EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
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Dave Kaplan
D
The Agency Group
ave Kaplan’s career hasn’t followed the traditional arc. He joined The Agency Group about
a decade ago, but not after working at another big
agency. He has no stories about being an assistant to some great mentor, or learning about radius clauses
at William Morris.
“The only time I worked in a
mailroom was at a collection
agency,” Kaplan told Pollstar. “That
wasn’t a very fun job.
“When I was 17, I had a roommate who booked ‘Punk Rock Mondays’ at Mabuhay Gardens in San
Francisco,” Kaplan added. “I started
helping him. After a while, the
owner was, like, ‘This guy’s an idiot.
Why don’t you do it?’”
So, in 1983, this “punk rock kid”
who had been sneaking into clubs
since he was 14 helped get talent for
Ness Aquino’s club. And once he was in
that scene, he started getting to know
all the big players in town, notably
Paul Bachavich – who in the punkrock world is known as legendary promoter Paul Rat. With Rat’s tutelage,
Kaplan started booking shows at The
Farm, On Broadway and many other
long-gone venues.
“I had no idea what I was doing,”
Kaplan said. “I thought that if you
made a guarantee to a band and you
were able to pay it, the show worked.
Paul was the first who explained,
‘No. If you’re going to book a show,
there is a budget. This is what you
have to pay everybody, this is what it
costs to do a show, this is your promoter profit, this is how it works.’”
So Kaplan learned the ropes at
Rat’s RRZ Presents. He even got some
experience booking The Sea Hags,
which were managed by Rat, up and
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down the West Coast. Then along
came a trainwreck known as Flipper –
a band that enjoyed a brief moment
of success. Kaplan, nearing his 21st
birthday, thought it would be a good
idea to become a tour manager.
“I booked the dates and I tour
managed them and I think I technically might have been their manager. I dunno. It was one of the most
disorganized bands in history. It
was just a bad scene.”
By the time Kaplan got back to
San Francisco, his girlfriend yelled
at him to get a real job. His life in
the music biz was done, and with
thanks to Flipper, he was more than
happy to never see it again.
That was, until he started hanging
out with Paul Rat again. Rat, among
his many gigs, hosted a weekly radio
show. Helping out with the show took
Kaplan right back into promotion.
He was a club DJ and started doing
shows at places like Brave New World,
The I-Beam, Bottom of the Hill, DNA
Lounge and the Nightbreak. And from
1994-97, Kaplan was the exclusive
buyer for the Kilowatt. In ’97, when
the owner of the Kilowatt decided he
wanted the venue to just be a bar,
Kaplan went in a new direction. He
asked Dead Moon if they needed help
with booking, and they did. With that
as a start, Kaplan opened Easy Action
Industries.
And that’s how he became an
agent. But it wasn’t like he didn’t
have some knowledge of it. Over
the years he had worked with all
the indie agencies, from Billions
Corporation to Flowerbooking to
Creature Booking.
“And I always did a good job for
these people, so I think that put me
in a better position than, say, some
guy starting up in his bedroom with
some indie rock bands nobody
heard of, trying to establish himself,” Kaplan said. Plus, he was good
friends with Rave Booking, whose
principals, Todd Cote and Kevin
Wortis, gave him their database.
Bands like The Bomboras and
Chrome started showing up on
Easy Action’s roster (Kaplan didn’t
book any San Francisco bands).
And he started getting lots of acts
from Detroit, including a twoperson outfit – but not the one
you’re probably thinking of.
The name of the duo was Bantam Rooster, and it was a catalyst
to taking Kaplan’s career to the next
level. Kaplan’s lengthy roster today
not only includes The White
Stripes, The Raconteurs and The
Dead Weather, but The Young
Veins, Autolux, Blonde Redhead,
The Black Keys, The Kills, She
Wants Revenge and Nicole Atkins.
How did Bantam Rooster
get you so involved with the
Detroit scene?
Tom Potter from Bantam Rooster
was friends with Jack White, and I
was getting Bantam Rooster out
on tour. They were doing lots of
dates. I mean, they played bars,
200-cap rooms for the most part,
but Jack was impressed. Tom gave
Jack my number. It was just a random call from Jack.
I knew about The White Stripes.
I had friends who worked at Revolver, a record distributorship,
and they told me about them.
But at this point, if you weren’t
a record store clerk or a fanzine
guy, you probably hadn’t heard of
them. It was very early days.
Right around that same time
there was this whole Detroit scene
starting up and I wound up working with all of bands, because they
were all friends. The White Stripes,
Detroit Cobras, The Dirtbombs,
The Von Bondies. But it was clear
The White Stripes were not going
to be a stationary band. Probably
around the time of the second tour
it was very obvious this was going
to grow. Then the second album,
De Stijl, came out and there was a
lot of press. Rolling Stone said they
were one of the 10 bands to watch,
that sort of thing. They were on
Sympathy, a very fly-by-night
indie label. The guy didn’t even
own an answering machine.
But things started to change
quickly?
Well, it’s funny. I don’t think The
White Stripes was a long-term concern for Jack at the time. He definitely
had no visions of getting a record
deal and being famous. People from
Detroit just didn’t think that way. But
they toured with Sleater Kinney in
fall 2000, and that was the first time
they went to the Northeast. Those
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dates were really an eye-opener to
Jack and Meg. A lot of people showed
up just for them. And Jack and Meg
were, like, “Wait. We can actually do
this and make money?” They didn’t
exactly have a lot at the time.
I went with the band to South By
Southwest and it was the only time
Jack’s ever been there. He never
wanted to go back. But that was another eye-opener, the feeding
frenzy around them at that point,
just lawyers and labels, everyone
trying to get a piece of them. At
that point they had no manager.
They didn’t even have a lawyer.
And that’s actually where I made
my first connection with The
Agency Group. My friend Scott
Kannberg, the guitar player in Pavement, introduced me to his agent,
Russell Warby. At the time I told
Russell, “Yeah, sure, you can book
the band in Europe.” And I told Jack,
“Yeah, we just hired that guy.” It was
as simple as that. That was the structure of things back then.
Getting a European counterpart
for that band sure turned out
to be the right move.
Oh yeah. When The White Stripes
went to England, it just blew up in
two seconds. Everything that happened in a year and a half in America
happened in a day in England. And
when you get that much attention
over there, they’re going to pay that
much more attention over here.
So how familiar were you with
The Agency Group?
At the time, they didn’t have the
coolest roster, to be honest. I mean,
when I was booking a venue, I
didn’t even pay attention to that
agency. The U.K. roster was great,
but the U.S. roster? There was some
stuff here and there but it definitely
looked like an old fogie roster.
So how did you get hired?
I moved to The Agency Group
around June 2002. It came through
a few places. Bruce Solar, whom I’ve
known forever from San Francisco,
had moved on to work out of the
L.A. office with Andy Somers. Basi-
cally I had him and Russell, separately, approaching me.
The one thing about The Agency
Group is that Neil Warnock is very
good at knowing what he should be
getting involved with. And in 2002,
they needed to look a little hipper.
I was basically a one-man operation,
and it was stretching me thin. I was
looking at hiring people, a bigger
office space. All these things that, to
be honest, were not really at the forefront of what I wanted to do. There’s
a lot of freedom in owning your own
business but there’s a flip side to
that. I don’t want to do accounting.
I don’t want to do payroll.
The White Stripes did a fournight run at the Bowery Ballroom
and I met up with Steve Martin
right after that. And right away, I
thought, “This could work.”
But you lived in San Francisco.
The idea of moving to New York was
extremely appealing. They actually
thought I was going to move to L.A.,
and the first thing I said was, “Hell
no.” My whole family comes from
New York. My sister still lives here.
And I realized I was spending a
month out of the year there anyway.
Great timing for TAG – the
Detroit scene just kept getting
bigger.
Yeah. The White Stripes were obviously doing great. The Dirtbombs
and The Detroit Cobras were at
their peak. It was still club-level
stuff but it was doing really well.
The Von Bondies, whom I no
longer represent, at one point everyone thought was going to go
somewhere. That never really happened but there was a lot of hype.
A couple of key artists I signed
almost immediately after coming
here – The Raveonettes and The
Kills. They’re a couple of my favorite acts to work with on every
level. I love the people, I love the
music – and their fans like them
too, which helps. And also Electric
Six, which was one of the last Detroit bands that I brought in. I
wish every band wanted to work
as consistently as they did.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Any new signings worth
mentioning?
The first is this band from Milwaukee
called Kings Go Forth, which are on
Luaka Bop. They are basically a
straight-up ’70s soul-funk band, with
a Curtis Mayfield vibe. The record’s
coming out in a couple of weeks.
They’ll be doing ACL, and they’ll be
doing Ottawa Blues Fest. Zach
Quillen and I are doing that one.
As far as other recent signings,
there’s this band Harlem. Their album recently came out on Matador.
I don’t foresee either one blowing up immediately but, in a year
or two, I’ll still be talking about
them and they’ll be further along.
Repeating an exchange we had
with Ken Fermaglich a few years
ago, there are promoters out
there who no longer want to
work with bands at a club level.
Oh, you definitely get promoters
who want to cherry pick. There are
certain promoters who are great
for a larger band but I wouldn’t
want them to do the smaller
bands, because I don’t know if
they would know what to do.
Obviously I prefer a company
like Jam in Chicago. You can come
to them and say, “I have a band that
will do 500 tickets” and they know
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what to do with it. And if you have
a band that will do 5,000 tickets,
they know what to do with it.
But not everybody is set up the
same way, especially with things
like Live Nation, with companies
getting rolled up. They’re getting
further and further away from artist development. The way they’re
going, I wouldn’t be surprised if
Live Nation wanted to get out of
the club business completely. And
it’s too bad. They’ve got such a
cross-section of buyers. There are
some really great people there,
people I’ve known for years and
years who are very much about artist development, promoting shows
in all sorts of different venues.
But I think a lot of those people,
unfortunately, are getting reined
in, and getting pulled away from
doing that. It’s more about volume
in the sheds, volume in the arenas.
You mention promoters better
suited for larger shows than
smaller ones. On the flipside,
do you still have promoters
who get to do the larger shows
after they did the smaller ones?
Oh absolutely. I do the vast majority of my business in San Diego
with Tim Mays, who owns the 250cap Casbah, but he’s also a promoter there. He did the first White
with Jack White at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles in
June 2002.
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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Stripes show in San Diego and
he did the last one. He did The
Raconteurs as well, which I think
was a co-promote with Live Nation. But especially in a market like
San Diego, which isn’t the easiest
market in the world, it’s a comforting thing to know he’ll deal with it,
and get me what I need.
And I’ve known Tim forever.
I knew him when I used to work
for Paul Rat. I’d call him to book
the Sea Hags in 1986 [Rat managed the band]. And Tim was the
guy who did the punk rock shows
in San Diego, so I’d find out things
from him, and then Paul and I, in
turn, would chase down things we
might not know about.
The Bowery Presents people,
too, because of the Bowery Ballroom, obviously. Before they had
everything else in there, the Bowery and the Mercury were the
spots. Those were where my bands
wanted to play in New York.
Do you handle a lot of fan
e-mails / complaints?
If I get an e-mail like that, I forward
it to management. I try not to deal
with the irate fanboys. I do get a lot
of those, but I just have to roll my
eyes, when somebody’s complaining because a T-shirt they ordered
off of a band’s website didn’t show
up. It’s like, “All right, did you just
send this to every contact you
could find on a website?”
Honestly, for The White Stripes
and all of Jack’s acts, I don’t think
my e-mail or phone number is on
the website anymore. I think we
just put the mailing address. We
want people to take the extra effort
to figure it out because we were just
getting too much ridiculous stuff.
If a lot of offers come in from
the same market, what do you
do: consider all of them or just
a few?
Well, I understand on the one hand
not wanting to look at everything
that comes in because maybe there’s
too much stuff but, really, if you’re
not going to look at every offer,
maybe you have the wrong job.
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BOOKING AGENCY DIRECTOR
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THE NEW YORK STAFF
of TAG gather ’round for the Pollstar exec profile. L-R: Ken Fermaglich, Steve Kaul, Steve Martin, Dave
Kaplan, Tim Borror, Peter Schwartz, Natalia Nastaskin and Marc Gerald.
I feel like you have to absolutely
look at every offer. Whether you
want to call every single promoter
in every single town, that’s a different story. I do try to reach a
fine balance because most of the
time, when I’m looking at a tour,
it’s already been discussed with
management and we know what
rooms we want to be in and usually who we want to be in there
with.
And the other thing that obviously changes is, especially with
the whole Live Nation thing, you
have all these shifts. In Denver,
you had those musical chairs a
few years ago, with Live Nation
people going to AEG, Nobody
in Particular people going to Live
Nation, and then the rooms they
all booked shifting. Well, who’s
the history with? So that definitely
factors in as well. But you’ve got to
look at all your options.
On the flipside, a lot of times
the artist and their management
know what they want. That’s the
thing. A lot of artists that I work
with have a singular vision and
it extends through all aspects of
our business.
Building bands – do you have an
overarching strategy? Obviously
every band’s different but ..
No, I think you’ve hit the nail
on the head because every band
is totally different. It just depends
on what you have to work with.
That’s really the bottom line. For
example, The Big Pink. That’s a
band I signed about two years
ago and that’s gone really well.
From the get-go, by the time they
were going to come to America,
it was really clear this band has an
audience, and we can go out and
headline at a certain level. That’s
the biggest difference: can they
headline at some level? Can they
do the 300-cap rooms? Because
you have some stuff that comes
in so early, your only choice is to
support.
I personally prefer building
a band through a combination
of the two. If you don’t establish
some kind of headline identity,
I just think it’s going to work
against you in the long run
because you don’t create a real
fan base.
Can you expand upon that?
Are you saying some bands
don’t develop their material
to become a headliner?
I don’t think it’s so much developing their material as a psychological thing. It’s getting people to
think, “All right, I’m going to see
The Black Lips’ show” instead
of, oh, the Black Lips are opening
for so-and-so. That’s a funny example because that’s a band that
did a lot of touring before I became their agent, which was great
for me. They supported The Dirtbombs, which is how I found out
about them.
But support for the sake of
support can be painful. How
many times have you gone to
a show and seen an opening act
die a slow death because people
aren’t paying attention, or they’re
playing to a half-empty room,
which is one of the most disheartening things to an act? You’re playing to nobody. Or worse, you’re
out with a headliner who shouldn’t
be headlining the rooms that
they’re in.
To go back to The Black Lips,
the last support tour that they did
was for The Raconteurs. That was
a great move. They headlined before it and they headlined after it.
The Black Keys are doing Kings of
Leon dates in September but we’re
mostly headlining. This opportunity makes a ton of sense. Would
we have done a full U.S. tour with
them? Hard to say.
Was there ever a band that got
away?
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Well, it’s all shoulda, coulda,
woulda, I’ve been very fortunate
in my career. I could count on
one hand the bands that have
fired me and, for the most part,
in hindsight it was all good riddance. At least three that come
immediately to mind, their careers took fairly quick downturns.
Not to say my departure was the
cause of it, but I think their careers
in general were not in the right
place. There’s nothing worse than
having to watch an artist’s career
go downhill. It’s one thing for
it to ebb and flow, but when the
bottom falls out, it’s a rough business.
And it really sucks when it’s
an artist you care about. But on
the flip side, if they were nice
enough to fire you and then their
career goes down the toilet, you
don’t have to feel sorry for them.
You can just say sayonara.
Why did they go kaput? Lazy?
Bad luck?
Bad decisions. Bad luck always
factors into it. Then a lot of times,
you get bad management decisions, bad label decisions. Sometimes there’s even an agent that
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2002.
makes bad decisions. Not me,
but you know.
Sometimes careers can get
killed by bad touring decisions.
But I always feel the worst thing
to happen to artists is labelrelated. The record didn’t match
the hype. The label had a different
vision for the band than where
the band should be. They shoved
the band into a different peg for
radio, tried to find them an audience they weren’t going to get.
I’ve seen it more than once. It is
what it is, unfortunately. But now
that the labels aren’t into artist
development, they’re less likely
to meddle. At least because they
aren’t giving them tour support.
They can still find ways to ruin
their careers.
It can’t all be record labels
though, can it?
You see people overreach all
the time. You see agencies or
management overbooking the
act. And that’s a really hard thing,
because it’s such an intuitive, subjective thing. I’m going through
that right now with The Black
Keys. It’s all working because the
band’s phenomenal, so they’re
with Meg White at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles in June
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
making it easy. It’s just a lot
tougher when you have these
things where the steps aren’t
there and people still try to take
them.
There are certain agents who
have this mentality that they
shouldn’t be going back to the
same rooms, ever. And I definitely
do not agree because there are
times you have to face facts and
you are not any bigger this time
around. Maybe you’re better off
selling out the room you played
the last time. It really comes
down to how it looks in the
room because audiences don’t
know what the true capacities
are.
There are plenty of agents
whose philosophy is to have
people be turned away.
Oh, absolutely! A perfect example,
and this is an easy one, is at SXSW.
Whenever I have an artist down
there, especially if it’s a bigger
artist playing, I’m not really concerned if it’s the biggest room.
The people who don’t get in will
talk about it as much as the people
who got in.
Anyone ever come back after
making a bad decision and say
you were right all along?
Eh, it’s a fine line. I’m certainly
not going to be the one to tell a
manager or, God forbid, an artist
that they were wrong and I was
right. No matter what my relationship with them is, it’s just not
my place to do that. Maybe in a
subtle way, in some situations,
yes. But you kind of gotta grin
and bear it. Hopefully you’re not
getting thrown under the bus
and getting blamed for somebody
else’s decision.
But I’ve been pretty lucky. I
work with great managers, and
great artists, who are all appreciative of what I do for them. When
I talk about artists, it’s people I’ve
worked with for years and years
and I’d like to think I’ll continue
to work with them for years and
|Joe Reinartz| years.
JACK WHITE AND DAVE ham it up in
the photobooth of the Lakeside Lounge
in NYC in 2002.
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