Behind the music

Last Saturday night, the Cinemat’s screening room reverberated with the sounds of sonic experimentation. Standing in front of a projection of the animated sci-fi film “The Iron Giant,” electronic six-piece Goodhands Team paired droning and static with drums, guitar, violin and trumpet. Following Goodhands’ set, the garage-meets-progressive-meets-funk threesome Impure Jazz provided a groove-heavy soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.” The path to this concert was not without its bumps – headliner Development (aka New York singer-songwriter Shawn Trail) canceled his appearance, and earlier in the week, floods struck the home of Impure Jazz drummer Joshua Morrow and destroyed much of his musical equipment. But the show still went on – and even a flood could not dampen Morrow’s enthusiasm.

“We really enjoy the space because it’s really intimate,” Morrow said of the Cinemat’s screening room. “You’re not on a huge stage, you’re in the crowd’s face.”

The Goodhands Team/Impure Jazz show was no random, last-minute occurrence. It was the result of a process started four months earlier by individuals beyond the ones playing the instruments. Every single week, Bloomington hums with live music – in bars and basements, in parks and theaters, from professional bands passing through town to amateurs playing at open mic nights. But a show is seldom the product of the artist (or artists) alone. Rather, people like promoters, booking agents and venue owners spend countless hours offstage, providing the mechanics for Bloomington’s dynamic music scene. For a change, it’s time to shine the spotlight on them.


Promoters
June 14’s Cinemat concert was organized by Andy Goheen, vice president of Spirit of ’68 Promotions. Founded last year by IU alumnus and Herald-Times journalist Dan Coleman, Spirit of ’68 promotes shows in Bloomington every week, organizing them, finding sound engineers and working with hundreds of acts, including Feist, Okkervil River and Vampire Weekend.

“Basically everything that people don’t think of that goes into a show is what we are responsible for taking care of,” Goheen said.

Once a show is arranged, Spirit of ’68 designs and prints fliers, publicizes it online (for example, through Goheen’s “People who like to go to shows and don’t mind incessant event invitations” Facebook group), and seeks to spread awareness of it via word-of-mouth – anything to generate a buzz.

“And then hoping to God that people actually come out to it,” Coleman said.
However, even with Bloomington’s large college-aged population and active nightlife, the job of promoting shows is difficult and risky. It can be hard enough to organize a show that simultaneously leaves the musicians, the crowd and the venue owner happy with the result – but doing it day after day, for months on end, represents a far greater challenge.

Further, the more famous the act, the more money it will demand. And if there isn’t a large enough audience to cover the show’s cost, the promoters get stuck with the bill. Spirit of ’68 seeks to reduce this risk by researching the kinds of music Bloomington audiences demand – for example, indie rock has a steady fan base – and by limiting its promotion expenses as much as possible. Thus far, the company has struggled to make ends meet, but Coleman and Goheen are optimistic.

“Are we rolling around Scrooge McDuck-style?” Coleman said. “No. But neither one of us is doing it for the money. ... We make enough to get by and bring interesting shows to Bloomington.”


Booking agents
New, local bands such as Goodhands Team and Impure Jazz arrange their own gigs with promotion companies or music venues, but the more shows they play and the farther they travel, the more complicated this process becomes. Thus, touring and long-established acts generally turn these duties over to booking agencies.

“The number one thing that a booking agent does is take a band on his agency’s roster and tries to book them so their fanbase grows,” IU senior Ari Solomon said. Solomon is an intern for Creative Artists Agency, an international firm that represents not just bands, but actors, athletes and other companies.

A booking agent’s duties vary widely, from arranging a tour route that minimizes an act’s travel costs while maximizing its opportunities to make money, to negotiating its contracts with promotion companies and music venues.

For handling bands’ tours, booking agents receive a percentage of the proceeds from their shows.

“It gets split up in a lot of different directions,” Solomon said.

After the agency and the venue each take their percentages, the money then goes to the act, the act’s management, covering its rider (the part of an act’s contract covering expenses of any equipment, food or other things it might require for playing a concert), etc.


Venues
But, of course, there’s no show without a place to perform. The Goodhands Team/Impure Jazz show was one of an increasing number taking place at the Cinemat – which, despite renting out videos since 2002, has only recently branched out into live music, as well.

As a small, low-cost venue, the Cinemat attracts an eclectic assortment of acts. But Bloomington venues vary widely in the types of shows they host and how they handle them.

For Rhino’s All-Ages Club, Assistant Director Tim Pritchett looks for acts that appeal to 13- to 20-year-olds and solicits recommendations from the club’s young volunteers – who show a preference for metal and punk.

“We’re really open-minded in terms of music, but the stuff that does better is the louder, angrier-type of stuff,” Pritchett said.

As a youth center, Rhino’s requires that bands’ lyrics not be obscene or glorify substance abuse. The venue also limits ticket prices (the maximum being $15) – but, as a nonprofit, its low cost has made it very popular with bands looking to reach a teen audience. Pritchett receives about 150 unsolicited requests from bands per week, he said.

Over-21, for-profit venues face dramatically different conditions, however. Aaron Steele, owner of Uncle Fester’s House of Blooze said that his club has to balance offering a diverse range of music and finding acts with high integrity, while also drawing in a large enough crowd to pay the bills.

“They may be an amazing talent, but unfortunately if they can’t bring anybody in, it’s not worth me running,” Steele said, noting that he nevertheless will try to build lineups of smaller acts whose collective audience will make the night profitable. “Sometimes you’ve got to take shots on things, or you’re just stuck with the same thing, over and over and over.”

And as venues that host larger, national acts, Fester’s and The Bluebird Nightclub have to negotiate contracts with booking agents and fulfill concert riders. Solomon, who before working for the Creative Artists Agency served as promotions director for the Bluebird, said that venue owners had to deal with a wide range of demands in getting bands to play Bloomington.

“Each band requires different things, different riders, different guarantees,” he said.
Steele, though, found an item on the request list of guitarist Tim Reynolds memorable.
“He wanted Hershey chocolate bars,” he said. “It had to be the big ones. Specific number: six, I think it was. In foil, in wrapper.”

Despite the challenges, Fester’s and the Bluebird each succeed at hosting shows an average of five nights a week, amounting to more than 200 every year.

Wherever you go, and whatever music you prefer, you might want to hurry up and get out there. As a longtime resident, Chris Swanson, the co-founder of independent record labels Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar and Dead Oceans said, the Bloomington music scene undergoes cycles of strength and weakness. It is currently very strong.

“It’s a really exciting time when you can feel the extension of the scene, feel it growing to critical mass,” he said. “Right now just happens to be a really great time in Bloomington.”