Inside the Smooth Jazz Music Industry

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

Talent managers and promoters race to respond to coronavirus outbreak

By Marcia Manna

BEHIND THE SCENES of the music industry, booking agents, festival promoters and managers can spend months negotiating and interacting with each other to make a single concert a success. It’s a high-stakes, all-hours job wrought with challenges. Although one can earn an educational degree to support being a talent agent, concert promoter or manager, it takes years of experience to develop a viable business model to represent those with unique musical talents or produce a profitable event. When the coronavirus emerged in March, impacting hundreds of working musicians, manager Steve Chapman raced to rearrange the lives of his clients. “Today it has been about canceling shows and rescheduling shows,” Chapman said with a soft British accent. “You are bouncing from one thing to another all day. I’m a little ADD, so it suits me well.” As a teenager, Chapman played drums in his own band and worked at a London music publishing company before recording and touring with artists such as singer-songwriter Leo Sayer, the country-rock band Poco and British folk-rock guitarist Al Stewart. After retiring from performing in 1989, he formed Chapman & Co. Management Inc., guiding the careers of Stewart, British guitarist Peter White, and, over time, a who’s-who of smooth jazz artists including Rick Braun, Richard Elliot, Euge Groove, Jeff Lorber and David Benoit, among others. Many of Chapman’s clients tour and perform together worldwide, making venue closures due to the coronavirus potentially devastating. “A lot of jazz artists are working musicians, and they have to cover their nut, especially if they have families,” he said. “A lot of the schools are shutting down, and they have performing arts centers, so a lot of performances will be canceled until things calm down.” Routing an artist on the smooth jazz circuit requires timing and mapping skills. Road tours need to be lined up in a specific direction, within a reasonable date range, and promotion must be scheduled in a timely manner. The artist also has to be appropriate for the venue, and that requires a booking agent or manager to have firsthand, up-todate knowledge about every concert hall in every town. The venue’s seating capacity, public address system and the age and tastes of its clientele are all important considerations. And, the artist’s salary can’t be higher than anticipated ticket sales. “There are some acts you know are going to work. You know you are going to make money,” Chapman said. “But with a bigger act, like a Boz Scaggs or Michael McDonald for example, you are going to pay them more, then bump up the ticket price and hope you sell out, or you are in big trouble.” Last year, Chapman arranged a Christmas tour for White along with Euge Groove, Vincent Ingala and Lindsey Webster. The group performed 23 shows in 25 days, driving most of the way and taking a plane for larger distances. “A tour bus makes it easier,” Chapman explained. “It was Austin, Houston, Dallas and a travel day. You are doing 400-mile hops in a tour bus overnight.” After the shows journeyed to the East Coast and then Florida, the band took a 6 a.m. flight to San Francisco, and a bus picked them up to perform a matinee and evening show at Yoshi’s in Oakland, California. Some engagements are shorter, what Chapman called a hit-andrun weekend. “You go into an area and do a concert booking in Indianapolis on Thursday, and book Friday and Saturday in Chicago,” Chapman explained. “As audiences got older, it’s tougher to get them out on weekdays for a must-see show, but they will come out on a weekend.” Managing artists, Chapman stressed, is all about attention to detail and creating opportunities for his clients, so they are “in the frame to be first choice at festivals.” He said that the main purpose of artist management is to advise and counsel clients, but they also interact with concert promoters and booking agents, keeping them informed about new album releases and artist collaborations. A manager would negotiate positioning, for example, so that an artist with a significant following would not be an opening act for a new, unknown artist. Chapman & Co.’s client roster also includes Mindi Abair, who recently returned to the smooth jazz genre (and to her manager Bud Harner) after a several-year absence exploring blues music with a couple of different managers. She and Ingala are among the acts

scheduled to perform at the 34th Annual Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival in October, launched by veteran radio personality Art Good. Good is known for hosting the popular KiFM “Lites Out San Diego” program. And, smooth jazz fans continue to tune in to JazzTrax, his weekly, streaming syndicated radio show, which Good said “still has an impact and keeps me in the loop.” This year’s Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival features Dave Koz, Gerald Albright, Jeffrey Osborne and Spyro Gyra, among many popular artists scheduled to perform over the course of two weekends, which as of today, is still scheduled to take place, Oct. 8-11 and Oct. 15-18. To find talent for his festival, Good starts working a year in advance to create a lineup that will be profitable and competitive. He has to consider the proximity of nearby venues and what is known as a “radius clause. ”It’s a contractual rule restricting distance and promotion, typically for 60 to 90 days, and it prohibits artists from promoting and performing at a nearby venue, potentially undercutting profits. The Hollywood Bowl, for instance, can block Good from contracting with one of its summer acts, which could forbid him to hire and promote that artist for his October festival. “I can’t book someone, pay them top dollar and announce it at the end of August,” explained Good. “The majority of my tickets have been sold by the end of August. People plan and come from all over the country.” The Hollywood Bowl is a Dave Koz on his 2019 17,500-seat venue that pays Christmas tour artists well, and its radius clause ensures that those acts won’t work at competing festivals and venues. Good has learned over the years to think creatively and count on relationships with industry pros, other festival promoters and friends in high places. This year, for example, he was able to book Koz, who headlined a concert at the Bowl last summer. Good thought the popular saxophonist would be out of reach until an agent tipped him off to the fact that the smooth jazz superstar only plays the Bowl during the odd years. So, Good waited for 2020, an even year, and booked him for his festival. Then there was the time that JazzTrax fan and former Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Don Knabe advocated on Good’s behalf. Average White Band was scheduled to play the Bowl, and Good yearned to book the group at his Catalina Island JazzTrax Festival. “He [Knabe] wrote a letter to the Hollywood Bowl asking them to let Average White Band play Catalina, and to let me announce it,” Good said. “And they did!” David Britz, founder of WORKS Entertainment (which has offices in Los Angeles and Nashville), has represented top smooth jazz headliner Brian Culbertson, his only contemporary jazz client, for 16 years. Britz, who grew up in a small Delaware town, scouring record labels and dreaming of producing music acts, said that he and his production manager, Luke Pierce, are involved in every aspect of their artists’ careers. Nine years ago, Culbertson created his Napa Valley Jazz Getaway, followed by the Chicago Jazz Getaway. Britz advised him to start slowly. “If you start out too big, and you lose a ton of money, there is nowhere to go from that,” Britz explained. “My advice was: Let’s do this, but let’s sell it out the first year, and we can expand it from there.” At the time of this writing, the Napa Valley Jazz Getaway (rescheduled from June to Nov. 10-13, 2020) and the Chicago Jazz Getaway (Sept. 10-13, 2020) festivals are still happening. But Culbertson’s national road tour was not immune from the effects of the coronavirus. Earlier this year, Culbertson released his 20th album, XX, and was scheduled to perform more than 60 coast-to-coast shows in support of the new recording. When large gatherings were prohibited due to the pandemic, the whole tour had to be postponed. Simultaneously, venues all over the country are in the process of rearranging entertainment lineups. Britz acted Steve Chapman, founder quickly, booking a revised tour of Chapman & Co. schedule for 2021. Management “Our company does 1,500 shows a year with artists across the board, plus the festivals we produce,” he said. “You have to know your artist and have the right instincts. Everybody has different needs and everyone is different.” The impact of the coronavirus has struck a blow to the building blocks of the entertainment industry—from the musicians and artist representation to venues and support staff.