the ’Zine

Tales From the Management Zone

March 9 by Brett Milano

Filed under: 52 Weeks to Rock / Tags: hmxmusoman, promoting-your-band / 3 comments

So you think you know what it takes to manage a band? Then think of what you’d do in each of these situations:

1. You manage an up-and coming punk band who look great, sound great and might even get signed, save for one problem: The bass player has a ponytail. And he’s a guy. He’s also a nice guy and a good bass player, so nobody wants to tell him he’s getting laughed at. Or that reps from punk labels are hedging about signing the band because of his fashion fiasco.
2. You also manage a Hard-Livin’ Punk Band who’ve been known to get a little carried away with post-gig celebrations. On one of those occasions, you’ve just played the Warped Tour and have adjourned to a nearly watering hole. There in the corner, flexing his muscles and showing off his tattoos, is a Big Rock Star that your singer thinks is a jerk. So Hard-Livin’ Singer walks over, pretends to want Big Rock Star’s autograph, and hands him an exploding pen.

So what do you do? In the first case, you administer the medicine with the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Instead of embarrassing the bass player you invest some band money and bring him to the hippest hairstylist you can find, who gives him a Joe Strummer pompadour. He likes the new look so much that you swear his bass playing’s improved.

In the second case, you do the only thing you can: You pray that the pen decides not to work. And that was just what happened: Big Rock Star sat there looking annoyed, and Hard-Livin’ Singer blurted out “Hey, that pen was supposed to explode.” Star gave him the ultimate dirty look and intoned, “That would not have been a good idea.” Everybody’s embarrassed, but Big Rock Star has a clean shirt and Hard-Livin’ Singer is still alive.

Both stories are true, swears Kevin Patey who runs the Combat Jack agency in Boston. And both should shed some light on what a manager does and doesn’t do: The manager can’t necessarily make you rich or win you hordes of fans. What he or she can do is to keep you intact and focused, and make you’re moving toward that day when you do get rich and win hordes of fans.

“The misconception is that a manager is going to be the be-all and end-all,” notes Patey, who has a handful of punk and alternative bands under his umbrella. “The ultimate goal is to further your career, get you to a higher level than you’re at, and ultimately get you signed. But it’s still a team effort, and you still have to do everything you’re doing. The ultimate manager is someone who’s enthusiastic about what you do, what their game plan is and what they can accomplish for you.”

That will necessarily involve being the one with the cool business head, and sometimes being the den mother. “When there’s interband issues, the manager has toe be the intermediary. You’re the objective party who has the band’s interest in mind and can address issues as need be. That may mean you need to tell one guy to drop his heroin habit, or that one bandmember is doing a great job and everybody else is dropping the ball. Sometimes you have to be the bad guy in the sense of bridging those uncomfortable gaps. I tell everyone I work with that I’m going to be brutally friggin’ honest with them.”

Deciding who to trust with that responsibility can be the most important decision a band makes. But with Patey’s help we’ve put together a few words to live by:

1. Don’t hire a manager to do things you can do yourself. Or things that anyone with a little computer savvy could do in an afternoon. The music industry may be going down the toilet, but the flipside is that it’s easier to build a name and get some national grassroots recognition than it ever was. So you won’t need a manager to upload some songs on Myspace or post on some chatboards about how awesome you are.
2. Don’t get suckered in. The manager shouldn’t get rich until the band does—so if you’re paying the manager more than your band makes, somebody’s getting ripped-off and it’s probably you.
3.  Don’t sign anything. Ever. Or at least not until you have enough people in your court who know what’s going on. Say that some nice label owner pays you a couple hundred bucks and does a limited release of your first demo, which you knew would never sell big anyway. You feel great about it, until you get signed to a major label five years later. That’s when you realize that you gave that guy a cut of your songs, which are now worth hundreds of thousands, and he’s back to collect.
4. Once you do have a manager in place, get some kind of band agreement drafted up, particularly in terms of who owns what. If your bass player becomes a junkie, you’ll probably wind up kicking him out and figure he’s in no shape to fight back. Then two years go by, he’s gone through rehab, and teamed up with that drummer you’ve also kicked out to form a band with the same name as yours.
5. Don’t expect a manager to do everything. You may need a booking agent to get the gigs, a publicist to do publicity, a lawyer to handle contracts. Don’t forget, you’re on the way to massive success, and need to make sure there are no weak positions on your team.

Is it starting to sound like running a band might be more of a business? Now you’re getting the idea.

← Previous post

Next post →

Comments

bluetonz...

Takes a lot of hard work! Good Article...It was entertaining.

Monday, March 16, 2009

---

Karmeleaux...

I mean, to be fair, this is a tough one to comment on, because I think an overwhelming number of people who read these and are in a band do not have a manager because it's just a band for fun or a local band. So it's not like many people have manager stories to tell or anything.

That said, it was a good read as always.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

---

Baanu_Rass...

Still no comments on this article?

Anyway, maybe it's just because I'm not in a band but all of these articles are very entertaining.

Friday, March 13, 2009