How to attract more tours to Cincinnati

[IanBolender]

Those of you that know me realize that I am a promoter by trade. I am also a musician, a music enthusiast, and a huge fan of Cincinnati in general. I try my best to collaborate with other local promoters because I feel like we are all fighting the same fight. It's not about luring artists to a specific venue or event. It's about luring them to Cincinnati in the first place. I see my competition as Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville. We all live here, and all benefit from a strong music community.. So let's get some ideas rolling on how we can make a difference. Here are a few articles with some opinions on the subject:

http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-23545-too_hot_for_cincy.html

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110802/ENT03/108030319/Paul-McCartney-concert-coup-Cincinnati

I can argue for and against many of those points.. I think there are some positive things happening in this city right now that will make a long-term difference.

What can we do to make sure that (a) our homegrown artists are reaching their full potential and (b) Cincinnati is considered when routing a tour?

[Mike Sarason]

Ian,

This is an issue I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially with SGH being out of the mix (at least for the time being). It's hard to pinpoint where this issue starts, as there are so many factors that combine to yield a great music scene, city and community for local as well as touring artists.

On the one hand I sometimes get upset when I see all of these new, interesting bands tour the Midwest and skip right over Cincinnati. It's like there aren't enough venues taking chances and making Cincinnati cool. But on the other, I've been to several of these shows that HAVE come through Cincinnati and often times I'm one of a few dozen (or less) people in the audience. Having been on the other side of that equation as the performer several times, you obviously want to go to cities where people dig you and the potential to develop a solid fan base is there.

So where does the issue lie then? Do we simply not have enough people here that are finding out and getting excited about new music? That seems like a reductive answer to an obviously complicated question.

The Midpoint Summer Series/Fountain Square activities have been a great way to bring in national talent and show them how great Cincinnati really can be and Dan Mccabe/Citybeat certainly deserve a lot of credit for that. But I feel like we need a way to use that to get those artists to return for a club show on their next tour or something. Just some way to further capitalize on that momentum...

I think that to get more tours to come through here, Cincinnati ultimately has to be viewed as a city where something is REALLY HAPPENING by tastemakers in NY, Austin, LA, etc. Nashville is great example to look at in that sense. There's definitely something happening there. Right now, I think that many people in Cincinnati know how cool our music scene is, but not many people on a national level do.

At this point, I don't really know where I'm going with this post...but I definitely think about this issue a lot and wonder how we can address it.

Thanks for bringing this up Ian and for creating this forum where people can discuss it. Hopefully someone has something more constructive to say than I!

-Mike

[MCCVIII]

is this discussion about bringing lady gaga and U2 and the foo fighters to cincinnati, or bands on a much more down-to-earth scale? the citybeat/enquirer articles (written for an audience) seem to focus on the big $$ concert statistics.

I think Cincinnati is doing a pretty good job of cultivating talent, in the last decade since i've been knowing what a mic cable looked like. We've definitely seen the corporatization and conglomeration of a lot of the big places to play (bogarts, etc), but in the most recent years, aided by the OTR youth revival, the grassroots are gaining momentum and commanding a presence inside the city. I definitely don't feel bad about bumping Brian Penick and The Counter Rhythm Group, and all the work that they have done and will do for Cincinnati bands. Is one man's vision enough to put Cincinnati into the next level? Probably not, but when we have things like that going on in the city, inspiration begins to take over. When TCRG helps legit bands be even more legit, younger people see the process and results and work harder/SMARTER to become legit bands. The cycle continues.

Its an offshoot discussion, but inside the pinstripes, we've talked a lot about how people in Cincinnati generally aren't that souped about paying money to see live music. Probably exacerbated by the economic climate, but who can blame the audience for not wanting to pay for shows when there are so many free places to see live music around the city? It's almost like a music welfare dilema. you want to get people off of welfare, and spending money that they make themselves, but you're encouraging them to stay put because you're giving handouts of free shit. How do we encourage people to be cool with paying a fair door price for a local/midlevel show?

[IanBolender]

Mike, I think you nailed it. Artists are accustomed to making a certain amount of money in surrounding markets and expect the same when they come to Cincinnati. Unfortunately, regardless of how well you promote the show certain artists just don't do the business here. It doesn't take an MBA to realize what happens.. Promoters stop taking risks with certain artists so they can stay afloat. I dip my toes in the water every once in a while to see if we can make it work, but I inevitably get bit.

is this discussion about bringing lady gaga and U2 and the foo fighters to cincinnati, or bands on a much more down-to-earth scale? the citybeat/enquirer articles (written for an audience) seem to focus on the big $$ concert statistics.

Both of these types of shows suffer from the same issue, which you touched on in your last paragraph. People in Cincinnati don't seem to want to spend money on live entertainment (relative to surrounding markets).

How do we encourage people to be cool with paying a fair door price for a local/midlevel show?

I really think this is the problem we should tackle. We need to focus on exposing more new music to people in this city. Look at WFPK in Louisville and CD101 in Columbus... We desperately need something like that. I think that if people were more tuned in to music in general we would see better results.

I do think that Indie Summer and MPMF are great assets in our community, and we are headed in the right direction. I've been telling people that I work with that it seems like Cincinnati is having a sort of 're-birth' right now. The loss of so many great venues last year sets us up for a year of new beginnings. There are a lot of people that were motivated by what happened, and we should see a lot of growth in the coming years.

[CincySlim]

I hope you guys realize that we are getting passed up for.... DAYTON. I've seen so many acts at the Canal Street Tavern like Holy Ghost Tent Revival, David Wax, David Mayfield, and other high energy small name acts that have never/ rarely set foot in Cincinnati. Bigger acts will sometimes go to Fraze Pavilion before Riverbend. I think its our crowds. If you go to Riverbend you have to fight through the thousands of drunk teens. I even went to one of the last shows at Southgate House and was inundated with drunk high school hipsters trying to mosh to the Pomegranites.

[helmespc]

I hate to say it, but I think some of it has to do w/ crummy treatment of bands by venues. All it takes is for a couple bands to not get paid for the word to get out. Not to be singling anyone out, but a particular defunct venue that, in its final days, was known to not promote national shows and then not pay the acts because of poor turnout. This sort of thing spread a bad reputation for Cincinnati's music scene to booking agents very quickly. Its easy for booking agents to simply avoid a potential "problem" when you have 4 cities within 2 hours of here that may provide better options.

[IanBolender]

I hate to say it, but I think some of it has to do w/ crummy treatment of bands by venues. All it takes is for a couple bands to not get paid for the word to get out. Not to be singling anyone out, but a particular defunct venue that, in its final days, was known to not promote national shows and then not pay the acts because of poor turnout. This sort of thing spread a bad reputation for Cincinnati's music scene to booking agents very quickly. Its easy for booking agents to simply avoid a potential "problem" when you have 4 cities within 2 hours of here that may provide better options.

I don't know.. There are plenty of reputable promoters in this market that are consistently treating artists well. Any agent worth two cents know who they are. It is kind of the agent's fault for taking a risk on a promoter that doesn't have a reputation yet.

[transfusion666]

Believe it or not it's the economy guy's. People have less disposable income these day's. Anyone
on here that is 30+ should be able to remember not even 10 years ago a $10 bill bought gas to Columbus
and back. With the rate of inflation, the lack of meaningful work. I know there are jobs but not a lot
of good ones. There is a massive wave of under employment. Overall it cost more to go to a show,
the average person is not making anymore than they did a few years ago and what little extra they might
be making it's getting ate up at the pump and the grocery store.

Until people feel safe about blowing money you are going to see live music suffer. At all levels.

We see this from the inside out. From the outside that average Joe taking his girl out to see even a all
local band show... $20 minimum on gas if you live out of the city, $5 a head to get in ($10) a few drinks
for you and the girl $20. Let's grab a shirt to support, maybe a cd too. Got a deal Shirt and disk for $15.

That's $65.00 to go see a local band perform. Good or not @ $10 a hour that's 6.5 hours to watch bands play
in a bar that may or may not be clean, easy to get to reasonably priced drinks, good sound etc. And let's not
forget about the not so good band's that have to be used just to help get a extra 50 people to the show or
in these days 20 extra people.

I blame this bad economy, or the idea of a bad economy, either way it's scaring people into not spending like
they used to. And it's hurting everyone. The old models are not working anymore. We all have to adapt or we
are going to get passed by.

[IanBolender]

I think everything you said has merit, but it doesn't explain why shows in comparable markets are doing so much better.

I've been talking to a few people about this lately and one common theme seems to be that we don't have an outlet educating people about new music. Hopefully this site, CityBeat, WNKU, and a few others will help change that. Even then, all this great music is available online.. I don't really get it.

There also seems to be less of a 'support local business' attitude here. Take a look at Louisville for instance.. Local businesses thrive for the simple fact that they are local. We have that attitude in pockets here (Northisde, Hyde Park to name a few), but the average Joe living in Florence, KY would likely choose Logans over a mom & pop restaurant most days. That attitude extends to the local music community.

Things seem to be trending in a good direction, but we want to be a catalyst to help speed it up. Just trying to figure out where to focus our efforts.

[transfusion666]

I would have to disagree... I deal with venue owners and talent buyers from sea to shining sea and
they are all buying less, paying less, and just doing less. There are some success story's. Don't get
me wrong. Just like Louisville. 8 years ago I would have said you were spot on. But let's face it. For
anything over a small pub or corner bar there isn't anyone in Louisville killing it anymore. I know
the two bigger buyer's in Louisville and neither of them are spending what they did even 5 years ago.
Fewer show's and tighter budgets. The people are just not coming out like they once did. IF you only
have $65.00 left over after you do your weekly budget how many show's would you be going to???

Or if you even had $100 left over... We just have to keep trudging along. It will come back around
sooner or later. After the financial wave of the late 80's and 90's it had to slow down sooner or later.
We just have to ride it out.