Panel Report:
Independent Club Bookers Forum
Moderator
Dave Kirby TKO
Tim Borror The Agency Group
Theresa Chambers The Knitting Factory
Amy Corbin C3 Presents
Roger LeBlanc Coach House / Galaxy Theatre
Allen Scott The Independent / Another Planet Ent.

Moderator Dave Kirby caught the panel's attention right off the bat by taking a page out of Sharon Osbourne's playbook and making this suggestion regarding the challenges indie club owners and promoters face today: "I think maybe what we should do is to have all the shows for free from now on. Free booze, free everything and we'll figure out how to pay for it later. But parking is $40," he said.

After a good laugh, the discussion turned to the issue of facility fees and whether the panelists use them. Roger LeBlanc, with the Galaxy Theatre and Coach House, said he doesn't use them as a rule.

"I've seen that happening more and more but, as a whole, we don't. Canyon Club does on some shows but they tend to do more adult contemporary stuff," he said. "On the younger kid shows, where the artists are really trying to lower ticket prices, it doesn't do any good to add $2 on and jack that ticket price up."

C3 Presents' Amy Corbin said she does charge a facility fee of $1.50 in certain circumstances.

"We have a facility fee outdoors at Stubb's, which is our big room," Corbin explained. "But for anything outdoor under Stubb's capacity or any other venue we work with, if they don't have a facility fee we don't charge a fee."

Kirby said that he's always thought of facility fees as "promoter profit in disguise" unless the building has renovations or restorations under way, so he adds the fee into the gross and looks at it as money in.

The conversation then turned to whether the Internet has changed the way panelists do business.

"I think the Internet is the first thing in a long time that's leveling the playing field between venues and promoters," Kirby said. "You can actually compete with the big guys because you have just as much of an ability on the Internet as they do. If you're clever with Internet marketing, your reach can be incredible."

LeBlanc said the Web is a quick way to research bands and look into what venue works best for a particular act but added it depends on the genre.

Another Planet Entertainment's Allen Scott said using the Web has been the best choice overall compared to other media.

"That's primarily how we market our shows for the clubs, with e-mail. We're a 500-capacity club and we also do some stuff with a 1,500-capacity club. As print advertising and radio buys get more expensive, we're spending $2,500 for 16 spots, it's just not that effective a use of a limited budget," he said. "We'll put shows on sale without doing any print advertising - just e-mail and Web site - and a lot of the shows will sell out or get a good jump of 20 percent of the house before spending any money."

Kirby then brought up the issue of loyalty between promoters and bands and what to do when a band "slaps them upside the head" when they move up to the next level.

The Knitting Factory's Theresa Chambers had a clear strategy in that area.

"If I find a band, I put them in a 400-seat room and I sell it out, then I do a 1,200- or 2,500-seat room, why shouldn't I have the get-go to take them to the next level?" she said. "If I've got the wherewithal and the money behind it and I can to do it, why go to the `big guys?'"

Kirby asked Chambers how far she would take it in order to get that chance - would she call the band's manager?

"I would call their mother!" she said.

The Agency Group's Tim Borror, in answer to an audience member's question on going behind an agent's back, said calling a manager wouldn't necessarily hurt anything if it's handled the right way.

"It's not going to hurt the relationship unless you said things that weren't true about how you contacted me, or whatever," Borror said. " I don't necessarily think in every situation that contacting the manager is going to change the program but sometimes you need to know that for yourself.

"In a lot of situations, it's good for the managers and promoters to have relationships anyway. You need to have the manager and the promoter developing the band together as a team."

The discussion then shifted to renegotiating a show, with Kirby asking the panelists what they feel are grounds for doing so.

"There are a lot of different variables. I think a situation to ask for a reduction is if you've been pushed by an agent on a guarantee and a few weeks out, you're not getting the sales that you want," Scott said. "You work with the artist, the management, the agent to try to help sell that show and make
it perform as well as it can.

"But still, you're taking a sizeable hit relative to what venue you're in. Then I think there's a discussion."

Chambers said the nature of the business really is a gamble and sometimes "you take a hit."

"You're gambling on artists that you believe in and you're hoping to take them to the next step," she said. "But if your man goes into rehab and he's not there to do the promo, or not there for four weeks, you go back to your man and say `I need a little help here." Chambers added that she'd pay the premium an artist is worth but should there be circumstances that make a show "not worthy," she'd do whatever she could to make it work.

"I would never do bad buying. I know what I'm doing - we know what we're doing - I do my research. We trust the agents that we deal with and we don't deal with crappy agents," she said.

"If you take a hit, you take a hit but you never take a hit for ridiculous amounts of money. We've been doing this for a long time and we're savvy people who know our jobs."

Tina Amendola