The Promoter

The band is late and its replacement won’t answer the phone.

“They never answer their phone,” Dan Coleman says, shaking his head as he paces the floor of The Bishop. His loud, cobalt blue sweater stands out against the bar’s dark walls. Dan booked all three bands for the evening’s show as an independent music promoter.

“The lead has a flat tire, and they won’t be here until 9:30 now,” he says to Andy, the Bishop’s talent buyer. “Secrets Between Sailors will have to go on first – I hope.”

“You can’t just tell them to come in earlier?” Andy asks.

Dan stops to stare at him through thick square-rimmed glasses.

“I’m sorry, is this your first time working with a local band?”

Andy pauses, as if slightly confused by the question. Dan laughs.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Just stop asking stupid questions.”

Dan’s not an intimidating figure, standing a few inches below six feet at a middling weight.

Now, he and Andy are bent over a table examining some promotional posters that Dan hates and debating what band played with Neon Indian at one of last fall’s shows.

It was Jukebox the Ghost, Andy says. He remembers because it was 200 people, at capacity. He remembers because they were late. He remembers for several reasons.

Once he rests his case, Dan speaks.

“No, it was Freelance Whales. That’s who it was,” he says, relaxing his shoulders and turning to walk away.

Ah, you’re right, Andy confesses. Of course he is: he’s the man who runs Bloomington’s music scene.


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If Dan opens his arms, you can see a tattoo on the inside of his right wrist: the logo for his company, Spirit of ’68 Promotions.

’68 is essentially his own moniker as an independent promoter, since the staff begins and ends with Dan, save a couple interns. He books all the shows, pays all the bands and shakes all the hands.

He first arrived in Bloomington to finish his master’s degree in journalism and graduated in 2006. Then, as a music columnist for the Bloomington Herald-Times, he started booking shows at Bear’s Place on Tuesday nights. One day soon became two days per week and continued to grow, eventually becoming what is now something of an empire: Spirit of ‘68 brought 73 shows to Bloomington last year.

One show is great, but 70 are a job. Dan has little free time and can’t remember the last time he went to a concert that wasn’t one of his own.

He has no office, working out of his home and the Blueline Gallery. He also has no car and uses buses, his shortboard, and his feet for transportation.

He keeps jobs on the side, bartending at The Atlas Bar and picking up 4 a.m. shifts at Target. All of it underscores the one big problem with ’68.

The job that he created for himself, that has asserted him as Bloomington’s music force, doesn’t pay.
 

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Dan thinks The Bishop’s bartender’s girlfriend is too hot for him.

Jay, the bartender, turns around, smiles and shrugs – this is a regular topic of discussion between the two of them.

“Get rid of her,” Dan says.

“Why? So you can date her?” asks Jay.

“No, because she told you to lose weight.”

“So the new plan is diet and exercise.”

“No, get sad and don’t eat,” Dan says. Jay rolls his eyes and returns to the tap while Dan reminds everyone one more time that Jay’s girlfriend is out of his league.

Because of his shows, most employees and regulars know Dan at The Bishop. Someone walks in the door, exchanges hellos with him at the bar and goes into the show. If you stand with him long enough you’ll get the feeling he knows the whole bar.

He’s something of a local celebrity. People pass him on the streets and recognize him, sometimes suggesting one band or thanking him for another. He listens and often maintains arms-length relationships with students.

And students know him.

A few weeks ago, two kids sat on a bench at an IU bus stop, one with iPhone in hand.

“Oh, Dan Coleman just tweeted about the Freddie Gibbs show!”

 “Nice, I just posted that on Facebook. I beat Dan Coleman to it,” the other says with a laugh.

“Yeah, but you told like two people. Dan Coleman just told like 10,000.”


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With little pay, difficult hours and a lot of what he calls “babysitting,” why does Dan do what he does?          

It’s because whatever chase goes on behind the scenes is more fascinating than the show itself. It’s about being part of a process that people don’t see, monitoring the turnstile of What People Are Listening To and negotiating the band into town.

So he checks out who’s talking, waking up every day around 7 a.m. to send e-mails and make his rounds on daily music blogs to monitor buzz and find acts.

“If you book a show with Soulja Boy’s manager, that’s cool,” he says. “But in two years when Soulja Boy’s not cool anymore, then what do you have?”


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Dan is always on his phone.

He sits at the bar, wondering where his band is, e-mailing agents and watching “Friday the 13th Part 3” play out in front of him with the TV on mute. He orders a Boddingtons Pub Ale and switches over to play Bejeweled on his iPhone. That agent was annoying him anyway.

The e-mails are from a Los Angeles-based entertainment agency attempting to promote one of its smaller bands through Dan.

He is, however, not interested. He doesn’t want a band that “outside of two clubs in LA, no one gives a shit about.”

He goes on, talking about smaller agencies that he works well with. His relationships with agencies are the key to his success.

The reason is power. While the public’s often-fickle taste can dictate the success of a musician, agencies are not so vulnerable. They control most of the booking and have a much more stable position of influence.

“You can either throw money at people like the frats do during Little 5 or you can build relationships,” he says. “How else do you think I got Girl Talk for ten times less than the next time he came?”

His impeccable memory can recite a resume of Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, among a plethora of other indie darlings. But shows mean something different to Dan now.

“When people hear a band, they think, ‘when can I get this?’ Now I just hear them and wonder how long will it take me to get that band here.”

He gets up to pace some more – with show time rapidly approaching that’s what Dan does.

All three of the bands have arrived now, and Dan greets each of them in a friendly, but not overly talkative, manner.

As the band starts to play, he looks over and says, “I wish you would have come for a bigger show.” Then he quickly turns and walks away, stopping to make fun of Jay with his too-hot girlfriend, who is now seated at the end of the bar.

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Dan admits that eventually he must expand his revenue stream, whether it’s through merchandise, freelance public relations work, or something he hasn’t thought of yet.

“I’m trapped,” he says quickly. “There’s a me in every major market in America. I kind of have a thing going here.”

2011 will be Dan’s fourth full year in the business.

He’s constantly building something, adjusting to the learning curve of promotions. For now though, Dan can get by in Bloomington, so that’s what he’ll continue to do.

 “I’m an independent promoter. I just want to make it to the next show,” he says again, then turns his head.

“In theory, one day it will all click. I’ll sit down and get to it.”