Campus Activities LIVE! at SUNY Cobleskill
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The Von Shakes
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FundRaver
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RaviDrums
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SUNY Cobleskill shares with readers some of the unique experiences that make their program a success. A truly contemporary way to look at the Von Shakes’ Irish roots and their campus popularity.
A completely new idea about how to deliver a fun experience to students and fund a cause at the same time. EDM is not only a hit nationwide but a huge success on college campuses. This show, “The Future of EDM”, is bound to be a hit!
MATT COREY 22
Not Many Artists Have Acquired The Level Of Success Matt Corey Has Been Able To Achieve In This Market. This Is A Tribute to His Amazing Talent.
IT’S ALL INSIDE
From the Publisher Real Life Laff Guru Barry Smith
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Hot Music 2014 Awards Nomination Info Trendsetter Tour Artist Reports
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RANDOM THOUGHTS & OTHER MINDLESS DRIBBLE No Posters...No Contract.
“I am an Assistant Dean of Students of a campus I assume most professionals would call ‘medium’ sized. We have about 25,000 undergraduate students with over half living in on-campus housing. We rely very heavily on agency supplied posters to generate a crowd for our events. I realize the trend has been for agencies to welch on that responsibility and try to supply us with digital files that we are instructed to print ourselves, but that doesn’t fly here.
First off, it takes either a student or myself away from our normal scheduled activities to handle this, the cost is very high and the quality quite frankly is not acceptable.
Our university has a campus radio station but it attracts only about 10% of the student population because it never plays anything relative to contemporary music but more alternative- really, really alternative. We have a campus newspaper where we have tried to advertise but in our survey only about 21% of the students we polled looked at the campus newspaper for events.
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What has worked best for us is posters. We put them in every bathroom on campus. In the men’s bathrooms they go on eye-level with the urinals. In the ladies’ bathrooms they go on the inside of the door in each bathroom stall. They are impossible to miss. They go in every restroom on campus including staff restrooms and public restrooms. They go in the residence halls, coliseum, arenas, stadium, library, student union and lounge areas. Most campus programs here are free to students (MOST) and there is a small charge for the community. In order to at-
PUBLISHER CONTINUES ON PAGE 36
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BY ELAINE PASQUA
Alcohol Poisoning: A DEADLY NIGHT
I am writing this in mid September. In regards to alcohol poisoning, this academic year is off to a dismal start. I spoke to administrators at three different campuses who are extremely concerned about high-risk drinking. One campus experienced an alcohol poisoning death of a sophomore in their first week, plus had 12 hospital transports within their first three weeks. Another had 6 transports of sophomore students within the first two weeks. The third experienced 9 transports in just two weeks.
death and need medical attention immediately – call for help! In most scenarios underage drinkers fear they will be cited for underage drinking if they call for help, so the person is carried off to a couch or bed to sleep it off. Friends come back the next day and find them dead. Parents who have lost their children to alcohol poisoning advocated for campuses and some states to enact Medical Amnesty or Good Samaritan laws. If underage drinkers call for help for someone experiencing alcohol poisoning, they will not be cited for underage drinking. We don’t want to discourage them from getting the medical attention that is so badly needed.
If someone is passed out, cold, clammy, the skin is a bluish color, you can’t shout them awake, or shake them awake, they are experiencing alcohol poisoning. The clamminess occurs because the body is loosing its ability to regulate temperature. Then the breathing and heart rate eventually shuts down. These people are close to
The blood alcohol continues to climb for an hour and a half after a person has consumed their last drink. You can’t sober a person up by placing them in a cold shower or pouring coffee down their throats. Time is the only thing that will accomplish this by giving the liver the opportunity to break down the alcohol.
Women are trying to keep up with the guys, but they can’t consume alcohol the same way that men can. Alcohol gets absorbed into our blood stream faster. We have a higher ratio of body fat than men. The alcohol collects in the fatty tissue and does not break down as quickly. Lastly women have a lower amount of the enzyme that metabolizes the alcohol.
Alcohol poisoning takes the lives of 300 students annually on campuses nationwide. Students are drinking higher quantities at one setting, thus increasing their risk for alcohol poisoning.
The body can only clear one drink per hour. When more is consumed, the brain absorbs the excess alcohol, causing one area of the brain after another to systematically shut down. The area that controls our higher rational thinking shuts down first - next up, the area that regulates the balance of fluid in the body. Then the coordination goes. Finally when so much alcohol has flooded into the brain, the medulla or brain stem shuts down. The medulla controls our involuntary reflexes like heart rate and respiration. This is alcohol poisoning.
cohol will rise to .08. That person is now legally drunk. One drink is 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine and 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. People are drinking from much larger containers and are consuming more than they realize. Wine glasses are wider than they use to be and hold more. The red Solo cup when filled holds 16 ounces, so you are consuming a drink and a third.
Preventing alcohol poisoning is a priority so we should look at why students drink excessively. The need to loosen up in a social setting is the number one reason for abusing alcohol. Learn to feel comfortable with yourself. Having confidence and feeling good about who you are will enable you to have a good time without depending on alcohol as a social lubricant. Studies are showing that those under the age of 21 who use alcohol to loosen up in a social setting, tend to carry that pattern with them through their adult life. Many abusive patterns with alcohol begin in college. What quantities are considered high-risk? If a male consumes five drinks and a female four within a two hour period of time, the blood al-
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How can one drink with low risk? The rule of thumb - consume no more than one drink per hour. You can catch a light buzz but not get wasted by overloading the body and brain with too much alcohol. Drink a non alcoholic beverage in between each one. You will give the liver a chance to break down the alcohol and re-hydrate the body so you feel better the next day. Keep an eye out for one another - don’t be afraid to tell a friend that they need to slow down. Also, keep in mind, if everyone is getting wasted, who will have the ability to know when things are turning for the worse?
Questions on college life? Email me at elaine@elainepasqua.com
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Spanky At Your Service BY SPANKY McFARLAND
At the first of this year I received a request to perform for military audiences overseas. The request came from civilian audiences in the US—ba-da-bing! It actually came from my good friend and comedy cohort, Don Barnhart, who was putting together an All-Star Comedy Tour to perform at military bases in Africa and the Middle East. I said “Yes!” without hesitation. I have a long history of traveling around the world (to almost thirty countries now) to boost morale and bring a “touch of home” to our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines who are separated from their family and friends. I’m proud to say I once was ordered to a base so in the middle of nowhere, that Paul Harvey mentioned me in his national newscast as the very first performer the USO or AFE had ever sent to this remote outpost. In fact, many of the bases I have visited do not “officially” exist. When touring, Military Intelligence strictly forbids me to expose my location on Facebook or Twitter, however, I can buy a tshirt that has the location printed on it at any base exchange and then post a photo of me wearing it (which brings to mind the old joke of “Military Intelligence” being an oxymoron).
In my ongoing eagerness to support the troops, I agreed to head to Arabia, without first considering the tour would take place in July and August. The average American has no clue how unbelievably harsh the conditions are in which our troops serve. To help you understand, picture the most miserably hot you have ever been. Now, add THIRTY to FORTY degrees. Now, wear 100 pounds of equipment and body armor. Now, go fight someone that is used to the hellish heat! Also add the relentless sand getting in every orifice you own (it is the only place I have been where you spit cement). Get the picture?
Describing the stress of being an American in that part of the world is beyond the limits of my meager vocabulary. Not only do our brave men and women have to fear IEDs and Al Qaeda attacks, they also have to deal with the rising menace of missile attacks from Iran. One Commander told me Iran had been doing missile tests on a target the exact size of the base we were on, and we would have only 3 minutes from launch to impact to do a mad dash to a bunker— Yikes!—so death from above weighs heavy on your mind. Naturally, I was happy my comedy would provide a pleasant distraction from such
troubling thoughts. Not that I was the only pleasant distraction available. Many of the bases I visited had what’s called a “Threshold Rule” which meant no one could cross the threshold into the living quarters of the opposite sex, thus the same bunkers I hoped to save me in a missile attack doubled as the alternative location for a great deal of, ahem, horizontal happiness. (I was told one base had discontinued their Threshold Rule and condom sales doubled.)
Sex is currently a hot topic in the military. In response to the sexual harassment scandals Congress has pressured the Department of Defense to take action. As a result, the military is cracking down on anything and everything sexual. For example, the crews for the B-1 Bombers call their aircraft a “bone” (B-One) and were forced to drop their motto “Home is where your bone is.” Our comedy shows were severely censored to PG, and any sexual material or dirty words were ordered removed. The irony that a soldier was old enough for someone to shoot at him, but not old enough to hear someone swearing was apparent to all involved. But orders are orders, and I was relieved I had an ample supply of clean material to draw from.
Our tour started in Djibouti, which must be an African word meaning “Duck!” because some of the local population is in the habit of throwing rocks at Americans. (I confess hearing “Djibouti” makes me giggle as much as “Uranus.”) The troops not so affectionately describe the country as “Mars with trash.” Indeed, this unappealing nation was totally littered with empty red and blue plastic bags that locals sell “khat” in, the country’s drug of choice. The bags are so plentiful they are jokingly called “the national flower of Djibouti.” I was beginning to think the Horn of Africa was the most uninviting landscape ever, until I saw the endless barren deserts of the Middle East, where trash would at least give you something to look at.
Although most of the scenery is boring in the Middle East, my time there was far from it. On a typical day we would meet and greet the various units on whichever base we found ourselves. We might start by going to the base hospital and autograph photos for the injured good guys, followed by a visit to the B-1 squad to autograph bombs for the bad guys. I got to sit in the cockpits of various aircrafts (my fave being the F-22 Raptor), saw drones bigger than a 747, rode on a
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$30,000 military model Segway, talked to an astronaut (U2 pilot) and ate his space food from a tube, played with a variety of $300,000 remote controlled robots, got to do battle simulation on the EST 2000 (Engagement Skills Trainer - basically a 10 million dollar video game), fired a M240 Bravo machine gun (got the shoulder bruise to prove it), a M4, and a rocket-propelled grenade, rode in a combat equipped Humvee, wore a two hundred thousand dollar bomb disposal suit, had different K9 units pad me up and let their attack dogs chew on me (got an even bigger bruise to prove that), and my time in a helicopter earned me the nickname “Black Hawk Clown.” I feel blessed I had the opportunity to do all the cool military stuff without having to actually join the military. I can't begin to tell you all of the heart warming and heart wrenching personal stories the soldiers shared with me. You have no idea of the personal sacrifice these good people make on our behalf. Whenever I began to feel a little homesick, I wanted to slap myself; I was only on tour for a few weeks, but the people I performed for are there for six months to a year! Whenever I wanted to whine about the 120 to 140 degree heat, I would remind myself our troops work in it 12 hours a day, 6 days a week! Whenever I was tempted to complain about having to use a distant communal latrine, I remembered what a member of the Special Forces told me, “I just spent the last three months in the mountains of Afghanistan having to crap in a plastic bag and throw it in the fire.” (Next time you see a member of the armed forces, show your gratitude by buying them a frosty adult beverage. They deserve it!)
Out of respect and admiration for America's sons and daughters doing a helluva job in a helluva place, I can say with all honesty, wherever that flag flies I am willing to go! Sure, the weather sucks, you travel constantly, sleep in a twin bed, and have to walk a block to the toilet... but standing on a stage and seeing the joy in those faces makes it all worthwhile. Thank you Armed Forces Entertainment!
Steven Kent McFarlin (AKA “Spanky”) offers two great events at one low price, and has been voted “Campus Comic of the Year” and the “Campus Performer of the Year”. His credits include over 50 TV appearances, including: Showtime, Good Morning America, and The Late Show. He is represented by GP Entertainment.
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TICK, TICK, TICK
The woman sitting across from me dumps a box of small metal washers onto the flimsy card table, hits the button on her stopwatch and yells, “GO!”
And I go. I start putting these washers on the metal post as quickly as I can. I remember having a toy like this as a kid - big, colorful plastic rings that fit on an equally colorful plastic post. I can see how that toy was designed to teach hand-eye coordination and prepare me for such real world moments, but the rings were big and soft and mostly I just chewed on them. I don’t think chewing on these metal washers is going to help me at this point. I can hear the stopwatch ticking away. Yes, it’s ticking, because this test is taking place in 1986, and things still tick.
I’ve decided that it’s time to get a job. Not my first job - I’ve had a few up until now. I’ve been an automotive parts sanitation engineer (see last month’s column), a paperboy, an underaged bartender, juggler, file clerk, messenger and card-carrying professional photocopier. Now I’m at this temp agency, seeing what other random jobs I can scare up for myself as I diligently seek to find my place in the work world. I’m sitting at this cheap card table as part of the manual dexterity test. I have 60 seconds to put as many of these washers on this post as I can.
Tick, tick, tick… And I have to say - I’m doing an awesome job. Those washers are stacking up the post at an amazing speed. Ha! Piece of cake. I’m really good at this.
Oh no...I’m really good at this. What if I’m REALLY good at this? What if my washer-on-post-putting skills are off the charts? That means that they’re probably going to place me in a job doing something very similar to this. Or doing EXACTLY this. And I’ll be expected to do it THIS fast, all day long. They’ll total up my washers-per-minute, multiply it by 60 to get my washers-per-hour, multiply that by 8 to get my washers-per-day, multiply by 240 (365 days minus weekends and a 2-week vacation) to get my washers per year, then multiply that by my expected life span… This is bad. This is one of those moments, the kind that you’re also likely to encounter as you wind your way through your own career path. The moment when you’re about to enter a job that you just know, deep down in that knowing place, is not at all a good match, no matter how appealing it may seem on the surface (free washers for life!) This is get-out-whileyou-can time, and if you can manage to get out before you even get in, all the better. TICK, TICK, TICK… The ticking seems louder now - the woman much be holding the stopwatch closer to my ear.
I know that I have to sabotage this test, but I don’t want to be obvious about it. I “accidentally” drop one of the washers as I try to put in on the post, and it rolls toward the edge of the table. My hand jerks out to catch it, “accidentally” knocking over the post. All of the stacked washers spill out onto the table and the floor. I bend down and start picking washers from
the carpet, fully intending to “accidentally” knock the entire card table over as I lift back up. Kind of like how you “accidentally” tip the board over when you’re losing at Scrabble. But before I’m able to execute my coup de grace I hear, “TIME’S UP!”
The clicking stops. Final count: zero washers, 60 seconds. That’s one washer every...never. Perfect. “I’m sorry,” the woman says, walking me to the front door. “Given your extraordinarily poor test results, the only job we can offer you is, uh…”
She’s flipping through the pages of a book when she suddenly looks surprised. “Oh! Well, here’s a place that needs someone to spend their days doodling and writing free verse poetry. I’m afraid it only starts at $100,000 a year, but you do get full benefits and a company gas card. Sorry, but that’s the best we can do for you.” Oh, wait...that’s not at all what she said. I remember now. She said, “Get out.”
Barry Smith is a writer, comedian and speaker. His presentation, is based on the lessons learned from his life of offbeat employment choices, and how these lessons can help students in their own career evolution. “A refreshing guide to career exploration and served as a wonderful reminder that we can find happiness by following our passions." - Bryn Kass, Senior Class Council President, Tufts University. Book Barry at Kirkland Productions www.kirklandproductions.com)
GOO GOO DOLLS AT THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE © grand opera house
2013 EVENTS: ONGOING NACA NORTHEAST: NACA MID-AMERICA: NACA WEST:
October 31- November 3 • Hartford, CT November 7-10 • Peoria, IL November 14-17 • Ontario, CA
2014 EVENTS APAP NATIONAL CONFERENCE: JAN 10-14, 2014, NEW YORK HILTON, NEW YORK, NY NACA NATIONAL CONVENTION: FEB 15-19, 2014, HYNES CONVENTION CENTER, BOSTON, MA NACA NORTHERN PLAINS: April 3-6, 2014 • St. Paul, MN AEP WORLDWIDE SIGNATURE EVENT: JUNE 19-21, 2014 GRAND OPERA HOUSE, WILMINGTON DE
National Association For Campus Activities (NACA) • (803) 732-6222, naca.org Association of Performing Arts Presenter (APAP) • (202) 207-3842, apapnyc.org Association of Entertainment Professionals (AEP) • Ian Kirby (803) 941-7228, aepworldwide.org
Just because this is “Irish Rock,” don’t expect these guys to show up with kilts and bag pipes (okay, we know that's Scottish but you get the idea). Von Shakes are a throwback to the raw, gritty days of old school punk. With no frills around the edges, these guys are pure energy and talent. http://bit.ly/vonshakesvideo
This band is taking the music back to its roots. “A close as we can describe it would be indie rock,” says Paddy of Von Shakes (otherwise known as Patrick Brazel), the vocalist and guitarist, speaking in a light brogue. The band is living in New York now, but started off life grinding it out in Dublin. “We say indie rock in a sense that we are a rock band, and we’re independent (laughs). We are not playing arenas yet. The original line up started playing five years ago, all of us in Ireland. We were all 18 years old playing cover music, but you wouldn’t want to hear those covers, they were lousy,” he kids. Once the band found its core, they were on to playing their own music, they changed their name and began the life of the band in its current incarnation. “The name Von Shakes came from quite an interesting story. We were invited to play a show in Germany with a friend of mine that had gotten very big there. We were collected from the airport by a guy named Otto Von Schmuck.” Suddenly this feels like it’s going to turn into a story about a James Bond villain. “He was basically a roadie for the other band, and we had been playing with the name The
Shakes for a while. We decided we would put the Von in the name in tribute to Otto. We found out about a month later he had passed away, so we thought it was kind of cool for the name.” Despite having a great sound and tremendous potential, things just didn’t shake out (sorry) across the pond. “We just couldn’t make a living at it,” he says. “We came to try to test the water here in New York two summers ago and we ended up meeting our agent, Kate Magill at Sophie K. Entertainment. We met an independent record label, and some people looking to make investments in some bands they believed in. We made the move. We did 125 shows last year. Back home, you’d struggle to play 25 a year.”
Von Shakes have done a great job of balancing out their schedule so they don’t have all their eggs in one basket. “We have the balance of our shows in three main areas. In 2012, I believe we did around 30 college shows and 50 club shows. We also did about 50 bar gigs, they just help pay the bills (laughs).”
Many us Americans don’t realize the scale of the landmass in our own geography, and what it feels like to people from some where you can drive across your entire country in a few hours. “We’ve done shows in Iowa, Colorado, Michigan, Virginia, New Hampshire and all over the East coast. We are actually going to Arizona in two weeks and North and South Dakota in January, so we get to see a bit of America, which is always fun. Honestly, the sheer amount of land
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mass in this country is a bit of a shock to the system. We drove from New York to Iowa, and that was mind blowing. We had some shows along the way to break things up a bit, but I remember driving from Chicago to Iowa and not seeing another car for over an hour. We were driving through corn fields and just land as far as the eye could see. With the motorway that is back home, we can drive from Dublin on the East coast, all the way to the West coast in under two hours now,” he says laughing. Paddy says there are certain draws to the college market. “They give you free food at the cafeteria.” OK, besides that. “Really though, it’s more fun. Obviously the venues can be very big at some of these campuses, but more often than not at any campus gig, they are packed. That helps us play a better show, not to mention be able to sell a bit more merchandise,” he says cheekily. “People are really interested in listening to you as well. The whole college ethos of trying to open your mind and broaden your horizons puts them in a great frame of mind to enjoy new music. We tend to put a smile on people’s face, which encourages us. I don’t think anyone can do anything just for money,” he says, then hesitates. “The fundamental reason we started playing music was to make a living while having fun and really enjoy it.” Your campus will enjoy it too. Contact Kate Magill at Sophie K. Entertainment for more info on how at (877) 664-8559 or kate@sophiek.com.
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Following in the spirit of this month’s focus on the EDM (Electronic Dance Music) craze, CAM was extremely happy to find an act that could bring something a little more to the table than just a really great time. We stumbled upon this story at the last minute and thought there was no way we would find space in this issue for it, but saw the opportunity was so perfect to accompany our theme that we made the space. Why not embrace the current popular trends and be able to host an event at your school that also benefits a good cause? Micah Cruver thought exactly the same thing when he came up with the concept for FundRaver, and sits down with us to explain a little bit about how this project works and why it’s finding great traction among campus buyers.
“Essentially, at our core, we are just trying to benefit the world in a positive way,” he says, “through the use of something we are all really passionate about. It’s a movement that is based around a positive atmosphere, so we want to use that scene to initiate changes for good. So whether we are raising funds for a student group, or awareness for a certain cause, or helping someone pay for a medical procedure, we get to have the best possible time doing it and get to bring people together. EDM is one of the most popular www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
genres of entertainment there is among the college crowd and younger demographics, and we have found the universities have been the best possible platform for what we are doing. They have many resources we can use, the age is perfect and they get really excited about having something big like this coming to campus. I remember being a freshman and not really having anything to do on campus, we were studying or going to bed (laughs). If something like this program came along I would have been so stoked to have something huge and important to attend. We want to help people take ownership of bringing something like this that will energize students and help them all be a part of something positive.”
There are different ways to set up the event to raise money for a cause. “The main and most straightforward method for raising money is a door cost. If you bring a ton of people and they throw in a couple of bucks, it’s pretty easy to cover the cost of bringing the team in and having a surplus to donate to the cause at hand. Because so many universities have resources for this kind of purpose, like free venue space or production equipment like sound, the overhead is really minimal. Students can also use this as an opportunity to work with a sponsor, there are plenty of companies and local organizations that would love the idea of being a focus in a place
where they know there will be a healthy population in attendance. Finally, they can take donations from fellow students or attendees. It really depends on the school or group we are working with and we are very sensitive about that. We never want to force some outside company into a college campus that doesn’t belong there, or set up a situation where people are uncomfortable with donating for whatever reason.”
The program has been around for about a year. “I was volunteering at a summer camp as a DJ and some of the folks in the kitchen said I should come out and do a fund raiser rave at their school to raise money for their glee club. Just cracking wise I was like ‘You mean a FundRaver?’ It was a joke that eventually stuck, because the name says exactly what it is. We did that first event and sold out within half an hour, with 150 people lined up around the block that couldn’t even fit inside the venue. We knew then that we really had something special right away.” There are tons of possibilities for FundRaver to do a lot of good at your school, not only by giving students something fun and exciting to do, but by benefitting a worthy cause your campus cares about. For more information, contact Josua Martinez at Hope’s Voice at 800.516.7680 or jmartinez@hopesvoice.org.
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MUSAE: Musae is a female six-piece vocal band born in Boston, Massachusetts. The name comes from Latin, plural for “musa”: muse. United by passion, these muses plan to tear down archetypes regarding female a cappella and breathe new life into the professional scene in the United States and abroad. NEON ENTERTAINMENT
SIMPLIFIED: In 2003, Simplified took shape and was acclaimed as a dedicated touring machine. They gained new fans, one by one. Simplified's sound caught on, with a devoted fan base in the Southeastern U.S. and spread nation-wide. DEGY ENTERTAINMENT 14, CAMPUS ACTIVITIES MAGAzINE®, OCTOBER 2013
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SVET: Over the past year and a half Svet has performed at over 80 colleges across the country and showcased at every fall regional NACA Conference in 2012. He has played with T-Pain, Gym Class Heroes, and The Black Keys. BE COLLEGES
REBECCA MORELAND: Rebecca’s latest single, Far From Heaven, charted in the top 40 on FMQB’s AC charts. She is a sponsored artist for Breedlove Guitars and a featured artist on Reverbnation, MusicXray and Muzikreviews.com. DEGY ENTERTAINMENT
BRETT YOUNG: Brett’s gritty vocals and impassioned lyrics are built on the same foundation that made him predraft of the Tampa Bay Devil Rayshard work, sheer talent and a lot of heart. One listen and you will get it. NEON ENTERTAINMENT
MATT COREY: His Saxophone driven Top 40 revue features hits from Michael Jackson, Elton John, Al Green,Smokey Robinson, Cee Lo Green, Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, and even country from Luke Bryan, Blake Shelton, & Jason Aldean! CUTTING EDGE ENTERTAINMENT
AMANDA DUNCAN: Amanda draws from a diverse blend of the crooning hits of the 30′s and 40′s and the popcountry of today, to craft what has become her light-hearted, head-bopping acoustic sound. BASS SCHULER ENTERTAINMENT
JOY IKE: She has been compared to Corinne Bailey Rae, Norah Jones, and Regina Spektor. Her honest, bittersweet songwriting has earned her the chance to open for a number of national touring acts. A compelling act. WALLY’S WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT
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MAXINE ASHLEY: She is a soulful & sassy 20-year-old misfit with a mesmerizing voice and spirit. Her YouTube Channel has over 9,000,000 views of spellbinding R&B covers. Pharrell Williams and Lil Wayne recorded with her. R I ENTERTAINMENT
JAMIE LONO: A Blues/Pop Acoustic singer and songwriter and a member of Team Cee-Lo on this season of The Voice. He wants people to feel good and forget those parts of your life that keep you down. BASS SCHULER ENTERTAINMENT
JOHN RUSH: John has been called a " Human iPod " because he can play more than 70 hours of music by request! He has opened for Fuel, Edwin McCain, Matt Kearney, Keller Williams, Rob Thomas, Guster, Howie Day & more. WALLY’S WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT
\REVERSE ORDER: In 2012, Reverse Order was featured on America's Got Talent and nominated for a Grammy for their single "Go". They spent the summer touring the country and performed at Bamboozle and on Warped Tour. They bring a crazy amount of energy to the stage. BE COLLEGES
RYAN SCHMIDT: He has opened for critically acclaimed artists including: Matt Nathanson, LIGHTS, Pat McGee, sang a duet with Juliana Hatfield, is a YouTube partnered cover artist and has been named the Critic's Choice at the Starbucks Music Makers Competition. CUTTING EDGE ENTERTAINMENT
JON AANESTAD: As a solo artist and multi-instrumentalist, Jon has toured nationally for Colleges, Corporate clients, and performed on the CMA Awards. He has a devoted fan base on YouTube with his original material and his quirky covers of everyone from Justin Bieber to The Black Keys. THE COLLEGE AGENCY
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The State University Of New York College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill is situated about 45 minutes west of Albany, best known for their agricultural programs. “We also have fairly well known programs in culinary arts, early childhood development and other technological areas like computer science and networking systems as well,” says Jeff Foote, Director of The Student Life Center.
The campus has about 2500 full time students, but about 1500 students on campus. “Probably about two-thirds are on campus, and those are the students we are primarily programming for, though we do try to draw in the off-campus population as well.” The events planned by the Council For Student Activities tend to be pretty popular, because there isn’t
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much competition in the area. “Usually we plan for events on campus, because there isn’t much to do outside of campus,” says Jourdan Duryea, an Event Leader for CSA. “Albany is 45 minutes away, so we plan a variety of activities that involve bus trips to places like Six Flags or to go apple picking, and we do many homegrown events on campus. We do a variety of things to keep the students engaged.” www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
CSA programs between 40-50 events in the fall semester and between 35-40 in the spring. “It’s a fairly large number from what students from other campuses like ours have told me. Especially in September, we try to host 2-4 events per week,” Jeff says. “Then it starts to taper off until we get to the last few weeks of the semester when we only do one or two events per week. The students get more distracted with their academics so we scale things back so they can focus.” A majority of the events are planned for midweek time slots. “We have a sub-planning board called Coby Late Night,” Jourdan says, “which focuses specifically on Friday and Saturday nights. Tuesday through Thursday are when CSA itself hosts most of it’s events.”
As far as the genre breakdown goes, SUNY Cobleskill has a generous mix but like on most campuses, there are certain genres that work better than others. “We have a variety of entertainment we host on campus,” Jourdan says. “Our homegrown events, like a spa night with a masseuse and facials are popular and very affordable. We have a lot of comedians come in, because those are our most popular type of live talent. We have started introducing slam poets and they are becoming more popular. Music is not a major thing on our campus because it is so hit or miss because of the wide diversity in our student population. We have tried a few different bands or cover bands and we have a hard time with turnouts there. We also do a lot of bus trips on the weekends and those cover the daytime weekend activities, while Coby Late Night covers the late night activities.”
The late night program is under Mike Wacksman’s leadership, the Assistant Director of Student Center. “They have developed a concept to try to bring students into the union and keep them there,” Jeff says. “The features there include a dining option that is open until 2AM, but the activities side of that equation includes movies, competitions like laser tag, volleyball and dodge ball, and then there are things www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
like novelties and ‘make your own’ events. We have craft events and fundraiser events as well.” There is a wide variety of programming space available on campus. “Our theater seats about 400 people, we have a small cafe that we can do for things that involve food if we don’t use one of the dining halls. We have a small outdoor amphitheater that can hold about 600 with a sloping lawn with a stage at the bottom. The gymnasium is great for our intramural style events like the dodgeball or laser tag. We happen to have a bowling alley on campus in our union as well. So, we have a variety of spaces to work with, but most of what we do is right here in our Student Union, a place we try to make a hub for students.”
It’s a practice that makes things practical for students and easier for CSA to market since everyone knows where most of the events are, but Jeff says there is a deeper reason for centering so much around the Student Union base. “The most important reason we keep everything centrally located there is to build critical mass and create a sense of community. We could try to cover every nook and cranny of the campus and host events here and there and everywhere, and students could probably figure it all out, but when we try to bring them into that one central place where they have regular face time together, and just hang out and relax, it still really builds a sense of community and togetherness that we view as a very important part of what we do.”
Marketing events to students at SUNY Cobleskill is open ended. “We do whatever will work,” Jeff says. “We try almost every channel that we have access to (laughs). We got away from doing campus-wide emails because students seemed to not be checking them, but for some reason that pendulum seems to have shifted in recent years and they are using that service a lot more often. So, we do a weekly email blast that I think is pretty effec-
tive. We put flyers out on campus and placing table tents on the dining hall tables has worked wonders. Everyone’s got to eat and students have reported that is a good choice for them.”
OnCampusText has turned into a viable option for them as well. “We send out a text blast once a week as well regarding upcoming events the day of or day before an event. Since all the students are pretty attached to their phones anyway that has been a great way to access them directly.” One very unique aspect that stands out about CSA is the incentive that the school offers students to join up and help out with the programming board. Most folks reading this will understand the challenge of getting students involved and the pressures they are under; they often have a full curriculum, jobs to support their education and living, not to mention the hopes of some sort of social life. So, CSA has come up with a novel idea to help offset these pressures and get them more involved. They pay them. Jeff explains: “We have recently transformed the board from a volunteer, club-based model to a paid staff model. I am not sure how many campuses are doing this, but we felt that it was unfair how we were expecting a great deal of work from a small group of students, to deliver such an important campus goal as building our community by providing a social outlet. So we took a portion of our budget and put it towards stipends for those students who are designated as event leaders and event assistants, of which we have 5 each. We have openings for people just starting out who are referred to as apprentices, and they are not compensated, but once they move up to one of the higher two levels I mentioned, they get paid for their work. Those event leaders and assistants are the people who really make everything happen; they carry out all the planning and details for each event. We think it’s only fair to reward their hard work.” An interesting idea to ponder for other schools out there. If anyone has questions, contact Jeff Foote at 518-2555300 or footejc@cobleskill.edu.
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For this month’s music issue, which has a focus on EDM, we thought we’d throw a special campus market cover out to an entertainer who has made his bones playing for colleges just like yours. With his solo show “Two Turntables and a Saxophone,” Matt brings an organic approach to the dance medium with a highlight on fantastic musicianship. This is not a dance show where students are just going to watch someone push buttons and fist-pump. He’s opened for Joe Walsh of The Eagles, Gallagher, B.oB., Bo Bice, Josh Gracin, Dave Koz and many more.
One great aspect to Matt’s show is that it is always an all-ages production. He covers tons of hits from Michael Jackson, Usher, Aerosmith, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake and other artists spanning the last several decades and into the bleeding edge of new music, but because the saxophone replaces the lyrics, all the songs are now G-rated.
While Matt Corey found success with Disney and on The West End of London before playing the campus market, this is where he has truly made his home. Now he’s in his fourth year of playing the majority of his dates here and with sev-
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eral awards and accolades to his credit, including consistently being one of the top booked acts at his showcases. Campus Activities Magazine talks a bit with Matt about how he got here and why a performer who could easily be tapped for any number of large acts as a support player makes his schedule all about colleges.
Matt feels he has gone through a lot of growth in these few short years. “I feel like the show has developed into much more of a mature presentation than when I started. Back then, I came in from a part of another band called
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Skinny, which played the college market for 3 or 4 years, but I was not the frontman of that act. That was the biggest adjustment, to go from being a supporting player to the feature.”
The band was at one point named “The best unsigned band in the U.S.” by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but disbanded when one of their members, Eric “Biggie Bass” Daniels, passed away suffering from a heart attack. “I had been in the college market and I had the idea for this show, and all of a sudden found myself needing to put something together because I was out of work. I knew I could really make this idea work, I just had no idea that four years later I would be Male Solo Artist of the Year 3 times, as well as being nominated as “Fastest Rising Star” and “Best Music Act” by the readers of this magazine.
show with the full symphony orchestra. They gave me an exciting opportunity to be the feature in the show, and it will be a very cool project.”
Of course the full band performance will give you the most bang for your buck, but if you only hire Matt for the solo show, don’t feel like you’re students will be missing out on anything. “I love doing the solo show, and it makes me a lot more accessible. Not every campus has the budget to bring in a full huge (11 piece) band, but they still have entertainment needs. That was the great thing about traveling in the college market
Matt has some impressive credentials backing him, he graduated from Youngstown State University after studying classical saxophone, music education and jazz performance and got his gig at Disney World as the lead performer of the hit show “Blast! 2 Shockwave” the sequel to the Emmy and Tony Award winning Broadway show that was essentially “Stomp” for horns. The show later moved to The Queen’s Theatre in London. He performed for the world-famous Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey Orchestras, and even jammed on stage with George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic for a few dates.
One of the great things about Matt’s show now is it’s scalability. Whether your school has a large venue or small, healthy budget or modest, Matt can make it work for you. His solo show “Two Turn Tables and a Saxophone can work in just about any venue for most budgets. If you are looking for the full scale rock concert party atmosphere, then he can bring in the full production with the Matt Corey Band, with all the bells and whistles. He is even working on an upcoming project where he will be playing with a symphony. “I have been doing a lot of stuff with my full band and in April I will be doing the
with another band before I had my own solo show, I was prepared and knew what they wanted to see. I knew I could tailor a show that could cater to many campuses needs. I can come in and do
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a smaller coffee house type performance, or scale it all the way up to a huge stage with a great band. I pride myself on being able to play any room or audience size, large or small, and have everyone in that room leave saying ‘I didn’t even know you could do that with a saxophone.’”
Matt’s show is all about versatility. “I would say in the last four years that is the biggest area of growth I have had as an artist. The versatility of my show and being able to get in any venue and have a show that can compete with big time national artists. I feel you can put my band up against anyone and we will be able to hold our own.”
Matt has performed at over 350 colleges in the past four years. “I don’t keep an exact count, but it’s a ton (laughs). In that time I have seen some extremes. One wild story was being at a school, opening for a national artist and right before I went on stage the advisor took me into a conference room for a quick meeting with the president of the university. I thought ‘Geez, I’ve never had to meet with the president of a university, but this is a really big show and the whole campus is out there so I guess this makes sense.’ So, I was in the conference, and the president basically tells me the rules, no cursing, keep it clean, no drug references, no partying with the students, etc. General rules of good conduct, which is something that I always stress anyway. Every time I am on campus I am pretty adamant about making sure everyone in my unit is conducting themselves professionally. So, I agreed to the terms of the president and asked her, because I had never really had this happen before, if there was a reason for this sudden sidebar. I felt like there must have been some sort of specific reason why she would go out of her way to have this chat with me (laughs). She says, ‘Well, we had a problem with an artist last year,’” Matt says, clearly enjoying the story. “‘Are you familiar with the WuTang Clan?’ she asked.” As he tells it, he is barely able to control his laughter. “I was like ‘Uh, yeah, I don’t think you have to worry. My act is pretty www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
much the opposite of that.’ That is the beauty of having a performance that is mostly instrumental, because even when I am playing a cover that is maybe ‘adult’ oriented, the sensitive lyrics aren’t there.”
Sometimes, the shows that fall on the opposite end of the spectrum (than opening for a major artist) are just as much fun for Matt. “I have had some crazy things that have happened with the weather. There was a show that had the potential to be huge, but there was a near-hurricane that came in where it was raining sideways and there were 5 or 6 people in the audience once I got there (laughs). We had a great time though. It goes back to the versatility aspect. When there are seven people there counting me, it’s time to turn it into a more intimate kind of setting and start taking requests!”
Matt loves to involve the students in his show and that works especially well with smaller groups. “I’m there to make sure the group has a great night and is entertained, no matter what. One thing I have really learned is the ability to not just be a musician, but an emcee as well. When I did my first showcase, I got on stage and just played straight through and didn’t say a word. Now, I have the ability to really warm up to an audience, talk to them, tell stories and walk out feeling like I have made a lot of new friends. That is probably my favorite part of this gig; being able to make new friends all over the country that I continue to stay in touch with. I look forward to all the new friends that are to come.”
For more information on bringing Matt in to your venue, contact Rob Jockel at Cutting Edge Entertainment at (860) 693-9116 or rjockel@cuttingedgeentertain.com.
If you contact Rob before December 15, mention this story get a special 10% CAM DISCOUNT on a 2014 Matt Corey World Tour date.
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Concert Ideas is one of the leading concert production companies in the campus market, and they’ve proven that once again by coming up with a completely new and unique concept that puts YOU, the school, in charge of selecting an artist and building a tour route, not the other way around.
Rather than an agency calling to force feed the artists they are pushing, CI had an epiphany and realized, ‘Why not let the schools get together, pick the type of music they are interested in, and then get to select from a list of artists who THEY want, rather than the other way around?’ Partnering up with APA, CI has put together the Trendsetter Tour, and Adam Tobey of CI and Andrew Buck of APA sit down with Campus Activities Magazine to explain just why this revolutionary idea has grown legs and gotten off to a running start.
“Many of the acts that students look for at NACA or ACUI or other similar organizations,” Adam says, “are not for their ‘big’ events. They are not the Spring Fling or Homecoming headline talent. They are looking for a wide range of acts to sometimes fill out their calendar, or a specific niche, or accomplish a goal. Every
artist that is brought to any campus fills some sort of special role. At NACA Nationals last year, I was sitting back and looking at this prospect and saw there were some great options, and some that students really just weren’t all that into but were being pushed on them by agencies from a business perspective. I started to think that maybe there was another option we could come up with. A way that schools could really work together to create an event and then plug in a band that is going to fulfill the goals of the school. Not just ‘I need a concert on October 10th’ but ‘I’d love to do an event where we get more interaction with an artist, where they will do giveaways and seem really invested in coming to campus and helping us to make the show as successful as possible.’” Concert Ideas reached out to dozens of schools in their network and started hammering out the idea. “We asked them, if there was a way to create a project around them and their specific goals, would they be interested? They wouldn’t know the artist up front, they would be creating an event around these goals and choosing the artist afterward. The consensus from everyone was that it was an interesting idea, but they needed three things. First, if they were going to trust us to find the options for this project, they needed to be able to choose the
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genre. They needed to be able to choose from multiple acts within that genre and finally the chosen act has to agree to do a variety of things for the school. Not simply a band that was going to just come in and play the date and leave, but acts that would be proactive and involved enough to create customized videos, create online chatter, do giveaways and contests, campus radio, etc. All the schools kind of said the same thing on this front.”
18 schools were gathered initially that decided to take the chance and see how this project would pan out. “The routing played out well and we got to the point where we were comfortable enough to start pursuing an artist. But in order to do that, and this is where it gets really interesting, the schools had to be willing to make an offer for an act to be determined. The reason is that the power of this concept is in the fact that we are not booking an artist as an anchor date at one show, but were able to go to the agency with an entire tour ready to go. This gave us a tremendous amount of weight when it came to working with the artists, because when it comes to pricing, we are able to negotiate a great rate for the schools because we are able to deliver so much volume to the artist all at once.”
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CERT IDEAS AND APA TEAM UP TO BRING YOU
After compiling the list of things the schools wanted from the artist, with the genre chosen being rock, the Trendsetter Tour was created and the schools signed on, trusting Concert Ideas to then go out and find them great options on which they all could agree, to fill in the artist to be determined. This is where Andrew Buck and APA come in. “We sent out feelers to different agencies explaining we had a tour already put together and wanted to explore options for their developing or upand-coming acts. But here was the kicker, there were all of these caveats the artists had to fulfill. This was not a negotiable thing because these schools were already signed up for X, Y & z dates and were trusting us to deliver. Going back to the schools at that point to try to negotiate on certain demands from the artists was not an option.”
Within a short amount of time, CI had dozens of options, as many bands were excited to jump on the prospect of being presented with an entire tour in one neat package. They internally vetted the list. “We got it down to a handful of bands and talked to their handlers, Makeshift Prodigy being one of them, and reconfirmed that they were on board and into the concept. They had to understand that if they were chosen, here would be the tour on a silver
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platter, but the terms were absolutely nonnegotiable. We weren’t doing this to be a stick in the mud for the agents, but the power of the schools banding together and going out on a limb for this had to be absolute. From there, we sent the options we had vetted out to the schools for a vote.”
APA was on board and Makeshift Prodigy won by an overwhelming margin. “When Adam first presented this to us at APA,” Andrew says, “our first reaction was kind of like...‘Are you effing kidding me? We were supposed to be hands off and let everything go and just let you run with it?’ Then, the more Adam explained it to me, the more I realized it was an amazing idea. I still can’t believe someone hasn’t thought of it before. It is literally delivering to colleges something that is precisely what they ordered, and it’s coming to bands that, in all honesty, probably aren’t getting many offers already to play for colleges.” Hopefully this story is laying out the concept clearly enough that readers are getting it, because it’s one that many, including this writer, have a hard time wrapping their heads around at first. Andrew says it was no different when it was time for him to take it to the artists. “Explaining the program to the band and their
manager was kind of a challenge. It is basically saying to them ‘Hey, here is the deal: we can make X amount of dollars a night, we need to leave 20 dates open, we have no say on where we are going to play, how long the drive might be and we need to leave time open to help promote around the event. We had no say, we were just sort of along for the ride. The cool thing about it though and what really made it stand out for us (apart from getting a routed college tour delivered to us), was actually being able to build a brand with the schools. The band right away did all these viral videos and posts, they really got into it. They got really excited because it was something where they could support the school, support the Trendsetter brand and obviously get into a market that maybe wasn’t open to them currently. I think we exceeded expectations with the amount of dates we were able to do, adding a lot more in than we originally thought.” This is just the maiden voyage for the Trendsetter project. With the success of this first venture, Concert Ideas fully intends on continuing the process and building more routes with future groups of schools. Contact Adam Tobey to find out more about how this innovative new idea works at (800) 836-2000 or adam@concertideas.com.
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y the time you are done reading this story, you are going to wonder how you’ve never heard of Ravidrums before. With a list of credits and accomplishments a mile long, this innovative performer has worked with some of the biggest names in the business.
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EDM or electronic dance music, has become all the rave in the last few years, and Ravi has been waiting for it. Waiting a long time... 15 years in fact. “I have been consistently in the heart of the EDM movement since 1998,” he says. “I was playing shows when Paul Oakenfold was the only big name in the early days for the genre. I have done so much over the years, but most of it has been in the so-called ‘trendy’ scenes of L.A, Miami, Vegas and New York, with sort of insider parties that are disconnected from the real people out there. Unfortunately, none of my work has ever been in the college market, something I have lamented over and am now very excited to change.” Ravi is a fresh, hot new act for the market. The list of this guy’s accomplishments is incredible (head to our website at www.campusactmag.com to see a demo video that very nicely displays his impressive credentials). You can see him in Britney Spears’ video “Dance Till The World Ends,” Howie Mandel’s “Howie Do It,” Paula Abdul’s “Live To Dance,” the Oscar’s performance for ‘Slumdog,’ on The Superbowl, “The Tonight Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live” or numerous celebrity red carpet events for the likes of Michael Jordan, Nike, HBO, Nintendo and FOX. Now, he wants to perform for your campus. “I have always wanted to play the college market, because the students are always ready for something new and exciting and what I do is like a jam band style to a degree, and they love it because they know no two performances are ever going to be exactly the same.”
Again, you’ll wonder why Ravi isn’t a household name. He is a part of a project called “Live Real Change” (video on our site) that features Pitbull, Justin Bieber, Jason Mraz and some other HUGE artists. Ravi is right there with them. “If you are in Hollywood, then you know me, it’s completely strange because people outside that circle don’t know me at all. The joke
with my manager is that I am the only person that is a part of that project who isn’t a platinum artist (laughs). Ravi’s show isn’t just a great drummer/DJ musical performance. It is a complete sensory experience, with eye candy that abounds, produced by his very own custom stage set up that includes drums with lighting LEDs every time they’re struck, and a NASA inspired digital turn table rig that the entire audience can see and enjoy firsthand. Forget about having a DJ on stage hunched over behind a laptop and occasionally pumping his fist.
When we say a NASA inspired DJ rig, that is not figurative. Ravi literally set out to create this amazing piece of technology with scientists from NASA. “There used to be two kinds of DJs. If you think about it, EDM wasn’t in the general populace three years ago. Now, it is the biggest thing on earth. I have been playing electronic music for 15 years. Several years ago, you had your DJ AM-type artist. He was just a genius who could scratch and battle like there was no tomorrow, but he was hunched over two turn tables and the audience didn’t have a lot to visually latch on to. He was the first person to bring the whole scratching DJ-style to the popular culture five or six years ago. Before him, there were some guys doing it but very few of them. 99% of the clubs you would go to, you wouldn’t even know where the DJ was or he wasn’t in the spotlight. I always thought that was sort of ridiculous and we should bring more attention to the DJ, as in the DJ being the featured attraction the audience was able to watch just as if they were seeing a live band play. “Things have evolved, but you still have two main types of DJs, one is hunched over scratching, and the other is jumping up and down pumping his fist in the air. Then, you combine that with an incredible lighting designer and you have a show.” Ravi decided these separate elements had no real reason they should remain separate. “I decided, ‘Why don’t we just take all of those things and combine them into one performance? That is what I have done.”
Ravi now owns a company with two partners, who yes, were actually NASA scientists before this venture. “I hooked up with
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my partners at Dream Screen Labs, who actually helped launch 10 space shuttles during their previous careers. Then the space program closed down and they were looking for new opportunities. Our little joke is that now you can get NASA scientists for pennies on the dollar (laughs). Isn’t that absurd? I think it’s almost an insult that I have business partners that are NASA scientists. It is amazingly fortunate for me, but it’s also like ‘God, you guys should be doing something to further the human race,” he says laughing. This is a show that’s set at an affordable price for the campus market, but that Ravi has invested in significantly, in time, research costs and hard equipment costs. I asked him if his entire rig disappeared tomorrow, how much it would cost him to replace. “Oh, you are looking at $60,000 to $70,000 easy. The development is another aspect all together, which was very expensive and painful in itself. Surprisingly though, it went much faster than I anticipated.”
There is a pretty interesting story around the development of this technology he uses, as the process came so quickly not out of convenience, but necessity. “I had an idea for this screen. I was on a flight on my way to Brazil for vacation, and was talking to Paula Abdul by phone. She has been like a big sister to me, and she had a new TV show she was developing and was considering the prospect of tapping me to become the musical director for the program. I wrote the theme song for it and I was going up against a group of much bigger names in the industry for the job. I told her I had this great idea, I had just seen Minority Report with Tom Cruise and told her we needed to make some sort of transparent screen that I could DJ on like something out of the movie. She said she loved the idea!”
Ravi had no idea what he had just started, or gotten himself into. “I’m trying to kick back and enjoy a little time on the beach and she keeps emailing me saying ‘Call me, call me, call me!’ I’m thinking here I am trying to relax, and it’s like $8 a minute to call back to The States and she says ‘No, you have to call me immediately, I will pay for the call.’ I knew then it was important and something was going on. So we got on the phone and she says ‘They www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
LOVE it!’ I said, ‘Who loves what?’ She says ‘CBS, the screen!’ I laughed and said ‘Paula, that was an idea. I need to go and try to put it together, I don’t even know where to start yet.’ She tells me I better go get started because she had just spent two hours pitching this concept to the president of CBS and that I better get it together ASAP or I was going to get fired from a job I didn’t even have yet (laughs).”
It took about a year to develop the technology. “I got the prototype together in about six months, and within about a year we had worked out all the bugs, finished the programming and had it ready to go. Under any other normal circumstances, it probably would have taken much longer, but because of the pressure and commitments that had been made, it had to happen very quickly.”
they want the edge, the new, what’s happening next. I am really excited about how much that will keep me on my toes, and push me to stay ahead of the game. This is something I have always tried to do and think I have been pretty good at it.”
and it came together somehow, cosmically. Now we have awesome screens, and they are beautiful. When people see them, they freak out. I perform at many of these large scale corporate events for Microsoft, Steve Wozniak’s 60th birthday, etc. Even he came up and said he wanted to play with it (laughs). When I did an event for Microsoft, Steven Ballmer, the CEO of the company came up and said ‘What’s that?! Did we make that?’ I said, ‘Nope. I called like 10 different Microsoft presidents to get you guys to help me develop it and we couldn’t make it happen,” Ravi says laughing.
and remixes of the most current hits your students want to hear. Because he is so used to playing so many different markets (club, corporate, special events), he specializes in dialing into his audience’s demographic and playing exactly what they want. “I am beyond excited about this, because college students are all about the ‘new,’ which suits my personality famously. They don’t want the old and tired, they’ve been there and done that. At corporate events, you have to do the safe, clean, tried and true hits that everyone knows for an ‘adult’ audience with a wide range of tastes and ages will all like. With students,
pus, expect just an absolute explosion of energy, nonstop. It is going to be really, really fun. I think the college audience is always ready for the next thing, and that is what I want to deliver.”
Through quite a few trials and tribulations, Ravi found a few people who were working on the transparent touch screen technology in The Netherlands, and eventually got hooked up with his NASA scientists. “I funded Dream Screen Labs
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Ravi brings this unique and amazing technology to campuses now. His show is a true feast of sound and lights, and he knows exactly how to tap into what campus students want. You can count on him coming in and dropping the hottest beats
Ravi says the campus market provides a unique atmosphere for a performance artist that one doesn’t really see in other markets. “For them, it’s all about the energy. Any time you play a gig, you have to read the crowd to find out where they want to go. Once you see them, get that read and see where they want to go, it kind of takes you on that journey. But when I am on cam-
For more information, contact Brian Dennis at Diversity Talent Agency, and be sure to ask about getting a special deal as a CAM reader when you mention this story! Contact Brian at (770) 2105579 or brian@diversitytalentagency.com. WATCH THE VIDEO AT CAMPUSACTIVITIESMAGAZINE.COM
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YOUR GUIDE TO AMERICA’S BEST ARTIST RATINGS THE RATING SYSTEM: 5= EXCELLENT 4= VERY GOOD 3= AVERAGE 2= FAIR 1= POOR
If you want to know how good an act might be that you plan on booking, just ask another campus where they have played. Here are current reports from our readers. All ratings here had complete verifiable information and were signed by the reviewer. All reports must have been submitted by the school where the date was played. These reports are comprised of reports electronically submitted on our web site. Reports MAY NOT be submitted by the artist or their agency. ALL REPORTS MUST BE SUBMITTED ON OUR WEBSITE AT: http://www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com/arc/ THERE IS A DIRECT LINK TO THE REPORT FORM ON THE HOME PAGE. HERE ARE THE CATEGORIES FOR THE RATINGS FOUND AFTER THE BUYER’S NAME AND PLAY DATE: (1) ORIGINALITY; (2) ARTIST’S ABILITY; (3) RELATIONSHIP TO THE AUDIENCE; (4) COOPERATION / ATTITUDE; (5) ROAD CREW / MANAGEMENT; (6) AGENCY COOPERATION; (7) PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS PROVIDED. Campus Reports listed in RED indicate the buyer reported a perfect score in all categories that applied to their campus performance for that artist or event. ATTENDANCE (When Available) AND THE LOCATION ON CAMPUS WILL FOLLOW THE PERFORMANCE DATE. THESE RATINGS REPRESENT ACTUAL SHOWS REPORTED BETWEEN SPETMEBER 1 AND SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
sssss INDICATES A PERFECT SCORE FROM FIVE (5) OR MORE SCHOOLS WITH NO SCORE LESS THAN A 5
COMEDY
ADAM GRABOWSKI Auburn Moon Agency
Roanoke College, Salem, VA 08/31/13 60 Colket Center- Ballroom 5555-55 Adam was absolutely fantastic to work with! His show had the audience laughing the entire time. He's definitely one of the best comedians we've ever had because not only was he funny, but he was friendly as well and hung out with the students, well after the show. We'd definitely love to have him back again! Danetta Allen, Head Event Supervisor
Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, PA 09/04/13 150+ Robert S. Carey Center 5555555 Adam was fantastic! He was so enthusiastic and loved talking to the students before and after the show. He really got a feel for the audience and catered his performance to make it enjoyable for everyone. Adam was hilarious and definitely one of the best performances Saint Vincent College has ever had! Shelby Klick, Event Leader
ANDREW SCHULZ KP Comedy
Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI 09/20/13 350+ Plachta Auditorium 5555555 It would be a pleasure to have Andrew Schulz return to Central Michigan University. Charles Thurman, Comedy Chair ANT Admire Entertainment
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/17/13 366 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555We had ANT on campus for his comedy show one night followed by his Bullied,
Bashed, and Not Broken lecture the next day. It was an amazing experience to see the effects of both shows on our students and how he tied everything together in the end about loving oneself. If you want a show (or two) that will truly make a difference at your campus, ANT is the perfect choice! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB
She was fantastic! Her story-telling humor about her days growing up in the Bronx were hilarious. She's a comedian AND leaves the students with some life lessons. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB
ARVIN MITCHELL Summit Comedy, Inc.
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 08/22/13 200+ Multi-Purpose Room 444554Grant was a positive, flexible and creative performer with tons of energy and interactive experiences for the audience. Additionally, he was friendly and supportive with our student staff and took time out to remember their names and chat with them before and after the show. All around a very positive experience! L.T. Austin, Program Manager
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/04/13 656 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Arvin Mitchell was hilarious! He interacted with the crowd and tied his jokes in seamlessly with those interactions. He was an absolute blast to host and a great guy just to chat with before and after the show. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB BARRY ROTHBART KP Comedy
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 09/21/13 100+ Campus Center 5545-44 David Pack, Assistant Director, Collis Center DEREK GAINES Metropolis Management & Entertainment Group
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, PA 09/07/13 100 Kehr Union Ballroom 5555-5Rob Rowinski, Special Events Chairperson
GINA BRILLON Summit Comedy, Inc.
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/04/13 656 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Gina Brillon was the headliner for our NBC's Stand Up for Diversity Comedy Tour show.
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GRANT EDMONDS' COMEDY VARIETY GAME SHOW Bass/Schuler Entertainment
MISSION IMPROVABLE Bass/Schuler Entertainment
Black Hawk College, Moline, IL 08/29/12 125+ Hawks Nest 5545555 The students always love Mission IMPROVable. Erica Murphy, Student Activities Specialist
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 08/30/13 900+ OVerture Center for the Arts 5555-5Great guys to work with This is our 4th year having them. Dave Laur, Coordinator of First-Year Programs SAMMY OBEID KP Comedy
Eastern New Mexico University-Main Campus, Portales, NM 08/28/13 330 Ballroom 4535--3 Sammy is a funny guy, his ability to incorporate academia into jokes was hilarious. Draco A. Miller, Director of Campus Life
Washington & Jefferson College, Washington, PA 08/31/13 150+ Rossin Campus Center Ballroom 5555-55 Hello Gina, Sammy did an awesome job! His sense of humor connected with our students and he literally had them laughing out loud throughout his entire performance! Ketwana Schoos, Assistant Dean of Student Life & Director of Diversity Programs and Multicultural Affairs
University of Evansville, Evansville, IN 09/06/13 210 Ridgway Center 4535444 Sammy did not arrive on time but this was out of his control. He had two plane issues that delayed his arrival by 4 hours. Sammy's comedy is edgy but so purposeful. If a school judges based on language and not what he is intending to convey though a humorous message, they miss the whole point of meeting students where they are at and changing stereotypes and cultural norming. I don't know if his comedy is intentional, but it is funny and educational and meaningful. Geoff Edwards, Director, CSE University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada 09/07/13 140 Dinwoodie 5444443 Sammy puts on a great show and the audience very much enjoyed the evening. His repertoire runs the gamut of puns to academically clever humour. His jokes are average stories with endings that make you laugh, think, and then laugh some more. Jennifer Wanke, Senior Manager Programming & Venues TODD WOMACK KP Comedy
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY 09/21/13 60+ Cabaret 5545544 Mike Bueti, Comedian Chair
www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
MUSIC
CASEY WESTON Auburn Moon Agency
Georgia Highlands CollegeFloyd Campus, Rome, GA 08/21/13 250+ Student Center 555555Casey was a delight! Students enjoyed interacting with her after the show. Great VOICE! John Spranza, Director of Student Life University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/25/13 269 Student Union Starbucks 555555Casey Weston is an absolute sweetheart! Her voice is amazing and our students loved her. She does great covers of well-known songs that get the crowd to sing along. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB LIVE BAND KARAOKE Bass/Schuler Entertainment
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1434 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555It's one of the coolest things to watch our students feel as though they're performing a live show with Live Band Karaoke! It made our Casino Night so much fun and the band was so great to work with! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB SCOTT WESLEY Degy Entertainment
Georgia Highlands CollegeFloyd Campus, Rome, GA 09/24/13 275+ Student Center 5545-5Scott was wonderful. Very crisp and clean voice, great cover songs and really catchy original material. Would certainly bring him back. John Spranza, Director of Student Life THE DOYLE BROTHERS Degy Entertainment
Carroll University, Waukesha, WI 09/06/13 500+ Main Lawn 5555-55 Super easy to work with. The Doyle Brothers were very interactive, had a lot of fun with our staff, stayed around for pictures, and had a great performance. Our students loved them and hope to bring them back in the future! Jake Eisch, Associate Director of Student Activities
VARIETY
CHRISJONES Bass/Schuler Entertainment
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 08/17/13 1040 Bunker Aud 5555-4chrisjones is laugh your butt off funny. he did an incredible job connecting with the audience and keeping them engaged. he travels with extras to add into your space making it a true experience. A must book! Jenn Mazzotta, Director for Student Activities CHRISTOPHER CARTER Bass/Schuler Entertainment
Methodist University, Fayetteville, NC 08/16/13 550+ Reeves 5555555 Christopher Carter had a fantastic show! My students loved him and the show was the
perfect addition to making our Freshmen Orientation an experience to never forget! Doris Munoz, Director of Campus Life
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 08/30/13 1000+ OVerture Center for the Arts 5555-5Chris always does a great job. This is our fourth year having him at this event, and each year he leaves the students amazed and wanting more. Dave Laur, Coordinator of First-Year Programs Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada 09/01/13 3000+ Fieldhouse 5555555 Chris is phenomenal. William Johnson, Student Development and First Year Experience Programs Coordiantor
Albion College, Albion, MI 09/04/13 200 Outside on the Campus Quad 3555-55 Christopher is a class act! He performs and excellent show every time and he is great to work with. I have seen a lot of hypnotists, and Chris even brought some new things to the show that I had never seen before. Jennifer Schreer, Director for Campus Programs and Organizations Hope College, Holland, MI 09/06/13 600+ The Knickerbocker Theatre 5555555 Easily our FAVORITE performance of the year. He has been coming here for years. Students always love him and they come back each year. Chris Bohle, Associate Director of Student Life
Colorado Mountain College, Glenwood Springs, CO 09/18/13 40+ Recker Student Lounge 5555-54 Chris is Amazing! We will definitely have him again! His show is mind blowing Brandon Fox, CSAC CRAIG KARGES sssss Karges Productions
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/27/13 1018 E.J. Thomas Hall 5555555 Craig Karges is simply fantastic. The audience was gasping from amazement within minutes of his show. Craig and his wife are two of the best people to work with! Both kind-hearted and extremely personable. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB Michigan Technological University Houghton, MI 08/28/13 600 Rozsa Theatre 5555555 Katie Cooper, Assistant Director
Northern State University, Aberdeen, SD 09/12/13 375+ Krikac Auditorium 5555555 Craig put on an awesome show and brought in a record number of students for our live entertainment events. He was very easy to work with and did a great job putting on a teaser to help attract more students. We look forward to doing more business with him in the future!I would recommend him to any school out there trying to diversify their acts and have a great time! Chance, Director Live Entertainment
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 09/13/13 137 Sarratt|Rand Lounge 5555-55 With almost 19 years of involvement with Student Activities I am still amazed with the caliber of work Craig Karges produces on stage. He is so great that his charisma and stage presence could warm up a room in Antarctica. Dwayne V. Elliott, Director, Arts & Campus Events
www.campusactivitiesmagazine.com
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 09/20/13 850+ SUB Allen Theater 5554555 Craig was very nice and well spoken. He was prepared on all fronts. He gave the crowd the show they were looking for. He performed during our Family Weekend and his show brought entertainment for all ages. I would definitely recommend him to other college campuses. He did a great job. Regine Cliatt, TAB Nightlife Coordinator Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, Shippensburg, PA 09/21/13 300 Shippensburg University Multi Purpose Room 5555555 Totally Awesome!!! David Meckes, Graduate Assistant for the University Union and Student Activities(CUB)
University of Washington-Bothell Campus, Bothell, WA 09/25/13 50+ Mobius Hall 5555555 He was great to work with and a great performer. I loved how flexible he was and happy to just be there with the students. I would recommend working with him for any college campus and hope to get the opportunity to work with him again. Jeff Sann, Resident Director Regis University, Denver, CO 09/26/13 350+ Mountain View Rooom (On Campus) 5555555 Craig Karges has been to Regis for the past 10 years and brings something original, engaging, and thrilling every year! He is wonderful and easy to work with and makes the planning process a breeze. Craig is a great entertainer who grabs the attention of the audience and keeps them on the edge of their seats the entire show! It's a joy to have Craig at Regis and we will definitely continue to bring him back to perform! Justine Espinosa, Regis University Student Goverment Association (RUSGA) Director of Programming Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg, MA 09/27/13 450 Weston Auditorium 5555555 Craig is THE best at what he does. He was the perfect person to have kick-off our Family Weekend. We will definitely bring him back! Shane Franzen, Associate Director, Student Development
Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA 09/28/13 250 College 5555555 Craig is the best in the college market. There is no other act that is perfect for students, families and staff. He is outstanding year after year. I have hired him for years because he is amazing! Mary-Alice Ozechoski, Dean of Students DANIEL MARTIN sssss Bass/Schuler Entertainment
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 09/01/13 590 ballroom 5555555 Melissa Grosso, Leadership Advisor
Davenport University, Grand Rapids, MI 09/03/13 210+ Gym 5555-55 Daniel Martin was outstanding. His originality in his performance was superb! We hope that he can come back to our campus again. Go Daniel Martin! Dena Willis and Caitlin Kirchner, Housing and Res Life Concordia University-Seward, Seward, NE 09/06/13 270 Chapel 5555555 Seriously one of the sweetest people I know. Daniel Martin truly knows how to relate to the audience and is very articulate about his needs. We will definitely be supporting him
throughout the years. Allyson Porath, Student Activities Co-Chair
Keene State College, Keene, NH 09/13/13 220+ Mabel Brown Student Center 5555-55 Amazing and easy to work with. Fun performance and relationship to audience. Would absolutely have him back. One of the best events I have coordinated as events coordinator within a 17 month span. Ryan Mahan, Events Coordinator University of La Verne, La Verne, CA 09/18/13 100+ university of LaVerne 5555555 Great! Must have again! Very Energetic! Estrellita Guzman, Comedy Chair ERIC DITTELMAN Franco Talent
Babson College, Wellesley, MA 09/02/12 150+ Sorenson Theater 5555--4 Eric was such a pleasure to have and work with. He was loved by the crowd, and delivered a wonderful performance! Gaby Deraney, Miss
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY 09/04/13 98 Marist College Cabaret 555555Eric Dittelman was great to work with! He was very easy going and put on a great show. The audience was attentive and amazed. Eric also did another short routine with just the members of the board as he was cleaning up. I would highly recommend him to other colleges! Abigail Denis, Socials Committe Chair FREDERICK WINTERS Bass/Schuler Entertainment
University of Wisconsin-Superior, Superior, WI 09/02/13 100+ University 5555555 Best hypnotist ever! Mr. Winters has been performing at our university for over 15 years and his performances are always a hit with our students. He is entertaining, professional, and memorable. It was almost been a month since he was here and the students are still talking about it. We are already looking forward to having him again next year! First Year Experience Staff, Lead Student JOEL MEYERS GP Entertainment
The College of Saint Scholastica, Duluth, MN 08/31/13 400 The Mitchell Auditorium 5555555 Joel is wonderful! His personality makes the show! It was amazing! We will definitely be bringing him back for years to come! Marisa Sanderson, Student Activities Coordinator
Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Albany, NY 09/28/13 300 ACPHS Student Center 201 & 202 4545-55 Joel put on a strong show and had the audience laughing and highly engaged. Although we weren't informed in advance, we needed one of our staff to operate the audio system according to his script. Joel performed the same routine from the highlight video on his website... which detracted a bit from the originality of the audience experience. Joel did stay after the show to sign autographs and interact with the audience. We had a high audience approval of the event. Reid Ockerman, Asst Dir of Student Engagement and Leadership JONATHAN FROST Chilling Entertainment
SUNY College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, Cobleskill, NY 09/10/13 340 Bouck Theater 5555555
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Jonathan was amazing. He arrived 4 hours before the show started to set-up and get familiar with the stage. Students LOVED his show. Mike Wacksman, Assistant Director of Student Life MAD CHAD TAYLOR Bass/Schuler Entertainment
SUNY College of Agriculture and Technology at Cobleskill, Cobleskill, NY 08/23/13 300 Bouck Theater 5545444 Chad is great to work with and his show was very well received by the students. Jeff Foote, Activities Director Aurora University, Aurora, IL 08/24/13 200 Perry Theatre 5555555 Brandy Skierkiewicz, Director of Student Engagement MICHAEL C. ANTHONY Neon Entertainment
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/10/13 1448 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Michael C.'s hypnosis show gets better and better every time we bring him to campus! He's hilarious and really knows how to work the crowd. Michael is a pleasure to work with and is always willing to stick around after the show to talk to our students about his expertise! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB MICHAEL KENT sssss Fresh Variety
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Green Bay, WI 09/03/13 250 Phoenix Rooms 5555-55 Great show! We all loved it! Beth Ledvina, Variety Entertainment
Niagara County Community College, Sanborn, NY 09/05/13 140 Dining Room/Cafe 5555-55 Awesome show. Kept students engaged & entertained. One of our most attended events. Heather Saba, Technical Assistant
Rockford College, Rockford, IL 09/14/13 134 Regents Hall 5555-55 Michael was a hit from the very start of his arrival on campus. Connected well with student leaders and continued the connection the entire night with the whole crowd. His humor brought laughs out of the entire audience throughout the night. Would love to bring him back on campus! Jil Gates, Director of Student Activities
Saint Mary's University of Minnesota Winona, MN 09/16/13 100+ Saint Mary's Hall 5555555 Laura at Fresh Variety and Mr. Kent are the complete package. They send high quality posters before the show, which is rare, and they keep in touch throughout the entire process. The show itself is high quality and students enjoy the comedic aspects just as much as the mind bending. Great job all around. Lance Thompson, Director of Student Activities
Missouri Southern State University, Joplin, MO 09/17/13 300 Corley Auditorium 5555555 We were thrilled with both Michael's performance and the attendance, both of which far exceeded our expectations. Our students loved Michael! Landon Adams, Director
Mount St Mary's University-Emmitsburg, Emmitsburg, MD 09/20/13 114 1808 5555-55 Michael was a pleasure to work with! His energy and humor was awesome and really got the crowd going! It was an awesome experience! I would recommend him for any university/venue! Jennifer McSparron, AMP Leader Capital University, Columbus, OH 09/25/13 300+ The Mezz 5555555 The biggest turnout we have ever had for an event like this. Great job! Morgan Gates, Executive Director
Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 09/27/13 500 Viking Union MPR 5555555 The teaser was amazing. The show had the audience on their feet, standing ovation. An amazing blend of comedy and magic. Darioush Mansourzadeh, Special Events Coordinator TEAM M&M Everything But The Mime
Georgia Highlands CollegeFloyd Campus, Rome, GA 08/26/13 400+ Student Center 5555555 Students LOVE Mike and Margaret! The most amazing balloon creations and most beautiful body art on the market! Students demand them every year, and we will bring them back as much as possible! John Spranza, Director of Student Life TOM DELUCA Admire Entertainment
Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 08/22/13 1000+ Byrnes Auditorium 3555-5Great performance students really enjoyed out of all the years Tom has been coming to Winthrop this was probably the best show yet! Tevin Brown, DiGiorgio Student Union Special Events Chair
NOVELTIES
AIRBRUSH TRUCKER HATS Kirkland Productions
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 08/28/13 2500 Iowa Memorial Union 3534355 Airbrush trucker hats were great to have with a big crowd. The artist took orders so people could get what they wanted while checking out the rest of the event. A huge success! Molly Golemo, Coordinator, Student Activities ATOM, THE WORLD'S FASTEST PAINTER Mark Sonder Productions, Inc.
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555ATOM is amazing! His fast-paced spray paint artwork is phenomenal. His energy is unbelievable and he is someone our students talk about even after the event is over! ATOM is absolutely fantastic to work with and helps make our Casino Night a wonderful success. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB BALLOONS BY LESTER & BODY ART BY SUSAN Everything But The Mime
College of Mount St. Joseph, Patchogue, NY 09/05/13 1200 Quad 5555555
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They showed up early and decorated our tents! Campus Activities Board, Welcome Back BBQ
University of Arkansas at Monticello, Monticello, AR 09/14/13 400 Fine Arts Center/Tailgating 5555555 This was a great team to bring to campus. They were engaging with the audience and produced great products. The campus was very pleased! I highly recommend them to everyone! Guy Joubert, Director of Student Programs and Activities CARICATURE ARTISTS Kirkland Productions
Texas Woman's University, Denton, TX 09/04/13 150 4554-4Everyone raved about the Caricature! The line was never very short, and several people asked afterwards for his contact information so they could contact him directly for their own events. Several people said he was the best caricature artist they have seen! Will definitely invite Benjamin back. Chre Parnell, Student Life Coordinator
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 09/13/13 1500+ Arkansas Union 5545-5The caricature artists were a hit at our Casino Night themed program. There were long lines all night and our event lasted four hours! The staff at Kirkland Productions are always so friendly and helpful. Thank you for another excellent job well done! Jameel Braddock, Program Coordinator of Late Night and Leadership Programs CARTE BLANCHE CASINO NIGHTS Kirkland Productions Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 08/28/13 1000+ LSC Ballroom 5555555 Donielle Miller, Assistant Director for Student Activities DIGITAL CARICATURES Kirkland Productions
Lamar State College-Port Arthur, Port Arthur, TX 08/29/13 100 Student Center 5555-55 Ben did an excellent job! He was very cooperative and accommodating. Gina and staff are wonderful, as always! Our programming board is already talking about bringing the event back in the spring. Claire Thomason, Director of Student Activities
MIKE DA ROVING GUY AND MARGARET'S "ART ON YOU" Everything But The Mime University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Both Mike and Margaret create absolute masterpieces! During our Casino Night, all you could see were Mike's balloon creations being carried or worn by our students and Margaret's face and body paint on almost every face, arm, and leg of our students! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB
University of Arkansas at Monticello, Monticello, AR 09/14/13 400 Fine Arts Center/Tailgating 5555555 This was a great team. The were very professional and produced a quality product. I highly recommend them to everyone! Guy Joubert, Director of Student Programs and Activities
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555The green screen and photo booth are always a hit with our students! Party Pix bring everything needed and also have chests full of fun props for our students to wear in their photos. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB PHOTO KEYCHAINS Everything But The Mime
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Photo Key Chains was a hit at our Casino Night! The students loved being able to take away something from the night as a souvenir for their key rings and lanyards! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB PIPPI'S ART - ASIAN NAME PAINTING Everything But The Mime
Georgia Northwestern Technical College, Rome, GA 09/03/13 200+ Polk Campus 5555555 April Welch, Campus Manager POSTCARDS2HOME Everything But The Mime
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1434 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555Postcards 2 Home were a favorite at our Casino Night. The picture and printing of the postcards only took a matter of seconds, so students kept going back for more! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB SATURDAY NIGHT COIN CASINO Auburn Moon Agency
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555The casino night games were packed from the beginning to the end of our Casino Night event! Saturday Night Coin Casino brings everything necessary to make the event possible and are always a great pleasure to work with. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB SILHOUETTES BY KATHRYN Everything But The Mime
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1434 E.J. Thomas Hall 5555555 Kathryn is absolutely amazing! She is able to cut out perfect silhouettes in under 2 minutes! We love having her as part of our Casino Night during Welcome Weekend. She definitely gives students a novelty to keep forever! Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB TWO CARICATURE ARTISTS Fun Enterprises, Inc.
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 08/24/13 1435 E.J. Thomas Hall 555555The caricature artists were a student favorite, as always! Faline was such a pleasure to work with and was more than happy to make sure our students were satisfied with their caricatures. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB
PARTY PIX GREEN SCREEN PartyPix Photo Experience
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SPEAKERS
BRANDON "REAL T@LK" WILLIAMS Brandon Williams
Georgia Highlands CollegeFloyd Campus, Rome, GA 09/16/13 275+ Student Center 5555--Brandon was great! Engaging spoken word, mixed with hip hop and great story-telling. He is certain to be a rising star! John Spranza, Director of Student Life DANIEL HERNANDEZ JR Kirkland Productions
Millikin University, Decatur, IL 09/24/13 50 Richards Treat University Center 5555555 Daniel was more than what we anticipated. He was very engaging with the students, really relatable, and very down to earth. The students were really impressed that he remembered their names from the first meeting to the end of his speech. His story is powerful, and his message of preparation and taking advantage of your opportunities is something everyone needs to hear. Really great! Molly Berry, Director of ISE DEANNA LATSON Kirkland Productions
Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 09/04/13 40 Green Center 5554-54 Deanna is an incredible speaker- we let her down with our attendance but will bring her again Jenn Mazzotta, Director for Student Activities DEL SUGGS Del Suggs
Iowa Western Community College, Council Bluffs, IA 09/05/13 85+ Iowa Western Student Center 5555555 Del did an amazing job at inspiring and empowering our Student Leaders and Staff! He hosted 3 different sessions to 3 different groups on-campus, including: Goal Setting - College Experience Class, Avoiding "Burn Out" - Staff & Faculty, and Recruiting - Club & Organization Sponsors and Presidents. In all 3 sessions, he successfully engaged the audience, providing valuable insight and tips, based on his own experiences and the experiences of others. I would highly recommend Del to perform leadership training on any College Campus. Adam Long, Student Life Coordinator
Beacon College, Leesburg, FL 09/21/13 35+ Student Center 4555-5Kelly Hickmon, Assistant Director Campus Life ELAINE PASQUA Pasqua Productions, Inc.
Mount Olive College, Mount Olive, NC 08/22/13 200 Auditorium 5555--LaToya G. Lindsey, Assistant Director of Athletics/SWA
Green Mountain College, Poultney, VT 08/31/13 125 Withey Gorge 3322--Ryan Ihrke, Director of Student Involvement University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Oshkosh, WI 09/02/13 1600 Kolf 5555--Elaine is great and SO easy to work with. She even helped us move chairs off the stage. She's made real connections with staff and students on campus. Debbie Gray Patton, Assistant Dean
of Students
University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 09/04/13 180 University Lecture Hall 5555-55 Elaine's presentation was amazing. She was very engaging and informative. Our studentathletes left her presentation feeling empowered. Charles Small, Assistant Athletic Director Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ 09/11/13 200+ McNulty 101 55555-5 Elaine was wonderful to deal with. She arrived early to gain background on our student-athletes and discuss the presentation beforehand as we had to make some slight alterations to her original program because Seton Hall is a Catholic-based institution. Many student-athletes went out of their way to praise her performance as they found her easy to relate to, funny, and informational. Her fluid-exchange exercise was eye-opening and really had our student-athletes focused and shocked. Overall, I would recommend Elaine to come speak to student-athletes on any campus. Roberto Sasso, Assistant AD - Student-Athlete Development & Leadership
Harcum College, Bryn Mawr, PA 09/18/13 100 COLLEGE 5555454 Elaine was great and our students loved her and learned a lot. Urick Lewis, An unheard voice GIRLS FIGHT BACK! Kirkland Productions
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD 08/29/13 133 Ballroom 5555-5We had a great time with Heather from 'Girls Fight Back!' She was able to keep the students engaged and interacting. We advertised the program as 'Students Fight Back' and interactive program and it worked really well. It's great to have a program like this at a male dominated school. It truly helped open their eyes to the realities of the world! Mike Keegan, Director Student Activities and Leadership Center Johnson & Wales University-North Miami, North Miami, FL 09/11/13 20 Wildcat Center 5555-5Natalia Montilla Portes, Coordinator of Student Activities HARLAN COHEN Help Me, Harlan! Productions
University of Akron Main Campus, Akron, OH 09/11/13 213 Student Union 555555Harlan is real. He connected with our students so well and left them with great leadership and life advice. He has a great mix of humor and silliness tied into great stories and worthy tips to succeed. Holly K. Pilcavage, GA-RHPB JESSICA PETTITT Kirkland Productions
McDaniel College, Westminster, MD 08/23/13 400+ Liedy Room/Theater 5555-55 Jessica Pettitt is fantastic! She did a trans inclusion workshop for staff and faculty as well as an orientation diversity program for new students. With each event, she kept the audience engaged with her humor and honesty. Jess was easy to work with, flexible, thoughtful, and fun. I would definitely recommend her to my colleagues and I look forward to inviting her back to campus in the future. Jennifer Jimenez Marana, Director of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA 09/06/13 65+ New Theater
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5555555 Many thanks to Jess and to the folks at Kirkland Productions. We were very happy with the event. Philip Mancus, Professor of Psychology and Sociology
University of Washington-Seattle Campus, Seattle, WA 09/16/13 150 theater 4245-1Jessica did 3 performances for us. The first was for our Resident Advisers before Behind Closed Doors. It was perfect. She struck just the right tone. The second was supposed to be professional development for our professional staff. As a result of extenuating circumstances, Jessica was unable to deliver the content she was supposed to deliver. The presentation was disjointed and without focus. Jessica apologized after the presentation for not delivering the content that she was supposed to. The third presentation was again with our Resident Advisers and it was better than the second, but not as good as the first. Jessica did a nice job of engaging students who often feel left out of diversity trainings. Jessica was very easy to work with. Following the event, I asked for a small discount, given I had to apologize to my RD staff for the lack of professional development and Gina Kirkland replied with a very short and dismissive response without any regard for my feedback or concern. While day of Jessica was easy to work with. I found Gina Kirkland from Kirkland Productions not pleasant to work with. Erica Barton, Administrator, Student Development Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, UT 09/19/13 150+ Salt Lake Community Colle 5555544 Jessica was great! Many of the audience requested to bring her back again. Thank you Doctor Abio Ayeliya, Coordinator, Leadership and Diversity PHIRED UP Kirkland Productions
Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX 08/27/13 1100 Coliseum 4555-53 Kevin Bazner, Assistant Director SEX SIGNALS Catharsis Productions
Defiance College, Defiance, OH 08/27/13 300+ Auditorium 3434444 Sex Signals was on target with our group! From a professional perspective, we loved what they had to say how they said it. They also handled uninformed perspectives with integrity and through an educational approach. They didn't allow the audience to get out of control and specifically said they weren't allowing the audience to leave until everyone understood why a certain situation involving rape was unacceptable. Nicole Buccalo, Director, Student Activities & Leadership United States Military Academy, West Point, NY 08/29/13 500+ Auditorium 4545-55 MAJ Missy Rosol, Sexual Assault Response Coordinator
Western New England University, Springfield, MA 09/02/13 400+ Fieldhouse 5555--5 Sex Signals performs during our move in weekend and always does a fantastic job. Great interaction with the students. Thank you! Dan Freese, Academic Technologist Seattle University, Seattle, WA 09/22/13 900 Campion Ballroom 5555555 Ryan Hamachek, Director of Wellness and
Health Promotion
THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING! Kirkland Productions
Dominican University, River Forest, IL 09/11/13 300 Theatre 5555555 The Muslims Are Coming documentary and comedy show was an excellent way to engage students in a conversation about Islamaphobia. The documentary is incredibly well done with popular comedians students can identify with. The directors were incredible to work with, and this engaging program touched on diversity, faith, and was entertaining...the triple crown in student programming! Michael Lango, Director of Student Involvement
PERFORMING ARTS
DRUMS OF POLYNESIA Drums of Polynesia
Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 08/17/13 1000+ Tilman Auditorium 555555They are a great group of performers that also give a lesson about Polynesia as they dance. The students loved the interactivity of the group. Tevin Brown, Student Union Spec Events Chair
Campus Activities Magazine速 NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD
Kathy C. Arnett Director/Student Union & Associate Director/Benson University Center Wake Forest University Joseph W. McGibboney Coordinator for Student Programming Dean of Student Department Florida Gulf Coast University
Boyd Jones, Campus Programs Director Dept. of Student Affairs Winthrop University April Palmer Assistant Dean of Students Newberry College
Mike Rapay University Program Council Advisor Auburn University Tom Faessel Assoc Dir Res Life Activities The University Of Akron
Chris Schuler- Partner Bass/Schuler Entertainment
Nikki Franklin Senior Entertainment Specialist TalentPlus Universal Gina Kirkland, President Kirkland Productions
Sailesh Jiawan. Owner Metropolis Management Laura Gilman. Partner Fresh Variety
Campus Activities Magazine速 Cameo Publishing Group 15420 Newberry Rd Blair SC 29015 (800) 728-2950 ian@cameopublishing.com kirby@cameopublishing.com www.campusactivitiesmagaziner.com
CAMPUS ACTIVITIES MAGAzINE速, OCTOBER 2013, 35
PUBLISHER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4
attend a show, the students must pick up their tickets at the student union. For the community to buy tickets, we have two community outlets near campus at restaurants. We get a count from these sources every day so we know what kind of crowd to expect for each show we book. When the event is 75% sold-out, we will change the posters to reflect the next show on our schedule. I allow the students to do most of the buying with the understanding I have the final say. They understand that we will book NO show where posters are not part of the contract.
This is an ever-changing population here and many of the acts we buy may be ones that our general population is not familiar with. For us to reach our mass audience we have to have posters. Not only do we put them up on campus, but our student activities board knows where students like to hang out, and all those merchants gladly accept posters to promote our shows.
The only way you might slip into our schedule without posters to promote your show is that if you are a top celebrity that your agency assures us will sell out our arena. Campus Activities Magazine has been a huge help over the years in identifying new acts that we should be considering. We
booked the ones that our students liked if we could find a date that fits both schedules and the artist had promo. I read the story in the Advisor’s Edition concerning how essential promo is for an artist and that prompted me to call the publication and inquire about the cost of posters. I could not see how this could possibly be a stumbling block for agencies to provide this material to close a date. I found out that an artist could purchase 10,000 color posters for $1458. That’s 14.5¢ each. Most campuses need 20 posters or so which total $2.89 (our campus requires at least 50). But assuming every campus got 20, that’s enough for 500 dates. Come on agents. You really want the campuses to pay $45 per poster to get posters printed when it costs you 14.5¢.
When I first became involved in activities on my campus, everyone wanted posters that were 17 or 18” wide and 25” long. Honestly, space on campus has become a premium and rarely can we find enough spaces that large for event promotion. The standard 11x17” poster fits our needs perfectly and we have even made glass cases to hold the posters at the front on our theaters. These posters are inexpensive for artists to buy and ship.
36, CAMPUS ACTIVITIES MAGAzINE®, OCTOBER 2013
I can appreciate the need for everyone to cut back, we have had to make some sacrifices here. But the administration doesn’t feel we are doing a great job unless we put students in seats and posters, along with pre-show teasers, have done the job for us. The only events where we do not require posters from agencies is our fall festival and spring fling. Because those events usually involve more than one attraction and sometimes from multiple vendors, for those two events we find students with graphic backgrounds to develop the posters and we print them ourselves. I believe that many smaller colleges have fewer resources than we do and for them to pay even $3-$4 per poster to have a digital file converted at Kinkos or some other source is absurd. Like the article said, if the agency or artist doesn’t want to absorb the cost, it could easily be added to the over-all cost of the show. I am sure that $15 to cover the posters and shipping would not be a deal breaker.”
Beverly
Note: because the writer is currently being considered for the position of Coordinator for the Deans of Students at a multiuniversity system, she has asked that her identity be withheld pending the job decision. This letter was not solicited by Cameo Publishing and was not printed to bolster our print business. Please use whomever you feel will do the best job and give you the best service.
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CAM OCT 2013
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