Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lefts That podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Gary Spivet, who books all the
Speaker 1: talent for the Danny Wimber Presents rock festivals. Good to
Speaker 1: have you on the show. Gary. How many rock festivals
Speaker 1: are there for Danny Wimmer.
Speaker 2: There are six right now for the calendar year. First off,
Speaker 2: thanks for having me, longtime listener, first time caller. Appreciate
Speaker 2: you as I am a flag waiver of rock and roll.
Speaker 2: Having me on important to speak my mind on that.
Speaker 2: So there's six rock festivals, all destination minimal three days.
Speaker 2: Most of them are four day rock festivals.
Speaker 1: Four days, so that would imply Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Speaker 1: most are three day. What's the thinking in four days?
Speaker 2: Well, first off, on business standpoint, it's an advertising of costs.
Speaker 2: You got your stages, you got your crews, you got
Speaker 2: your staffing, everybody's there. So from a business standpoint, it's
Speaker 2: almost like this nice added day of revenue. Rock fans.
Speaker 2: Believe me, Bob, if they were, because it is taxing
Speaker 2: as a promoter and somebody to work a four day festival.
Speaker 2: If they were crying about it, we wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: But they they eat it up. So for them it's
Speaker 2: like instead of a Hawaii vacation or bungee jumping, this
Speaker 2: is their this is their vacation, this is their getaway,
Speaker 2: and families come to this.
Speaker 1: And what are the capacities of these festivals?
Speaker 2: Had a record breaking Welcome to Rockville Daytona Beach, which
Speaker 2: was the single day, which was well over fifty five thousand,
Speaker 2: So capacities vary from that number to a round forty.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what festivals have yet to play this year?
Speaker 2: We have Louder than Life in Louisville, Kentucky, after Shock
Speaker 2: I'm not doing chronological sorry, Louder than Life Rock Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: which is Labor Day weekend, and After Shock in Sacramento, California.
Speaker 1: So conventional wisdom is rock is dead. What can you
Speaker 1: tell us about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you like saying that. I know. Look, all I
Speaker 2: can tell you is when you put these festivals on
Speaker 2: and you have an abundance of bands and you don't overcharge,
Speaker 2: they come and they come in droves. To me rock
Speaker 2: all right, So I think we the heyday when I
Speaker 2: was raised in the industry, when I was starting at
Speaker 2: record labels, this was the early nineties and grunge rock
Speaker 2: took over Nirvana, Pearl Jem, Soundgarden, Alis, Smashing Pumpkins. They
Speaker 2: had the mainstream MTV, buzzbin rock, and alternative radio, and
Speaker 2: I think a lot of us have been chasing the
Speaker 2: dragon's tail since then. But rock's never supposed to be
Speaker 2: in the mainstream. It's supposed to be the other side
Speaker 2: of the tracks. It's supposed to be like the grassy
Speaker 2: knoll where the cool kids are at the cafeteria table
Speaker 2: with the jocks and the kids in their polo shirts,
Speaker 2: and it's the rockers up on the grassy knoll with
Speaker 2: their cigarettes and exchanging rush cassettes. That's always been my
Speaker 2: taking rock. It's always been the left, the rebellious, and
Speaker 2: not the mainstream. Pop music doesn't the word pop means
Speaker 2: popular as in popular music, and rock has never been
Speaker 2: intended minus a couple moments in our favorite era, probably
Speaker 2: you know, sixty four to seventy, specifically sixty seven to
Speaker 2: seventy when rock kind of took it ruled everything. Rock
Speaker 2: is not the pretty girl in school, right, It's not
Speaker 2: the most popular kid in the class. It's the outcast.
Speaker 2: It's the misfits. So you gather them together at a
Speaker 2: festival or look I go to you see Greta van
Speaker 2: Fleet at the Forum twelve thousand people. I don't know
Speaker 2: how you can say Rock is dead when that happens.
Speaker 1: Okay, is this the same audience who goes to the
Speaker 1: Juggalo festival? No?
Speaker 2: You know what I equated to, Bob all right, So
Speaker 2: you might hear some sports analogies throughout our hang today,
Speaker 2: Hockey specifically Los Angeles. The Kings sell out Crypto every night,
Speaker 2: twenty thousand strong. There's probably twenty three thousand hockey fans
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, right, It's like, but they're dedicated, they're
Speaker 2: into it. They have the jerseys, they know that, the players,
Speaker 2: they know that, they know their competition. That's Rock. That
Speaker 2: forty thousand that attends our festival, that's the core. And
Speaker 2: if you treat them right and you give them great
Speaker 2: lineups and good food and good beer, not stale bud
Speaker 2: light and corn dogs anymore, they come back. So it is.
Speaker 2: It is not the Juggalo audience, though we cater to
Speaker 2: them too.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about good food. Coachella had very high
Speaker 1: end offerings and stagecoach was moorn downscale when you say
Speaker 1: good food for rock festivals, go a little deep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have. We have five stars. We have Louisville, Kentucky.
Speaker 2: We're Bourbon and Beyond and louder than life is. We
Speaker 2: have five star chefs backstage and front house. We have
Speaker 2: the best barbecue in Louisville. In Dave Grohl has been
Speaker 2: a part of that. Uh it is. We stopped with
Speaker 2: with the with the corn dogs and churos long ago.
Speaker 2: So it's a stone that it's it's oven pizza, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's quality food. And to go step further like
Speaker 2: it louder than life in Bourbon and Beyond. We have
Speaker 2: Bourbon tasting villages a la Bottle Rock where every real
Speaker 2: quickly quick fact about Bourbon, which I become pretty vers in.
Speaker 2: Not like Danny wimmern of all, Bourbon is just and
Speaker 2: Planet Earth is distilled in Louisville, Kentucky. Thought that Louisville,
Speaker 2: Kentucky was doing a very bad job about pring. That Louisville,
Speaker 2: Kentucky is the Napa Valley of Bourbon. So we have
Speaker 2: Bourbon tasting villages where it's it's one fixed price and
Speaker 2: every local bourbon distiller is set up so you have
Speaker 2: these fine bourbons, You've got high end barbecue, you have
Speaker 2: vegan it's it's all there and food trucks and vendors,
Speaker 2: and it's it's quality. So people are we want them
Speaker 2: for lunch and dinner.
Speaker 1: Okay. Coachella historically, for like the last decade, except for
Speaker 1: maybe the last year two, has been line up independent,
Speaker 1: i e. People will buy tickets based on the name
Speaker 1: of Coachella with the faith that Golden Voyage will book
Speaker 1: a lineup that they're happy with. To what degree does
Speaker 1: that apply to rock festivals?
Speaker 2: Not as well? It is. It is definitely artist dependent.
Speaker 2: But we do blind ticketing and we could sell about
Speaker 2: twenty percent of give or take of of capacity without
Speaker 2: a lineup, But it is, it is artists dependent. They
Speaker 2: they don't like repeats, they like reunions, they like you
Speaker 2: know what wins at our shows, Bob and a prop
Speaker 2: It's very simple. It probably wins at any concert you
Speaker 2: go to is energy, songs, attitude, and production. I put
Speaker 2: production last because a lot of the festivals are city
Speaker 2: festivals with hard curfews at eleven, so, especially in the spring,
Speaker 2: top two bands really get lights because it doesn't get
Speaker 2: dark till nine nine to fifteen at some of these festivals.
Speaker 2: So songs win and energy wins. So when you put
Speaker 2: all these bands together and you curate it right, they
Speaker 2: return and they show up. So to answer your question,
Speaker 2: the short answer your question at our festivals, it's it's
Speaker 2: definitely talent dependent and we got it and we're swinging
Speaker 2: with the biggest Now.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how many of these festivals or city festivals
Speaker 1: and how many are destination outside of the city.
Speaker 2: Well, they're all destination, you know, Louder than life. Using
Speaker 2: that as example in Louisville, Kentucky. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: things about that festival, it's literally across the road from
Speaker 2: the airport. It is art the hotel we stay out.
Speaker 2: You could see the main stages. Like how great is that?
Speaker 1: One has to ask if it's across the street from
Speaker 1: the airport, what about the airport noise?
Speaker 2: We work with them. Well, and you have left, you
Speaker 2: have curfews and they they they have. We are so
Speaker 2: good with Louisville that they help redirect their airline their
Speaker 2: flight takeoffs and departures where they direct it out of
Speaker 2: the you can see planes taken off. The quick funny
Speaker 2: story I have is Foo fighters played on a Friday.
Speaker 2: I had to leave on a Saturday for a family thing.
Speaker 2: Dave Groll wanted to see a band, and I escorted
Speaker 2: him on stage. We're watching the band and I have
Speaker 2: my luggage with me, and I get my runner and
Speaker 2: I'm boarding my plane and that band's still playing. That's
Speaker 2: how great that festival is.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's let's go back. How many of these festivals
Speaker 1: are like acl or Lollapalooza in the metropolis, and how
Speaker 1: many are more akin to Bonaru or Coachella in an
Speaker 1: area that's not literally right by a city.
Speaker 2: Rock Klahoma and Prior Oklahoma is forty five minutes from Tulsa.
Speaker 2: It is a ninety percent camping festival. We have camping
Speaker 2: at every festival, but every festival I just mentioned is,
Speaker 2: if not ten minutes from the airport, less than thirty.
Speaker 2: So it's there's camping, but it's hotel. It's like Sonic
Speaker 2: Temple and Columbus, Ohio. We did a zip code report. Columbus,
Speaker 2: Ohio is responsible for twenty nine percent of ticket sales,
Speaker 2: meaning what is that seventy one percent of all tickets
Speaker 2: sold are outside of the city of Columbus. So what
Speaker 2: we bring into that city, Hotel, Starbucks, gas station, sports bars.
Speaker 2: We bring a lot of income into into Columbus, Ohio
Speaker 2: for that weekend.
Speaker 1: How into the data are you not?
Speaker 2: It depends. I will not answer. If I don't know,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to make shit up for you. My
Speaker 2: specialty is talent booking curating. But when we started when
Speaker 2: when Danny Wimmer, myself and Dell Williams, you'll probably hear
Speaker 2: that named Del Williams a lot as we talk today.
Speaker 2: Dell and I were in record label world together. We
Speaker 2: wanted to start something. We felt there was a This
Speaker 2: is two thousand and six, by the way. My last
Speaker 2: label job was Geffen Records Head of Rock and Alternative Promotion.
Speaker 2: I was hitting my head on the ceiling. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be a promotion man anymore, live concerts or
Speaker 2: what gets the hair on my arms raised. So Del
Speaker 2: Williams and I started what was called Right Arm Entertainment.
Speaker 2: At the time, it was just a book. If you
Speaker 2: remember the Radio Festival craze those radio stations right So
Speaker 2: we started booking all them because these programmers didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do, and Dell and I were verse in
Speaker 2: it because of our label experience. And work with bands
Speaker 2: and managers and agents. So we were booking festivals, sorry,
Speaker 2: radio shows. But Bob quickly became noticeable for me that
Speaker 2: if you're going to be kind of taken seriously in
Speaker 2: this business, you got to write a check and you
Speaker 2: got to be able to be an actual promoter. So
Speaker 2: we started Rock on the Range and Carolina Rebellion and
Speaker 2: that's Charlotte, North Carolina Rock on the Range, Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 2: Dell and I and Danny Wimmer. Danny Wimmer and I
Speaker 2: was it was kind of an arranged marriage. Through Dell,
Speaker 2: Danny and I flew to Saint Louis, Missouri to strike
Speaker 2: a deal with a guy by the name of Joe
Speaker 2: Lidvag who was the head of Midwest at AEG and
Speaker 2: we went fifty to fifty with him because it was
Speaker 2: us three. We didn't have. We didn't really have we had.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of ignorance and a lot of arrogance,
Speaker 2: and so AG became our partner, the nuts and bolts partner,
Speaker 2: and we worked with Columbus Creuse Stadium in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 2: which was an AEG room, a building it was. It's
Speaker 2: on the it's on the grounds of the Columbus fair Grounds.
Speaker 2: So there's camping, parking, soccer stadium, parking lots, side stage areas,
Speaker 2: perfect and Danny and I went to Saint Louis to
Speaker 2: sign our agreement, and little did I know that the
Speaker 2: kid had food poisoning, but he kind of personed up
Speaker 2: and that was a real sign for me that this
Speaker 2: this this guy is serious and he was a hustler
Speaker 2: because he had food. If I think you've probably had
Speaker 2: food poisoning in your life, oh I've had it multiple times. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a fucking knockout. That's like put me at just
Speaker 2: kill me now. But we just started talking and this
Speaker 2: arranged marriage became kind of this brotherhood, this partnership. So
Speaker 2: we started these festivals. And the reason why we started
Speaker 2: these festivals Bob two thousand and six, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: There was Coachella, there was acl there was Bonnaroo, but
Speaker 2: there wasn't who was serving these rock fans when and
Speaker 2: I don't mean warped to or punk rock or oz
Speaker 2: Fest at the time, like rock and roll. You know,
Speaker 2: bands like Godsmack and Shine Down and Disturbed will never
Speaker 2: get invited to Coachella or bonnerou Let's make this their Coachella.
Speaker 2: And we picked Columbus, Ohio for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 2: One because it was AG fifty to fifty two, but
Speaker 2: also we're really big into feeder markets, meaning around Columbus,
Speaker 2: you have Cincinnati, you have Cleveland, Detroit, you have Toledo, Akron,
Speaker 2: these kind of underserved rock towns, and they all it worked.
Speaker 2: They all came in and they all have rock radio stations.
Speaker 2: So at the time we were very terrestrial radio heavy
Speaker 2: because of our radio show knowledge, and we knew all
Speaker 2: these stations, so they became friends to us and we
Speaker 2: use them. I got on and back in the day,
Speaker 2: because you asked, I said, I'm strictly mostly talent and booking.
Speaker 2: But back then us three did everything. Bob we I booked,
Speaker 2: I did the marketing, I got sponsors, I got on
Speaker 2: the radio, I talked to morning shows. It was just
Speaker 2: spreading kind of this rock nation around the area. And
Speaker 2: that's we did it, kind of you know, soup to nuts.
Speaker 2: At the time, I knew every sandwich on that subway
Speaker 2: because that's all that's all we can afford.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's just go through the history a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the three of you start. Does Del Williams continue
Speaker 1: or does he step aside at some point? What's his role?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was it was Gary, Dell and Danny. I
Speaker 2: think we had one assistant maybe, so over the years
Speaker 2: we did a fifth year anniversary I think of Rock
Speaker 2: on the Range and Dell kind of stepped aside. Danny
Speaker 2: got into some capital and kind of bought Dell out
Speaker 2: and rolled me in to Danny Wermer Presents, and I
Speaker 2: became the head of talent and Dell stayed on as
Speaker 2: a consultant. Is I think we're at twenty thirteen now
Speaker 2: after a run of two thousand and seven to twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: So Dell, Danny and I have always been communicating, always
Speaker 2: been talking. So from twenty thirteen to about twenty one,
Speaker 2: I was the head of talent at DWP Booking, curating
Speaker 2: programming all the rock festivals. Dell at the time was
Speaker 2: doing bourbon beyond helping where he could and for me,
Speaker 2: if I could talk about me, a couple of things happened.
Speaker 2: Two in particular, we got the Woodstock account, which was
Speaker 2: a very big deal for me. As I follow you,
Speaker 2: I know you're extremely versed. You were living it in
Speaker 2: real time, but I'm a total student of sixty seven
Speaker 2: to seventy specifically and Woodstock, I'm kind of a complete
Speaker 2: Woodstock nerd. And we became friend. We cold called Michael
Speaker 2: Lang and became very friendly with him. He would come
Speaker 2: to our festivals, He came to Louder than Life, he
Speaker 2: came to Columbus, Ohio, and he said, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be doing Woodstock fifty, and we said we want to
Speaker 2: be part of it in any shape or form. He
Speaker 2: ended up hiring me DWP for booking. He ended up
Speaker 2: hiring Superfly for production, and he got this company called
Speaker 2: Densu Japanese conglomber and advertising agency to fund it. And
Speaker 2: it was one of the greatest couple months of my
Speaker 2: life booking that festival until it was the whole thing imploded.
Speaker 2: Michael may he rest in peace. Uh is the ultimate
Speaker 2: was the ultimate Hippi hustler, you know, like, well, he
Speaker 2: was an elephant who would just kind of leave a
Speaker 2: bunch of shit behind and it was for us to
Speaker 2: clean up. So Woodstock took a lot out of me.
Speaker 2: And if you yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I shouldn't remember den Sue pulling the plug,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But if you had to specifically state why
Speaker 1: that failed? Why did it fail?
Speaker 2: Michael did not have his stuff together. He didn't. He
Speaker 2: didn't have a venue deal Superfly rightfully, so was holding strong.
Speaker 2: He wanted one hundred thousand. It was Watkins Glen was
Speaker 2: the venue. Uh, and I think in what was that?
Speaker 2: You remember? I was at seventy three, the Almond Brothers,
Speaker 2: Greg was there. You were there? Awesome? Uh, biggest one
Speaker 2: day rock festival in America. I believe for a long
Speaker 2: period of time he chose Walkins Glen. Fish was supposed
Speaker 2: to have a Walkins Glen Weekend in like October of eighteen.
Speaker 2: This is Woodstock fifty supposed to be August twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and we were getting ramped up and started booking Woodstock
Speaker 2: and Fish. If you remember, there was all these water
Speaker 2: and plumbing issues at Walkins Glen and they had to
Speaker 2: pull the plug the day before that Fish Weekend, which
Speaker 2: caused a lot of red flags for everybody, but not
Speaker 2: for Michael, and capacity was lowered. He didn't have permits,
Speaker 2: he didn't have dB permits. But we proceeded and booked
Speaker 2: a hell of a three day festival of four main
Speaker 2: stages and a couple side stages. Anybody. You can google
Speaker 2: Woodstock fifty. You could see the lineup because it was announced.
Speaker 2: I had never in my life seen a show. This
Speaker 2: was announced in March of twenty nineteen with no on sale,
Speaker 2: and Michael had the idea of this is March, like,
Speaker 2: let's put it on sale Earth Day, you know, April twenty.
Speaker 2: So it was supposed to be on sale. April twenty
Speaker 2: came and went, and I was getting a lot of
Speaker 2: heat from every agent. You know, these are big bands
Speaker 2: I had. The Killer is Maty Cyrus, The Racking Tour's
Speaker 2: Dead and Company, Chance the Rapper, I'm on top of
Speaker 2: my head, Jay Z Imagine, Dragons, Brandy Carlisle, Halsey, it
Speaker 2: was Black Keys and they were like, what's up, what's
Speaker 2: going on with the show? And I and nobody can
Speaker 2: get a straight answer. Finally the plug was pulled and
Speaker 2: it took a lot out of me. So now we're
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. Second thing that happened was COVID March
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. I'm on a trip with my wife to
Speaker 2: see my daughter who's studying abroad in London and crushing
Speaker 2: it as a young woman. We fly back on I
Speaker 2: think it's March ninth, I think was March ten. We're
Speaker 2: trying to fall asleep and we turn on CNN and
Speaker 2: Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks got COVID and the NBA
Speaker 2: season was canceled, and I think I'm texting with Wimmer, like,
Speaker 2: you know, oh, this is this is real. And I
Speaker 2: just was one of those guys, Bob who kind of
Speaker 2: had an epiphany, you know, like I'm I'm a little
Speaker 2: burnt right now. I pushed through twenty twenty with DWP.
Speaker 2: We do what everybody else does, you know, get into streaming,
Speaker 2: do what we can to survive. We all take big
Speaker 2: pay cuts and just as a company, and that took
Speaker 2: a lot out of me. Twenty twenty one rolls around.
Speaker 2: We put shows together thanks to guys like Cliff Bernstein
Speaker 2: and Q Prime. We were the first to have Metallica.
Speaker 2: We were the first to have Metallica played twice. They
Speaker 2: played a Friday and a Sunday, different sets. And so
Speaker 2: by then I was watching Metallica at Aftershock, which is
Speaker 2: October twenty twenty one, and I just had this moment
Speaker 2: where I think I'm good. I think I'm good, and
Speaker 2: I talked to Wimmer and we worked out. I left
Speaker 2: as an executive just to become a consultant, just a
Speaker 2: book and during that time, during COVID, I myself became
Speaker 2: a lot closer with one of my than I have met, Bob.
Speaker 2: I have mentors. I thought i'd have a shitload of
Speaker 2: mentors in this industry. I have less than a handful.
Speaker 2: And one of them is Mark Geiger, who's appearing a
Speaker 2: mentor and a tennis buddy. And I know I could
Speaker 2: take him skiing too, but that's a different story. I
Speaker 2: want to get with you one day on skiing too,
Speaker 2: because I went to the University Colorado for the sole
Speaker 2: reason because I was a ski rat.
Speaker 1: That's such a long conversation. I'm gonna let it go. Sorry,
Speaker 1: continue with the getting together with Geiger.
Speaker 2: As my wife would say, here's my ADHD kicking. Geiger
Speaker 2: was leaving WM and we're playing tennis, and he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm starting something. I'm kind of going back to my roots,
Speaker 2: and I want to what I love and when I've
Speaker 2: always loved to booking Metallica and Guns n' Rows and
Speaker 2: Foo Fighters is great, but Bob, I'm all about music discovery.
Speaker 2: To this day, I eat it up and I love
Speaker 2: when I find a band that I actually love, because
Speaker 2: a lot of these and everybody knows this about me,
Speaker 2: there's a good amount of these bands because I'm a
Speaker 2: businessman that I book that I don't really like personally,
Speaker 2: but I get it and I appreciate it and I
Speaker 2: respect it. But when there's a band that I like
Speaker 2: that I appreciate and respect it and I get to
Speaker 2: go watch, that's that's the good stuff. So with Mark,
Speaker 2: you know, here's a guy who started Lollapalooza. Here's a
Speaker 2: guy who's his resume is we all know it, but
Speaker 2: he loves going to see an unsigned band at a
Speaker 2: three hundred club room, as do I. So he said,
Speaker 2: I'm starting this company. And at the time I was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, you know, if you were selling strawberries
Speaker 2: off the four or five, I think I would go
Speaker 2: with you. Let's let's let's do this. So I called Wimmer.
Speaker 2: This is I think January twenty two now, and I said,
Speaker 2: look something. He loves Mark like I do. And he
Speaker 2: said something something on opportunities arisen and I want to
Speaker 2: try this with Mark. And Danny said, is Mark interested
Speaker 2: in festivals? And mark S answer was fuck no, because
Speaker 2: Mark's been there, done that, and he just he wants
Speaker 2: to do his venues and Dany's like, all right, you know,
Speaker 2: have at it man. So twenty twenty two to twenty four,
Speaker 2: I was kind of rolling double duty working as an
Speaker 2: executive in Marks Companies, Saved Live and consulting with DWP.
Speaker 2: Dell Williams came back and took the role of of
Speaker 2: talent at DWB was so it's been this kind of
Speaker 2: constant flow between Gary, Danny and Dell to this day.
Speaker 1: So you've recently left Save Live. What was going on there?
Speaker 2: Sports analogy if I can. I was a player at
Speaker 2: a position and I knew it and Mark knew it.
Speaker 2: It right, people wrong fit it was. It's a volume
Speaker 2: based booking job. I love creating and curating and putting
Speaker 2: together who could I put under Metallica with with Danny
Speaker 2: and Dell and what can we put on the side
Speaker 2: stages Save Live. I wish him the best, love them,
Speaker 2: just it wasn't right for me, and I'm at the
Speaker 2: point in my life, you know, I'm a squirrel Who've
Speaker 2: collected a good amount of nuts where I just want
Speaker 2: to work with people or do something that inspires me
Speaker 2: and excites me so completely amical parting Mark got it.
Speaker 2: I hope he I hope he rules the world, and
Speaker 2: I hope woman rules the world too.
Speaker 1: Okay, so where does this leave you?
Speaker 2: I am consulting with DWP. I also kept a couple
Speaker 2: of venues Mark greenlit which is the Rave and Eagles
Speaker 2: ball Room in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Fantastic historic venues. I'm working
Speaker 2: on an international deal with a German promoter, and I'm
Speaker 2: just kind of you know, I'm leaning, Bob. I'm in
Speaker 2: a really unique place in my life. I'm leaning hard
Speaker 2: on my relationships because that's all I got. You know,
Speaker 2: somebody said, you work till you're forty five. Let's say
Speaker 2: you work to your fifty to build your relationships, and
Speaker 2: then why don't you take fifty to whenever to use them?
Speaker 1: Dot and I here, what's this? What's going on with you?
Speaker 1: I think you said in Wisconsin?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am consulting Eagles Ballroom and the Rave Eagles
Speaker 2: at there. It's this fantastic historic venue that is all
Speaker 2: in one. There's four venues in this building. It's across
Speaker 2: the street from Marquette University. An a rock band worth anything.
Speaker 2: In the last thirty years has heard of Eagles Ballroom Independent?
Speaker 2: You know again, I've always been kind of an independent spirit,
Speaker 2: even at the at my record label days. I worked
Speaker 2: for one Monster Major. That's where I met Jason Vlohm
Speaker 2: at Atlantic Records. Besides that, I was I was an Electra.
Speaker 2: Geffen at the time was kind of a sister label
Speaker 2: of Innerscope I worked for. Before Atlantic, I worked for
Speaker 2: Tag Records, which was the Atlantic Group, a startup label
Speaker 2: started by Craig Callman. That folded. I kept on with Atlantic.
Speaker 2: So I always love the independent spirit and that was
Speaker 2: Saved Live. Save Live is independent run venues that go
Speaker 2: up against cocin PEPSI.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You do the initial festival in
Speaker 1: partnership with AG. Are the rest of these festivals fully
Speaker 1: independent or are they in partnership with AG or anybody else?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're fully independent, fully independent. The AEG partnership, as
Speaker 2: things do in life, ran its course.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There was a there was a divorce. I'm the child
Speaker 2: of the divorce, you know. And when those festivals kind
Speaker 2: of as things do, as festivals come and go, those
Speaker 2: festivals had a great run, and that partnership had a
Speaker 2: great run, and it dissolved. It was time to it
Speaker 2: was time to separate, and I stayed on as the
Speaker 2: head of Talent with DWP. So all the festivals that
Speaker 2: I've mentioned to you, Welcome to Rockville, Louder than Life,
Speaker 2: Bourbon and Beyond on Rock, Oklahoma, Sonic Temple, After Shock
Speaker 2: are completely owned and operated by by DWP.
Speaker 1: And where does the financing come for these festivals DWP?
Speaker 1: So it's self financed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's you know, there's there's investors, and not right
Speaker 2: of me to talk about that right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say you have these festivals. How far
Speaker 1: in advanced you start planning for a festival.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, because it's getting more the window,
Speaker 2: the windows getting more and more. When we started, I
Speaker 2: remember we used to announce like on Martin Luther King
Speaker 2: Day in January for a May festival. And now we're
Speaker 2: definitely in the in the back end of the year
Speaker 2: before when we announce usually November December. So it's a
Speaker 2: it's a three hundred and sixty five day siege we have.
Speaker 2: You know, again, when you say Rock is dead, I'll
Speaker 2: just tell you man two thousand in twenty five, because
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four we're as we're so talent dependent. Kind
Speaker 2: of a down you know, the thesis come in cycles.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a down year for headliners. We actually
Speaker 2: had to freaking reunite a metal band, Slayer. They're doing
Speaker 2: three shows this year. Two of them are with us,
Speaker 2: the other one's riot Fest in Chicago. So we like
Speaker 2: helped put together Slayer again. So it's been kind of
Speaker 2: a down year. And that happens. I mean you see
Speaker 2: it at God if you remember last summer with Beyonce
Speaker 2: and Taylor and Metallica, gn R and Green Day. How
Speaker 2: many stadium tours are this year? So kind of a
Speaker 2: down year. Twenty five feels great. We're in twenty five,
Speaker 2: we're booking twenty five.
Speaker 1: Let me go sideways for one second. You had the
Speaker 1: Black Keys and Arenas that shut down, and you had
Speaker 1: j Loo that shut down. Do we learn anything there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's and I was talking to I still
Speaker 2: like to talk to venues for my especially for festival research,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of down this year, and especially Look,
Speaker 2: I think rock and hip hop. I like to think
Speaker 2: inflation has a lot to do with this, Bob. I
Speaker 2: think we deal with paycheck to paycheck people that's the
Speaker 2: core audience, you know, for for us at a at
Speaker 2: a single GA ticket, I'm being really general. Say it's
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy five dollars, which to me is
Speaker 2: great value because you say you have forty bands a day.
Speaker 2: Do the math, it's like five it's less than five
Speaker 2: five dollars a band. But these people have to decide,
Speaker 2: like am I gonna buy Welcome to Rockville or fix
Speaker 2: my carbureator. It's being very general. I have to you know,
Speaker 2: I have to paint paint part of my house or
Speaker 2: get that concert ticket. And I think people, I think
Speaker 2: inflation is catching up, and I think you're seeing that around,
Speaker 2: especially in rock and hip hop. That's what that's what
Speaker 2: I'm getting for this year. So the strongest will survive.
Speaker 2: The branded festivals I think are doing great. Dvp's having
Speaker 2: a really good year. I'm not hyping you. It's it's
Speaker 2: the record breaking year actually, because I think, Okay, I
Speaker 2: think if you are a festival and you're starting and
Speaker 2: you start with say you launch a new festival and
Speaker 2: it's Siza and Noah Khan and Blink one ey two
Speaker 2: and Gwen Stefani and Janelle Monet, like who are you
Speaker 2: appealing to? But if you're at if you don't have
Speaker 2: a these festivals, the root of the tree, the core
Speaker 2: are rock festivals. You can go kind of left, you
Speaker 2: know with Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age. You
Speaker 2: can go right with Mega Death and Lamba God and Slipknot.
Speaker 2: You go center with Papa Roach and Shine Down Godsmack.
Speaker 2: We're allowed to do that, but we're not. We don't
Speaker 2: go for Megan Thee, Stallion and Sisa. We are rock
Speaker 2: festivals and I think those are those are thriving because
Speaker 2: they have their base. That's my take.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the timeline. Let's say a
Speaker 1: festival is going to play in May. How far in
Speaker 1: advance will you start working on that festival?
Speaker 2: May May twenty five? We were doing calls in January
Speaker 2: twenty four.
Speaker 1: Okay, on that What is the first step? Where does
Speaker 1: talent come in putting on a festival?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I love that question because for me, I'm a
Speaker 2: big proponent of top down because for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 2: if you have Metallica or you have the Food Fighters
Speaker 2: and Metallica Metallica is their own genre, that's bad example,
Speaker 2: because Metallica could play with anybody. If you have Pantera,
Speaker 2: you have to curate and program a proper way. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't get too cute and put Royal Blood with
Speaker 2: with Pantera. If you have the food Fighters rightfully, so
Speaker 2: they they come with a couple proper demands. Dave loves females,
Speaker 2: so a band like the Pretty Reckless or Hailstorm is
Speaker 2: great to get and represent on that day. They don't
Speaker 2: like the fist clenching metal, although Dave is a big
Speaker 2: fan of that, but food Fighter of the brand. So
Speaker 2: you go Queen's of the Stone Age, you go Greta
Speaker 2: van Fleet, you go Royal Blood. So you have to
Speaker 2: so you have to stop the start at the top,
Speaker 2: at the top and work your way down. I think
Speaker 2: if not, you're going to be left with all all
Speaker 2: these mid level bands and a very bloated budget, and
Speaker 2: you got to be careful.
Speaker 1: Let's start with the budget. Do you have a hard
Speaker 1: budget before you start calling anybody?
Speaker 2: Yes, but it's it's it's a moving target depending on
Speaker 2: you know what this band. Like with Slayer, you want
Speaker 2: to have security, I guess using that word. So if
Speaker 2: you look at Aftershock, we got Slayer and Judas, we
Speaker 2: got Slayer and Pantera. We got Iron Maiden, a band
Speaker 2: that I've coveted, Danny and I and Delve coveted since
Speaker 2: we started. There's two bands, by the way, that we
Speaker 2: coveted and were down to one, and that that one
Speaker 2: is raged against the machine and just cry and shame.
Speaker 2: They're not an actual band right now. So normally you
Speaker 2: would say, you know you got you got your headliner,
Speaker 2: Slayer or Maiden, We're good, let's let's but we wanted
Speaker 2: to really kind of hit them over the head with
Speaker 2: a hammer. So we increase the top line budget and
Speaker 2: with that, you're gonna probably have to increase your ticket price.
Speaker 2: So that's the great catch twenty two, and that is
Speaker 2: the great moment where festivals can outprice themselves because at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, our boss is the fan.
Speaker 2: Capital f capital, a capital end period, the fan will
Speaker 2: speak and we'll know if we've outpriced. And I think
Speaker 2: some festivals out there have like they look at the
Speaker 2: ticket price and I'm taking a pass because this isn't
Speaker 2: my festival. So yes, there's a budget, Yes we stick
Speaker 2: to it religiously, and yes it's a moving target.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say it's January of twenty four. You're
Speaker 1: booking for May of twenty five before you call anybody,
Speaker 1: do you plot out all four days?
Speaker 2: You plot out your your your headliners. I do, we do.
Speaker 2: And if it was like if it was pay for,
Speaker 2: you know, you would go through a fucking notebook because
Speaker 2: what you start with and what you end with are
Speaker 2: two very different things. Those those grids that we live
Speaker 2: by a change and they were we're booking. I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: I don't. I can't speak for all festivals. We're booking
Speaker 2: the usually the week the week before we announced too.
Speaker 2: You're still in it. It is, it's it's wild because
Speaker 2: festivals are different. You know. You you ask for more rightfully,
Speaker 2: so you pay from You pay more money for two
Speaker 2: main reasons. Bob, is you pay for the specialty of
Speaker 2: the performance. We like to make it special. And you
Speaker 2: pay for radius claus you know, like I said, those
Speaker 2: feeder markets. We like to If you're playing Columbus Sonic Temple,
Speaker 2: that's your play in the region.
Speaker 1: Do all acts have the sea radius clause?
Speaker 2: We like to kind of keep it case by case,
Speaker 2: but it is a Pandora's box. We're really strict on radius.
Speaker 2: Can't speak for other promoters, but it is case by case.
Speaker 1: And how long a period of time and how many
Speaker 1: miles will be the typical headliner or radius clause.
Speaker 2: I'm more into state like, for example, sonic temples radius
Speaker 2: states as in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia. That kind of
Speaker 2: covers it. If you want to play outside of those,
Speaker 2: we're probably cool. There's a couple markets that kind of
Speaker 2: go into that two fifty to three hundred mile radius,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the the industry standard.
Speaker 1: And how long a.
Speaker 2: Window you could announce you could play that show the
Speaker 2: next day, as long as you announce the day you
Speaker 2: can announce from our festival stage.
Speaker 1: No, no, let me let me be clear. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: a band, I'm playing in Kentucky. How long until i
Speaker 1: can play in Kentucky again?
Speaker 2: Sixty to ninety ninety? It's kid's case by case, it's
Speaker 2: sixty to ninety.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's go back to booking. Do you call
Speaker 1: agents and see who's available for headliners? Or do you
Speaker 1: make a list to who you want and then call
Speaker 1: the agents.
Speaker 2: Both were you know, we we've become that I there
Speaker 2: isn't another company that does this amount of rock festivals
Speaker 2: in North America of what our core is. So there
Speaker 2: used to be a time when we started, when we
Speaker 2: were getting on our knees to agents and managers like
Speaker 2: what are you doing? What is this? And thanks to people,
Speaker 2: I would say, people like Bill McGaffey and Ken from
Speaker 2: Me Gush and Rick Roskin, early believers, Corey Brennan that
Speaker 2: that got it, that got what we were doing. But
Speaker 2: now we're we're in lockstep. We we have bands that
Speaker 2: will literally create their their cycle around the festival. We
Speaker 2: want to launch a single when you announce, we want
Speaker 2: to put the street date on the festival date, do
Speaker 2: and doing a meet and greet, a pop up in store.
Speaker 2: So these rock bands have it's great. There's a great partnership.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have so many examples, Bob, and I'll
Speaker 2: use and I think you've you've talked to her, which
Speaker 2: I love that you did. I think a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago you reached out to Lizzie Hale of Hailstorm.
Speaker 1: Actually I have not done a podcast with Lizzy Hale.
Speaker 1: I'm certainly familiar with Hailstorm, but the pretty reckless Yes,
Speaker 1: I've done that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll use Hailstorm. Example that was Bill mcgafey. He
Speaker 2: stepped up for us. He called me and said, hey,
Speaker 2: I want you to, you know, put a brand new
Speaker 2: band that I just signed Kenya and am Mike. Who
Speaker 2: is Bill? He's said the lead singers, A lead singer
Speaker 2: is a girl, and the younger brothers the drummer, and
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard a lick. I'm like, you know what, yes,
Speaker 2: but in the band was Hailstorm. We put them on
Speaker 2: at twelve thirty on the little stage and we loved him.
Speaker 2: Two years later they headlined that stage. Two years later,
Speaker 2: they're opening the main stage. Two years three years later
Speaker 2: they're in the middle and they're one of our core bands.
Speaker 2: We build this relationship, we have this. I've got Greta
Speaker 2: van Fleet. Greta van Fleet. I got a demo tape
Speaker 2: from an unsigned from Mark Giger and Ron Opeleski, and
Speaker 2: it was two songs. It was the Flower Song in
Speaker 2: Highway tune. I mean yes, its completely sounded like led Zeppelin,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, let's go Yes, booked him for five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars. I have the contract on my wall. You
Speaker 2: got add a couple of zeros now to to get
Speaker 2: credit of Anfleet, but they're worth it. I've got countless
Speaker 2: stories of that and how we build these bands together
Speaker 2: and they've become family, and how they've risen with us.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the top end. So what you're
Speaker 1: saying is the agents are where that your festival is
Speaker 1: going to play, and they're pitching you a little bit.
Speaker 1: Do you also have dream talent that you just call
Speaker 1: the manager of the agent and say this is our.
Speaker 2: Vision totally Yes, yes, and we'll and we'll design a pitch.
Speaker 2: I'll use I'll use our friend Cliff Bernstein. We weren't
Speaker 2: ready for Metallica for many years. We had to we
Speaker 2: had to build that trust, we had to build our brand.
Speaker 2: So what we did there was other bands that Q
Speaker 2: Prime has, three Days, Grace, Disturbed, put them on They're
Speaker 2: they're they're down the middle, core bands for these festivals,
Speaker 2: and he'd get word back like great crowd, great merch numbers.
Speaker 2: These guys take care of us. That's one thing that
Speaker 2: we knew from day one. If we're an independent, we
Speaker 2: better go the extra mile backstage and front of house,
Speaker 2: and we do like our We work our stage managers
Speaker 2: and that crew to the core and there by Sunday
Speaker 2: at eleven PM. These guys are so fried because we
Speaker 2: go the extra mile and I go to a lot
Speaker 2: of festivals, and yes, Coachella completely does it right for
Speaker 2: the fan and for the band and for everybody. We
Speaker 2: take notes of that. We've gone to Hellfest, We've taken
Speaker 2: trips to download and rock and ring and walkin park
Speaker 2: and see what some of these do and somewhat of
Speaker 2: these festivals don't do. So we take care of these bands.
Speaker 2: And Q Prime got wint to that. So tried for Metallica. No,
Speaker 2: not this year, not this year. We almost had them
Speaker 2: one year, but we ended up getting the Red Hot
Speaker 2: Chili Peppers when they are Q Prime monumental booking for
Speaker 2: us because that type of booking made sure that we
Speaker 2: weren't just the slipknot of ND Sevenfold, who we love
Speaker 2: hard rock metal festivals. We can go left and we
Speaker 2: can go right. Red Hot Chili Peppers had an amazing
Speaker 2: experience and Metallica was ready for us. So that's the
Speaker 2: story of that dream scenario. We had to be ready
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 1: Okay, if these are four night festivals, how many a
Speaker 1: list headliners does each festival need?
Speaker 2: Well, we're four now, and that's the thing which it
Speaker 2: makes it very hard, Bob, because if like for example,
Speaker 2: in twenty one, we had the Foo Fighters done at
Speaker 2: three of them up and announced, and one of the
Speaker 2: saddest things in rock in the last couple decades was
Speaker 2: Taylor Hawkins past and we couldn't I think they were
Speaker 2: playing Lopaluza and a couple other festivals. We couldn't uh
Speaker 2: replace them with Meghan the Stallion, you know, or Chance
Speaker 2: the Rapper. We we we are rock festivals. So the
Speaker 2: you are limited, it does it does make it harder.
Speaker 2: Like I said, this has been a kind of a
Speaker 2: down year for headliners. We got the foods for Rockville,
Speaker 2: we got iron made in an aftershock, but we we
Speaker 2: we had to kind of go back to the well
Speaker 2: on some of some others. But yes, the headliner is key,
Speaker 2: But I'm telling you these fans love Bulk.
Speaker 1: Okay, But just to ask the question again, if there
Speaker 1: are four nights, you have iron made in one night,
Speaker 1: what caliber of status, economic status, and draw do the
Speaker 1: other three nights need to have to make it work? Well?
Speaker 2: Similar to to to the story I told you of
Speaker 2: we had made in one night and then we did
Speaker 2: you know a Slayer and Pantera for another night, so
Speaker 2: you do kind of a you know, two A minuses
Speaker 2: if you will, to stack it up, look a core
Speaker 2: bands for us that our family, Slipknot Events, Sevenfold, Corn Disturbed.
Speaker 2: You know you look at Spotify numbers like Undisturbed, I
Speaker 2: think twenty two million monthly listeners. That they have a
Speaker 2: couple of songs that are through the moon, the sound
Speaker 2: of silence cover bigger than might Some people might think, Okay.
Speaker 1: So let's just assume you have your headline level band.
Speaker 1: You've locked those in. One question before I go down
Speaker 1: the bill. You know, for a long time festivals had
Speaker 1: exclusives and then just before were COVID, the same acts
Speaker 1: seem to be headlining all the festivals. To what degree
Speaker 1: do you want or not want multiple festivals for the
Speaker 1: people you do book?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were into what's called bundle offers. If you
Speaker 2: can get food Fighters or you can get Pantera for
Speaker 2: a couple of them. But I will tell you these
Speaker 2: fans are smart. They start seeing, oh that looks like
Speaker 2: Loud of Them Life looks like Welcome to Rockville or
Speaker 2: Louder than Life and after Shock. So we can't duplicate
Speaker 2: too much, So we do our best to separate, but
Speaker 2: it's good when you can get a band for a
Speaker 2: couple of them. It's great when you can get a
Speaker 2: band for one of them. We had Green Day for
Speaker 2: Louder than Life. They're exclusive kind of Ohio Valley Play,
Speaker 2: which is Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia fucking great. So the
Speaker 2: exclusive is great. Those are those are important, Love them expensive,
Speaker 2: but love them.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you've locked in your headliners? Where do you
Speaker 1: go from there?
Speaker 2: Right? So if you have again, if you have kind
Speaker 2: of slipknot closing a night, you got to program appropriately,
Speaker 2: and you could we like to kind of stretch the
Speaker 2: fishing net as much as we can without sorry to
Speaker 2: use cliches jumping the shark on a slip not day.
Speaker 2: So then you go down and you know, mega death.
Speaker 2: I'm just throwing bands out, Lamma God, there are tons
Speaker 2: of them, and I'll tell you there there is a
Speaker 2: nice crop of bands right there on the cusp in
Speaker 2: our world, including and again you may never have heard
Speaker 2: of these bands that I'm about to say, and that's okay,
Speaker 2: but bands like bad Omens, they're about there. An arena act,
Speaker 2: Bring me the Horizon, a data remember falling in Reverse
Speaker 2: and sorry to the word. If I'm missing a couple
Speaker 2: in that immediate world, you know, a band like Eis
Speaker 2: nine Kills, who Metallica is taking out right now? There
Speaker 2: is movement, there is there is traction in the rock
Speaker 2: hard rock world. And these are bands that you know
Speaker 2: are melodic and very heavy and not mainstream, but the
Speaker 2: core knows them. If I just said ban Oben's falling
Speaker 2: in reverse to a bunch of rock fans are like that,
Speaker 2: that's that's that they think they could headline a festival.
Speaker 2: And again, I could look at you and I bet
Speaker 2: you may have never heard of bad Omens.
Speaker 1: I have heard of those bands has been around for
Speaker 1: a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, let's let's go back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about pricing. Can you buy a day ticket
Speaker 1: or do you have to buy all four days?
Speaker 2: We go four day tickets out of the shoot four
Speaker 2: day tickets? Single day there was uh we we will
Speaker 2: uh priced here. Rock Oklahoma will start as a weekend
Speaker 2: because again that's such a camping festival. So again, ninety
Speaker 2: percent of that festival are campers, so you know predominantly
Speaker 2: they're gonna want to They're gonna want the weekend pass
Speaker 2: and the single day at that particular festivals is kind
Speaker 2: of minimal because it's Oklahoma, so it's pretty much Oklahoma City, Tulsa,
Speaker 2: maybe Arkansas, and a couple other cities. So out of
Speaker 2: the gate, we will go single day, single day, VIP,
Speaker 2: four day, four day, VIP, four day ticket plus camping,
Speaker 2: four day ticket plus hotel. So there are a ton
Speaker 2: of tiers.
Speaker 1: But you announce them sequentially. They don't all go on
Speaker 1: sale the same time.
Speaker 2: They go on sale at the same time.
Speaker 1: They do go on sale at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's kind of good research. You can kind
Speaker 2: of see that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Look, Saturday is a protected play. I'm in quotes right
Speaker 2: now because yes, it's it's not hard to do research
Speaker 2: to know that if a guy's going a single day,
Speaker 2: he's off work, he's not going to church or a
Speaker 2: football game on Sunday. Saturday is a good concert day.
Speaker 2: Friday is too, So Thursday the Friday, and Saturday can
Speaker 2: outperform the Thursday Sunday. It's a delight when we see
Speaker 2: the Sunday out performing a Friday or Saturday.
Speaker 1: And once again I realize every festival is different. What
Speaker 1: are the price ranges?
Speaker 2: Okay, so if you go onto Aftershock festival dot Com,
Speaker 2: which if it's okay, I'd like to do because every
Speaker 2: festival is different, because every city is different. And one
Speaker 2: thing I love that we do when you go on
Speaker 2: this website is well, immediately try to grab email addresses.
Speaker 2: It's for research, it's for being part of the family.
Speaker 2: It's for merch discounts, it's for early ticket discounts.
Speaker 1: You know. We like that.
Speaker 2: Again, fan is our boss. We like to ask them
Speaker 2: what bands they want to see next year, what bands
Speaker 2: they liked this year. Love the comments. So you're going
Speaker 2: on aftershock dot com and well, let's.
Speaker 1: Go with the email. Let's say I register for the email.
Speaker 1: How often am I going to hear from you? And
Speaker 1: what's going to be the content?
Speaker 2: Uh, it's everything, It's it's Uh. You'll hear from us
Speaker 2: on uh on a on a on a band that's performing,
Speaker 2: that has a record coming out. You'll hear from us
Speaker 2: on an interview that we did. We have our own
Speaker 2: social media and video team and content. Uh, you'll hear
Speaker 2: from us on on updates. You know, if if a
Speaker 2: band has to drop and we replace, you'll be first
Speaker 2: to know. So going back on on tickets, let's see
Speaker 2: a a weekend, four day it's again I'm not I'm
Speaker 2: not giving away seekers. It's right online we can four
Speaker 2: day is around is around five hundred dollars, so it's
Speaker 2: it comes out to be, you know, a little over
Speaker 2: one hundred and change a day, okay.
Speaker 1: And how much is VIP and what do you get
Speaker 1: for VIP?
Speaker 2: It depends. We have certain different VIPs. One standard VIP
Speaker 2: will be a dedicated entrance will be access to the
Speaker 2: VIP lounge, which usually is tree shaded furniture, live audio,
Speaker 2: video streams of the main stages, water refill air conditioning
Speaker 2: and flushable restrooms dedicated for merch, boose, private lockers, premium
Speaker 2: food and drink offerings. And then there's there's this different
Speaker 2: tiers on that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were talking earlier. One hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars and five dollars of band were you talking about
Speaker 1: for four days or for one day?
Speaker 2: By the way, that's including fees. We don't hide fees.
Speaker 2: So it's right there again on the website.
Speaker 1: But the example you were giving for one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five dollars, is that a real price for one
Speaker 1: of these festivals?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And for one day or for four days.
Speaker 2: That's single day ticket, single day ticket.
Speaker 1: Okay. So generally speaking, you're in the same price range
Speaker 1: as other festivals.
Speaker 2: I think so. But God, the value that we offer
Speaker 2: to the rock fan.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go. Let's stay as I'm looking at the aftershock.
Speaker 1: You know on Thursday you have Slayer, well known, tell
Speaker 1: me about Linda Man. Who's the next is built under Slayer?
Speaker 2: That is Till of Romstein. Yeah, so the again, the core, well,
Speaker 2: we'll know who that is.
Speaker 1: Okay. If we go to the bottom of that stage
Speaker 1: like a storm, what time will they go on? And
Speaker 1: who are they?
Speaker 2: One o'clock cash? Like a storm is from down Under?
Speaker 2: Funny enough? Fun fact? The drummer is the son of
Speaker 2: Godsmax co manager. Fun fact.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are all these bands. There's like sixty to
Speaker 1: one hundred.
Speaker 2: Bands of good bands. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I talk to you Gary and I say,
Speaker 1: we're booking sixteen months out, okay, and we look at
Speaker 1: the we start from day one in January of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, and the show plays on May of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. Will you already know? You personally? Will you
Speaker 1: already know? In January twenty four? Every band that's playing
Speaker 1: sixteen months later, or some of these new to you.
Speaker 2: Oh, some of these are art brand new. And looking
Speaker 2: at this list, there's a scene that's happened that we
Speaker 2: got into and we booked later than normal, which includes
Speaker 2: Drain and Drug Church and gel and Military Gun. There
Speaker 2: there's a new scene popping up and it's kind of like.
Speaker 2: The leaders of that scene is a band called Turnstile,
Speaker 2: who I adore. That's another tremendous d DWP story. I
Speaker 2: found them on YouTube and the manager now is still
Speaker 2: their manager. It's become a very dear friend of ours.
Speaker 2: It's their Turnstile. At the time was like Fugazi meets
Speaker 2: Green Day Ors. It was just they were doing shows
Speaker 2: in gymnasiums and like rec centers. So there's there's a
Speaker 2: real scene. So we grabbed onto this current scene again.
Speaker 2: The leaders of this I don't know al core. Somebody's
Speaker 2: gonna yell at me from probably not saying the genre right,
Speaker 2: but looking looking at the poster of Aftershock, we wanted
Speaker 2: to make sure that scene was really kind of taken
Speaker 2: care of an account.
Speaker 1: For okay, broaden that what other bands were in that scene?
Speaker 2: All right, I'd go, let's say Drain Drug Church, flesh Water,
Speaker 2: look out for Fleshwater Gel.
Speaker 1: Okay, every band, every band is incomparable. But what does
Speaker 1: fresh water sound like?
Speaker 2: Fleshwater sound female lead from Los Angeles actually, which isn't
Speaker 2: which is kind of unusual for this scene. Theyough military
Speaker 2: guns from Los Angeles too, What do they sound like?
Speaker 2: They sound like Green Day meets Damn It Bomb, green
Speaker 2: Day meets Mastodon. There's there's punk, there's metal, and there's
Speaker 2: alternative in this in this kind of movement.
Speaker 1: Okay, so in this movement, the audience that's aware of
Speaker 1: this movement, how are they discovering this movement?
Speaker 2: It's it's uh a fall on word of mouth, social media,
Speaker 2: di I y shows. I know, I know a promoter
Speaker 2: whose name is Casey Smith who handles things like the
Speaker 2: Catalyst in Santa Cruz and and venues in Berkeley and
Speaker 2: up and down coastal California. This they're Santa Cruz. The
Speaker 2: Santa Cruz area is eating it up. It's it's a
Speaker 2: skate rap mentality, but there's but there's metal in it.
Speaker 2: It's it's really unique and they and what I love
Speaker 2: about this genre more than most is they like look
Speaker 2: out for each other. If when Drain or Drug Church
Speaker 2: is playing, every band of that scene is on the
Speaker 2: side of stage watching them and rooting for them, and
Speaker 2: they take each other out, which I feel rock needs
Speaker 2: more of.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if flesh Water is playing your festival, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. If they're not playing your festival, how many
Speaker 1: tickets can they sell them? Where can they sell them?
Speaker 2: They're doing They're thousand plus now they're moving. One of
Speaker 2: the last things I booked with Save Live was a
Speaker 2: Fleshwater show in Oklahoma City. It's called beer City Music
Speaker 2: Hall five hundred that went clean. And that's and they're
Speaker 2: from Los Angeles, So there's a movement. There's a movement.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say you're one of these bands in these movements.
Speaker 1: Can you work every night of the week if you
Speaker 1: want to? Is there a big enough audience across the country. Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And again they play like they don't play big places,
Speaker 2: and they're in you know, they're doing at hardcore, they're
Speaker 2: in vans, they're sleeping at friends houses. It's a real
Speaker 2: kind of punk diy mentality. And I know for a
Speaker 2: factor and style was living on couches. Another when they
Speaker 2: launch in twenty five they're playing Madison Square Garden in
Speaker 2: the forum.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think it used to be a joke
Speaker 1: when people would get a festival slot, and especially in
Speaker 1: early slot twelve for one, and think that it could
Speaker 1: help their career other than saying they played the festival
Speaker 1: with so many fewer avenues of exposure. To what degreed
Speaker 1: does playing one of your festivals. I'm talking about a
Speaker 1: starting band, to what degree might that help their career?
Speaker 2: I pull bands aside Bob at these festivals and say,
Speaker 2: look what you do for your thirty to forty minutes
Speaker 2: at one thirty is not why you're here. You know,
Speaker 2: put on your best show, leave the blood on the stage.
Speaker 2: But you get involved in our media. We have media tents,
Speaker 2: use our press, go see other bands. I know countless
Speaker 2: stories of young bands that have played at one thirty
Speaker 2: that have gotten onto support slots from bigger bands because
Speaker 2: of our festival. And that's a perception thing. You know,
Speaker 2: you're you're on the poster, You're on the poster with Metallica,
Speaker 2: You're on the poster with food Fighters. You know, like
Speaker 2: when when they're when they're when an agent or managers
Speaker 2: pitching their young band perform with food fighters.
Speaker 1: What's the headliner worth money wise?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Come on, now, okay, has the price to what degree
Speaker 1: have you seen price inflation since COVID or has it
Speaker 1: stayed steady?
Speaker 2: Now it's look, it's it's it's gone up. Part of
Speaker 2: it's justifiable because of look, the gas for their tour
Speaker 2: buses are more. There was a problem post COVID, right
Speaker 2: out of COVID with crews and people took different career
Speaker 2: year pass who were you know, working as a tech
Speaker 2: or a roadie or and they they moved on and
Speaker 2: those are became kind of scarce, so you pay them
Speaker 2: appropriately because man, a good a good tour manager, a
Speaker 2: good sound person is priceless, right, So their cost have
Speaker 2: gone up and therefore that's that's the justifiable part. The
Speaker 2: other part is a problem, and you know the the
Speaker 2: and and all I could say to that is who's
Speaker 2: going to speak the loudest will be the fan and
Speaker 2: there will there can be an implosion.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It kind of reminds me if you remember of the
Speaker 2: record label days when in promoting with the independence, where
Speaker 2: they just started gouging and gouging and increasing their rates
Speaker 2: where it just got to be enough. There was there wasn't.
Speaker 2: That wasn't a fan element. But I think there is
Speaker 2: a is there. There can be a breaking point, and
Speaker 2: we're starting to see that, you know, as some of
Speaker 2: these festivals are going away. Some of those tours like
Speaker 2: the Black Keys and j LO are are not happening.
Speaker 2: So I think there's a breaking point.
Speaker 1: If I'm opening on one of your stages in one
Speaker 1: of your four days, that's still five hundred to fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, maybe a little.
Speaker 1: More, okay? And how did the prices go up? How
Speaker 1: close to the headliner's performance do I have to be
Speaker 1: for it to be real money?
Speaker 2: Look, we never have an issue. If I can, I'll
Speaker 2: give the grid event Fleet example, because it's a good one,
Speaker 2: you know, with the first time we booked them was
Speaker 2: for five hundred dollars and they were totally buzzing. Fun story.
Speaker 2: The last show of the run was Aftershock, which was
Speaker 2: which was that payday, and they had a one point
Speaker 2: thirty slot by this time in October of that cycle,
Speaker 2: they were bigger there. And I'm going in quotes again,
Speaker 2: their van broke down on the way to Aftershock and
Speaker 2: they couldn't get there till six o'clock at night, and
Speaker 2: of course we're all, okay, that's that's a good one.
Speaker 2: And to this day I've talked to them and their
Speaker 2: people like all right, just cop to it. Did your
Speaker 2: and literally their van did break down, that's a true story,
Speaker 2: but we're like, you got to play. So we worked
Speaker 2: it out where they headlined the side stage at like
Speaker 2: eight thirty pm and the only lights they had were
Speaker 2: these kind of Christmas lights from their from their van.
Speaker 2: It was it was adorable, but they had this great show.
Speaker 2: So obviously we started a great relationship with that band.
Speaker 2: And the next time, next cycle, their agent was like, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, I know what you paid. Here's the number now,
Speaker 2: and we're like, that's really high. But you know what
Speaker 2: we're in because we there's no such Bob, there's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a bad band, just a bad deal.
Speaker 2: I didn't make that one up. That is an industry
Speaker 2: that's an industry classic. So if the band's worth it,
Speaker 2: we'll pay it.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, you're booking so many bands, how many times
Speaker 1: or maybe one hundred percent of the time are you
Speaker 1: negotiating the price. It's like going in to buy a car.
Speaker 1: The car salesman says the car is fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: There's not a buyer in the world to say I'm
Speaker 1: taking it. Okay, they're going to counter offer? To what
Speaker 1: degree when you're booking this talent? Is it a matter
Speaker 1: of kinnter offering getting to the number or to what
Speaker 1: degree is it I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Sure, there's a negotiation, there should be. You know where
Speaker 2: I'm not a big quote price sky what's your quote?
Speaker 2: What do you guys? You know, cause yes, if they
Speaker 2: if they say one hundred is their quote and you
Speaker 2: know they're worth half that. So look, you got to
Speaker 2: do your research. You got to you got to do
Speaker 2: your analytics. What what's the Spotify number? What's the I'm
Speaker 2: a I'm a big YouTube guy because it's where I
Speaker 2: live in a visual medium. So when I see a
Speaker 2: new band, or I get send a new band like
Speaker 2: please send me, Please send me your best video link,
Speaker 2: or I could just find it on YouTube anyway, which
Speaker 2: I do so, but I want to see what they
Speaker 2: look like. I want to see their visuals. I want
Speaker 2: to see and I want to see how they present themselves.
Speaker 2: I want to see what the crowd's like. And then yeah,
Speaker 2: the analytics of everything from Spotify, TikTok, Instagram, what what's
Speaker 2: your what's your what's your followers, what's your monthly listeners?
Speaker 2: And then the big one for me is hard tickets.
Speaker 2: You know what's and I know that now because of
Speaker 2: my m B A I got with with Save Live
Speaker 2: of of two years plus working the heart ticket venue world.
Speaker 2: I know when I'm getting hyped h and I know
Speaker 2: a band's worth so hard tickets a hard ticket value
Speaker 2: combined with all the spokes in the wheel I just
Speaker 2: mentioned and radio airplay, and who's their team? You know,
Speaker 2: I know good agents, I know good managers, I know
Speaker 2: good lawyers, and I want to see who they've been
Speaker 2: out with. So all that combined kind of let's well,
Speaker 2: we have a line like we're this band's great. I
Speaker 2: love this band, this great song. All right, let's dive
Speaker 2: into it. Let's look at the analytics and even if
Speaker 2: it's really young and the numbers aren't great, and you
Speaker 2: still love it. You know, I remember the years ago.
Speaker 2: I can la times. Paul to let have a quote,
Speaker 2: He's like why why? The question is why did you
Speaker 2: book that band? Like? I booked that band because I
Speaker 2: liked them. They're cool and that's great, and we do
Speaker 2: that like this, SPAN's cool. I like it. That was
Speaker 2: that was turnstile.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when you decide you want someone, you get
Speaker 1: a hold of the agent, you make an offer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or they're already hitting us at this at this
Speaker 2: point in our in our in our careers. And yeah,
Speaker 2: we take the submission lists seriously. We we know batting,
Speaker 2: we know batting averages. You know, there's certain agents like
Speaker 2: at Kirk Summer, like the guy doesn't miss you know
Speaker 2: his from from the Killers to Adele too. I'm sorry
Speaker 2: I mess up his roster, but he's what Yeah, they're
Speaker 2: all he there. And then there's guys who you know,
Speaker 2: are hypers who this this is the one, Gary Dell,
Speaker 2: this is the one. And you know I was in
Speaker 2: record promotion for sixteen years. Man, you can't. You can't
Speaker 2: hype a hyper I could. I could read through it
Speaker 2: because that's what I did for sixteen years before. I
Speaker 2: was on the other side and hyped and hype some
Speaker 2: stuff that I didn't personally believe in. And that was
Speaker 2: always a problem for me.
Speaker 1: By the way, what did you learn about hard tickets?
Speaker 1: Working with Geigert? Saved Live.
Speaker 2: Like legit numbers. You know, I Mark is so good
Speaker 2: at at separating his passion and gut from and so
Speaker 2: and so is Danny from his brain? Uh, And I
Speaker 2: I'm ever evolving. I'm an instinct passion guy. If I
Speaker 2: like something, I will tell you without look. I have
Speaker 2: a really good batting average. I just and that's from
Speaker 2: being a drummer as a kid and being a music guy.
Speaker 2: And like you, I'm song I'm a song driven man.
Speaker 2: I know a good song. And I was working at
Speaker 2: record labels and working with some really good radio programmers
Speaker 2: because how you devise a festival is quite similar to
Speaker 2: how you properly program a radio station. You know, if
Speaker 2: when k Rock, Kevin Weatherley, name drop, who's probably the
Speaker 2: best rock broadcaster in our lifetime, you should have them
Speaker 2: on your show one day. He won't put when he
Speaker 2: plays Metallica, the next song won't be wet Leg. You
Speaker 2: got to get to wet Lake. How do you get
Speaker 2: from Metallica to wet Leg, Metallica to the Foo Fighters
Speaker 2: to Incubus to you can probably go Incubis to wet Leg.
Speaker 2: So that's a good way to program and curate a festival.
Speaker 2: I learned a lot, and so did Dell on our
Speaker 2: record promotion days too. I feel have a step up
Speaker 2: on festival curators.
Speaker 1: In terms of hard ticket sales. Do you rely on
Speaker 1: the Polestar numbers? Or do you actually call people? How
Speaker 1: do you get the number that you're faithful with?
Speaker 2: Both? Polestar's great somewhat of a bible, but they only
Speaker 2: you know, we all know what the Polestar usually will
Speaker 2: the people that turn in Polestar numbers are they're usually
Speaker 2: because they're good, right, who's gonna? Who's Why would you
Speaker 2: turn in bad post numbers to Pollstar? What good will
Speaker 2: that do you? So? You know own venues? I knew
Speaker 2: I knew I book bands, I book rock bands, hard
Speaker 2: rock bands, metal bands, all bands. Sleep Token there's one there,
Speaker 2: there's and I'm sorry I left them out, spirit Box
Speaker 2: being another ghost being another Uh. Sleep Token is a
Speaker 2: phenom and.
Speaker 1: Well ghost has been operating for number of years. I'm
Speaker 1: fully up to speed on them. Sleep Token, I'm not
Speaker 1: tell me the.
Speaker 2: Story there sleep tokens from Britain. Sleep Token is a
Speaker 2: maxed band. Nobody knows what the lead singer looks like.
Speaker 2: So there's a ghost uh kind of parallel. They're like
Speaker 2: ghost meets Deftones. They're like heady thinking person's metal, very
Speaker 2: kind of pink Pink Floyd's a weird reference, but I
Speaker 2: mean that because they're spacey. Uh. The songs are space
Speaker 2: The songs have space in them, like Deftones, but it's
Speaker 2: rocking and it got it just connected, you know, Nick Storts,
Speaker 2: the agent can't put his finger on it. It just connected.
Speaker 2: They they sold out two days at Red Rocks in
Speaker 2: four days at Radio City. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: fo multiple and their arena level. Now they can only
Speaker 2: play in the dark. There's a couple bands that we
Speaker 2: deal with that that won't that have to play in
Speaker 2: the dark, which restricts us sleep Token being one of them.
Speaker 2: But love them and sleep Token, Man, if there was
Speaker 2: ten sleep Tokens, my job would be a lot easier.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to an earlier story where I
Speaker 1: forget the name of the band. You discovered them on YouTube?
Speaker 1: Were you literally just independently coursing around YouTube and you
Speaker 1: found them?
Speaker 2: Yes? And I love Algorithms can be the devil, right,
Speaker 2: but sometimes there's algorithm heaven. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell
Speaker 2: you about a band that dropped from the Algorithm's sky
Speaker 2: to me. They're a band called My First Time. They
Speaker 2: have a song called Wark where it is Arctic Monkeys
Speaker 2: meets wet leg. They are unsigned, they have no agent,
Speaker 2: the manager. I've fell in love with it. Anybody listening,
Speaker 2: go find My First Time. If that was nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: a major label would snap them up, Alternative radio would
Speaker 2: jump on it, and they'd be on MTV buzz bind
Speaker 2: and see you later, Charlie. I invited them to play
Speaker 2: at Rockville, and I convinced Danny and Dell and we
Speaker 2: had an opening slot on the Food Fighter stage and
Speaker 2: I often and they turned it down, which made me
Speaker 2: want them more. Of course, I think because the money
Speaker 2: that we actually had. This is to the point of
Speaker 2: an earlier like why the numbers they can't They couldn't
Speaker 2: get their work, visas and the flights. And that's why
Speaker 2: it's so hard for bands overseas and rock to break
Speaker 2: in America because, unlike you know, overseas, you can place
Speaker 2: to ten shows, you get on NMA, you get a
Speaker 2: melody maker, you play the festivals, you can get real traction,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't work in America. You gotta grind, you
Speaker 2: gotta play you gotta play Des Moines, you gotta play Fargo, Duluth.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So back to your thing on Turnstyle. Yes, what I
Speaker 2: do in music discovery is all there's that's a you know,
Speaker 2: Spotify and YouTuber outstanding to me that way on the
Speaker 2: right side of YouTube there's bands and this particular turnstyle.
Speaker 2: I just anybody listening go to like YouTube turnstyle, like
Speaker 2: Turnstyle twenty seventeen, and you'll find the craziest shit. Like
Speaker 2: fans couldn't not they had to be on stage and
Speaker 2: the band I couldn't stay on stage. It's just this
Speaker 2: there was a community spirit. So that's why I brought
Speaker 2: up Fugazi, that there was no boundary between stage and
Speaker 2: band and fan, between stage and the audience. And I
Speaker 2: just flipped out and there was so much energy there
Speaker 2: and I just I have to I got to book
Speaker 2: this band. And I don't remember the band I was
Speaker 2: looking at or following that led me to turnstile. I
Speaker 2: have no idea.
Speaker 1: If I am early in the day, do I have
Speaker 1: a radius clause M yep.
Speaker 2: But we're again, we're flexible because we also realize those bands,
Speaker 2: say you're in a van, you can't get front like
Speaker 2: welcome to Rockville and Sonic Temple are back to back weekends.
Speaker 2: That's Florida to Columbus, Ohio. You got to get from
Speaker 2: Daytona Beach to Columbus. So we so you play Charleston.
Speaker 2: I'm just doing a simple map, and you play Savannah
Speaker 2: and Charleston and Norfolk and you got to get to Columbus.
Speaker 2: And if they're like, look, man, there's no avails because
Speaker 2: of your festival. All the bands have taken up the
Speaker 2: outside radius. Can we please play Lexington, Kentucky and if
Speaker 2: it's a three hundred seater and we'll talk about it. Okay.
Speaker 1: Conventional wisdom is rock doesn't stream. Do you believe that?
Speaker 1: And if so, what are your thoughts.
Speaker 2: Why I don't. The answer is no, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: stream as much as popular music. To my earlier point,
Speaker 2: I think rock was always on the wrong side of
Speaker 2: the tracks. Another band that I should bring up to
Speaker 2: you Knocked Loose, get Ready. They're on a They're on
Speaker 2: a rocket to the moon. They have a song called
Speaker 2: Slaughterhouse that has thirty seven million Spotify hits listens. That's
Speaker 2: a really good number, thirty seven mil for a band
Speaker 2: that has zero zero terrestrial radio airplay, so you find
Speaker 2: those uh yeah, I mean you know, you look at
Speaker 2: Beyonce or Taylor and there's no competition, But then you
Speaker 2: look at like again, food fighters. I think I looked
Speaker 2: at last Night it's what twenty three million monthly listeners.
Speaker 2: That's that's pretty damn good.
Speaker 1: Although there's a difference between acts that broke in the
Speaker 1: MTVVH one era and certainly since twenty ten. It's a
Speaker 1: different marketplace. But okay, you have the six festivals this year?
Speaker 1: How many rock festivals of this stretch? People who are
Speaker 1: not in the business have no idea how much it
Speaker 1: takes to put these things on. You don't snap your fingers.
Speaker 1: A good idea and execution are different. But is this
Speaker 1: an underserve market? Could we have another seven or ten
Speaker 1: of these? Or are you pretty much covering it?
Speaker 2: I think Look, I think DWP has the the flag
Speaker 2: in the sand. There's not there's boxes that you should
Speaker 2: check when you think about doing this in our In
Speaker 2: my opinion, when you look at a market or a region,
Speaker 2: is there what what's the festival layout? Is there? Is
Speaker 2: it a shed market where where these rock bands are
Speaker 2: going to play the shed? Louisville not a shed market,
Speaker 2: Daytona Beach not a shed market. Columbus, Ohio not a
Speaker 2: shed market. Is there feeder markets big on that where
Speaker 2: people could come in? Is there radio support? Because again
Speaker 2: in rock, I can't speak for other formats or genres,
Speaker 2: but terrestrial radio is still very powerful because the number
Speaker 2: I don't know if I should on the data and
Speaker 2: the data if it's not number one, it's right there,
Speaker 2: the number one way. You've heard about this festival through
Speaker 2: the local rock radio station, which is nice. Granted, they
Speaker 2: should play out more new music, and they they they're
Speaker 2: scared of it and that that pisses me off. But
Speaker 2: that's a whole other story. So I think there's boxes
Speaker 2: you should check, and I don't see a lot of
Speaker 2: markets or regions where I would check all the boxes
Speaker 2: where you could say that we haven't covered that, where
Speaker 2: you could say, yeah, there needs to be a rock
Speaker 2: festival there.
Speaker 1: Now since you've been doing this for an excess of
Speaker 1: a decade, or any festivals that you shut down and why.
Speaker 2: I told you about, you know, the partnership with AEG
Speaker 2: there was let's see what, uh you're always looking for
Speaker 2: the bad huh? Yeah, Look, things run its course for
Speaker 2: what was the one in Dover that AEG had that
Speaker 2: was a good one? Damn it.
Speaker 1: Uh I'm aware of the third parties, But you have
Speaker 1: a very specialized festival and you don't have an unlimited
Speaker 1: bank account. So I'm wondering if you've learned anything from
Speaker 1: things that haven't worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one like we used to. We had
Speaker 2: a couple of great experiences with something we called Chicago
Speaker 2: Open Air in Chicago, uh where, and we had tool
Speaker 2: and system of a down one year, but Chicago Lollapalooza,
Speaker 2: Wrigley Field, Pitchfork a shed number three market in America.
Speaker 2: Every band's playing there. We're kind of a big serve
Speaker 2: the underserved. We're kind of, you know, hit them where
Speaker 2: they ain't. We're Southwest Airlines, you know. That's the that's
Speaker 2: the mentality of that kind of a nice unspoken mission statement. Louisville, Kentucky, Jacksonville,
Speaker 2: Florida now Daytona Beach, Florida, Sacramento, the Saint New York
Speaker 2: or Los Angeles, uh so, Chicago. For those reasons. We
Speaker 2: did one in Fort Myers, Florida, which was a sister
Speaker 2: of Welcome to Rockville, which we called Fort rock which
Speaker 2: was because of Fort Myers did that for a couple
Speaker 2: of years to kind of reading and leads it, you know,
Speaker 2: for for the Saturday bands, put them on the Sunday.
Speaker 2: But Fort Myers wasn't big enough.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the demo who comes to your festival?
Speaker 1: What are the ages?
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with an overall twenty five to
Speaker 2: forty nine, with the core for thirty four to forty
Speaker 2: four being it. And you sure you see kids, Sure
Speaker 2: you see kids with dads and moms, and sure you
Speaker 2: see teenagers in bulk, but the core is that kind
Speaker 2: of thirty four to twenty nine to forty four Bob
Speaker 2: sixty five, male thirty five maybe a little more more
Speaker 2: than you think on female.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about it generally financial paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker 1: I don't want to use the term blue collar, but
Speaker 1: let's just use the term lower middle class. The people
Speaker 1: who buy VIP are they a different economic stratum? Yes?
Speaker 1: And no.
Speaker 2: I mean it's value priced, they're they're all of there's
Speaker 2: there's again, there's there's camping, there's literal PLoP up a tent.
Speaker 2: God bless them for four days in a tent. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm clamping at best middle aged Jewish man myself. There's
Speaker 2: Hotel v I P. So yeah, the I don't know
Speaker 2: the higher price there. There's a guy who I met
Speaker 2: who's a dentist. His name's Giddis. Shout out to Gidas
Speaker 2: if he's listening. Guy uh who is a dentist in Detroit,
Speaker 2: and him and his wife Sarah, this is there. They
Speaker 2: go all in super v I P. There. They just
Speaker 2: love rock and roll. This is their vacation. I think
Speaker 2: he has like a I think he also has like
Speaker 2: a Michigan lake house too. He does very well for himself,
Speaker 2: but he that spare no expense. You know. There's a
Speaker 2: certain core of that where they grew up with rock
Speaker 2: and roll and this is this is their dream weekend.
Speaker 2: It's it's guid us by the way.
Speaker 1: Sorry, let's say it's dark. It's on the main stage.
Speaker 1: A Trump impersonator comes out, somebody dresses Trump. What's the
Speaker 1: audience reaction going to be?
Speaker 2: Could this? Could this be another podcast? Fortunately? Bob as
Speaker 2: I am. When it comes to politics, for me, it
Speaker 2: is all about character and morals and empathy and having
Speaker 2: the government be supporting and not having the government being
Speaker 2: a punisher. So that's where my politics lie. And that's
Speaker 2: predominantly every person who I deal with behind the scenes
Speaker 2: at a festival too. And fortunately, God bless these festivals.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling you are very apolitical. We haven't had
Speaker 2: one instance of that. Man, I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: Let me change the question. The perception of this audience
Speaker 1: is the lean right would that be accurate?
Speaker 2: That is the generic h uh thought? And if that
Speaker 2: was the case, I would have a hard time doing
Speaker 2: my job as a as as as a person again
Speaker 2: of of of moral character. That is not the case.
Speaker 2: It is when I say they leave their politics and
Speaker 2: at the door at the front gate, they really do. Again,
Speaker 2: I've I've never seen i haven't seen it. And I'm
Speaker 2: really and uh and and maybe it's just the true
Speaker 2: nature of this community of this rock festival. I'm not
Speaker 2: blowing smoke. I would tell you. I'm I'm an open
Speaker 2: book on this on this stuff. We were We're in
Speaker 2: the throes of a coup right now, God help us.
Speaker 2: And I'm just hoping that, uh, that sanity wins out.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, again at these festivals, bands are a political
Speaker 2: but they'll speak from their heart and nobody's It's never
Speaker 2: been an issue, And if it was, I would tell.
Speaker 1: You what about fights in violence?
Speaker 2: No, you know that the whole the old saying of
Speaker 2: if you see something in the mosh pits and the
Speaker 2: slam dancing, you can see somebody down, pick them up,
Speaker 2: it's not and and and that these people are drinking
Speaker 2: all day it's not violent. It's it's wonderful. I I
Speaker 2: just I urge anybody who has doubts, and I've gotten
Speaker 2: a lot of people down off the fence to come
Speaker 2: to one of these festivals, and the energy is vibrant
Speaker 2: and alive. And the last thing you think about at
Speaker 2: these festivals is that rock is dead. It is the
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, And that's what makes me happy because
Speaker 2: I am just such a flag waiver of rock and roll.
Speaker 2: I'm a rock and roll kid. I could give you
Speaker 2: my trajectory from from the British Invasion to Cream and
Speaker 2: Zeppelin and Henrix to Bowie that led me.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's let's just put a bow on this. You
Speaker 1: live at where you have a festival, Your sixteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter comes to you and says, I want to
Speaker 1: go for a day to one of these Danny Wimer festivals.
Speaker 1: You say, have at it, or you say, well, who
Speaker 1: you're going with? Maybe I'll take you. What would you
Speaker 1: say as a.
Speaker 2: Parent as a parent, as a parent, yeah, who you
Speaker 2: going with? Sure, I've been a big live show. My kids,
Speaker 2: my two children have seen more than I'll ever see.
Speaker 2: And yes, outside Lands, Coachella, Goveball, my kids have been
Speaker 2: to a lot of these festivals. DWP festivals are completely safe.
Speaker 2: Have at it. Who you going, how are you going with?
Speaker 2: Have at it? Have an amazing time. Keep keep your
Speaker 2: cell phone on you let me know where you are here,
Speaker 2: and here's who here's who you should see.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've mentioned all of these acts that a lot
Speaker 1: of America is unfamiliar with the people. Are you listening
Speaker 1: to this spot? Cast Ethan? Is there any chance that
Speaker 1: these bands I'm gonna use cliches will cross over, but
Speaker 1: let me just put it a different way, will become
Speaker 1: much bigger than they presently are. I'm talking about new acts.
Speaker 1: There weren't the beneficiaries of the old system MTV, when
Speaker 1: terrestrial radio was much more powerful acts from the last
Speaker 1: ten or twelve so years.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, look in one band I'll mention that is
Speaker 2: from that area you mentioned that is currently having a
Speaker 2: big crossover successes the band shine Down. But so there
Speaker 2: is hope you know wait.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, shine Down is from a long time Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just said that. Yeah, so you know. No, there's
Speaker 2: not many rock bands that cross over. That's okay for us,
Speaker 2: that's okay. Meanwhile, like I said, Knock Lou, a band
Speaker 2: that has zero rock airplay, Terrestrial has thirty seven million
Speaker 2: hits on their song Slaughterhouse.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me be very direct when I get Ryan
Speaker 1: Downey's email, when I look at the active rock tracks,
Speaker 1: I say, if I played this for the average person,
Speaker 1: they would say turn it off. Okay. And then I
Speaker 1: analyze the music a lot of times, some of it
Speaker 1: does have melody, but a lot of it doesn't. So,
Speaker 1: if you put on your record industry hat and you
Speaker 1: were with one of these bands and you wanted to
Speaker 1: broaden their audience, what is it that these bands have
Speaker 1: or do not have such that they're in this cocoon.
Speaker 1: It's not insignificant you have all these festivals, But what
Speaker 1: would it have to change in the music such that
Speaker 1: more people would be interested in.
Speaker 2: Songs? Again, I personally wouldn't work with a band that
Speaker 2: didn't start as songwriters. As I said, the things that
Speaker 2: went at these festivals energy, songs, attitude, and I put
Speaker 2: songs as a one B because you can get away
Speaker 2: at our festivals with a thirty to forty five minute
Speaker 2: set with total energy. But you're gonna plateau. You know,
Speaker 2: you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna just fall fall off
Speaker 2: the rock and roll cycle. You need songs. So bad
Speaker 2: Omens has has a song called v An with Poppy
Speaker 2: that is I would think, and look, I don't know
Speaker 2: what hot Ac your top forty is actually doing. I'm
Speaker 2: that is. I'm not totally paying that close attention to
Speaker 2: to those charts personally, but.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, at this point in time, all that
Speaker 1: stuff means less. If something catches fire, radio is less.
Speaker 1: But we're living in the rock is somewhat ghetto wise.
Speaker 1: So the question, and we all know you know when
Speaker 1: you hear it, So the key is what would it
Speaker 1: take for it to be broader? Now you talk about
Speaker 1: sixty seven, seventy whatever needle to say. You know, certainly
Speaker 1: by the time you hit the seventies, AOARFM radio ruled
Speaker 1: the country even though there was a pop chart. So
Speaker 1: rock is actually a pretty big ten and the type
Speaker 1: of band you were purveying or a slice of that ten,
Speaker 1: But it's much broader. Is it the fact that these
Speaker 1: acts are not moving to these other areas. I'm basically saying,
Speaker 1: what is the future for rock music? This scene is
Speaker 1: very healthy, but what does it take it to make
Speaker 1: it broader?
Speaker 2: I've met when I youtubed, when I fell into that
Speaker 2: Turnstile algorithm, I never thought. I never thought in a
Speaker 2: million years that band would write a song like Blackout
Speaker 2: or TLC again using turnstyle. That song was all over KRQ.
Speaker 2: I never thought that band could do that. I just
Speaker 2: loved their energy. Now they have energy and songs and
Speaker 2: they're gonna They're gonna play arenas. So if you have,
Speaker 2: if you're, if you're, if you have it is back
Speaker 2: to the basics. You gotta deliver live in rock and roll.
Speaker 2: You have to. You have to have a great live show.
Speaker 2: And then when you have, there's an old saying, you're
Speaker 2: a song away. Right and Turnstile, which was a five
Speaker 2: hundred dollars band not too long ago, is now an
Speaker 2: arena band because of their bass, because of their live show,
Speaker 2: and because of the songs they now write.
Speaker 1: The undercard because you're booking a lot of bands to
Speaker 1: what degreed do those bands continue to slog out or
Speaker 1: a lot of those acts just call it a day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they you know, they they we it's not
Speaker 2: our it's not our job too. How should I say this?
Speaker 2: It's not it's not the festival's job to break the band.
Speaker 2: We like to have a part and would like to help.
Speaker 2: If we're into a band, we want to support as
Speaker 2: much as we can. So at a certain point, yeah,
Speaker 2: if they plateau and they keep on coming back every
Speaker 2: cycle every two years and hitting us up, there's a
Speaker 2: certain point where we have to kind of cut the
Speaker 2: chord and find find the flesh Water who was Fleshwater
Speaker 2: four years ago, right, who is like, we're into that band,
Speaker 2: we're gonna put you on, we believe in you, we're
Speaker 2: gonna get we're gonna give you a nice profile. And
Speaker 2: then there's a certain point where a band and their
Speaker 2: team have to prove it and keep on going. We
Speaker 2: have we have countless stories of that, from Knock Loose
Speaker 2: to bad Omens to five Finger Death Punch. They opened
Speaker 2: up a main stage. Now they're a headline hard rock
Speaker 2: bad act because they have a ton of songs they
Speaker 2: have popa roach. You can do a sixty minute hit
Speaker 2: set to the core to these forty thousand fans and
Speaker 2: they'll that those fans will know every song, so songs win.
Speaker 1: Okay. Now you come from the record company world. It
Speaker 1: cracks me up when the record companies get a hold
Speaker 1: of me and they'll stay, you want to see this show,
Speaker 1: and they have a ticket buy. These are major labels
Speaker 1: with like ten tickets. You know, I don't need their ticket.
Speaker 1: I get it from the promoter. But to what degree
Speaker 1: did the record company even fit into your business?
Speaker 2: Less and less? It's kind of sad, you know, because
Speaker 2: I've been I was. I grew up with record labels,
Speaker 2: you know, I knew which label the doors were on
Speaker 2: and and Sire Records and I R S what a
Speaker 2: great label? Yeah, you know there I used. The radio
Speaker 2: chart used to be in our early days, a big
Speaker 2: influencer of of what bands to look at, especially for
Speaker 2: the undercart. It's it's now, it's it's nice spoken the wheel. Uh,
Speaker 2: I think you you you said it. You know, movie
Speaker 2: studios and major record labels are released less. You know,
Speaker 2: it's sad, man, it's uh. I'm so loyal to a fault.
Speaker 2: You know, I root for for the old school. I was.
Speaker 2: I was. I think I was the last human I
Speaker 2: knew who had the BlackBerry and not I have. I
Speaker 2: have switched everybody. So and rock and roll is a
Speaker 2: loyal thing too, you know. It's rock and roll is
Speaker 2: jazz with great with songs that are that are forever
Speaker 2: embedded into our lives.
Speaker 1: So you've had festivals played this year twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: What have you learned this year?
Speaker 2: Uh? Curate, properly, give them, give them the appropriate ticket price,
Speaker 2: bulk wins, and treat your fans right. Give, don't keep.
Speaker 2: Don't keep them in the dark. It's it's about the fans.
Speaker 2: Without them, they're are no festivals.
Speaker 1: What do you mean keep them in the dark.
Speaker 2: Don't keep them? Did I say keep him in the dark?
Speaker 1: No, you said, don't keep him in the dark. What
Speaker 1: do you mean, keep.
Speaker 2: Them informed, keep them engaged? I think it was Dean
Speaker 2: de Leo, my friend of a stone too, a pilot said, Gary,
Speaker 2: when we do a show, we hit him out, We
Speaker 2: hit him over the head with a hammer. Just just
Speaker 2: hit them with information. Have great, great apps for for
Speaker 2: scheduling if there's weather issues, keep them informed, keep them
Speaker 2: in and keep them in the know. They like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know fifteen years ago everybody was festival crazy.
Speaker 1: There's been a pullback in the UK. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot of festivals canceled. What do you think of the
Speaker 1: festival landscape going forward.
Speaker 2: I'm of the belief that if you're branded, and you
Speaker 2: have your you have your mission statement, and you and
Speaker 2: you know what you are as a festival, you should
Speaker 2: do good business. If you're a festival that just plops
Speaker 2: up the bands that I mentioned a while ago, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna put on a festival and UH in a park
Speaker 2: with Siza and Noah Kahn and Blink one eighty two.
Speaker 2: Those won't survive. Branded events, UH will survive. And if
Speaker 2: and and if you have a great marketing staff.
Speaker 1: Well tell me about the market staff. How you know
Speaker 1: you've sent everything down? How do you get the word out?
Speaker 1: Which is harder than ever before? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Cracking, that's cracking the codeh man. That is if if
Speaker 2: if we knew how to crack the code, then are
Speaker 2: then we'd all be zillionaires. But with Rock again, it
Speaker 2: when I say paycheck to paycheck, things don't blow out
Speaker 2: in Rock a lot. It is a rind. The more
Speaker 2: and that's the more window you can have, the better
Speaker 2: for a show. Keep your marketing fresh, keep it, keep
Speaker 2: your audience engaged, use radio appropriately, use social media right.
Speaker 2: Band engagement more critical than ever. And it's not just
Speaker 2: like an iPhone video. Hey, this is so and so
Speaker 2: from the band so and so. See it Rockville, you
Speaker 2: get them, you know, do a guitar lesson, showing me
Speaker 2: your new song and and and the chord struck. It's
Speaker 2: it's keeping him engaged. Having said that, where I have
Speaker 2: a where I try to draw the line, Bob, maybe
Speaker 2: you two. I love the mystique of rock and it.
Speaker 2: You know, MTV took the took the Wizard of oz
Speaker 2: cape down a little bit. Where that that guy, that
Speaker 2: rock star that you can only dream of on on
Speaker 2: stage or on the album he's writing, he's right in
Speaker 2: your face. You know twenty four to seven that that
Speaker 2: empty takes a steak out of rock. It's not as special.
Speaker 2: So there's that fine line. But god, it's not enough
Speaker 2: to have a great song. You have to know how
Speaker 2: to you know, TikTok. Right, That's that's that's just the
Speaker 2: sad truth.
Speaker 1: Have you had any viral moments on TikTok with promoting
Speaker 1: these festivals. Have you found that it's worked for you
Speaker 1: in any special way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, certain bands have have, like definitely Instagram TikTok moments.
Speaker 2: You know what we like is uh? For instance, Disturbed
Speaker 2: Q Prime has as a as a number one rock
Speaker 2: song with Ann Wilson of Heart and they're playing our festivals.
Speaker 2: So what they do they'll grab a lower level rock
Speaker 2: band as a female lead singer on our shows and
Speaker 2: ask them to do the duet when especially now because
Speaker 2: Anne is going to be recovering from cancer and hope
Speaker 2: she does. That goes viral. There was a it was
Speaker 2: Ash Costello of the New Year's Day who played probably
Speaker 2: I think one or two o'clock, and there she was
Speaker 2: in front of forty thousand singing this song with Disturbed,
Speaker 2: went viral. Dave Yes the if you maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: caught it Mammoth Wolfgang Mammoth w the h played earlier
Speaker 2: in the day and he was side a stage and
Speaker 2: Dave had what he does is he introduces everybody and
Speaker 2: he starts playing eruption, and then he starts playing with
Speaker 2: one hand, and then he starts playing with no hands
Speaker 2: and shoot to Wolfie on the side completely went viral.
Speaker 2: So those special moments we love that.
Speaker 1: You've certainly been to Coachella. Let's say I just five
Speaker 1: thousand people from Coachella and I put them down in Rockville.
Speaker 1: What would their reaction be.
Speaker 2: I think they would fucking flip out. I think they
Speaker 2: would love it because that that was the ed M
Speaker 2: guy with the with the with the laptop, you know,
Speaker 2: creating the drop. That's all these songs. That's what these
Speaker 2: rock songs are. Verse chorus, verse chorus, breakdown, middle eight
Speaker 2: course chorus. They would I think, Bob, they would love
Speaker 2: the energy, and that is what we do. It's look,
Speaker 2: it's part super serving on the left and then part
Speaker 2: education on the right. And I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: it's maybe it's seventy thirty super serve educate, maybe it's
Speaker 2: a little less. I like the educate. I like turning
Speaker 2: bands onto people, and I have forced industry people to come.
Speaker 2: I forced John McHugh to come to Rock on the
Speaker 2: Range and we ended up doing a documentary about which
Speaker 2: You're in the rock, about the rock festivals called long
Speaker 2: Live Rock. There's a plug for you. So yes, all
Speaker 2: day long, Coachella kids with your VIP and your daddy's money,
Speaker 2: come out to one of our festivals.
Speaker 1: And your kids are how old?
Speaker 2: I have a twenty seven year old in Berlin and
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old who is at Wasserman right
Speaker 2: now in Brooklyn. They know they don't live in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: They all live in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can't afford to live in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: Never mind, Brooklyn is now hip but yeah and expensive.
Speaker 1: You call them and say, I'm gonna fly out to
Speaker 1: my festival. Are they into this kind of music?
Speaker 2: That's a hard pass for them?
Speaker 1: Okay? How about your wife?
Speaker 2: Jill has been The great story of Jill Spivac is
Speaker 2: she went to Louisville and Eddie Vedder, who at the
Speaker 2: at the last song throws out tambourines, and there was
Speaker 2: we were side of stage, and he had two. He
Speaker 2: threw one out in the crowd and he threw one
Speaker 2: to the side and she caught it. And it is
Speaker 2: now in our playroom, not to be touched. It's it's
Speaker 2: a spinal tap guitar. You can barely look at it.
Speaker 2: But no, Jill, Jill's Jill, my kids. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what if Radiohead tours we're traveling we're deadheads for them,
Speaker 2: so we'll go out with radio.
Speaker 1: Okay, But Radiohead could never be at one of the
Speaker 1: Danny Wimmer rock festivals.
Speaker 2: That's okay, Radio he doesn't en play with guitars anymore,
Speaker 2: so so that's nowhere. Yes, the Radiohead won won't be
Speaker 2: playing one of these festivals.
Speaker 1: Yes, And since you've been doing these festivals, tell me
Speaker 1: about two performances that stick in your head.
Speaker 2: What put us on the map in two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight was the return of their first show in seven
Speaker 2: years of the Stone Temple Pilots with Scott Land Big
Speaker 2: Band for our Core sold it out. That put people
Speaker 2: in the industry like, oh, those guys aren't fucking around.
Speaker 2: And then probably what comes to mind is the Food Fighters.
Speaker 2: At the first time we had the Foo Fighters Welcome
Speaker 2: to Rockville, and something happened in that crowd and Dave Grohl,
Speaker 2: Pat Smear Chris will cite that show as one of
Speaker 2: their favorite American shows ever he can YouTube it because
Speaker 2: something there was an insane amount of crowdsurfing, to the
Speaker 2: point where Dave stopped the song and goes, hey, promoters,
Speaker 2: is there, like, do you guys have like a crowdsurfing
Speaker 2: contest going it was hysterical. It just worked. Man, when
Speaker 2: a band connects, they're like the ultimate. They're the they're
Speaker 2: the ault. They could play in your backyard. They're they're
Speaker 2: the ultimate rock and roll party band because they have energy,
Speaker 2: songs and attitude and and that and production at the
Speaker 2: songs and it just works. So those two shows come
Speaker 2: to mind. Thank you for asking that question.
Speaker 1: And then you were just at Wimbledon. That's an event.
Speaker 1: Did you learn anything at wimbled in that you can
Speaker 1: translate into your own business?
Speaker 2: It's the you know, that's that's Coachella. You know, you go,
Speaker 2: you go to Coachella and you're like the grass and
Speaker 2: how compact it was. And I like that, you know
Speaker 2: at at at at Sonic Temple in Ohio, it's it's
Speaker 2: in a stadium and then there's grounds you can kind
Speaker 2: of put your arms. I hate these vast festivals where
Speaker 2: you're getting your steps in too much. And no, thank
Speaker 2: you for asking. It was Wimbledon was remarkable and everything
Speaker 2: I thought it would be. And I wish I was
Speaker 2: there still because that is the mecca. As you know,
Speaker 2: I want to go to Glastonbury. I haven't been. I
Speaker 2: feel that's probably the mecca of the overseas festivals.
Speaker 1: Without talking about Glastonbury. Is every festival branded separately or
Speaker 1: is there one place where you can go as a
Speaker 1: consumer and find all of these rock festivals.
Speaker 2: Danny Rember Presents. Yeah, they're they're all there. We we
Speaker 2: will do certain packages, but we'd like to separate them.
Speaker 2: You know. It's it's it's a company whose hedgehog, whose
Speaker 2: wheelhouse is rock festivals. But there is Bourbon and beyond
Speaker 2: there is Golden Sky, which is a country festival, and
Speaker 2: and and then there's a big casino business that the
Speaker 2: company has too. But yeah, it's it's, it's all there.
Speaker 2: I don't see another company doing what this company does
Speaker 2: and just waving the rock flag when very few want to.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's it's it's a passion play and
Speaker 2: it's it's hard. It's it's it's it's hard to put
Speaker 2: these on. It takes a fucking village. And it's in negotiating.
Speaker 2: I love to negotiate, I love to hustle, and it's
Speaker 2: just it's just a siege on on on your nervous system.
Speaker 2: But it's it's what I signed up for, you know.
Speaker 2: They what's saying, Uh, you don't find rock and roll,
Speaker 2: rock and roll finds you. I'm a sucker in that.
Speaker 2: Can I tell you something? Yeah, And I just thought
Speaker 2: of this. I graduated from University of Colorado. My father,
Speaker 2: who's still alive, my mom, who passed. My dad joined
Speaker 2: to start up in nineteen sixty two called ibm uh
Speaker 2: huh was an IBM or and here I am a
Speaker 2: ski rat and a drummer. And what I got for
Speaker 2: my graduation was a briefcase in a suit. I just
Speaker 2: and I could laugh about it now with my dad,
Speaker 2: but I was so pissed off because they, like, they
Speaker 2: didn't get me. That's not I want to I want
Speaker 2: to be a drummer. I want to be in rock
Speaker 2: and roll. And I'm like, all right. So I had
Speaker 2: this dichotomy, you know, of growing up in a businessman's
Speaker 2: house but loving rock and roll. Like, I guess, if
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be a rock and roll drummer,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna I'm gonna find a way to be in
Speaker 2: the business of music.
Speaker 1: Okay, So they gave you the suit in the briefcase,
Speaker 1: you got your diploma. Then what.
Speaker 2: There was two shows that shape my life. One was
Speaker 2: The US Festival, I wouldn't be here talking to you,
Speaker 2: which again I'm extremely grateful and humble about at this moment.
Speaker 2: But the US Festival, and in eighty three and then
Speaker 2: Jane's Addiction did seven shows at the John Ansen Ford
Speaker 2: Theater in Hollywood, two thousand capacity. Quick story on that.
Speaker 2: I'm a kid, I'm a young twenty four year old
Speaker 2: and I get lost in that show, like mentally lost,
Speaker 2: and there's I've since talked to Perry Ferrell about this,
Speaker 2: and he remembers there was a rope between the you know,
Speaker 2: you know, Jennet's four right on the left side and
Speaker 2: right side there's a little kind of VIP area. Somehow, somehow,
Speaker 2: my I, my friend and I Joshua Barbone found our
Speaker 2: way Mark Pollock, Hi, Mark got us tickets and I
Speaker 2: found my way to this VIP and there's a rope
Speaker 2: that connected to the monitors and this VIP area and
Speaker 2: they were playing pigs and zen and I climb up,
Speaker 2: I jump on the rope and I'm I'm hanging on
Speaker 2: a rope like a monkey, and soon enough like security
Speaker 2: grabs me and I get kicked out. This is before
Speaker 2: cell phones, and I'm out, and this is like one
Speaker 2: of the greatest shows of my life. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I gotta find my way back in, and I sneak backstage.
Speaker 2: I don't know how I got it, but I sneak
Speaker 2: back and I have to be incognito. And it was
Speaker 2: a bunch of Hollywood freaks out there, but there was
Speaker 2: one average looking dude. I'm like, that guy could be
Speaker 2: in my fraternity and I go up to him and
Speaker 2: we watched half a song and I go, Hi, I'm
Speaker 2: Gary and he goes, hey, I'm Mark, and I go
Speaker 2: what do you do? He's like, I'm the agent for
Speaker 2: the band, and I go in my mind, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I better say something. I'm like, how big is John
Speaker 2: answered fours? It's about two thousand, and I do, like
Speaker 2: seven nights fourteen thousand, Wow, you could have booked the Forum.
Speaker 2: And he looks at me like only Mark Geiger knows
Speaker 2: how to look at somebody and goes the Forum We're
Speaker 2: playing seven fucking Nights at John Ansen Ford and walks away.
Speaker 2: And that was the first time I met Mark Geiger. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I go back to the show and I end up
Speaker 2: getting an interview through a girlfriend that I was dating
Speaker 2: at Electra records to be an assistant, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want it. I didn't want the job. I had long hair,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was doing. But I go
Speaker 2: into the meeting at five point thirty. I'll never forget this.
Speaker 2: The head of promotion, his name is Brad Hunt. Love
Speaker 2: him and hate him for getting me into this world.
Speaker 2: He has a stack of resumes and he looks at
Speaker 2: my resume and words to the wise to any young
Speaker 2: person listening when you go to interview, just be relaxed
Speaker 2: and be you, because that's what I was at certain
Speaker 2: interview because I didn't really care, and he looks at
Speaker 2: my resume. He goes ah University of Colorado, and this
Speaker 2: is the year the Colorado Buffalo's won the national championship.
Speaker 2: And I'm kind of a big college football guy too,
Speaker 2: so that our interview was fifty minutes of talking about
Speaker 2: college football and then your favorite bands and everything, and
Speaker 2: he's like, you know what I'm gonna I'm going to
Speaker 2: leave this resume over here. I'm having a going away
Speaker 2: party a couple nights later, because I was going to
Speaker 2: move to San Francisco and live with my college roommate,
Speaker 2: Rodney Lou who was a stockbroker and he had an
Speaker 2: apartment and take my drum set and go live in
Speaker 2: San Francisco. And I'm having to go away party in
Speaker 2: the phone rings and I pick it up. I'm like hello,
Speaker 2: He's like Gary, this is this is Brad Hunt and
Speaker 2: I'm doing a sign now I cut the music, cut
Speaker 2: off the party. Mike kai Brad and he's like, what
Speaker 2: do you think about San Francisco? And I go for
Speaker 2: an assistance job. He's like, no, I got a better
Speaker 2: idea something about you. I'm going to put you in
Speaker 2: the field and I'm going to offer you twenty seven
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. And I was twenty five. Do you remember
Speaker 2: the time when like you made more than your age.
Speaker 2: I was like a big moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I'm like yes. And so I'm like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 2: I just got a job. So I became the Electro
Speaker 2: local in San Francisco and it was glorious for four months,
Speaker 2: and then I got a call that Electra Records this
Speaker 2: is ninety one was cutting its staff in half. So
Speaker 2: because I was so cheap, they were so cheap, and
Speaker 2: I had such a cheap salary, they didn't fire me,
Speaker 2: and they moved me to Denver, so because I went
Speaker 2: to the University of Colorado and I spent six months
Speaker 2: in as the Denver local and bob to this day
Speaker 2: as a ski rat. I'll never forget it. It was
Speaker 2: the first snowfall and I had all my ski passes
Speaker 2: lined up because of all the local radio stations, and
Speaker 2: Brad Hunt again called me. It's like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: promote you to Los Angele like, this is ten months
Speaker 2: and I'm looking at the snow. I'm like, ah, I'm
Speaker 2: going home. And that led to Electure in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and at the time this is now if you remember,
Speaker 2: there were about twenty alternative stations and I knew something
Speaker 2: was going to click. I knew something was going to
Speaker 2: happen with that format, and I worked at Electra and
Speaker 2: loved it. It's where I met Dell Williams, by the way,
Speaker 2: and I took a job at MCA Records as the
Speaker 2: head of Alternative, which was the worst alternative label for
Speaker 2: alternative in the industry, but it did have a guy
Speaker 2: named Gary Kerr first God bless him, who had a
Speaker 2: label called Radioactive who had the Ramones and a couple
Speaker 2: other bands, but he had this band Live that had
Speaker 2: throwing copper and that I broke Live with Gary. That
Speaker 2: became my resume. That led me to Atlantic, which that's
Speaker 2: where my two kids were born, led me to Capital,
Speaker 2: and led me to my final and by the way Capital,
Speaker 2: I got to work with Radiohead, and I took a
Speaker 2: band that nobody believed in and nobody in America wanted
Speaker 2: to hear about, called Coldplay. They had a song called Yellow,
Speaker 2: Sorry for giving You My life story, No No Go,
Speaker 2: and very few people believed in it. There was a
Speaker 2: station at Portland, Oregon, K and RK and Lisa Warden
Speaker 2: at K Rock and they put Yellow in and the
Speaker 2: rest for that band is history. And we broke Coldplay.
Speaker 2: A new regime came in which happens at record labels,
Speaker 2: or happened at record labels, and I was one of
Speaker 2: seventeen vice presidents. When I was fired, I was one
Speaker 2: of two vice presidents remaining, me and Rob Borden, and
Speaker 2: I was let go because I just wasn't part of
Speaker 2: their plan. And for anybody listening who hasn't been fired,
Speaker 2: I hope you get fired one day, because it was
Speaker 2: the greatest thing that happened to me in many ways
Speaker 2: at the time, it was fucking heartbreaking and scary, and
Speaker 2: I went out on my own terms. I got one
Speaker 2: more label job, but Geffen was just a stop because
Speaker 2: I was thinking about what am I going to do?
Speaker 2: And that's when myself and Dell Williams aligned and Danny
Speaker 2: Wimmer and we formed right our entertainment and started rocking
Speaker 2: the range of Carolina Rebellion, and that led me to
Speaker 2: where I am at this very moment.
Speaker 1: Okay, just one fill in. Most people graduated from college
Speaker 1: at twenty two. You didn't get the job with Brad
Speaker 1: Hunt at twenty five? Would you do in that period
Speaker 1: of time?
Speaker 2: I farted around. I took a job with Premiere Radio
Speaker 2: Networks in selling syndicated radio shows to radio stations. I
Speaker 2: think that helped with Brad Hunt, though he cared more
Speaker 2: about college football seriously, and that led me to meet
Speaker 2: Mark Pollock, who was at home Holliwood reporter, who led
Speaker 2: me to get Jane's Addiction tickets. So I had that job.
Speaker 2: I was drumming in a couple struggling LA bands. One
Speaker 2: of them was called the Riddom bandits an all white
Speaker 2: reggae band. R I D D I M. I love
Speaker 2: reggae music. And at the time I thought reggae would
Speaker 2: take over the world. And this reggae that I personally
Speaker 2: really love is mostly like the British Steel Pulse oz
Speaker 2: Wad that there's a punk ethic with those bands that
Speaker 2: I that I really enjoyed. Bob Marley of course, Black Ohuru.
Speaker 2: So we were a roots reggae band and we we
Speaker 2: got on K Rock's Reggae Revolution, big moment I got.
Speaker 2: We got opening gigs for Ecamouse and Yellow Man, and
Speaker 2: we had a couple label meetings. One of them was
Speaker 2: IRS Records, and one of the A and R guys
Speaker 2: it was like Junior and our guys said, you know,
Speaker 2: because I was a spokesperson because everybody else was too
Speaker 2: stoned or whatever about things. And they said, one guy said,
Speaker 2: you'd be really good at promotion, and I'm like, what's that?
Speaker 2: And I led me to interview at IRS. By the way,
Speaker 2: they ended up not signing the Ridden Bandits. Obviously, they
Speaker 2: went with dread Zeppelin. Remember that one, of course you do.
Speaker 2: Of course I love that for anybody who doesn't know
Speaker 2: dread Zeppelin. They were a reggae band covering Zeppelin songs,
Speaker 2: but the lead singer was an Elvis Presley impersonator. How
Speaker 2: about that lost out to that. I think they live
Speaker 2: comfortably in the where they now filed. Right.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you ever use the suit your father got?
Speaker 2: Ye? Yeah, probably that friend's the younger kids bar mitzvahs
Speaker 2: or something. The briefcase I used for My wife used
Speaker 2: it for she had a photo shoot once she got
Speaker 2: like a Miller's outpost. We were dating, so she I
Speaker 2: think I still have that briefcase.
Speaker 1: And at what point did your parents accept your career path?
Speaker 2: God bless them. They still to this day don't know
Speaker 2: what I really do.
Speaker 1: Well, it's one thing not to know, it's another thing
Speaker 1: to respect or accept totally respect.
Speaker 2: And there was a moment we had a show called
Speaker 2: Epicenter in in Pomona and we had tool and Lincoln
Speaker 2: Park Alison chains and they went to it. I got
Speaker 2: them on the side of stage. My dad was wearing
Speaker 2: an Epicenter hat and they I think they were like,
Speaker 2: this kid is doing all right. You know, they were
Speaker 2: at to a point where I am, as a parent,
Speaker 2: as long as your kid is happy. As long as
Speaker 2: your kid is happy, that that's that's it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you got two kids, you stip of money.
Speaker 2: Uh, they're still on the spivac company teat a little bit.
Speaker 2: For some reason, they're still on. We still have a
Speaker 2: cell phone family plan, and I'm like, why are they
Speaker 2: Why are we pay for their cell phone bill? I
Speaker 2: gotta get them off. No, they're almost but they're yes
Speaker 2: little thing. When if my daughter's going to fly to
Speaker 2: l A, I'm going to pay for that.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't want I got a lot of questions.
Speaker 1: I'm want to go too deep down that avenue. Gary.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking all this time
Speaker 1: and telling your story and giving us the nuts and
Speaker 1: bull to the rock.
Speaker 2: World, Bob, thank you for having me, thank you for
Speaker 2: letting me kind of wave a rock and roll flag.
Speaker 2: We're on the other side of the tracks most of
Speaker 2: the time. We don't get these looks. So I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you for being a microphone and standing up
Speaker 2: and having moral character and fiber. We're in a we're
Speaker 2: in a dark spot right now. I'm still optimistic that
Speaker 2: America will take its cue from Britain and France, you know,
Speaker 2: so that let's I would like to take this moment
Speaker 2: to say we should Hopefully you're in the near future,
Speaker 2: or have our peace and say it, but let's stop
Speaker 2: the boat leaking. The far right is loving what's happening
Speaker 2: to us right now. They're eating it up. So hopefully
Speaker 2: we'll pick, we'll have a unified moment. We need that.
Speaker 2: That goes to you too, George Clooney. So whoever it is,
Speaker 2: let's be unified. So good wins over you.
Speaker 1: Well, I put it until next time. This is Bob
Speaker 1: Left sens