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A tourism minister for the Bahamas is throwing cold water on Billy McFarland‘s comeback plans. In a statement Monday (Nov. 14), Chester Cooper, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister for Tourism, said that the creator of the disastrous Fyre Festival is still considered a “fugitive” in the country and that anyone knowing his whereabouts should contact the Royal Bahamian Police Force. In response, McFarland issued a letter to the Bahamian government later that day apologizing for Fyre Fest and promising, “I will spend the rest of my life working to right my wrongs.”
The news — first reported by local newspaper The Tribune — comes after McFarland was earlier this year released from prison and later home confinement for crimes he committed while raising money for the 2017 festival. Last month, McFarland released a video on TikTok teasing out a new Bahamas-based project that would be promoted through a treasure hunt set to begin this week on the Caribbean island nation.
“The public is advised that no application has been made to the Government for consideration of any event promoted by Billy McFarland or any entity or parties known to be associated with him,” said Cooper in a statement. “McFarland was the organizer of the Fyre Festival several years ago, a notorious charade for which McFarland was convicted and sent to prison in the USA. “The Government of The Bahamas will not endorse or approve any event in The Bahamas associated with him. “He is considered to be a fugitive, with several pending complaints made against him with the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF).”
McFarland first announced his plans for PYRT on Oct. 24 after serving four years in prison, noting he’s “working on something new” that’s “a little crazier but a whole lot bigger than anything I’ve ever tried before.” In the video announcement, he then flipped a whiteboard to reveal a treasure map taped to the other side and a phone number to call for more information.
In addition to his prison sentence, McFarland was ordered to pay roughly $26 million in restitution for his crimes. In May, his attorney Jason Russo told Billboard that McFarland was focused on finding “the best way to generate income to pay this restitution back and make amends,” adding, “Any new projects that he does become involved in will be done solely for the purpose of generating the restitution for paying back his victims.”
Later Monday, a representative for McFarland provided Billboard with a copy of a letter McFarland says was sent to the Bahamian government in response to Cooper’s statement. In it, he says he has been working to “make amends” with the Bahamian people and pledges to “make these families whole as soon I am allowed.” He goes on to “ask for guidance on whom to speak with to begin my journey to do right by the incredible people of the Bahamas and Family Islands.”
Read it in full here:
Dear Government of The Bahamas,
I am writing to you to profusely apologize for my actions 5 years ago. I was completely wrong and I wholly regret my actions.
I’ve now served my punishment in prison and now that I am out, my main focus is how I can right my wrongs and how I can make the Bahamas and Family Islands, a region I care so deeply about, whole again.
Over the years, and particularly since my release on August 30, I have been in constant touch with the people throughout the Islands. Their generosity and kind hearts have been a constant guide and motivation for me. I have been re-engaging with the families of the islands to see what I can do to begin making amends.
I don’t have much right now, but I am committed to make these families whole as soon I am allowed. I ask for guidance on whom to speak with to begin my journey to do right by the incredible people of the Bahamas and Family Islands.
I truly acknowledge the hurt I caused to the people, and region, and I will spend the rest of my life working to right my wrongs.
Sincerely,Billy McFarland
BMG has acquired the songbook of beloved, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson for an undisclosed amount, the company announced Monday (Nov. 14).
The deal includes Nilsson’s publishing catalog and writer revenue streams of songs including “One,” “Coconut,” “Jump Into the Fire,” “Gotta Get Up” and “Me and My Arrow” as well as songs co-written with John Lennon (“Mucho Mungo/Mt. Elga” and “Old Dirt Road”), Danny Kortchmar (“(Thursday) Here’s Why I Did Not Go to Work Today” and “Moonshine Bandit”), Dr. John (“Daylight Has Caught Me”) and Ringo Starr (“How Long Can Disco On”). The deal additionally includes artist revenue streams of Nilsson’s recordings, also including including hits he didn’t write like “Everybody’s Talkin’” and “Without You.”
Over his career, Nilsson released 18 studio albums, including his 1966 debut Spotlight on Nilsson, Harry, Nilsson Sings Newman, Nilsson Schilsson, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, the Lennon-produced Pussy Cats, Knnillssonn and Flash Harry. The list also includes soundtracks for Skidoo, Son of Dracula and Popeye, as well as the posthumous album Losst and Found. Nilsson died of a heart attack in 1994 at age 52 while recording the latter album, which was finished and released 25 years later in 2019.
As part of the acquisition, BMG will collaborate with Nilsson’s family to explore opportunities around his other creative assets. These include Nilsson’s story for The Point! — the 1971 ABC TV special for which he also wrote the soundtrack — as well as his name, image and likeness, including for film, TV, stage and books.
Nilsson launched his music career in 1960s Los Angeles as a songwriter for groups including The Monkees and Three Dog Night. He broke through with his cover of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” in 1969, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and netting him a Grammy for best contemporary vocal performance, male. He cemented his status as a left-field hitmaker with his seventh album, 1971’s Nilsson Schmilsson. That set was nominated for album of the year at the 1973 Grammys and ultimately went was RIAA-certified gold on the strength of hit singles, including the No. 1 smash “Without You” (a cover of the song by Badfinger), “Jump Into the Fire” and “Coconut.” He followed that with the Gold-selling Son of Schmilsson the following year. That album’s biggest hit, “Spaceman,” peaked at No. 23 on the Hot 100.
Over the decades, Nilsson’s music has found new generations of fans thanks to placements in films and TV shows like Goodfellas (“Jump Into the Fire”), Reservoir Dogs (“Coconut”), Russian Doll (“Gotta Get Up”), Forrest Gump (“Everybody’s Talkin’”) and You’ve Got Mail (“The Puppy Song”).
The Nilsson family’s team was led by John Rudolph of 1.618 Industries, Inc. (formerly Music Analytics) with counsel provided by Jason Karlov and Amanda Taber of Barnes & Thornburg.
“We are delighted to have found a partner that shares our love and reverence for Harry’s legacy,” said the Nilsson family in a statement. “We look forward to a long relationship with BMG, working together to celebrate this true genius of pop music.”
Thomas Scherer, BMG president of repertoire & marketing, Los Angeles and New York, added, “For generations, Harry Nilsson’s timeless music has captivated millions of people all around the world. A brilliant songwriter with an exceptionally beautiful and unique voice, we will ensure his spirit thrives for generations to come. We are honored the Nilsson family chose BMG to entrust as the custodians of his musical legacy and are proud to represent the cherished works of Harry Nilsson.”
Other recent acquisitions by BMG include the publishing and/or recorded music catalogs of John Legend, Mötley Crüe, John Lee Hooker and ZZ Top.
Bill Oakes, who was president of RSO Records in the 1970s, remembers the first time he heard Bee Gees’ demos for the songs that would end up on the label’s blockbuster 1977 soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. He and Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees manager and founder of RSO, were visiting brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb at the Château d’Hérouville recording studio in northern France as the trio were mixing a live album. Stigwood requested that the Bee Gees come up with some new songs for a disco movie he was producing, starring an emerging actor named John Travolta. Following the meeting, Oakes went to Paris; a short period of time later, he received a cassette from Bee Gees’ personal manager Dick Ashby.
“I put it on in my hotel room,” Oakes recalls. “It was one after the other — No. 1 records. Even in their demo form, it was quite obviously a staggering success. It started with ‘More Than a Woman,’ ‘Night Fever,’ ‘If I Can’t Have You,’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘How Deep Is Your Love.’ I said to Robert, ‘We’ve got the score. We’ve got it.’”
Those new songs that the Bee Gees came up with in short order catapulted both the movie and the soundtrack to massive commercial success, transformed the Gibb brothers into superstars and further popularized disco. Released 45 years ago on Nov. 15, 1977, the double album of disco standards is one of the best-selling soundtracks ever; in the last five years, the soundtrack’s songs have racked up 1.9 billion on-demand U.S. streams, per Luminate.
“As the years go on, it makes me more proud in a way,” says Oakes, who is credited with “album supervision and compilation” in the Fever liner notes. “Anything that stands the test of time must be, by its very essence, worth it. Other things I’ve done have disappeared and you don’t usually get satisfaction, 40 years later, out of what you did back then. But [the Fever soundtrack] does hold up.”
During his time as RSO Records president, Oakes oversaw a roster that included Bee Gees and Eric Clapton. He was friends with the British journalist Nik Cohn, who wrote a 1976 New York Magazine story, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” which centers on an Italian-American working-class youth named Vincent who spends his Saturday nights at the 2001 Odyssey disco club in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Through Oakes and Stigwood’s assistant Kevin McCormick, Stigwood became acquainted with Cohn’s article and bought the film rights that would serve as the basis for Saturday Night Fever. For the movie’s lead character Tony Manero, Stigwood signed Travolta — who was best known as Vinnie Barbarino in the TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter — to a multi-picture deal.
“Robert saw [Travolta] and he just made a note, ‘This is the guy who could play the lead in Saturday Night Fever,’” says Oakes. “He said [to Travolta’s manager], ‘I’ll make you an offer for three pictures for a million dollars.’ That was Robert just basically taking everyone else out of the market. It turned out to be actually a very good deal because, from the million dollars, he got him for Saturday Night Fever and Grease, which turned out well.”
Stigwood suggested to Oakes that the soundtrack would be a two-record set of disco’s greatest hits featuring Bee Gees. “That was an inspired move of saying, ‘We’re gonna do a gatefold double album and fill it up with all the best soundtrack goods,’” says Oakes. “It didn’t really matter if you didn’t see the movie. It became an iconic thing in itself, because if you were giving a party in 1978, all you needed was that album. I sequenced the album specifically so it would be that way.”
Before their involvement in Saturday Night Fever, Bee Gees were slowly making a comeback after a commercial and creative dry spell, starting with such Billboard Hot 100 toppers as 1975’s “Jive Talkin’” and 1976’s “You Should Be Dancing” (both of which also appeared on the soundtrack). “I presided over a bad time in their career with [the 1974 album] Mr. Natural,” says Oakes. “They couldn’t really get a hook on how to sell themselves. It was [producer] Arif Martin who really brought their sound into a modern R&B world.”
Oakes recalls that after he and Stigwood met with the Bee Gees at the Château d’Hérouville, he realized that the film script remained unopened on the studio console. “They hadn’t even looked at it,” he says. “What Robert did tell them in broad terms is it’s about a guy who works in a paint store and blows all his wages on a Saturday night, and he goes to a club and they do the hustle…Robert’s mission was [to] get the Bee Gees to write a disco track that you cannot stop dancing to, with a great melody. And that’s how they came up with ‘Night Fever,’ for instance. These are great melodies that happened to be in the disco mold. That was the breakthrough. It was interesting: they just simply dropped the live album they were mixing and went straight into it.”
With Bee Gees compositions taking up side one, Oakes now had three more sides of the record to fill. Aside from contributions by Kool & the Gang (“Open Sesame”) and KC and the Sunshine Band (“Boogie Shoes”), the soundtrack consisted of mostly relatively unknown acts. One of them was singer and Oakes’ then-wife Yvonne Elliman, who recorded the Bee Gees-penned “If I Can’t Have You.” “The Bee Gees originally wanted her to do ‘How Deep Is Your Love,’” Oakes says. “But Robert said no — he wanted the Bee Gees to do that. So Yvonne got ‘If I Can’t Have You.’ It just happened she was on the label, so there’s a bit of nepotism there (laughs).”
In addition to Bee Gees’ recording of “More Than a Woman,” R&B group Tavares’ version of that song also appeared on the soundtrack and peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100. Says Oakes: “We wanted another act doing a Bee Gees song, so Tavares seemed the logical choice. I remember calling [their producer] Freddie Perren, and he took it in a different direction. He of course made it into a hit on his own. That was a very fairly easy one because I knew Freddie. He produced two hits with Yvonne: ‘Love Me’ and ‘Hello Stranger.’”
Other numbers, such as Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven,” MFSB’s “K-Jee,” Ralph MacDonald’s “Calypso Breakdown” and the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno,” had been released prior to Fever but enjoyed renewed popularity when they were included on the soundtrack. They were augmented with instrumental scores composed by David Shire such as “Manhattan Skyline” and “Night on Disco Mountain.” However, not every artist that Oakes sought for the soundtrack came on board — including Boz Scaggs, whose 1976 hit “Lowdown” was initially used in the film’s dance rehearsal scene involving the characters Tony and Stephanie (played by Karen Lynn Gorney).
“I just thought Irving Azoff, who managed Boz Scaggs, would let me have the track,” Oakes remembers. “Why wouldn’t he? Of course, his response to me after we shot the scene was: ‘Bill, I don’t want my artist in your little disco movie,’ which was a phrase that I was assailed with throughout the production. In those days, music artists didn’t really want to be in movies. Now it’s completely different. Artists actually upfront tout their songs to get into a movie because they know how good it is for their sales.”
As he was wrapping up work on the album, Oakes saw something one day that told him the disco trend was on its last legs. “I was finishing up after listening to the tracks for a straight 14 hours for any defects at the mastering lab. And then I put the masters in my car, which would become the album. I was stuck behind a truck [whose bumper sticker said] ‘Death to disco,’ and it dawned on me. I told Robert, ‘We might have missed this one.’ We didn’t coin the word ‘disco’ — disco was around. What [the soundtrack] did was just when disco seemed to be dying, it gave it a new lease on life. We certainly didn’t create disco–we created a real global, across-the-board demand for it. That’s what Fever did.”
Three months ahead of the film’s Dec. 14, 1977 premiere in Los Angeles, Stigwood had the foresight to release the soundtrack’s first single, Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love.” “One of the things that Stigwood initiated with film companies was how a record could promote a movie,” Oakes explains. “Paramount said they were thinking of [Fever] as a strictly token release — 50 cinemas for this indie picture. [Stigwood] said, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. If we’re putting out a single in September three months in advance, and everybody plays the record, we’ll say it’s “From the forthcoming film Saturday Night Fever.” That will sell the movie.’ He was right about that because by the time ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ went to No. 1, Paramount did have to increase the screens. That was entirely due to Stigwood tying in the record with a promotion for the film.”
Released on Nov. 15, 1977, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and stayed there for 24 consecutive weeks. It gave the Bee Gees three Hot 100 No. 1s with “How Deep Is Your Love,” “Stayin’ Alive” and “Night Fever,” with Yvonne Elliman’s version of the group’s “If I Can’t Have You” also topping the chart.
“When ‘Stayin’ Alive’ went straight to No. 1, that’s when I thought, ‘We really got something here,’ because the album was shipping that next week and the orders were coming in,” Oakes says. “We didn’t know still until the movie opened whether it would open big. It was only after it opened that the cinema owners were calling Paramount saying, ‘We are having people dancing the aisles. We gotta call security.’ Paramount was taken aback. They said that every screening was sold out. It was just an extraordinary thing. So that’s when we knew that the record had really promoted it.”
The Fever movie and soundtrack launched Bee Gees into superstardom. The trio’s next record, 1979’s Spirits Having Flown, also topped the Billboard 200 chart and gave them three more Hot 100 No. 1 songs: “Tragedy,” “Love You Inside Out” and “Too Much Heaven.” “Their following went up through the roof after Fever,” Oakes says of the Gibb brothers. “They were the biggest artists in the world by that point.”
In addition to Bee Gees, the blockbuster success of the Saturday Night Fever movie and soundtrack marked a triumphant period for Stigwood, who enjoyed massive success again in 1978 with another film he produced: Grease, also starring Travolta. The following year, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack won the Grammy for album of the year. But the Fever hysteria also marked the end of an era: in the 1980s, disco was out; Bee Gees never had another No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100; and RSO Records folded. Still, the legacy of the soundtrack endures: in 2013, the U.S. Library of Congress added it to its National Recording Registry; five years later, the album was reissued as a deluxe box set for its 40th anniversary.
Oakes admits that he is surprised by the soundtrack’s longevity decades after the fly-away collars and bell bottoms became passé. “It’s easy to see how it resonates with people who were young at the time. When you go to a party or a wedding anywhere in the world, they’ll still play ‘More Than a Woman,’ ‘Night Fever’ and ‘Stayin’ Alive.’
“’Stayin’ Alive’ is probably one of the most-played songs ever—I get that. What is interesting to me is how is it that young people today are finding it. I think because it is a classic combination of melody and dance. The Bee Gees combined the tune with the dance record. There is something haunting about their hook lines and choruses, which is unique. That’s really down to their music, it’s down to their combining melody with dance and rhythm. I think that’s the combination that still hasn’t been surpassed.”
UTA has signed country singer-songwriter Dalton Dover to its roster for global representation in all areas, the agency tells Billboard.
Last month, it was announced that Dover signed with UMG Nashville’s Mercury Nashville imprint. He’s aligned with Sony Music Publishing Nashville as well as Droptine Music Publishing, which was launched by Nashville music industry veteran Jim Catino. Dover continues to be represented by Charly Salvatore at Underscore Works.
(L-R): Jeffrey Hasson (Co-Head of UTA Nashville), Matthew Morgan (Partner & Co-Head of UTA Nashville), Scott Clayton (Partner & Co-Head of Global Music, UTA), Charly Salvatore (Founder & Manager, Underscore Works), Dalton Dover, Josh Garrett (Music Agent, UTA), Brett Saliba (Music Agent, UTA).
Courtesy Photo
Dover’s most recent song, “Damn Good Life,” which dropped in September, followed previous releases including “You Got a Small Town” and “Baby I Am.” He was Billboard‘s Country Rookie of the Month in February.
“I’ve had the Hot Country playlist from Spotify on my phone for a while. My friends have it, everybody has it,” Dover told Billboard at the time. “The coolest thing is you can hear Miranda Lambert, Luke Combs — and then you can hear my songs. Coming from where I’m from, this kind of thing just doesn’t happen.”
Dover first came to attention when he appeared on Season 16 of The Voice in 2019, earning a chair turnaround from coach Blake Shelton. From there, he developed his fanbase via his #CatchMeOffGuard series on TikTok, which drew praise from artists including Jimmie Allen, Luke Combs and more. This summer, he graduated to opening for Combs at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and performed a seven-date run of concerts at various Shelton’s Ole Red locations around the country.
Dover is currently opening shows on Priscilla Block‘s Welcome to the Block Party tour and will make his Grand Ole Opry debut on Dec. 3.
SM Entertainment, home of such K-pop groups as NCT 127, SuperM and Girls’ Generation, had revenue of 238.1 billion KRW ($165 million at the Sept. 30 exchange rate) from July 1 to Sept. 30 — up 65.4% year-over-year and a 29.1% improvement from the previous quarter, the company announced Monday (Nov. 14).
Operating margin — operating profit as a percentage of revenue — improved to 12.5% in the third quarter of 2022, up from 6.9% in the prior-year period. Net income was 29.2 billion KRW ($20.2 million), up 129.5% year-over-year and 15% higher than the second quarter.
The company’s multi-pronged business, which generates revenue across all facets of its artists’ careers, improved across the board: Recorded music revenues grew 46.6% to 135.1 billion won ($93.6 million). SM Entertainment’s album sales improved from 3.25 million units in the prior-year period to 4.7 million units. It had two standout releases in the quarter: NCT 127’s 2 Baddies peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and Aespa’s Girls: The 2nd Mini Album topped Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart.
Concert revenues climbed to 10.9 billion won from virtually nothing a year ago. In the quarter, Revenue from appearances — including television, advertising and events — grew 96.4% to 24.3 billion KRW ($16.8 million). Licensing revenue improved 76.1% to 26.4 billion KRW ($18.3 million).
Revenue at SM Entertainment’s subsidiaries grew 119.5% to 136.9 billion KRW ($94.9 million). These companies include Dream Maker, a Hong Kong-based concert booking agency; SM Culture & Contents, a content production and advertising business; and Keyeast, a Korea-based merchandising and licensing business. According to the release, these subsidiaries benefitted from the reopening of domestic and international touring and increased demand for advertising promotion and business-to-business travel.
Several SM Entertainment artists are on tour in the fourth quarter: NCT 127 has nine dates in Korea, U.S., Thailand and Indonesia; Super Junior has six concerts in Indonesia, Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Ryeowook and NCT Dream have six and five concerts in Japan, respectively.
The company’s fourth-quarter release schedule includes new mini albums by Chen, BoA and Red Velvet and Red Velvet member Seulgi. Red Velvet’s Feel My Rhythm album peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Global Excl. US chart in April; it also landed on the Indonesia Songs (No. 3), Malaysia Songs (No. 5), Phillippines Songs (No. 15) and Taiwan Songs (No. 16) charts. The group’s The ReVe Festival: Finale EP reached No. 40 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart in January 2020.
SM Entertainment’s shares rose 0.5% on Monday to 65,800 KRW. Down just 11.3% in 2022, SM Entertainment’s share price has fared better than Korean music companies HYBE (down 61.2%) and YG Entertainment ( down 26.4%) but lags behind JYP Entertainment (up 12.0%), home of Twice, Stray Kids and iTZY.
SM Entertainment’s shares rose 19% on Sept. 16 after the company announced would prematurely end a contract with a production company owned by the company’s founder and largest shareholder, Lee Soo-man. Its share price, however, has fallen 14% since then.
Liberty Media Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) launched by John Malone’s Liberty Media a couple of years ago in hopes of finding at least one takeover target, has taken a key step towards closing down the financial vehicle.
On Monday, a virtual special meeting of stockholders voted in favor of the move by approving updates to its certificate of incorporation, which allow it “to unwind and redeem all of its outstanding public shares prior to Dec. 30,” which is “in advance of the contractual termination date of Jan. 26, 2023.”
Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei told the online meeting that his company — which owns the Atlanta Braves and the Formula One race car circuit among other media and entertainment assets — looked at around 140 companies in all as potential acquisitions, without identifying who they were. He added a picky Liberty Media saw no targets worth pursuing for a merger.
Maffei added Liberty Media had been working amid an industry backdrop where financial markets had turned down. That made financing any potential transaction more difficult and jumping through regulatory hurdles for a time extension to work out taxation issues more challenging.
“Frankly, getting an extension wasn’t worth it, given we had nothing on the table that was attractive enough for us to take us look,” Maffei told investors about the decision to wind up the SPAC.
SPACs, or “blank check companies,” have been a popular vehicle in recent years, including for former top media executives, including James Murdoch and former Walt Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, to raise cash and hunt for acquisitions. But stock market volatility, macroeconomic uncertainty and the disappointing performance of some SPACs, along with other factors have led to questions about the outlook for SPACs.
Liberty Media Acquisition (LMAC) had announced the special meeting in October, detailing the challenges of its management team, led by Maffei, in finding a suitable merger deal.
“Since its IPO on Jan. 23, 2021, LMAC’s management team has employed a broad set of search criteria for potential target business combinations and evaluated more than 140 such target companies,” the firm said back then. “In evaluating these businesses, management remained focused on finding fair valuations amid volatile market conditions. LMAC’s management has observed what it believes were high valuations in 2021, a declining IPO market in 2022 and significant public and private market volatility, which have prevented the company from securing an opportunity that it believes will offer a compelling return on investment for its stockholders. In light of these circumstances, LMAC has determined that it is not feasible to complete an initial business combination (or enter into an agreement in principle with respect to an initial business combination) by Jan. 26, 2023.”
LMAC also noted “recent changes in U.S. tax law” that “could create corporate-level tax liabilities in connection with stockholder redemptions following year-end.”
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
Touring can be a tough way to make a living these days, but for Arlo Guthrie, playing live comes with certain medical benefits that aren’t available in retirement.
“There’s nothing like playing before a live audience,” says the prolific songwriter, activist and storyteller who suffered a series of strokes in 2019 and decided to retire in 2020 as the pandemic shuttered the live music industry. Now, after three years resting at his home in Berkshire County, Mass. with wife Marti Ladd, the couple decided that “I could recuperate better in front of a live audience, rather than just sit at home, and both agreed I should get back out there as part of my rehabilitation.”
Today, Guthrie is sharing the details of his recovery plan, embarking on a four-city storytelling theater tour titled “Arlo Guthrie – What’s Left Of Me – A Conversation With Bob Santelli,” featuring the executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. The tour is spread out so that each show is at least one week apart, making travel an easy back and forth trip from his home in western Massachusetts.
“I didn’t really retire from the gigs. I retired from getting to them. I’m retired from seven-hour rides in a tour bus,” Guthrie tells Billboard. The first show in the series will take place at Boston’s Schubert Theater on April 1, followed by The Egg in Albany, NY on April 21; The Pollock Theater at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey on April 28; and The Spruce Peak PAC in Stowe, Vermont on May 27.
“What’s Left Of Me” was booked by Guthrie and Ladd’s new production company Gut3 Productions. Ladd is the director of set design for the series and has created an intimate setting with a backdrop of Arlo’s heroes and mentors hanging within a living room environment. The couple met 20 years ago in Woodstock and married in December 2021. For “What’s Left of Me,” Guthrie will talk about his life as a touring artist, his memories of his famous father Woody Guthrie and his wildly entertaining tales from the road. Guthrie has performed at Carnegie Hall, the 1967 Newport Folk Festival and the original Woodstock festival in 1969 and has released 32 acclaimed albums over his six-decade career. “What’s Left of Me” also includes rarely seen video footage along with an audience Q&A and snippets of his past performances.
Guthrie says the stroke has affected his ability to perform music and says the series is not a music show with some conversation sprinkled in between songs.
“It’s a conversation between two people with maybe some music included,” he notes. “I would rather have it that way. There may be some young people who have no idea who I am, but who got dragged to these events by overenthusiastic friends or parents, or even grandparents and you’ve got to reeducate people and tell them where you’ve been and who you’ve been and make it as much fun as possible.
That includes telling the story of “Alice’s Restaurant Massacre,” a 18-minute monologue that’s both a celebration of Thanksgiving and a not-so-subtle protest piece against the Vietnam War. The talking, satirical format was unusual when it was released in 1967 and still occasionally befuddles folk music fans.
“In 1967, I was beginning to tell my stories on stage and somebody yelled out, ‘shut up and sing,” he jokes “After ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ came out, I was back in Chicago and I was singing songs and somebody yelled ‘shut up and talk.’”
While Guthrie is still affable and gregarious six decades into his career, he’s also become an outspoken advocate and proponent for folk music and the genre’s legacy. His father Woody is one of the most significant and recognized American folk artists of the last century and Arlo has received multiple awards and accolades for his work in folk music, which he insists is more of a musical movement than a genre.
“The great folk musicians all learned how to play music the same way — on acoustic instruments in their houses. That’s the kind of music that I was brought up with. That’s the kind of music my father played. That’s the kind of music I taught my kids to play. It’s music you can take to any country in the world and sing or play with anyone – even those you may not be able to talkto. You may not even be able to say hello, but you can sit down and play something together. That to me, is really always been at the heart of what folk music is,” Guthrie explains.
“That to me is what folk music is,” he continues. “It’s how you learn music. It’s not the sound of it. It’s not the look of it. You don’t need a fancy hat for it. You don’t need lights or amplification. You don’t need anything besides experience and the will to learn how to play.”
For more on “What’s Left Of Me” and to purchase tickets, visit: www.gut3.me
Last year, Milana Rabkin Lewis, co-founder and CEO of the distribution company and payment platform Stem, was among those who read a series of frustrated tweets from the rapper Meek Mill. “I haven’t got paid from music, and I don’t know how much labels make off of me!” Mill wrote in a since-deleted thread. “How much have you spent on me as an artist? How much have you made off me as an artist?”
“Why can’t he know that?” Rabkin Lewis asks. The problem has frustrated her since she was an agent at United Talent Agency and saw “just how messy the whole process” of royalty accounting was. “We were working with major artists who realized they had no visibility into when they were going to get paid and how unrecouped they were,” she recalls.
Part of the reason she started Stem in 2015 was to provide artists with more transparency. Now Stem is debuting Royalty Services, which aims to distill labyrinthine Excel spreadsheets into digestible dashboards and will be available to labels outside of Stem’s distribution network. (Some of the major labels also have their own version of a dashboard, though managers say they can be tough to navigate.) Users can view summaries of overall costs, earnings and recoupment status. They can drill down into more granular data — to determine which streaming platform or track is generating the most money, for example — with a click. And the process of linking bank accounts and sending money to partners is straightforward.
“It’s easy to see which song is doing the most each month on which platform, how much you’re making, when you will recoup,” Rabkin Lewis says. Stem’s chief product officer Brendan Kao calls the new dashboard “the next step in our mission to improve financial clarity for the entire music industry” for both labels and artists.
Royalty accounting has been a source of artist frustration for about as long as there has been a music industry. “The mystique of the music business is that, though profits are huge, accounting is incomprehensible,” CBS boss Walter Yetnikoff wrote in his memoir. Another company hoping to inject more transparency into an industry known for opacity is CreateSafe, which made a Record Deal Simulator freely available online so artists can input their advance, recording and marketing costs and get a rough estimate of how many streams they need to generate to recoup their deal.
If anything, royalty accounting has only become more complicated in today’s digital environment. Artists often release more music with more partners than in the past and work with more producers. And revenue comes from multiple streaming services as well as platforms like TikTok and Twitch. “We’re also seeing this trend of the admin and the responsibility of paying people out going more downstream,” Rabkin Lewis adds. “Motown pays out Quality Control, for example, but there are so many layers of people that need to get paid after that,” from artists to producers to engineers, and “often the people downstream from the major have no software.”
Quality Control has also started using Stem’s technology, as has Fool’s Gold. Rabkin Lewis says she hopes to have 50 clients by the middle of 2023. “Stem’s software makes royalty data easy to read to the point that I actually want to log in myself to look at trends,” Quality Control co-founder Kevin “Coach K” Lee said in a statement. “With any other solution, I would wait for my team to generate a report and then wait again while they pull the important details out of a massive spreadsheet.”
Justin Blau, best known as the DJ-producer 3LAU, is the founder of Blume Music, another label that quickly signed on to use Royalty Services. “We used to hire an accounting firm,” Blaus says. “We’d send them everything, they’d send paperwork back, and then we’d send payments manually to each rightsholder.” This system was “inefficient,” Blau continues, to the point that it was “just obnoxious.”
He was quick to sign up for Stem’s new product: “A lot of artists have been waiting for this.”
Later this month, Chris Cobb, longtime independent operator of revered Nashville music venue Exit/In for nearly two decades, will conclude his work at the 51-year-old music venue due to the lease ending at the conclusion of 2022, as Nashville-based development firm AJ Capital Partners (which purchased the Exit/In property in 2021) are set to begin overseeing operation of Exit/In.
“It looks like 51 years of local, independent ownership and operation have come to an end,” said a statement from Chris and Telisha Cobb. “We are humbled to host this last run of concerts with friends from many eras gracing our stage again. There have been too many incredible moments to count over the 18 years we’ve stewarded Exit/In. It’s an incredibly special place that we are so fortunate to have been a part of.”
The final 2022 concert at Exit/In is slated for Nov. 23, with the second of a pair of shows from Diarrhea Planet.
A statement from AJ Capital Partners, which recently moved its headquarters from Chicago to Nashville, provided to Billboard says, “The Exit/In will remain open, as it has under the stewardship of dozens of operators over the past 51 years, as its irreplaceable self: an iconic Nashville venue and gathering place for music lovers from all over. We spent the last year securing historic protections for this special and sacred space, which we’re committed to preserving while providing some long overdue physical improvements. We look forward to the next half-century of moments and memories, and to announcing 2023 show dates very soon.”
In 2021, AJ Capital filed a request to designate the Exit/In as a historical landmark, and historic overlays were approved for a section of the property this year.
Last year, the Cobbs launched a GoFundMe campaign with the aim of purchasing Exit/In, shortly after the venue went under contract. The fundraiser received over 4,000 donations and accumulated over $270,000 from supporters. In his statement, Cobb said that the money will be donated to National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) and to Music Venue Alliance (MVAN).
Exit/In, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, opened in 1971 and is located at 2208 Elliston Place, as the anchor of “The Rock Block,” which over the years has been home to businesses including The End, Elliston Place Soda Shop and The Gold Rush. Exit/In quickly became known for the diverse slate of artists who have performed there — with many of their names scrawled on its Wall of Fame at the front of the building. Those artists have included Billy Joel, Etta James, Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters, Paramore, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chuck Berry, The Allman Brothers Band, Jason and the Scorchers, Cage the Elephant and R.E.M., among many others.
Jimmy Buffett was the first performer at the venue when it opened in 1971.
The Rock Block was commemorated with a historical marker in 2020.
This past summer, the second-largest U.S. bank, Bank of America, looked at how its customers’ spending on entertainment for the month of May compared with a year ago. What researchers found was surprisingly positive for the touring industry, and there are signs the good news is holding steady, at least for now.
Spending on concert, theater and movie tickets in May was up across all income groups. Moderate- and high-income earners — households bringing in over $50,000 and over $125,000 in annual income, respectively — exhibited the most pent-up demand, with spending levels up more than 40% in May compared with May 2021.
Demand among lower-income consumers — households earning less than $50,000 a year — was up almost as much, rising roughly 38% year to year.
In October, Bank of America surveyed its customers again to ask if they expect to increase spending in the next 12 months in a number of categories including in-home entertainment. With inflation cutting into or erasing most Americans’ pandemic cash buffers, credit card spending is on the rise, and with companies proactively laying off staff in anticipation of a recession, 21% said they plan on reducing what they spend on in-home entertainment either moderately or significantly in the next 12 months. (Sixty percent said they planned no change to their spending.)
Bank of America does not have current data on whether consumers plan to cut back on concerts and other entertainment outside their homes, so the live-music industry will have to hope that consumers will pare down their audio and video streaming service subscriptions so that they can continue seeing their favorite acts at local venues while enjoying their concession fare and buying merchandise.
Goldman Sachs analysts expect they will. Although they predict growth in the global live-music industry to slow somewhat next year, they forecast it will still put up a 4% compound annual growth rate from 2023 to 2030.
In 2022 so far, the industry has seen 5% growth in revenue despite a number of high-profile tour cancellations. Growth this year is on par with the 5% compound annual growth rate the industry experienced from 2007 to 2019.
Looking at the numbers on a more granular level reveals that the global live-music industry grew most sharply between 2007 and 2009 at the onset of the global financial crisis.
During that time, industry revenue rose from $17 billion in 2007 to over $20 billion in 2009, according to research by Goldman Sachs. But between 2010 and 2015, the industry had several years of essentially no growth as the effects of the crisis — unemployment above 10%, nationwide foreclosures — caused deep financial pain.
Even then, the live-music industry grew overall by roughly $3 billion, from $22 billion to $25 billion, during that period of austerity.
Music is often called recession-proof, and while that may hold true, the touring industry feels vulnerable, given the on-again, off-again reality that artists, promoters, venues and their support have had to contend with through the pandemic. For now, industry experts say consumers continue to spend, the industry’s revenue will continue to grow, and even in a worsening economic climate, the shows will go on.
