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The shows must go on
A friendly roundtable with some Buffalo concert promoters
By Joe Sweeney
If you’re a music buff living in Buffalo, you probably see the local concert schedule as a benchmark for how our city is perceived. And judging by the crop of shows we’ve had to choose from in recent years, people must think that Buffalo’s about as relevant as the keytar. Why do most of the big-name arena acts and über-hip up-and-comers pass over the Queen City? We sat down with a group of folks who can answer that question better than anybody: Marty Boratin, long-time Mohawk Place booking agent; Bruce Eaton, producer of the Albright-Knox “Art of Jazz” series; Rob Falgiano, assistant director at the UB Center for the Arts; Donny Kutzbach, concert promoter with Funtime Presents and Artvoice music editor; and Alison Zero, talent producer for WBFO’s “Live in Allen Hall” concert series.
While their opinions weren’t exactly hopeful, an undercurrent of optimism ran through the conversation—the keytar may be outdated, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t inherently kick-ass.
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| Bruce Eaton: “You used to have to work at it to discover bands. You had to give up part of your Saturday, hang out, and spend hard-earned money. When you did discover something, you felt like you had more of an ownership.” |
| Marty Boratin: “There are a lot of bands that know they have a free place to stay when they play Buffalo, plus they can get two free meals out of it.” |
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Let’s start by saying some optimistic stuff about live music in Buffalo.
Alison Zero: My friend manages the band Crystal Antlers, and when he came to visit, the first thing he wanted to do was visit Soundlab, because the band came back from Buffalo and [said] it was their favorite city of the entire tour. They couldn’t stop raving about the people. A lot of artists come to Buffalo and expect the worst. Then they get this great feedback from people—enthusiasm at shows, willingness to actually participate when audience participation is called for. And they can afford to stay here and eat here for a night.
Marty Boratin: They can afford a hotel here for two or three nights if they have the time off.
OK, screw the niceties. Why do people think that Buffalo is a cesspool of ice and boredom?
Rob Falgiano: I haven’t found any problem finding enough things to bring to town. It might not be your favorite band—it won’t be Radiohead, which won’t be viable unless they ever do a regular, city-by-city tour.
Donny Kutzbach: Everybody always talks about Radiohead! They’re not gonna play Buffalo until it’s some kind of weird situation that makes it happen. It’s this white elephant that people always bring up. It’s that dream band, and you’re going to have to travel to go see them.
RF: And it’s not just our city. It’s a lot of cities.
DK: They’re one of the very few bands who can write their own ticket and do whatever they want to do—which is why they’re such a terrible example. A realistic comparison is Wilco. Wilco actually tours a lot, and they haven’t been back since Rockin’ at the Knox. All they do is tour, and they still don’t get to come back and hit all the markets that they should be hitting more often.
AZ: What do the booking agents say when they pass?
DK: “You’re a secondary market. You’re just not in the big picture.”
RF: Or they’ve got a collection of higher offers that are more to the west. And then in the next cycle, the band has picked up to where they’re doing 3,500-seaters, and then you might get scaled right out. All we had to do was make one phone call on Norah Jones, and they were like, “No, you’re too small.” She got so big so fast, she had eclipsed us before she had even toured.
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| Alison Zero: “I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve seen at Mohawk Place where it’s an excellent, nationally recognized band, and we’ll have twenty or thirty people there. Where’s UB? Where is everybody?” |
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I thought that with record sales going into the toilet, bands would be touring a lot more. Why hasn’t that spike in quality shows trickled down to Buffalo yet?
DK: It’s going to take a bit longer to happen. It’ll probably be a two or three-year thing. It’s the only way bands can make money anymore. We all know that nobody’s making any money selling records. It’s a fraction of what they used to make.
Bruce Eaton: We talk about all the big bands that are still touring and playing arenas. All of those bands, almost without exception, came up playing live gigs relentlessly. They were bar bands. Now you have a lack of bands like that, a lack of cover bands—covers are really disparaged. The Beatles, the Stones, the Who, Springsteen, Allman Brothers: those bands were first and foremost cover bands. That gave them a musical sophistication, and they played their asses off. That doesn’t exist anymore.
DK: There isn’t that same model of working, and learning all these different songs and styles, and being able to play with an audience.
AZ: A big part of what we’re trying to begin with our Wednesday night concert series is fostering development, cultivating all of these local artists, with the hope of evolving to a point where we have nationally touring acts that would support the music culture on the UB campus. I do find a huge disconnect between the kids on campus and what’s going on downtown. I can’t tell you how many shows I’ve seen at Mohawk Place where it’s an excellent, nationally recognized band, and we’ll have twenty or thirty people there. Where’s UB? Where is everybody?
MB: Students just don’t seem to go to shows anymore.
Why is that?
DK: Apathy. Music has become so much more of a niche thing now. When I was going to college in the early nineties, music was all you had. You didn’t have the Internet. You didn’t have online communities. You had magazines, you had college radio, and that was what you clung to. Music has become much more of a wallpaper thing, especially for college students.
AZ: That’s definitely the case in Buffalo. But having just moved from New York, all the young kids are out at shows. They’re packed with kids from NYU. It’s baffling. Even if this music is wallpaper and background noise at a party, why aren’t they connecting with it? Why don’t they hear the music and go to Soundlab and see it?
DK: It’s the same old story. Buffalo is a shrinking population.
MB: And a spreading population, too.
How has this apathy developed over the years?
BE: You used to have to work at it to discover bands. You had to give up part of your Saturday, hang out, and spend hard-earned money. When you did discover something, you felt like you had more of an ownership.
DK: Bands then, they had to build it. They had to cultivate a following. They’d come play your town three or four times a year. Now, you hear about the band on the Internet and all your friends are talking about them for five days, and then in six months, who cares?
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Donny Kutzbach: “Everybody always talks about Radiohead! They’re not gonna play Buffalo until it’s some kind of weird situation that makes it happen. It’s this white elephant that people always bring up.”
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Rob Falgiano: “I actually feel pretty optimistic. If the city was bigger, there’s more we could do. But for where it is right now, I don’t feel badly about it. We get awesome feedback from the artists.”
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Going back to Donny’s comment about Radiohead—they’re one of only a few bands that can write their own ticket. In the heyday of seventies arena rock, there were dozens of bands that could do that. Can we officially pronounce arena rock dead?
DK: Absolutely. The infrastructure isn’t there to develop bands; the farm system isn’t there; there’s no radio.
BE: It even goes back to high schools. Billy Sheehan was pulling in $60,000 a year in 1974 playing high schools and clubs. That’s a good living.
MB: The Great Train Robbery did that.
DK: They were playing St. Joe’s dances, getting paid $500 in 1985 dollars, which is pretty damn good.
How has the phenomenon of the free summer concert series changed the booking game?
DK: It doesn’t help. In season, when there are all the free shows, I’m ready to close the club up in a lot of cases. It can get so hard to book a good calendar, because there’s so much free stuff.
RF: The upside is at least some of those acts can roll into a hard ticket date, where people pay.
DK: That’s true. I’ve done the Disco Biscuits for three years at the Ballroom now. We’d always done really well with them; it was building and getting bigger. But after they played Thursday at the Square last year, we sold their next show in advance. And we probably could have sold another 400, 500 tickets.
Is there anything proactive we can do to change Buffalo’s stigma as a dying secondary market?
DK: Everybody has to get 100 people they know to move here.
RF: I actually feel pretty optimistic. If the city was bigger, there’s more we could do. But for where it is right now, I don’t feel badly about it. We get awesome feedback from the artists.
MB: I think all of us do.
DK: The arts are strong here; it’s just that battle to get people. Sometimes you’ll have a great day, then you’ll have a terrible week then another terrible week and then another great day. It’s trying, but you do it because, ultimately, people will come.
You’re, like, totally ripping off Field of Dreams right now, Donny.
[From this point, our roundtable got ugly. One harmless accusation of Kevin Costner-related plagiarism quickly elevated to an all-out brawl, resulting in serious injuries to all the participants. As Donny Kutzbach was being wheeled into an ambulance, the EMT asked him why Radiohead won’t play Buffalo.]
Joe Sweeney doesn’t care if Radiohead comes to Buffalo or not.
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