State Champ Radio Touring
Page: 129
Sixty miles outside Taking Back Sunday‘s gig at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., last July, the alt-rock band’s driver woke up and informed tour manager Andrew Sprague: “Bus can’t move.” The bus company’s fleet was too depleted to supply a backup, so Sprague spent a day securing transportation for 12 musicians and crew, some of whom hitched a ride on touring mate Third Eye Blind’s bus.
But 2023 is different, Sprague says: “Fingers crossed, everything’s moving a little bit better.”
Personnel shortages and supply-chain issues continue to plague the touring industry, but as 2023 shapes up to be a gigantic year, with stars like Taylor Swift, Drake, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen and The Cure selling out shows, bands and managers are noticing an economic tension release from the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s been full-tilt since April of 2022,” says Brent Dannen, studio general manager for Rock Lititz, the 96-acre Pennsylvania campus where artists rehearse and prep for major tours. “Certain supply-chain issues are not like they were pre-pandemic — we’re not back to that yet. But they have improved since this time last year.”
Robert A. Roth, a rental representative for Christie Lites, the lighting company that works with stadium stars such as Bad Bunny and Karol G, is even more upbeat, although he acknowledges freight costs remain “elevated” above 2019 levels. “If somebody’s looking for a doom-and-gloom outlook, you need to look somewhere else,” he says. “Are things more expensive than they used to be? Yes. Demand is high. Challenges remain. [But] things are improving.”
One reason for concert-business optimism is that touring artists, crews and vendors have adapted to challenges like bus-driver shortages and being forced to procure hard-to-find parts from international factories.
Hemphill Brothers, the Nashville bus-rental company that specializes in concert tours and has worked for artists like Janet Jackson and Mötley Crüe, spent the past year and a half training 60 full-time drivers and stocking up on hard-to-find tires. And bands have learned to book buses farther in advance than usual, sometimes 14 months before a tour begins. “In ’21, we were doing a lot of things for smaller acts,” says Joey Hemphill, Hemphill Brothers’ co-owner, chairman and treasurer. “Now the monster tours are back.”
Finding qualified tour personnel remains a struggle. John Benjamin “JB” Brubaker, lead guitarist for August Burns Red, says a key lighting director recently departed the band’s tour for “some bigger accounts,” but they were able to find a replacement. Michele Abreim, who manages Pierce the Veil, adds that the metal band has given raises to all of its crew members since a tour last September, with high-demand guitar and drum techs being especially expensive. “Normally, our crew is with us a longer period of time before we give pay bumps,” she says.
Rhino Staging, which supplies thousands of staff and crew for live-entertainment events, has aggressively trained workers over the past two years. According to CEO Jeff Giek, it’s still challenging to find people for specialized concert-production work like stage rigging – but new employees are slowly filling the spots. He adds that Rhino has turned down more work over the last 18 months than it has in the last 30 years, but that tours have not had to scale back dates or production due to lack of personnel. “There’s some sex appeal to working in the music business. We’re better off than some of the other industries — I have friends who have cleaning businesses or are in the restaurant business, and they’re really struggling,” Giek says.
Bands are still frustrated that supply-chain issues, due to lingering pandemic shipping delays and factory shutdowns after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, still translate into parts shortages. August Burns Red’s lighting fixtures require cooling fans that have been on back-order for weeks: “It’s just dead equipment sitting in the back of the tour bus,” Brubaker says. Pierce the Veil ordered new guitar cases months ago, but they won’t be ready for the band’s tour, which begins later this month in Mexico. “We’ll sometimes start a tour without everything we need,” Abreim says.
Some economic, logistical and emotional issues remain insurmountable for touring acts — especially in Europe, which, Brubaker says, is “extremely expensive” given high oil and gas prices. “It’s definitely still an issue,” adds Bob McLynn, who manages Miley Cyrus, Green Day, Fall Out Boy and others. “Costs are very high. It’s more difficult than it’s ever been. We had an act do a sold-out theater tour [in] Europe, came back, $60,000 loss on the tour. It’s brutal.”
Lorde, one of McLynn’s clients, wrote last fall of “truly mind-boggling” freight costs, crew shortages, overbooked trucks and other factors that created an “almost unprecedented level of difficulty.” Still, Lorde’s own international tour, which began last April, has achieved what McLynn calls her “greatest success ever, as far as ticket sales.” For 2023, many artists playing top venues say they’re seeing similarly high numbers, including rapper Key Glock, who has sold between 48,000 and 60,000 tickets for a tour of mid-size theaters that started in early March.
“It’s almost 100% back to normal,” says Kyle Carter, Key Glock’s agent. “You’re seeing a lot more of these bigger shows go out — the Beyonces, the Drakes. They’re able to do the shows they want to do. It’s easier to find buses. It’s easier to find equipment we need.”
Ticketmaster has rolled out crypto wallet integration for Avenged Sevenfold’s upcoming tour, allowing NFT holders from the heavy metal band’s fan club — Death Bats Club — to get priority access to tickets and reserved seating with no queues.
Fans have already used the feature to purchase tickets for events at New York’s Madison Square Garden and The Forum in Los Angeles ahead of the general public. Now the initiative will now go live for the rest of the dates available on Ticketmaster. “We have integrated Death Bats Club into Ticketmaster,” confirmed singer Matt Sanders on Twitter, “assuring that fans get the best tickets at the best prices without bots, scalpers and long wait-times.”
Shadows was instrumental in pushing the Ticketmaster integration forward, and has been an early advocate for NFTs and Web3. The band launched the Death Bats Club in 2021 — a collection of 10,000 NFTs with unique visual traits that unlock real-life perks such as care packages, meet-and-greet opportunities, and now early-access ticketing.
Ticketmaster has already issued more than 5 million NFTs as commemorative tokens for major events including the Super Bowl, but this is the first token-gated integration for purchasing tickets directly. Currently it is a pilot program but may roll out to more artists based on demand. “Avenged Sevenfold used the capability to offer first access to tickets, but there are a variety of ways it can be used by artists in the future,” said David Marcus, Ticketmaster’s executive vp of global music, in a statement. “From unlocking premier seats to special experiences like sitting in on soundcheck.”
Ticketmaster’s token-gated sales are currently compatible with tokens minted on Ethereum and stored in dapp wallets, such as MetaMask or Coinbase.
“Token-gated ticket sales are available as part of our expanding Web3 services and other features that help artists set their own terms on how tickets get to fans,” said Marcus. “Any artist who is minting their own NFTs or partnering with another independent community can explore with token-gated ticketing now.”
This marks the latest mainstream Web3 wallet integration after Spotify recently launched token-gated playlists as a pilot feature with several NFT projects including KINGSHIP and Overlord. Holders can connect their wallet and listen to exclusive playlists curated by their communities.
The Web3 fan club model — such as Death Bats Club — has emerged as a resilient use-case for blockchain technology even as the hype around NFT trading fades. Artists such as The Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki and Portugal. The Man have found token-gated communities as a way to engage more closely with their biggest fans and deliver exclusive perks and content.
For example, Chainsmokers host a Discord community open only to NFT holders where the duo regularly talk directly with their fans and offer meet-and-greet exclusives. Steve Aoki launched the “Aokiverse” NFT club with six different levels of ownership offering discounts and backstage access. Santigold, Tycho and Sigur Ros have all launched free Web3 fan clubs using a white label tech platform called Medallion where fans get first access to exclusive content.
Missed out on a chance to score tickets to John Mayer‘s 2023 solo acoustic tour? Fans are in luck, as the musician announced on Monday (March 26) an extension of his current trek into the fall, with a series of additional dates across the United States.
“Announcing new fall dates for the Solo tour. As a dear friend once told me, ‘never block a blessing.’ Something very special is happening out here and I want to keep it going – It’s too good for my soul. Thank you for making it such an incredible run so far,” Mayer shared on Instagram, along with the new dates included on a poster.
The fall leg of Mayer’s Solo tour will kick off on Oct. 3 at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, and will make stops in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville and more before concluding on Nov. 10 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. JP Saxe will be the special guest for the new dates. “Deeply overjoyed we get to keep doing this. thx for bringing me along,” Saxe commented under the tour announcement.
The “Daughter” singer’s post also included details on how fans can buy tickets. “Tickets go on sale to the public Friday, March 31 at 9 AM local time,” he shared. “An exclusive fan presale will be available starting Wednesday, March 29, at 9 AM local time and end Thursday, March 30, at 10 PM. Sign up to access your unique presale code now at johnmayer.com. UK and Europe dates coming soon.”
See Mayer’s announcement, as well as the full list of tour dates, below.
The Four Chord Music Festival is back with the announcement of its 2023 lineup, which will bring a stacked roster of punk and indie bands to Western Pennsylvania’s Wild Things Park on August 12 and 13 for a two-day, DIY celebration from across the punk rock spectrum.
This year’s headliners include Yellowcard — performing their 2003 album Ocean Avenue in full — as well as Taking Back Sunday, The Gaslight Anthem, The Interrupters and Alkaline Trio. Also on the bill are Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, Waterparks, The Maine, Streetlight Manifesto, Face To Face, American Football, Magnolia Park and more.
“I started the festival because I got frustrated with some of the politics behind getting on tours,” says festival founder Rishi Bahl, a touring artist and college professor who first launched Four Chord Music Festival in 2015 as a local punk rock event in a 1,500-capacity club. Since then, the festival has grown into a massive stadium-sized two-day destination event featuring the punk scene’s biggest and brightest — while keeping its independent DIY roots intact.
“We have some of the lowest ticketing fees in any festival of this size in the whole United States,” says Bahl, noting that Four Chord uses the ShowClix ticketing platform. “We control the cost of beverages. We don’t price gouge for alcohol. We don’t price gouge for food. We have 30 and 50 local vendors on site. We have a DIY rate for small, independent companies, and we have a higher rate for more corporatized companies.”
Booking Yellowcard is a return to Four Chord’s roots, adds Bahl, noting that the band headlined the festival in 2015 before breaking up shortly afterward. “When we heard they were getting back together to play a big Ocean Avenue tour, we wanted to be a part of it,” he says. “If you grew up in the early 2000s and were in the punk rock, pop punk, emo scene, that was a seminal record.”
The festival is split into two days — a pop-punk emo day and a punk rock day — and there are no conflicting sets happening that will see one artist playing at the same time as another.
“Everything we do is focused around making it a good experience for the fans and the bands, without making it cost prohibitive,” says Bahl. “I put this festival on each year knowing what it is like to be a kid on a tight budget and we go out of our way to make sure the festival stays affordable and carries on the DIY tradition.”
Single-day general admission tickets for the festival start at $94, while single-day VIP tickets are priced at $196. More information and tickets can be found at www.FourChordMusicFestival.com.
So far this year, much of the discussion around the touring business has been about ticketing, with high-profile tours by the likes of Taylor Swift and Drake putting Live Nation and Ticketmaster in the spotlight. But underlining that throughline is one undeniable fact: three years on from the onset of the pandemic that shut down events across the world, the live music business is fully back, with the biggest stars in the world hitting the road for their first outings in years.
That has meant that all facets of the touring business are once again operating at full speed. Or, as UTA partner and music agent Mike G puts it, “Post-pandemic, the live business has been on fire.”
The longtime agent would know. This year, he’s booked a series of major tours and shows for some of the biggest acts in multiple genres, including Lil Wayne, Romeo Santos, Wizkid and The Kid LAROI, each with some significance: Wayne’s charting an underplay in anticipation of a broader tour around his upcoming album Tha Carter VI; Santos is playing stadium dates in four cities, almost a decade after he became the first solo Latin artist to sell out Yankee Stadium; Wizkid has a headlining arena tour on the way, after he became just the second Nigerian artist to sell out Madison Square Garden in November; and The Kid LAROI kicked off a college tour of secondary and tertiary markets this week. And all that activity has helped earn Mike G the title of Billboard’s Executive of the Week.
Here, he talks about the strategy behind several of those outings, as well as the difficulties and opportunities that have arisen as the pandemic increasingly appears to be in the rear view mirror. “[The pandemic] created a demand,” he says, “and the live industry is healthy.”
This week, The Kid LAROI kicked off his college tour in Syracuse, New York, one of a number of big tours you’ve locked in in the last few months. What was the strategy behind this one in particular?
The strategy behind touring these college towns was to touch a significant fan base for LAROI in secondary and tertiary markets. The idea of going on a reputable college tour hasn’t been executed since Jay Z. So, we saw an opportunity to continue to build his live business with this run and market it in a specific way. The pop-up pep rallies on the day of the show have been a special touch by LAROI to connect with his fans on campus.
You also booked the upcoming Lil Wayne tour ahead of his next album, which sold out in presale and moved 70,000 tickets with a mix of theaters and arenas. What goes into the routing of a tour like this for a superstar like Wayne?
The idea behind Lil Wayne was to create an intimate touring experience for his fans by playing at venues like the Wiltern in Los Angeles and the iconic Apollo Theater in New York. The concept of playing these rooms was to leave tickets at the door for his more extensive run in the fall while pre-promoting Tha Carter VI with this tour as a marketing vehicle. It is an understatement to say this has played out the way we wanted it to. This tour will be such a great experience for the fans.
Last November, Wizkid became the second Nigerian artist to sell out Madison Square Garden, and now he’s set for an arena tour later this year. What do you see as the touring market and possibilities for afrobeats artists in the U.S.?
The possibilities will be arena and amphitheater tours with afrobeats artists as well as headlining crossover festivals. The potential is unlimited in the live space and we’ve seen such incredible success with WizKid being on the forefront and one of the very few artists leading the movement in the U.S.
In 2020, you guys signed Romeo Santos, his first time signing with a major agency. How did you convince him to come aboard?
The signing of Romeo Santos in 2020 was one of the most significant signings for our department. We presented the full-service models that we live by at the agency. Touring is an artist’s most important revenue generator, but in conjunction with live, the thought was, “Let’s build out other untapped business areas.” Film, TV, digital and brand opportunities should be part of those daily conversations. That generated Romeo’s interest and, ultimately, led him to signing with us. It’s about everything we can deliver, not just touring. He wanted to build out a 360 business in all areas of entertainment.
This year, he’s doing stadium shows in four U.S. cities, just shy of a decade after he became the first Latin artist to ever sell out Yankee Stadium. What continues to make him such a big draw?
His loyal fan base and consistency in delivering fantastic music and a spectacular live show. Romeo took Bachata music to new heights. He revolutionized and modernized the genre.
What goes into booking artists of all sizes in the right venues — especially those artists who may have emerged during the pandemic, and don’t have much of a touring history, if any?
We study and understand where that artist is in their career. For some acts, we can gauge and see if playing a 500-cap room is the right step to begin their touring career in the major markets. Finding the right support slot on tour for other acts can expose the artist to new fans and build a base. Each artist is different, but you must be strategically aggressive and not afraid to lose to make a live career.
How has the touring business changed as the world emerges from the pandemic? And how has it changed how you do business?
Post-pandemic, the live business has been on fire. It created a demand, and the live industry is healthy. The business will continue to thrive, but being conscious of ticket pricing will be instrumental in our current economy.
Previous Executive of the Week: Jesús López of Universal Music Latin America
Immersive audio has been available in the live sector for about a decade now, but growing interest in spatial audio is fueling increased demand from artists and their creative teams to find money and physical space to deploy the technology at concerts.
That includes global superstar Adele, who wraps up her “Weekends with Adele” residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace this Saturday. After a brief demonstration in London, Adele and her creative team decided to use L-Acoustics’ L-ISA system for the high-profile residency, creating an ideal showcase for journalists, creative teams and other music executives to hear the system’s “hyper real sound,” as L-Acoustics sometimes calls it, and how it compares to traditional stereo sound.
“In a traditional stereo show, the sweet spot for sound as a mixer is probably pretty small,” explains Jordan Tani, project and technology marketing engineer for L-Acoustics, during a pre-show front of house tour of the Colosseum. In many venues, “the sweet spot” where the audience can fully capture the audio mix is as little as 5% of the venue. But immersive audio systems significantly expand the coverage area of a venue to more than 90% of the audience, thanks to innovations in loudspeaker configuration, algorithmic sound mapping technology and the processing power of the human brain to quickly calculate differences in time and amplitude to determine a sound’s location.
When delivered correctly through high-end lateral and overhead speakers, L-ISA creates a 3D soundscape that more evenly distributes audio to the audience and gives certain sound objects a distinct spatial position.
“And by having this type of coverage and this resolution, we can now pan things around, give spatialization, and give the instruments and the sounds, their appropriate space,” Tani says. “Immersive sound ensures all sounds are heard the way the artist wants them to be heard, not matter where the audience member is sitting.”
For Adele, that means the sound of her voice naturally moves with her as she walks around the stage and the venue, while greeting fans. It also gives her front-of-house engineers a chance to build impressive crescendo moments into her songs. As more instruments and audio elements are added, the soundscape is widened and given more depth, slowly immersing the audience for each track’s big musical moments.
For L-Acoustics, the pioneering sound company launched in France in 1984 and now headquartered in LA’s Westlake Village, The Coliseum is the most high-profile use yet for L-ISA. L-Acoustics is one of the largest premium loudspeaker and pro audio companies in the touring industry and one of only a few manufacturing complete audio systems for immersive sound at live entertainment venues.
The company’s founder Christian Heil is credited with inventing the modern line array, a system for stacking speakers familiar to live music fans used to seeing large, curved vertical arrays of loudspeakers hanging from the stage grid. Heil — a partial physicist and fan of Pink Floyd in the 1970s and 80s who wanted to improve the sound quality of the gigs he was attending in Europe at the time — noticed that many venues and sound techs tried to make up for sound coverage issues at concerts by increasing overall power, making it much louder in the front section than the rear. In 1992, he discovered that stacking speakers of the same frequency at a slight angle greatly expanded sound coverage, without additional power requirements, and gave way for a much more even listening experience from front to back.
Today, most loudspeaker companies have adopted the line array model into their touring systems, while the team at L-Acoustics have continued to innovate and develop new methods for how sound is delivered to an audience. Beginning in the early 2010s, the company began experimenting with immersive audio and object-based sound mixing, paving the way for the launch of L-ISA in 2016.
In order to expand adoption of the technology, L-Acoustics CEO Laurent Vaissié says the company has shifted its marketing and educational efforts away from production managers and front-of-house engineers toward artists, musical directors and sound designers that have creative input for a show.
“L-ISA opens up the creative process and you can see that with Adele show,” says Vaissié. “There are creative decisions that need to be made in terms of how the music should be heard. Is her voice front and center? Who wide do her backup vocals need to be? These are decisions increasingly being made by the creative director, the musical director, and sometimes even the artist themselves.”
By engaging directly with the creative teams, L-Acoustics has expanded the number of contemporary artists using its immersive technology, signing up Bon Iver, Odesza, Katy Perry, Lorde and more.
“It’s a slow burn,” says Vaissié who estimates that about 10% of the tours that work with L-Acoustics are now using L-ISA. In five years, he believes that immersive audio will account for 20-30% of his company’s business.
The challenges of building the system, which costs about 20% more than non-immersive products, are expected to improve as L-Acoustics shifts to a lower cost licensing model charging users based on how they use the system, lowering costs for smaller productions. He also added that the necessary gear is getting smaller and lighter, taking up less real estate on stage.
“And most importantly, fans are demanding it,” Vaissié says. “Once a fan hears it at one show, they come to expect it at other concerts they attend. Fans pay a lot of money for concert tickets, and they want to have the best experience possible.”
Since joining forces in 2011, Queen + Adam Lambert have quickly become one of the most successful touring acts in the world — and now, they’re ready to prove why.
On Friday (March 24), the internationally beloved rock group announced the latest North American expansion of the Rhapsody Tour, set to take place this fall. Kicking off at Baltimore’s CFG Bank Arena in October, the tour will make 14 stops throughout the U.S. and Canada, including shows in New York, Boston, Toronto, Chicago, Nashville and Dallas, before closing out at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium in November.
For fans who saw the first North American leg of The Rhapsody Tour in 2019, fear not; the new set of dates promises an “expanded and updated” show, with guitarist Sir Brian May adding in a statement, “Our last tour featured our most ambitious production ever. So we decided to rip it apart and get even more ambitious.”
Billboard caught up with May, Lambert and Roger Taylor ahead of their official announcement, where the trio talked about what fans can expect from the new show, their favorite songs to perform live, and why “this is not a farewell tour,” according to May.
This is the first time in four years that the three of you will be touring the U.S. together, following your European tour last year — how are you feeling ahead of hitting the road this fall?
Brian May: It’s incredible, yeah. I think we all learned in COVID how much we really missed this. It was really tough for everybody. We already did our big outing in Europe, but with a lot of restrictions on that; we had a very strict protocol just to get through, because people were going down like flies. But we managed to get through that whole tour without losing a date, and it was all sold-out, packed, fantastic and better than ever, I think. So we thought, “Well, we just have to get back to the states.”
Outside of those restrictions, were there any significant learning curves you had to navigate in a post-COVID touring environment last year?
Roger Taylor: Not really, no, I think it was a huge relief to just get back to something approaching normality. That made up for the fact that we did have to have a lot of mask-wearing, and we temporarily lost a few people along the way. And it was a long tour wasn’t it?
May: Oh, yeah.
Taylor: We were changing it and improving it as we went, and we are now going through all of those improvements again when it comes to this American leg.
I’ve noticed that the phrase “one more time” has been thrown around quite a bit when it comes to this tour — are you planning on this being Queen + Adam Lambert’s final outing?
May: Let me be clear, this is not a farewell tour. You can always do one more time … and then one more time … and then another time after that!
Adam Lambert: [laughs] Yeah, why limit yourself, guys?
Taylor: It’s just a simple, five year farewell tour, right?
When it comes to the “improvements” you’ve made to the show, what can fans expect to see that’s new with this leg of The Rhapsody Tour?
May: Well, we’re not gonna tell you that much, we don’t want to spoil it. [laughs] But the nice things is that the material is what ultimately gives the ideas, and we’re able to develop those ideas as we go along. We get to throw more and more stuff in, production-wise.
Lambert: I will say, the technology has come so far, even in the 10 years that we’ve worked together. It gives us so much freedom when it comes to what we want to create, what environment we want to put around a song. We have all of these toys that we get to play with, which we all get a big kick out of. We have an amazing creative team that work with us — I mean, we add something in a couple of days if we have a cool idea. Once the show kicks off, the show is never locked. It’s never the same show every night, we have the ability to throw a new song in, move the set around, change the visuals. There’s so much freedom.
That’s really interesting — how exactly do you go about adding new songs or new moments on the fly like that?
Lambert: I’d say a couple of glasses of wine and a chat, yeah?
May: [laughs] I mean, we also always do a soundcheck. The soundcheck is the key thing for us, I think. Every time we go into a new city and set things up, we’ll go into a soundcheck for two or three hours sometimes. When we’re doing that, we’ll try new stuff out, and our team is so flexible with us, that we’ll just throw out, “Can you give us a certain lighting effect, can you do stuff on the screens?” And they’ll build it on the spot for us. We don’t work on backing tracks or anything, which means we can kind of do anything we want. And we’re really fortunate to have a technical team that can handle that — a lot of this stuff is programmed to work at pretty exact intervals, and ours is all human touch, which gives it that live feel.
Lambert: Also, when we add a song sort of impromptu, we don’t like to over-rehearse it. We play it in that soundcheck and maybe one more soundcheck, and then we throw it in. It makes it really fun, like it’s a thrill-seeking activity, where we just go for it and see what happens.
Brian, I wanted to congratulate you on your recent knighting from King Charles III — what was that experience like for you?
May: It was nice! It was a lot more exciting that I thought it would be, really. We’ve interacted with King Charles a lot — he was at Live Aid! We’ve worked with him on the Prince’s Trust, which is a wonderful charity that takes care of young people, over the years. So meeting him and having him actually do that for me, was actually a really big deal for me. We had a pleasant chat about how old age was treating us, because we’re about the same age [laughs]. It’s quite nice, I feel like it’s given me a little bit more power to do the work I do with animals. I view it in that light — not so much as a prize, but as a kind of empowerment.
And Adam, congratulations on your High Drama covers album — were there any big covers you wanted to include that didn’t quite make the cut?
Lambert: There were definitely a couple others I was considering, but it was a very thought-out project, so we weren’t wasting a lot of time or energy in the studio. We did it so quick, probably recorded those over about two months. I’m so happy with it, even though I did not write those songs, it felt like I was getting creative in the studio to find new ways to make them sound. That was such a cool challenge for me.
Queen has one of the most prolific songbooks in modern rock music. Obviously there are the core set of hits that you’re gonna play almost no matter what — do you have any favorites in particular to perform that maybe aren’t as monolithic?
May: You know, there’s some stuff that we know would be very difficult — Roger mentioned “The Millionaire Waltz” once.
Taylor: [laughs] Oh yeah, I don’t know if we could pull that off.
May: But a lot of the stuff we do anyways is fairly complex — the key is you don’t play the record. We really play how we feel on the stage. It’s funny, some people would call that a bluff, but there’s a lot of multi-track guitar harmonies in a lot of our songs, and I don’t do that onstage and I don’t use trickery to achieve it. I play what I’m feeling, and people hear that and get a purely live version of the song. No extra frills, because to me, recording has always been different than performing live.
Taylor: Sometimes, the song gains a whole new dimension of excitement from that. But the live version will not be exactly the same as the record — that’s not what we’re about.
May: Some people will do that — they’ll have clicks and backing tracks and make everything sound perfect, but why do that? Why not do something that’s real and in the moment and ready to fall off the edge?
Lambert: As far as the setlist goes, I think we’re all aware of what the fan favorites are. But the most important thing here is that, sure, we need to have fun, but the audience is buying a ticket to see the show. This is about their evening and giving them a show that feels fresh. We are keenly aware of what the favorites are and we try to include the big hits every night — they have a lot of hits, so it’s a lot to choose from. But it’s a two-plus hour show, so we’ve got plenty of time to get those big hits.
Tickets for The Rhapsody Tour officially go on sale Friday, March 31 at 10 a.m. local time on LiveNation.com.
Tony! Toni! Toné! will reunite for a tour in 2023.
The announcement came by way of Instagram posts from members Raphael Saadiq, D’wayne Wiggins and Timothy Christian Riley that read, “Raphael Saadiq revisits Tony! Toni! Toné! Just Me And You Tour 2023” — with an influx of fans including John Legend, Questlove, Keri Hilson, Common and Bun B commenting their excitement on Saadiq’s post.
While no dates have been announced yet, Saadiq included a phone number for fans to reach him via Instagram Stories, linking to his Community.com texting list, which will presumably include more information about the tour.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Tony! Toni! Toné! is comprised of brothers Saadiq and Wiggins and their cousin Riley, who joined together in 1986 and had a monumental run. Their first album, Who?, was RIAA-certified gold and produced hit singles including “Little Walter,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The group’s second album, The Revival, was met with critical and commercial acclaim, spending 64 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart and going platinum, in addition to boasting a slew of hits, including the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 “Feels Good.”
The “Anniversary” group went their separate ways following the 1996 album House of Music, with Saadiq going on to produce music for Stevie Wonder, Mary J. Blige, En Vogue, D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Whitney Houston, John Legend and Beyonce. This year, he won his second Grammy for best R&B song for his work on Beyoncé’s “Cuff It.” Wiggins, who helped develop R&B supergroup Destiny’s Child, entered the film world following the group’s hiatus, working as an executive producer and actor.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) responded to President Joe Biden’s calls for fairness and transparency in ticketing fees by introducing the Junk Fee Prevention Act on Wednesday (March 22). While the proposed legislation goes beyond live music, it would transform how concert tickets are sold and attempts to reduce fees that inflate tickets’ face values.
“Concealed surprise fees — nickel and diming Americans to distraction — must be stopped,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
“Consumers are charged hidden fees when purchasing everything from flights to concert tickets,” added Whitehouse. “Our Junk Fee Prevention Act would provide consumers with the transparency they deserve when making a purchase.”
Biden urged Congress to pass legislation addressing “junk fees” during his Feb. 7 State of the Union address, pledging to cap fees on concert tickets and make companies disclose all-in prices upfront. “Americans are tired of being played for suckers,” he said. “Pass the Junk Fee Prevention Act so companies stop ripping us off.”
Blumenthal and Whitehouse’s proposed legislation would at least improve transparency. Ticketing companies would be required to “clearly and conspicuously” display the total price of a ticket with all fees included “in each advertisement and when a price is first shown to a consumer.”
While the legislation targets concert ticket fees and some re-sale tactics, it’s more than a reaction to Taylor Swift’s botched Eras Tour presale that prompted a Senate hearing on Ticketmaster’s business practices. The Junk Fee Prevention Act seeks to prevent companies from applying or advertising “any mandatory fees that are excessive or deceptive” for any good or service. It also targets fees for airline tickets and short-term housing such as hotels and vacation rentals, and would require airlines to seat parents next to their young children.
Transparency is a key theme of the Junk Fee Prevention Act. It includes a requirement to disclose the total number of tickets being offered for a concert, theater event, sporting event or other events “at a place of public amusement of any kind.” Both lawmakers and consumers have long complained that many concert tickets are held back for fan clubs, commercial partners like credit card companies and VIP packages.
Many of the changes sought in the Junk Fee Prevention Act are also found in the FAIR Ticketing Reforms, a set of “common sense” measures introduced on March 8 by a group of leading music companies including Live Nation, Universal Music Group and Red Light Management. FAIR Ticketing Reforms also calls for an end to speculative selling on secondary markets and mandatory all-in pricing. Unlike the Junk Fee Prevention Act, FAIR Ticketing Reforms also calls for stricter measures against automated bots and policing and fining resale sites that serve as a safe haven for scalpers.
Any person who violates the Junk Fee Prevention Act would be subject to the penalties of the Federal Trade Commission Act. A state attorney general can also bring a civil action if a violation affects residents of that state. In determining whether a fee is excessive, the bill asks the Federal Trade Commission or court to consider whether the fee is “reasonable and proportional” to the cost of a ticket and the reason for the fee. The FTC or court can also consider “any other factors determined appropriate.”
A mandatory fee is defined as any fee required to purchase a ticket, is not “reasonably avoidable,” is not expected to be included by a “reasonable consumer” or “any other fee or surcharge determined appropriate” by the FTC. Within 180 days of the bill’s enactment, the FTC would commence a rule making proceeding to consider whether and how the Federal Communications Commission should require disclosure of mandatory fees or prohibit companies from charging mandatory fees.
UTA has officially set up shop in Atlanta.
Along with its partner company KLUTCH Sports Group, the agency opened its new Atlanta bureau Wednesday (March 22) to extend its ability to discover and serve artists, athletes, musicians and brands in the region. Steve Cohen, Rob Gibbs and Arthur Lewis will serve as co-heads of the new office.
“Atlanta is an entertainment and cultural hub, and planting our flag here gives us the ability to support clients with investments and opportunities across the city’s growing creative ecosystem,” said Cohen and Gibbs in a joint statement.
UTA will offer representation in Atlanta across its multitude of divisions, including music, sports, film, television, digital talent, marketing, gaming, fine arts and more. This includes advising top global brands based in the Southeast on a range of growth initiatives, including ways to partner with the creative community.
“Atlanta is a vibrant city for music, sports and arts, and there is a ripe opportunity to create another center of gravity for film and television,” said UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer in a statement. “We are excited to bring our full range of services to the community of talented artists, athletes, musicians and creators who call the Southeast their home.”
The new office is located at 1401 Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta and occupies nearly 20,000 square feet across three floors. It was designed by the firm Hastings Architecture, which also designed UTA’s office in Nashville.
The Atlanta bureau will additionally feature a fine art gallery called The UTA Artist Space to showcase programming from the Atlanta art community and across UTA’s global fine arts roster. The inaugural show will feature Atlanta-based artist and musician Lonnie Holley in the first exhibition of his work in the city in over 10 years. Entitled “The Eyes Were Always on Us,” the exhibition will feature sculptures constructed from found materials in the tradition of African-American sculpture. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
UTA also boasts offices in Beverly Hills, Nashville, New York, Chicago and London.
