Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bob Leftsett's podcast. My guest today
Speaker 1: is longtime agent Wayne Quorte. Wayne, you emailed me that
Speaker 1: it was the fifth anniversary of NIDO, the National Independent
Speaker 1: Talent Organization. Tell me what NIDO is.
Speaker 2: NIDO is an advocacy group formed during COVID right at
Speaker 2: the outset actually, which is now about one hundred and
Speaker 2: forty members of independent managers and independent talent agents, so
Speaker 2: basically talent representatives.
Speaker 1: Okay, And how did it get started and what does
Speaker 1: it do?
Speaker 2: So just as COVID set in, I should say, ar
Speaker 2: who was a twenty twenty I guess in April, maybe
Speaker 2: second or third week in April, when I guess most
Speaker 2: of us realized that we're going to be home for
Speaker 2: more than two weeks. Frank Riley from High Road Touring
Speaker 2: sent an email out to a whole bunch of agents.
Speaker 2: You know. Copied on the email and asked he said,
Speaker 2: I said, actually that he had had some conversations with
Speaker 2: some of the large promoters. He was involved with a
Speaker 2: call conference call possibly and they were, you know, discussing
Speaker 2: what was going to happen, you know, what what could
Speaker 2: be done? What was you know, the you know, the visions,
Speaker 2: the idea, what was ahead of us, you know, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, things that we were thinking about at
Speaker 2: home individually, all on our own, and asked if we
Speaker 2: were interested to have a conference call to discuss it,
Speaker 2: which everybody immediately said yes, because we all had no
Speaker 2: idea what was coming up and how we were going
Speaker 2: to stay open and how we were going to stay
Speaker 2: in business. So we had one or two calls, you know,
Speaker 2: like a check in, and then we checked in like
Speaker 2: a week or so later, and you know, maybe on
Speaker 2: the third call or so, somebody said, hey, maybe we
Speaker 2: should form an organization, and which was interesting because we
Speaker 2: were really at the time about sixteen sixteen or so
Speaker 2: agencies at the time. Let me back up a second,
Speaker 2: So these were all agencies at that point, so about
Speaker 2: sixteen of us roughly agencies, and I think there were
Speaker 2: nineteen people because a couple of them had two people
Speaker 2: on the call. We were all competitors day to day,
Speaker 2: competitors spoke to you know, maybe a couple of us
Speaker 2: spoke to each other, but really, you know, didn't spend
Speaker 2: any time together, didn't really you know, didn't go out
Speaker 2: to dinner and hang out, so to speak. You know
Speaker 2: some of us, some of us were friendly, but I'd
Speaker 2: say sixteen we weren't necessarily and what had happened was
Speaker 2: due to this you know pandemic. We all realize that
Speaker 2: we're in the same box or the same boat, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden it became kind of a brotherhood.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's independent. Who is independent and who does not
Speaker 1: qualify as being independent?
Speaker 2: So the independent definition is you know, a little bit loose,
Speaker 2: but not at the same time. So it's no, no
Speaker 2: internationally owned you know agency, So not like an agency
Speaker 2: here that's owned or controlled by a group in London
Speaker 2: or Canada. Let's say, no corporates, you know. No, it
Speaker 2: has to be at least fifty one percent minimum fifty
Speaker 2: one percent owned and operated. So it can't be you know,
Speaker 2: something where it's just a you know, an adjunct or
Speaker 2: a you know, a subdivision or whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it of a corporate. We can't be controlled or
Speaker 2: financed by a fund or a bank. We can't be
Speaker 2: a public company.
Speaker 1: Okay. Of the one hundred and forty members today, how
Speaker 1: many agencies.
Speaker 2: Is that roughly half? So what happened from the initial
Speaker 2: start was as we when we decided to form a
Speaker 2: you know, let's form an organization. We immediately discussed bringing
Speaker 2: other people in. Initially we talked about bringing managers in,
Speaker 2: tour managers, artists, basically all or any independence that were
Speaker 2: kind of out there, you know, they needed a lifeboat,
Speaker 2: so to speak, because at this point we were in
Speaker 2: survival mode. We weren't looking to thrive, we were just
Speaker 2: looking to survive. So we started by you know, picking
Speaker 2: up all these people that you know around us that
Speaker 2: we did business. But at as we defined it to
Speaker 2: become an organization, and as we set our sites to
Speaker 2: jump in with other organizations to start lobbying our representatives
Speaker 2: for financial help for aid, we brought on lobbyists.
Speaker 1: Well, well, well, let's low down a little bit. You
Speaker 1: formed the organization's lobbyists costs money?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 1: How organized was NIDO and where did the money come from?
Speaker 2: So yeah, and I am jumping ahead because it's all
Speaker 2: it's all kind of an entangled ball, you know, like
Speaker 2: a bullus spring bull, a string that's all tangled. So
Speaker 2: when we decided to form an organization, we decided that
Speaker 2: we'd be a nonprofit. We knew we'd had to, you know,
Speaker 2: form a nonprofit entity. We'd have to hire an attorney.
Speaker 2: This is even before we decided to go into the
Speaker 2: lobbyist mode. So what we did was each of us,
Speaker 2: each of the companies, threw in fourth thousand dollars out
Speaker 2: of our own pockets at the time, and we took
Speaker 2: that sixteen whatever it was times for is what sixty
Speaker 2: sixty four thousand dollars. We took that, and then we
Speaker 2: hired an attorney. We knew were eventually we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to have an accountant. We started, uh, you know, we
Speaker 2: came up with a name, we started to organize, putting
Speaker 2: together a nonprofit organization, nonprofit corporation. We also set out
Speaker 2: to form you know, set up bylaws, so we had
Speaker 2: to have an attorney to do that. So that's where that
Speaker 2: funding came from. And then not too far after that,
Speaker 2: or too soon after that, I should say, we realized that,
Speaker 2: you know, the only way we were going to really
Speaker 2: be able to move forward, if the pandemic was going
Speaker 2: to extend for a long period of time, which in
Speaker 2: fact it did, we would have to start talking to
Speaker 2: representatives about some kind of you know, some kind of
Speaker 2: financial funding to be able to keep our staff together,
Speaker 2: to be able to keep our businesses together, and we
Speaker 2: joined and I don't want to jump too far ahead,
Speaker 2: but we ended up joining up with other organizations. The
Speaker 2: main one was NEVA, the National Independent Venue Association, who
Speaker 2: had already been speaking to Amy Klobachar and she was
Speaker 2: speaking to Senator Cornyn down in Texas. And those were
Speaker 2: the two that you know, really carried the flag for
Speaker 2: the bill that later became s VOG, which started out,
Speaker 2: as you know, as something else and again jumping ahead,
Speaker 2: but so we started that when we when we realized
Speaker 2: that we had to get into that kind of a game,
Speaker 2: we knew that we'd have to get lobbyists. We couldn't
Speaker 2: do it ourselves. And you know, we couldn't get on
Speaker 2: a train and go to DC. Nobody was going anywhere,
Speaker 2: so it was all gonna have to be virtual, and
Speaker 2: we didn't frankly, didn't know where to start. So we
Speaker 2: reached out and we interviewed three different lobbying you know, companies,
Speaker 2: organizations basically law firms, and we hired a lobbyist. So
Speaker 2: we had some funds to begin, but we knew that
Speaker 2: we couldn't at the burn rate of you know, a
Speaker 2: monthly lobbying fee or consulting fee, if you like. We
Speaker 2: knew that we couldn't sustain. So what we did was
Speaker 2: we jumped into fundraising mode. And actually so I at
Speaker 2: the time, we also you know, elected officers elected him
Speaker 2: by just saying you're so and so, you're going to
Speaker 2: be so, and you're going to be so and so so.
Speaker 2: Frank Riley, who put the whole thing together, really spearheaded.
Speaker 2: It was the president. We had three vice presidents, people
Speaker 2: that were you know, actively doing a lot of things.
Speaker 2: I became secretary and Tom Chauncey became treasurer, and that
Speaker 2: was our executive committee, and we met almost every day.
Speaker 2: We did zooms when I said meet, we met by zoom.
Speaker 2: We did at least once a day. We we did
Speaker 2: the Board of Directors, which the Board of Directors became
Speaker 2: the original sixteen. We met at least three times a week.
Speaker 2: I have to go back to my notes and look
Speaker 2: bit at least and sometimes executive committee we're meeting twice
Speaker 2: a day. But we also then broke up into committees
Speaker 2: because we had to. There were people talking to the lobbyists,
Speaker 2: there were people that were talking to the other organizations.
Speaker 2: So we you know, we doled out the responsibilities and
Speaker 2: off we went UH and I became, by whatever happened
Speaker 2: stance and timing, I became the head of the fundraising committee.
Speaker 2: And so we set out to raise funds. And what
Speaker 2: we did to initially raise funds was we did an
Speaker 2: instrument auction. We went out to managers and artists and
Speaker 2: we you know, got UH signed instruments and you know,
Speaker 2: something that was laying into closets, something special they never used.
Speaker 2: And we did a but three. We did it in November,
Speaker 2: I think late November, so we had enough to get
Speaker 2: through the end of the year. We raised of that
Speaker 2: year twenty twenty, we raised money, raised about one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty thousand dollars. I think we were so one
Speaker 2: hundred twenty hundred thirty. We need probably around one hundred.
Speaker 2: So once we did that, we figured we had enough
Speaker 2: to go for the next year, you know, at least
Speaker 2: a year. We didn't Again, we didn't know how long
Speaker 2: it was going to take. So it was really a
Speaker 2: step by step process, and honestly, it was shooting from
Speaker 2: the hip, and you know, meeting challenges every day and
Speaker 2: things that we you know, I never did, I never
Speaker 2: petitioned lobby you know, we were on the phone at
Speaker 2: least two or three times a week with senators, congressmen,
Speaker 2: you know, their staffs, you know, giving them the giving
Speaker 2: them the pitch, basically just explaining to him what what
Speaker 2: it meant to have the you know, the talent not
Speaker 2: not around if the agent, the independent agencies weren't around
Speaker 2: the independent venues. You know, they both needed each other
Speaker 2: to survive. And the independent venues you know in a
Speaker 2: lot of markets or a cornerstone, you know, in their
Speaker 2: main street or downtown area. We did, you know, we
Speaker 2: did a lot of research. We found a study that
Speaker 2: said that for every dollar spent on a ticket or entertainment,
Speaker 2: it was twelve dollars in the local community. So we
Speaker 2: immediately calculated the numbers and you know, figured out, you
Speaker 2: know what on an annualized basis. You know, we've just
Speaker 2: looked at you did quick you know, math, what what
Speaker 2: the agencies generated, with the artists generated and multiplied by twelve.
Speaker 2: Came up with some big numbers that the venue association
Speaker 2: did the same. And then there were other groups too.
Speaker 2: There were the you know, there was the theaters, and
Speaker 2: then later there was you know, the the museums. Once
Speaker 2: the thing started rolling. You know, Schumer got involved, Centator
Speaker 2: Schumer and there was I think eight stakeholders at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, and the eight of them all
Speaker 2: had their own lobbyists and all worked you know, in tandem,
Speaker 2: even though independently to get the word out. And you know,
Speaker 2: the Venue organization they had about twelve hundred and fifteen
Speaker 2: maybe back in those days a thousand, but they have
Speaker 2: almost fifteen hundred members now, and so they had because
Speaker 2: they had so many members, they were able to do
Speaker 2: like localized things, you know. They had you know, like
Speaker 2: state committees and you know, regional things and they'd reach out,
Speaker 2: they'd have people reaching out in each state. Obviously we
Speaker 2: had less you know, members, but we tried to get
Speaker 2: our members to reach out in their states as well.
Speaker 2: We tried to get some of our artists involved, and
Speaker 2: we were lucky to do that that, you know, some
Speaker 2: of them were willing to step up and speak on
Speaker 2: behalf of the whole movement. And then backing up a
Speaker 2: few steps. As we were rolling along, we decided to
Speaker 2: bring members into the organization, sorry, managers into the organization
Speaker 2: for the boards. Then we started we brought in two
Speaker 2: or three managers today we have about half and half
Speaker 2: on the board. Then we had mostly agents, so had
Speaker 2: half and half and membership wise an answer to your question,
Speaker 2: roughly half and half. But a lot of them are
Speaker 2: small operators, you know, one person, two people, small offices.
Speaker 2: You know, they're not all big companies. It goes from
Speaker 2: red light at the top to one solo operator at
Speaker 2: the bottom. So it really covers the span of independence. Really.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. It's easily understood
Speaker 1: the costs and the losses of a venue as an agent.
Speaker 1: And as you were on the phone with these people
Speaker 1: beginning in April, how hurt were the agents? The perception
Speaker 1: would be your percentage operators. Okay, your costs or overhead
Speaker 1: is not that high. What was it like to be
Speaker 1: an agent when everything was shut down?
Speaker 2: Well, immediately you think about and you're right, your percentage
Speaker 2: a percentage operator. But we're a percentage operator that operates,
Speaker 2: you know, day to day. I don't want to say
Speaker 2: hand to mouth, but hand to mouth, like you earn
Speaker 2: you put out, you earn you put out. If you're
Speaker 2: in a major you know, if you're if you're in
Speaker 2: a major agency situation or a larger business, management company, agency, whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe you generate enough that you have a
Speaker 2: huge turnover and you have enough to operate and take
Speaker 2: out a huge profit when you're independent. You know, even
Speaker 2: even the larger independence if they're a larger company generating
Speaker 2: more money, but they have a lot more people. So
Speaker 2: you know, in my position, I may have four or
Speaker 2: five people. A larger agency may have forty. So even
Speaker 2: though they're generating a larger amount of money, their payrolls
Speaker 2: a lot higher, their office space is a lot higher,
Speaker 2: their travel is a lot higher. So obviously during COVID,
Speaker 2: we had no travel, so that knocked that out. There
Speaker 2: was no you know, no t and so that was that.
Speaker 2: But I still had salaries to pay. I still had
Speaker 2: at the time, I had my office space. I was
Speaker 2: trying to negotiate my landlord. He would not give me
Speaker 2: a break. I was paying the rent every month, and
Speaker 2: you're paying your phone bill unless you cut your phones off.
Speaker 2: But you know, we ended up forwarding our numbers to
Speaker 2: individually to each of the people who worked with me
Speaker 2: to their cell phones, so you know, those costs were ongoing.
Speaker 2: So it got to a point. I mean, there was
Speaker 2: some localized stuff, you know, there was like, you know,
Speaker 2: New York State had something, New York City had a
Speaker 2: little something. There was the you know, there was the
Speaker 2: initial thing where you could file for you know a
Speaker 2: certain amount of money. You had to get a bank
Speaker 2: to to approve it. The government you know, uh over
Speaker 2: oversaw the or backed up the loan. Uh. There was
Speaker 2: you know, emergency loans you could apply for. I did.
Speaker 2: I got an emergency loan. It helped for some of it.
Speaker 2: I'm still paying it off. But you know, you look,
Speaker 2: you're sitting there and you're looking and you're thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: who do I have to lay off? Well? Who who
Speaker 2: do I have to cut back? What I did was
Speaker 2: I stopped taking you know, obviously not obviously I stopped
Speaker 2: taking anything. I immediately stopped taking any draw whatsoever. I
Speaker 2: just was living on my savings, and I kept continue
Speaker 2: to pay my staff, you know, as long as I could.
Speaker 2: I figured I'd pay them as long as I could,
Speaker 2: and then i'd I'd give them the opportunity to do Listen,
Speaker 2: if you need to go try something else because I
Speaker 2: can't pay you anymore, go ahead, if you want to
Speaker 2: stick around, that's fine. So I didn't have to get
Speaker 2: to that point, luckily, but that's what I was looking at,
Speaker 2: and all of us were, you know, in the same position,
Speaker 2: unless any of us were independently wealthy and could just
Speaker 2: keep floating the whole thing. But you're still at that
Speaker 2: point in time. You don't know how long it's going
Speaker 2: to last. Six months, six years. I mean, honestly, we
Speaker 2: all thought it was three weeks and then maybe six months.
Speaker 2: And then at the same time of doing all this stuff,
Speaker 2: for instance, we were rebooking tours. I rebooked the tours
Speaker 2: that I had booked three times during that period because
Speaker 2: every time we thought, okay, it's going to be six months, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a year. And I remember when
Speaker 2: I said, okay, it's going to be next year. I
Speaker 2: remember calling my managers and saying, I'm going to rebook
Speaker 2: it for next year. But honestly, I just have this
Speaker 2: feeling that it's not going to be next year. I
Speaker 2: think it might be two years. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: book next year and I'm going to hold the year after,
Speaker 2: which is what I did. And I had to roll
Speaker 2: into that third one. And then I had one client
Speaker 2: who when COVID was kind of over over here or
Speaker 2: just starting to Wane, No, unintended. He didn't want to
Speaker 2: go overseas and I had an overseas tour. He said,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be in Europe, and if there's
Speaker 2: an issue, I have to shut down and I have
Speaker 2: to ship everything back and pay everybody and you know,
Speaker 2: pay deposits on things. He said, I really don't feel comfortable.
Speaker 2: So I had to rebook that one the fourth time.
Speaker 2: That was the toughest one because it wasn't There wasn't
Speaker 2: an easy out on that one. Everybody wasn't Yeah, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: they were like, really, there's other people touring. But the
Speaker 2: fact of the matter is we didn't know. It could
Speaker 2: have sparked back up at any time.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you form the organization degrees, you know, four
Speaker 1: k from each individual. What is the goal? What is
Speaker 1: the agenda? When do you say and what do you say?
Speaker 1: Do you say, Hey, our main agenda is getting money
Speaker 1: for the people working for us and for agencies. We
Speaker 1: need to get it from the federal government. Walk me
Speaker 1: through what the thoughts were then.
Speaker 2: Well, the initial thought was we need to get money
Speaker 2: for everybody. That's everybody in the ecosystem. So we were
Speaker 2: again we were working along. At the time, we were
Speaker 2: working very closely with NIVA. That's before we officially join
Speaker 2: the if you want to call it the consortium or whatever,
Speaker 2: right the stakeholders as they called it. We were working
Speaker 2: with them, and there was other organizations working as well,
Speaker 2: and there was a there was a larger bill that
Speaker 2: was truck that was being that was put out, that
Speaker 2: was trying to that they were trying to, you know,
Speaker 2: get through that would have covered a lot of the people,
Speaker 2: right the workers backstage and the artists and the and
Speaker 2: the crews and all those people. So initially we were
Speaker 2: pushing for that. We were pushing it and then and
Speaker 2: I guess this is one of the reasons why you
Speaker 2: have lobbyists, well two reasons. The first reason is to
Speaker 2: be where you can't be, which is Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Or wherever it is. You need to be right talking
Speaker 2: to whomever needs to be spoken to. Also, they have
Speaker 2: the relationships just as we would if somebody wants a
Speaker 2: tour they call an agent because we have the relationships.
Speaker 2: They have those relationships. So in talking to them and
Speaker 2: discussing it and pushing for it, you know, the feed
Speaker 2: what happens is an interesting process. You know, the feedback comes,
Speaker 2: and somebody will say, and again, I wasn't directly speaking
Speaker 2: to the to the to the congressional people's staffs on
Speaker 2: the hill, although we did have you know, our interview
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call them, our interviews or our
Speaker 2: conversations with them individually set up, you know, strategic to
Speaker 2: push certain areas that we needed to push people that
Speaker 2: weren't in favor, to try to talk them into it
Speaker 2: or explain why they should back it, that it wasn't
Speaker 2: just to give money away, but that it was actually
Speaker 2: going to help you know, their constituents and their cities
Speaker 2: and their areas, because they depended a lot of these
Speaker 2: you know a lot of these I'm getting to a
Speaker 2: sidebar for a sec but a lot. And I just
Speaker 2: had this. I just came back from a conference. It
Speaker 2: was there Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It was out in
Speaker 2: mil Milwaukee, and we were talking to some you know
Speaker 2: people there and they'll tell you themselves, you know, people
Speaker 2: that own restaurants and hotels when when these events happen,
Speaker 2: When these concerts happen. Obviously the bigger ones are even
Speaker 2: more important, but even the smaller ones. People come into
Speaker 2: town from out of town, you know, from the suburbs,
Speaker 2: or from at fly in from out of town, depending
Speaker 2: on how big it is. They stay at hotels, they eat,
Speaker 2: they take taxis, they park cars, they pay babysitters, They
Speaker 2: go to the local pharmacy, they go to CV, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever it is. They they're there spending money, you know,
Speaker 2: because this thing's happening. Take away them movie theater, which
Speaker 2: was also going to go down the tube. That was
Speaker 2: one of the other stakeholders. Take away the movie theater
Speaker 2: and take away the concert venue, the theater or the club.
Speaker 2: Let's say it's a theater in a club and a
Speaker 2: movie theater. Take those out of the system. And what
Speaker 2: are they going downtown for? To shop? To a restaurant?
Speaker 2: But they go to restaurants when they go to shows. Right,
Speaker 2: A lot of people, not everybody, but they're going out
Speaker 2: because they're going out, you know. They're parking in garages
Speaker 2: because they're coming in to do that. Yes, some people
Speaker 2: come into park to go shopping. But they may come
Speaker 2: in and go shopping. They may come in and see
Speaker 2: one of the concerts. They may stay over the weekend
Speaker 2: and go to a theater. You go to the theater
Speaker 2: one night and the Broadway Theater groups were in on
Speaker 2: it too. They were one of the stakeholders. So, you know,
Speaker 2: getting back to your question, we were trying to get
Speaker 2: more of a broad thing going, but word came back
Speaker 2: to us that it wasn't going to go through. That
Speaker 2: was the word from the hill. They said, you can
Speaker 2: spend your time doing it if you want, but it's
Speaker 2: not going to pass. They said, there's this other bill
Speaker 2: that looks like it's going to pass. It it's more focused,
Speaker 2: it's more on the you know, the venue use specifically
Speaker 2: because of the reason I just explained to you. You know,
Speaker 2: you take all those venues away, and in some towns,
Speaker 2: you know Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, what happens if
Speaker 2: all those clubs are out of business? There is no
Speaker 2: Sixth Street, right, You take some of these you know
Speaker 2: clubs out of business, you know the Greenwich Village, right,
Speaker 2: all those clubs go out. You get some pizza places
Speaker 2: and some restaurants down there. But what else you're gonna
Speaker 2: do down there? No jazz, no pop, no you know,
Speaker 2: in indie music or whatever. So so that bill was
Speaker 2: seemed to be that, Yeah, that one bill seemed to
Speaker 2: be or thought of a bill. Proposal of a bill
Speaker 2: seemed to be gaining traction, so we focused ourselves on that.
Speaker 2: We figured, we've got to cover something, you know, we've
Speaker 2: got to be able to keep this thing going as
Speaker 2: best we can, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: if there are no tours, those other people and there
Speaker 2: are no venues the other people were trying to help
Speaker 2: aren't gonna have jobs anyway. They're gonna be looking for
Speaker 2: other work. So this at least keeps them in a
Speaker 2: place where they can have a job, you know, the
Speaker 2: potential of having a job. So we decided to jump
Speaker 2: on that bandwagon. And that's where the you know, where
Speaker 2: as I said, these eight major stakeholders started focusing was
Speaker 2: to try to get this through and then the you know,
Speaker 2: in the end it did go through.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the consolat ship and you talk
Speaker 1: about the stakeholders. There's NEVA, there's NITO, who else, if anybody.
Speaker 2: There was an organization I think called NATO, which was
Speaker 2: the I think National Association of Theater Owners, right and
Speaker 2: that and that was I think movie theaters. Uh, there
Speaker 2: was the Broadway League or a Broadway group. Right, there
Speaker 2: were Broadway theaters right there with that group. Later on
Speaker 2: there was the museums and the aquariums. I don't know
Speaker 2: if they had a specific group, but there was that.
Speaker 2: That was a that was a Senator Schumer thing for sure.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think there was eight of them. I
Speaker 2: don't remember them all off hand.
Speaker 1: So in a perfect world there we kum bay ah.
Speaker 1: But certainly Broadway tends to look down on certain things.
Speaker 1: Certain things generate more money as agents. How big a
Speaker 1: seat did you have at the table? Into what degree
Speaker 1: we listened to?
Speaker 2: Well that was the interesting thing, Bob. So how big
Speaker 2: a steed I don't know, But the reality is we
Speaker 2: had a seat, and we never did and even if
Speaker 2: it was a small seat, we had a seat, and
Speaker 2: we had a voice, and it was listened to. And
Speaker 2: we had to just not sit back and let the
Speaker 2: lobbyists do the talking because really they have the seat
Speaker 2: right at the table on the hill. But we got
Speaker 2: you know, as I said, we were on the phones,
Speaker 2: and we were when we broke up into groups. You know,
Speaker 2: our people from New York would get on the phone
Speaker 2: with the New York representatives, people from Nashville would get
Speaker 2: on the phones with the Tennessee representatives. I live in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: That's where my home is. I was on the phone
Speaker 2: with the Connecticut people right and on the call. I
Speaker 2: arranged the call, and I had a couple of theater people,
Speaker 2: I had a promoter or two I had myself. So
Speaker 2: the idea was to bring you know, the different groups
Speaker 2: together so they could hear from all of us. They
Speaker 2: could hear from the theater directly, they could hear from
Speaker 2: the promoter directly. They can hear from the agent. Oh,
Speaker 2: and they had a manager. So we tried to have
Speaker 2: as many you know, people as we could on the
Speaker 2: on the phones and they listened, so we had a voice. Yes,
Speaker 2: we did have a voice.
Speaker 1: Okay. When the bill was ultimately passed, where were the
Speaker 1: agencies in this and how did it ultimately play out
Speaker 1: with the money?
Speaker 2: Where were the agencies? What do you mean by where
Speaker 2: were the agencies?
Speaker 1: Okay, there was a pool of money. You had to
Speaker 1: apply for the money. Correct, there were all these stories.
Speaker 1: You heard for sure, they're going to run out of money.
Speaker 1: Then you heard that not enough people were applying at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. How did it work out
Speaker 1: for the agencies?
Speaker 2: So the agencies and the managers, Okay, the talent, let's
Speaker 2: call it talent representatives. Okay, let me step back one
Speaker 2: more step, just to clarify or whatever add to the story.
Speaker 2: So when we focused in on talent representatives, agents and
Speaker 2: managers did so when we set up the organization because
Speaker 2: our lobbyists suggested to us that when you're dealing with
Speaker 2: the hill, you need to be again, you need to
Speaker 2: be focused. So talent representatives, agents and managers, no matter
Speaker 2: what sports music wouldever have the same NASIS code, okay,
Speaker 2: which is the code that you use your company or
Speaker 2: yourself use on your tax return. So my company, a
Speaker 2: management company, whatever, sports agent, et cetera, we all use
Speaker 2: the same NASIS code. So we went by that code.
Speaker 2: Anyone with that code can join our organization basically, and
Speaker 2: so we formed it based on that and it became,
Speaker 2: as I said, talent representative. So theoretically we could have
Speaker 2: sports agents and managers joined too, because we're a talent
Speaker 2: representative or talent organization, international organization. So for the talent organization,
Speaker 2: roughly there was sixteen billion in the bill, okay at
Speaker 2: the end of the day. Initially they had a number
Speaker 2: they were looking at and they were there was going
Speaker 2: back and forth and the conversations were is it enough money?
Speaker 2: You know? And the initial number that they came up
Speaker 2: with is what you're discussing or alluding to the original
Speaker 2: number that they came up was thought to not be enough.
Speaker 2: What they asked for was each of the organizations to say,
Speaker 2: how much do you think you need okay for you know,
Speaker 2: to repay and to stay open for whatever period two years,
Speaker 2: whatever that period was, I don't remember off the top
Speaker 2: of my head, but you know, for this period and
Speaker 2: they and they were periods. It was set up with
Speaker 2: the SBA overseeing it, and there was like these this
Speaker 2: period that you had to apply for within that periods
Speaker 2: certain income and it had to reflect you know, going
Speaker 2: back I think two or three years or something some
Speaker 2: an average and I have to pull out my notes
Speaker 2: to see what the thing was. It was. There was
Speaker 2: a lot of calculating going on and you had to
Speaker 2: go through you know, a uh request, you know uh
Speaker 2: uh process. They set up a website for it, which
Speaker 2: crashed initially, by the way, and everybody's freaking out because
Speaker 2: you had the time period within to register. Uh. So
Speaker 2: there was so at the end of the day they
Speaker 2: did they estimated, re estimated and estimated again, they came
Speaker 2: up with the number of six billion. That was for
Speaker 2: all of these different scenarios. Okay, the talent representatives ended
Speaker 2: up with around nine hundred million dollars the independence. Okay,
Speaker 2: roughly that was our share, so just under a billion.
Speaker 2: The rest of the money, I couldn't tell you where
Speaker 2: it went, but you know it was all those different scenarios.
Speaker 2: The theaters, the quariums, the museums, the movie theaters, you know,
Speaker 2: all those things.
Speaker 1: Uh, you know.
Speaker 2: Broadway, That's where all the money went. You applied for it,
Speaker 2: you got the you got the grant if they if
Speaker 2: you were approved. And then what they did was they
Speaker 2: had additional funds available. They did after everyone applied, which
Speaker 2: again is probably what you're referring to. It's almost like
Speaker 2: we had too much. But maybe it's because some people
Speaker 2: didn't apply, maybe their numbers didn't work out, or maybe
Speaker 2: their calculations were overestimated. I mean mine were pretty tight
Speaker 2: and what they weren't questioned, thank god. And I got
Speaker 2: what I you know, what I applied for. And so
Speaker 2: they did a second round. After that, there was like
Speaker 2: a supplemental phase you could apply for and you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. I'm not sure exactly
Speaker 2: how much was used out of the sixteen billion. But
Speaker 2: there's also something I learned, you know, in the whole
Speaker 2: government process, like once they they approved something and they
Speaker 2: decided that's the number, they don't want to give it back.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to say, oop here, put it back
Speaker 2: over here, which I think is ridiculous. But hopefully nobody
Speaker 2: shoots me for saying that on this but I think,
Speaker 2: you know, honestly, I think it's ridiculous. But so it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we have too much, you can have some more, but
Speaker 2: you know, it goes according to you know, what it
Speaker 2: was you applied for. So it wasn't like you got
Speaker 2: double your money. You got like a little bit extra
Speaker 2: over here. But you know, I, you know, I got mine.
Speaker 2: And before you even asked the question, and I don't
Speaker 2: know if you're going to I'm going to answer it.
Speaker 2: I had gotten to a point when I realized this
Speaker 2: thing was going to go for a long time. I
Speaker 2: had a conversation with my staff and I said, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to lay anybody off, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to cut back for right now because I've got
Speaker 2: to try to work within my means, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to take anything, but I'll need everybody to reduce like
Speaker 2: twenty five percent of something. Is that okay? And everybody
Speaker 2: said yes, that was fine. So I did that and
Speaker 2: we went along our merry way. Everybody got paid, but
Speaker 2: they got paid at a lesser, lesser rate. And then
Speaker 2: when I did get the money, I sent checks to
Speaker 2: everybody or wires and I paid them back for the
Speaker 2: money that they didn't they didn't get. And I had
Speaker 2: one of my one of my employees who actually called
Speaker 2: me and said, why are you sending me this money?
Speaker 2: I said, because I owe it to you, And I said, no,
Speaker 2: you don't. I said, yes, I do. I owe it
Speaker 2: to you, so keep it. Do something. I don't care
Speaker 2: what you do with it.
Speaker 1: So essentially everybody was made whole.
Speaker 2: More or less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, let's shift gears a little bit. Neither. The
Speaker 1: Venue Association just had a conference and they put out
Speaker 1: a report. I believe the number was sixty four percent
Speaker 1: of venues don't make money. How the hell is it
Speaker 1: a sustaining business?
Speaker 2: Well, they're saying I was at that conference, by the way,
Speaker 2: that's where I was this week. They're saying that that
Speaker 2: it's not a sustaining business for them, and that you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five or thirty percent of their members are going
Speaker 2: to go out of business at the rate or something
Speaker 2: like that. I don't want to be quoted on it,
Speaker 2: but that's around that number, which is not just similar
Speaker 2: to what was happening overseas in the UK. They lost
Speaker 2: a you know, a a good portion of the bottom
Speaker 2: segment of the business. And you know of the of
Speaker 2: the small clubs and you know, small small, even small festivals.
Speaker 2: I mean they've had a number of them just shut down,
Speaker 2: go out of business. In reality, it see the problem
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to defend it because I'm not
Speaker 2: in that business, so I can't defend it, you know,
Speaker 2: I can't say, yeah, it's true, they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: all sixty five percent not maybe they're not operating properly,
Speaker 2: but but it's not. It's a it's a difficult business
Speaker 2: to sustain for a whole number of reasons. People are
Speaker 2: drinking less, that's the reality, especially the younger generation, so
Speaker 2: they for a long time depended on bar sales. One
Speaker 2: of the arguments that the ACT, and I'll just say
Speaker 2: this as a talent represented one of the arguments is
Speaker 2: that the acts charged too much. Okay, the deals are
Speaker 2: what the deals are. If a venue or a promoter
Speaker 2: doesn't want the act, they can say no. The artist,
Speaker 2: you know, either needs or or commands a certain amount.
Speaker 2: A young artist on the road today and I said
Speaker 2: this at the conference too, in a meeting that I
Speaker 2: had with a bunch of their people, I said, if
Speaker 2: you don't realize, and maybe you don't, a young artist
Speaker 2: today on the road needs about a minimum roughly of
Speaker 2: about twenty five thousand dollars a night. And I'm talking
Speaker 2: on low level, not on a even a medium level.
Speaker 2: You need about twenty five thousand dollars a night just
Speaker 2: to sustain and that's making no profit, that's just paying
Speaker 2: to be on the road. Back in the day, as
Speaker 2: we call it, the old days, labels subsidized that for
Speaker 2: new artists and for the ones that had new albums out,
Speaker 2: they got some subsidy as well. But these artists today
Speaker 2: that are going out and there's really no record label
Speaker 2: to subsiden I mean there are record labs, but not
Speaker 2: subsidizing anything. These guys are subsidizing it on their own.
Speaker 2: So where are they making their money, making their money
Speaker 2: on merch sales like that's and when I say making money,
Speaker 2: maybe they make a profit. I had a client on
Speaker 2: the road recently and their profit was all in their
Speaker 2: merchandise sales. That's where their profit was. They made nothing
Speaker 2: at the end of the day from what they took
Speaker 2: on the road. So the whole segment of the business
Speaker 2: is difficult to sustain, not just theirs. But I can
Speaker 2: understand it because people either aren't going out as much.
Speaker 2: They also stay a lot of them, not all of them,
Speaker 2: stay open multiple nights a week because they you know,
Speaker 2: they want to be open, they want to continue the business,
Speaker 2: but their bar seals being down, and then they're increasing
Speaker 2: their price on drinks to make up the difference, and
Speaker 2: then people are buying less. They may be drinking, but
Speaker 2: they're buying less because beers were ten bucks, maybe now
Speaker 2: they're twenty so or whatever fifteen and so maybe instead
Speaker 2: of three they buy two, or maybe instead of two
Speaker 2: day buy one. So there's that issue. Rents are going up,
Speaker 2: insurance is going up. You know, their fees just continue
Speaker 2: to increase, and there's only a certain amount they can increase. Tickets.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the smaller level. I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: the high end, talking about the bottom end. I mean,
Speaker 2: they can increase them, but this is a certain point
Speaker 2: which is which it becomes the diminishing returns. Right, keep
Speaker 2: increasing ticket prices, then you get lesson less people, and
Speaker 2: then they're back in the same boat that they were before.
Speaker 2: So it's a listen, it's a business I wouldn't want
Speaker 2: to be in. I can tell you that it's a
Speaker 2: tough business.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. The act has to get paid
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars a night.
Speaker 2: No, no, a week, a week a week.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's just to cover costs. I'm talking about small.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's just flesh it out a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's twenty five k a week, how many people
Speaker 1: in the bands? How much infrastructure, how much you know, equipment?
Speaker 1: What are we talking about If it's a being outfit
Speaker 1: for twenty five k a week?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm talking about it again. I'm talking about a
Speaker 2: starting act because as they get a little bigger, it's
Speaker 2: more expensive obviously for things that you're saying right now
Speaker 2: are alluding to. So let's just take you know, an example.
Speaker 2: So you got a five piece band, you got two
Speaker 2: people with them on a road. So that's seven okay, crew,
Speaker 2: that's tour manager crew. Merged that like all and two
Speaker 2: people are doing everything van. They're driving around a sprinter van.
Speaker 2: Their gear is either being pulled in a in a
Speaker 2: van or it's in the sprinter but probably most probably
Speaker 2: in a van. So it's not there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of gear. It's a drum kit. Let's say, there's keyboards,
Speaker 2: there's three amps, there's some guitars, not a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: They're doubling up in hotels mostly right, they're not in singles.
Speaker 2: I mean I could, as I said to them when
Speaker 2: I was talking to a bunch of the you know,
Speaker 2: club people, I was saying, look, they could sleep six
Speaker 2: in a room and driving a funky old van that
Speaker 2: breaks down all the time. But you know that's not practical.
Speaker 2: So so they you know, they're paying a little bit
Speaker 2: more for let's say a sprintter van, a little bit
Speaker 2: more room. But some of them, some of them are
Speaker 2: in just a nice van, but it's a van and
Speaker 2: they're driving around, and you know, between paying for gas
Speaker 2: and paying they got to pay salaries, you know, unless
Speaker 2: it's a band splitting, what's left which was one of
Speaker 2: the clients I had. And at the end, as I said,
Speaker 2: they only split the merchandise. They didn't make a profit on,
Speaker 2: you know, from ticket sales. So they're driving around, they're
Speaker 2: doing gigs, and if you think about it, they're working
Speaker 2: five nights a week. They're driving two hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: to three hundred miles you know, between gigs. Maybe more,
Speaker 2: but probably not because they're not in a tour bus.
Speaker 2: You know, they've got to be paid basically five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars a night, and a lot of these bands are
Speaker 2: getting the grand. Like what about an opening act, it's
Speaker 2: getting five hundred bucks. Okay, maybe it's not twenty five.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's seventeen to five for them because they're sleeping
Speaker 2: six in a room, but still get paid five hundred
Speaker 2: bucks two hundred and fifty. How are they making it work?
Speaker 2: They're not. They're not. They're barely living. They want to
Speaker 2: do it because they want to do it, but you
Speaker 2: know they're they're not living. You know, it's tough.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are many multiple levels here. Let's start with
Speaker 1: the beginning. You are a talent representative. The acts you're
Speaker 1: talking about, it takes twenty five k you have a
Speaker 1: number of issues. You have the band wants to do
Speaker 1: it because it is hard work, you have to find
Speaker 1: somebody who's going to pay for it. And then you
Speaker 1: have the venue saying we're in the red. So how
Speaker 1: does this play out?
Speaker 2: Well, this is this is what happens every day. So
Speaker 2: they're not saying every day, every single day, oh, we're
Speaker 2: not making any money. We don't do it. They obviously
Speaker 2: need the talent, they need to have shows, They need
Speaker 2: to have performances because they need to keep people coming in.
Speaker 2: So they do. However, you know, you can only use
Speaker 2: lack of a better term, you can only squeeze so
Speaker 2: much blood from a stone. So you know what they're
Speaker 2: saying at this point. Why they put that report out,
Speaker 2: or one of the reasons they put that report out
Speaker 2: is you know, to show that they're not you know,
Speaker 2: they're not making bank over there. You know they're not.
Speaker 2: Oh man, we're all you know, we're going on holiday,
Speaker 2: we're going to Aruba. Was shutting down for a month.
Speaker 2: You know, we're doing great. Some of them are probably
Speaker 2: doing great, right and some of them are doing terrible.
Speaker 2: But the ones in between are probably just making it,
Speaker 2: you know, because it's tough. So how does it play out?
Speaker 2: It's you know, like every day, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: people go to the store, they buy food, they come home.
Speaker 2: When they get home, you know, depending on what kind
Speaker 2: of job they have, they have to decide what kind
Speaker 2: of food do I want to buy? How much do
Speaker 2: I want to spend? Do I buy an extra this?
Speaker 2: Do I go it out to a dinner more than
Speaker 2: once a week? Do I? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2: It's like budgeting. But they still have to keep doing things.
Speaker 2: They got to get to work. And when you know,
Speaker 2: the and you're living in New York City and they
Speaker 2: decide that they're going to increase you know, the metro
Speaker 2: card or the you know, the metro system from you
Speaker 2: know two ninety to three fifty, and they're going to
Speaker 2: increase you know, the George Washington Bridge from you know
Speaker 2: whatever it is now ten bucks or nine to fifty
Speaker 2: or whatever it is to cross to you know, fifteen dollars.
Speaker 2: Or they have the you know two fifty surcharge now
Speaker 2: for driving below sixty fourth Street in Manhattan. All these
Speaker 2: little things for many people don't matter, but for the
Speaker 2: working guy, working woman, that's a big hit. Very similar
Speaker 2: in the clubs, very similar for the acts. So so
Speaker 2: we do the business. They're going to you know, I
Speaker 2: just said they're going to work. They're doing their thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, maybe they skip a lunch, maybe they
Speaker 2: have less to eat. You know, who knows. They go
Speaker 2: out less. One thing always affects the next, and so
Speaker 2: they going out less obviously probably affects the clubs, the
Speaker 2: movies and whatever. But we play out, you know, we're
Speaker 2: talking and making deals all day long. The fact of
Speaker 2: the matter is at the end of the day, they're
Speaker 2: having to do things to make up for it. As
Speaker 2: I said, I probably charging more for drinks or increasing
Speaker 2: the fee, increasing the ticket price. The point is they
Speaker 2: have to do something. So how it plays out is
Speaker 2: is a constant negotiation back and forth. They're not going
Speaker 2: to not buy talent because they won't be open if
Speaker 2: they do that. But maybe they buy different talent, or
Speaker 2: they just say I can't afford it, I'm not taking
Speaker 2: this act, or yeah, And what happens when those things happen,
Speaker 2: Bob is a lot of developmental acts are the ones
Speaker 2: that suffer, right because they now either have to go
Speaker 2: to smaller places locally, and maybe they don't get any guarantee.
Speaker 2: They just to play for the door, which a lot
Speaker 2: of brand new bands do anyway, and it starts to
Speaker 2: kind of warp the system, you know, instead of being
Speaker 2: able to build it up. You know, play this place,
Speaker 2: in this place, in this place, in this place. Makes
Speaker 2: it a little bit more difficult if the ones in
Speaker 2: the middle are getting really choosy about what they buy,
Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, I don't want to take
Speaker 2: a shot on this. I don't want to take a gamble,
Speaker 2: you know, I can't afford to lose money. That starts
Speaker 2: to affect it. So it how it plays out is
Speaker 2: it does affect the system. It kind of sets it off,
Speaker 2: you know, off rhythm if you like, it's still happening,
Speaker 2: but it's not happening exactly like it was.
Speaker 1: Okay in the old pre Live Nation days, if you
Speaker 1: were an agent and you booked a tour and the
Speaker 1: promoter got hurt, you would give money back for two reasons.
Speaker 1: A to keep the promoter in business. Sometimes these people
Speaker 1: were teetering. Also when you came back through, they would
Speaker 1: book you. So to what degree does that occur with
Speaker 1: independent venues? You're all independence In this case, there's no
Speaker 1: big backstone. So you have an act, it goes in there.
Speaker 1: You need your twenty five k a week, but they
Speaker 1: draw a fifteen or twenty percent crowd. What do you do?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a loaded question, but I have to unpack
Speaker 2: it piece by piece. So back in the day, preleb
Speaker 2: Nation days, it's not that everybody that lost money got money,
Speaker 2: but I could. It all came down to relationships, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it was with the act and the
Speaker 2: manager right, not necessarily specifically and strictly with the agent.
Speaker 2: Although yes, there were some of those relationships where agents
Speaker 2: might have gone back and said, hey, give them some
Speaker 2: give them, you know, give a second thought to this
Speaker 2: because they got really hurt. But usually it was that
Speaker 2: they really got hit and that was you know, that
Speaker 2: could have been anything, that could have been, you know,
Speaker 2: a storm. I mean today's world, we have it all
Speaker 2: the time now, but a really bad storm came through
Speaker 2: and everybody thought it was gonna be great, but in
Speaker 2: fact there was torrential downpour unless people showed up than normal.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just a club venue. It was like
Speaker 2: a big place and there was like big money on
Speaker 2: the line, and so you know, they would get helped out. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: not all the time, but sometimes in today's world, I'm
Speaker 2: sure those things happen, but not so much for me.
Speaker 2: I can't speak specifically, I because when I'm making the
Speaker 2: deal I try to make I try to make certain
Speaker 2: that it makes sense for everybody. Am I one hundred percent? No,
Speaker 2: nobody is, But I try to make sense. And I
Speaker 2: think some of the independence, if not all of them
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the talent representatives, have the same sort
Speaker 2: of thought.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It's not about how much can I get at the
Speaker 2: end of the day. Yes, we'd like to get as
Speaker 2: much as we can, but it's not just about Okay,
Speaker 2: let me get as much as I can't worry about
Speaker 2: the rest of later. It's about, you know, does it
Speaker 2: make sense if I'm going to get this, is it
Speaker 2: going to make sense or not? And yes, there's going
Speaker 2: to be a time when you have something that happens
Speaker 2: that you can't anticipate. You know, no different than booking
Speaker 2: a tour and than a hurricane comes through and you
Speaker 2: lose three shows. You know, it's nothing you can do
Speaker 2: about it. You know, weather's weather, So in this instance,
Speaker 2: you just try to be cognizant of it. At least.
Speaker 2: That's that's what I try to do. I try to
Speaker 2: be cognizant. I try to set the deals up to
Speaker 2: they make sense. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: if you can, if the one of the managers that
Speaker 2: one of the meetings that we had this week actually
Speaker 2: put it in a in a very good way, and
Speaker 2: he said, as long as I can make for lack,
Speaker 2: I'll just use an example, he said, if I can,
Speaker 2: you know, if I can, if I can earn seventy
Speaker 2: percent of the door, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I don't care how I get there. I don't need
Speaker 2: it all up front. Okay, as there are people that don't,
Speaker 2: that don't think that, don't believe that, and don't go
Speaker 2: by that. But but he put it out, you know,
Speaker 2: in a way that made sense, which is it doesn't care.
Speaker 2: As long as he's making what he's got to make
Speaker 2: and what he needs to make and what he'd like
Speaker 2: to make for his client, he's happy. You know, whichever
Speaker 2: way we get there, whichever street leads down to there,
Speaker 2: go around the corner and come back, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. So does it happen yet, I'm sure it does.
Speaker 2: I try to I try to avoid it if I can't,
Speaker 2: you know, I try to avoid it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So we referenced the old days where the labels
Speaker 1: gave tour support, they bought drinks. It venues today. In
Speaker 1: the old days, pre internet days, a all the action
Speaker 1: was outside the house. You needed to go to the
Speaker 1: club to socialize. Okay, you want it to be out
Speaker 1: amongst people. You don't need to do that today. In addition,
Speaker 1: on a developing act, we would hear about an act
Speaker 1: and he went to the club. The price might be
Speaker 1: cheap ten dollars back in the day, because you heard
Speaker 1: about the act, you wanted to see it. That was
Speaker 1: the only way to see it. Maybe there was one
Speaker 1: song on the radio, whereas today we have Spotify, we
Speaker 1: have YouTube. Is there a future and what is in
Speaker 1: the future of developing acts for them? The bottom up?
Speaker 2: Well, this is and yeah, that's that's a good point
Speaker 2: and a good statement and actually kind of reverts back
Speaker 2: to what we were talking about a little while ago.
Speaker 2: That's another thing that's affecting these clubs. You know, it's
Speaker 2: not the same, you know, the two things rather and
Speaker 2: it's been years now, so it's not like it's just
Speaker 2: doing it this, you know, like the next last two years.
Speaker 2: But the whole record company thing that probably happened towards
Speaker 2: the end of the or mid nineties, probably, I would think.
Speaker 2: But you're right. And back in the old days, the
Speaker 2: labels bought seats, they bought drinks, right, they bought tickets, right.
Speaker 2: They didn't ask for comps. Starting probably in the early
Speaker 2: the mid nineties, they started asking for comps, like they
Speaker 2: didn't want to buy tickets anymore. Right, that's when all
Speaker 2: the artist development stuff kind of went out the window.
Speaker 2: In today's world, I don't know that they do anything.
Speaker 2: I see them occasionally putting tickets on hold. They don't
Speaker 2: even pick them up, you know, they put them on
Speaker 2: hold to buy, but they don't pick them up. So
Speaker 2: there's not that support. So when you take that out
Speaker 2: of the you know, out of the out of the system,
Speaker 2: you know, that affects you know, these clubs as well.
Speaker 2: So uh and and you're right, Uh, the urgency so
Speaker 2: you know, going back to our time, you and me,
Speaker 2: the urgency was like you heard about it, you heard
Speaker 2: a track at your friend's house, right, like I got it.
Speaker 2: I got to see this band, we gotta go see
Speaker 2: we gotta go see them? Did you see. By the way,
Speaker 2: did you see the uh you saw the led Zeppelin doc? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sure you did. Okay, So I was a big fan.
Speaker 2: I remember hearing them that. Somebody played the track and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, this is you know,
Speaker 2: it's just what we're talking about. It's like, you have
Speaker 2: to go out and get the album, you gotta go
Speaker 2: see him. Not so much now, yes, but some of
Speaker 2: that's going on. I at this conference there was a
Speaker 2: young woman I think she was she was involved with
Speaker 2: the club. I think she might have been involved with
Speaker 2: the club, and she was, you know, saying, oh, I
Speaker 2: heard this new act and you got to check them out,
Speaker 2: and it's really good. I just overheard her having a conversation.
Speaker 2: They're really great, and I'm going to go out and
Speaker 2: see him. I mean, there's still some of that, but
Speaker 2: but not at the level that there was, because you're right,
Speaker 2: there's alter aternative stuff. There's a lot of people that
Speaker 2: and my daughters did this when they were in high
Speaker 2: school too. You know, when it's ticket sale at ticket
Speaker 2: prices went up, you know, and started getting you know,
Speaker 2: higher and higher. They started on the movies more because
Speaker 2: it was cheaper back in those days, they were probably
Speaker 2: seven fifty you know whatever, the fifteen bucks now. But
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of people that I know
Speaker 2: that have movie passes, right, so they can go as
Speaker 2: many as they want. They buy them monthly. So yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of alternative stuff. Plus, you know, there's
Speaker 2: TikTok and there's you know, Netflix, and there's you know,
Speaker 2: zooming with people and whatever. So there is a lot
Speaker 2: of competition for that, you know, for entertainment. So in
Speaker 2: answer to the question, it it's really difficult. I can
Speaker 2: tell you it's difficult to establish an act and quote
Speaker 2: unquote break it, as we used to say in the
Speaker 2: old days, you know, get them to a point where
Speaker 2: you can build an audience for them because there's so
Speaker 2: much else going on. There's so much distraction. And some
Speaker 2: of them, depending on the music, you know, what genre
Speaker 2: they're in, it happens for talk, you know, those girly
Speaker 2: pop singers, right, the female pop singers, right. A lot
Speaker 2: of that's TikTok driven and all of a sudden boom,
Speaker 2: they have a huge crowd. And some of it's not
Speaker 2: you know, just happened yesterday. Obviously, some of them were Disney,
Speaker 2: you know, people, and they came up and you know,
Speaker 2: the kids were watching them on TV for five years,
Speaker 2: so there's that base. But if you think about it,
Speaker 2: that's the same system, only it's different now, right that
Speaker 2: was our system, like they built. They built it from
Speaker 2: the ground. They saw them on TV. You know, they
Speaker 2: lived with them, they grew up with them, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, now they're on stage at Madison Square Gardens,
Speaker 2: so they've known them for years. It's not an overnight
Speaker 2: suc sensation. So in trying to build it from ground
Speaker 2: zero with none of that happening is extremely difficult, extremely difficult,
Speaker 2: And for that reason, there's not a lot of headline
Speaker 2: new headliners coming through. There are headline obviously headliners coming through,
Speaker 2: but not a lot of new ones, not a lot,
Speaker 2: not multitudes like they're used to be. There seems to
Speaker 2: be a lot in the middle, and there's a whole
Speaker 2: lot at the bottom that are trying to get up
Speaker 2: and break the ceiling or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: You know, those waves that we had, except you know,
Speaker 2: again putting the pop thing over to the side, because
Speaker 2: that's its own entity now, which is interesting because when
Speaker 2: I started in the business, or actually before I started
Speaker 2: the busines when I was a kid, then when you
Speaker 2: were a kid. But that was the thing, right, the
Speaker 2: pop thing. I wasn't a pop guy. I was more
Speaker 2: into the album tracks, but you know that was the
Speaker 2: pop thing. Oh one single, I gotta go out and
Speaker 2: see them, you know, blah blah blah. So that's what's
Speaker 2: happening now. So growing, it's a real process. It's on
Speaker 2: the road because there's really no record action happening. You've
Speaker 2: written about a lot of this. Bob. It's working it
Speaker 2: and is trying to build an audience and it's you
Speaker 2: know and literally building them because you just don't find
Speaker 2: them by accident. You don't roll into town and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden there's a thousand people that come see
Speaker 2: you. You know. It's not like it was you know that
Speaker 2: happened to hear it on the radio and you didn't
Speaker 2: even know they were there. You know, so much different.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a much more grueling game, and you
Speaker 2: have to you have to take time. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of hit and miss, you know, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: of for me anyway, I have to spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time, you know, thinking about it, like are they
Speaker 2: going to work over here or not. Do I really
Speaker 2: need to go out to the Midwest and spend and
Speaker 2: have the act spending twenty five let's say, if it's
Speaker 2: a new young act, twenty five grand a week to
Speaker 2: work out there for we're not going back for two years.
Speaker 2: Or do I better off working over here near where
Speaker 2: they live, you know, doing it regionalized. So I think
Speaker 2: there's more of a you know, I think this has
Speaker 2: to be more thought behind it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say you're booking clubs, independent clubs. In terms
Speaker 1: of the negotiation. How much negotiation is there? Is it like, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the fee, and then what percentage of merch they take?
Speaker 1: When you're negotiating with an independent venue. What are the
Speaker 1: deal points?
Speaker 2: Well, those are Those are a lot of the points
Speaker 2: that we were discussing actually at the conference, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a couple of ways. There's multiple ways
Speaker 2: you do it. You can go in and say, hey,
Speaker 2: this is the feed, take it or leave it, and
Speaker 2: you know, I just I just want this and I
Speaker 2: don't care about anything else. Or you can go in
Speaker 2: and you know you can you can build it from
Speaker 2: I need a minimum of this, and then I need
Speaker 2: to be able to make this at the end, so
Speaker 2: and structure it, you know, on a basis where you
Speaker 2: can earn it if you if you if you draw
Speaker 2: the people right, you earn it if you earn it,
Speaker 2: so to speak. The merchandise is again one of these
Speaker 2: tricky areas because the venue wants to have a piece
Speaker 2: of the merch You know, back in the day, the
Speaker 2: artists rolled in and they had a guy that walked
Speaker 2: around selling shirts and it was like, okay, we sold
Speaker 2: some shirts, you made some money. Or maybe it was
Speaker 2: as the kids were leaving with the fans, they'd sell
Speaker 2: it to them on the way out right, not the bootleggers,
Speaker 2: but actually the artists people, right, they'd be selling them.
Speaker 2: And then merch merchandise became a thing. I mean now
Speaker 2: there's merchandise companies. Back then it was just then printing
Speaker 2: their own shirts up. So you know Whi's been for
Speaker 2: a long time. But you know now big conglomerate merchandise companies.
Speaker 2: So the merchandise can be as I said to you,
Speaker 2: for the younger at it's really important. As I always
Speaker 2: saying to some of these you know, venue operators, the
Speaker 2: merchandise could be profit and loss you know, that could
Speaker 2: be the difference in them making any profit. But even
Speaker 2: more than that, some of these acts, especially if like
Speaker 2: I said earlier, these opening acts that are getting paid nothing,
Speaker 2: that's how they pay for hotels and fuel. Like if
Speaker 2: they if they're giving up merchandise or a large percentage
Speaker 2: of it, that's that's money they need to operate. They're
Speaker 2: not making a they're not making a profit. They're they're
Speaker 2: on the road because they want to be or they
Speaker 2: think they're going to be successful. Want to be successful, right,
Speaker 2: or they just love playing music. They're they're using that
Speaker 2: to help them sustain themselves. Like maybe they can stop
Speaker 2: in at Burger King instead of skipping a meal because
Speaker 2: they have merchandists. I'm not trying to pull anybody's you
Speaker 2: know what, do you get the tears rolling here? But
Speaker 2: that's the reality. Some of these guys are like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: if I you know, if we can sell some merch uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we're good. Because the fuel in a hotel,
Speaker 2: all right, maybe we're gonna have to stay all in
Speaker 2: one room. Sel sub merch maybe can have two rooms,
Speaker 2: you know. For the smaller acts, that's the level it's at. Frankly,
Speaker 2: for larger acts. You know, again, we want to talk
Speaker 2: about the top ten percent. That's a whole different story.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a corporate, you know, profit game. That's different.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stay with the small venues. It's in the
Speaker 1: smaller venues that the ticket fee looks outrageous. If there's
Speaker 1: a twenty five dollar fee on one hundred dollars ticket,
Speaker 1: you don't like it. If there's a twenty or twenty
Speaker 1: five dollars fee on a twenty five dollars ticket, everybody's unhappy.
Speaker 1: So talk about that.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and something that we've been talking about lot.
Speaker 2: The reality is, you know, from our perspective, fees have
Speaker 2: gotten out of hand. It used to be there was
Speaker 2: a fee, a handling fee, right, There was a ticket
Speaker 2: fee because they had to print it out and you know,
Speaker 2: sit mail it to you or whatever. So there was
Speaker 2: a handling fee, there was a printing charge and whatever,
Speaker 2: and then the fee became you know whatever, it was
Speaker 2: a dollar. I think it's actually going back. There was
Speaker 2: there was no fees to the to the fan. The
Speaker 2: fees in the old days, the fees were charged to
Speaker 2: the show. You paid. I don't remember the number of
Speaker 2: fans ten cents whatever. It was a ticket and it
Speaker 2: was charged to the show as a show cost. Okay,
Speaker 2: and then Fred Rosen came along. You know the story.
Speaker 2: I don't even have to tell you, but I'll tell
Speaker 2: it on the podcast. Fred Rosen came along, and I'll
Speaker 2: and I'll I won't say I made it happen, but
Speaker 2: I will take some of the hit for this. He
Speaker 2: called me on a particular tour of one of my clients. Actually,
Speaker 2: somebody had him call me the client that I had.
Speaker 2: We were we were going on tour and ticket Tron
Speaker 2: was doing it. Remember ticket Tron of course, so ticket
Speaker 2: ticket Tron was doing the you know the ticketing back then,
Speaker 2: the computerized if you want to call it that whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, mechanical ticket issuing or whatever. If you didn't
Speaker 2: go to like your local record shop or you didn't
Speaker 2: go to the box office or whatever. They were handling
Speaker 2: it a lot of them. And somebody called me and said, hey,
Speaker 2: you got to talk to this new company. It's called Ticketmaster.
Speaker 2: They can do it better, they can do it faster,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah. I said, okay, right, so I
Speaker 2: talked to I talked to uh Fred. I quote Fred
Speaker 2: up when we had a conversation and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to do I want to handle I'd like
Speaker 2: to do all the tickets for the whole tour. And
Speaker 2: I said okay, but I said, I don't want to
Speaker 2: have to pay a fee. I don't want to tour
Speaker 2: to pay a fee for it. He said, okay, don't
Speaker 2: worry about I'll take care of it. I said, how
Speaker 2: are you going to take care of it? He says,
Speaker 2: I'll charge the buyer. I said, oh, that's a good concept.
Speaker 2: I never heard of that concept. He goes, yeah, charge
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's twenty five cents or something or
Speaker 2: ten cents or something. I said, okay, that sounds great.
Speaker 2: And so that happened there. So you know, the next
Speaker 2: time I had a actually I had a conversation with
Speaker 2: him a bunch of time. But the next time I
Speaker 2: got on the phone to talk about ticketing, I was
Speaker 2: trying to get him to reduce his fee that he
Speaker 2: was charging for the buyers. And this was probably two
Speaker 2: or three years later, and he hung up on me
Speaker 2: basically because he was like, screw you, find somebody else
Speaker 2: to do your tickets. And I went, wow, that was
Speaker 2: a quick turnaround for it. But that was just you know,
Speaker 2: then it just went from there, right, it escalated. So
Speaker 2: in today's world, what does it cost to actually issu
Speaker 2: your ticket? Eighty five cents? Maybe? Okay, so when you're
Speaker 2: charging fifteen dollars at thirty five or a hunt or
Speaker 2: probably doesn't go higher than that. But fifty yeah, okay
Speaker 2: if it's on a really huge ticket, I guess, I
Speaker 2: mean it doesn't matter. But the conversations we've been having
Speaker 2: with with you know, with promoters and buyer and venue buyers,
Speaker 2: is why don't we just why are we doing this?
Speaker 2: If it's twenty five bucks for the ticket and thirteen
Speaker 2: for the fees you know, ticketing fees, venue fees, whatever,
Speaker 2: so it's thirty eight dollars, why don't we just put
Speaker 2: thirty eight dollars down to figure out how to split
Speaker 2: it up? I want to do fifty to fifty, I mean,
Speaker 2: like what makes sense. Like let's at least engage the conversation.
Speaker 2: Because back in the day before it was all the
Speaker 2: expenses and ticketing fees and all the rest of it,
Speaker 2: you know, it was the deals were simple. It was
Speaker 2: X amount of dollars guaranteed versus fifty percent, and it
Speaker 2: went to sixty at a point and maybe seventy at
Speaker 2: a point. And that was like later on when everybody
Speaker 2: figured out there might be more money to be made.
Speaker 2: And it was simple. There was no you didn't have
Speaker 2: to have accountants on a road, you didn't have to
Speaker 2: do any of it. It's like, okay, this is what
Speaker 2: we're going to do. So you know, and I know
Speaker 2: for the larger tours, just still otive accounts. But I'm
Speaker 2: talking about for the workingman's band if you want to
Speaker 2: call it that, or a workingman's group. So that's some
Speaker 2: of the conversations we've had. We've been having because you know,
Speaker 2: it is kind of out of hand. It's it's really
Speaker 2: like I have this over here, and then you can
Speaker 2: split this and so then what then we as agents
Speaker 2: or managers have to go back and go, okay, then
Speaker 2: we'll do this, but we're going to keep this over here.
Speaker 2: You know. It's like, let's just put it all here
Speaker 2: and figure out what it is. You have the venue,
Speaker 2: we have the act. If the act didn't come into
Speaker 2: the venue, there'd be nobody there, very few people. Okay,
Speaker 2: not every venue, but some or most they're not coming
Speaker 2: down to hang out at an empty venue and drink
Speaker 2: beer or drink drinks at the bar if nothing's happening.
Speaker 2: Unless it's a bar, you know that they have talent
Speaker 2: in but it's also a hangout bar. But if it's
Speaker 2: a place that's actually a showcase for talent, they're not.
Speaker 2: Nobody's coming down to hang out without talent. So there's
Speaker 2: a reason people are in there. So why can't we
Speaker 2: take it from that position? You know, you've got the bar,
Speaker 2: you got you know this, you just just make it easier,
Speaker 2: make it simpler. It's it's kind of I was sitting
Speaker 2: at the meeting we were having conversations about at Milwaukee,
Speaker 2: and I was sitting there thinking, this is like two
Speaker 2: countries with you know, uh military, you know weapons, right,
Speaker 2: you're going to have you know, dis missile. Then I'm
Speaker 2: going to make this bomb. You're going to do this.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do this. It's just like, can we
Speaker 2: just cut it all out and just have nothing? We
Speaker 2: won't attack you, you don't attack us. How about that? I mean,
Speaker 2: I know that's unrealistic, but uh that's the way I
Speaker 2: feel something.
Speaker 1: Okay, ticket Master, when we're talking about Areena's large values
Speaker 1: that are they pay these advances. They rationalize the fees.
Speaker 1: Let's just talk about that conceptually. We'll get into details. Leader.
Speaker 1: When you have an independent club, how they rationalizing these
Speaker 1: large fees.
Speaker 2: Cost of operation is one. They need this guarantee to
Speaker 2: their bottom line, you know what I mean. So it's
Speaker 2: again it's like, okay, this parts are so we know
Speaker 2: we have that we're gonna sell x amount of tickets
Speaker 2: all year or you know, average right on a year,
Speaker 2: so we know we have this much coming in. So
Speaker 2: that's one reason. And some of them, honestly, I don't
Speaker 2: know for sure, but maybe some of them get advances
Speaker 2: from the ticketing companies. I'm sure they do. It's probably
Speaker 2: the same thing, just in a smaller, smaller way, right,
Speaker 2: because they're not all ticketmaster venus. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of independent, you know, small ticketing companies, although
Speaker 2: a lot of those are being bought up, so you know,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure they go, if they're smart enough, they
Speaker 2: go and get advances on their ticket money to operate.
Speaker 2: And so they're doing the same thing that the larger
Speaker 2: places are doing. They you know, it's already in there.
Speaker 2: So they're charging the fee because they've you know, they've
Speaker 2: taken this money. They're charging the fee. They're legitimizing it
Speaker 2: because they've got to repay the ticketing company and they
Speaker 2: also want to make a profit. So the fee. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it's all going to Ticke company, but part
Speaker 2: of it probably is, and then some of it's coming
Speaker 2: to them, and some of it maybe's going to promoter.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know what their venue deal is,
Speaker 2: you know, for every date, every show, but they may
Speaker 2: they may have a deal like that. You know, you
Speaker 2: come in, your partner with us, will give you a
Speaker 2: piece of the ticketing.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's flip the script a little bit. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Titesky Trucks. You're the agent. They're playing bigger venues
Speaker 1: now at this point in time. You know, we'll go
Speaker 1: back in time. But they have an overall deal with Live.
Speaker 2: Nation right now.
Speaker 1: They do, yes, Okay, So what are your feelings about
Speaker 1: overall deals, touring deals?
Speaker 2: You know, it really depends on the situation, and it
Speaker 2: depends on the you know, who's doing it and what
Speaker 2: they're capable of doing. There's other than Ticketmaster sorry, Live Nation.
Speaker 2: There are other people out there trying to do these
Speaker 2: kinds of deals, right. I mean, Age obviously has been
Speaker 2: doing it for a while. We'll take Louisina out of
Speaker 2: it for a second, because that's kind of a different scenario.
Speaker 2: But you know there's other people doing it. There's you know,
Speaker 2: a venom now in America is trying to do the
Speaker 2: same thing, right, the ticketing company from Germany. There's been
Speaker 2: promoters that, you know, independent promoters that have tried to
Speaker 2: do a similar thing. Some of them now are backed,
Speaker 2: you know, by bigger money to do a similar thing.
Speaker 2: So my question always is as an agent is excuse me,
Speaker 2: can they can they take the place of the local person,
Speaker 2: you know, the local promoter or and or you know,
Speaker 2: the local marketing piece people like if they're living in
Speaker 2: I don't know, a city to Buke, Iowa. Let's say
Speaker 2: the promoter's living which probably isn't the case, but let's
Speaker 2: say they are. Are they going to know what's happening
Speaker 2: in Newark, New Jersey? Probably not. You can in today's world,
Speaker 2: you can do marketing the social media obviously, if you
Speaker 2: can do it anywhere in the world, right, that's not
Speaker 2: a surprise. I mean, you could even buy time on
Speaker 2: radio from anywhere. Really, if you want, although there's little
Speaker 2: of that being done. There's not so much print being done,
Speaker 2: so it's not a matter of doing that. But when
Speaker 2: and where? When when that was still happening and there
Speaker 2: was these kind of national things going on, I always
Speaker 2: question are they getting the right deal? You know, do
Speaker 2: they have a deal where the local guy might do
Speaker 2: they know all the ins and outs locally? Do they
Speaker 2: have do they know the jocks at the station, or
Speaker 2: are they're just calling up sales and you know, ordering spots.
Speaker 2: So to me, there's something about having the person in
Speaker 2: the market, especially when you're developing an act. So maybe
Speaker 2: when an act gets to a certain level, it's just
Speaker 2: all right, we're putting the show on. Okay, there's still
Speaker 2: things that happen to be done, and there's still probably
Speaker 2: marketing it needs to be done as well to make
Speaker 2: sure that you're doing the business or increase the business.
Speaker 2: But you know, as you're coming up, are they going
Speaker 2: to have the same wherewithal Now from a live nation perspective,
Speaker 2: they do have offices in virtually older major cities, so
Speaker 2: you can say that they have their localized people right,
Speaker 2: So maybe that makes you know, that makes more sense
Speaker 2: than somebody that's doing it, that just says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm going to call you know, I'm gonna call the Beacon,
Speaker 2: or I'm gonna call Madison Square Garden and book the
Speaker 2: Beacon and I'm going to do a show there. But
Speaker 2: I live in Minnesota and there's people doing it all
Speaker 2: the time because it's easy enough to do these days.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like it was in the old days, right,
Speaker 2: And you know, they'll fly in if they have to,
Speaker 2: or they'll hire somebody to go cover the date. It's
Speaker 2: a lot of these guys that are people around there
Speaker 2: that are doing and there's not lots and lots of them,
Speaker 2: but there's quite a few now that are doing like
Speaker 2: these tour deals or whatever. You know, they're hiring somebody
Speaker 2: to be like the tour manager. So and they're on
Speaker 2: the road, you know, covering the shows because they you know,
Speaker 2: the promoter's doing other stuff too, so he's not going
Speaker 2: to be able to cover all the shows. I mean,
Speaker 2: back in the day, you know, there was Larry Magott
Speaker 2: and Philly. There was Don Law in Boston. There was
Speaker 2: Ron dels Are in New York. Right, your guy had
Speaker 2: the city wired, he had all the stuff locally wored
Speaker 2: and maybe that's part of why the developmental thing isn't
Speaker 2: as strong as it was. Maybe that's a little bit
Speaker 2: part of it. I mean, there's other reasons obviously the
Speaker 2: radio stations, record companies, et cetera. But maybe it's because
Speaker 2: it's gotten so nationalized. We're losing out on that, you know,
Speaker 2: we're losing out on the guy or person that's developing
Speaker 2: that act, you know, for that region like you know,
Speaker 2: Philly around the Philly area or Pennsylvania or whatever, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, the metro New York
Speaker 2: City area or you know Syracuse and Rochester, New York,
Speaker 2: where before you had somebody working on because they wanted
Speaker 2: to develop business. So the independent you know venues now
Speaker 2: have kind of taken over that role, only they don't
Speaker 2: all have that wherewithal you know, financially as well, some
Speaker 2: of them, but not all of them. And they also
Speaker 2: if they're running five six nights a week or more,
Speaker 2: some of them run seven. If you're running five or
Speaker 2: six nights a week, that's that's really difficult to do.
Speaker 2: You know. Back again, back in the day, they were
Speaker 2: doing maybe a show a week, maybe a couple of month,
Speaker 2: you know, and then eventually they had multiples and they
Speaker 2: had to hire other people. But still they weren't doing
Speaker 2: you know, they weren't doing three hundred and sixty five
Speaker 2: shows a lot of them. Right these venues now are
Speaker 2: you know they're running They're doing two hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: or whatever. You know, I mean, I know one venue
Speaker 2: close to where I live that there's one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty seven okay, small theater, right, so that's a lot
Speaker 2: of shows. If they were trying to do the rest
Speaker 2: of the country, how would they you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: how would they concentrate on what they're doing locally? So
Speaker 2: that's that's my general feeling on that. Okay.
Speaker 1: The old logic was if I go independently, the promoter
Speaker 1: has a relationship. If I have I'm a good draw,
Speaker 1: I can make more money. But I could have a
Speaker 1: bad date for whatever reason, turns out I'm soft in
Speaker 1: the market, it's weather whatever, blah blah blah. Whereas I
Speaker 1: made an overall deal, my money was guaranteed. Then you
Speaker 1: have the Michael Cole paradigm. What he started was I'll
Speaker 1: pay you the money, don't ask me how I make
Speaker 1: my money. Okay, And so if there's an overall tour
Speaker 1: deal today. I mean Arthur Fowell works there at Live Nation.
Speaker 1: Michael Cole is not a part of that. To what
Speaker 1: de do you just say, Okay, I negotiate the biggest
Speaker 1: number I can and I just leave the rest of
Speaker 1: the air. And to what degree can you control them?
Speaker 2: Well? Okay, so again a lot to unback. I guess
Speaker 2: when you get to a certain level, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll just I'll give you a a an example, but
Speaker 2: not in the business, not necessarily for that. And then
Speaker 2: I'll answer the question. If you have a business, you
Speaker 2: build it up. You're an independent and you know you're
Speaker 2: a businessman. Rather you start your own business or an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: You build your business up and you get along, you know,
Speaker 2: later in life, and you decide, you know what I
Speaker 2: need to I'm working like crazy. I'm banging my head
Speaker 2: against the wall making sure everything happens properly. Somebody comes
Speaker 2: along and goes, hey, you know what, I like your business.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you, you know, ten million dollars
Speaker 2: for it. You think, yeah, but this is like my family,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Then you think, okay, how long do
Speaker 2: I have left Okay, I'll take the money, and then
Speaker 2: you know, you've got to be on for whatever it is,
Speaker 2: three to five years, and then you can do whatever
Speaker 2: you want. Maybe you stay, maybe you don't. So I
Speaker 2: think with with not everybody, with certain situations in this
Speaker 2: business as well, you know, you get to a point
Speaker 2: where it's something that I was mentioning before. So I
Speaker 2: had a client, as I said that, you know overseas,
Speaker 2: was concerned that, you know, during COVID, that they'd be
Speaker 2: over there, COVID would come, everything would shut down and
Speaker 2: he'd be stuck on an island and have to pay
Speaker 2: everybody and pay to get everything back and whatever, and
Speaker 2: basically lose his ass right because there would be no shows.
Speaker 2: He was concerned with that. So when you're operating that
Speaker 2: way with some of these acts, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them do, even if they're larger, and you and you
Speaker 2: can realize that, or you realize that if I make
Speaker 2: this deal, I could just take care of I don't
Speaker 2: have to worry about that. I'll take the money, and
Speaker 2: you know, I don't have to worry about anything else.
Speaker 2: I don't have to deal with anything. It sounds easy, right,
Speaker 2: but sometimes it's not that easy. It's not always that easy,
Speaker 2: but it seems that easy. But for them, maybe it
Speaker 2: makes sense. You know, let me take the check and
Speaker 2: you worry about it. They still have to do their
Speaker 2: show and do all the rest of that stuff. But
Speaker 2: maybe they're thinking, I don't have to worry about anything
Speaker 2: else now they deal with it. But as you alluded to,
Speaker 2: most of those deals are yep, don't ask me what
Speaker 2: I'm doing, because I'm gonna do whatever I have to
Speaker 2: do to make it up. I mean, that's the reality.
Speaker 2: I do the same thing. I just gave you ten million.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me how I'm gonna get it back. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna do whatever I have to do to get it back. Now,
Speaker 2: different for me than some is I just don't have
Speaker 2: it in me to do whatever it takes to get
Speaker 2: it back. I'm going to try to do it. You know,
Speaker 2: the way I feel is right, But that's just because
Speaker 2: of who I am. But it's still leaving it out
Speaker 2: there because you even if you think you have controlled,
Speaker 2: you don't have one hundred percent of control. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to give something up. It's why I gave
Speaker 2: you that example of the business, because even though you
Speaker 2: see I'm taking a Timley, and they say to you,
Speaker 2: you can run it the way you want. You can
Speaker 2: do whatever you want. Don't worry about it ain't gonna happen.
Speaker 2: You think it is not going to happen. I just
Speaker 2: told some friends of mine a couple of years ago
Speaker 2: who were out looking for money to you know, invest
Speaker 2: in their business, and they go, we're gonna get this,
Speaker 2: We're gonna get that. And I said, let me let
Speaker 2: me say something to you. You think that that's going
Speaker 2: to answer all your problems and answer every you know,
Speaker 2: the questions for you, and you think you're going to
Speaker 2: have control. But if somebody gives you ten million dollars
Speaker 2: or twenty million dollars, they are going to want control.
Speaker 2: They are not giving up control. I'll give it. I
Speaker 2: don't care what they say. I don't care what when
Speaker 2: they put that agreement together, you better read it really carefully.
Speaker 2: Now I speak from experience because my business prior to
Speaker 2: this was a partnership with you know, with an agent
Speaker 2: that we you know, started the business together very much
Speaker 2: the same as I did this one, very small, built
Speaker 2: it up. It was very successful. We made a joint
Speaker 2: venture and it was great, and we expanded and we
Speaker 2: did a lot of great things and whatever, and for
Speaker 2: the most part, we were we did what we wanted
Speaker 2: to do. We still had to ask because it was
Speaker 2: a fifty to fifty joint venture, but they agreed until
Speaker 2: the administration changed and then it was like, what are
Speaker 2: you guys doing? We don't understand. Why are you doing this? Why?
Speaker 2: And then it was like, okay, we have to do
Speaker 2: this over here to expand, and we're going to need
Speaker 2: this much money. Well, I don't know if we want
Speaker 2: to give you that money to do that, you know.
Speaker 2: And then things changed overnight and I was sitting thinking, Okay, now,
Speaker 2: what how do I get myself into this? So it
Speaker 2: sounds good from the outset, but if you take the check,
Speaker 2: you're giving up control.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go. When a step before, before there was
Speaker 1: an overall deal for Tedesky trucks, what would be the
Speaker 1: negotiations and what were those tours like?
Speaker 2: Well, see, so the Tedesky trucks are or however, you
Speaker 2: know whatever, It doesn't matter who the act is. But
Speaker 2: in my you know, theory, not just my personal theory,
Speaker 2: you can you can probably do the same either way,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, You can do the same
Speaker 2: sort of things and probably have basically the same business
Speaker 2: either way. But as I said it, maybe it may
Speaker 2: look easier to do this right because you either have
Speaker 2: to do less work, you have less risk, and that's
Speaker 2: a lot of it is the risk. So you do
Speaker 2: this and there's less risk, and maybe you just end
Speaker 2: up at the same place at the end, you know,
Speaker 2: or close, or maybe you're a little bit ahead. So
Speaker 2: that's good, you know, Is it twice as far ahead?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, it's still to be seen.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of those big tours and I'm
Speaker 2: not avoiding the answer the question. Rather, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: I'm trying to give you more of a full answer.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of those tours that are you know,
Speaker 2: the what do you call it, you know, the tour deals, right,
Speaker 2: the big packages. We're done for a lot of different reasons.
Speaker 2: One of them, you know, one of them maybe was
Speaker 2: on creativity, you know, based on creativity, because they felt
Speaker 2: like if they made this deal and somebody was producing
Speaker 2: the whole tour, they had more control on the creative
Speaker 2: side because then they could roll in with whatever they
Speaker 2: wanted and basically just do what they want. Well, it
Speaker 2: doesn't not necessarily, but maybe closer, you know, and maybe yes,
Speaker 2: maybe at the end of the day you'll get almost
Speaker 2: as much, sorry, almost one hundred percent of whatever you want.
Speaker 2: And then another reason again was risk. You know, you
Speaker 2: want to somebody wants to take on a situation and
Speaker 2: they want to have, you know, put out a bigger show.
Speaker 2: There's a huge risk in that, you know, a risk
Speaker 2: getting into it, and then you probably come out okay,
Speaker 2: but you're still risking coming in because you've got to
Speaker 2: you got to finance it. So maybe that's the other
Speaker 2: reason is the risk, as I said earlier, so risk
Speaker 2: is a big thing as well. Now, so the question was,
Speaker 2: you know, how of the negotiations go. Well, when when
Speaker 2: you're dealing on forty or fifty shows independently, you're dealing
Speaker 2: with you know, each promoter office, it's a little different
Speaker 2: than you know, having a tour deal, so some of
Speaker 2: them may be the same places that you're playing, but
Speaker 2: it's coming in as you know, an overall tour deal,
Speaker 2: so you're not necessarily negotiating each of the to the
Speaker 2: dates individually. At the end of the day, the shows
Speaker 2: will be the same, you know, the earnings may be
Speaker 2: higher maybe or may be the same, but again the
Speaker 2: risk is out the ability to coordinate things from one
Speaker 2: place who is attractive to some people. The show is
Speaker 2: still being done virtually the same way. I mean, it
Speaker 2: may change in certain people's cases. As I said, you know,
Speaker 2: it may be that they're out on the road and
Speaker 2: they want it. You know, Like I had a client
Speaker 2: the other day that said, oh, if I only had
Speaker 2: somebody that would finance the whole tour, I bring screens
Speaker 2: and I'd do this, and I do that. So there's
Speaker 2: a reason why they would do it because they want
Speaker 2: to put on a bigger show. You know. I don't
Speaker 2: even know if they're thinking about at the end of
Speaker 2: they making more money. They might be, but I think
Speaker 2: they're thinking about presenting a bigger show and the investment
Speaker 2: it takes to do that, you know, up front. So
Speaker 2: I think that may be a lot of the reasons.
Speaker 1: Well, let me let me be clearer. Okay, Yeah, prior
Speaker 1: to making a little we're all deal with Live Nation
Speaker 1: with Tedesky Trucks. Let's take that off the table. If
Speaker 1: there were fifty dates, did you work with fifty different
Speaker 1: promoters and have to negotiate fifty different deals? Yes, Now,
Speaker 1: when you're making a deal. I have literally sat with
Speaker 1: the promoter where they have the computer, and they show
Speaker 1: me the two sets of books. There's the one they
Speaker 1: send to the act and the one for them. So
Speaker 1: the one that goes to the acts as they're in
Speaker 1: the red, the one that's in the black, theirs, which
Speaker 1: they don't show the actions that they made money. So
Speaker 1: from beginning to end, how do you get I mean,
Speaker 1: it's constant war between agents and promoters. How do you
Speaker 1: make sure you get the most money and don't get screwed?
Speaker 2: How do you make some Well, if I'm gonna just trust,
Speaker 2: there's no way to make sure. Bob, how do you
Speaker 2: know your bank's not stealing from you right now? You
Speaker 2: have no idea?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, as you talk about changes in the business,
Speaker 1: they sent out these two accountants whatever who were more
Speaker 1: line by line, and we're arguing it more as opposed
Speaker 1: to trust. Now you have to pay that person and
Speaker 1: sometimes there's not enough money or else the advance is
Speaker 1: so big, you know they have to steal from you
Speaker 1: in order to make it work.
Speaker 2: But even if you're going line by line, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: if you're if you're in a settlement, and you're going
Speaker 2: line by line, they go, the advertising costs this much,
Speaker 2: and then they go, here are the receipts. Well, how
Speaker 2: do you know you're going to call every radio station,
Speaker 2: you're going to call every newspaper. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: this is going back pre today. Let's say, you know,
Speaker 2: going back ten years, fifteen years, whatever. The local guy
Speaker 2: has a deal with all those people. Why because he's
Speaker 2: doing volume right today. It's in the agreements, right, it
Speaker 2: says any disc count afforded to us does not go
Speaker 2: in the deal. It's right there in black and white.
Speaker 2: So that immediately admits that there has always been discounts,
Speaker 2: but we suspected that anyway. Of course there's discounts. And
Speaker 2: those re seats like are they real or did they
Speaker 2: get are they computer generated? Or? I mean today we
Speaker 2: can make anything on a computer.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that's why I say this trust involved. Because you
Speaker 2: look at it and you could go line by line
Speaker 2: by line, that doesn't mean the reality. I remember back
Speaker 2: when the tour account started going out, they were counting
Speaker 2: seats and venues, right Literally, it'd go around counting the
Speaker 2: seats to make sure you know, blah blah blah blah
Speaker 2: blah to make sure the seats were there, and then
Speaker 2: they'd say, oh, there's five more seats. Well, okay, so
Speaker 2: you caught them for five seats, but what else is
Speaker 2: going on? Like, you can't, you can't, you're not in
Speaker 2: the box office. You don't know what's really going on.
Speaker 2: It looks good, and yes, you know at a certain
Speaker 2: level you do need somebody out there doing that. You
Speaker 2: don't want to just blindly go through it. But there
Speaker 2: is a large amount of trust involved in the meantime.
Speaker 2: What you're saying about the double books is funny because
Speaker 2: I brought that up in one of the meetings I
Speaker 2: was having this past week, and it was like, and
Speaker 2: they were shocked, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: You know it happens. I know it happens. But also
Speaker 2: if you own it, see so part of the differences
Speaker 2: I think, I think, but I didn't see the books.
Speaker 2: You saw. You know what you saw. If you own
Speaker 2: a venue, right, or you control a venue, you can
Speaker 2: show the actual show, maybe losing money, right, the selling
Speaker 2: the tickets, people coming in and sitting okay, But then
Speaker 2: the question becomes, all right, but what else is there?
Speaker 2: So that's in the red and that's what normally we
Speaker 2: see but what about you know, again, depending on the venue,
Speaker 2: it's like the sports venues or you know, the arenas today,
Speaker 2: you go in there and none none of the boxes
Speaker 2: are in the manifest, right, none of the special you know,
Speaker 2: annual deals they do are in the manifest. You know,
Speaker 2: there's all of that. So so that could be part
Speaker 2: of it. Right, They go, Okay, we're making money because
Speaker 2: we've got you know, parking, and we've got the bar,
Speaker 2: and we've got this, and we've got the ticketing feed,
Speaker 2: and we've got the venue fee, and we've got you know,
Speaker 2: our club seats, and we've got our members and all
Speaker 2: the rest of it. So you know, they look at
Speaker 2: that and they go, okay, we made money, but we
Speaker 2: lost money here. But you know, that's but that's part
Speaker 2: of that model, and it's been developed, and that's why
Speaker 2: you know, there's certain entities that you know that are
Speaker 2: out you know, building venues and making venues and and
Speaker 2: you know, some of these club the larger club guys
Speaker 2: control multiple rooms. What we see as a settlement on
Speaker 2: the show, we don't see the settlement on the business, Like,
Speaker 2: what's the real settlement on the business. We never see
Speaker 2: that really you know Jake Gold of course, right, So
Speaker 2: Jake told me a story and I know you love
Speaker 2: this because you love Jake as I do so Jay.
Speaker 2: When I was representing the Tragically Hippy years ago and
Speaker 2: I started to represent them in Canada, Jake used to
Speaker 2: tell me stories about when they went out on the
Speaker 2: road and sometimes and I told this story actually to
Speaker 2: somebody this weekend at the not this this week because
Speaker 2: it was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at the conference, because they
Speaker 2: were talking about the bar and the tickets and whatever.
Speaker 2: So Jake used to say to me, you know, if
Speaker 2: a club owner doesn't want didn't want the act in
Speaker 2: the early days, I'd tell them, you can have the
Speaker 2: act for free, give me the bar, because I knew
Speaker 2: people were going to drink. And I'd say yeah, and
Speaker 2: then you know, I remember going to the shows and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, they do drink, you know. And
Speaker 2: so he was willing to trade the door for the
Speaker 2: bar because he knew that they were making more money
Speaker 2: in the bar than he was making at the door.
Speaker 2: So you know that's my point, like, well, he knew
Speaker 2: because you know, Jake is Jake, and he probably you know,
Speaker 2: went in there and you know figured it out. He
Speaker 2: probably counted the people and how many drinks they had.
Speaker 2: But you know, we don't know what the business is doing.
Speaker 2: We just know what we're seeing, you know, we're seeing
Speaker 2: It's like the airlines. You know, they go, well, we're
Speaker 2: losing not anymore today because they weren't making money, but
Speaker 2: we're losing money. Well, why you lose money? Well, fuels, this,
Speaker 2: this is this, this is the so now they're charging,
Speaker 2: you know, for baggage. You want to sit over here,
Speaker 2: you got to pay this. You want an upgrade, you
Speaker 2: want to pay this. You want to get on early,
Speaker 2: you pay this. They figured out it's the same sort
Speaker 2: of model. It's the same model. Hey for extras, let's
Speaker 2: do upgrades. Let's do all of this, right, you got
Speaker 2: your normal guy. How many people want to sit in
Speaker 2: the very back and be the basic economy? Not many,
Speaker 2: So they say, here's basic economy. It's not bad. You
Speaker 2: can fly to Chicago for three hundred bucks, but bags
Speaker 2: fifty dollars early. You know, on the plane twenty five bucks.
Speaker 2: Sit in a seat where you can actually put your
Speaker 2: legs out right, that's another fifty bucks. And just keep
Speaker 2: doing that. It's all add ons.
Speaker 1: Okay, in these larger venues, you know there's a law
Speaker 1: now you have to show the overall price. But as
Speaker 1: an agent, what about negotiating in terms of the ticket
Speaker 1: prices and the add ons on these bigger buildings.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's ticketing things. You know, there's a never ending
Speaker 2: conversation or battle. Honestly. First of first of all, the
Speaker 2: the all end price was a good concept and principle,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it is in the actual everyday usage.
Speaker 2: I had a manager that called me the other day
Speaker 2: and when it took effect in New York, and he
Speaker 2: said he got a something from a fan that they
Speaker 2: were playing somewhere. It was like the ticket was fifty bucks.
Speaker 2: I think it was fifty five something like that, and
Speaker 2: they flipped it to all in pricing. So the fifty
Speaker 2: five dollars ticket became sixty eight. So the fan was
Speaker 2: emailing saying, I was going to buy a ticket, but
Speaker 2: you increased the price to sixty eight. Well, the artist
Speaker 2: didn't increase the price. Price is the same. The fees
Speaker 2: increased the price and it went to all in ticketing.
Speaker 2: And depending on what platform you're on. And he was
Speaker 2: explaining to me on the particular platform he was on.
Speaker 2: It doesn't show you that until you check out. It
Speaker 2: does give you all the fees when you check out,
Speaker 2: but not until you check out. There is I understand.
Speaker 2: I haven't been on all the platforms, and this was
Speaker 2: a big conversation in Milwaukee, and on one of the
Speaker 2: platforms it shows you upfront what the fees are. I
Speaker 2: still don't think that the public really understands that, nor
Speaker 2: do I think we could really make them understand it
Speaker 2: or get them to understand what it is, because they
Speaker 2: think it's the artist, and the artists in the you know,
Speaker 2: in the larger scenarios maybe be maybe controlling the overall. Right,
Speaker 2: they may be able to say, and I'm talking about
Speaker 2: the big one percent or top ten, whatever you want
Speaker 2: to call it. They may be able to say, here's
Speaker 2: what I want the ticket to be, and the fee
Speaker 2: has to be no more than this and this and this.
Speaker 2: They can control that because honestly, you want that tour,
Speaker 2: that's what you do, or you don't get it. So
Speaker 2: they probably do control that. But for the you know,
Speaker 2: working man's act or the working act, as I say,
Speaker 2: then they can't control that. So you know, they decide
Speaker 2: they want a twenty five dollars the ticket it ends
Speaker 2: up being thirty five. You know, it's probably more than
Speaker 2: they should charge for that particular act. And there's no
Speaker 2: real way to control it because you got the you know,
Speaker 2: you got the fees for the building, get the fees
Speaker 2: for the ticketing company. And we just went through why.
Speaker 2: You know, it's advances, it's splitting it with somebody, it's
Speaker 2: whatever it is. It doesn't even matter anymore. It's the
Speaker 2: fact that they're there. So all In was supposed to
Speaker 2: quote unquote solve it. All it does is just lump
Speaker 2: in one lump sum. And so the good part about
Speaker 2: it is you can see what the price is and
Speaker 2: you go, you know what, that's too high. I'm not
Speaker 2: buying it. Whereas before maybe if it stated, you know, whatever,
Speaker 2: it was fifty five dollars or if it was a
Speaker 2: seventy five or whatever it was, and not like ninety eight,
Speaker 2: you look at it and go, okay, I'll buy that.
Speaker 2: Oh there's these fees and that's like tax. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, okay, you know, okay, I'll have to pay
Speaker 2: that at the end. But you see them. The argument was,
Speaker 2: or at least from our standpoint, is a talent representative.
Speaker 2: We wanted everybody to see the price, to be aware
Speaker 2: what you're paying and what the fees are for. We
Speaker 2: wanted them to know the artist is charging this and
Speaker 2: these are the fees, so you're paying that because of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your view on authorized resale? Ticket Master says
Speaker 1: the ACT has the right to turn that off R on.
Speaker 1: I've heard, you know, not my personal experience. I've heard
Speaker 1: from some agents that ticket Master turned it on. They
Speaker 1: weren't aware of it. They had to call them to
Speaker 1: them to turn it off. What's your philosophy and what's
Speaker 1: your experience?
Speaker 2: Experience is very similar to what you say. I've had it,
Speaker 2: you know, turned on without without knowing, and then you
Speaker 2: call it turn it off, and I haven't. It hasn't
Speaker 2: happened recently. But when it started to have out, they
Speaker 2: turned it off initially and then later said no, we're
Speaker 2: not going to turn it off, and they they reverted
Speaker 2: to we'll keep it off until it gets to ninety
Speaker 2: eight percent, then we're turning it on or some percentage
Speaker 2: I don't remember off the top of my head, and
Speaker 2: then we're turning it on automatically. The thing is that
Speaker 2: Once you get to that percentage and it turns on,
Speaker 2: that just opens up the floodgate because then everybody has
Speaker 2: tickets can put them up on resale, and if the
Speaker 2: bots have them, and if whoever has them, all of
Speaker 2: a sudden boom, there they go. So my philosophy on
Speaker 2: resale is I okay, my personal philosophy. My personal philosophy
Speaker 2: is resale is fine. It should be at face value
Speaker 2: with a minimal up charge whatever whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it. You got a ticket for one hundred bucks
Speaker 2: or let's say one hundred bucks, two tickets to go
Speaker 2: somewhere your friend can't go, you're going on your own.
Speaker 2: You want to resell it, resell it for one hundred,
Speaker 2: maybe you get one hundred and ten or whatever. Okay,
Speaker 2: to me, that's fair. But when you have it and
Speaker 2: you're reselling it, you're getting two fifty for it, that's
Speaker 2: not fair. But the other side of the argument is
Speaker 2: the act should to charge two fifty to begin with. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: there's always two sides to an argument, and yes, some
Speaker 2: of the acts are charging more for tickets. But again
Speaker 2: I get back to the my statement about you know
Speaker 2: it feels like you know two countries with war weapons. Right, Okay,
Speaker 2: now we're going to charge two fifty for the ticket,
Speaker 2: and now it's three seventy five on the resale market
Speaker 2: because it just goes up again. Right, it doesn't stop
Speaker 2: if we change.
Speaker 1: We've experienced with Beyonce and a couple of other acts
Speaker 1: now where the reseller's secondary market got killed.
Speaker 2: Well, they did because they overbought, right, overbought.
Speaker 1: So there is a price like the Stones. The Stones
Speaker 1: go out, they charge the most. There's really no secondary market, Okay,
Speaker 1: because the tickets are so expensive, they flex price them, etc.
Speaker 1: The viewpoint from the artist has historically been that it
Speaker 1: is bad for us if the ticket is expensive. As
Speaker 1: you say, there's two sides the argument. Yeah, you say
Speaker 1: that tickets under price, secondary market gets the uplift. Do
Speaker 1: you think at this late date, where as they say,
Speaker 1: the level of sophistication is complicated, the public will never
Speaker 1: understand the fees, but the public understands what the value
Speaker 1: of the ticket is. There's always somebody who says, I've
Speaker 1: been listening to this band for twenty years, I should
Speaker 1: be able to sit in the front row for fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: And they're all over complaining it's like you know, when
Speaker 1: Springsteen went over more than one hundred dollars, all those
Speaker 1: people complained. Meanwhile, they go to dinner for more than
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars a person before the damn show. Once
Speaker 1: the show played, nobody cared, not to mention not every
Speaker 1: venue was clean, major markets were clean, whatever, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: No at this laid date, is it really going to
Speaker 1: hurt the act if you charge what the ticket is worth?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I think so, But again, let me so,
Speaker 2: there's two different conversations or two different I don't want
Speaker 2: to say arguments, but there's there's two different scenarios here.
Speaker 2: For the top level acts. You're absolutely right you can
Speaker 2: charge more and maybe they should. Okay, when you again,
Speaker 2: when you get back down to like the working bands,
Speaker 2: that's where it is, that's where it's more most effective
Speaker 2: against them, Right, that's where it hurts the most because
Speaker 2: if they're let's you know, let's call it a fifty
Speaker 2: dollars ticket. When it's a fifty dollars ticket, it's on
Speaker 2: resale for when twenty five s they have charged one
Speaker 2: twenty five, Well, if they did, the resale would be higher. Again,
Speaker 2: now they're not going to be thousands of them on there,
Speaker 2: but there might be you know, two or three dozen,
Speaker 2: or there could be hundreds, depending on the size venue
Speaker 2: they're playing. And yes, maybe it'll get overbought as well,
Speaker 2: and that happens, but see when that happens, that also
Speaker 2: affects the acts because when the when the resellers or
Speaker 2: the bots whatever buy up a lot, a huge lot
Speaker 2: like that, and they put it up for resale for
Speaker 2: again higher than whatever's being charged, and they don't sell them,
Speaker 2: then they drop the price to get rid of them,
Speaker 2: because at that point they just want to dump them.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, you know, you're charging
Speaker 2: seventy five bucks per ticket. It's on resale for one
Speaker 2: point fifty, right, and then all of a sudden they're
Speaker 2: available for thirty five and then you know, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I got a ticket for thirty five. You know, it's
Speaker 2: like that doesn't help us, that doesn't help the artist.
Speaker 2: So you know, that's another argument too, because that's just resellers.
Speaker 2: But and there's not going to be any way to
Speaker 2: control this, I know that because they have more money
Speaker 2: than anybody has as far as you don't talk about lobbying,
Speaker 2: they spend a fortune lobbying. They're everywhere, you know, the
Speaker 2: resellers are everywhere, lobbying everywhere. The only the only place
Speaker 2: where they got semi defeated was in Maine recently with
Speaker 2: that main bill that went through.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the main bill, because this affects
Speaker 1: certain congressional stuff. The laws on the books. Okay, ye
Speaker 1: means obviously a small state, but they have Portland Real
Speaker 1: Augustus premate line or market. Yeah, but how the hell
Speaker 1: are you gonna enforce it? And they're not going to
Speaker 1: put it, give any money to enforce it. So it's
Speaker 1: a victory exactly.
Speaker 2: The enforcement's the important thing. Look, we got there's a
Speaker 2: law in the books not as good as the main
Speaker 2: law in New York State, and it's not enforced a time,
Speaker 2: right or maybe a lot of the time. You're right,
Speaker 2: it's the enforcement. So we were talking again, we were
Speaker 2: talking about this in Milwaukee's It's one thing to actually
Speaker 2: get a law asked. But what seems like they don't
Speaker 2: do is they don't set up the enforcement, you know,
Speaker 2: like in advance. And if you do this, it's this,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's going to cost this. And even
Speaker 2: if they say, okay, if you do this, you're going
Speaker 2: to be fine. One hundred and fifty grand, Like who's
Speaker 2: going out there looking for it and who's doing It's
Speaker 2: not gonna be that high, but you know, a thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: you know, an incident or whatever, who's going out there
Speaker 2: doing it. If they do do that, then these laws
Speaker 2: have teeth. You know, then maybe some of the stops,
Speaker 2: but it's a matter of them doing it. And that's
Speaker 2: something that we're working on. That's part of what we're
Speaker 2: working on. Part of our advocacy is trying to see,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to get some of these things enforced,
Speaker 2: trying to change the laws a little bit, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to trying to angle them a little bit more
Speaker 2: towards you know, in pavor of the Act. And we
Speaker 2: have to do the same thing with those people, you know,
Speaker 2: the representatives that we do when we're when you know,
Speaker 2: when we're talking in general, while I'm talking to you,
Speaker 2: we have to qualify, yeah, the top one percent or
Speaker 2: over here, and they do that and that's okay because
Speaker 2: for them, you know, it's play money. But for the
Speaker 2: working band, this is important. This really hurts them, and
Speaker 2: it's it's hard to get some of those guys to focus.
Speaker 2: I mean, let me tell you a little side story
Speaker 2: on this one too, in two different situations. I won't
Speaker 2: say where and who because I don't want to get
Speaker 2: anybody in trouble. But so I had a promoter that
Speaker 2: I spoke to in a major market in a state
Speaker 2: that doesn't have a law you know, about this stuff,
Speaker 2: or doesn't have a good law. And I was trying
Speaker 2: to see if I could get him interested in, you know,
Speaker 2: in doing something about it. So I called him up
Speaker 2: and it was somebody who one of the people who
Speaker 2: worked for him had told me that on one show
Speaker 2: that they had sixty percent of the house was bought
Speaker 2: by the resale market. Wow. Right, yeah, exactly, that's what
Speaker 2: I said. And when the show played, half the place
Speaker 2: was empty, right because they didn't all show up because
Speaker 2: as you say, they probably ought, were you intimated before
Speaker 2: they overbought and they didn't show up. So, uh, I
Speaker 2: was talking about it, and he said to me, I
Speaker 2: have to talk to these guys, you know, because he
Speaker 2: knows some of these people. Obviously most of the major
Speaker 2: promoters do. He said, Uh, I've talked to these guys,
Speaker 2: but the one guy you know, the one key guy
Speaker 2: like the resellers, his buddy, Like, that's where he gets
Speaker 2: his sports tickets. And when he wants to go see
Speaker 2: you know, Taylor Swift or Beyonce or whatever, that's where
Speaker 2: he goes to get his tickets. He doesn't want to
Speaker 2: have to go online and buy his tickets. He just
Speaker 2: calls up gets his tickets. He considers him a mom
Speaker 2: and pop business. And I'm like, seriously, So that's that one.
Speaker 2: And then we had a similar thing in another state
Speaker 2: that we were working on where one of the guys,
Speaker 2: uh that was that we were that that two of
Speaker 2: our members were going to to you know, to try
Speaker 2: to lobby. He was like, no, I think you know, no,
Speaker 2: they're fine, They're okay. You know, they're not bad people.
Speaker 2: And you know, because he gets his tickets there, like,
Speaker 2: and that's what they do. I mean, they know how
Speaker 2: to feed the monster, right. They take care of them.
Speaker 2: They take care of them so that they get taken
Speaker 2: care of. So something that we probably will never solve,
Speaker 2: but we continue to work on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk to Desky Trucks. You've been involved with
Speaker 1: Derek Trucks from day one. Derek was a phenom he
Speaker 1: played with the Almond Brothers, ultimately gets married to susanho
Speaker 1: has her own career. They've been going out as the
Speaker 1: Tedsky Trucks being certainly in excess.
Speaker 2: Of a decade.
Speaker 1: In the all days, the pre internet days, the goal
Speaker 1: would be to get a record company deal. As you said,
Speaker 1: the company would support you as long as you continue
Speaker 1: to stay look like you were going to be in
Speaker 1: the black and you would have a breakthrough track. It's
Speaker 1: a little different in the late sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 1: but certainly the eighties they're waiting for you to cut
Speaker 1: that one track that's going to make it all work
Speaker 1: for them. Okay, even the biggest tracks on the Spotify
Speaker 1: Top fifty today are not known by most people. So
Speaker 1: the paradigm is done. So like Tedsky Trucks. A is
Speaker 1: it growing? B what is the potential upside? See? What
Speaker 1: is the goal? D? What might get you there?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, another deep suitcase to unpack? Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 2: Tedesky Truck. So it's fifteen years, Bob, fifteen years almost two, well,
Speaker 2: fifteen years to the day, probably at the end of
Speaker 2: the month, at the end of the year, but fifteen
Speaker 2: years and when we started out, and I'll guess I'll
Speaker 2: start there, wave at me or whatever if I'm getting
Speaker 2: too lost in the weeds. But when we started out,
Speaker 2: we had an eight piece band. It's twelve pieces now
Speaker 2: we had an eighth piece ban That was the concept
Speaker 2: they wanted to do. They wanted to take out a band,
Speaker 2: you know, full band, double drummers, you know whatever, didn't
Speaker 2: have horns in those days, and had two singers now
Speaker 2: at three so apiece, and so it was going to
Speaker 2: be expensive from the outset. And there was no record
Speaker 2: because there was a brand new band they just put together.
Speaker 2: And this certainly was no hit record, no hit single, right,
Speaker 2: there's none of that yet. So the the thing was,
Speaker 2: and it was something that I was chomping at the
Speaker 2: bit to do for a number of years actually, was
Speaker 2: to have them get together. Would be like I thought,
Speaker 2: this could be it, right, and I think it has been.
Speaker 2: But anyway, but as a backup, so I had to
Speaker 2: and there was you know, no record company support, right
Speaker 2: as you said, I mean there was a record company.
Speaker 2: There was Derek's record company who actually put out I
Speaker 2: think their first album, and then they moved, you know
Speaker 2: after I think after the first album they moved to
Speaker 2: another label, but certainly no labels are going to do
Speaker 2: what has what used to be done right in the
Speaker 2: old days, like we were talking about earlier. Right, they
Speaker 2: would have been a couple of one hundred grand for
Speaker 2: the tour. They would have been a market, they've been
Speaker 2: a big party, they would have dropped the record. It
Speaker 2: would have been like a you know, pr blitz, like
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Okay, So none of that. So this
Speaker 2: had to be worked from the ground which in a
Speaker 2: way was kind of a godsend because it wasn't going
Speaker 2: to be a hype and it could be built, you know,
Speaker 2: from from the ground up. Both of them had a base,
Speaker 2: and it was just a matter of building a beer base.
Speaker 2: So I went to people that I thought would be
Speaker 2: interested promoters, people who I happened to speak to right
Speaker 2: after they decided they were going to do this, who
Speaker 2: were hey, what's new? And I said, oh, I got this.
Speaker 2: You want to know something new, I got something new.
Speaker 2: The problem is, honestly, you're not going to make any
Speaker 2: money for three years, and truthfully that was my line.
Speaker 2: You are not making money for three years if you
Speaker 2: do this. Well, why is that? Because I need a
Speaker 2: certain amount of money to keep them on the road.
Speaker 2: They have to have a certain amount of money each night.
Speaker 2: If not, they're not going to work. So it's one
Speaker 2: of the others. So if you're in, you're in. If
Speaker 2: you're out, you're out. It's okay, you know whatever. And
Speaker 2: so I had, you know, probably two or three people
Speaker 2: that were okay, yeah, I like that, let's do it.
Speaker 2: So we started out doing that, so, you know, and
Speaker 2: we went out and built it up. I'll skip all
Speaker 2: the middle part, but basically we did a bunch of
Speaker 2: work the band through over time fairly quickly. They played
Speaker 2: a date in New York. I think it was in
Speaker 2: New York and they invited some horns to come and
Speaker 2: sit in and it was pretty good. And I remember
Speaker 2: asking Derek after the show. I said, hey, what'd you
Speaker 2: think of the horns? He goes they were cool. I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: they are, he goes, maybe we should add them. And
Speaker 2: I kind of shook my head. I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I mean nod my head. I was like, yeah, that'sund
Speaker 2: like a good idea. And so then all of a
Speaker 2: sudden they were horns and it became a twelve piece
Speaker 2: so and it did, and those early promoters to get involved.
Speaker 2: Probably I'm sure they didn't really make any money. Maybe
Speaker 2: they broke even maybe they didn't, but they were in
Speaker 2: for the beginning, you know, and they stayed in there.
Speaker 2: So it was built from that level. And it never
Speaker 2: was built on records. It was built on touring, which
Speaker 2: is basically what's happening now anyway, but strictly built on touring.
Speaker 2: And how big could it be? Well, at the beginning,
Speaker 2: I remember people saying to me, I can't believe you're
Speaker 2: doing this. There's no way this is going to work.
Speaker 2: Get eight people. Even in the early days, you got
Speaker 2: eight people, because don't forget you get eight people plus
Speaker 2: the crew. So maybe there was fourteen or fifteen, you
Speaker 2: know whatever, maybe fourteen. You got fourteen people on the road.
Speaker 2: How are you going to keep you know, two buses
Speaker 2: and how are you going to keep that going? I said, well,
Speaker 2: we'll do it until we can't, and you know, we
Speaker 2: did it, and it built up little by little, and
Speaker 2: it was a matter of it was a matter of
Speaker 2: doing what I said earlier. It was a matter of knowing,
Speaker 2: feeling where to go, taking some shots, seeing where it worked,
Speaker 2: and it didn't knowing that if it worked over here,
Speaker 2: it could probably work over here, and then just kind
Speaker 2: of building it up and building it up to the
Speaker 2: point where you know, now everybody can you know, everybody
Speaker 2: being fans or whatever in the business can walk around
Speaker 2: and go, oh, yeah, of course Today'skee trucks. Well yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, but you know, it's fifteen years. It took
Speaker 2: about I had told them when we sat down with
Speaker 2: the you know, the then manager, it would take I
Speaker 2: remember saying to what we had lunch, I said, I'm
Speaker 2: in for penny, in for a pound on this. I
Speaker 2: think it's going to take three to five years. If
Speaker 2: you're willing to invest yourself time in three to five years,
Speaker 2: I'm in. But it's probably going to take that because
Speaker 2: I knew, you know, unless we had a hit record,
Speaker 2: it's going to take time to build it. And we
Speaker 2: really started, it really started, you know, uh, whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it, like, you know, gliding on its
Speaker 2: own if you want to call it that. Probably year seven,
Speaker 2: you know, where it was like okay, we're here, you know, three, yes, five, yes,
Speaker 2: but seven was like yep, we're here, and you know,
Speaker 2: from then, where can you go? So people said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe it's never going to get out of here. So
Speaker 2: eventually they played Madison Square Garden, you know, and we did.
Speaker 2: We didn't do the full venue, but we did the
Speaker 2: you know whatever. It is a twelve five setup, which
Speaker 2: is what most people do right front and sides, and
Speaker 2: we did, you know, phenomenal and it was like there
Speaker 2: was terrent I remember there was torrential rain that day.
Speaker 2: The subways were flooded, the tunnels were flooded. I thought
Speaker 2: we were gonna have to cancel the show. In the end,
Speaker 2: uh we you know, we played it and people came,
Speaker 2: which was a rain stopped in the afternoon, luckily, but
Speaker 2: it was torrential. It was you know, it was everywhere.
Speaker 2: It was shutting things down. It was so bad. And
Speaker 2: you know, we played it and there was you know,
Speaker 2: more no shows than we would would have liked. But
Speaker 2: still the place was full and it was phenomenal. And
Speaker 2: so that was a step that was just to say,
Speaker 2: you know, or said to us, rather, Okay, we're here now,
Speaker 2: we can do whatever we want. We can go back
Speaker 2: to what we're doing. But you know, earlier on we
Speaker 2: started doing the amphitheaters, you know, in the summertime. We
Speaker 2: did the theaters in the in the winter and or
Speaker 2: fall and spring and in the winter actually because they
Speaker 2: used to work. At one point they were working, you know,
Speaker 2: anywhere from seventy to eighty, maybe ninety shows a year.
Speaker 2: One year they hit one hundred and ten I think,
Speaker 2: which was probably their biggest year. But that's a lot
Speaker 2: of work, you know, playing on the road. And they
Speaker 2: had kids too, so that that did that didn't help.
Speaker 2: But you know, it built up and it got too
Speaker 2: a place where now so your question, one of your
Speaker 2: questions is like where does it go from here? I'm
Speaker 2: not sure where it goes, but but it's in a
Speaker 2: place where it's not an overdrive but kind of like
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's a fan base. It's still growing. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not really diminishing. I mean I watched
Speaker 2: the shows. Uh you know whenever I'm out, you know
Speaker 2: there and I see the people, and I don't see
Speaker 2: people getting up and leaving, you know what I mean. Well,
Speaker 2: when a lot of shows it's like, okay, I've seen
Speaker 2: half of it. I'm going now when they do there
Speaker 2: like you know, uh evening with and I have the
Speaker 2: break in the middle. Sometimes you see that with other acts,
Speaker 2: people start leaving during the break. Now they don't. They
Speaker 2: go out, they buy beer, they buy whatever, they buy
Speaker 2: you know, snacks, whatever, and they come back in buy merchandise. Uh,
Speaker 2: they come back in, so uh, you know it's there.
Speaker 2: So so then now the next thing is, you know,
Speaker 2: which is one of the things you know that they did,
Speaker 2: you know, beginning a few years ago, is they started
Speaker 2: beefing up the production a little bit because because it
Speaker 2: really has been and it still is but has been
Speaker 2: uh since the beginning. You know, a musical act and
Speaker 2: you've seen them, so I think you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: But it's an act that you go there and you
Speaker 2: look and you go out. These guys can play, all
Speaker 2: of them, any one of them. It's it's almost like
Speaker 2: any one of them without doing a pitch on the band.
Speaker 2: It's almost like any one of them could have their
Speaker 2: own band. It might not be a big band, but
Speaker 2: any one of them can have their own band. And
Speaker 2: in fact, most of the guys up there have their
Speaker 2: own bands, you know, their side projects, right so, you know,
Speaker 2: because they're really accomplished musicians. So the music and all
Speaker 2: that's solid, you know, the sets, the shows, whatever. So
Speaker 2: then they started doing the next thing, which is they
Speaker 2: they've over the last three four years, they've started beefing
Speaker 2: up the production a little bit, adding a little bit
Speaker 2: more production value, entertainment value, you know, packaging. We did
Speaker 2: this summer. They're doing you know, shows package with larger
Speaker 2: acts where it's more of a co bill, trying to
Speaker 2: you know, trying to present themselves to a larger audience
Speaker 2: if possible. They've done festivals. You know, they don't live
Speaker 2: on festivals, but they've done them. I don't know, this
Speaker 2: is a personal thing we won't get into, but I
Speaker 2: don't know the festivals they add that much to you
Speaker 2: unless maybe you're.
Speaker 1: Well that was going to be my next question, but continue.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we'll hold it then for then a hold
Speaker 2: that one. But yeah, so, yeah, it is growing, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's like anything else, though it goes in spurts.
Speaker 2: So there was a point where we were doing this little,
Speaker 2: you know, this thing at the beginning, and then we
Speaker 2: leaped like around year three or so, right, and then
Speaker 2: were all of a sudden we started doing multiple theaters,
Speaker 2: which was a plan. And the plan was to have
Speaker 2: them because they were doing a lot of shows a year,
Speaker 2: was to have them traveling less but doing the same
Speaker 2: amount of business and being able to generate the income
Speaker 2: they needed to keep the band going. So we started
Speaker 2: doing multiples and then you know, then there was a
Speaker 2: thing where kind of set there, and then we jumped
Speaker 2: up and did more multiples in certain places, added some
Speaker 2: more cities, and we started doing the outdoor thing, you know,
Speaker 2: in the summertime, and they did that as a as
Speaker 2: a scenario, and then and tried to play different markets,
Speaker 2: so you know, we're getting to different people and you know,
Speaker 2: so and then so then maybe it settled in for
Speaker 2: a little bit and then now there's going to probably
Speaker 2: be another spurt coming up, so it grows in spurts.
Speaker 2: It not every act, every live act or artist goes like,
Speaker 2: you know, straight up. It's not a straight up trajectory.
Speaker 2: Usually if it is, then it starts coming down quicker,
Speaker 2: I think. I mean, there's exceptions to every rule, but
Speaker 2: then usually there's a down, you know, coming down over here.
Speaker 2: Now it may go back up again at some point,
Speaker 2: but it could also just crash back. So slower trajectory
Speaker 2: is better. And you know, I think there's you know,
Speaker 2: they can they can tour as long as they want
Speaker 2: to or not I mean it don't have the tour,
Speaker 2: but I mean they do to give the band together,
Speaker 2: but they can tour as long as they want.
Speaker 1: Well, is the question here, especially today's major market, is
Speaker 1: there a limited audience or is there a growth potential
Speaker 1: from people who just haven't been exposed to it.
Speaker 2: There's there's a growth potential to people that haven't been
Speaker 2: exposed to it. And what we find is what we
Speaker 2: have found over time over the course of the career
Speaker 2: so far, and initially the manager and I will when
Speaker 2: at first started out, we had a we had an etho,
Speaker 2: but the two of us had an ethos. We just
Speaker 2: got to get into a town and play. People will
Speaker 2: see us and they'll come back and bring a friend.
Speaker 2: And it almost worked like that everywhere right first time
Speaker 2: we played in New York? Who played one day at
Speaker 2: the Beacon, which was a shot. Okay. When I tried
Speaker 2: to get the Beacon Theater date together, I called, I
Speaker 2: spoke to three different promoters, none of which wanted to
Speaker 2: do it, and I finally John Cher said he would
Speaker 2: raise his hand and I said, okay, Well, he said,
Speaker 2: what do you want to do in New York? And
Speaker 2: I said, I The first show in New York. By
Speaker 2: the way, they hadn't played here yet as that band.
Speaker 2: I said, I want to either be in Central Park
Speaker 2: in the summer. I want to play the Beacon Theater headlining.
Speaker 2: And he said, what's the deal, And I said, there
Speaker 2: is no deal. This I shouldn't tell you, Bob, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you because it's you. I said,
Speaker 2: there is no deal. Forget the deal. I want the Beacon.
Speaker 2: Give me, give me a weekend night in the fall
Speaker 2: and it's your show. And he got it Saturday night.
Speaker 2: I don't know how he got it, but he got
Speaker 2: it because it's hard to get the Beacon. Uh. And
Speaker 2: I put the date together and we didn't have a guarantee.
Speaker 2: We did a straight percentage of the door. Okay, we
Speaker 2: sold it and we sold out. Well, we finish your story.
Speaker 2: So we sold out. Everybody made money. And then the
Speaker 2: next time, you know, we came around. He goes, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to do it again next year and I said, no,
Speaker 2: next year, we're doing two. And he was going, well,
Speaker 2: you're crazy, blah blah, and I said no, we're doing too.
Speaker 2: Because again, our theory was everyone's going to bring a friend,
Speaker 2: so let's try it out, and we did, and we
Speaker 2: did a weekend. Okay, honest truth, we didn't sell it
Speaker 2: to the rafter. You know, we didn't sell every seat
Speaker 2: in the house, but we fucking basically sold it out.
Speaker 2: I mean it was. It was a great two nights.
Speaker 2: And that's when I went upstairs to the back of
Speaker 2: the house and I looked, and I thought, we're not
Speaker 2: selling any seats upstairs. What can we do about that?
Speaker 2: And I thought, let's try this. And I talked to
Speaker 2: the manager and I said, let's make the back of
Speaker 2: the house really inexpensive. Think the upstate had been to
Speaker 2: the Beacon, so you know the you know the upstairs
Speaker 2: balcony at the way back, I mean, you're up there.
Speaker 2: They call the nosebleads, but actually they're good seats. But
Speaker 2: you know they call the nosebleeds for the Beacon, you know,
Speaker 2: for anywhere else, they'd be good seats, really good seats.
Speaker 2: So we did a situation where we charged Okay, so
Speaker 2: this is interesting, okay, I think for you. So I
Speaker 2: made a deal with between the promoter and the venue.
Speaker 2: I got them to agree to do an all in price. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is ten years ago, all in thirty bucks next
Speaker 2: time we played the venue, we sold all the seats
Speaker 2: and I walked up there to see who is going
Speaker 2: to be up there, and so some of the argument was,
Speaker 2: you're just gonna you're gonna, you're gonna cannibalize, you know,
Speaker 2: the other seats you're selling. I said, I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think they're fans. Even though we've only done it
Speaker 2: in a couple of years, I think they're fans, or
Speaker 2: maybe it was three years before we did that. I
Speaker 2: think their fans are going to want to sit close.
Speaker 2: That's what they want. They want to be comfortable and close.
Speaker 2: That's who their fans are. I think up here we're
Speaker 2: going to have people that want to see them but
Speaker 2: don't want to pay seventy five dollars or sixty nine
Speaker 2: or whatever the present. So we kept that for a
Speaker 2: lot of years, and I used to go up there
Speaker 2: and check at every show and you'd see you'd see
Speaker 2: the face is not the particular people, but you could
Speaker 2: tell those people haven't been here before, or those people
Speaker 2: or there were young couples. I went to a young
Speaker 2: couple and I said, hey, how you doing. You ever
Speaker 2: seen the band before? And they go, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 2: saw them once we love them. They said oh. I said,
Speaker 2: oh great, and they said yeah, in fact, we came
Speaker 2: tonight because we just got engaged. I said, oh, that's awesome, congratulations.
Speaker 2: So they were there because obviously they wanted to pay
Speaker 2: sixty bucks and not have to pay like one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty or whatever it was. And fine, it probably
Speaker 2: really couldn't afford it, but they wanted to see the band.
Speaker 2: The other thing that happens up there, or did happen
Speaker 2: up there, is you get when we started doing the
Speaker 2: multiple nights, right, you get people that want to come
Speaker 2: back but don't want to pay one hundred and twenty five.
Speaker 2: So they'll you know, one hundred twenty five one night
Speaker 2: and they'll go sit upstairs, you know, for sixty for
Speaker 2: two of them or whatever, you know, two people or
Speaker 2: whatever or a group will go sit up there. So
Speaker 2: we use that anyway. So from the two days, the
Speaker 2: next time we played, I said, let's do three, and
Speaker 2: John said, you're out of your mind. I said, no,
Speaker 2: it'd be fine. We'll do Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So that's
Speaker 2: what we did and we oh, no, sorry, we did.
Speaker 2: We were actually going to do four. We're going to
Speaker 2: do Friday Saturday, Friday Saturday, which he really freaked out about.
Speaker 2: But we ended up doing three for other reasons because
Speaker 2: we had there was another show that they played with
Speaker 2: somebody else and it was kind of in conflict, but
Speaker 2: they had the dates on hold already, so we only
Speaker 2: did three instead of four, and we did great business,
Speaker 2: and then the time after we did four, So it
Speaker 2: was a matter of and so I think the theory
Speaker 2: held true. Also, we had people that would come multiple nights,
Speaker 2: but not as big as most people. Most people thought.
Speaker 2: Most people thought, oh, yeah, they're you know, the fans
Speaker 2: are just buying tickets again. Now I used to look
Speaker 2: at the you know, the ticketing reports. We were doing
Speaker 2: about thirteen percent repeats. It wasn't that high. You know,
Speaker 2: it's probably more now, but you know, because now they'll
Speaker 2: do six days or seven days or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't as high as people thought. People thought, you know,
Speaker 2: we were doing fifty percent repeats or whatever, thirty percent.
Speaker 2: We weren't doing it. It was thirteen. Maybe some people
Speaker 2: did come back twice, or they came back again and
Speaker 2: brought a different friend with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've touched on festivals in the old days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Up until very recently, you know, you played at twelve
Speaker 1: or one, no one saw you. It was more to
Speaker 1: put on your website. We played d lollaplues or whatever.
Speaker 1: But now it's so hard to get noticed. Some acts
Speaker 1: will play every festival and it seems like there is
Speaker 1: some traction. What do you say to that.
Speaker 2: There is? I mean, there's some, but it's hard. Again,
Speaker 2: if you're talking about the upper ten or twenty percent
Speaker 2: of the acts, yes, maybe, yes, maybe, But when you
Speaker 2: get down the line right when you're an up and
Speaker 2: coming actor, when you're kind of one of those middle acts,
Speaker 2: you know, when you're on at three o'clock in the
Speaker 2: afternoon on the main stage, or even if you're on
Speaker 2: like at five o'clock on that third or second or
Speaker 2: third stage, like, who's seeing you? I mean, I've been
Speaker 2: to some of these festivals. You go out at you know,
Speaker 2: even three o'clock, who's there? Three thousand people? You know,
Speaker 2: at eight o'clock at night is thirty thousand, At ten
Speaker 2: o'clock is forty thousand. You know what I mean. It's
Speaker 2: like if you get the right and I tell us
Speaker 2: to ax all the time, but they but they want
Speaker 2: it for the reason you opened up with Bob. They
Speaker 2: want it on their resume. That's what they say. I
Speaker 2: just want to say that I did it, I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean then I lose the argument because my argument
Speaker 2: to them is why bother? You know, you have to
Speaker 2: stick it in somewhere where it doesn't fit. You have
Speaker 2: to try to surround it because you just don't want
Speaker 2: to fly out and do it. You can't afford to,
Speaker 2: and you're not making much money, and where are you playing.
Speaker 2: You know you're planning to nobody. It's a shame. But yeah,
Speaker 2: there can be some traction. And every once in a while,
Speaker 2: well you know, an act comes out of the festival
Speaker 2: season or something or two or three and everybody goes, oh,
Speaker 2: that's how to do it. There's no magic bullet in
Speaker 2: this business. There is no magic bullet. Now, if there
Speaker 2: was an absolute brand new led Zeppelin today, only because
Speaker 2: they're one of my favorite bands, or Jimmy Hendrix, I
Speaker 2: think they did a couple of festival blow people away,
Speaker 2: and yes it would happen, but if they did it
Speaker 2: at one o'clock in the afternoon, nobody would frickin know.
Speaker 1: Okay, Another one of your long term clients is Joe Satriani.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he works with other people. You know, it could
Speaker 1: be too active, could be part of Sammy Hagar's being.
Speaker 1: Is that just a lifelong career or is there any
Speaker 1: upside in the touring of someone like Satriani.
Speaker 2: It's a lifelong career, really, I mean there's an upside
Speaker 2: obviously he you know, he makes money or he wouldn't
Speaker 2: do it. But it's a lifelong career. It's not like
Speaker 2: you do it for you know, I don't think any
Speaker 2: a lot of these extra five for five years and
Speaker 2: you retire or ten years or whatever. But so I've
Speaker 2: represented Joe for I don't even know how long, thirty
Speaker 2: five years, long time, my probably longest client. He's on
Speaker 2: the road. So what we've done, when I say, way
Speaker 2: the former manager who passed away a few years ago unfortunately,
Speaker 2: you know, terrible accident, what we would do with Joe
Speaker 2: is we would just try to change it up because
Speaker 2: again we had an artist or not again. But you know,
Speaker 2: no record company, no radio stations after the mid nineties, right,
Speaker 2: the AARs were dead early early to mid nineties, like
Speaker 2: they just went away. And that's when his career started.
Speaker 2: You know, when I career sorry, his business, not his career,
Speaker 2: but his business started waning a bit, no pun intended.
Speaker 2: And we had conversations on the phone about it, and
Speaker 2: and I, you know, gave it some thought. We got
Speaker 2: to do something, you know. And it's not about just
Speaker 2: going to smaller venues, because with an artist, some of them,
Speaker 2: some of them will accept that if they want to
Speaker 2: just be you know, if they just want to work,
Speaker 2: you know, I just want to go play my music,
Speaker 2: I'm okay. But if if they have a you know,
Speaker 2: if they have a like an artistic you know, feeling.
Speaker 2: And we all have egos. All of us have egos,
Speaker 2: big ones, little ones. It doesn't matter. We all have
Speaker 2: to have an ego. I think we're not most of
Speaker 2: us have egos. I shouldn't say, oh, maybe some people don't,
Speaker 2: but most of us have some kind of an ego.
Speaker 2: So as an artist, you want to be able to
Speaker 2: present yourself. You don't want to just keep going smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller venues. So I knew that that wasn't the answer,
Speaker 2: you know. So we sat where I sat. We talked
Speaker 2: on the phone, but I sat and I thought about
Speaker 2: it and thought about it, and I thought, okay, we
Speaker 2: gotta do something different. So I actually call the manager.
Speaker 2: I said, I have an idea. So I'm a as
Speaker 2: you may already know or not with the names i've
Speaker 2: been thrown out, I'm a lifelong guitar freak, right, guitar
Speaker 2: player freak like that's been my thing. So I've represented
Speaker 2: a lot of guitar players over the years, bands with
Speaker 2: you know, heavy guitar players, whatever, stand out guitar players
Speaker 2: even now, even now, So I thought about it. I thought,
Speaker 2: what would those fans, especially those guitar nerds, right the gearheads,
Speaker 2: what do they want? I want to see? They want
Speaker 2: to see they want to see guitar players. What's the
Speaker 2: most exciting thing for me? When I, you know, was
Speaker 2: in college and I went to a show and I
Speaker 2: wanted to see a show. What was exciting. What was
Speaker 2: exciting is when the guitar player from one band got
Speaker 2: on stage with the guitar player from the other band.
Speaker 2: They jammed for a while. So I called the manager
Speaker 2: one day and I said, okay, I have an idea.
Speaker 2: I said, what if we get three guitar players or
Speaker 2: four guitar players and put them on stage with one
Speaker 2: band and we do like the whole fucking shows almost
Speaker 2: a jam like, you know, they play each of their
Speaker 2: own songs or whatever. Then they jam some songs and
Speaker 2: they do all this. And I said, basically, it's an
Speaker 2: indoor festival. And he said, I don't know. Let me
Speaker 2: think about it, all right, So he goes back, right,
Speaker 2: and he calls me back. He goes. I spoke to Joe.
Speaker 2: It's it's not a great idea, he said. There's some
Speaker 2: problems with him. He said. One of them is, you know,
Speaker 2: they have to learn his material. He has to learn theirs.
Speaker 2: The other guys have to learn that, you know, blah blah.
Speaker 2: He said. It's there's a logistical thing here. And again
Speaker 2: we're not talking about you know, three chord blues, right
Speaker 2: or whatever, three bard blues. We're talking about technique and
Speaker 2: technical you know stuff. So I thought, okay, I understand,
Speaker 2: you're right, he said, but how about this? He said,
Speaker 2: what if we have three bands and the three bands
Speaker 2: play each their own set, and then at the end
Speaker 2: they jammed for half an hour. I said, that's a
Speaker 2: great fucking idea. Let's do that. So that became G
Speaker 2: three and the idea was to give him another platform,
Speaker 2: to give him something, you know, he had spoken to
Speaker 2: Joe and they had come up with that idea of
Speaker 2: let's do the three bands with the three whatever and
Speaker 2: then and then we had to come up with a name,
Speaker 2: and he and Joe came up with G three, and
Speaker 2: so G three was formed and that was basically three
Speaker 2: bands led by guitar players on stage playing and then
Speaker 2: they jammed at the end. And to this day, especially overseas,
Speaker 2: everyone thinks it's a band. They always called me, I
Speaker 2: want to book the G three band, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: and I go, it's not a band, it's a concept.
Speaker 2: So we did that for you know, many we did that. Alternately,
Speaker 2: Joe would go on tour with an album and then
Speaker 2: when he didn't have an album, we do G three
Speaker 2: and we just, you know, we weren't like that. And
Speaker 2: then what happens eventually is you run out of guitar players.
Speaker 2: You know, unless you can get Brian May or Jeff
Speaker 2: Beck or you know, Jimmy Page to be in it,
Speaker 2: you start running out of guitar players that have teeth. Now,
Speaker 2: there's some good guitar players out there, but what we
Speaker 2: found is I'm probably going deeper than you want, Bob,
Speaker 2: But let me know if I am no matter who
Speaker 2: we put on. After about the first four or five,
Speaker 2: the business got no better than Joe on his own
Speaker 2: because it virtually was the same audience because none of
Speaker 2: the other guitar players really had teeth. The best show
Speaker 2: was the first one the business rather again because it
Speaker 2: was probably the first one that was Joe Eric Johnson,
Speaker 2: who I represented at the time, and Steve I was
Speaker 2: the opening act, and Steve and Joe grew up together,
Speaker 2: but they never played on stage together anywhere, so that
Speaker 2: was like the first time they were kind of playing
Speaker 2: together on stage, right. And then we did one again
Speaker 2: the next time with Joe, Steve and Kenny Wayne Sheppard,
Speaker 2: and we had Robert Fripp playing on the side of
Speaker 2: the stage opening the show, but he didn't want to
Speaker 2: be visit and he played what he called airport music,
Speaker 2: but we advertised him on the bill, and he wouldn't
Speaker 2: come out and jam with him because didn't want anybody
Speaker 2: to see him for whatever reason. He's a lovely guy,
Speaker 2: but he's not into the spotlight basically, you know, he's
Speaker 2: not into being in the spotlight. Uh. And then the
Speaker 2: next one that did the second best ever, I think
Speaker 2: it was a third or fourth one was with Ingvey
Speaker 2: Malmstein and that did really good business as well, because
Speaker 2: again Ingvey had real teeth, right, And then we did
Speaker 2: a bunch of other ones which were great, but then
Speaker 2: it was you know, it didn't when you talk about growing,
Speaker 2: it didn't really grow. So he kind of put it
Speaker 2: and we did it overseas. We did in Australia, we
Speaker 2: did in Europe, we did it in South America. So
Speaker 2: we kind of put it on hiatus for a long
Speaker 2: period of time. And actually the old manager and I,
Speaker 2: you know, at one point thought, I don't know, let's
Speaker 2: just or actually I recommended it to him, but he agreed.
Speaker 2: I said, let's just let's just not do it right now.
Speaker 2: It was a good brand. Let's not kill it, let's
Speaker 2: not let it die, Let's let it be something. Let's
Speaker 2: let people remember, you know. And so we let that go.
Speaker 2: So then what happened last was it last year? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think it was last year the beginning of last year.
Speaker 2: So last year was like the we call it the
Speaker 2: twenty fifth anniversary, but I think it was actually like
Speaker 2: the twenty seventh really of G three. We put the
Speaker 2: original lineup back together in the original way, you know,
Speaker 2: that we did it. Oh, no, we did it, but
Speaker 2: I think Eric open this time. We put the lineup
Speaker 2: back together and we just did a west coast run,
Speaker 2: you know, north to south, because Joe wanted to do
Speaker 2: a documentary on G three and he wanted to film
Speaker 2: some live stuff and he wanted the guys back together.
Speaker 2: He wanted to do it then and now, which they did.
Speaker 2: They did that. So I put a run of dates together.
Speaker 2: You know, that would pay for itself, make the guys
Speaker 2: a few bucks, you know, you know that we're playing.
Speaker 2: And so Joe could put a documentary together, which was
Speaker 2: actually done by his son who went to film school.
Speaker 2: He's the director. And it was great. The business was great.
Speaker 2: The business was like the first time, it was amazing. Actually,
Speaker 2: so it still has you know, it still has something,
Speaker 2: it still has, you know, appeal. And then following that,
Speaker 2: for the rest of the country. I had planned this
Speaker 2: in advance. We did a Joe Satriiny band Steve Vaiband tour,
Speaker 2: which we had never done before, with the two of
Speaker 2: them playing, each with their own band, and then again
Speaker 2: they jammed at the end and that did really, really well.
Speaker 2: And then the manager talked to Joe and said, you
Speaker 2: know what would be great because he and I had
Speaker 2: talked and I said, you know, it would be great
Speaker 2: if the two of them played together in a band.
Speaker 2: That would be freaking amazing. And so he talked to
Speaker 2: Joe and they talked to Joe and Steve talk together,
Speaker 2: and so they put a band together. They actually went
Speaker 2: in a studio and recorded an album, which they'd never
Speaker 2: done before. Album comes out I think in September. They're
Speaker 2: in Europe now doing the tour. Unfortunately, the album was
Speaker 2: held up because of the LA fires, but they put
Speaker 2: out a couple of tracks, so they're doing a tour
Speaker 2: in Europe. The reviews were phenomenal, the UK dates were phenomenal,
Speaker 2: and we're planning a tour here yet next year. So
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to do a pitch for the tour,
Speaker 2: but we're planning and doing that tour here next year.
Speaker 2: Is called the setch V Band SVB be the first
Speaker 2: time that you know in America that they play in
Speaker 2: the same band and there's a guy that sings some songs,
Speaker 2: so actually there'll be some vocals and it's just again
Speaker 2: it's a new take. It's what you're asking about, what
Speaker 2: do you do so it's a career, but you just
Speaker 2: change it up, you know, you keep them excited, you
Speaker 2: keep the audience excited. I mean, that's all part of it.
Speaker 2: I just got an email from Steve I today going,
Speaker 2: this is so exciting. I can't wait for the US dates.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what I do it for.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Niedo now that COVID is over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how active and what's the agenda of Needo?
Speaker 2: Sonito's very active. We just hired an executive director full
Speaker 2: time starting this January. This at the end of last year,
Speaker 2: I was elected president for this year, so I'm sort
Speaker 2: of in the driver's seat, I guess if you want
Speaker 2: to call it that. But we have a board of
Speaker 2: directors which are probably probably half of the originals or
Speaker 2: a little less than half the original guy as people.
Speaker 2: And then we have some you know, new members that
Speaker 2: we've had new members coming in over the years. Some
Speaker 2: some people step down off the board, but we you know,
Speaker 2: we're fighting to fight on the tickets that we just
Speaker 2: talked about, and you know, the ticketing and the fees
Speaker 2: and whatever. We had a joint board meeting in Milwaukee
Speaker 2: with NEVA to see what it is they would like
Speaker 2: to see what they their problems, what they would hope
Speaker 2: to have happened. We gave them some of the things
Speaker 2: that we think we would like to see for us,
Speaker 2: for our clients. Uh So it was a good two
Speaker 2: hour discussion that we had. Aside from you know, individually talking,
Speaker 2: that was like a sit down joint board meeting. We
Speaker 2: had a before that they're turning over their president. They
Speaker 2: have a new president coming in July one. So we
Speaker 2: met with you know, two presidents and the executive director.
Speaker 2: Myself and two of the officers are our executive director
Speaker 2: had a baby, had a baby two and a half
Speaker 2: weeks ago, so he couldn't make the trip. He didn't
Speaker 2: have a baby. He and his wife had a baby.
Speaker 2: They couldn't make the trip. So he couldn't make the trip.
Speaker 2: He didn't want to leave home for three or four days.
Speaker 2: Uh So we we filled in for him on that.
Speaker 2: In that meeting, we're you know, we are talking to
Speaker 2: the p ros, the performing rights organizations about I don't
Speaker 2: want to get into a long conversation because that could
Speaker 2: last another hour, but you know, basically performing rights for
Speaker 2: people I don't realize, and the fans and audience aren't
Speaker 2: really going to care about this, but managers and artists
Speaker 2: care about it most of all. You know, the p
Speaker 2: r os, four of them right now. They collect you know,
Speaker 2: a fee on every show in most of every venue.
Speaker 2: Right some venues maybe they don't have a deal with yet,
Speaker 2: but mostly most of the venues, and that all goes
Speaker 2: into a pool. And one of the managers are speaking
Speaker 2: this weekend and this week sorry I keep saying this weekend,
Speaker 2: this week and saying that they had an artist that
Speaker 2: agreed to So what happens is you pay the four
Speaker 2: performing rights organizations okay, no matter what you sing or play,
Speaker 2: but you may only be licensed or have a deal
Speaker 2: with one of them. Okay, most people have with one
Speaker 2: or two. And if you're doing a lot of cover
Speaker 2: songs or other people's material, it could be that they're
Speaker 2: all four, right, But somebody that does their own material,
Speaker 2: if they have a deal with BMI, it's only BMI,
Speaker 2: not ASCA, for instance, or CSAK or GMR. So you're
Speaker 2: paying into a pool. And this one act said, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll make a list of all the songs I'm playing
Speaker 2: and I'll submit it so that I can get paid
Speaker 2: on what to perform. So he did his whole tour
Speaker 2: and did that and on the money that was drawn
Speaker 2: on one of the shows. And I'm just this is
Speaker 2: third party, so I don't know this for a fact.
Speaker 2: One of the shows that he joined, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what was paid in. It could be as much as
Speaker 2: three to six It could be like eight hundred bucks,
Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty bucks. Let's say in a theater
Speaker 2: venue or something, you pay in it's actually a fixed
Speaker 2: fee versus a percentage of the sales most of the time. Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's say seven one hundred to one thousand he
Speaker 2: paid in, he got twenty eight bucks. So where the
Speaker 2: rest of the money go. So that's what we're looking into.
Speaker 2: Now take that to a stadium level, and could you imagine.
Speaker 2: I had a conversation with an attorney for one of
Speaker 2: the major for a number of major stadium acts, and
Speaker 2: I said, hey, if you ever looked at the pros?
Speaker 2: And he goes, what are you talking about? I said,
Speaker 2: do you ever see a settlement sheet? He said no.
Speaker 2: I said, let me send you a copy. I got
Speaker 2: on the phone with him a couple of days later.
Speaker 2: I said, have a look at this. I said, look
Speaker 2: at how much it's being paid out. How much you
Speaker 2: get how much do you realize you realize how much
Speaker 2: money that is on a tour if you do in
Speaker 2: all stadiums, I'm sure you're not getting that back. And
Speaker 2: he was like, holy shit, that's a lot of money.
Speaker 2: So we're trying to deal with that. Where are we
Speaker 2: going to get We don't know. We're advocating, you know,
Speaker 2: we're advocating for tickets. We did something again the normal
Speaker 2: Joe's not going to care about. We negotiated a you know,
Speaker 2: a terms and conditions attachment for contracts with Live Nation
Speaker 2: individually and AEG individually, and we're working with Neva to
Speaker 2: get something that they could recommend to their venues so
Speaker 2: that instead of them getting every from every agency for
Speaker 2: every act, a different set of terms and conditions. That's
Speaker 2: the add ons to the contract, like you know, no photography,
Speaker 2: you know, if it rains, this happens, you know, all
Speaker 2: the extra crap, you've got to have two million dollars
Speaker 2: in insurance, you know all that stuff. We're trying to
Speaker 2: pre negotiate all that so you can just do your
Speaker 2: basic contract, attach it which has already approved, send it,
Speaker 2: no argument. We all agreed it already, so we're trying
Speaker 2: to do that just to make the whole process of
Speaker 2: the contracting a lot easier and less tense and argumentative.
Speaker 2: So there's that that doesn't seem like a lot, but
Speaker 2: it is for a day to day scenario. We're you know,
Speaker 2: we negotiated an insurance policy for the younger acts to
Speaker 2: have a you know that need bottom line insurance for
Speaker 2: touring that can't afford a lot of insurance. So we
Speaker 2: negotiated with an organization needle members get a discount, and
Speaker 2: there's like a low level for the band starting out
Speaker 2: to make sure their equipment's covered. You know, they've got
Speaker 2: you know, you know, liability like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So so we've negotiated that. At one point, we we know,
Speaker 2: we negotiate, sorry, we negotiated with Peter when Peter was
Speaker 2: still at a hub. We negotiated a festival and outdoor
Speaker 2: show weather contract or or deal for neat lower level
Speaker 2: Needo acts, right, they can't afford you know, not what
Speaker 2: do you call it weather insurance? Right, cancelation insurance. So
Speaker 2: so we you know, we did that. So some of
Speaker 2: the stuff we're doing is kind of boring and mundane
Speaker 2: to everybody else, but it's you know, it's for our members.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's other things, uh, that we've been
Speaker 2: working on. You know, the ticketing things is a really
Speaker 2: big one because we've been involved in Maryland, we were
Speaker 2: involved in Maine, we were involved in New York State,
Speaker 2: We're involved in California. You know, we're involved in in
Speaker 2: a lot of different states because really at state by
Speaker 2: state over here, and and then there's things that that
Speaker 2: come up that you know, that that members say they
Speaker 2: need that we you know that we get involved with.
Speaker 2: So that's what we're here for. We do we run
Speaker 2: we're starting to run weekly, sorry not weekly, monthly webinars
Speaker 2: indoor town halls. So we used to do them once
Speaker 2: in a while. We do zooms for our members, so
Speaker 2: we've been this year we decided to get you know,
Speaker 2: serious about it, so we're doing one. So we did
Speaker 2: one on marketing and PR where we brought marketing people
Speaker 2: in and PR people you know, from a couple of firms,
Speaker 2: from a couple of promoters, independent marketers to do with
Speaker 2: session for members that wanted to to discuss marketing and
Speaker 2: public relations. We did one on visas Carnes and something else.
Speaker 2: There was like three topics on it. Boring for most people,
Speaker 2: but for people, especially managers that are touring, they need
Speaker 2: to know about that stuff. They need to know what
Speaker 2: their options are, what their issues, what the issues are.
Speaker 2: You know, country by country you can change, especially now
Speaker 2: that you know the UK is not in the EU anymore.
Speaker 2: It was easy to get from you know, the UK
Speaker 2: into Europe and tour, but now that they're not part
Speaker 2: of the EU, there's a whole thing of the trucking
Speaker 2: go in and out of the UK back to Europe.
Speaker 2: Things that you know, most people generally don't know about.
Speaker 2: We did what we're going to We did one on
Speaker 2: mental health on the road the other day, which was
Speaker 2: a really good one. We had a lot of people
Speaker 2: attend that one, and that's important because that's happening. Issues
Speaker 2: are happening more and more, you know, when you're out
Speaker 2: on the road, especially for these crew people right there.
Speaker 2: So an artist goes on the road for you know what,
Speaker 2: sixty or eighty days, maybe ninety days. Maybe maybe it's
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty, you know, but not that many shows,
Speaker 2: but maybe it's over a period. Some of these crew
Speaker 2: guys are working all year long and they don't think
Speaker 2: about it. The burnout rates really high mentally I'm talking
Speaker 2: about physically also, so you know, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of issues. So we're just trying to we're trying to
Speaker 2: help with that, so you know, those are the kinds
Speaker 2: of things that we do.
Speaker 1: Okay, Finally, why should someone hire you as an agent
Speaker 1: as opposed to anybody else? And implicit in that question
Speaker 1: is to what degree should acts hire and independent age
Speaker 1: as opposed to one of these corporate own full sort
Speaker 1: of agencies.
Speaker 2: I'll just say this to the on the immediately to
Speaker 2: get it out of the way before I actually say
Speaker 2: why they should hire me personally, it really depends on
Speaker 2: what an acts looking for. If they want to be
Speaker 2: a TV film star, I'm not the place to come, Okay.
Speaker 2: I doubt whether the regular Joe act is going to
Speaker 2: be a film or TV store. Anyway, it's a great pitch.
Speaker 2: I've had a couple of acts over the years that
Speaker 2: left me because they thought they were going to get
Speaker 2: a film score or they were going to be in
Speaker 2: a movie or a TV thing. And I'm still waiting
Speaker 2: to see and hear all of the above. Okay, So
Speaker 2: that's number one. It depends on what you want. If
Speaker 2: you want somebody that's going to help you and give
Speaker 2: good advice, if you want somebody that's gonna really care,
Speaker 2: and if you're gonna want somebody and I hate to
Speaker 2: say this because my daughters think I'm I'm crazy and
Speaker 2: I should get out of business already, is if you
Speaker 2: want somebody that's gonna lose sleep over your fricking tour
Speaker 2: and literally wake up at five o'clock in the morning
Speaker 2: with an idea that they think is going to help
Speaker 2: you do something different that will help your career, or
Speaker 2: an idea. I've actually texted you know, promoters at six
Speaker 2: o'clock in the morning when I came up with something
Speaker 2: to save a date that I thought was going to
Speaker 2: go down. And you want some good advice on like
Speaker 2: building and maintaining your career, I'm the guy, but I'm again,
Speaker 2: I'm not for everybody. I say what I mean Sometimes
Speaker 2: I shouldn't, but I do. I'm basically honest as far
Speaker 2: as and I don't mean in a financial way. I'm
Speaker 2: talking about in a conversational way. I may say things
Speaker 2: that will end up costing me the relation, the representation,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to say what I mean, because if
Speaker 2: somebody is dreaming, I'm going to tell them that you're dreaming.
Speaker 2: I hope you achieve it, but I don't think you will.
Speaker 2: I think you got to. You know. Sometimes it's like
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna get here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of steps to get there. You're not
Speaker 2: just getting there. You got to do all this first.
Speaker 2: And you know, I like to take care of details.
Speaker 2: I'm a detail oriented guy for everyone else, not for myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, Wayne, a lot of information here. I'm glad we
Speaker 1: covered what Nita was doing, a lot of important stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking this time to
Speaker 1: talk with my audience.
Speaker 2: You're welcome, Bob anytime. I appreciate it. Thank you for
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, we still didn't cover David Bowie in all the
Speaker 1: Old Days at another time.
Speaker 2: Well, we should come back to that because I have
Speaker 2: some good stories. If you want to do a story, okay.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Until next time. This is Bob left six