Ex-Margin Walker Principals Mint New Music Events Company: Resound

When Austin’s most prominent independent concert promoters, Margin Walker, closed last December during a pandemic that brought the live music business to its knees, the owners essentially assured a post COVID-19 return.

The Resound Staff (photo courtesy of Resound)

“A company like ours has to have shows meet a certain threshold to be profitable,” veteran booker Graham Williams told the Chronicle at that juncture. “It’s going to take a while to rebuild [concert-going]. After everything comes back online, then we can figure out our place in it.”

In the same interview, Margin Walker co-founder Ian Orth mused, “The music industry, in general, will be completely different in a year and that might create opportunities for other ideas to manifest, while still doing what we’ve always done.”

The ongoing post-vaccination rebound of live events receives an additional good omen today with the announcement of Resound, a new “live-music, creative events, and marketing agency,” of which all of the six principals are former Margin Walker staffers. The Resound team lists Williams and Orth as owners, Rosa Madriz as Director of Talent Buying, Gab Soong working as Marketing Manager, Chanel Quinones managing the administrative bookkeeping, and Zane Ruttenberg rolling as Digital Advertising Administrator.

The company’s website features a calendar with 40 upcoming shows at Mohawk, Empire Control Room & Garage, Antone’s, the Parish, and Paper Tiger in San Antonio.

Margin Walker, founded in 2016, staged hundreds of concerts in Austin and other Texas markets annually. For the eight years prior to that company's existence, several of the primary employees anchored Transmission Events, which booked clubs and also put on the legendary Fun Fun Fun Fest.

Reached for comment this morning, Orth outlined how Resound will be similar and different from past efforts:

“At the foundation, the soul of the business is the same – booking independent live music here and in San Antonio and focusing a bit more on creative events. The long term outlook though will see the business evolve into more community outreach. Emerging from this past year, we can’t do business as usual.

“It’s time to look at the lessons we learned and figure out how to have a bigger impact on our community.”