One Man Band: Dan Coleman

This is a one-man show.

Dan Coleman’s workday is spent sending emails, making phone calls and posting online updates to his company’s website.

Downtime doesn’t exist. If he has the occasional intern to work with, he’s lucky.

Coleman, owner and founder of local Spirit of ’68 Promotions, is the go-to guy for all things live music in Bloomington.

He works with venues like the Bishop Bar, Buskirk-Chumley Theater and Russian Recording, and he’s always looking for the best entertainment he can bring to Bloomington.

Tuesday’s concert at Buskirk-Chumley starring Jeff Mangum, who hadn’t toured in 15 years? He worked on that.

Father John Misty at the Bluebird Nightclub? He worked on that as well.

When people go to see a live show at the Bluebird, or even the occasional concert at the IU Auditorium, Coleman likely had his hand in securing the venue and the band for that performance.

Coleman’s repertoire is vast. It includes the local promotion of past shows by the likes of indie greats Unwed Sailor, Band of Horses, Cursive and Minus the Bear.

But many people still don’t understand the work Coleman does.

He isn’t asking bands to come to Bloomington for shows, and he isn’t the one ordering the band a case of beer for the green room.

“I don’t actually talk to a band until they show up at the venue,” Coleman said. “Bands aren’t reaching out to someone here — they have agents. They pay someone to do that for them. So, for example, the Bluebird isn’t talking to Pretty Lights, they’re talking to the agent.”

Coleman is the middleman between the venue and the artist. He said he finds a way to put the acts students and locals want to see in a venue that is most accessible to the masses.

“We’re basically finding the best fit,” he said. “It’s an entire industry of emails, and you
rarely talk to people on the phone.”

His days normally consist of everything from pointing people to new music via bandcamp.com or posting bands’ videos to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to incite local interest in new acts coming to town.

Coleman said he works almost exclusively online because the way people discover music is primarily through Internet media channels, but there is also a lot of hands-on work involved.

Coleman creates promotional posters, ensures proper ticket counts and checks social media repostings about the bands he’s promoting.

Tuesday afternoon, he was setting up equipment at Buskirk-Chumley in preparation for Mangum’s performance. If there happens to be a show any given night, Coleman is there to welcome the band to Bloomington.

Despite being surrounded with music and professional performers, there can be a downside to promoting shows in town.

Nash Hott, staff reporter at WFHB Bloomington and IU graduate student, said Spirit of ’68 takes a risk by promoting the shows.

Hott has never worked with Spirit of ’68 personally but studied the business in his reporting.

“They’re filling that gap in the industry,” Hott said. “They’re paying the band and the venue, but only taking in the front-of-house sales. So they’re basically assuming that risk of the show failing or being a success.”

Hott said he heard rumors about Spirit of ’68 having trouble making profits from a WFHB broadcast about eight months ago.

The problems were valid at the time, Coleman said, but, he added, the rumors that Spirit of ’68 is currently in financial trouble are completely false.

Problems with people sneaking into shows through back doors, or simply walking into the bar and standing on the sidelines of the stage without paying  have been corrected by the venues themselves, Coleman said.

The Bishop even built a wall between the bar and its stage.

“People who go to shows can see that it isn’t a problem anymore,” Coleman said. “But the people who don’t go don’t know.”

Because the music business is somewhat unpredictable, Coleman said he acknowledges there are some sacrifices that come with the work he does.

Despite the market for indie rock music rising in recent years, the market for some of Coleman’s favorite genres has grown smaller.

“I’m a big fan of hip-hop and soul music, but we really don’t have the crowd to support that,” he said. “We really have DJs and emcees so all the smaller acts don’t come here anymore. We never had soul and funk. We never really had a market for it. I hope that changes.”

The idea that live music can always be cheap can be another obstacle to the
business.

To counteract the notion that watching popular bands has to be expensive, Spirit of ’68 began a student discount program in partnership with student radio station WIUX 99.1 FM last fall.

WIUX agreed to subsidize the discount for tickets provided through Spirit of ’68 so IU students could participate in shows without having to purchase full-price tickets from Ticketmaster or another retailer.

Coleman said the shows he’s most excited to bring to Bloomington this spring are The Helio Sequence on Jan. 31, at the Bishop and Unknown Mortal Orchestra on March 8 at the Bluebird.

Even though he can act as a breed of his own, a one-man show promoter, Coleman admits he’s not the only one of his kind.

“It’s like a series of conversations with people you rarely ever actually meet, all in an effort to get bands into town, that’s what we do,” Coleman said. “And there’s a ‘me’ in every city in America.”