As if I-35’s entrance and exit ramps weren’t challenging enough, fleets
of tour
buses and equipment trucks have be-come yet another obstacle on the
highways in
and around Austin. And as for parking near Sixth Street, the recent
influx of
tour buses deposited outside the Driskill and Omni seems only to have
aggravated the space shortage. That’s the bad news. The good news for
music
fans is that the buses and trucks that carry national touring talent
are now
more likely to display “Austin” in their destination windows. To the
concert
industry, Austin’s no longer just a rest stop between Dallas and
Houston. Now,
major acts are not only stopping in Austin, but also unloading their
gear and
playing. Recently, just one two-week period yielded diverse choices such as
Belly,
Black Uhuru, Black Crowes, Adam Ant, Jeff Buckley, Faith No More, and
Extreme.
To the surprise of many, the University of Texas’ Memorial Stadium
broke a
20-year moratorium and reopened its facility to concerts for the May 5
Eagles
date. But as recently as two years ago, artist management and booking
agencies
considered Austin a secondary market without the large and mid-size
venues
necessary for extensive national booking. Now, these same players
credit
Austin’s growth as a roadshow market to an obvious, if clich�d,
principle “If you build it, they will come.”
“The more facilities that any community can offer, the better its
chances of
landing national tours,” says Pollstar’s Gary Bongiovanni, editor of
the
touring industry’s leading trade publication. “For a city like Austin
not to
have several appropriate venues for larger acts hurt its chances of
landing a
tour that already has 20 or 30 must-play cities. That definitely seems
to be
changing.”
The change Bongiovanni refers to comes in the form of two relatively
new,
mid-size (up to 3,000 capacity) venues, the Backyard and Austin Music
Hall, as
well as the substantially larger and outdoor South Park Meadows (up to
80,000).
Despite only holding five shows in its opening season, South Park
Meadow’s
Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, and Aerosmith concerts all wound up on
each
band’s respective top-three attendance lists for 1994. Last year, the
Backyard
hosted an estimated total of 68,000 fans for its summer concert series,
while
Backyard owner Tim O’Connor also spent close to $500,000 to renovate
the new
Austin Music Hall in time for a crowded spring and summer schedule. The
concert
industry is big business, and big business’ primary focus is
attendance,
grosses, and booming investment. Booking agents say that these three
new
venues, in addition to the Erwin Center, City Coliseum, Terrace,
Paramount,
Bass Concert Hall, and Liberty Lunch, now provide the type of date
availability
and venue flexibility that has ultimately begun impressing agents to
route
Austin onto national tour schedules. The prospect of a baseball stadium
on the
horizon offers even more possibilities. “We now have the luxury in
Austin to
pick the right buildings on the right dates,” says booking agent Jeff
Osbourne,
who books tours for everyone from U2 to Kevin Salem for Premier Talent.
Yet Osbourne and other booking agents admit that tour scheduling,
which
Erwin Center director John Graham calls “Three-Dimensional chess,”
ultimately
winds up being far more complicated than just booking the right
building on the
right date. Well before a show is announced to the public, there’s a
complex
routine behind the scenes to address the needs and desires of both the
artist
and the venue. Booking agents fulfill the middleman role between an
artist’s
management and a potential venue. With a knowledge about a region’s
venues,
booking agents search out deals that address pre-determined management
issues:
from ticket prices to how the band would like to be displayed (selling
out
small venues or playing less crowded large venues for prestige). After
putting
out word of a tour, booking agents accept bids from parties that see
themselves
as able to provide the proper venue. These parties are typically
promoters or
talent-buying groups such as Houston-based PACE and San Antonio-based
Stone
City, or from the venue’s own in-house buyers, like Liberty Lunch’s
Mark Pratz,
who is both the talent buyer and owner of the Austin concert
mainstay.
At this point, a winning bidder either places the show in his venue or,
in the
case of talent buyers, rents what they know to be an appropriate and
available
hall.
It’s the second part of the touring equation – who buys the show and
where
it’s placed – that ultimately becomes the most confusing when
discussing the
local market. Obviously, the success of Austin’s three new venues does
indeed
open more available dates, but what seems to have become the most
complicated
question regarding both the old and new venues is to whom they are
actually
open.
PACE Concerts and their involvement with South Park Meadows, the
Backyard, and
the Austin Music Hall is singularly the source of the new touring
landscape’s
greatest hopes and debate. PACE has been actively booking Southwest
venues for
over 20 years, although their detractors say PACE has achieved in
Houston a
“monopoly” on major touring talent. And although PACE has a long
history of
promoting Austin shows when they’d purchase a tour’s regional block,
their
interest in regularly promoting Austin venues has increased noticeably
over the
last two years. “It’s useful that PACE is involved,” says Graham,
“because it
demonstrates to the industry that there’s financial commitment.”
The concept that PACE is committed to Austin is a no-brainer. PACE
promoted
all five South Park Meadows shows last season, and so far has been the
only
promoter to schedule dates for this current season – beginning July 2
with the
on- and off-again Pearl Jam show (and possibly including summer
stopovers from
R.E.M., Vince Gill, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, and Lollapalooza). South Park
owner
Abel Theriot maintains that the venue is open to all rental offers,
similar to
the Erwin Center, City Coliseum, and the Terrace, but adds that PACE
has been
the most ambitious, and therefore the only, promoter of his venues’
shows. And
although Theriot says he would like to see a production company add a
seated
area and book a fuller season of shows of varying sizes, PACE has no
apparent
plans to either finance seating or book smaller shows. Ultimately,
South Park’s
biggest setback is that nobody in the industry, including South Park
and PACE,
seem to know entirely if PACE holds “exclusive rights” to the venue.
One talent
buyer maintains that the confusion over who’s doing what at South Park
has
already cost the venue one major late-summer show.
It’s no surprise that “exclusive rights” agreements are often
controversial,
as it gives only one promoter the right to offer the venue to booking
agents.
Clearly, in spending the time to consistently book, promote, and
produce shows,
there’s a financial commitment from an exclusive promoter to that venue
that is
financially beneficial to both parties. “When we make a large
investment, we
obviously look to recoup and turn profit, ” says PACE Vice President
Bob Roux.
“That means more shows and more opportunity.”
Certainly, the busy calendars of the Austin Music Hall and Backyard
indicate a
land of increased opportunity. Both PACE and O’Connor confirm that PACE
has a
virtual lock on both Austin Music Hall and Backyard bookings, although
O’Connor
retains an exclusionary list of artists with whom he has established
previous
relationships, like Jimmie Vaughan and Willie Nelson. PACE’s
competitors admit
their confusion as to how exclusive PACE rights are at the two venues,
maintaining that they hear different things each time they call
O’Connor. For
their part, PACE warns that competitors placing Backyard and Austin
Music Hall
offers to acts not on the exclusionary list could find themselves “in a
problem
with the act.”
For the involved parties, including the consumer, exclusives have
their
advantages and disadvantages. For the promoter and the venues,
exclusives
generally lead to better financial and political arrangements between
a
venue’s exclusive buyer and a band’s booking agent. Agents say
it is not
unusual for exclusive venues to accept less exciting mid-size or large
shows in
order to get access to the blockbusters. And although a promoter’s
ability to
buy shows cheaper could hypothetically lower ticket prices, one local,
non-exclusive venue owner offers the existence of “anti-trust”
legislation as
federal precedent that monopolies typically don’t work in the
consumer’s
interest. O’Connor contends that consumers do ultimately see savings
through an
“exclusive,” in that competition for a booking creates a bidding war
that only
escalates price to a point where the difference is tacked onto ticket
sales.
Others say bidding wars don’t actually raise ticket prices, they only
give an
agent options to find a deal that may be in the band’s and the fan’s
best
interest.
“The industry is at a point now where the bands, venues, and
promoters know
what they need to make, so interested parties either come to the table
or
don’t,” says Stone City’s Jack Orbin. “A real bidding war is rarer than
a band
that has loyalties to a certain promoter or venue, and won’t play a
market
because the correct venue is tied up with an exclusive. And certainly,
that
kind of situation also happens more often than an exclusive [brings] in
an act
that otherwise wouldn’t have come.” In any event, booking agents
contend that
they, not the venues, control ticket prices by watching the national
markets
and setting their asking prices accordingly. It’s PACE and O’Conner’s
contention that the consumer’s benefit comes in service they can
trust.
“Our investment in a market means we spend considerable time each day
on
providing the best concert experience for the fans,” Roux says. “We
learn from
our considerable experience and can make improvements. The bands know
we’ll be
there to pay them in the end, the venues know we’re creating a safe
environment
because we’ll be back immediately, and the patron knows we’re going to
provide
accommodating and consistent patron services.”
Ironically, the “exclusive” question, and, to some degree, the
consistency
answer typically go unnoticed by the average fan. “What does it matter
to
them?” asks Osbourne. “Is anybody going to be giving a deal and
lowering tour
ticket prices because they got a particular gig?” In actuality, given
fairly
priced tickets, agents say promoters, and even venues, aren’t conscious
factors
for a majority of fans. Venue owners say that patrons most often
comment that
they simply want more roadshows to choose from. But from a venue’s
viewpoint,
more shows at more venues could potentially mean less people at each
venue. And
worst of all, for traditionally busy venues like Liberty Lunch, when
fans do
consider venues as a factor, they may be more likely to sample newer
venues and
find something they like.
Luckily, both Liberty Lunch’s Mark Pratz and the agents and
managers
monitoring the Austin roadshow scene say the varying sizes of the new
and old
venues create a niche market that doesn’t seem to be noticeably
draining any
venue’s calendar or fan support. And while Pratz may lose several
larger
returning acts this summer to the Music Hall, O’Connor says a slow
summer
stadium circuit could lead him to lose several Music Hall acts to
stadium
packages. In fact, Pratz says several of the acts he has recently lost
or
expects to lose had become too big for the Lunch anyway. “I may be
bitching up
a storm later in the year,” says Pratz, “but at this point, I’d like to
be
optimistic that we’ll all be able to complement and supplement each
other.”
And while Pratz says he has his hands full fighting a new City Hall,
owners of
several smaller live music venues say their most important battles are
to get
roadshow-happy patrons to support local talent in between. Pollstar’s
Bongiovanni points out that concerts don’t just compete against
concerts, but
also with video arcades, restaurants, records stores, and theme parks.
Austin’s
club owners say they agree, and have already witnessed firsthand that
when a
patron’s concert budget is spread between more major roadshows, it’s
the local
bands that get hurt first. “Already I’m seeing local bands discouraged
and
breaking up left and right, because clubs can’t afford to pay them as
much
because they’re not drawing as well,” says the Back Room’s general
manager Mark
Olivarez.
One thing on which everybody involved with the venues and touring
industry
agrees is that their business is cyclical – dependent on tastes and
economy.
And ironically, there’s something stabilizing about the cycles. The
knowledge
that when Austin’s build-it-and-they’ll-come wave peaks, the focus will
return
to local music, can be comforting. And when the cycles flops over
again, debate
over “exclusives” and new venues may seem just as fresh as it does
today. “The
market will dictate what works and doesn’t every time,” says the Erwin
Center’s
Graham. “Touring is part of the entertainment business and it’s no
different
than vaudeville or motion pictures. Change is the only constant.”
This article appears in May 12 • 1995 and May 12 • 1995 (Cover).