Iconic Dealmakers Part 4: Cash & Carry Pyle and the Bunyon Derby

Dealmakers Barry and Dennis explore CC. Pyles’ famous International Intercontinental Race, a/k/a “The Bunion Derby, and his creation of nationwide “on-the-spot” dealmaking, a precursor to the types of deals made in today's modern and complicated entertainment touring environment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Music Row Deal Makers, where we explore our world of making deals from that deal-famed Music Row. In the heart of Music City, we are the Deal Makers from composing to closing. Now, here's your host, Mary Neemostrom, and Dennis Disney.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hello, you dealmakers out there. Welcome to our fifth episode of the Music Row Dealmakers from Composing to Closing. My name is Barry Neil Strom, and as always, I'll be joined later by my partners-in-law, Dennis Disney and the United States. Our first series in the Music Row Deal Makers podcast is a 10-part series we've called Iconic Dealmakers. And in in that series, we explore standout deal negotiators throughout U.S. history. Our first episode explored my friend and client, Frank DeLeo, who, of course, if you'll recall managed Michael Jackson. In these last two episodes of Music Road Dealmakers, parts uh two and and three of Iconic Dealmakers, we've examined a man by the name of Charles C. Pyle and a couple of deals he made for nationwide tours to showcase first the football talents of Red Grange and then subsequently the tennis prowess of Susan Langland. Part four in Iconic Dealmakers is the last of the episodes uh in which we will explore Mr. Pyle. And it involves perhaps his biggest deal venture ever before ultimately becoming president of the radio transcription service and and spending out his career there. And that was um CeC Pyle's international intercontinental race, um, also known as the the Bunyan Derby in the press. So as we talked about in uh segments two and three of Pyle's uh discussion, Pyle was part of a collection or a number of colorful promoters, these shakers and movers who thrived in the 1920s. You may have seen the greatest showman ever featuring P. T. Barnum of this time period. Also, in this time period, boxing took on a new life with a a man named George Tex Ricard. And in another industry, radio and and uh ultimately phonograph records, uh, David Sarnoff is another mover and shaker. And we'll we'll take a talk look take a look at David Sarnoff in another part of this iconic dealmaker series. So stay tuned for that. These entrepreneurs, particularly Pyle and Dar uh and Barnum, were adept at communicating compelling stories of of human drama to the press in the hopes of prying admission fees from the the hands of the public who wanted to be entertained and prying sponsorship fees from anyone who wanted to be a part of the action. So in in this episode, we will explore the Bunyan Derby, what was described in in one news article or uh biography, I don't remember which, as Pyle's most stupendous athletic accomplishment in all history. As the um relationship with Susan Langland was winding down and uh the tennis tour was wrapping up, Pyle was already uh conjuring up his next great deal. This was early in 1927. Pyle was reading a newspaper when he stumbled on a small item about this 72-year-old man who had ran two nine 96 miles without stopping to deliver a message during the 1921 Riff campaign of Moroccan independence. That story impressed Pyle. So and inspired by by this old man's endurance in the the face of the need to get the news out, Hyo began to imagine heroic athletes running long distances, all of course orchestrated solely by himself. He said he would call it the international intercontinental race, and it would lead dozens, if not hundreds, of runners from one coast of the United States to the other. This this race, this this idea was part of the culture uh in the late 19th century and early 20th century. And it was driven by um incredible feats of strength and endurance. 1896, for example, saw the revival of the Greek Olympics, and that event ultimately led to what we know of as the modern Olympics, which gained uh notoriety and momentum in the uh uh through the 1924 Paris Games. Also in uh 1895 was the great auto races which uh began to pop up around the world, first from Paris to Bordeaux and back again, and another in America from Chicago to Evanston and back. A few decades later, of course, the Grand Prix event would kick off in 1920. And of course, that led to the Indianapolis 500 and the Le Mans, just to name a few of these uh races that have continued into the modern era. We talked about Pyle's role in the formation of the NFL through Red Grange in episode three, but in addition, in the early 20th century, we saw the evolution of horse racing uh and the Triple Crown. We saw the formation of the NHL and and NCAA, along with uh modern rodeos, which um uh evolved out of the old traveling wild west shows. So these showans, these entrepreneurs, uh were were part of the culture at the time. Around the same uh time frame in 1819, the American culture was moving from horse-drawn carriages and transportation to the more modern trucks and vehicles that that evolved in in this time frame. And so the uh U.S. Army orchestrated a convoy of some of their heavy military trucks, about 30 or so, to travel from Washington, D.C. over 3,000 miles to the west so that they could determine if their these new modern vehicles could replace the the traditional horse and mule-drawn transportation that they had been using prior. The uh leader of that convoy was none other than Lieutenant Colonel at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who of course later became president. And and that convoy he led transversed, you know, terrible conditions, rutted roads, muddy, often unpaved, with very few gas stations or garages along the way. It was still evolving. And that experience led Eisenhower to propose the the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which ultimately provided states with funding to to improve the uh interstate highway system that we we now enjoy and and and uh and experience without without flaw. So all of these feats of endurance and strength and all of these examples of what was going on at the time led Pyle to begin to envision a feat of endurance and and and strength for the human soul like none other before. And he proposed to uh establish this nationwide nationwide foot race. And and he envisioned hundreds of runners starting out in California and transversing the United States uh to the Madison Square Gardens of New York City. He was kind of fond of the Madison Square Gardens. I think uh all of his events at some point landed in that arena. So Powell's runners would would transverse these same roads that that Eisenhower's convoy traveled. He would go, they would go through small towns and cities, uh each of which he envisioned would would eagerly pone pony up thousands of dollars in advance for the privilege of having these runners uh travel through their towns in order to attract dollars and people to their tiny towns. So Kyle began by accumulating some investment and he promised the winners forty eight thousand dollars in cash, including twenty-five thousand to the first place winner, all for their meager uh fee, entry fee of a hundred and twenty-five dollars. And the first leg of their journey would would start in LA and go to Chicago. And if you're an aficionado of of traveling and cars and roads, you'll recognize that as Route 66. It was called Highway 66 at the time. So on March 4th, 1928, he had convinced 199 individuals, mostly men, to set off from Los Angeles on foot. This was his largest endeavor ever, his biggest deal. So the kicker in all of this was that Pyle would drive ahead of the runners, or be driven ahead of the runners, in the comfort of a custom land cruiser he had designed, which he called America or The American. And and he would plot out the the next day's course in advance and and communicate it back to the runners as they left their previous destination. So most of the route was made up as he went along, and large part dependent upon which um uh count town councils and and uh city planners along the path would pay to have his endeavor transverse their squares, theoretically to bring spectators and their dollars to bear upon the lucky chosen few. That route was then transmitted to the nation via the then modern technologies of of wires, radio, and photography through the press corps that that accompanied Pyle along the the long journey. It was estimated that millions of people witnessed what was sometimes called the greatest show on earth before that race ended. So uh in effect uh through these uh various deals that we've looked at, we can see that Pyle created the high-stakes money-laden laden cult culture of professional sports and professional entertainment, creating on-demand tour kind of environments. This is where we we transverse into modern culture and the entertainment industry, and these are the kinds of deals we'll be talking about here.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Uh, how is your day going? It's going well. This this summer's been uh nutty. It's been uh crazy summer busy and incredibly hot.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Incredibly hot, and uh we're suffering through um a little bit of heat wave inside our office today. Our air conditioning is not working well, let's say. Well, let's uh we got a great topic today. Uh you know, we're uh winding up with uh Charles Pyle. We've looked at him from various different aspects. Uh we talked about his uh foray into the NFL, the National Football League, and his his tour with Red Grange. We talked about the uh tennis tour with Susan Langland. And uh today we're we're looking at his pinnacle um as I've described it uh of his career, and that that's the uh Bunyan Derby, an intercontinental national foot race with uh 200 uh various uh runners. And and in that regard, Pyle, well, in all those regards, really, Pyle was what I call a progenitor of nationwide touring and and and on-demand or as-you-go deal-making. Is is that a word we can use in public progenitor?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

As far as I know, it is. What's your understanding of what that means? I know the I know what the colloquialism for that is. The euphemism for that, sure.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

There you go. Yeah, he he he was definitely one of those, shall we say. But anyway, the the the Pyle's model serves as sort of a template for um, I would say most touring and uh events uh of these kinds, you know, not only NFL and exhibition tennis and with the Bunyan Derby perhaps leading to something akin to the Olympics, but other examples, you know, that I can think of off the top of my head is like Broadway tours and dance tours and the Barnum Bailey Circus and antique car shows and horse shows and home tours and festivals. But uh I I guess in a world that you and I understand most, it would be musical performances. So, you know, and and and in in connection to that, in this episode's intro, I talked about the fact that Pyle essentially planned the routing for the Bunyan Derby along the way. Routing is a concept we know of in the touring industry in the musical world. So he would go in advance of the runners in his uh his bus called the America, and he would go and scope out which town he can negotiate the best deal with, and then call back and tell you know the tour organizers this is where we're going. So uh what's your impression of all that, Dennis?

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Well, it is so interesting. I have grown up, so if you want to say that, in an era where planning was much more sophisticated and detailed. However, having said that, I remember early in my career back in uh the 84-85, I was at a in marketing at a label here in town, and they had put together a tour of their artists and had hired a promoter to go put a 12, 15 city tour together, had about eight artists on this tour. And even then, though, at least the people from the label did not manage that process well. And I remember walking to the office one day, and my boss, who's the head of marketing, said, Man, I got a call yesterday from the tour manager. I said, Okay. He said, Yeah, they pulled into Oklahoma City, which is where we were supposed to be playing, and the promoter met the bus and said, Oh, we're not playing Oklahoma City, we're playing Tulsa. A little bit of that way. What? I mean, it's it's drivable, but excuse me? What? So that's this sounds a little like that idea. Yeah, a little bit uh hazard. We're going, we're you know, we're going to Davenport, Iowa. Oh, nope, hang on, we're going to Peoria. We're going over here. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

You use a phrase there, tour manager. A lot of our listeners may not know what you're talking about there. So what's the role of a tour manager in in this world?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

So basically, when you get into artist touring, for those who who are not fully knowledgeable on this, you have the booking agent who works with the artist and the manager, the artist artist's manager, to book a tour or book individual shows. They, the the booking agent sells that date to a promoter. And it could be a one-off show with one promoter, it could be a multi-city tour with one promoter, or even a multi-city tour with multiple promoters. And so the tour manager is then the person who is in charge of everything that happens on the ground, getting from city A to City B. A lot of people hear about road managers, and yes, road managers are there for the smaller tour. You don't need a quote, tour manager and a road manager if it's one artist, even doing multiple cities. But a tour manager really comes into play when you're doing multiple artists, multiple tours, multiple cities rather, multiple production elements, et cetera, et cetera. And the tour manager oversees all of the, if you want to call it the macro elements that happen on the ground. So they'll take the routing from the booking agent, they have the contracts, so they know what the settlement is supposed to be each night, and what is supposed to be provided at each each venue when they come in, and then they put the crews to work to get the show set up and torn down properly. He takes care of ticket counts, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So the tour manager is sort of the uh the the guy who makes sure that the staging gets there, makes sure the lighting gets there, make sure, make sure the artist gets there and not only gets there but gets up properly, and you know they'll break that down.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

They'll have a production manager who's deals solely with the staging and the audiovisual and the lights and that sort of thing. Yes. Then the bands will have a music director who makes sure all the instruments are set up properly and all that. But yeah, he's the he is the boss on the road, not to say that the artists aren't. The artist can tell the tour manager what to do sometimes. Yeah, many times, no matter how threatening the manager may be to the tour manager, to not listen to them. Hey, when you're on the road, the artist is the boss, but ultimately it's the tour manager, and they will dictate everything. If a if a band member needs to uh wants to run back to the hotel for an hour for a dip in the pool, you got to clear it with the tour manager. You know, that type of thing. Hey, we need to uh get some extra stuff in the green room that we okay, tour manager will go find the promoter to get it done. So he is the boss, he is the director, he's captain on the road.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, and I I like that that responsibility you talked about of settling the accounts. That's something I would think most people who go to a concert, you know, down at the Bridgetone or or some other arena don't understand what that means. And it's it that that makes me think of of the Bunyan tour and and Pyle going in and collecting his money every night. That's exactly what these tour managers do. And a lot of people don't know that that's done immediately after the show, and you know, it can take an hour or longer.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah, it usually starts in the middle of the show because once the show starts running, there's nothing, the tour manager's job for that moment is pretty much done until the show ends. And so the tour manager, and it doesn't have to be a guy, obviously, it could be many women. I've met many great female tour managers, they're really good. But they in today's world where it's a lot of credit card and online purchases ahead of time, so people may think, well, what is there really to settle? Well, you still have to settle final ticket counts because at the end of every night, the tour manager is responsible for getting a report done and sent back to the manager. So you have to find out what was the actual ticket count of tickets sold, what was the actual count in the room, if you can get that. I mean, some most venues you can. But then on top of that, there is some cash sales that happen. Perchets and things like that. Well, that will be a separate line item, but yeah, and if that has to be settled, of course, if the venue is taking a merch fee, which is most venues now often, yeah, anywhere from 10 to 30 to percent. I've seen a couple that's been high as 40 plus, and clients I was managing at the time said, then why sell merch? You know, we can't make any margin. So the settlement does happen that way, especially on ticket counts, but even more so on expenses, because the promoter is supposed to give you a complete breakdown of expenses that he's spent to promote that particular show, because that does get taken off the top. And then once all that is settled, based upon the terms of the contract, are they paying, writing a check that night or not? They could maybe pay it the next day, et cetera. Depending on how they worked out how the net monies are coming in. But with these big multi-city stadium tours that are happening with some of these people, that's a massive job to do. And they work with uh the those big ones like that will actually have tour accountants on on the road to do take care of all that, make sure the dollars are properly accounted for, et cetera. It's but it's a pretty significant role for for any person, but obviously necessary.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

I get these uh visions of of the tour manager sitting with the promoter and the you know the venues and and all their people, and you know, some conflict arising, and everybody draws their six-shooter or something. Well, it's almost like the Wild West, you know.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

Yes, but and I I won't mention the artist, and and it might be urban legend. I was told it wasn't, but there was a significant country artist from the 80s in particular. I've heard this who the story goes when his manager, who went on every show, would come in to do the settlement, he'd reach into his briefcase and pull out a 357 bag and sit it on the on the table and say, Okay, boys, let's get to counting. Now, some people go, Well, is that to scare the promoter? Yeah, to to make sure you don't cheat me, but it's also protection from people busting in the door to steal the money, especially back then.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

What I would say to all of our deal makers out there is that the that is the ultimate form of leverage. The 357 magnum. There may be other terms for it, but uh that's a lot of it. Now uh talking about the advanced driving ahead that Pyle did, there are advanced teams that go into the cities that that are on the route as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Yes. Again, it varies depending on the size of the of the tour, on what how big that team is, but every show gets advanced. It has to be advanced for, first of all, when you select the venue, because the manager is going to have certain specifications for that particular artist for that particular tour, how many seats, what's the acoustics, how's the sight lines, et cetera, for the production they want to bring in. So the venue gets advanced from a physical standpoint as well before it ever gets approved. Once the data's booked, then again, the size of the tour will dictate when you do this, but typically it starts no less than three months before a show. There are there's advance for production needs because we're going to have to tie into power for certain things. We have to fly certain rigging, uh, what's there, this is what we're bringing. And they go through the technical rider with the venue itself to see what's already in place, what has to be brought in. Do genie lists need to come in because they can't, they don't have mechanism, winches already in place, that type of thing. And so you work through all that as an advance on that part. And then you usually have an advance on marketing and promotion. When ticket sales are going to go on sale, what type of promotion is going to happen. That's done usually with the promoter directly. And then we'll have a catering advance about what type of food you've got the writer, are you going to have this? Is all this stuff in place? But it's production and promotion are the big keys to those two things. Those are the ones you can't mess up. Because if it's a bad show, no matter whose fault it was, the artist gets blamed for it. And if the gear's not there, they're supposed to get there, no matter whose fault, the manager gets blamed for it. So everybody works very hard to make sure the people, the advanced people, are doing their jobs. And some people have argued, well, why do you have to have all this? Why every show do you have a writer and a and a hospitality writer? And it's really because, for the artist's perspective, you want to be as standardized as possible. The rooms are going to change, but as much as you can control, the better it is for your performance, because the more you can control, the more comfortable you are on that stage that night, and you perform better. And for the promoter and the fans, you want the best performance possible from that artist. And if something went awry in the hospitality, if it's their fifth night of eating cold pizza because the promoter thought this will be different, trust me, we've all dealt with that. You're not getting the performance that you need. I mean, it's it's a grueling experience to be on the road. And you want to be confident and rested and come in and attack every show with all that you've got and make it feel like it's the best show and the first show you've ever done at that scale. And that's what you owe the audience, and candidly, that's what you owe the promoter, because they're paying good money. They're guaranteeing you certain amounts, and you may have a huge guarantee plus a back end, maybe a small guarantee plus a back end. But promoters risking a lot of money, and they should want the best performance possible. And you get that by standardizing and normalizing as much as you can for the tour as possible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah. Because of the complexity of these uh these modern tours that we're talking about, there are so many things that can go wrong that that tour manager has to handle and resolve. And you and I have been involved in cases involving tours where you know promoters switched out the venue at the last minute, and you know, they're already selling tickets to this new venue that doesn't support the lights or the the rigging that that you talked about, and you know, the artist has to cancel the the the management has to to you know put a stop to it.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah that I think people often, consumers that is, often think that a show is booked because it's where they can make the most money. That's not always the case. Right. In in referencing the what the one you're talking about that we had dealt with what two years ago, that venue change meant a lot to the artist. It was moved to a different city that he did not have a strong following in. The promotion mechanisms weren't nearly as strong. The promoter moved it because it saved him money on the on the hall rent, basically is what it was.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

He still drew or could have drawn a good crowd, but it wasn't going to be the same size crowd. That was one thing. He had no real fan base support there, and so all the stuff that then you would look at and go, Wow, he could still make a lot of money, yes, but it doesn't bring the other pieces to to bear that you need. So if I remember correctly, that particular venue was going to be much bigger than the other one he wanted, which meant it probably wouldn't sell out. Now we lose the story of a sellout, right? And that carries a ton of weight in marketing to say we're selling out shows. So it's all these elements that seem sort of inconsequential aren't.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Well, they make a big difference. And and you know, had had the artist had that information prior to agreeing to that venue, then he probably would have said, no, I don't want to do that show for those reasons. So you can understand it from the artist's perspective, certainly. So uh, you know, tying this back to to Charles Pyle and his Bunyan Derby, it was somewhat complex, per perhaps not to the degree that we're we're talking about with the modern tours, but a lot of things fell through or fell apart along the way for him. For example, um he had you you've heard of Route 66 at the at the time it was Highway 66, and of course there was an association, and they had agreed to advance uh Pyle $50,000 uh up to a total of $110,000, but they refused to pay him the remainder when when the runners veered off Highway 66 for some reason, perhaps perhaps because Pyle says we're going through this city.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

I'm not sure, but uh it could have just been so dang hot, man. Because I've seen the we're going this way. I've seen the routing for Route 66. It goes through some hot territory.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

It certainly does. And when you're you know running it, uh you you want the coolest path possible. So we're gonna take the valley way. Now, uh speaking of contracts, Pyle, interestingly enough, had contracts with all the runners, with each one of them. And it effectively made them indentured servants to Pyle, you know, and of course he was going to take whoever won and and make them a star, much like he did Red Granger. This reminds me so much of the modern reality shows like American Idol, the voice, and and you know, the whole litany of singing competitions. And in that regard, I'm sure you've seen some of these American Idol contracts and 19 Entertainment, of course, is the company that that produces American Idol, and they do something similar. Of course, there's the initial participation agreement, which, as you know, you can do very little to negotiate. In fact, as I understand it from people who have come to meet clients, they basically put you in a hotel room in the early stages of the competition and say, Here's the contract. And there are attorneys there, and he explains it to you. And he says, Sign it. And here you are, looking for your holy grail, as we've talked about, looking for a recording contract, looking to be famous. What are you gonna do? Right? Sign it. And then, of course, as you move through the process and you get along through the competition, ultimately you sign away management, you sign away merch, you sign away an exclusive recording agreement, you sign a co-pub agreement, and ultimately they act as your talent agent. These participants give up a significant amount of control over their careers to 19 Entertainment. I'm sure you've got plenty of thoughts about that.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

Yeah, you know, as I was thinking about this earlier today, even a contract signed under duress would not be enforceable. Right. Ultimately. My thought was, okay, how much duress is that? I mean, they're not holding a gun to their head and say, sign it. Would a court go, well, yeah, it's under duress, so it's not enforceable. That I don't know. Now, if they said, I want my attorney to look at it, my own attorney, and somehow they prohibited that, maybe. But because everyone should have a right, supposed to have a right, to have their attorney if they choose to look at it themselves. But what I know what they play on. They play on, oh my gosh, I'm here and I'm doing this contract and it's it's it's you know, idle or voice or whatever, let's do it. Very restrictive. We just recently consulted with an artist who had an invitation to come to the voice. So she had passed the first round, and so she sent us the contract and said, Can point some stuff out to me. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with everything here. And it wasn't as egregious as I've seen the the early contracts were from American Idol and things. But at the same time, it was like, wow, here are some areas that you need to really think about. It's restrictive movements within certain regions. It's what you obviously what you can and can't talk about, and a whole variety of things. And it was a hard decision for her, but it would have required some things from her that she said, I can't commit to that. And I said, No, you can't. And so you can't be on the show because those things probably would survive in in some sort of a suit for you know whether it's enforceable or not. I think it's probably is, but then you're gonna have to pay to fight it, and then you're probably not gonna win it. So I said, or you can do it, because a lot of people have and they've gone on to great things. So, you know, obviously it worked out well for Carrie Underwood and some others like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

It did. And you you look you can look at both sides of this, right? And and and let's face it, 19 Entertainment is not the first company that came up with an all-exclusive, shall we say, 360 deal for an artist. I mean, the record labels have been doing it and had been doing it for decades before 19 Entertainment came along. Locking up various aspects of of the career and taking a piece of it. But on the flip side, those labels, those companies spend millions of dollars to make those participants stars. They're on TV every week, right? That alone gives you marketing that can bolster your career for a lifetime. So there is that. And you know, if you got a court looking at it and and you've got an artist saying, okay, this is duress, you know, the court's gonna say, well, wait a minute, you know, look how much money they pumped into you. Look at what you got for it. You're right, right? So, you know, there's there's there's there's arguments on both sides, and of course those contracts have been criticized, and that approach has been criticized as being one-sided and potentially exploited. But you gotta look at the uh the overall picture.

SPEAKER_02 33:24

You know, it's so funny. A few years ago, this is probably pre-2010, had a person out of North Carolina call me one day. He was a vendor for something, called my office, and we got talking about Nashville and music, and he said, Man, I bet everybody in Music City just loves American Idol and just are glued to it. I said, No. He goes, What? It's it's music business. I said, that's not music business, that's the television business. Now we watch it, especially the the early rounds with all the you know the plane wrecks that happen, train the car wrecks and stuff that happened in the auditions. I said, no, but as it goes on, sure, we start, we pay attention to it, but we're not glued to it. And he goes, Yeah, but those people go on to be big stars, some of them. And I said, What you just said, well, yes, if you're on national television twice a week for what, four or six months, you're probably connecting or will connect at some level, and you can become a big star at least for a period of time. But that's not the real music business. The real music business with artists who take development, et cetera, et cetera. So to your point, is it duress? Not in the sense of what they're bringing to the table on your behalf. I mean, a record label cannot put you on national television twice a week for six months.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

Can't do it.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

Can't do it. This show can. So yeah. Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that, and and you know, you gotta look at both aspects. And it's not that they haven't been sued. I mean, you look at a company like Up19, uh, Phillip Phillips sued them, you know, and I have to say his um his lawyers were quite creative. They were California lawyers, and they sued, basically claiming violations of the California Talent Agencies Act, and said, hey, these guys are procuring things for me without a talent license. So it was a fairly creative uh lawsuit. So and the same thing happened with Pyle, one of the with one of his runners. A guy named William Kerr hired a lawyer to represent him, and basically they did it on the basis of uh breach of contract. They said Pyle had violated the terms of his own pact so many times that that he stood little chance of getting enforcement from a from a judge. So um there is that. So is every time you have one of these organizers doing these kinds of things, you're going to have lawsuits, you're going to have complaints, because there's huge amounts of money and investment involved.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

There is. And in the case of like the Bunyan race or even some of these music shows, there is such an investment of time and energy that people want to return on that. Unfortunately, if they've not sought competent legal help to help them craft the right deal for them, they get stuck with some stuff that they could have avoided had they just called an attorney. Which, by the way, if you have a question for us, you can reach out to us. Like how I segue into that. I like that. I like that a lot, yes. Yeah, you can reach out to us at 800 DealMaker. That's D-E-A-L-M-K-R 800-332-5657.

SPEAKER_01 36:52

All right, we come to that point in time where uh we need to talk about the walk away points from from uh this conversation, Dennis. What would what would you say is some of the the things we need to instruct our listeners to walk away with?

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Well, some of it even ties back to our earlier discussions. First of all, envision the deal point. What are you trying to get out of this deal that you're going to do? So when it turn comes to events, the artist slash manager and the promoter oftentimes have diverging objectives, right? But you have to be clear on your side of what you're trying to gain from this. Pyle had a vision for what he wanted to gain. These runners had a vision for what they were looking to gain and and what they were willing to do to get to achieve that objective. So, same thing with touring artists or a Broadway show or even NASCAR. You have to know what are we trying to get out of these things, get that crystallized. That's the first one. The second one, then, that plays into that is to affect that from an economic perspective, you do have to look at the routing. You have to pay attention in today's market in particular with Department of Transportation regulations and things like that. Bus drivers can only drive certain amounts of time during a shift, if you will. So typically it's you know, nine, sometimes they'll squeeze 10 hours. But if you've got a run that's 12 hours long, you have to have a co-driver to know your costs go up. So routing becomes an issue just for transportation. What gear you're carrying, is it one bus, two buses, three buses, how many trucks or trailers that you're having to bring with you, et cetera. Identifying the venue. And again, you might look to go into a certain city for routing purposes, but there's not an adequate venue to fit your economic needs. Or there is a venue or even multiple venues, but they're booked at the time you need the routing done. It is a major challenge in today's market in particular. Booking agents will tell you routing a full tour. When I say a full tour, we're talking about at least 15 shows, maybe 30 or 40. Even routing that in today's market is such a challenge because the market is so saturated with events and not just music touring events, but rodeos and carnivals, et cetera, et cetera. Roller derbies, you take up arenas sometimes that you would want to book. So that routing becomes a big part of it, planning that out based upon your both on your positioning and imaging objectives. When I say positioning, how do people view you in the marketplace, the type of show you need to put on for the image purposes? You know, if you're the Black Sabbath style rock and roll band from the 70s and 80s, you got pyro everywhere and you're batting heads off bats and that sort of thing, you're probably not playing a coffee shop, right? So, you know, what type of image are you trying to do? And then you have to route that in a way that works economically, works within the law, transportation law in particular, and works within the types of venue structures you can get into at that time. So it's it's that's the real heavy lift. And prior to that happening, by the way, I should have said this earlier. Prior to identifying that, is when the artist has to come in with the vision. This is what I'm looking for. And to make that happen, I have to have venues with a certain dimensions for the stage, certain height availability for our rigging and things like that. So don't even look at a venue that doesn't provide those things. And then externally, it's got to have proper loading docks or parking on the somewhere on the street to be able to do that. If you've never tried to do a show in a venue that's not Madison Square Garden in New York, I'm telling you, man, it's hell. It's hell trying to find the right venue to do what you want to do that you can actually get your truck to to unload. It's it's a problem in Manhattan in particular. So all those things come into play for the routing part of it. That's the big one.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

So I I would say to kind of summarize all that, you need a big team. You need you need a manager, you need a tour manager, you need all those sub-managers that you talked about earlier. And that's they all have to be part of that artist vision you talked about and and be willing to participate in. I I will say it's easier these days to to at least route a tour using social media metrics that that you know can tell you where the large following for your particular celebrity might be, and then you can market directly to those fans and you know, and and candidly, buildings that have been built within the last 50 years have at least adequate loading docks and things to be able to get the stuff in if you're doing a significant tour.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

So that's better than than it it might have was definitely back in Pyle's day.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

The but to your team comment, the last big tour when I was at the management company that we were part of around the planning meeting, just to let you know. Occasionally we even have a representative from the A from the record label that would be there just to help talking to it as well. But obviously, we had the artist, manager, tour manager, production manager, business manager. I mentioned the artist. We might have even had a couple of band players who had loud voices within the band. It was probably a team of anywhere from six to ten people that would sit together and go, this is the type of show we want to put on. These are the number of dates we're willing to do. How do we do it? And if we had an actual promoter booked that was taking the whole tour, then obviously they became part of that conversation as well. So it definitely is a team in today's booking touring world.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Yeah. And now turning to another walk away, I would say, is uh focus on marketing once you figure all of those elements out because Pyle ingeniously, I will say, in a in a time when it was wires and and you know, old telephones and everything, but he carried his press with him in the bus with him. I mean, that's best case scenario, you know, have but bring your own press core with you. But um, you know, what kind of things do we do do you need to do to market this? You you you talked a little bit about it. You did do you have uh grassroots ground teams that go in and put up posters, do you, you know, scheduling interviews, all that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah, you once the show is or the tour, I should say, is booked, if it's a real tour, there will be press gets involved, publicists get involved, and we schedule a an announcement date of when tickets or advanced tickets even are going on sale. Today's market with all the social media, you're able to build quote unquote fan clubs a little easier, if you want to call it that. Back in the old days, we called it fan clubs. Right, I remember. Same idea, and if they subscribe into your into your web portal, if you will, you can get access, early access to tickets. They'll go on sale to you first before anybody else in the public. And that usually starts and can start anywhere from six months to a year out. Major artists are announcing on sale dates a year out. They just start and they're but they're those are the ones playing stadiums. Are playing the 20,000.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

You call that the Swifty model.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Yes, exactly. And they'll put those on sale and the superstars, the Swifts of the World, they sell out pretty close to immediately. They really do. The next level down artist, however, might sell half the room within the first week. That's amazing. Then it'll go a little dark, except for the, if you want to call it the organic social stuff that happens, et cetera. The promoter does more local marketing, almost passive to some degree, until you get about three months out. Then it starts picking up and it'll get a bit more heavy, or heavier, I should say. And then as you get closer, it'll pick up even more. And about anywhere from two to four weeks out from a show, that's when in a given market, and we're not talking about national promotion, we're talking about actual tour city, that's when the heavy promotion really starts. Ads are starting on radio, Spotify, or wherever you want to hear ads. Articles are popping up in newspapers, radio interviews are happening where artists, or at least the opening artists, maybe calling in and doing some things, ticket giveaways, that sort of deal will happen. And that's usually about two to four weeks out, and it'll stay that heavy all the way through the show. Right is what it happens. And if you're smart, and when I was running marketing, I thought we were smart, I'll put it that way. So the we always had the concept of the circus is coming, the circus is coming prior to show date or prior prior to album release. Day or week of show, week of album, circus is here, circus is there, circus is here. Then the next two weeks after that, you just missed the circus, you missed it, you missed it, you missed it. So it tells people, hey, I wish I had gone. Next time I'll I'll check it out, or maybe I can find them on a video in today's world or some other things. But marketing to drive ticket sales is the ultimate, if you want to call it, direct-to-consumer call to action. Buy now, get them now.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

And all the specials that you get to to get people to induce to buy. And the thing about ticket sales, if you buy it, you can't return them. You can't cancel them. They're yours. Well, I can't make the show now. Well, give them to somebody because you don't get a refund. Only in cases, and this isn't even always the case, but force majeure issues and things, you can maybe get refunds or partial refunds or that sort of thing. I just read actually this week, Darius Rucker had a voice issue, got four songs into a show, and his voice basically locked him and said, I am so sorry, folks, I can't I can't continue. And it's like a day or two later, he announced that they were able to work out a deal. They were giving everybody a hundred percent refund.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

Well, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

That's a I love that.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

That's sorry to hear about that. He's one of my favorite country singers. I think you liked him as Hootie, too.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

I think he's gonna be I think he's gonna be okay from everything that I've read so far, but I was just really impressed that he said we're going to give 100% refunds to everyone. Stand-up guy. Yeah, very much.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Now the last thing I'll bring up is uh this idea of of exclusivity that is inherent in almost every celebrity, right? You talked about Taylor Swift and and her Swifties. You you can use that kind of popularity to increase market and to negotiate deals as leverage. Pyle used the fact that that his derby was was very well known. It was in all the papers, and so he would he would sell that to each town along the way to try to increase the advance that they were willing to give him for them to come through. And likewise, if if you're negotiating with a venue for, you know, a certain type of deal, you might be able to get a bigger advance, you might be able to get a percentage of ticket sales, an advance plus or or something of that nature. Speak to that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Yeah, every venue contract, or I should say every promoter contract will have a geographic and a time-based restriction to it, which basically on average might say you cannot play within 150 miles, maybe from the bigger shows, maybe 200 miles, of this venue 120, 150 days prior to my event, 90 to 120 days after my event, that type of thing. And it creates that exclusivity for the region. It creates scarcity because people say if I don't catch them now, I'm gonna have to drive five hours to catch the next show, and I don't want to do that, so it builds up that type of scarcity, which drives sales. We all know that. And then that's the big piece with that. So you give market protections to the promoter, which helps him make money because you want the promoter to make money. You want him to bring you back in next time. You do. So you want to honor that, you want to build that scarcity, you want to do these things. As you're growing from a brand new artist up to a Taylor Swift, let's say, sometimes within that, you might also look at and say, I'm gonna come back into this market more than once a year, if I'm small enough. My the the again, could be Urban Legend, I don't think it is, but the band Creed, because I love this story, they couldn't get arrested by a record label, if you will, and they were really just starting out. But their manager put them in a little club, I think it was in Florida or somewhere, had about 35 people there, but the show was so good. He didn't wait a year to come back to play. He brought them back in like six weeks before the energy could die down, doubled the crowds. Another 70 plus, 80 people. Brings them back another six weeks later, and now you're up to about 150 people. He did it like five or six times in every one of these little markets, and the crowds just kept getting bigger and bigger. So I'll I've always used that example with artists who say, Well, I you know, I played Paducah, Kentucky, you know, just three months ago. Yeah, how many people? Well, I had about 30. Even a little Paducah didn't know you were in Paducah. Go back, you know, but go, you've got to go back quick enough to capture that that energy. But then you look at the the Swifts of the world and that sort of thing. If you're playing like Taylor Swift came to Nashville and I don't know, it was three, four nights at the Nissan Stadium. Yeah, she's not coming back next year. She's not coming back for several years. She doesn't have to, and she shouldn't. Right. Because she saturated this market for that period, maximized those dollars, let the scarcity build back up, and she's got the whole rest of the world to tour.

SPEAKER_01 50:22

And yeah, it's a different story with Taylor Swift, but the Creed example you talked about is a perfect example of if you don't have leverage enough to get a label deal, go find some. And that's exactly what the manager did.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Well, again, build fans, talking specifically to music artists now. Your goal is to build fans. If you build fans, this other stuff comes along.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

It it falls in place. Listeners, I hope you've enjoyed our episode today. We've certainly enjoyed it. Remember to hit subscribe down below wherever you uh downloaded this and uh and uh get our numbers up there. We appreciate it. You uh we appreciate Shore for providing the microphones that we're using, and uh we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Music Row Dealmakers is a production of Shroom Disney and Associates, recorded on location on Music Row, the heart of Music City, Nashville. Subscribe to future episodes wherever you enjoy your podcasts.