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Industry Spotlight: Curran Reynolds

Hello, everyone! With Christmas morning less than a day away we’re working hard to get a few final emails sent, calls made, and posts written. We know a lot of you won’t catch up on this content until after the holidays, but for those that read as soon as they go live we want to extend an extra special thanks. Your support means the world to us, and we hope to continue sharing informative articles with you for a long time to come.

This site exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Curran Reynolds is the kind of music industry professionals those just starting out aspire to one day become. He’s a hard working, driven, and incredibly successful man with a long history in numerous facets of the entertainment business. He’s perhaps best known around Haulix for his publicity efforts, and earlier this month Curran was nice enough to sit down with us for a conversation about his career up to this point.

A lot of the people we interviews are individuals that various Haulix team members have already gotten to know through their years of experience. Curran is no exception to this rule, but he is someone whose life outside of work was a bit of a mystery to us until this interview was conducted. His story is one I think many will relate to, and some may even find it inspiring. Either way, it’s definitely worth a read.

If you would like to learn more about Curran and his ongoing efforts in the music business, please take a moment and follow him on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello, Curran. Thank you for joining us today. How is the weather wherever you happen to be?

C: James, hi, I’m at my apartment in New York City. It’s late December and it’s raining.

H: You’ve been a customer with Haulix for a while at this point. When did you first learn of our service, and what lead you to sign up?

C: I love Haulix. It was one of those things – I started seeing some other publicists using it and the momentum built. The final straw came when I was at lunch with the editor of SPIN and he told me he personally loved Haulix.

H: I want to dig into your life and work, but while we’re on the top of Haulix we should also talk about the releases you’re currently working to promote. Care to fill our readers in on some of your current clients?

C: My most recent release is The Banner’s new album, Greying, out this month on Good Fight Music. A few years back, Good Fight was distributing Guy Kozowyk’s label, Black Market Activities, and I was doing all the press for Black Market. Now I’m working direct with Good Fight to handle press for a bunch of their new releases. Some other ongoing label clients of mine include Vitriol, Melotov, and Twelve Gauge. I’m also excited to report that I’m starting work in 2015 with Three One G Records and Aqualamb Records. Three One G is Justin Pearson’s label – The Locust, Retox, Some Girls, Swing Kids, the list goes on. I’ve been a fan for a long time and I befriended Justin in 2011 when our bands toured the UK together. Aqualamb is a totally unique label out of Brooklyn – they design and print books for each release, in lieu of traditional packaging.

H: People have probably gathered by this point that you work in publicity, but that’s not all you do. You’ve also created quite a career for yourself as a musician. It seems safe to say you’re the definition of an industry ‘lifer,’ and I’d like to learn a bit about your origins. Was music always a big part of your life?

C: Yes, I fell deep under the rock n’ roll spell at age 10. It was building for a few years before that but 10 is when I started educating myself, buying my own music, and playing drums. It was a whole new world and I dove into it. I lived with my mom and my sister at the time and they were both very supportive.

H: Do you remember your first concert? How about the first album you purchased with your own money?

C: My first concert was Tina Turner at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine, in the summer of 1987. My mom and her boyfriend took my sister and me. I think the first album I purchased was Europe’s The Final Countdown, on tape, also in 1987. My sister and I split the cost of it and shared the tape.

H: A lot of people grow up thinking about life in the entertainment industry, but far less actually try to make those visions a reality. You not only tried, but succeeded at that effort, and I’m curious when it all began. Can you pinpoint a specific experience or time in your life that sold you on working in music?

C: I was obsessed with rock music from a young age, as I said. It started building and continued to build. On a visceral level and an intellectual level, it was a realm within which I found excitement and fulfillment. But at no point did I have a long term plan. It was always more about following my heart at any given moment.

H: My research shows that you attended Sarah Lawrence College. What did you study? Is it safe to assume that you were active in music in one way or another during this time?

C: I was at Sarah Lawrence from 1994-1999. It’s a school that gives its students freedom to study a wide variety of things. There are almost no requirements. I studied writing, literature, art, film, history, and economics. I continued my musical education on my own time. I played drums and went to a lot of shows. The school is a few miles north of New York City and I got to see some amazing shows during that time. Off the top of my head, some of the bands I saw during my college years include Fugazi, Quicksand, Today Is The Day, Unsane, Modest Mouse, The Make-Up, Sleater-Kinney, Kiss It Goodbye, Shai Hulud, Indecision, Candiria, Will Haven, and Soilent Green. Junior year of college, I got an internship in the publicity department at Matador Records – I think that experience helped steer me toward music as an actual career.

H: Looking back now, was college worth the cost? The one question we are asked most frequently by readers is whether or not they should pursue higher education when hoping to one day work in music. Do you have any thoughts to share on that?

Sarah Lawrence is currently ranked as the most expensive school in the country. I can’t believe I went there. Some of my classmates were the kids of rock stars and big Hollywood producers. I had won a $20,000 scholarship which helped a little bit. That, financial aid, and my parents’ extreme sacrifice and generosity. I was very young when making the decision to go there. I had skipped a grade so I was 16 right up until my high school graduation. Sarah Lawrence appealed to me because of its academic freedom, its emphasis on the arts, and its proximity to New York City. As to whether it was worth the cost, it’s tough to quantify experiences like that. I did not go to college with the intention of training for a specific career. It was more a time of growth and exploration for me. But in hindsight, I can say that my college years paved the way for everything that came after. A few specifics:

1) Sarah Lawrence strengthened my writing, a core part of everything I do now.
2) It placed me in the New York City area, giving me access to so much great music and opportunities like the internship at Matador.
3) It’s a school full of independent, creative people doing cool things (both students and faculty) so there was a lot to be inspired by. Coming out of a setting like that, you’re instilled with a certain amount of bravery to go out and do your own independent, creative thing, at whatever cost.

H: You graduated in 1999, and not long after took a job with the legendary Earache Records. Were you a big fan of the label prior to joining the company? Any insight you can provide into the application and interview process would be greatly appreciated.

C: I’d been aware of Earache Records since freshman year of high school when my friend turned me on to Napalm Death. The way I got the job there is like out of an old movie. It was about a year after graduating from college, I was in my kitchen in Brooklyn, looking through the Village Voice, and I just happened to see a want-ad that read: “independent metal label seeks publicist.” It seemed too good to be true – a perfect fit. I applied, had one interview, and got the job. I mean, what are the chances? From the moment I stumbled on that ad, it felt like it was meant to be. When I got the phone call saying I was hired, I knew it was a turning point in my life. If the Matador internship was the thing that steered me in the direction of a music career, the Earache job is the thing that sealed the deal. I stayed at Earache five years, 2000-2005.

H: I’ve found that a lot of people who make publicity a career have one or two mentors in life that show them the ropes of the business. Was that the case for you? If so, please tell us about the people who helped you learn the music industry.

C: Al Dawson was my boss at Earache. Al was a punk rocker in Australia in the ’70s. He was pen pals with Digby Pearson, the founder of Earache, going back to the very beginning of the label, then he moved to England to work there. He came over to New York to run the US office just a few months before he hired me. He is one of the sharpest guys I know. He really has a mind for PR and for business in general. Nowadays, as a freelancer, I get to work with many labels and pick up different things along the way. It’s symbiotic, I learn from them, they learn from me.

H: While you’re at Earache you’re performing in various bands. Were you touring during this time? How did you balance the requirements of the label with your desire to perform?

C: I started a band called Wetnurse about a year after starting work at Earache. That band got more and more serious over the next few years. We started leaving town for weekends and short tours. Al Dawson was supportive of it but eventually I wanted more freedom. I left Earache in 2005, partly because I wanted to be free to tour more. Wetnurse’s first major tour, a six-week US tour I booked myself, happened a week or two after I left the label.

H: While we’re talking about your other projects we might as well mention writing. When did you first begin writing about music outside of PR, and who were the first publications to run your work?

C: In my first year or two at Earache, I got to know a lot of magazine editors and I began getting offers to write. My first gig was for Rockpile, a Philly magazine that’s defunct now. I took whatever assignments the editors gave me, which wound up being interviews with The Icarus Line, The Faint, and Nic Endo from Atari Teenage Riot, and reviews of albums like Zeni Geva’s 10,000 Light Years and American Nightmare’s Background Music. I quickly learned something about myself from that experience: I have no interest in giving anyone a negative review. I am not a critic. I am a maker of things and a champion of things I like. Writing, like PR, is an opportunity to champion things I like. So I stopped writing for Rockpile and started writing for VICE. VICE gave me the freedom to review whatever music I wanted. Given that freedom, I chose all my personal favorite new releases and gave them all 10/10 ratings, no exceptions – this was 2002 so it was stuff like Premonitions of War’s self-titled demo, Lansing-Dreiden’s The Incomplete Triangle, and Khanate’s self-titled debut. Also, instead of standard reviews, I wrote poems. This lasted for a few issues until a new editor took over and tried to rein me in. I respectfully refused to change my ways and that’s where it ended. After that I didn’t pursue writing again, feeling I had pretty much hit the peak of music journalism – I mean, what could top handing out 10/10 reviews to my favorite bands while simultaneously seeing my poetry get published in a magazine that was, at that time, thought to be the pinnacle of cool?! The next great opportunity came up in 2006. My friend Alanna Gabin was working with the skateboarder Mark Gonzalez and she’d gotten Mark a gig as guest editor for an issue of The Journal, this art magazine based here in New York. Alanna and Mark gave me 16 pages in the issue to do with whatever I wanted so I gave them my tour diary and photos from Wetnurse’s first big tour – the tour I left Earache for. I’m still proud of that piece. I did not pursue writing again until just this year. Thanks to my friend Polly Watson, I wrote a feature for High Times about the rapper Lil Debbie. I followed that up with a feature for Mass Appeal about Justin Pearson of Three One G Records, The Locust, Retox, and countless other bands. Lil Debbie and Justin Pearson are two people I am in awe of in different ways and it was a pleasure to interview them and share it with the world.

H: You’ve continued to balance publicity and performances, as well as freelance music writing, for over a decade at this point. Do you have any advice to offer on the topic of time management?

C: There are two forces driving me. One is the financial necessity of food and shelter. I am self-employed, out on a limb with no security, and if I screw up, I’m done. The other force is the need to create, to leave a mark, to do something cool with my time on earth. These two forces keep me on track. All I do every day and night is work, whether it’s my business or my own creative stuff or some overlap of the two. I love what I do so it mostly doesn’t feel like work. I am always wishing for more hours so I could get more done, as opposed to that other scenario of the guy at work, watching the clock and counting down until the day is over. That scenario looks suicidal to me. You are literally wishing your life away. In terms of how I specifically organize my time, it’s pretty natural, according to what’s going on that particular day. You prioritize and act as needed.

H: Who was your first client as a solo publicist, and how did you initially contact them?

C: My first client as a solo publicist was Black Box Recordings, the label owned by Mike Hill who now fronts the band Tombs. Mike was already a friend of mine. Wetnurse had done shows with his band, Anodyne, and he had recorded one of our demos. I really respected his DIY approach and liked him as a person. Specifically, the first release I worked for him was an EP by the band The Heuristic, members of which are now in Mutilation Rites.

H: How did the decision to step out on your own impact your ability to tour and perform? Was it easier because you were essentially your own boss, or did the additional work required to be your own boss make it harder to stay active?

C: It was easier in the sense that I could do what I want, when I wanted. After becoming my own boss, I did many tours with Wetnurse, then later joined one of my favorite bands, Today Is The Day. I did four US tours and one European tour with Today Is The Day. I probably wouldn’t have felt capable of joining that band had I been tied down with a normal job.

H: I know it’s not something you do now, but not long after stepping out on your own you also founded a live music series in NYC called Precious Metal. We receive a lot of inquiries about how people can launch similar events in their areas, and I’d love to know about your motivations behind that project.

C: I founded Precious Metal in 2006 and continued it until 2013. It was a weekly series of shows, every Monday night at Lit, a bar in the East Village in Manhattan. By the end of the series I had booked and promoted over 300 shows. I was inspired by the DIY efforts of other people I’d seen. I think the do-it-yourself approach has always appealed to me, since I was a kid, and it was especially exciting to me to try and help build a community for cool music in New York City. I’d actually been booking shows around the city since 2001. The first show I ever put together in New York consisted of the hip hop group Cannibal Ox and the Hydrahead Records band Cattlepress, featuring Harley Flanagan from the Cro-Mags on drums! I was really psyched in 2006 when Lit offered me a weekly series because it meant I’d have a home base from which to do stuff on a regular basis. The scene in the city changed a lot during Precious Metal’s reign. When I started there didn’t seem to be a cohesive scene at all and by the end it was booming. I think Precious Metal was one of many factors that helped this change happen. Social media was another. Nowadays you have venues like Saint Vitus and The Acheron that have taken the Precious Metal vibe to a higher level, seven nights a week. Those venues are doing great work and I attend both of them often, as a fan.

H: Without going too in-depth, please walk us a through a typical work day:

C: Currently my time goes toward my PR work, my new musical project Body Stuff, and some freelance writing. Each day consists of a combination of those things, with the PR work taking up the majority. My drug of choice is coffee with coconut oil.

H: What would you say is the most difficult aspect of being a music publicist today?

C: The number of bands and publicists, and the volume of overall chatter, is greater than ever. There’s a lot of noise out there, the pace is faster than ever, and as a publicist you have to penetrate that. Editors and writers are defensive, they filter out a lot, because they have to. In the early ’00s I had many more in-depth conversations, where now no one has time. So it’s a game of how to continue to reach these people and be heard, without harassing them and adding to the noise they are trying to navigate through. In my case, I think it has been to my benefit that I am more than a publicist, I am someone who has worked within the industry on more than one front, and my relationships are often more dynamic than a simple publicist-press relationship. I think this has helped me become someone whose voice gets listened to.

H: If you could offer one piece of advice to people reading this who may be considering their own pursuit of a career in music, what would you tell them?

C: The only way I know how to live is to follow my heart and worry about the rest afterward. I don’t know if this is the most responsible advice so hey, kids, take it or leave it. But we only live once, we might as well make it as cool as possible.

H: Looking ahead, what goals do you have for the immediate future?

C: On the PR front, I have a ton of cool work lined up for the first part of 2015 – the labels I mentioned earlier, like Three One G, Aqualamb, Good Fight, Vitriol, Melotov, and Twelve Gauge. I’m excited to kick ass for all my clients and continue building what I do. On the music-making front, it’s all about Body Stuff right now. Body Stuff is my solo project where I’m writing songs and singing. I put out my first EP in 2013 and I am now halfway done tracking the second EP. I aim to finish the second EP this winter and I also put together a live band which consists of my some of my closest friends. There will be shows soon. On the journalism front, I have more stuff in the works with Mass Appeal – incidentally, the editor over there, Noah Rubin, was once my intern and has become a good friend. Not only is Noah killing it as editor of Mass Appeal but he’s running Mass Appeal Records where his first signing was Run The Jewels.

H: Let’s step a bit farther out. Where is Curran Reynolds in five years?

C: Great question. I have no idea. I feel like something big is coming up. I want to continue doing bigger and cooler things. Continuing to team up with people I respect is part of it. No idea yet what form it will take.

H: That’s all I have today, Curran. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Do you have any closing thoughts or comments you would like to share?

C: Thank you so much, James! It’s been fun sharing some stories with you. I’ll close by saying, be kind to each other out there.

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News

Industry Spotlight: Richard Collier (Keynote Company)

Hello, everyone! We are thrilled to learn that you found time in your busy schedule to spend a few minutes browsing our blog. There has been a rising demand for interviews as of late, and today we hope to satisfy those readers with an in-depth conversation on the topics of talent buying and concert promotion.

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Before we get to the interview we have in store for today I must first issue an apology. We started this blog with the mission to highlight all corners of the music business, but in recent weeks those efforts have skewed heavily towards the digital/blog side of the industry. We love every feature we’ve done, but in the interest of keeping things fresh we’ve gone out of our way to try and ensure November is one of the most diverse months we’ve had on our blog to date. Those efforts started several days ago, and now we’re happy to take them one step further by sharing an interview with someone who I’m relatively sure has never been much of a blogger. Ready? Let’s begin…

If you live in New England and enjoy live music you more than likely owe Richard Collier, founder of Keynote Company, a thousand thank you notes. For the better part of the last year Richard and his team of promotion gurus have been putting on shows in Boston, Providence, and beyond. All that effort has helped develop a budding concert empire that continues to grow in leaps and bounds with each passing year. Richard has been the mastermind behind these efforts since day one, and late last week we convinced the nationally recognized talent buyer to share his insight on the music business with our readers. You can learn about his life, the development of Keynote Company, and where Richard believes the industry is headed in the years to come, below.

As a longtime resident of Boston, I’ve known about Richard’s work for a number of years. We’ve spoken briefly in the past, but this interview was the first chance I had to really learn about the man who makes so many great events happen. If you would like to learn more about Richard beyond what is contained in this post, please make it a point to follow Keynote Company on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello, Richard. How are you this afternoon?

R: Hello, James. I’m doing quite well right now. Keeping busy per usual!

H: It’s great to have you with us. I’ve been wanting to feature you on our site for a while, but scheduling got a little messy at the end of summer. Things cooled off a bit and here we are. Has October treated you well?

R: I appreciate you having me! October was a pretty solid month. Honestly we had a pretty rough summer so it was a nice turnaround month. We had a lot of great shows, but a lot of them under-performed and were high finance shows this summer. July was the toughest month we’ve had financially in my seven years of booking. That being said we are back on pace now though heading into the end of the year and 2015.

H: When would you say is the busiest time of year for you? I’ve heard from other people in your position that the fall is usually pretty hectic.

R: It’s tough to say. I mean tours are definitely more frequent in spring/summer from my viewpoint. Every high school band is off and wants to get out on the road so usually I’m bombarded with “Hey were x band from x town just seeking x.” It’s tough because I want to help everyone, but the realistic viewpoint is I can’t with where we are at. We are seeking nationals with a respectable draw and locals that are looking to build the scene.

H: You and I have known each other through industry connections for a bit, but truth be told I don’t really know much about your history. Where do you think your interest in music comes from? Were your parents big on live music?

R: My parents weren’t really big on music. My dad likes classic rock and my mom had a musician friend Matty B that I would listen to, but it wasn’t like a major influence to pushing me by any means. I guess some of my early memories with music would be watching TRL on MTV after school back when they played music. I would listen to N Sync, Jay Z, and Limp Bizkit a lot… so I had a pretty eclectic taste. I just loved everything regardless of genre so I guess that’s where it would start for me. My interest in live music came from school. To be honest I was pretty much a loser in school and I didn’t really have friends. A group by the name of Another Option (still going as War Games now – check them out) started playing out locally in the vfw/legion/school and I started getting into live music. It was also around the time of Myspace so I met a lot of people online. I just would start making a lot of friends and what would later be connections by seeing bands like A Loss For Words, Vanna, Therefore I Am, Four Year Strong, etc… all the bands that MA is proud of today.

H: What was the first concert you can remember attending? Any details you can give us from that experience would be appreciated.

R: I honestly don’t know what my first show was which really bums me out sometimes considering what I do haha. I think it was my mom’s friend Matty B at like some local place, but if not it had to be Another Option in a hall probably. I will say whatever first local show I went to I don’t remember much, but it definitely got me interested.

H: I’m sure you had no idea when you attended that first concert where your life would eventually lead, but I am curious when your interest in the business side of the music industry began. Can you recall what was happening in your life at that time?

R: I mean definitely didn’t expect for my life to be what it is today from being that loser back in middle & high school. I always had an interest from day one that something would happen in music, but I didn’t believe I’d book bands I cherished and people that I see on TV and the radio. It’s just wild. The business side was definitely started in college though. I was approached by my friend Alex Mazzuchelli about helping his booking company. I was always into the booking part, but never knew how to really start so I give him the credit for pushing me. We collaborated on an Eyes Set To Kill show at The Living Room that did fairly well, but I think it lost a few hundred bucks or at the least wasn’t well in the green. So that was my first sign that a quality lineup didn’t equate success. Following that my first personal show was Vanna’s first RI show. We soldout the Riverside legion with the bands I saw in high school – Orchestrate The Incident, Follow The Flies, Outrage (now Raindance), In Response To You, and Dour Cursiva in those halls in all over the southcoast of Massachusetts We even had to sneak people in. I was hooked and there was no looking back!

H: I know you attended Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island. What did you study there, and how involved were you in the music community at that time?

R: I studied Sports/Entertainment/Event Management there. I was very involved in the music community and would be at The Living Room 2-3 times a week. It was a bummer because I’d always see all these awesome shows in high school going there, but I didn’t really have friends to go with so I’d miss out. I’d walk to most of the shows and start meeting more people and making friends there. I honestly think the RI scene hasn’t had as strong mid level shows as The Living Room days and wonder if it ever will. I saw so many great shows there that I just don’t see any venue filling what they did. The other part of attending so many of those was doing papers in the wee hours of the night/morning and waking up at 7/9 AM and losing sleep. All completely worth it though.

H: Did you finish college?

R: I did finish college. I graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor’s degree.

H: This is a question that comes up in almost every interview we do. It would be possible to argue that your career today is not a direct result of your time in college. A lot of what you have accomplished is owed to your own drive and hard work. That said, do you still feel college was worth your money and time? Why or why not? Would you suggest others hoping to enter the entertainment business pursue a college education?

R: HAH. Absolutely not from the college itself standpoint and that’s nothing against JWU persay – it is a great institution, but for what I do they definitely didn’t get me much in terms of career parth. I will say that dorming in Providence allowed me to be engulfed into the music scene and making connections which would help me later on. That being said I have 100k in loans that luckily are split between me and my parents, but it sucks flat out. I could have went to community college for free, but it has that stigma that it’s “not as good” or whatever. Yes, I learned things in college that goes without saying, but nothing like my own experience taught me. I’m really passionate in what I’ve told people about industry vs college. You can get great grades and learn all sorts of stuff by the books in college. That’s well and good, but when “shit hits the fan” day of the event you need to adapt. It takes a lot of patience and a certain mindset to run events successfully. That’s not to say myself or anyone in this industry isn’t without making mistakes – we all have and will as nobody is perfect at what they do. I’ve done some pretty stupid stuff over the years haha, but I feel I’m definitely very good at what I do. You constantly learn just like anything else. It’s a high stress environment that’s for sure. You’d be better off learning time management than certain things in a class. I strongly encourage people not to attend a high cost private institute if they are looking to get into the music business. Start at the ground level and work your butt off like you never have to showcase your worth in whatever position you can get – even if not directly related to what you want – referrals like anyone will help. Network with every single person possible – you never know who will help you in life and don’t count anyone out because it could bite ya later. One of my best connections in this industry who always offers great advice – Mathew Barletta – was in a small band that I booked several times in a pool hall to tiny shows. We went from a random booking to solid friends that can always relate industry talk. So never ever count out someone because you never know what the relationship can develop to. I answer every single message / e-mail I get even if I can’t help just because that’s who I am. If you want to go to college (which you should) get a degree at a community college and save yourself the money. The other thing is especially for a while the music business isn’t going to be lucrative. You’re going to likely scrap by and not want fat loans to pay off. So that’s my thoughts on all that… def a big subject for me.

H: Keynote Company started in 2007, which would have been during your time in college. Did you intern, work, or otherwise train with another booking company/group prior to launching your own venture?

R: As I stated previously I worked with Alex on a show, but it wasn’t formal interning or anything. I honestly have never worked for anyone else I just observed and knew what to do and who to do it with. I basically behind the scenes studied what worked and didn’t and would learn my own lessons. That’s why I was saying in the previous answer like – books can teach you one thing – you learn so much more by doing it on your own.

H: I really like the name Keynote Company, but for the life of me I don’t know why you chose it for your business. Can you tell us the origin story behind this name?

R: It’s funny because I don’t think really many people know what the name means. Originally with Alex we were X-Mothaz booking. I have NO clue why he chose that ridiculously bad name. I think we were just joking around and were like well whatever it’s just for fun. When I knew that Vanna show was hyping up and it was what I wanted in life I knew I needed a more serious name. Basically everyone assumes the company is Keynote and company is attached as a formality like a company. The name is suppose to be separated – Key (right fit / top notch) Note (music) Company (meaning the company of friends). So essentially it’s a behind the scenes meaning is the right fit top notch music booking with good company. It’s a little trick so I never really explain it that much. Basically though the name was just suppose to reflect that it’s not just about booking shows. It’s about trying to book the best shows with the right company and making them feel like a community.

H: How big is the Keynote Company? I know you’re the leader, but how many people work with you for promotion/marketing/etc.?

R: Honestly right now it’s basically just me although I do have friends that help out. Over the years my best friend Derick Swiader was booking with me, but he left this year to pursue other endeavors in life. I’ve had countless people help me, but the most mainstays that are worth namedropping are my other best friends Nichole Bishop, Erin Rice, Lauren Sullivan, my brother Jason Collier, and definitely my dad and mom have helped a ton as well. Also right now I take a lot of great advice from various promoters in other markets – most specifically Jake Zimmerman, Anthony Cabrera, and Sage Keber.

H: Are you looking to expand your team? I’m sure a few of our New England readers might want to join your efforts.

R: I take pride it my company as like it’s my personal baby. I do want to expand, but the relationship would have to be strong and the person would have to bring a lot to the table. I’m always open to networking and collaborating, but I don’t see myself officially adding anyone to the team anytime soon. I would love for someone to have enough to offer to the company though and change my mind absolutely.

H: Without going too in depth, can you walk us through your typical day at work?

R: I would just say there is no typical day. That’s the beauty of it I can wake up and have a ton of great emails or a ton of spam. Everything can go right or mostly everything can go wrong til I fix it and adapt. I love it. It beats waking up in an office 9-5 and a routine schedule. My owning my own company I can work when and if I want. I don’t have to answer your e-mail right away or I can sit and read them as they come in. It’s a beautiful thing to have that freedom. That being said I still end up working 60-80 hours a week on average.

H: Is Keynote your full time job? If so, how long has that been the case?

R: Yes it is my full time job and always has been. I started in December of 2006 and my first show was February of 2007. So were closing on just about 8 years although I host my anniversary as February to the first show. It’s crazy to think about and I still have people that talk about the early days. Let’s hope they do down the road when were even older!

H: Do you have any advice to offer show promoters and talent buyers about maximizing profits and ensuring they stay profitable?

R: Work work work. There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. Like I mentioned earlier this past July was incredibly discouraging. I never expected to just take hit after hit after hit. I lost almost 70% of my life savings in one month. It was really eye opening, but as down as I got I knew I wouldn’t quit. It just goes to show you can work super hard and think everything is gravy and a show can just not perform. Unfortunately that month it happened several times on some of the biggest finance shows I’ve had.

H: How far out do you typically book? I know shows sometimes come up at the last minute, but generally speaking how far ahead are you planning? For instance, it’s October now. Are you booking for 2015?

R: Yupp I have 3 shows on the books for May 2015. One is already fully confirmed. Typically I’m 2-3 months out which is the standard for most average booking. I’m not getting One Direction so I’m not getting stuff a year out haha. Maybe someday… but I was pretty stoked on confirming a May date… in October.

H: What would you say is the most difficult part of your job? How about the most rewarding?

R: Definitely the stress and time. As a single person business owner doing 20 shows a month is tough. I definitely will say thanks to my family and friends for dealing with me. I’m not always the easiest, but I think most see what I have to do to make myself succeed. The most rewarding is the finished product really. Watching a show go off without a hitch or when the headliner hits the stage to a packed/soldout show. Or when 20 kids watch an unknown touring band play for the first time and just give them the attention. Sometimes it isn’t about the big shows. Those little things count too. So definitely that and also the same thing I got into it for. I see friendships form and relationships. I see people meet people literally saved their lives. The fact that what I do literally saves lives and changes them in such a positive manner is worth so much more than any dollar. I feel like I’m making a difference and that’s really a powerful feeling.

H: Keynote company has been around for close to a decade at this point. What are your longterm goals for the company? Do you think you will ever have a venue of your own, or would you prefer to stay in the booking/promotion realm?

R: My longterm goals are just the simple “bigger and better”. I’m not content with just booing 500 people shows. It’s been my goal to book Lupos / Palladium downstairs and pack it, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s on the near horizon and was suppose to happen several times this year, but things feel through. I want to sellout Gilette Stadium or the Dunk one day. Anything is possible if you work hard enough. I don’t doubt that someday it could happen. It’s a bit ambitious and crazy right now… but hey that’s what entrepreneurs get super successful are anyways. I would like to own my own venue someday potentially too, but I rather diversify and book several different markets. Maybe when and if I do have a staff of people someday I’d open my own though. That’s been something I’ve though about a lot before too.

H: What would you say is the biggest misconception about what you do?

R: Easily that I’m just cashing in on talent. It’s so far from the truth. Do I make decent money right now? Yes there’s no denying that. But it’s no different than I would (and likely way less) if I used my college degree to pursue a job. It took me 7 years to make significant money really. I was always profiting yearly from the get go, but I’ve invested a lot back into building the company up. People get a false idea when I work the door and have a fat wad of cash. Just because it’s in my hand or pocket doesn’t mean it stays there. The expenses on shows are a lot higher than most people realize. Promoters aren’t all rich or we’d have fancy houses and cars haha.

H: I know you work with talent from essentially every genre of music. Is one genre typically more difficult to book/promote than others in New England?

R: For once I don’t have that lengthy an answer. I think anything can succeed, but I would feel like country is a weaker genre in the Northeast. Metal and hardcore are more prevalent in MA because they are known for that.

H: What are the biggest challenges facing Keynote Company in the year ahead?

R: That’s a tough one. I think I’m at the stage of branching out from under 500 people to shows that draw 1000 or 2000. It’s definitely going to be nerve-wracking shelling out that money for the artists and venues that bring that crowd in. Yeah… that’s going to be the biggest challenge. Learning how to effectively do those types of shows.

H: I know we talked about the company’s plans, but what about you? Do you have any addition goals you’re hoping to achieve in the next year or so?

R: Not really. I’d like to have some time to travel and maybe attend Fest in Florida this year, but my schedule is tight around traveling definitely.

H: What advice would you offer to those reading this who are currently considering the pursuit of a career in your line of work?

R: As I said before it’s just about hard work and networking. Learn from your mistakes and don’t get too discourage by them because we all make them. Don’t put the word quit in your vocabulary or if it is make sure it’s just out of frustration. You’ll go through hard times, but just strive and adapt to get the success you want.

H: Where is Richard Collier five years from now?

R: Hopefully as a household name in booking on the east coast. I’m not ever going to be Livenation or Bowery because of their financials, but I definitely think we’ll be making a statement and providing quality shows.

H: That’s all I have, Richard. Thank you for your time. Do you have any closing thoughts you would like to share?

R: I appreciate you reaching out to me for the interview. I hope everyone that reads this gets some more insight to what me and my company are about. You can find us at www.keynotecompany.net and keynotecompany on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Youtube. We hope to hear from you as we love meeting new people!

Categories
News

Industry Spotlight: Emily Hakes (Lame-O Records)

Hello, everyone! We have been waiting to released this interview for a few days, but transcriptions sometimes take longer than expected. We finished today and thought it best to go ahead and push it out right away. Double post Tuesday, anyone?

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s been a while since we featured an up and coming industry talent who is somehow managing to juggle multiple high profile projects while maintaining an impressive GPA. Emily Hakes hails from the thriving city of Philadelphia with a passion for music that has been developing since her early teens. The world probably should have known she would be an industry lifer when her first show was Van’s Warped Tour 2007, but here we are seven years later and she’s just now starting to get the notoriety she deserves. From her work at Bad Timing and Lame-O records, to her fast developing skills as a publicist, Emily is quickly ascending to the heights of young music professionals everyone aspires to reach.

Last week, I was able to connect with Emily over the phone for a half hour conversation about her life and experiences up to this point. I knew next to nothing about her going in, aside from the various project I knew her to be connected with, and walked away feeling as if I made a very important new friend. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Emily will be able to accomplish anything she sets her mind to in this industry, and I am incredibly excited to see her achieve her various goals in the years to come.

If you would like to learn more about Emily’s adventures in the industry, make sure you follow her on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello, Emily. How are you this afternoon?

E: I’m doing well. Just started my day a few hours ago. So far, so good.

H: I know we’ve tried to schedule this a couple time now, so I am happy we finally able to connect. How is the weather in Philadelphia today?

E: It’s actually great today. It’s been bad this week. It’s been rainy and humid a lot, but today it’s sunny.

H: To be honest, I’m fairly excited about this interview. We have covered the people you work with in the past, but you’re someone who has been making moves in this industry under the radar for a while at this point and I think it’s high time you get credit for all you do. Tell me, when do you think you first fell in love with music?

E: I think I started listening to music of my choosing around 14 or 15. I started with a few records I got from a friend’s older sibling that I listened to a lot, as well as Paramore and Fall Out Boy type stuff because I was young. The records that stuck with me were Motion City Soundtrack, Brand New, and Death Cab For Cutie, who are still some of my favorite bands today. I would say I got my start in pop punk music, but those bands carried my interest over to other things.

H: Falling for music is something most people do at one point or another in life, but taking that passion and attempting to transition it into a career is fare more rare. I don’t want to jump too far ahead in your story, but can you recall a time when you first started considering the possibilities of a career in entertainment?

E: It’s kind of a funny story. I go to Drexel University now, but before that I was in high school. I went to a college fair and they had pamphlets for the Music Industry program at Drexel, which happened to have a summer program with it. That was something I had never heard of before. I loved music, but I lived in the suburbs and had never considered it as something people did for a living. Reading that set me on the path to pursue the industry.

H: Interesting. We usually do some basic music history questions and I’m realizing now we skipped right over them. Let’s fit one in: Do you remember the first concert you attended?

E: I think my first concert was Warped Tour 2007. I don’t think I went to any events before that with my parents, and if I did I do not remember them. I saw All Time Low, Hawthorne Heights, and a few others. I don’t know that there was a band I really wanted to see. My friend was going and there were a few bands I knew who were there. I wasn’t completely into the world of punk yet, so it was something I did mostly just because I thought it would be fun. It was definitely a weird first concert.

H: You mentioned Drexel University. You’re still enrolled now, correct? I believe you’ve only got a short while left to go.

E: I’m in my senior year now. I graduate in March.

H: As someone who has already accomplished a lot in their young career, would you encourage aspiring industry professionals to attend college?

E: I’ve got a weird relationship with that kind of question. I know that I probably wouldn’t be doing a lot of the things I’m doing today without going to this school, but it’s not necessarily because of the program. It’s more the people I met here and the environment we’re in. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend going to school for something like this due to the cost of higher education, but at the same time – if you’re in the suburbs and need a way into the city it’s not a bad way to go. So I don’t hate the idea of going to college, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for everyone. It’s more about the relationships.

H: Okay, so you enter school and then about a year ago two big things happen: You have an internship with SideOneDummy and you launch your own label, Lame-O Records, with Eric Osman. Which came first?

E: Technically, SideOne came first. Lame-O was started by Eric, who is one of my best friends, and he started it on his own to help Modern Baseball put out their album. When he was doing this, I was giving him advice and helping, but I wasn’t technically working at Lame-O because it wasn’t really a business. Then right before I left for LA to do the SideOne internship he asked me to really be a part of it. I said yes, entered the partnership, went to LA, and then when i came back I really dug deep into the Lame-O stuff.

H: Let’s start there. What inspired you to apply for SideOneDummy?

E: That is one of my favorite record labels. It’s one of the first labels that I knew of because they had The Gaslight Anthem, and they continue to be one of my favorite bands. I wanted to know more about the label and people who put it out, so I dug into their artists and discovered people like Chuck Ragan, Fake Problems, and so on. They were one of the first labels I connected with like that, and from then on I kept up with them. For a while I was going to work with Zack on Bad Timing’s first release, but then I saw S1D put up something and I decided to apply. When they called, I talked to Zack and he supported me. He put me in contact with Jamie Coletta, who is amazing, and things came together from there.

H: What do you think was the biggest lesson you learned while doing your internship?

E: I learned a lot. Jamie is incredibly good at her job, and she taught me the basics of how things are done. On top of that, she taught me one of the most important things that I needed to know about email, and that is that it is your job to follow-up with people. There’s nothing wrong with sending a couple of emails, people get it, and that’s something she taught me.

H: Do you have any advice for others thinking of starting a label?

E: It’s a stupid and cliche answer, but you just have to do it. Everyone has reservations when it comes to starting something new, but it’s important that you get past that and just do it. It’s not as hard as it seems, and you will understand that once you just do it. Everything I have been a part of, both Lame-O and Bad Timing, came from people just doing something they wanted to do.

Whatever you think your idea is, trust that it is a good one and try it.

H: I want to fit in a little discussion about the other label you work with, Bad Timing Records. They’re a bit newer than Lame-O, and right now they have a lot of stuff going on. How did you initially get involved with the label?

E: Zack went to school with me. I kind of mentioned it earlier, but before the SideOneDummy internship I had spoken to him about working for Bad Timing. I was going to do that until S1D came along, and then when I got back they told me their horror stories from trying to pack their first release. We talked and that’s where things started. As the business grew I began taking on more things.

H: Is working with Bad Timing that different than Lame-O?

E: I think it’s pretty different. It’s similar in that they’re both starting up and we encounter similar issues at times, but Thomas and Zack have more industry experience and know a bit more about the music business. Lame-O is a bit more relaxed, and we are figuring things out as we go along. I do similar jobs for both, even though I do have more control at Lame-O. We both have a lot of ambition.

H: After all you have accomplished, what are your current career goals?

E: I still want to do a lot. On a professional level, I want to have another big record with Lame-O to help make us a powerhouse. I want us to be a real label and not the kind of local thing it is now. I’m also really focusing on trying to make PR my career, as Lame-O doesn’t pay me anything. I’m hoping to get involved with agencies after graduation, and overall I want to improve at everything I do. I think I still have a long way to go.

H: Out of curiosity, do you have any free time left? It seems that between two labels and school you keep fairly busy.

E: I have more now than I did before. The last few years I was also working a food service job in addition to the labels, so that was pretty crazy. I make just enough, or close to enough now through our efforts to cover my rent and needs.

H: Do you still believe music is the industry you want to work in for the foreseeable future?

E: Yea, that’s definitely the goal. I like working in it. I know some people get worn out in the music industry, but that hasn’t happened to me. If anything, I listen to more music now and get more excited than ever before. I haven’t gotten jaded yet or anything, but then again I’m still young.

H: I know we’ve talked a bit about advice already, but I’d like to tap into your well of knowledge once more. Do you have any additional insight to offer aspiring music professionals about making their way in this industry?

E: To get started, go somewhere cool. Go where something is happening and start to make friends. Don’t make it about business up front, just network and meet people who are doing cool things. Develop ideas, work together, and act on the best material. There’s not much more to it.

H: That’s all I have for right now. Before I let you go, are there any final thoughts or ideas that you would like to share with our readers?

E: Bad Timing just released a new 7” with Kevin Devine, which I think is really awesome. They also have a Knuckle Puck EP, which is doing incredibly well. Lame-O doesn’t have anything this month, so nothing for that. On the PR side, I’ve been working with a band called Hurry and they’re great. Everyone should check that out.

Categories
Job Board News

Industry Spotlight: Sam Christie (Bandsintown)

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the beginning of another new work week. We are thrilled to learn that you managed to find a few minutes of free time to spend exploring the modern music industry. We have been looking forward to sharing this feature for a while and are thrilled to see it finally materialize.

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

For the better part of the last few years, it has been almost impossible to look up tour dates for your favorite band without interacting with the BandsInTown platform. This one company, which has been growing since inception in 2007, is the number one concert discovery app for Facebook, iTunes, and Google. At least 50% of all Billboard artists have already embraced it, and an even greater number of indie acts rely on the its customizable embeds to make their Facebook pages a bit more eye catching. 

We wanted to learn more about the company and how it came to be the powerhouse it is today, so recently we interviewed Social Media Community Manager Sam Christie about his experience and where the company is headed in the future. It took a while to hear back, but that was only due to the fact the Bandsintown team never slows down. They have developments rolling out regularly, and they seem to be doing everything in their power to increase their productivity as often as possible. Work ethic like that is hard to come by in any industry, especially the music business, and it’s something we hope to gain insight into through our conversation with Sam. You can learn about his journey, as well as the ways Bandsintown keeps indie artists in mind, below.

If you would like to learn more about Sam and the efforts of the entire Bandsintown team, please follow the company on Twitter. You should also download the app, which is available now in whatever digital store your smartphone/tablet relies on. Additional questions and comments may be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello there! Please help us begin by introducing yourself to our readers?

S: Hi Haulix Readers! My name is Sam Christie and I’m the Social Media Community Manager for Bandsintown.

H: It’s great to have you with us, Sam. From what I can tell life at Bandsintown is incredibly busy these days. Thank you for finding time to fit us in.

S: Indeed! Thank you for your interest.

H: Our blog’s goal is two-fold: To promote future thinking company and individuals while also informing aspiring industry professionals about the realities of working in the music industry. I know Bandsintown is more in the tech sector than music directly, but the same concept still applies. With that in mind, I’d like to begin by learning a bit about your role. Have long have you been with Bandsintown?

S: My three year Bandsintown-aversary (not an official term) is October 24 this year. I started out doing a lot of support for our Concerts app users (fan side of our app) as well as the Manager app (which was then called our Artist Platform). I also did some company wide analytics for a while, and I transitioned into some marketing duties as well a bit later.

H: Were you always interested in the music business, or are you more of tech person? What drew you to this company in the first place?

S: I grew up playing in bands, and most of my adolescence centered around either playing shows or going to shows. I always had this mentality that I would jump at the chance at a record deal, or music for a living, “if it came to that”. Our band had a good run but we learned as we all grew up that it wouldn’t have “come to that” unless we had worked specifically towards that goal. I’ve always been interested in tech and I’m obviously passionate about music, so when the opportunity to work on this side of both industries came up, I figured this was the best way to turn my passion for music into a career. To me it’s a way to be as involved as possible with the music world without actually playing music every night for a living.

H: What other tasks does your job entail?

S: I handle support through all channels, for artists and fans, including Facebook, Twitter, socials etc, and serve as a bridge between our users and our product and development teams. It’s up to me to figure out what a lot of the big issues are and prioritize them with our product & dev teams as far as new features, fixes, and general health of the app. I also handle a lot of Tour Diaries, photo posting, and social strategy. More generally, I’m usually the guy to come up with some off the wall new ideas for social media stuff and then once the rest of our team checks it out they reel it in a bit so that it’s scalable for us since we are a fairly lean team.

H: Do you have any advice for people who may be reading this and considering pursuing a career in social media marketing?

S: Definitely. A few things come to mind. First off, when you are in college or headed down a certain career path, you may see the same types of companies popping up at job fairs and things like that. These will typically be your giant corporations and massive brands, which is awesome, but you have to remember there are social media and/or marketing jobs out there in every industry at every company. Don’t be afraid to look for those long tail companies that may not be your first thought—find a culture that suits you in an industry you can grow with and go from there, even if you’re just trying things out as an intern. Just as an example, let’s say a lot of music-loving journalists out of college may think “my first job has to be at a newspaper” when there are tons of music blogs, PR companies for labels, tours, artists etc that you can get involved with.

Second, don’t wait until you are jobless/out of school to start doing what you want. If you want to be a social media marketer, go find some small Facebook pages, blogs, or anything like that and try to work with them on their strategies. It’s never been so easy to create cool stuff on the internet, whether you are blogging, doing a YouTube series, or anything in between. Start small, find your niche, and grow from there and you can easily put a blogging experience or YouTube series on your resume, especially if you are keeping tabs on all your important metrics and KPI’s (key performance indicators).

Third, be yourself!

H: Thank you for filling us in a bit about you. Moving on to Bandsintown, I noticed there is not a ‘history’ page on the site. Can you give us a little background on the origin of the company?

S: Bandsintown started in a Boston apartment between two best friends, the app’s co-founders. They participated in a startup accelerator and were able to get some first-hires from that, then a few years later the app was acquired by the app company Cellfish Media. I joined the team shortly after we were acquired. We have had amazing growth since the acquisition and recently Cellfish, our parent company, rebranded as Bandsintown Group, which is pretty huge and exciting for the app, and for the company as a whole. Bandsintown Group’s co-founders, Fabrice Sergent and Julien Mitelberg, are our CEO and COO respectively. They’re also childhood best friends, and co-founders of Cellfish Media.

H: How would you explain the Bandsintown app to a music fan who has never encountered the app in the past? What about a musician?

S: For fans, we take all your music preferences and tell you when your favorite artists are playing in your area. For artists, we help you display and promote your tour dates around the web and connect with your fans.

H: Something I have always admired about Bandsintown is that all the messaging I’ve received has blended top 40 headliners with regional talent. I know not only the acts playing the local arena, but also the groups playing the bar down the street. Is unsigned/indie music something Bandsintown developers are very passionate about?

S: Absolutely. We’ve always focused on the longer tail artists existing alongside top 40, because that’s how it should be—we want to see every artist have a chance to be heard and seen live. So we’ve built our tools in a way that can benefit any artist in a meaningful way depending on their own promo and touring strategies. Anyone can go to a massive ticket site and find out about top 40 artists, but we wanted to make sure you’re also in the loop about the next big thing, that artist that is underground today but may break out tomorrow.

H: As popularity for the app continues to grow, it’s not hard to imagine why some indie artists fear there may one day be a drop promotion given to smaller acts in favor of highlighting major label talent. Have your developers taken any steps to ensure local/regional talent gets exposure through the app?

S: The best way to make sure that indie artists get exposure is to not play favorites—we take what you give us and give you suggestions based on that. We don’t weigh any one artist for you based on their size, just on how relevant they are to your music tastes. We also work directly with both higher tier and smaller artists to make sure they are using the Manager apps in a way that can help their unique situations.

H: I’ve recently become a big fan of your company blog. Is that something you are responsible for? There is a lot of great content there for music fans to enjoy, but I’ve noticed it’s not something that is highlighted too heavily on the front page.

S: The blog started as sort of a pet project way back when and has become its own thing over time. We regularly post Tour Diaries, some photo sets, and any content our users and fans may find useful or interesting, and even some artists are seeing it as an outlet to share their tour experiences. We know our artists have interesting stories to tell and we want to continue to grow the blog to facilitate those stories and those interactions between artists and their fans.

H: Bandsintown was one of the first apps featured during the marketing for Android smart watches earlier this year. Can we assume there will soon be a new app ready for the watches Apple recently unveiled?

S: We don’t have anything to announce at this time and we can’t comment on rumor or speculation J. But I can tell you we’re always looking for opportunities to get fans to the shows they love, so if we feel there is something unique we can do that will bring value to the fans/our users, we will definitely consider it.

H: How are developers currently working to improve Bandsintown? What kind of updates can we expect in the coming months, or even in 2015?

S: We are working on updates to the mobile Manager apps that will allow artists to change their Bandsintown profile image manually—an oft-requested feature, so we are excited about that. We have some bigger things in the works so keep an eye out. We’re always listening to our users of both the fan-centric Concerts app and the artist-centric Manager app, so if you want to see a certain feature or need help with something, please get in touch!

H: Bandsintown released a very famous study of concert goers a couple years back. Is the company actively working on any new reports regarding music and/or concert attendance?

S: We have nothing to announce at this time, but we’re always analyzing how our users interact with our products and inspecting the concert landscape as a whole to identify trends and draw meaningful conclusions.

H: That’s all I have for now. Thank you for taking a few minutes to speak with us. Before I let you go, are there any final thoughts, observations, or promotions that you would like to share? The floor is yours:

S: Thanks for providing a platform for us to share our story! Fans can get Bandsintown Concerts on the App Store and Google Play, and artists can get Bandsintown Manager there as well. Give us a like on Facebook and Follow on Twitter, and let us know what you think of the app! If you’re lucky I might be the one to reply, and if you’re really lucky I might even throw a meme or goofy picture into the response. We’ll also be at CMJ in New York from October 21-25, hosting some Speakeasy’s and Artist Meetups, so keep an eye on our socials for more info.

Categories
Job Board News

Industry Spotlight: Jesea Lee (Tragic Hero Records)

Good afternoon, everyone! Thank you for carving out a few minutes in your day to spend with us. We have been looking forward to sharing this feature for several weeks, and we hope you love it as much as we do. Jesea has a great history, and his future is very bright. 

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you would like more information on the content in this article, or if you know of an industry pro you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Jesea Lee is the kind of music industry professional I love to highlight on our blog. So many aspiring entertainment pros believe they have to relocate to one of the coasts in order to be successful, but Jesea is one of many who prove that is no longer the case in 2014. As long as you work hard, stay motivated, and continuously put the needs of others before yourself there is no telling how far you can advance in any endeavor you choose to pursue. That’s what Jesea has done with his love of music, and today he shares his journey with us.

If you would like to learn more about Jesea, as well as his efforts at Tragic Hero, be sure to follow the label on Twitter. Additional questions and comment should be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello! Before we dive in, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our readers:

J: Hey there, hi there, ho there! My name is Jesea Lee and I’m the publicist for Tragic Hero Music Group.

H: It’s great to have you with us, Jesea. I feel like I’ve known about Tragic Hero for a long time, but I’ve never had a chance to look ‘behind the curtain’ so to say. How is your day going?

J: Not bad! I hope yours is going well. I’m currently working on a bunch of tour press at the moment.

H: Let’s begin we a little bit of your personal history. If you had to pinpoint a specific moment or experience, when would you see you initially fell in love with music?

J: When I was 12 years old I used to skateboard and that was my biggest passion. I would think about skateboading all day. One day at school I was daydreaming about playing guitar and couldn’t wait to get home and learn some new songs. Some friends asked if I wanted to go skate after school and I remember just thinking that I’d rather go home and play guitar. That’s when I realized music was my new passion and nothing has replaced it since. It’s a silly story, but that’s honestly the moment I realized how much I liked music because I chose it over what I believed to be my biggest passion at the time

H: Do you remember the first album you purchased with your own money? How about the format?

J: It was a Blues Traveler CD. I bought it specifically for a certain song, but didn’t know the name of it. My parents didn’t have the internet, so I couldn’t just google the lyrics to find the title. I took a guess and bought “Save His Soul”…and it ended up being the wrong one. I ended up loving that album, though.

H: First concert? Bonus points if you share an early story of fandom.

J: Cold and Evanescence. Completely random because I’m not a fan of either band, ha. My first fandom moment would probably be seeing Senses Fail in Cleveland. I met Buddy Nielsen (vocalist) outside after the show and totally “fangirled.”

H: Most people do not immediately connect their passion for music to the idea of working on the business side of the industry. Did you ever try your hand at being a musician? Did you chase the rockstar dream before turning your eyes toward business?

J: I sure did. I’ve been in bands since I first picked up a guitar when I was 12. I’ve toured, put out records, and have been lucky enough to do a lot of things that most musicians won’t get to do. I think all those experiences makes it easier for me to empathize with the artists I work with.

H: I mentioned Tragic Hero early on, but you’ve had a few roles in music up to this point and I want to cover everything I am able. From what I found, you studied Music Business at Cuyahoga Community College. Is that a program you would recommend to others seeking a little more guidance on the music business?

J: I’m not sure how much I really retained and use from that program because I felt like it wasn’t as in depth as it could have been. Also, I felt like it may have been a little outdated. I still think any extra education is great, though.

H: Do you think college/higher education is something all aspiring industry professionals should seek out?

J: I don’t really endorse getting a really expensive degree that you have to spend the majority of your life to pay back just because you think that’s what you’re supposed to do, but I do think if it’s financially reasonable and it’s actually something that you’re gonna use then why the hell not? To that end, I would say I’ve learned waaaaay more about the music business from real life experience.

H: Around this time you also landed your position with Tragic Hero Records, which as many know is owned by Tommy Lacombe. Can you tell us a bit about how you learned of the position and shed some light on the interview process?

J: I spent the time after college pretending to be a rock star basically, ha. In 2010, I met the Business manager of Tragic Hero through a mutual friend and it wasn’t until 2013 that I approached him about a job with the company. It took about six months of talking and interviewing before I secured the position.

H: Once you secured the gigs you have no, your free time had to be pretty limited. How do you keep everything balanced while still making time to relax?

J: Work-life balance is almost virtually impossible in our generation. Your bosses and clients can reach you any time, day and night. One of the things I like to do is leave my phone in the locker when I’m working out. Nothing can mess up a good set more than an email from a writer rejecting your pitch. Things like that can wait until after I get my pump on, ha.

H: With that in mind, would you please walk us through a typical day of work for you?

J: I usually spend the first hour catching up on emails that came in while I was sleeping. That also involves sending links of new coverage to artists/management. Then I make a schedule for the remainder of my day. For example, 10-11 “X BAND” tour press, 11-12 “Y BAND” tour press, 12-1 “Z BAND” album press, etc. It almost NEVER goes according to schedule, though. There’s always something that pops up that need to be taken care right then and there, but the schedule is definitely a nice starting point.

H: What is the greatest lesson about publicity/A&R that you have learned in the two years since your professional journey began to take off?

J: Persistence and follow-up is key. It seems like every time I think “I hope this second follow-up email doesn’t annoy this person” that’s the one that they respond to.

H: If you could offer one piece of advice to people reading this who may be considering the pursuit of a career in entertainment, what would you say?

J: Network, network, network. That’s really the sole reason I am where I am right now …..that and my good looks ;). The entertainment business is really tough to break into and you won’t often see a craigslist saying “Record Label Seeks Publicist,” so you need to get out there and create opportunities.

H: Piracy is something we fight on a daily basis here at Haulix, but there are many young people who do not grasp how leaks can impact labels and the artists on them. Can you shed some light on your anti-piracy efforts at Tragic Hero, and how unwanted distribution of your copyrighted materials hurts the music business?

J: At the risk of sounding like I’m pandering, I use Haulix everyday. That’s the absolute best platform out there right now for protecting music. Leaking an album early and can really destroy any momentum that a label/artist is trying to build up. Leaking music is exceptionally annoying to me because most of the time these people who are leaking albums aren’t doing it because they love the band, they just want to be the ones that leaked it first. It’s like a game to them and their ignorance can have an adverse effect on people’s lives.

H: If you had to guess, where is Jesea Lee in five years?

J: Going down a giant slide made of Laffy Taffy into a pool of money! Honestly though, I love being a publicist and working in the music business, so that’s where I see myself in five years.

H: What are your current career goals, and more importantly – what hurdles are preventing you from reaching them?

J: My current career goals are pretty simple. To get as much press and exposure for my artists as possible. The only thing preventing me from reaching them would be writers not responding, ha!

H: Okay, I think that is all I have for right now. Before I let you go, are there any final thoughts or observations that you would like to share with our readers?

J: Dream big, live bigger.

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News

Industry Spotlight: Brian Volk-Weiss (Comedy Dynamics)

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the first Industry Spotlight column of the week. We have been looking forward to this interview for quite some time and could not be happier with the results. The topic has very little to do with music, but if you read on you will discover there is more to the Haulix community than record labels and DIY musicians.

This blog exists to promote the future of the entertainment industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your entertainment-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Haulix is most commonly associated with helping musicians fight piracy and securely distribute their media, but we also work with a large number of comedians every single year. Standup comedy has made a huge resurgence in the last half decade, and Haulix has been there to help various labels keep their media safe every step of the way. We have previously spoken to publicists who worked in the comedy realm in addition to dabbling in music, but today we are dropping music for the first time ever in order to talk about the life of a company that specializes in making people laugh.

Brian Volk-Weiss is the man behind Comedy Dynamics, which until a few months ago was known as New Wave Dynamics. Together with his team of standup loving employees, Brian has been bringing comedy into the lives of people around the world for the better part of the last decade. He’s worked with virtually every big name comic today, and those he has yet to connect with will likely join the Comedy Dynamics family in the years to come. I had the opportunity to discuss Brian’s work life with the man himself earlier this week, and now I am sharing that insight, as well as a preview of what Comedy Dynamics has in store for the future, with all of you.

H: Hello, Brian. Thank you for joining us today. How are things in California?

B: Yea, morning is my favorite time of day. It’s funny I’m saying this on a call, but it’s typically before phones start to ring. I love getting in before 730, and I usually get more done between 730 and 9am than any other 90-minute period during the day.

I do have an advantage of being out here on the West Coast. I can get up and work with our East Coast offices before things get too crazy over here. I digress however, we could talk about scheduling and time codes all day.

H: We’ve been looking forward to speaking with you for a while, so let’s go ahead and dive right in. I want to talk about Comedy Dynamics, but first I would like to learn a little about you. You’re known for working in comedy, so I’m curious when your interest with standup began. Is there a particular special that caught your interest at a young age?

B: This is going to sound a bit cliche, but it’s [Eddie Murphy’s] Raw. I grew up watching Star Trek, Star Wars, and Raw. The funny thing is, by the time I got out of college I had probably seen Raw 100-150 times and no other comedy special.

H: Just that one?

B: Yes. When I got out to LA I went to the Laugh Factory and I saw three shows on a Saturday night. That was all it took. I was hooked. It has not surpassed Star Wars in my book, but it has tied it.

H: We might as well cover this early on, who is your favorite comedian?

B: My favorite is Bill Cosby. Even though Raw was the special I watched a lot, Cosby created the albums that I grew up listening to. They were my parent’s records.

We’re working with Bill now on a few projects, and it’s literally the most surreal thing in the world. I’m not able to speak with my heroes.

H: My research shows that you attended the University of Iowa. What did you study?

B: I studied what they called Communications. For whatever reason, the program I was in was never called Film, it was called Communications, but in reality it was the film department. So I made a bunch of student films, learned the history of movies, and ironically my favorite class was a course on Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I had no idea I would work in comedy at the time, but that was probably my favorite class in college.

The story I always tell is one about the last day of school. As I was saying goodbye to my professors they were wheeling out the analog editing system and bringing in their first digital setup. I believe I was the last class to actually cut film.

H: How did you first get involved in the entertainment industry? Did you first go to college, or was there perhaps an internship that introduced you to the business side of things?

B: If it wasn’t for Star Wars I would be a dentist, or lawyer, or doctor in New York. I’m the first person in my family’s four or five generation history to only have a Bachelor’s degree. Went to Iowa, graduated, got a car and moved out to LA. I did every job I could find for about nine months and then ended up at a management company that was very focused on comedy. I rose to the position of manager and managed talent for about a decade. From management, I went to producing, and from producing I went to distribution, and through all that the company continued to grow. That company was sold to New Wave eleven years ago, and basically three years ago I retired my management cleats to focus on producing and being an executive running the company.

One of the greatest things that could have ever happened to me was being a manager for so long. Doing that taught me what is really important to comedians, and I think it’s what I learned through those efforts that makes us so good at what we do today.

H: New Wave recently became Comedy Dynamics. When did the name change take place and why?

B: We launched the first piece of the consumer facing part of our company in July, and that was on Hulu. Next month is Roku, and between now and June we will be on all the streaming platforms.

This is a true story. As we prepared to launch with Hulu, more and more people told me we should consider having Comedy in our name. As we got closer I realized they were right, and part of that is due to the fact ‘new wave dynamics’ is actually a real life engineering term. That, combined with the fact we wanted comedy in our title, made us Comedy Dynamics.

H: Comedy Dynamics has a record label, but you’re probably best known for the numerous specials you have produced over the years. What came first, the label or the video side of things? Did they launch simultaneously?

B: Great question. It was always the same, so we would launch the special side with the audio (digital) side. About 18 months after that we began releasing physical titles as well.

H: Comedy Dynamics has worked alongside Comedy Central Records in the past. Are you partnered in any way?

B: No, not at all. We’ve had a long and wonderful relationship with them, but we are not partnered with them in any way.

H: I’ve noticed there are several releases, like Marc Maron’s ‘Thinky Pain,’ where Comedy Dynamics handles DVD/Digital, but Comedy Central Records presses the special to vinyl. So I was curious as to how that works.

B: Basically, sometimes we approach an artist about working with us and we’ll sit down to draw up a deal. When that happens, their representatives will tell us that artist already has a standing deal with someone else. So ‘Thinky Pain,’ Marc Maron had a multiple record deal with Comedy Central Records. They told us, and we carved vinyl out of our agreement. That’s not something we like to do necessarily, but it comes up from time to time and we have a good business relationship so we make it work.

H: I follow. Have you gotten into the vinyl world yet?

B: Yea, we just released Chris Porter’s recent standup special as our first vinyl.

H: Can we expect more vinyl releases in the future?

B: Here’s the thing. Nobody is ever going to make a lot of money off vinyl. The thing that makes vinyl great is that when artists want to do it they are very invested in doing so. They want to give their fans, the true comedy aficionados, what they want, and those are the people we are trying to target. They want high quality vinyl, and we will do anything to keep them happy.

H: You’ve been fortunate enough to work with a lot of big names, so I’m curious as to how you go about recruiting talent to work with your company.

B: There are two answers:

Answer number one is this – I go with my gut. If they make me laugh, or I find them interesting, great. Sometimes I find people where their standup is not something I would have on repeat or listen to on a regular basis, but I recognize their genius and that they’re doing something great. I want to support that

The other answer, which comes from my management days, is that I take notes or suggestions from people I have become close with through the business. They know I trust them and they reach out to showcase new talent, pass along links, and generally recommend comedians they think we may be interested in working with.

H: Do you have a standing deal with Netflix and Comedy Central, or do you work on a special-by-special basis?

B: Comedy Central is special-by-special. Netflix is a combination of the two. We are very fortunate that we get in business with them (Netflix) when we did. We sold our first special to them four years ago, and things have been great.

H: You’re very engrained in the modern comedy scene. Can you offer any advice to aspiring comedians on networking and making friends within the entertainment business?

B: This is 95% of the story: Practice, practice, practice. Go into this knowing, and I’m speaking from my experience, that is takes six to seven years of performing regularly to get good.

The second part is location. If you were not fortunate enough to be born in New York or LA, go there. The chances of being discovered in other cities are far less likely than the big city. Start there, definitely start at home, but move when you’re able.

Lastly, be everyone’s friend, or at least try to get along with everyone. You need to be in a position where everyone you interact with, especially other comedians, will be friendly. You are going to rise through the ranks with these people, and it’s far easier to do with support from others. That’s where your first break will come from.

H: That’s all I have for you. Before we part ways, do you have any upcoming releases you wish to promote?

B: We have quite a few projects lined up before the end of the year, but our three big specials will be coming from Doug Benson (on Netflix November 6), Chelsea Peretti, and Bill Burr. We only produced Chelsea and Bill, which I always like to clarify.

We are also about six special into 2015 already. The one I’m most excited about right now is Lisa Lampenelli. We are shooting her new special in March. We’ve tried to work with her for a long time, and I’m excited that it’s finally coming together.

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News

Industry Spotlight: Andrew Jones (Checkered Owl)

Hello, everyone! Thank you for taking a few minutes from your hectic schedule to scroll through the latest content on our blog. Today’s feature just so happens to be the first interview of the month, and I think it sets the bar pretty high for everything that will follow. 

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

If you have been following the blog on a fairly regular basis over the last two months you have no doubt noticed a handful of guest columns contributed by a man known as Andrew Jones. We typically feature our guest writers through interviews ahead of their content’s debut, but Andrew’s schedule has been so hectic we ended up running his work before letting you know anything about the man who brought it all to life. Today, that long-awaited insight into the mind of the man behind Checkered Owl is ready to be shared.

Not long ago, Andrew Jones and I connected over the phone and spent thirty minutes discussion the music industry. Andrew told me about his childhood in Canada, his earliest memories of music, the years he spent making a name for himself in the states before heading back north, and beyond. We talked about his efforts to help independent artists gain the exposure they deserve, as well as the problems with the way labels and management groups approach working with talent today. You can read those thoughts, as well as comment on a number of additional topics, below.

The world needs more people like Andrew Jones. He is a brilliant and passionate music fan who puts the creative endeavors of the artists he supports before everything else. He’s setting the curve for how artist management will be handled in the future, and it’s an honor to share his journey up to this point with you today. If you would like to learn more about Andrew, please follow him on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Before we begin, go ahead and introduce yourself.

A: Sure, my name is Andrew Jones and I run Checkered Owl Media. I do a mix of artist management, artist development, video production, and everything in between.

H: You wear a lot of hats.

A: I think that is the modern manager’s goal, to be able to handle whatever tasks are present. Sometimes you book a show and realize you need someone to do a poster design. It all ties together, so it’s all worth learning.

H: When you think about your earliest memories of music, what experiences come to mind?

A: I was always into music, but the first thing I clearly remember is being at a garage sale and finding a turntable. We took it home and my dad put on The Beatles’ White Album. I knew the band, but I had not experienced a lot of music in depth, and listening to that album just completely blew my mind. I fell in love with music in a big way, and it has been that way ever sense.

H: Do you remember your first concert?

A: My first concert was actually a local band. I don’t know how to pronounce their name, but it is spelled K-Y-R-I-E. They were a band that had members who just so happened to work with my dad and he took me to see their show.

H: When you say local, what are you referring to? Where are you from?

A: I’m from Alberta (Canada). Edmonton is the nearest place people may have heard of. I’ve been here most of my life, though I did spend a few years in Calgary and even worked in Nashville for a while. I’ve thought about going to the west coast, but haven’t gotten there yet.

H: We have not had many opportunities to speak to people from Canada about working in the music industry. Tell me, did you experience any kind of ‘lightbulb’ moment when you realized a life in music was the one for you?

A: I was in high school and I was playing in bands, but I eventually realized that I was not going to be the guy who grew up to play in bands professionally. I still wanted to be involved in music, so I decided to promote a show, and sense I was in high school and didn’t know any better I booked a national touring band called Thousand Foot Krutch. There were flights, a $5000 guarantee, and a huge venue to fill, but for whatever reason I don’t think their booking agent ever caught on to the fact I was 16. Luckily, things were really well. better than most first shows could hope to go, and from then on I was pretty much hooked on music.

H: I started in booking as well, but I only worked with local bands at first. Taking on all the responsibility associated with bigger productions must have been daunting, especially for someone your age.

A: I probably should have started with local bands (laughs), but I was 16 and did not know any better, so I went for it. I’m happy I did. There was a moment before the show when the sound and lights company explained they were double booked and had to pull out. I panicked, but it came together, and it was in that moment I learned that no matter what you have to do whatever has to be done in order to make sure shows happen.

H: Did you pursue any secondary education? Perhaps to study the music business?

A: I did go to college, but my degree is in Performing Arts.

H: That’s pretty close.

A: Mine was mostly in theater. You know, a mix of everything.

H: I’ve interviewed at least four publicists who have degrees in Performing Arts, so I think you’re in good company. Did you continue booking through college, or was it more off and on.

A: It was off and on for a while. I was eventually running a family theater program, and during that time I started booking heavily again. In college I had no money, so that had to wait until I could start working again. One of the bands that came up was fronted by Luke Dowler, who I now manage, and it was there that my journey in that area of the industry began.

H: What is the origin story behind Checkered Owl?

A: I’d been working from Nashville for about a year, and to be honest I was getting tired. I wanted to be more involved than my career as an agent would allow, so I decided to start my own Management group. I spoke with my wife about it, and together we came up with the name.

H: Is there a story or any kind of significance to the name Checkered Owl?

A: Not really. We liked that owls are up at night and the fact the industry is usually most active at night, but that’s about it. My wife thought of it, we both thought it was rad, and we decided then to run with it.

H: I think that was a good decision. Even in the last week there has been at least one occasion when the name crossed my mind and captured my imagination. It’s the kind of name that you want to know more about, even if you cannot explain why. Kudos for that.

A: I like that. Thanks.

H: The reason I wanted to talk to you about Checkered Owl is because I believe it’s built on an idea that many companies will begin to follow in the years to come. It’s not about doing one thing for artists, but doing as many things as you can under one roof.

A: That’s completely right. I think that as labels start to change in the years ahead that management groups are going to become hubs in the industry. Artists are pulling from a number of revenue streams these days, and as we move forward I want to create a place where we can handle a wide array of tasks for artists. If you have a management, publicist, and booking agent there is a lot of down time in those people’s various roles. What I want to do is create a place where all that is happening through one time. Working with artists to develop and grow their career.

H: There is a blog element to Checkered Owl that I also wanted to touch on. Could you tell us a bit about this part of your efforts and what you hope to accomplish through your content?

A: The goals are 1. To really help artists out and give them one more place to learn from a slightly different angle. Everyone has their own preferred writing style to learn from, and I just wanted to add my voice. 2. Is just to connect with artists and other in the industry. It’s a great way to network and meet other people in music.

H: What are your current career goals?

A: I would say my goal is to reach a place where I have all the tools needed to be able to help the artists I discover and want to work with.

H: That’s pretty selfless.

A: What can I say? I want to work with artists and help culture by giving it more of the art and creativity it needs.

H: What would you say is the biggest problem in the music industry today?

A: I think too often, and this is improving in recent times, but too often the business and creative side of the entertainment industry do not always jive as well as they should, and if they don’t the business side of things will take over. That is bad for art and bad for people, as well as bad for the industry over a long enough timeline.

H: Do you have anything in the immediate future should be checking out from you and Checkered Owl?

A: My artists all have releases in the coming months. I will also be releasing a music video from a country artists I am working. There will be more blogging too. I also offer artist consultations and lyric videos, so I’ll do those as well.

H: Thank you for talking to me today. It’s been great learning about your journey.

A: Thank you for the opportunity. I’m sure we will be in touch in the weeks ahead.

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News

Industry Spotlight: Chris Seth Jackson (BamDing)

Hello, everyone! This is our second post of the day, as well as the second in a two-part series of guest posts from music industry blogger Andrew Jones. He shared this interview with us several days back and we thought it was too good to not share with all of you. 

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

A little while ago my friend Chris Seth Jackson (you probably know him from the now defunct howtorunaband.com) told me about a new service he started that automates the booking process for bands, allowing them to take some of the heavy lifting out of booking shows. I was intrigued and thought you might be as well, so decided to ask him a few questions about his new venture:

1.So Chris, What exactly prompted you to start this new automated booking venture?

I’ve had the idea in the back of my head for a while. I decided to just do it after staying up until 4am sending out booking requests for my own music project. Much of what we do when sending out booking requests is just copy and pasting the same thing over and over again. When you do that much repetitive work, that’s just screaming for a computer to do it for you.

I’d rather spend those hours spent booking on better things…like sleeping. Haha!

Plus, I like having a system to follow up with venues on a regular basis. Once I’ve narrowed down the venues and dates I want to play, another chunk of time is just making sure those venues saw your booking request in the first place. Silence is what you usually get when sending out just one email. To get booked, you need to have a systematic way of following up with that first email. Again, this is a perfect problem for a computer; not a musician.

2. How exactly will this help artists book shows? How does it work?

My service sends out booking requests on your behalf. It then follows up with those venues once every two weeks (or however long you specify).

The emails I send to the venues look like they come from you. When the venue responds to a request, it goes to the musician’s inbox like a normal email.My service just sends that email for you, and it looks like it comes directly from you. The booker is none the wiser that the musician is using a service to send emails.

To set up venues, I have an easy form where you can set up the venues you want booked. You give me an email address or a contact form for the venues. Then, we set up an email template that we send to venues. You know, the basic “We are The Awesome Rockers. We’re looking for shows for August and September. Here’s our music….”.

You can personalize this template however you want. You can also set up separate templates for different venues. So, if you have more of a personal relationship with a club, you can have something like “Hey, John! It’s Seth again. Just seeing if you have anything for us for August or September.” Once set up, my system will send out the initial booking requests. By default, it will then send another email every 2 weeks to those venues unless you specify otherwise.Some places only want to be contacted once a month. Others only want to be contacted once…ever. You control that.

I send out a reminder and a text message to you a couple of days before sending out these bookings, giving you enough time to add more venues, change your dates, or quit sending to some venues. Right now, the service is mainly me doing things manually for you on your behalf. It’s very personalized at this point. I try to make sure I’m doing the right things for musicians and making an awesome service to get musicians more shows, and, more importantly, save them hours of time each month.

3. Last time we talked you didn’t have a name put to this yet, is the plan to do a slow ramp-up or…?

The service is now called BamDing.

I’m really focused on getting musicians signed up to it and seeing what they want from the service. I suppose the analogy is making a full album. There’s bands that spend a ton of money and months upon months making a full album. Then, when it’s done, they find out no one wants it. Instead, if the band did quick demos in their basement and some live recordings, they could find out what people would buy off them. Once they figure out the winning songs, then put a price tag on it and see if people will buy the album (like KickStarter or doing a “pre-order”). That’s kind of what I’m doing here.

I’m figuring out what musicians want and then delivering it to them without all the bells and whistles. As I get more customers, the service will get more features and cool designs. So, it’s all coming! But hopefully not too slow of a ramp-up!

Luckily, I’m also a software engineer, so I can code up quite a bit on my own. But it’s more important to understand what musicians want over just writing a ton of code. So most of my time is spent going back and forth with musicians in emails understanding how they want to book their shows.

4. Finally, as people start into the booking process, especially if it’s automated, I think it’s pretty important to be aware of how the industry works and what kind of e-mails to send. If you could give to tips for booking e-mails, what would they be?

I do supply a basic template with my service to make it easy to get started.

But here’s a few tips when writing your own email template.

  • Bookers are busy. Get to the point. (Give them links to your full bio and press releases. That info should be on your website, not in your email.)
  • Know your draw and be honest about it. Don’t lie to get a show. If you promise 20 people and no one shows, you’re not going to be asked back.
  • Venues book months in advance. Trying to get a show for next month…or next week…can be difficult. Be flexible enough to book 2 to 4 months out.
  • Make your genre simple. A booker can understand “rock”. They may have a difficult time figuring out how to put you on a line-up when you say you are “experimental psycho-gressive jazz rock core”.
  • Have live video. Not glossy, over-produced music videos, but live videos. Bookers want to see how you look live.
  • Have easily streamable music. * Don’t add attachments to an email. Some bookers won’t even open an email with an attachment for fear of viruses.
  • Only have one person doing the booking. Two people will mess it all up and end up either overbooking or double-booking the same date. * Have a website. It’s more important than an EPK.
  • Be prepared to get a full line-up yourself. In addition to venues in a market, it’s important to know other acts you’d work well with. If you’re having trouble getting a show, put a full line-up together yourself. This makes it easy for a booker, and they’ll be more willing to book you if it’s already set up.
  • Be persistent. That’s another reason I set up my service. To automate persistence. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get a reply. Bookers are busy. Just follow up with the venue again in two weeks if you don’t hear back from them.
  • Be organized. (My system helps with this as well.) Keep a spreadsheet of venues you contacted and when you contacted them last. Also mark the last times you’ve played that venue.

Thanks Chris! That is solid advice. Any final words?

If anyone is curious about my automated band booking service, just go to http://bamding.com and put in your info. I’ll get in touch with you and see if this is something that works for you.

This post was written by Andrew Jones, editor of Checkered Owl. It originally ran on his blog, but we loved it so much we felt it deserved to shared once more on ours. If you like his work and want to read more of his writing, or if you want to be super cool and offer him full time industry employment, reach out and connect with him on Twitter.

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Industry Spotlight: Andrew West (The Noise Collective)

Hello, everyone. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to read about the industry we all contribute to on a daily basis. We have been searching coast to coast for someone working on the kind of project highlighted in today’s piece, and we hope the advice they have to offer inspires others to follow in their footsteps. 

This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Growing up in a town known for farming in the southwest corner of Michigan I had absolutely no idea how I would ever meet the kind of people who could help me make a name for myself in music. I asked everyone I knew if they knew anyone in entertainment, but the best anyone in my little world could do was offer was a distant cousin who may or may not have been a stunt double for David Duchovny once upon a time. His name was also David and no, he did not offer much help.

Eventually, I entered college and learned the hard truth that sometimes in life the easiest way to get what you want also requires the most work. I could stand around for years waiting to be introduced to someone who could help me, or I could put myself out there and see what – if any – attention my work would draw. I launched a music blog not long after, which put me in a position to meet publicists, and over the next several years I used my skills as a writer to navigate the industry. Whenever a major event presented itself, such as SXSW, I went with a hundred business cards ready to be dispersed. I knew if I ever wanted to leave cornfields in the rear view mirror I needed to know people who understand what it took to live as a music business professional. It took almost a decade, but I eventually found my way.

If I had stumbled upon a genie or some kind of wish-granting deity while on my journey into the industry, the one thing I would have asked for before anything else would have been an easier way to meet people with similar interests in my desired career field. That kind of magic never came my way, unfortunately, but for the better part of the last two years a group of industry professionals in New York City have been putting on the kind of events that would have made my younger self jump with joy. They’re called The Noise Collective, and in the interview below founding member Andrew West explains how he and his team and doing their part to further unite the industry at large.

If you would like to learn more about The Noise Collective and their plans for the future, please make it a point to follow the group on Facebook. Additional questions and comments can be added at the end of this post.

H: Hello, thank you for joining us. Would you like to introduce yourself to our audience?

A: Sure. My name is Andrew, and I work with The Noise Collective.

H: It’s great to have you with us this afternoon. I know you’re based out of New York, but as the majority our readers live elsewhere I am going to go out on a limb and say many people may not understand what The Noise Collective is based on its name alone. Could you shed a little light on what is you do?

A: A couple of years ago myself and a few others I knew found ourselves in New York City without really knowing anyone there. We were new to the city and we discovered there wasn’t really a mixer or networking event for people in the music industry. So we came up with the idea of The Noise Collective. It’s not really a panel or anything, it’s more like a room where you can hangout and get to know people every month. It’s a chill environment to interact with people from the industry with passions similar to your own.

H: When was your first event?

A: Our first event was around a year and a half ago. I think it was January 2013. It took a few months to plan, between deciding where to hold it and whether or not we wanted to have bands play. We eventually thought that having bands playing would take away from what we were trying to do. Plus, there is so much going on in New York City every day of the week that having live music would force us to compete for venues. Removing the music aspect allowed for us to create a chill networking environment.

H: Do you remember how many people showed up for that first event? How have your numbers developed since launch?

A: We had around 200-250 people. It was packed. We did it at this place called Brooklyn Stable, which is a bar, and everyone was pretty excited about it. Our team was really confident in the event, and we put a lot of effort into the promotion. It worked out so well that we eventually had to move to a bigger venue.

H: Oh wow. That’s really impressive. So where do you hold your events now?

A: Idle Hands. You may not know this since you’re not in New York City, but it’s kind of like THE music bar to go to. One of the owners is very heavily involved in music, and a lot of the bands playing in the area will go there after their show to hang out. They have different theme nights and all kinds of events, so we figured it would be a good place to host our gatherings.

H: You had a CMJ showcase in 2013. Are you planning another for 2014?

A: CMJ is basically New York City’s SXSW. It’s held in October every year, and last year we hosted a showcase that had four artists perform. It was great. There were about 300 people there and again, it kind of took the brand to another level. We’re planning to do it again, and there is a part of us that wants the same venue, but we haven’t actually gotten that planned out yet. That’s something we’re working on this week.

H: You talked a little bit about the goals you had when you launched The Noise Collective earlier. Have those goals and the things you hope to achieve with each event changed since that time?

A: It’s sort of the same goal in general, but we have added some things and taken away others that did not work. For example, we started having a playlist that we play during events. Unsigned bands in New York are encouraged to submit their songs for the list, which is updated constantly, and then when they attend our events there is always a chance their song will play through our system while they’re in the middle of a conversation. There are about 2000-3000 bands on the list, and we do our best to stay in contact with them regularly.

We also have these things called Spotlight Guests. We book 3 or 4 every month, and they’re just people from within the industry offering advice. We have had basically every label in house. It’s different than having a panel because our events are about conversations, not just talking.

So those are a couple of things, and we have more coming. We launched in Buffalo in June, and we are hoping to get more cities in the future. Right now, we’re getting more sponsor for our NYC events and trying to expand in that way.

H: Speaking of expansion, and you touched on this a second ago, have you put a lot of thought into expanding your events into other cities? Do you feel other people should maybe take it upon themselves to launch something similar?

A: Right now we’re building a website and developing our online presence. We did launch in Buffalo in June, and we are planning to move that to other cities in the future. Los Angeles is a big one, and Philadelphia is on the list too. 

I think it would be great to do, it’s just that there are only 6 of us on the team here. We’re hoping to spread the word to other cities where these events can kind of take on a life of their own. A lot of these cities, I think, could really use something like this.

H: Great. Well, that’s all the questions I have for you this afternoon. I think what you’re working on is really interesting and whether or not its nationally recognized I wholeheartedly believe there is a demand for this type of event and hopefully you can continue to spread your efforts.

A: Thank you very much.

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Industry Spotlight: Gary Suarez

Hello and welcome to a very special edition of our Industry Spotlight series. We usually reserve Friday afternoon for our company update, but we have been creating so much great content as of late that we could not resist the urge to share something extra special (and extra long) with you before the week let out.  If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

I have a confession to make: Dragging my feet when it comes to transcribing interviews running over thirty minutes in length is a skill I have essentially mastered over the last six years of my writing career. It’s not the kind of thing anyone should be proud of, and truth be told there is a small part of me that hates the rest of me for making this professional shortcoming public information. Still, it needed to be said before getting too deep into today’s feature because it’s an article that should have run several weeks ago.

Gary Suarez is one of the most entertaining and insightful music critics working today. He’s the kind of guy that knows a little bit about everything this business has to offer, which makes him the perfect person to highlight in our ongoing Industry Spotlight series. For more than a decade Gary has been writing about the best, worst, and most unique music the world has to offer. He’s also become a prominent figure in the world of social media, critiquing various aspects of the entertainment business in creative 140-character bursts. Today, in a rare interview, he tells us how it all came together.

I had the good fortune of speaking with Gary about his professional life a little over a month ago. My plan at the time was to run our conversation the following week, but as we began to chat the minutes quickly added up, and by the time I reached for the stop button I noticed that we were closer to hitting the hour mark than almost any interview I had done for this blog up to that point. I told myself the best way to get through the transcription challenge I had set for myself was to work on it right away, but that ultimately did not happen. Instead, I procrastinated like a fool and the amount of work I had to do continued to pile up until I had no choice except to dedicate a weekend to transcription. That occurred just a few days ago, and now I am finally able to share with you one of my favorite conversations to date.

If you would like to learn more about Gary and his ongoing efforts in entertainment, do yourself a favor and make it a point to follow him on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Hey there! To help us get started, please introduce yourself to our readers:

GS: Sure. My name is Gary Suarez, and I am a freelance music journalist.

H: That’s a good answer.

GS: Do you need me to tell you about the publications I write for?

H: Don’t worry, we’ll probably get there.

GS: Ah, okay. I don’t meant to rush you or anything, I’m just used to being on the other side of this conversation.

H: Completely understandable. That’s kind of how these tend to go. No one knows what to do because they’re usually the person responsible for asking questions, not answering them.

GS: Yea, you’re one of the few people who have actually asked me to talk at length about what I do.

H: Well I feel fortunate that you said yes. We’re talking on Monday right now, so let’s start there. What are Mondays like for you?

GS: Mondays are good because I usually have something to do. I either have a deadline from the weekend, or something new that I was asked to do over the weekend, so by 10AM things are in full swing. I also spend a lot of time on Twitter, talking to people and learning what it is that people are talking about. I think that’s important because you’re not just part of a conversation, which is a big thing in itself, but by having those conversations you may be able to figure out a new story or a new angle for a story that you never considered before.

H: I couldn’t agree more. Before we get any further with your current situation, I want to get a feel for your history with this business. When you think of your earliest memories involving music, what comes to mind?

GS: For me, it’s very much home listening. It’s going through my parents’ record collections and discovering music through that. Going through vinyl and seeing a cover that looked interesting, or a band name that I recognized. It’s the kind of thing where I could go through time and time again, and different things would stick out. My mother’s side was a lot of folk records, like early Bob Dylan. My father’s side is a bit more classic rock, like The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. And then there is a lot in the middle there, like Elton John records, just a lot of 60s and 70s rock and folk that was a big part of my youth.

The other part of my youth is radio listening, which is basically pop radio and whatever rap music made it through to the radio. That was the flip side to listening to my parents’ collection.

H: Can you pinpoint a moment in your youth when music became more than a hobby for you?

GS: I think for me there is a point where you can that a band is ‘yours.’ People talk about their ‘parent’s bands’ as bands they discovered through their parents, but there’s always a point in someone’s life where there is a band or artist that belongs to them. For me, that was Nirvana. They came along at a pretty critical point in my adolescents, it connects with me, it was the sound of right then, and it became my thing. I think that is one of those moments you cannot force on someone, it just has to happen, and everyone has that moment. Everyone has heard something for the first time and adopted it as their own, and for me that was absolutely Nirvana.

H: Was it Nevermind?

GS: It was Nevermind, and it quickly became Bleach too. Basically, when you find out something like this means something to you, and then you discover they made something before that thing that means so much, you get that other record as well. Listening to those two side by side was pretty important to me.

H: You know, Nirvana is one of a few bands I find a lot of writers referencing as a group who were influential on their lives.

GS: It’s strange because now, at this point in my life, Nirvana’s music does not mean a ton to me. It’s not what I care about now, and while I was happy to know the surviving member plays a show in Brooklyn it was one of those things where I later realized I did not really care all that much. There was a period of time, however, a very significant amount of time in my youth where it meant the world to me. I can imagine there is a 12 year old version of me who would be really annoyed to learn they were inducted into something as uncool as the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.

H: I think every music writer has a younger version of themselves that is frustrated with things that are happening in music today.

GS: Haha, yea.

H: Did you go to school for journalism or music? When did journalism come into the picture?

GS: It’s really interesting because I have always identified – even at a young age – as a writer. Not necessarily about music, because I was really into creative writing as well, but I was always interested in writing. I went to school for marketing. If anyone out there is reading this and looking for career advice, don’t go to school for journalism if you want to be a music writer. Actually, don’t become a music writer at all, but if that is absolutely what you want to do then go to school for something like marketing because that provides you with a skill set that will allow you to be successful in this business. You will be able to not only find an audience, but also speak to them.

H: Did you actually write for any school papers, or did you somehow maneuver your way right into music writing?

GS: When I was in college I started writing for a number of zines and e-zines. They were all kind of short lived, but they provided me the opportunity to write about music I was really interested in and that was helpful. Then in 2000 or 2001 I started writing for a site called Brainwashed. That site, which is still around today, is one of the best music sites on the net. It’s basically what Pitchfork originally model itself on. That team was very much a fan of what Brainwashed were doing, and Pitchfork followed suit early on. I think it’s one of the reasons Pitchfork has endured, to be honest. They cover the popular pop records, but they also have people writing about really dense, experimental, avant garde records.

So, Brainwashed was my first real opportunity to write about music you wouldn’t see in the pages of Rolling Stone or Spin. These were bands who had niche audiences, and I considered myself one of those who was ‘cool enough’ to understand it. I hope my sarcasm comes through here, but it really was fun, and it’s around this time my focus in writing started to move away from fiction or poetry. I felt more empowered when writing about music, and over time that became my medium. I still write about other things, but the core of what I do is music and entertainment writing.

H: Do you recall the first piece you wrote for Brainwashed?

GS: It’s hard to say, but it was probably something on Warped Records because at the time I was writing for them I was also hosting a college radio show. I would split the two-hour show into two parts, and the first part was industrial music. The second part was more experimental and intended to cater to that crowd. It was one in the morning so I could play anything I wanted. So yea, the first things I wrote for Brainwashed were some of those odd, off-kilter records. You couldn’t really dance to it, you could maybe nod your head to it, but something about it was very appealing to me.

From there, I wrote for them for a number of year and went through a number of changes in my life. I wrote about everything from Japanese noise to Jamaican dance hall, 70s noise, and a bunch of things in between. I covered this gamut and I think it was that effort that made me something of a generalist, as opposed to a specialist, when it comes to music writing. A lot of people in this business focus on a specific area, so you have rock writers, rap writers, and so on. A generalist, however, is something I never expected to become. I was kind of a snob when I started, but over time I turned into someone who could appreciate music he thoughts was good regardless of whether or not other people thought it was good.

H: I think that is turning point every professional writer faces at some point. It’s kind of a weird thing though, because it forces you to realize and accept that you too have changed over time. You’re not the same person anymore.

GS: And the thing is that you’ll get criticism from those who have read you. People will complain that you’ve changed. I wrote for MetalSucks for quite a few years, and then in late 2012 I decided that I wanted to expand my writing and nurture that generalist sense that I had. When I stopped writing for it, however, I was lumped into this group of metal writers who had decided to start writing about rap. That was funny to me because rap had originally been such a big part of my life, but at that time I had no outlet for the things I had to say. Now that I did, people thought I was just another metal writer who jumped over to rap. It was surprising to me.

H: I get that. Any time we do advice columns for young writers I try to mention that learning to write many different genres is key.

GS: I think that’s true. What I will say to add on to that point is that I don’t believe there is any harm in specializing, especially at the start. If there is a genre or area of music you feel confident speaking about then that is great place to start. I wouldn’t say that those who have never listened to country should start a country site and start reviewing records right away. There is a value to being able to do that at one point, but specializing early on can really help you get a start in writing. It has real value.

H: How long were you writing before you started to make money as a writer?

GS: Let me preface that by saying that if you’re doing this for the money then you’re an idiot. This is not about money, it’s about passion. If you want to make money at this, you don’t write, you build one of these giant websites and recruit people to write for you. That’s where the money is, not in the writing. I won’t put any particular sites on blast for what they do and don’t pay, but I will say that doing this for the money is ridiculous. You need a day job, or a side job, or you really need to hustle. You need to really commit to the freelance lifestyle and accept the challenges that come with that, be it living with four people in a tiny apartment or moving back home for another decade while eating ramen to make it work. A life in writing is not a glamorous one, even if you’re writing about something as cool as music.

To get back to your original question, I think that when you first you should be less concerned with what site is going to pay as you are with what site is going to offer you the best exposure. I don’t mean that in the abstract sense either, if you choose to invest your time in a site that has good reach and no budget that’s a good way to build up your clips while refining your writing. I think that those who are actively seeking paid gigs right out the gate you’re attempting to compete with those who have been doing this for a while and have built up reputations in the business.

Anyways…So I’ve been writing for about fifteen years at this point, and I think I started getting paid about 2/3 of the way through that. It felt good, and it was good for the ego, but again you need to have a day job or side job so that you’re not constantly stressing about paying the bills and/or filling the fridge.

H: What are some of the side jobs you have had while pursuing writing?

GS: For me, I think the best thing you can do is get into office work. Find a job that is a salaried position ideally, and something that is tied into your degree or your interests. Something that can give you health coverage is best. Freelancers are responsible for their own health care coverage, and it can be expensive.

Otherwise, I know a lot of people who work in bars or do aggressive temp work. I think there is a lot of reliability to office work. It’s something you can fall back on if things dry up, or if the rates your being paid begin to change and no longer cover bills. It can carry you until you’re able to do those things you’re passionate about.

H: What career goals do you have at this point? Is there a book in your future? Do you want to keep writing articles? What do you see on the horizon?

GS: It’s interesting because I had a really great 2013 in terms of writing. I got into outlets that I had been reading for years, but never got into. I also got into a few places I read when I was younger, but had never been published in. It was a very encouraging experience. My definition for success now has less to do with outlets, though I definitely want to keep writing for these publications, but I want to focus on what I’m writing. I want to make sure I’m writing about things that are interesting, and that the reviews I write have more to say then whether or not something is good. So for me, it’s a lot more about personal goals and what I hope to achieve as a writer. A book is not something I’m particularly interested in, though people have told me I should consider it. To be honest, I like the instant gratification that comes with publishing content online. You can write an article and boom – it’s out in the world. It triggers that part of the brain that recognizes satisfaction far faster than a book would.

H: I get that instant gratification thing, and I think it is something that has spoiled many young writers.

GS: The problem, for me, is that I think that rush of dopamine we get from posting content is in many ways a cheap high. Many people are writing carelessly, or falling into traps like ‘listicles’ that encourage bad habits and don’t necessarily make for good reading, but do provide instant gratification for the content creator.

H: I think you’re making a great point. I’ve been working on piecing together my own portfolio and I’ve noticed how drastically the number of listicles have increased in my own output over the last few years. It kind of comes across as lazy, at least to me.

GS: There are legitimate reasons for it, as well as business reasons. If you’re running a place like Buzzfeed then you’re writing for an audience and that is what you’re going to provide. What I find discouraging is when you see people with talent, or people who have shown promise as writers funnel themselves into that kind of content because it’s where the $25 is. I don’t hate anyone for going after that $25, but if you’re trying to make it as a professional writer you’re selling yourself short and dumbing down your content.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

GS: I would probably burn it all down, but I guess that is more than one thing. If I could do one thing it would be…I’ll liken it to this: If you want to buy a gun in this country there is a waiting period. If there was a way to do it I would impose a waiting period on writers for reviews. Make ‘em wait a few days or even a week before releasing their snap judgments. It’s never going to happen and it’s completely impossible to implement, but imagine what would happen to reviews if writers were forced to sit with a record for a week before publishing a single thing. I think we would get a lot more thoughtful responses, and we would do the music and the artists behind them more of a service than we do. Snap judgments and rushing to be first for a dopamine fix is not only bad for us, but also for the artists who spend countless hours and money to produce their work. We’re not being good partners in these scenarios. I’m not saying we have to be positive, in fact I think we should be more critical, but we should spend more time with music before creating content.

H: I only have two questions left for you. First off, what is the biggest challenge you face as a professional in music right now?

GS: I think it’s coming up with workable ideas. There are so many outlets that exist, and as a freelancer I am compelled to write for as many as possible on a regular basis, which means generating ideas. There are some editors who are good about saying they have something that would work for you, and that definitely happens, but pitching is still an important part of the process. You basically have to convince someone a subject is worth writing about, and some days I honestly don’t have a clue. Other times, like this past weekend, I was behind the wheel of a car talking to my fiancé when I started working out a pitch idea that randomly popped into my head.

H: We always end these conversations the same way. before we let you go, do you have any final thoughts or observations to share with our readers?

GS: One thing I wanted to stress that I talked about earlier is engagement on social media.

Social media, especially Twitter, is where your peers are. It’s where the editors you want to pitch are. It’s where the artists you want to write about are. And in many cases it’s where you can find the fans of the artists you want to write about. It’s all happening on social media, and even if you’re not the kind of person who likes tweeting or sharing images it’s important that you be on platforms like Twitter. Observe the industry and learn from it. That’s where the market is right now. By observing and participating in conversations on social media you can discover new opportunities that may have never come your way otherwise. Some of the best opportunities I have had in the past 18 months have come from interacting with writers, editors, and musicians though Twitter.

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