.
Speaker 1: He was eighty years old. He and his wife, and
Speaker 1: his two sons and their two wives did four state
Speaker 1: fairs in southern California. They did cotton candy and corn
Speaker 1: dogs and elephant ears, and they had done it forever
Speaker 1: and ever and ever. And this gentleman ended up on
Speaker 1: the phone with me repeatedly, help me, help me, help me.
Speaker 1: And of course at the end of the day he
Speaker 1: got no uh, he got no uh S V O G.
Speaker 1: He ended up getting some P P P. But but
Speaker 1: this is a guy you wouldn't think about, you know,
Speaker 1: he's a concessionaire for four state fairs. He had a building.
Speaker 1: It was worth two million dollars. So we end up
Speaker 1: on the phone and he went to several lenders to
Speaker 1: get seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He pledged the
Speaker 1: building as collateral, and he wanted the seven fifty, you know,
Speaker 1: to carry him and his family through through COVID. He
Speaker 1: couldn't get anybody lending the money because he had no
Speaker 1: balance sheet and he had no income statement that stood
Speaker 1: up because they were zero. So he was kind of
Speaker 1: in catch twenty two. That's just one example, because that's
Speaker 1: a really odd business and you wouldn't think about it.
Speaker 1: And eventually, you know, I helped him, and eventually he
Speaker 1: got to work out. And but there's there's so many
Speaker 1: people like that that There's a dry cleaner in in
Speaker 1: New York City that does the bulk of the dry
Speaker 1: cleaning for Broadway. You know. They have a big plant
Speaker 1: over on Long Island and at night they go to
Speaker 1: Broadway and pick up all the costumes and take them
Speaker 1: and clean them and then bring them back. They can't
Speaker 1: do your dry cleaning and my dry cleaning. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not set up to do it. They were shut down.
Speaker 1: There's a lovely lady that has a company in New
Speaker 1: York and in Los Angeles. All she does is rent
Speaker 1: furniture to Broadway in movies. There's nothing else she could do,
Speaker 1: you know, because she can't just go on the street
Speaker 1: and rent furniture. Uh So, there's so many of those
Speaker 1: stories that you don't know about that are out there,
Speaker 1: and so many of those people that need help. And
Speaker 1: I've gotten to know all of those people, tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of them. Well, many of those people went away.
Speaker 1: About oddly enough, about thirty percent of the people in
Speaker 1: live entertainment. Now I'm leaving sports out of this, but
Speaker 1: about thirty percent of the people in live entertainment left.
Speaker 1: Who who left primarily people under twenty five who had
Speaker 1: just come in and they said to themselves, you know,
Speaker 1: this is nuts. I don't want to go through this again.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna do something else. And and the people
Speaker 1: and currently and gen Z or whatever it is, they're
Speaker 1: gonna have h depending on who you believe, about seventeen
Speaker 1: jobs in their life. You and I, Bob are old enough.
Speaker 1: We were gonna have one point four jobs in our life.
Speaker 1: I haven't hit the point for yet. I've had one.
Speaker 1: But so a lot of the younger folks left because
Speaker 1: they were going to have multiple jobs anyway, and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm bailing. Then you had people fifty five plus that
Speaker 1: were near the end of their run in rock and
Speaker 1: roll if you will, and and and daring COVID. They
Speaker 1: got a job at home Depot or Amazon, and guess what,
Speaker 1: they had health insurance and they had retirement things they
Speaker 1: had never had. And they said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: got five more years, I got ten more years. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay here at Amazon. And they they left. You
Speaker 1: had a lot of truck drivers for show business that
Speaker 1: just got a day rate and that's it. They ended
Speaker 1: up driving for Amazon and all those kinds of people
Speaker 1: and they went, holy cow, I'm home at night, get
Speaker 1: to see the family and benefits. So they left. So
Speaker 1: that kind of left. Uh, that was thirty percent of
Speaker 1: the industry that left. The seventy in the middle tended
Speaker 1: to be between thirty and fifty. And those were people
Speaker 1: that were kind of trapped and it was all they
Speaker 1: knew to do. And again I'm not making this up.
Speaker 1: I know it from talking to tens of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: And that's where we sit right now. A lot of
Speaker 1: really good people left and because of the labor shortage
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, and this is not unique to entertainment.
Speaker 1: It has happening everywhere. Uh. We we have people, unqualified
Speaker 1: people coming into our industry who don't know what they're doing,
Speaker 1: demanding tremendous sums of money and in many cases getting
Speaker 1: it because they're the only body standing. And I think
Speaker 1: you know that's happening everywhere else. The typical warehouse worker
Speaker 1: went from twelve dollars an hour to twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: an hour overnight. Well, it happened in rock and roll too.
Speaker 1: And uh, well I know a very big promoter he
Speaker 1: had he pieces people everybody, ushers and etcetera thirty bucks
Speaker 1: an hour because he found less than thirty You don't
Speaker 1: know if they'll show up. Ye. Yeah, And and it's
Speaker 1: not it's not sustainable. Okay, let's talk about you. Where
Speaker 1: did you grow up? I grew up in extreme East Tennessee,
Speaker 1: in a little bitty town called Kingsport. And and that
Speaker 1: that's why we're sitting here talking today, because of where
Speaker 1: I grew up. And what did your parents do for
Speaker 1: a living? My father was a nuclear physicist and a
Speaker 1: research chemist, and he worked for Eastman Kodak. What a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know is, uh, parts of atomic
Speaker 1: bomb were built in Oakridge, Tennessee. Uh, the enriched geranium
Speaker 1: came out of Oakridge. My father was one of the
Speaker 1: people in Oakridge enriching uranium. Kodak ran the plant under contract.
Speaker 1: My dad worked with Oppenheimer and uh Einstein directly, and
Speaker 1: I've got pictures of Dad with with those two people.
Speaker 1: So when the war was over, he could either go
Speaker 1: to Rochester, New York, which was Kodak's headquarters, or to
Speaker 1: their plant in this little backward town called Kingsport, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: which Eastman. Kodak made all their film there at the time.
Speaker 1: That's where he went. So that's where I grew up
Speaker 1: and and to to connect the dots, that's how I
Speaker 1: got in rock and roll. I fell into love with
Speaker 1: show business at age five. I had seen concerts and whatnot.
Speaker 1: In the sixties there were no lights, you know that.
Speaker 1: The band came in two station wagons, set up their
Speaker 1: own junk, had two little tucked and rolled custom Pa speakers,
Speaker 1: set their own stuff up, had one guy that mixed
Speaker 1: sound and got to check and and then left. Well,
Speaker 1: I took the lights out of the high school theater
Speaker 1: and put them on the handrails around the gym. And
Speaker 1: this was with the Monkeys, the Beach Boys, part of
Speaker 1: the enerrators. Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons, which is
Speaker 1: where I met first met Roy and Jane Claire from
Speaker 1: Claire Brothers, uh and all these acts. In the late sixties,
Speaker 1: the grassroots weren't it, and from the grassroots to this
Speaker 1: day is one of my dearest friends. But but so
Speaker 1: I started taking these lights from the theater down and
Speaker 1: why did we get these rock shows? Well, in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight they built a new high school and we
Speaker 1: had a big Jodesic dome that had two very unique features.
Speaker 1: Air conditioning which was unheard of in nineteen and no poles,
Speaker 1: so no obstructions. Knoxville used to get the rock shows.
Speaker 1: And it's two it's a it's a hundred miles away,
Speaker 1: but they're big venue, had poles and no air conditioning.
Speaker 1: So this little backwater town started getting these major rock shows.
Speaker 1: And here's this kid putting lights on the stage. And
Speaker 1: they would get a little business card from me that
Speaker 1: I made in a v class in school, you know,
Speaker 1: with my phone number, own it and and say they
Speaker 1: would say, can you come to Chattanooga, can you come
Speaker 1: to Lexington, can you you know whatever? And so I
Speaker 1: started going wider and wider and wider as I was
Speaker 1: doing it, there was a guy in New York doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, there was people in southern California doing it.
Speaker 1: But that was the psychedelic here. I remember when you
Speaker 1: saw the Jefferson airplane with all the psychedelic stuff and
Speaker 1: and the Grateful Dead and all of that. I was
Speaker 1: emulating those people. I was getting projectors and putting oil
Speaker 1: and water in slithes and doing all this goofy stuff,
Speaker 1: emulating these people in New York and l A and
Speaker 1: and that was the genesis of it. And and uh,
Speaker 1: my senior year in high school, we grossed two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, which was pretty incredible. No, we spend it all.
Speaker 1: But then I went came down to ut to get
Speaker 1: my undergraduate degree, and uh we did two million dollars
Speaker 1: out of my dorm room my senior year at high school.
Speaker 1: And uh then when I went to law school. Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the acts I had signed was Kenny Rogers
Speaker 1: and he was nobody. Well he Lucile or the Gambler
Speaker 1: or whatever the hell. His first hit was hit and
Speaker 1: the next thing, you know, Kenny Rodgers the biggest artist
Speaker 1: in the world. And I'm in law school and I'm
Speaker 1: also Kenny Rogers production manager running his show. And uh
Speaker 1: it just when I got out of law school. My
Speaker 1: parents thought, Okay, he's going to be a lawyer. And
Speaker 1: I looked at Mom and Dad and I said, I'm
Speaker 1: with the biggest artist in the world. Why would I
Speaker 1: give up this business? And it wasn't just Kenny. I
Speaker 1: mean we were doing new writers of the Purple Sage
Speaker 1: and and Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons and the
Speaker 1: Grassroots and Conway Twitty and Loretta le nd I mean,
Speaker 1: we had all these clients and and I just kept going.
Speaker 1: But but those formative years and that formal education, which
Speaker 1: I'm a fierce believer in education again enabled me to
Speaker 1: do what I've done for the last two and a
Speaker 1: half years. But that's sort of the long short version
Speaker 1: of a new high school and a little rednecked town
Speaker 1: putting me in our trajectory for the rest of my life. Okay,
Speaker 1: you finished law school. Did you take the part exam?
Speaker 1: Never never intended to. Let's go back. Your father is
Speaker 1: an academic. Essentially, where do you get your entrepreneurial spirit?
Speaker 1: Really two or three things, And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people probably have this same story. Um, do you
Speaker 1: remember in high school, they had accolades, you know, uh
Speaker 1: best personality, you know, all those things. They were in
Speaker 1: the yearbook. Uh. We had off the record in in
Speaker 1: in the school newspaper sort of anti uh accolades. And
Speaker 1: my senior year at high school, I was voted least
Speaker 1: likely to succeed. And as stupid as that sounds, that
Speaker 1: was that was a real motivator. I mean, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll show them. And at the same time, when we
Speaker 1: wrapped up high school and we're getting ready to go
Speaker 1: to college, uh, my group of five or six buddies
Speaker 1: that that were we were doing this together, high school buddies.
Speaker 1: They all looked at me. You know, we had ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in the bike, and we took it and
Speaker 1: went to the beach and got a house and drank
Speaker 1: as much beer as we possibly could. And they said,
Speaker 1: now there's no point in carrying on. This will never
Speaker 1: be anything. So between my buddies telling me this will
Speaker 1: never be anything and that newspaper telling me I was
Speaker 1: the least likely to succeed, I've always been one of
Speaker 1: those people that, you know, tell me what I can't do,
Speaker 1: and I'll go prove you wrong. Even if it's bad
Speaker 1: for me, and and that really drove me. But again,
Speaker 1: the classical education is what prepared me for it, you know,
Speaker 1: the going to school stuff and and learning all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. Okay, why lights is supposed to sound reinforcement
Speaker 1: or whatever? Simple answer. You never see anybody leave a
Speaker 1: rock show going. Boy, that looked terrible, but half the
Speaker 1: people that leave a rock show go that sounded terrible.
Speaker 1: True story. I mean, to this day, you can't make
Speaker 1: everybody happy with the audio. Did you ever go to
Speaker 1: any concert and everybody going out going, Now that was amazing,
Speaker 1: that sounded really good. Some of them do, maybe most
Speaker 1: of them do. But I never heard anybody complain about
Speaker 1: the lights. So I just figured that's a better path.
Speaker 1: And how did you get the light side of the
Speaker 1: theater to install them when you wanted? Well, again, let's
Speaker 1: go back. This was night in the South. Nothing was locked.
Speaker 1: Churches didn't lock, schools didn't lock, theaters didn't locked. Nothing locked.
Speaker 1: So by the time I was a senior, on any
Speaker 1: given weekend back then, rock shows always played in high
Speaker 1: school gym's uh and or National Guard armories. They didn't
Speaker 1: have the you know, the monolithic basketball arena as yet
Speaker 1: so that's where they played. And uh so the shows
Speaker 1: were fairly small comparatively, and they always played with the
Speaker 1: roof light zone. So what I would do, uh would
Speaker 1: be take all the lights out of the high school.
Speaker 1: And by the time we were seniors, if we had
Speaker 1: two or three different gigs going on in a given weekend,
Speaker 1: we would take the lights from the high school, from
Speaker 1: both of the junior high schools, and then we would
Speaker 1: work our way down to the two movie theaters downtown
Speaker 1: and take gear from the movie theaters. But but on
Speaker 1: Sunday night we would always have to go back and
Speaker 1: put all the lights back. And hence the name bandit
Speaker 1: we we we were taking the equipment, but we always
Speaker 1: gave it back and and no one knew that. And
Speaker 1: fast forward to two thousand and eight, the city of
Speaker 1: Kingsport gave me the keys to the city and it
Speaker 1: was quite an honor, and we had this whole big thing,
Speaker 1: and I got to speak and I told this story.
Speaker 1: And you should have seen these people sitting in the
Speaker 1: audience and their jaws dropped because no one knew. You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't tell them. We just took the lights and
Speaker 1: put them back. And that was the first time I
Speaker 1: ever talked about it, and I started that conversation with
Speaker 1: I've checked the law and the statute of limitations his run.
Speaker 1: But that's how it began. And then we came to
Speaker 1: u T. I prioritied equipment from the University of Tennessee
Speaker 1: Theater because nothing was locked. And then I started buying
Speaker 1: equipment and here we are today. Okay, how old were
Speaker 1: you when you did your first gig? Twelve? And did
Speaker 1: you consistently do that thereafter? Ever since? Ever since that day? Wow?
Speaker 1: And did you learn about lighting on the fly? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you gotta remember back then what was lighting. It
Speaker 1: was a lightbulb that had two wires going to it,
Speaker 1: not three, you know, hot and neutral. There's no ground
Speaker 1: yet really, so if the lightbulb didn't work, it was
Speaker 1: one of two things. One of the two wires was
Speaker 1: broken or the filament and the lightbulb was gone. And
Speaker 1: what we started with was the R forty floodlights like
Speaker 1: you have in the corner of your house. We had
Speaker 1: red ones, blue ones, and yellow ones and and and
Speaker 1: we made literally coffee cans like you've heard out of
Speaker 1: and ran the wires to them. So a typical rock show.
Speaker 1: When we started building equipment was extension cords and coffee cans,
Speaker 1: and lightbulbs in the coffee cans, and or the bard
Speaker 1: lights from the high schools, and the whole pile of
Speaker 1: extension cords. And we made little wooden boxes that literally
Speaker 1: had househole light switches in it. So all of these
Speaker 1: cords just plugged into the back of this wooden box
Speaker 1: and you sat there and flipped the same switches you
Speaker 1: have on the wall today in your house. And and
Speaker 1: the way we turned them all on and off at
Speaker 1: the same time was we had a stick. You had
Speaker 1: a four ft stick, and you'd rake it across all
Speaker 1: the switches, either own or off. So it was really simple.
Speaker 1: And again through time you you started to begin to
Speaker 1: learn things about light and texture and color and shape
Speaker 1: and shade, but none of that existed in sixty nine
Speaker 1: and seventy. It was all owning off, owning off. And
Speaker 1: then we had the overhead projectors with the Pyrex dish
Speaker 1: with oil and water and red and blue and green
Speaker 1: food coloring. And oddly enough, when you stir it with
Speaker 1: a pencil with your hand, your hand and the pencil
Speaker 1: are not in the focal path, and all you get
Speaker 1: is that psychedelic look and and we were doing all
Speaker 1: that kind of garbage. But you know, through time it
Speaker 1: got more sophisticated. And yes, through time you began to
Speaker 1: learn what lighting was all about. And how did you
Speaker 1: decide how much to charge? In the beginning, it was
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars, and it stayed twenty five dollars for
Speaker 1: a year or two, and then it was fifty. And
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't really get into a real pricing
Speaker 1: model until probably my senior year of college, when I
Speaker 1: started to figure out, we're doing this for fun. We
Speaker 1: need to do it for money, you know. So about
Speaker 1: my senior year of college is when we began to
Speaker 1: figure out that, okay, there has to be a business
Speaker 1: plan here that actually makes money. Okay, so you had
Speaker 1: these friends. When did band it actually start on the
Speaker 1: path today? Will you say, hey, was that why you
Speaker 1: were still in school or after school? It started in
Speaker 1: I mean, when I did that first show, I thought,
Speaker 1: this is the coolest thing in the world. I'm getting
Speaker 1: to hang out with rock stars and see free shows,
Speaker 1: and and uh, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Having said that, the reasons were kind of wrong at first.
Speaker 1: The reasons were just to see the show and meet
Speaker 1: the band and meet girls, and you know, all of
Speaker 1: those things. And then I realized you could actually make
Speaker 1: money doing this and say that. That began to shift
Speaker 1: in college and we had to make the full transition,
Speaker 1: probably my senior year, and that's that's where I started
Speaker 1: to apply what I had learned. Herbie Herbert was the
Speaker 1: manager of Journey Journey during their heyday recently passed. He
Speaker 1: famously bought all the equipment and the lights and stage
Speaker 1: and he leased it to other people. I've talked to
Speaker 1: a lot of these major major ACKs. He said, why
Speaker 1: don't you own this stuff? And they say it changes
Speaker 1: too much? So does anybody own it? What do you mean,
Speaker 1: does anybody own their own lights? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Herbie bought it obviously first to do Journey and and
Speaker 1: so he owned lights and and and stuff, video and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and he rented it to his band. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: he was the first one that I remember that did it. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a company still is, but it's its own by
Speaker 1: Claire Brothers now. But there was a company in Europe
Speaker 1: back in the heyday of Pink Floyd called Brett Row
Speaker 1: or Britannia Row Well that was owned by Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd decided, Okay, we're gonna buy our own stuff
Speaker 1: and we'll call the company Brett Row based on Britannia
Speaker 1: Row the street. At the about the same time a
Speaker 1: company in California you may have heard of. They're still around,
Speaker 1: Delicate Productions. Delicate was started by Supertramp when when they
Speaker 1: became a big deal, they bought their own p A
Speaker 1: so they owned their own stuff. Uh. So there there
Speaker 1: there were several stabs at artists doing that, a few
Speaker 1: where managers did it. Most of them didn't work out.
Speaker 1: Uh and but but there were stabs that that stabs
Speaker 1: it doing that. Eventually, the whole nock Turn model, which
Speaker 1: is what Herbie called that organization, uh, ended up uh dissipating,
Speaker 1: I guess is the right word. And eventually the assets
Speaker 1: were sold off. But it was a way to do it,
Speaker 1: and I think it probably worked well for for Herbie.
Speaker 1: I don't know who the other partners were. I don't
Speaker 1: know if he had the band in on it or not,
Speaker 1: whether any of the band members ran on it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You've heard a very light there. The original moving light
Speaker 1: was very light well, Rusty Bruschi and Jack Maxim were
Speaker 1: the face of it, but Tony Smith, the manager of Genesis,
Speaker 1: and indeed the band Genesis were the original financers of it.
Speaker 1: So Genesis benefited greatly from the world's first moving light
Speaker 1: U and eventually that dissipated. But but I think they
Speaker 1: probably did very well. That's purely a guess. But things
Speaker 1: like that we're not really talked about openly. Uh. I
Speaker 1: think the world did know that Herbie was doing what
Speaker 1: he was doing because it was Herbie, wasn't it, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to tell you about it. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: there have been stabs at that, but none really really successful. Okay,
Speaker 1: So of the business are you worldwide or just in America?
Speaker 1: How does it split? You know, we've built offices in
Speaker 1: in uh, we had offices in Europe, in America, and
Speaker 1: we did have him in Asia, but we've withdrawn from
Speaker 1: Asia because of everything we did that three or four
Speaker 1: or five years ago, when you know, we had we
Speaker 1: had an office in Hong Kong and an office in Taiwan.
Speaker 1: And then when when the Chinese took Hong Kong over,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw the handwriting on the wall that
Speaker 1: they weren't going to live up to the twenty five
Speaker 1: year commitment. And I'm not being political. I'm a business guy,
Speaker 1: and so we withdrew from from Asia at that point.
Speaker 1: And I don't think anybody's doing business in Asia anymore.
Speaker 1: That's that's not Chinese are from that part of the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: what percentage of the overall market does BANDED have, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. The industry doesn't report to anyone. No
Speaker 1: one knows how big this industry is. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of guesses, and the guesses ranged from a low of
Speaker 1: probably four billion dollars a year, uh two a hive
Speaker 1: probably ten billion dollars a year. I don't know that
Speaker 1: any of those numbers are correct. Honestly don't know. And
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to not answer your question. Uh just
Speaker 1: no one really knows how big the industry as a
Speaker 1: whole is because there is no method of reporting. Okay,
Speaker 1: so an act wants to get lating for their tour,
Speaker 1: let's go tour. What are their options? Who can they
Speaker 1: go to? Well, there are probably six companies in the
Speaker 1: United States of any size that that could do what
Speaker 1: we would all call an a level tour. And there
Speaker 1: are probably eight to twelve what you would call mid
Speaker 1: level firms, and then lord god, there's probably a hundred
Speaker 1: small firms. But you can't discount the small firms. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is a company in uh Omaha, Nebraska called t
Speaker 1: MS Great Company. They do a little act called uh
Speaker 1: Dave Matthews. They do a few other things, but but
Speaker 1: but the folks that run the company have an old
Speaker 1: and a strong relationship with Dave Matthews. There's a gentleman
Speaker 1: down in Alabama that does Brad Paisley. He does a
Speaker 1: couple of other things, but he grew up with Brad
Speaker 1: or something, and he'll always do Brad Paisley. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a company in California called Morpheus that used to be
Speaker 1: a major player, not so much anymore, but they've always
Speaker 1: done Bruce Springsteen. Not a bad account to half. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of companies like that that that
Speaker 1: have a major client or two major clients, and and
Speaker 1: you know, the odds of taking those clients away from
Speaker 1: those people are pretty slim, because in most cases it's
Speaker 1: a personal relationship. Just like, Uh, I have a great
Speaker 1: personal relationship with a little bit of artist called Garth Brooks.
Speaker 1: And you know, rumors have always been out there. Well
Speaker 1: Garth owns bandit? Well, no, he doesn known band. They
Speaker 1: were just great friends. I start with Garth when he
Speaker 1: was in a bar, and we like each other. Uh
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure how you would pride Garth Brooks away.
Speaker 1: I've been with Jimmy Buffett thirty eight years. I've been
Speaker 1: with you know, Brooks and Dunn start to finish, Carrie
Speaker 1: Underwood start to finish, uh and Hollas Cooper twenty five years.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, so many of these stories shine
Speaker 1: down the rock bands from the very beginning. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of these. For us, we look for
Speaker 1: long term relationships as opposed to just bidding known tours.
Speaker 1: We like to be a part of the family. And
Speaker 1: that's how this company's built. And how do you convince
Speaker 1: someone someone who's in play as opposed to loyal? I mean,
Speaker 1: I was talking to Garth's manager. He says, Garth is
Speaker 1: super loyal. He's not leaving you unless something serious goes down.
Speaker 1: But and that comes to you. What happens, You ultimately
Speaker 1: make a sketch. How is the pitch and how do
Speaker 1: you differentiate your spend it from competitors? Two ways to pass. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some are to to have their own creative person and
Speaker 1: or team. And in that case, that creative person and
Speaker 1: or team comes to us with the blueprints, if you will.
Speaker 1: They're the architect and we're just the house builder, and
Speaker 1: they come and they go, here, here it is, Here's
Speaker 1: what I want. How much is it? Uh? The other
Speaker 1: model is what you just said. They come to us
Speaker 1: for what we call a turnkey solution. They go tell
Speaker 1: me what I need, you know, give me the blueprint,
Speaker 1: give me the plan, and designed the house and sell
Speaker 1: it to me. So you know, we do both of those, uh,
Speaker 1: and we like them both. But ultimately, uh, there are
Speaker 1: a number of bands who just want the absolute cheapest
Speaker 1: price possible. Uh, and we'll do You'll do a tour
Speaker 1: with them and the next year everything goes out to bed. Again.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's not where
Speaker 1: we prefer to go. We want to build a relationship
Speaker 1: and and greater than of the people that we work
Speaker 1: with throughout time. That's what we do. We developed career relationships.
Speaker 1: Now that's becoming harder and I think I think Bob,
Speaker 1: that you'll know this because going back to the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: and the Eagles and and all of those what we
Speaker 1: would call super legacy bands. What did they wanted? What
Speaker 1: did the Stones want to do? They wanted to be
Speaker 1: a rock band forever and ever and ever you come
Speaker 1: up to today these people, a lot of these young artists,
Speaker 1: that's not their vision. They don't want to have a
Speaker 1: forty year career like the Stones, are the Eagles or
Speaker 1: Kiss or those. They want to do it for three years,
Speaker 1: five years, seven years. They want to make a lot
Speaker 1: of money and they can now and then get out
Speaker 1: and go do something else. Uh. And again, as you know, Bob,
Speaker 1: because I know you were there, bands didn't make any
Speaker 1: money in the sixties and seventies, really into the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know we do Crosby Steals, Nash and
Speaker 1: Young and any combination thereof those guys, they're like me,
Speaker 1: we all do it for what the love of the game.
Speaker 1: And and some of the newer artists don't have that.
Speaker 1: So today is we're building relationships. We wonder will we
Speaker 1: get three years out of this artist, will we get
Speaker 1: five years out of this artist? And sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: even their fault, as you know. Sometimes the artists put
Speaker 1: out the music, but then, but then music moves on,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. You know, grunge died, didn't it. You could
Speaker 1: still be great at grunge, but it died. Or the
Speaker 1: boy bands or the girl bands or whatever the you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it was. We did a band that you've probably
Speaker 1: never heard of, Westlife. Have you ever heard of Westlife?
Speaker 1: Of course English Act. Yeah, the world's biggest boy band
Speaker 1: twice in business, twice the business of the Backstreet Boys
Speaker 1: are in Sync, or any boy bands, but Americans have
Speaker 1: never heard of them because they never cracked America. But
Speaker 1: we did them start to finish. Now they're back together now,
Speaker 1: but but they never cracked America, and and and and
Speaker 1: they they literally have done twice the business of any
Speaker 1: of the other boy bands that all Americans know. So
Speaker 1: what percentage of your revenue as concerts right now? We do?
Speaker 1: It depends on the year, but but somewhere between fifty
Speaker 1: and sixty as concerts, and it depends on the year.
Speaker 1: And then of course, and the rest the rest is integration, Okay,
Speaker 1: so basically installed permanent installation different locations like Fillmore's and
Speaker 1: House of Blues and and the World War Two Museum
Speaker 1: down in New Orleans, and and Shop at Home Television
Speaker 1: Network and and and all kinds of theme parks and rods.
Speaker 1: And we do cruise ships, you know, we outfit cruise ships.
Speaker 1: Just these extraordinarily boring things that you know, you you
Speaker 1: go tell people, hey, we put the lights in the
Speaker 1: they but then you go talk about a rock show
Speaker 1: and they get excited. I mean, we just did Tom Jones.
Speaker 1: I mean, how cool is that I did. I did
Speaker 1: the last four years of the rat Pack, you know,
Speaker 1: with the last four four years, they did two tours
Speaker 1: across four years before they never did anything again. That
Speaker 1: was really cool. Getting to meet Frank Sinatra and Peter
Speaker 1: Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. And those people. You know,
Speaker 1: it was really cool. Uh But but that's sort of
Speaker 1: the sexy side of what we do. And then there
Speaker 1: are things that we do that we don't talk about
Speaker 1: and that we can't talk about. Anything you do for Disney,
Speaker 1: you sign an n d A and you can't talk
Speaker 1: about it. Most of the stuff you do for any
Speaker 1: White House you can't talk about. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: that I did uh Obama's parties for his children in
Speaker 1: the White House. I can't tell you that maybe I
Speaker 1: did do it but I can't tell you that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're enlightening. Did you ever think of broadening to
Speaker 1: something else production staging? No. I'm one of those guys
Speaker 1: that believes, you know, do what you're good at. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying the other people are wrong, but uh, most
Speaker 1: of the people that I know that start out in
Speaker 1: one discipline are really good at it and really average
Speaker 1: at the other things they sneak into. Uh, And I'm
Speaker 1: not really aware of anybody that that. I think you
Speaker 1: dilute your core business. And that's just the thought process.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, there are a lot of artists
Speaker 1: that want a turnkey solution, they want a one stop shop.
Speaker 1: And you know, my point of view is, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get average sound, average lighting, average video, or you
Speaker 1: can go up to a really good lighting company and
Speaker 1: a really good sound company and a really good video company.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's just two different modes of doing business,
Speaker 1: and I respect the other methods. Okay, how hands on
Speaker 1: are you? Well, it's ten o'clock at night and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in my office. I mean, you're talking about flying
Speaker 1: all over the country and you're a million member mailing lists.
Speaker 1: How much are you working on bandit. Oh, I work
Speaker 1: fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Uh. Again, that balance shifts.
Speaker 1: It's some days it's fifty fifty. Some days it's one
Speaker 1: way and or the other. But no, I'm extraordinarily hands
Speaker 1: owed and and all of my peers are retired, all
Speaker 1: of them are dead. Um in fact, fact, in fact,
Speaker 1: we had an original Bandit passed away yesterday. And Uh.
Speaker 1: But but I'm one of those guys. A. I'm a workaholic,
Speaker 1: and B I really enjoy what I do. I really
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I didn't just do it for money. I
Speaker 1: did it for the love of the game. I'm also
Speaker 1: big into football and college football, and I know a
Speaker 1: lot of football players, and I played football, and and
Speaker 1: the emotions the same. You do it for the love
Speaker 1: of the game. The difference between me and Peyton Manning,
Speaker 1: who's a friend of mine. Peyton can't play football anymore, right,
Speaker 1: he's too old. I can still do rock and roll. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you go on your LinkedIn peage, you have like
Speaker 1: a million companies. What are all those companies? Through time? Um,
Speaker 1: the the in America up until nineteen one, everybody made
Speaker 1: their own everything in the world of lighting. Made your
Speaker 1: own lights. You made your own trust, you made your
Speaker 1: own cable, and there was no continuity to it. In
Speaker 1: England and Europe because of legislation. Over there, it was
Speaker 1: illegal to make your own trust. It was illegal to
Speaker 1: make your own lights. You had to buy them from
Speaker 1: a certified manufacturer that met certain standards. So, uh, there
Speaker 1: were standards that existed over there, and there were companies.
Speaker 1: There was a guy named Eric Pierce owned a company
Speaker 1: called show Group Production Services. Eric sadly passed away last fall.
Speaker 1: Eric actually invented a number of the devices that to
Speaker 1: this day you're used. As the standardization began to happen,
Speaker 1: so in Europe everything was standardized. Well. I went over
Speaker 1: to Europe in nineteen eighty and met Graham Thomas and
Speaker 1: John Walters who made all the aluminum trust structure a
Speaker 1: company called Thomas Engineering, and I said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: buy the American rights and set that up. And I
Speaker 1: did so. I bought the American rights and set up
Speaker 1: Thomas Engineering. Within three years, everybody in America equipped making
Speaker 1: our own trust and started buying from from Thomas. They
Speaker 1: didn't know that I owned. I kept my ownership secret. Uh.
Speaker 1: Later on there was helped set up another company called
Speaker 1: tom Kat, which was another trusting company. So I had
Speaker 1: the two largest trusting companies in America. Then there was
Speaker 1: a control company that made the lightboards in England called
Speaker 1: ah Lights. Well I bought the American rights to that.
Speaker 1: So now I owned the two largest trusting manufacturers as
Speaker 1: well as the console company. And uh so all of
Speaker 1: my competitors used stuff that I sold. Now again I
Speaker 1: kept my ownership secret. That's that's three of the companies
Speaker 1: that were on their Uh. Some of the other ones
Speaker 1: that are owned their, Lord god, I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 1: Uh own a company called b pH was a property
Speaker 1: holding company. I own a company called for All Air
Speaker 1: owned some airplanes, and the airplanes are in that Uh
Speaker 1: what else do I own? Uh? Oh, Lord God, I'd
Speaker 1: have to look at the website. I've got several other
Speaker 1: entities of that nature, but but a lot of them
Speaker 1: are tied to that. I was for five years. I
Speaker 1: was part owner of skycam. I know you know what
Speaker 1: sky cam is, the flying camera. I was part owner
Speaker 1: of that for a number of years. Uh, I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm leaving some stuff off. Do you do you still
Speaker 1: own the board making in the trust? No? No, I've
Speaker 1: sold all that. I've sold all that. No, And I
Speaker 1: had a company for ten or twelve years called Authentic Stars.
Speaker 1: And what we did at Authentic Stars was we sold
Speaker 1: rock and roll merchandise uh into into mass mark merchandizing.
Speaker 1: And we started with Walmart. So when you go in
Speaker 1: Walmart and see a big rack full of Kiss T
Speaker 1: shirts and Alice Cooper t shirts and you know what
Speaker 1: whatever in merchandise and all that, that was me, Me
Speaker 1: and and a guy named Charlie Anderson who put all
Speaker 1: the records and all the tapes and all the books
Speaker 1: and all the Walmarts and then all the best buys.
Speaker 1: So I just cotailed with with Charlie, and it was
Speaker 1: it was myself, Charlie Anderson, and Bill Battle. Bill Battle
Speaker 1: was once the football coach at ut and and eventually
Speaker 1: the athletic director at Alabama. Well, we had this company
Speaker 1: together where we put all this show business merchandise into
Speaker 1: the music sections at all the Walmarts and then all
Speaker 1: of the best buys, which had everything to do with
Speaker 1: rock and roll and nothing to do with bandit lige,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I just I just knew
Speaker 1: the right people, and so for years and years and
Speaker 1: years we put merchandise across all those stores, and then
Speaker 1: we eventually sold that company. That's one of them that's
Speaker 1: owned there. Okay, how often are equipment failures and uh,
Speaker 1: crew injuries? I mean you don't hear about them all
Speaker 1: the time, but you hear about a trust falling or
Speaker 1: a light falling. What what's going on in that world
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years. Not so much. I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's very rare because of the safety. Again, standardization
Speaker 1: of all of this stuff came into play years ago,
Speaker 1: and it is really safe, and the p are getting
Speaker 1: trained better and and uh. And in the funny story,
Speaker 1: in nine two or three, R E. M was going
Speaker 1: out on a tour and they hired a new production manager,
Speaker 1: a gentleman named mikey Weiss who also did Neil Diamond
Speaker 1: for years and years. Mike, he's a great guy. Find
Speaker 1: myself on the phone before the tour goes out, and
Speaker 1: this is when R. E. M is just as big
Speaker 1: as as big as they can be. And Mike, he's
Speaker 1: telling me, and you're gonna put fall protection on all
Speaker 1: of your lighting trusses so no one falls for twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm arguing with the guy because I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: spend ten thousand dollars to buy that, and I'm going
Speaker 1: if I have to. You know, I've got thirty tours
Speaker 1: out times ten thousand dollars, that's three hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing this. And about ten minutes and it
Speaker 1: hit me, what are you doing? One fall will cost
Speaker 1: you way more than three. So I thanked Mikey, We
Speaker 1: bought the equipment, we put it out, and from that
Speaker 1: date forward, Bandit lights wouldn't let anybody go up on
Speaker 1: the Trust without fall protection. And for five years we
Speaker 1: lost market share because everyone hated it. The unions hated
Speaker 1: Oh boy, you get to New York to Local one
Speaker 1: and try to tell a local one stage hand that
Speaker 1: they've got to put on fall protection to go up there,
Speaker 1: and all you get is, I'm not petting that ship on.
Speaker 1: I've been doing this my whole life. Who the hell
Speaker 1: do you think you know? And and I would get
Speaker 1: phone calls and we lost business because tours said, you
Speaker 1: don't use bandit, they insist on fall protection. Were fast
Speaker 1: forward five six years, the whole industry did it, and
Speaker 1: of course now everybody does it. Now no one goes up.
Speaker 1: But we were the industry leader in that. And again
Speaker 1: it's all because of Mikey weiss Us. For those for
Speaker 1: those unaware, what exactly is fall protection? You know that
Speaker 1: wearing a harness and being attached to a rope so
Speaker 1: that you know when you're up in the air thirty
Speaker 1: fifty sixty feet, if you do fall, you you fall
Speaker 1: four or five feet and then you just dangle and
Speaker 1: you know you don't fall to your death. And and
Speaker 1: really we you know, I'm aware of you know, two
Speaker 1: or three deaths a year globally. They're never really from
Speaker 1: people falling it. It's from when a structure collapses, a
Speaker 1: stage roof falls or or tragically the uh the sugar
Speaker 1: Land thing where the top blew over. I actually designed
Speaker 1: the thing that blew over was a Thomas top and
Speaker 1: I was one of four designers of it. Now by
Speaker 1: then I had sold the company, but I was called
Speaker 1: as an expert witness because I had to go sit
Speaker 1: and testify as to why it failed. And it failed
Speaker 1: because the people that owned it didn't follow the instructions.
Speaker 1: The instructions are very specific that when you put the
Speaker 1: top up, you've gotta have a certain amount of weight
Speaker 1: on the bottom and and and you got to do
Speaker 1: a B, C and D and they didn't and it
Speaker 1: blew over. So I remember the stones went on toward
Speaker 1: seventy two and they said we have to have the
Speaker 1: super Trooper lights. I remember seeing yes early eighties, uh
Speaker 1: when uh nine, O two, one five or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and they had the lighting trusses that went down and up.
Speaker 1: Supposedly Genesis did that first. What is what are the
Speaker 1: things on the cutting edge and lighting right now? Everything
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, all of the moving trust is. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot right now that hasn't been done
Speaker 1: because we're so technologically advanced. Right now, we're sort of
Speaker 1: in year five of of variations on a theme. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, think about smartphones. You know, you've got iPhones
Speaker 1: and this phone and that phone and the Google phone.
Speaker 1: They're all kind of the same, but by degrees they're
Speaker 1: a little bit different. You know that. I think it's
Speaker 1: the Google phone that will take any picture and smooth
Speaker 1: it out and make you look better. Uh, that's their
Speaker 1: unique thing. There are by degrees things of that nature,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, light's just moving, wiggle and
Speaker 1: change colors and make patterns. And and you know that
Speaker 1: there was a race to make them smaller and lighter
Speaker 1: and faster, and you know that continues to go on.
Speaker 1: But again, think iPhone. Uh has there been a quantum
Speaker 1: shift in iPhones? Not really, it's by degrees from phone
Speaker 1: to phone. And that's really where entertainment lighting is. Right now,
Speaker 1: people are dabbling with lasers as a light source. And
Speaker 1: there is a small handful of lights that are lasers.
Speaker 1: We own several hundred of them. We've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of the new carry Underwood tour. But in America, anything
Speaker 1: that's called a laser falls under the control of the
Speaker 1: f d A and you have to get it, just
Speaker 1: like Pyro. You have to get a permit in every city,
Speaker 1: and you have to have a laser guy come over,
Speaker 1: and they can't shine on the crowd and so on
Speaker 1: and so forth. So, uh, will laser lights ever become
Speaker 1: mainstream in America? Not until the legislation changes. Well, how
Speaker 1: dangerous are these laser lights? If you ask the f
Speaker 1: d A, they're extraordinarily dangerous. If you ask the people
Speaker 1: that make them, not at all. I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: what's the real answer? Who knows? Okay, you grew up
Speaker 1: when the South was still considered redneck correct certainly been
Speaker 1: to Nashville, which is pretty cosmopolitans some country element Memphis,
Speaker 1: which is really more Mississippi than Nashville. What's Knoxville like Knoxville, Uh,
Speaker 1: is you've got the Delta down in Mississippi and all
Speaker 1: of those sort of Delta influences and and and and
Speaker 1: jazz and blues and soul and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's always been there, you know. But because of
Speaker 1: of the cotton trade and all that went with that
Speaker 1: for generations. Uh, Nashville uh and Knoxville we're both port
Speaker 1: towns because of a river. And if you go back
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years, and again because of my
Speaker 1: role here running the Chamber of Commerce and being involved
Speaker 1: in all of that, if you go back on a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years, the Knoxville and Nashville were just alike,
Speaker 1: with one difference. Nashville had Norfolk and Southern Railroad and
Speaker 1: Ellen n Railroad, and so it grew faster and it
Speaker 1: became bigger because it had both rail and water. Knoxville
Speaker 1: only had uh water. Uh. Knoxville got a little bit
Speaker 1: of rail. Uh. So Knoxville remained much more rural, much longer,
Speaker 1: and even today Knoxville is more agrarian. It's more of
Speaker 1: an agricultural society. And there is no agrarian component too. Nashville,
Speaker 1: there isn't. I mean it's you've been there recently probably. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we're still very agrarian, and you know, very agriculturally
Speaker 1: oriented and and very uh uh slow and uh. Quality
Speaker 1: of life's higher, costs, the livings lower. Uh, great place
Speaker 1: to live. I live on the lake, I can see
Speaker 1: the mountains. Uh. Most people that come here uh to
Speaker 1: work with bandit that lives somewhere else move here for
Speaker 1: all the reasons that I said. People are nice, cost
Speaker 1: the livings low, quality of life is high, airs clean, Uh.
Speaker 1: And you don't have the uh, you don't have the
Speaker 1: traffic and all the issues that you do in a
Speaker 1: Nashville or a Memphis, which both of those are approaching
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles type situation. So what to coastal people
Speaker 1: or northern people not understand about the South. I think
Speaker 1: they understand the South much better now, because again you
Speaker 1: you brought up something that you may have read through.
Speaker 1: My competitors were all in New York, Los Angeles, in
Speaker 1: London and the first thing they would say to potential
Speaker 1: clients was, you can't use Bandit Lights because it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of rednecks. They don't wear shoes, they don't have teeth,
Speaker 1: they don't know what they're doing. And and that's sold.
Speaker 1: I mean that that did sell um. But in ninety
Speaker 1: three they turned around and looked and and Bandit Lights
Speaker 1: was doing Queen and Arrowsmith and Van Halen and r
Speaker 1: E M and Faith No More In Raging against the
Speaker 1: Machine and and and and Garth Brooks and so on
Speaker 1: and so on, and all of a sudden, and we
Speaker 1: had in the hair band days we were doing Quiet
Speaker 1: Riot and Crocus and Twisted Sister and Rat and all
Speaker 1: of those bands. And all of a sudden, Holy cow,
Speaker 1: these rednecks are bigger than we are. And they got
Speaker 1: more lights, and they're doing more stuff, and and they
Speaker 1: started taking us seriously. And I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember years ago there was a magazine called Performance. Do
Speaker 1: you remember, Yeah, well, Performance in ninety three did a
Speaker 1: bunch of accolades and uh, I forget exactly what the
Speaker 1: words were. I think it was Bill Littleton that wrote it. Said, Uh,
Speaker 1: the company this year with the biggest bump in the
Speaker 1: biggest bump or whatever, and it was banded out of
Speaker 1: all the companies, not just lighting but everything and did
Speaker 1: a whole hearticle Ognis and so many. Way fast forward
Speaker 1: to two thousand and uh three, every major production company
Speaker 1: in America as an office in Nashville, Tennessee. You know
Speaker 1: the Rednecks. That they've all come to the Rednecks. And
Speaker 1: for the most part, UH, production companies have deserted New
Speaker 1: York in l A for a number of reasons. First
Speaker 1: and foremost the cost. Uh. Secondly, they finally figured out
Speaker 1: that with my lights sitting in Nashville, I could beat
Speaker 1: to two thirds of the venues in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: When you're when your lights are sitting in l A,
Speaker 1: you can be to ten of the venues in twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. It's why I fed x IS in Memphis.
Speaker 1: It's centrally located. Put a pin in the map everywhere
Speaker 1: there's a venue, and you got this tremendous cluster east
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi, a small handful across the desert, and
Speaker 1: then a bunch up and down the west coast. And
Speaker 1: that's what I did at an early age. I put
Speaker 1: pins in maps and so today, everybody has an office
Speaker 1: in Nashville. Think of how many pop stars actually live
Speaker 1: in Nashville. It's it's countless. Cost the living's lower, quality,
Speaker 1: LIFs higher. Uh. I've got a lot of friends that
Speaker 1: have sold their house in l ah you know, and
Speaker 1: gotten you know, one point five million dollars for their house.
Speaker 1: This is pre COVID, and then moved to Nashville and
Speaker 1: bought a house twice that size for seven hundred thousand
Speaker 1: and and got acreage with it and put the rest
Speaker 1: of the money in the bank. So, you know, the
Speaker 1: rest of the world kind of discovered what we always
Speaker 1: knew about cost of living and how friendly the people were,
Speaker 1: and how centrally located it is. And of course everything
Speaker 1: is cheaper. The warehouses are cheaper, the labors cheaper. Uh
Speaker 1: and and the rest of the world is finally caught
Speaker 1: on to that. Okay, leaving aside bandit lights in the
Speaker 1: entertainment business to what degree? Just using you know, the
Speaker 1: pejorative descriptions, don't shoot the messenger. Is the South still racist?
Speaker 1: Red neck deep behind? Or is that passe to me?
Speaker 1: It's pass a of course I would say that I'll
Speaker 1: live here, but let me let me tell you how
Speaker 1: I grew uh in the in the late fifties early sixties,
Speaker 1: at war Worse and mccruary's and Crests, which were the
Speaker 1: big department stores. We had men's and women's restrooms. We
Speaker 1: also had white and colored restrooms. We had white and
Speaker 1: colored water fountains, We had white and colored lunch counters.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I didn't see that distinction as anything
Speaker 1: other than men and women. In other words, I didn't
Speaker 1: look at men and women's restrooms and think that women
Speaker 1: were less than men. You follow me, and the same
Speaker 1: thing between black and white. To me, it was different,
Speaker 1: that was all and and I, I and most people
Speaker 1: I knew, never had what you would call a racist
Speaker 1: point of view. Did those people exist, absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1: Did they use the inappropriate language? Sure they did. But
Speaker 1: but I didn't grow up in that, you know. I
Speaker 1: grew up around it, But but I never saw it
Speaker 1: and was never aware of it really until uh jeez,
Speaker 1: I to college, probably because it was just how it
Speaker 1: was now by the time. By the time I was
Speaker 1: a senior in high school, the segregation was over the
Speaker 1: black and white water fountains and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But but but I never experienced people mistreating one another, never
Speaker 1: ever experienced it, and uh, you know, no, I don't
Speaker 1: think it exists. Now. I have a really unique view
Speaker 1: about equality and racism and all of those things. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm right, but my opinion is just
Speaker 1: really simple. The best way to treat everybody fairly is
Speaker 1: just to quit talking about differences. You know that just
Speaker 1: we're all human beings, you know, we're we're all one,
Speaker 1: and and that's that's how I feel. I don't look
Speaker 1: at someone as black or white, or male or female,
Speaker 1: or transgender or gay, or they're just people. You know,
Speaker 1: they're just people. And I think the sooner we stop
Speaker 1: pointing out distinctions, uh, the quicker will get to a
Speaker 1: better place. Now. Having said that, I understand the argument
Speaker 1: against it that if if we're not proactive, it will
Speaker 1: never end. And I do think most of the preconceived
Speaker 1: notion about racism and and rednecks and all of that
Speaker 1: in the South most so that is not true. Having
Speaker 1: said that, my son played football all through high school,
Speaker 1: On any given Friday and Saturday night, my house would
Speaker 1: have eight or ten guys there after the game, and
Speaker 1: they'd spend a weekend and there'd be three white kids
Speaker 1: and seven black kids, and and nobody saw color. Nobody
Speaker 1: saw color, and and and the parents would come over
Speaker 1: and we were friends. And but there was this one kid.
Speaker 1: And he was that kid that that gives us all
Speaker 1: the black eye. You know, his dad was a hardcore racist.
Speaker 1: And then whenever this kid was was not around any
Speaker 1: of the black kids, he would he would go there,
Speaker 1: you know, he would use all the inappropriate behavior. And
Speaker 1: I'd look at him and go, you know, you know, Bob,
Speaker 1: stop it, you know. But that's just how he was wired.
Speaker 1: You know. Are they out there? Sure they are? You know,
Speaker 1: there's anti Semits that don't like Jewish, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's people everywhere that that you know, that don't
Speaker 1: like somebody. Uh. And I'm not sure how you overcome that.
Speaker 1: But but no, buy and large, I don't think the
Speaker 1: South is anymore or less uh backwards than anywhere else
Speaker 1: at this point. Okay, of the three hundred people who
Speaker 1: work at Banded, how many are women are people of color?
Speaker 1: That's a great question of the people that Banded or female,
Speaker 1: and that includes road staff. We've probably got more uh
Speaker 1: female road staff than anybody else. Uh And uh nineteen
Speaker 1: percent of the people that banded are people of color. Uh,
Speaker 1: And we don't hire people based on anything other than
Speaker 1: ability and a funny story. We've got eighteen people now
Speaker 1: in accounting. They're all women. And it's not about his
Speaker 1: it's not you know, we interview each time we make
Speaker 1: a hire. Guess what, it's usually females. We We've had
Speaker 1: males in accounting, but right now they're all females because
Speaker 1: the most qualified person through that door was a woman,
Speaker 1: so we hired her. Okay, So you say, you work
Speaker 1: sixteen eighteen hours a day and you're flying all over
Speaker 1: the country, how do you maintain a relationship. I'm single? Yea.
Speaker 1: How many times you've been married? I've had five very
Speaker 1: serious failed relationships too, of which were marriages, and and
Speaker 1: and after the fifth one, I figured out it was me.
Speaker 1: And is that because you're so dedicated to the work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean each you know, people would say you're married
Speaker 1: to Bandit lies. No, I'm not, you know. And and
Speaker 1: then finally, after this last one, which which ended right
Speaker 1: right as COVID hit, I realized it is me, and
Speaker 1: they are right and and and my story now, which
Speaker 1: I believe had I had a girlfriend when COVID started,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have one now because I was in d C,
Speaker 1: in l A and New York. You know, I was
Speaker 1: doing what I'm doing. And you know I've got a
Speaker 1: meeting tomorrow morning at six thirty that will probably run
Speaker 1: two hours to do with all of this, and uh,
Speaker 1: who would put up with that? I wouldn't. But it's okay.
Speaker 1: I love it. Okay, Michael, this has been very edifying.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking the time to
Speaker 1: speak to my audience. Bob, thank you very much, and again,
Speaker 1: please let me wrap up by urging anyone that hears this. Uh,
Speaker 1: we've got to get this entertainment association going. And once
Speaker 1: we get it going and living and breathing and in
Speaker 1: the shape of fashion and a format that everyone is
Speaker 1: comfortable with, we will have a defense mechanism against the
Speaker 1: future shutdown. And if someone wants more information or wants
Speaker 1: to make contact with you or be active, how might
Speaker 1: they do that? Since one point three million people have
Speaker 1: all of my personal information, I have no problem in
Speaker 1: sharing it. Its first initial last name, M. Strickland S
Speaker 1: T R I C K L A N D at
Speaker 1: bandit B A N D I T lights, l I T.
Speaker 1: E S dot com. Shoot me an email and you
Speaker 1: can talk to anybody that's in my circle. I answer
Speaker 1: them all and Buddy back in the middle of COVID.
Speaker 1: That was quite a task. It's not as daunting as now,
Speaker 1: but I answer everyone. There's no cookie cutter thing. It's
Speaker 1: it's an answer. But I find I get I get
Speaker 1: more traction that way. Well, you're doing yeoman's work. It's
Speaker 1: really admirable. Hopefully Law come to Fruition. Thanks again for
Speaker 1: doing this. Thank you, Bob, appreciate it. Have a great
Speaker 1: evening until next time. This is Bob left Sex