“It’s still pretty awesome and ridiculous that we get paid to do this,” The Bowery Presents founder John “JoMo” Moore says. He and his partner, Jim Glancy, are discussing the 20th anniversary of their concert promotion and venue operation business, which they celebrated by producing four residencies for indie acts they’ve worked with since the beginning of their careers: Modest Mouse, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and a reunion of TV on the Radio, which was also celebrating a 20th anniversary — the release of its first album.
Although a subsidiary of AEG Presents since 2016, The Bowery Presents remains a brand that, more than any other concert promoter, is closely associated with top-shelf indie artists who began playing in clubs and evolved to arenas. In addition to the aforementioned acts, they include Vampire Weekend, The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The National, Arcade Fire, Phoebe Bridgers and Brandi Carlile. It has also worked with mainstream acts like Adele and Sam Smith.
Related
Billboard Touring Power Players: 2024 List Revealed
10/24/2024Over the past two decades, the company has evolved as well. Glancy, who joined Moore from Live Nation in 2006, and AEG’s resources and venues have enabled The Bowery Presents to produce more shows at more — and larger — venues, including Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, where the company is the managing partner.
“We’ve been lucky in that things have continued to evolve,” Glancy says. “I’d go crazy doing the same thing day after day — like being on Broadway and doing A Chorus Line night No. 12,000. We always have interesting stories. We always have incredible opportunities.”
“This painting by the artist Dave McDowell was made for me,” Moore says. “It depicts some of my favorite things in life.”The company owns, co-owns and/or operates 18 venues in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia and Maine and has booking agreements with another 10. And while not all of them report to Billboard Boxscore, those that do in New York — including Brooklyn Steel, Terminal 5, Webster Hall, Music Hall of Williamsburg and Racket — grossed $17.6 million in the first 10 months of 2024. Forest Hills Stadium alone grossed $20.3 million during its season, although not all shows were promoted by The Bowery Presents or AEG.
You produced four residencies in the past month. Are they the future of booking smaller venues?
JOHN MOORE Residencies may not be the future of booking clubs, but the industry sees merit in confirming multiple shows in a major city and [music] center like New York. And we love to be part of that story when it makes sense for the artist.
What are the most enduring memories of the business and the shows you’ve produced?
MOORE The first 12 years being down on Ludlow Street, where we had a walkup office that was above Pianos [nightclub] from 2004 to June 2017, was a great time to be down there and to be starting the company with Mercury [Lounge] and Bowery Ballroom. We’d walk downstairs to Pianos to see Bon Iver play for the first time — not an underplay, just “Hey, this is the hot new guy.” Doing it on our own for 12 years before partnering with AEG was exciting.
JIM GLANCY For me, it’s the incredible music and the incredible artists that we’ve been able to work with over the last 20 years. Combined, we did 22 shows with LCD, Interpol, Modest Mouse and TV on the Radio over a three-week period. And we’ve probably done a total of 125 or 150 shows with them over the last 20 years. We took dozens and dozens of acts from Mercury Lounge or, later, Rough Trade, all the way up to [Madison Square] Garden. Vampire Weekend and The White Stripes and The Strokes. That’s the way you want the system to work. And we’re still doing that today. I can’t tell you if MJ Lenderman is going to play Madison Square Garden someday, but I can tell you he just did three Music Hall [of Williamsburg] shows in early October, and he’s got three sold-out Brooklyn Steels in April. That’s exciting.
“This is a tabletop painted by a Lower East Side artist Adam Lucas who went by Hanksy,” Moore says. “It’s called ‘Meth Rogen,’ and it’s a mashup of Seth Rogen and Walter White from Breaking Bad.”Do you have an established path through your venues in which you help artists evolve to play larger spaces?
GLANCY That’s a question for the industry. When we go back 15, 18, 20 years, there was the thing of, “Don’t skip steps. You’ve got to do the 200-capacity step and the 500-capacity step,” and there’s something to that with a career artist. I used to say to JoMo, “How was so-and-so last night?” and he’d say, “They’ll be great after they do another 300 shows.” He meant it. But there’s also the reality in this age, particularly in 2024, where things go viral and happen fast.
Do you ever tell an agent or manager, “No, that’s too big a venue for this act”?
MOORE It’s all about relationships with the agents and managers. In general, they seem to have a clear path of what they want and depending on what our relationship is, they’re calling and saying, “Hey, we were thinking of X, Y and Z.” And we’ll say, “I know that you’re thinking about Terminal 5, but the timing is right to consider Webster Hall and Brooklyn Steel.” We ultimately need to trust them if they want to go bigger than we think, or we choose not to do it. We definitely are involved in the process but we’re not telling them what to do — and we’d like to sometimes.
Rising indie acts have a tougher time making a profit or even breaking even on tours. And yet, tickets to those shows are usually affordable. How does that work?
GLANCY Here’s the dirty secret: The act is not making any money, and neither are we. We’re both betting on our respective futures. If we look at our average ticket price at Music Hall of Williamsburg and go back over the last 10 years, it probably went from a $15 to an $18 or $19 ticket. You’ve got smaller rooms because it’s a sense of discovery. What you’re banking on is, it’s a student, it’s someone who’s living probably paycheck to paycheck. We want to make sure there’s not a barrier to entry for them. I think most agents, managers, artists are on the same wavelength.
“I have a strong attachment to New Orleans,” Glancy says. “This is a bottle of New Orleans R&B singer Ernie K-Doe’s hot sauce that the Allman Brothers’ manager Bert Holman gave me.”Do you work on ticket prices with managers and agents?
MOORE Yes, they often have an idea, like, “How about a $35 ticket?” Or sometimes they’ll say, “We need to make $10,000,” so then it’s backward math. To get $10,000 you need this ticket price. And then the question is, is that actually the right price?
GLANCY Every deal should start with “What’s the ticket price?” But as these bands get a little bigger, it’s “We need this price.” Then you’re working backward, and you’re going to start making bad decisions and bad habits. Setting a ticket price based on a requested guarantee will sometimes yield higher ticket prices than the fan base will support.
What are the advantages of being owned by AEG?
GLANCY When you’re independent, there are some things you do really well and there are some things you don’t do well. At the most basic level, with AEG, we’re getting a critical mass of information. When you’re in a silo by yourself, you’re only as good as your own borders. So the fact that our general managers can get on a weekly call with other GMs in the Northeast — we’re Virginia up to Maine — the Rocky Mountains, [AEG’s] Goldenvoice and, in the Southeast, our Zero Mile Presents counterparts, that’s invaluable. The same thing goes for our more than 100 sales and sponsorship people. And at Bowery, we were bad at the things that were least sexy to us: finance, accounting, IT, legal, HR. All those are important for running a company, especially a growing company. AEG has been incredible in that regard.
I wear this badge to high-profile gigs and special occasions,” Glancy explains. “It says, ‘Bowery Presents Bank Enforcement,’ with my name on it. It was inspired by a Bowery Bank commercial that Glancy stumbled upon on YouTube that features Joe DiMaggio saying, ‘Come to the... Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Bowery Presents Co-Heads Celebrate 20 Years of Helping Indie Stars Graduate from Clubs to Arenas )
Also on site :
- Trump cuts tariffs on U.K. cars, steel and aluminum but keeps 10% base duty while Britain trims its taxes on 2,500 U.S. products
- Three big clues about new Pope Leo XIV’s papacy in opening speech
- ‘Shadow Force’ Review: Two Spies Get Dragged From the Cold in Middling Action Opus