Standing in the small hot dog joint across the street, you can barely hear anything. The steady and rhythmic thump of a bass drum. The intermittent screeching vocal. The muffled cheer from the crowd that comes almost every three minutes, like a well-worn and not-so-reliable clock that suggests the time but is never willing to give it exactly. Otherwise, the sizzling vat of grease that rests against the tiled back wall is a better attention-grabber.
The real noise occurs around 10 or 11 p.m., depending on when the doors opened at Metro. Hundreds of concertgoers spill from the front doors of one of Chicago’s most popular music venues and make their way to the nearby McDonald’s or the Addison stop on the Red Line of the El. Many rush across the street, paying no attention to traffic on the two-lane Clark Street, and the vat of grease becomes instantly insignificant.
That’s how things work in this town, especially when it comes to music – you can go from an up-and-comer to an insignificant afterthought in what seems like a matter of seconds. Of course, it also works the other way around.
Hurried by the large security guards, the crowd of 1,100 – Metro sells out most nights – packs onto the sidewalk. They are immediately replaced by ID-toting 21-plus-year-olds waiting to get into the basement, otherwise known as Smart Bar, for that night’s DJ set. With this formula, Metro/Smart Bar combination venue is able to host more than 1,000 acts each year. Somewhere in a small back room, the band members are getting paid the remainder of their fee – and extra money for a cab if they don’t have a van or tour bus waiting for them out front.
At least five nights a week, there will be a large group of musicians who didn’t grace that night’s stage waiting to greet the concert-goers as they exit the venue. They’re not just friendly people looking to say “hello”; they’re here to promote. Ruthlessly. You won’t find a crowd this large at any other venue in the city – Metro, over the past 25 years, has become a huge step: the last step in playing a long line of small local venues and backyard parties and the first step in becoming a nationally headlining act. The quarter-sheets and the men and women distributing them don’t stop short of begging passersby to attend their cheap, or even free, upcoming shows. “Only $3 tomorrow night!” “Just take a listen to this demo CD; my e-mail is on the sleeve. Let me know what you think!” “Open bar!” With their promotional materials and audio CDs printed off or burned on home computers, this group is trying – hard – to be one of next year’s 1,000 Metro/Smart Bar acts.
With enough dedication, a little luck, a sound deemed good enough for the stage by a talent buyer, some of them will eventually make it into this venue or a similar one. It helps to have some knowledge of how the system works. This is how they do it.
KNOW YOUR VENUES
Chicago is recognized as a city with a strong and lively music scene. Within the city limits, there are at least 119 different sites that can be considered, to some degree, music venues, according to one count done by chicagogigs.com, a site that hosts message boards for Chicago musicians. All of these sites host and pay bands or artists to play there, ranging from the solo musician with a 9-to-5 job that pays the bills to acts that have the power to headline festivals and sell-out stadiums.
The biggest mistake that bands make when trying to book a gig at one of these venues is to only consider the size. Being humble, many artists assume that the trick takes the form of a stepladder: gradually working your way up from a 50-person-capacity venue to one that holds 100 times that. It is far more important to learn the venue’s differing credos. Metro/Smart Bar, for example, presents itself as an establishment that is “focused on local and emerging talent from the region, nation and, ultimately, the world,” according to representative Jenny Lizak. The best way to get there is to start small and develop a strong fan base.
Lizak, who graduated from Loyola University with a degree in communication, has logged over a decade of experience in the music industry, getting her start in radio. She has returned to the air several times as a guest host for various music programs after ending her career in radio when Metro hired her as their head publicist.
KNOW YOUR PROMOTERS
The only way to get a gig at the majority of these sites is to go through a talent buyer or booking agent such as Peter Toalson. He’s influential in the Chicago music scene and acts as a buyer for The Empty Bottle, AV-aerie, Lakeshore Theater, Logan Square Auditorium, Portage Theater and Sonotheque. In September, he organized his first festival in collaboration with The Wire magazine.
Toalson suspects that his days and responsibilities are similar to those of other buyers in the area. This makes him a good case study. He’s been working with The Empty Bottle for eight years now and got his start as a buyer for an independent record store back when he was in high school. The company he started, Independent Trucker’s Alliance, organized shows with The Jesus Lizard, Modest Mouse and others. He’s been developing and using the same connections throughout his many years in the business. Toalson, who describes himself as a “pretty active buyer and listener of music,” talks about the rise of e-mail, of which he sends “200-300 a day, ” he says. The old days of calling and visiting talent buyers with homemade demo tapes and flyers are over, so don’t feel that sending an e-mail is too impersonal.
Lizak was quick to point out that bands are booked in a variety of ways at Metro/Smart Bar. “Sometimes the band’s agent approaches our talent buyers,” she says. “Or sometimes our talent buyer approaches an agent.” For younger bands with less exposure, she suggests sending in a demo to be reviewed by the talent buying department.
Both venue representatives – Lizak and Toalson – say that many shows are booked three or four months in advance, with the lead time growing recently. For Metro/Smart Bar, Lizak announces a booked artist typically five or six weeks prior to the show date.
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE WORTH
Most venues won’t release any financial information to the public beyond what they have to – the ticket price you have to pay to attend a show. All I could get out of Metro/Smart Bar was that they have, proudly, “been able to keep the ticket prices for [their] shows fairly low compared to other entertainment options in the city.” Sounds great, though anybody reading this knows that there are a dozen other shows in the city nearly every night at a comparable price. The Empty Bottle is one of those venues that offers similarly priced shows, and they are far more transparent in their dealings.
At The Empty Bottle, agents and artists are given a detailed breakdown of finances and expenses when a show is confirmed. Later, they receive a summarized accounting of all the show-related numbers. “Our deals vary widely, but the typical model pays out 85 percent of gross door receipts after expenses,” Toalson says.
Those expenses usually fall in the range of $200 to $500, according to John Benetti, a talent buyer with House Call Entertainment, Inc. House Call, based in downtown Chicago, acts as the booking office for several music events and venues, including the Beat Kitchen and Subterranean. Typical expenses cover hospitality, advertising and sound-related costs.
The amount that the band or artist walks away with after expenses are deducted varies greatly. Both Benetti – talent buyer for several small-scale, Chicago venues – and DJ Dieselboy (Damian Higgins) – currently one of the biggest names in American drum and bass, a niche version of electronic music – gave me the same numbers. In the past decade, they have both paid out and received, respectively, anywhere from $10 to $10,000 for a single performance.
In the end, agents – rather than promoters – are typically to blame for high prices. Fortunately, many shows
in Chicago are booked based on demos and personal communication between buyers and artists, leaving agents out of the picture entirely with the exception of nationally touring acts, which are “taken care of,” according to Benetti. “This is a business where people get taken advantage of all the time,” Benetti says. “The people who get fucked over are usually the ones who don’t deserve it.”
KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT
A lot of promoters talk about the strong relationships they like to develop with musicians. “We put the artists and their fans first, and that’s a longstanding policy of ours,” says Toalson. “Our management at both venues is run in a family business style,” says Benetti. “That is, many of our staff are involved with their own bands, and we think of ourselves as part of a larger community.”
Recently, Higgins performed at Smart Bar and, though his interaction with the promoters was “minimal at best,” he was taken care of. Prior to his most recent performance, Higgins was picked up at the airport by a car service, put up in a hotel, given a ride to Metro/Smart Bar, offered drinks and given cab fare back to the airport – all covered by the venue.
Jenny Lizak let me know that “Metro prides itself on having a great relationship with the artists who play.” “It is,” she insists, “that relationship that has kept Metro one of the only independently owned and operated music venues of (its) size left in the country – the artists who play (there) want to come back, even when they are superstars that could sell out rooms much bigger than Metro. We think we are different from other venues because we are committed to the artists, committed to new music and committed to remaining independent.”
According to Higgins, though, “In the grand scheme of places to play, they are definitely a solid B.” The bands, I would argue, don’t come back because of the relationships they develop while there; they come back because Metro/Smart Bar has built a solid name for itself.
