John Burdick: BSP has been drawing in bigger and bigger names from the “indie world” and beyond. How much of that would you say is because of the growing prestige of your room, the snowball effect? How much because bigger names are being driven to smaller places by the economic realities of music these days, and they’re seeking you out?
Mike Amari: Mainly it’s the snowball effect. Word-of-mouth between bands, booking agents, managers and so on is a very real, powerful thing. And beyond that, the people who are in the audience – accomplished musicians, industry people and studio engineers, in addition to fans – all spread the word and suggest us as a place to play. Social media plays a big part in this as well, and I feel we use social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram specifically) in a much stronger way than other venues in the area. Also, I’ve found that booking agents really look at who has recently played the club and what’s scheduled for the near future. If I can say to an agent, “Kurt Vile is playing here in two weeks,” that holds more weight than anything else, in terms of legitimizing this small venue in a town they’ve probably never heard of.
Economically, if you are a successful band, one of the few ways you can still make money is touring. So bands are doing it more often than ever, and we’re a good “small market” that they can use as an alternative to Ithaca, Albany and so on. Man Man, for example, has played Albany, Hudson, Ithaca and Kingston in the last year-and-a-half. Ours was the only one that sold out!
The other factor is that our sound is extremely good for a small venue. A number of the “bigger” shows (Kurt Vile, Sean Lennon) we’ve done were essentially warm-up shows for a large-scale tour. Kurt Vile kicked off a worldwide tour at our place, warming up for his headlining set the next night at Terminal 5 in New York City (3,000 capacity!) Without a good sound system and in-house engineer (Dan Votke), those shows would definitely not be happening for us.
John Burdick: Without feeling that you have to disclose the details, have you guys really been out on a limb with some of these bigger bookings (Sean Lennon, Kurt Vile, Man Man) regarding guarantees and such? Is it possible you have even looked at a few of these bookings as “loss leader”-type shows, where you build prestige but lose money?
Mike Amari: Well, we certainly don’t go into any shows as a “loss leader.” We get together as a group and analyze any data we have to try to figure out approximately how many tickets will sell for a show. We look at any past shows the band has played in our area, ticket prices, how long ago that may have been, whether the band has a publicist or a good label that will help promote things on their end, whether the show coincides with a new release or big announcement – those sorts of things.
Like any venue, we have had shows fail financially. You might look back saying, “That was a good show; it brought us other shows that were successful,” but that is usually only in hindsight. And as a talent buyer, this is all my responsibility: to accurately project what will or will not work financially. We have definitely turned down opportunities with bands/artists we really love or are well-known, because it would not make sense financially. A big part of that is we want our shows to be affordable. We could have easily charged $25 for the Sean Lennon show, but we chose to do $15. We don’t want money to be a factor in people’s decision about whether they can come to one of our shows.
John Burdick: I know you are deluged with interest from touring acts these days. I also know that, no matter how good they look “on paper,” many won’t draw as well as a happening young local band with a mobilized group of friends. What’s your view of balancing local and national acts?
Mike Amari: Yeah, well, you have to remember that any person/band with enough money can have tons of “likes” on Facebook, plays on their Soundcloud, press articles even. So ultimately it’s going to keep coming back to the music, and recommendations from people/sites that you trust. New bands are the hardest to gauge, and usually the least put-together live, so by that logic they are the riskiest books.
In terms of the local/national balance, I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think to grow a scene, it’s crucial to have a mix of both every chance you get. This obviously means locals opening for big national acts, but it also means putting an unknown regional act in the middle of two strong local acts. When you mix the two, you hopefully help your local acts make connections with those non-local acts, which will come in handy if they want to tour, which is still a total necessity for a band trying to break through nationally. Also, especially with the bigger booking agencies, I usually send multiple local support options and let them listen to the acts and do a little research of their own on who they would like to open. This definitely has helped some local or unknown artists get their music in the hands of established industry people.
John Burdick: You and the new management at BSP have put a lot of thought and effort into the idea of a sustainable culture – a “scene” in uptown Kingston. Do you feel that the essential “success factors” are in place for that? What are some of those factors? In fact, what, to your mind, is a scene?
Mike Amari: Well, for me a scene is when you have a lot of very talented bands in a concentrated area. They are feeding off of one another, coming up together and eventually break through on some larger-scale level as a collective. And along the way, there are genuine fans. So by that definition, I don’t really see the Hudson Valley as having a scene, or even striving to. What I see – highly talented artists/musicians/creative types attending each other’s shows, but not much in the way of fans – is more in tune with the old artist-colony history of the area. We’re a hard group of people to impress up here, because we’re kind of used to seeing a very high level of talent, an unusually high level of talent in our low-population area.
So, getting back to the question, I think we have put most of our goals for the venue into place, and are very close to hitting the ceiling of what we can do with the small amount of space that we have. The natural progression, then, is to look at that huge back space connected to our building and find a way to present performances back there, and that’s what we’re working on. Our “success factors” are simple: Consistently provide programming that we believe in, price tickets modestly and take good care of the musicians/artists.
John Burdick: Here’s a personal question: You said before – accurately – that touring is where acts make their money these days, but that’s a relative truth. Performance earnings are down considerably too – just not quite as “in the toilet” as earnings from recordings. As a working musician, booking agent/promoter and graphic designer, you are essentially “all-in” on music at a time when it is debatable whether there even is a music economy anymore. How do you feel about that? Do you see yourself ever following your various competencies outside of music, toward better rewards? Or is it music for you, ‘til death do you part?
Mike Amari: It’s a bit of a disease. I’m responsible, organized, hard-working and have always done well with regular jobs; but I get so much more satisfaction out of the work I do now, and happily work longer and harder for less money than I did when I had a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 job. With my particular agreement with BSP, I have so much freedom in what I book and how we present it, and it all goes hand-in-hand, making everything stronger. I’ll book a band that I love, create an interesting, unique poster for the show, get the word out about it, see the band play, see a crowd of people come check out the show and literally watch people fall in love with a band, or see a band that they love in their backyard instead of driving down to the City. And I get paid! It’s crazy.
But you do have to go “all-in” these days. The crossover between being a musician, a promoter, helping with O+ Festival and so on is tremendous, and I don’t know that I’d be happy doing just one of those things. My work as a promoter has only increased since I started a year-and-a-half ago, and therefore so has my compensation, so I don’t think I’ll really consider changing what I’m doing until that stops happening.
