Managers
Friday 22 June @ 13:19:18 |
by DWIGHT HOBBES
You go to a club, catch So-And-So doing a tremendous show and are stoked. You spend the night drinking up, throwing down on the dance floor and testing your ability to get lucky. Next day, maybe, you swing by the record store and pick up Whatever-It-Was on disc, go home slap it on the box and, while you're listening, peruse the packaging, checking out the photos, etc. Perhaps you read the liner notes. If you do, you've forgot about "thank yous" before you even finish reading them all. However, in there, quite likely, was a nod to someone who, fairly anonymously, keeps it all together for So-And-So, Whatever-It-Was or Who-Did-It-And-Ran.
Artists, be they bands or solo performers, have to cover a hell of a lot more ground than just getting up on stage and autographing a CD at the end of the night. Somebody's got to find a place to play, get them booked into the joint, make sure there's nothing funny with the money, keep track of T-shirts and other merchandise, make sure the money's straight, keep a line on publicity and—did I mention—see to it club-owners and/or promoters don't get cute with the cash. Enter, far from the spotlight, working for a percentage, the anonymously industrious individual called the manager. When everything comes off without a hitch, he or she isn't even noticed, since the idea is to spotlight the star. But, let the littlest thing go wrong and that's the first person at which the finger of blame is pointed.
Stephanie Devine, who holds things together for rising R&B monsters The New Congress, reflects, "I find that management has so many different aspects. My duties range from booking agent, publicist, merch girl, accountant and mother. [The] job consists of booking, keeping a schedule for them, tour manager—booking flights, hotel arrangements when traveling, starting bank accounts and an LLP. The business has now transitioned into an LLC. I track the sales of CDs at live shows, CD Baby, I-Tunes. I set them up with distribution thru AEC. I also was able to find an agent that we are currently negotiating a contract with to hopefully find them a record deal." Sounds like somebody who probably isn't thrown off her game by anything as incidental as a mere lack of sleep.
Not everybody gets to have a manager—maybe the act can't afford one, maybe they haven't come across one they can trust (the late great Jimi Hendrix, himself, got taken to the cleaners).However, that particular job still has to get done. Which leaves it to the act to be artistically able, business-wise astute and, again, ready to sacrifice a good night's rest. For instance, veteran workhorses Sexual Chocolate & The White Boys find it necessary, at this stage of things, to do it themselves. Bassist Steve Duder takes most of it on his shoulders. "So far SCWB has been managing ourselves,î he relates. "I have done the majority of the booking. [Lead vocalist] Kash books some gigs from time to time too. We are open to hiring a manager-booker, but haven't ever had anything pan out for that yet. In the first few years we took the idea that we cared about the band more than an outside source would and also were into the DIY [do it yourself] aspect of a band. Now as we have gotten older and wiser, we realize that an outside source would benefit us, and their arms can reach further than ours. In short, we would like a manager, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself yet." Hell, who wouldn't want someone capable and trustworthy to take over the nuts-and-bolts headaches?
Next time you're blown away by Whoever, allow at least a bit of space, in your mindful appreciation, for the fact that, indeed there is more to it than meets your eye.
Alison Vandenberg, Marketing Director, 651/296-2939 * alison.vandenberg@mnhs.org
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