Michael Strickland

get financing basically for our industry. But what is the Entertainment Association? Probably the most important thing that we will do that we need to do as an industry. And here's why. What I discovered first and foremost in the last two and a half years UH in Congress is that this industry holistically has no voice. Two and a half years ago when I began my journey and last week when I'm still in my journey, what you hear

every day is go away. You have no voice, because what did we as an industry do when the pandemic began? The Restaurant Association WIN is one, the Airline Association WIN is one. All of the other industries that you would think of automotive. They went is one one voice you didn't have in the restaurant situation, the waiters fighting, the cooks, fighting, the clean up people fighting the suppliers. What did entertainment do? We went in a thousand canoes. They all went in battleships.

We went in a thousand canoes. There were so many voices that the senators and the representatives did not even want to deal with us. So that brought me to the moment that I realized, we've got to have a unified front, just like all these other industries do. And it's it's much bigger than just music. Anyone that needs to gather a crowd to our no living would qualify

as being in the entertainment association. And that's basketball, baseball, football, ballet, hopie, Indian dancing, children's UH Dance ensemble, you name it, anyone that needs a crowd. When the country shut down, they had no voice. And as I went through my endeavors, UH it was really the small people that got hurt

the most. All of the cultural organizations around the United States that promoted regional or or or in some cases even national UH dance troops and and cultural things, they had absolutely no voice, and we've got to correct that because their bottom line, there's just no voice before Congress other than a thousand voices, and the thousand voices before Congress do not get heard. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. It's March. Obviously your company is affected by

the shutdown. How do you get involved in this whole money from the government lobbying voice thing? Another great question, Bob. I've got a degree in business and degree in law. Started in the show business at age twelve, but along the way, I've done a number of things Politically. I ran the Chamber of Commerce here in Knoxville for four years. I'm on the board of directors at the local hospital. UH lobbied for the university at the state and the

federal level, and I know a lot of politicians. So I had this weird background that never came into play, and I used to wonder, why do I have this weird background. Well, on March thirteenth, which was a Friday, Friday thirteen, that was the day that Live Nation a g n C double a NFL, all of those people said we're done, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve. When that happened, I picked the phone up and I called Marcia Blackburn, who was one of my two senators

who I've known for forty years. And I also called Lamar Alexander, by other senator, and I said, what do we do? Help us? Help us, you know, we we need some help politically. Uh, And so we began the conversation Lamar when I called him, you know, we spoke a bit, and then I called him back on Sunday and he was with Stephen manuch In, the Secretary of Treasury at the time, and Lamar put the cell phone on speaker and I explained to manuch In what was

going on. And he said, well, surely you have contracts and I said, well, you know, yes we do, but so what And he goes, well, surely these people are gonna pay you. And I said that's not the way it works now now, Manute and I don't know what you know about him, but he was in the movie business and he made a lot of huge movies you can google. And he made a whole bunch of those action thrillers in the eighties and early nineties, so he

understands entertainment. And I said, Stephen, you don't get paid and he goes, we'll sue them, and I said, the first time you sue somebody is the last time you worked with him in in show business. And I think he knew that. And his comment when I got through explaining how our industry works was he paused a moment and said, what a stupid business. You know. That was kind of how it started. So they began introducing me to other people. Now I knew some other people at

the time. Okay, let's let's just go back for a second. Your two senators, how do you literally know them? You get a call back, you gotta pick up right away. Yeah, I've got their cell phone numbers. I knew Marcia before she was in politics, and her first job was running the State of Tennessee's Tape and Film Commission, which promotes movies and television within the state. And uh, I was on the that board, and I worked with her and

set up a Knoxville Tape and Film Commission. So we worked hand in hand in her first what you would call political job, and then from there she became a state representative in the state senator and then the US representative in the U. S Senator. So we go back forty five years. Lamar Alexander is actually from this area. And uh, you know, he's been in federal government forty five years. But along his journey, uh, he was the president of the University of Tennessee. He was the secretary

of Education. You know, he did a lot of different things. So I knew him locally as he grew up. And you know, I had both their cell numbers, and they're what you would consider friends. Okay, So Minutan says, it's a stupid business. What happens next? I told him there are stupid things about it, and Marcia and and uh, Lamar immediately began helping me with introductions. And one person led to another. And uh, in my life, I have had the good fortune to meet a lot of people

which have led me to other interesting people. Uh. Jimmy Haslam, who owns the Cleveland Browns, is a good friend of mine. His family owns Pilot Flying J the truck stops. That's the sixth largest private company in the United States. So I called up Jimmy, and Jimmy introduced me to Rob Portman, the senator from Ohio, h Barry Switzer, the Oklahoma football coach, and the Dallas Cowboy coach, dear dear friend of mine for years and years and years. So I called up Switzer.

He introduces me to the Arkansas UH and the Oklahoma senators UH and and so on and so forth. I would call people. I knew that that new people who would introduced me to people, And suddenly I'm talking to senators and representatives all over the United States and we're gathering steam and UH. Eventually that led me to UH Senator Todd Young from Indiana, and the Senator Young had written a bill along with Senator Gold from Colorado called

the Restart Act. And if you trail back in history, and I'm not sure if you're aware, but but the Restart Act, we an entertainment launched a really impressive thing back in two thousands, which we called regular Restart. We lit two thousand, eight hundred buildings in the United States at the same time on the same night, and it ranged from uh Niagara Falls to the Empire State Building to the Seattle Space Needle, to half of the buildings in Las Vegas, UH, to stadiums all over the United States.

And then you move into little towns and we had people in the same night all over America donating their time, their equipment, and then we had a live webcast that the cameras you know, we switched from this city to that city, to the next city to bring attention to the fact that this industry needed the Restart Act past. Now you may say, what's restarting? Why did you back at Well, I spent February, March, April, May, June, July all the way through to December being the driving force

behind Restart. There were ninety two out of a hundred Senators that signed on to restart. There were three hundred ninety House members that signed on to restart, and restart was not for our industry. Restart simply said any small business which has less than five hundred employees and suffered a twenty five percent reduction and income in any one quarter in would get from the government forty five percent

of their two thousand nineteen income. The only exclusions were you couldn't be in the adult entertainment industry and you couldn't be publicly traded. So this was a broad based bill that that would help all of American business. And I'm sure Bob that that you noticed as this went on, you had restaurants in trouble, and I mean a lot of businesses were in trouble. We'll restart was going to

be the vehicle. So the day that I go first testify before the Senate December, uh, I'm giving my spiel and and and it was a two and a half hour Senate testimony and Q and A. Everybody said, Yep, we're gonna pass it. We're gonna pass it. And long behold, they didn't pass it. And to this day, no one can give me why other than uh, Todd Young had kind of backed off of it in November. To this day, I don't know why. And his girl. Every senator, senators

and representatives are are the entertainers. Uh, their staff are the songwriters. Their staff hands them a sheet before they go into a meeting or before they go into an event, and you know, it's a one pager that gives them the high points. And unless they're invested in it, they kind of get the high points and go in and

do the spiel and then they move on. Most people don't understand that the average senator and or representative have between eight hundred and four red bills that they're dealing with, So how much attention can they give anyone. Uh. I believe that Senator Young was all in on this bill, and I think that he was at some point, but he had a girl that that was his chief songwriter, if you will, well, she left at the end of

November and went to work for Rob Portman. And what I didn't know at the time was when she left, the bill left. If you know what I mean, this, this was the person. This was the engine that drove it all. So when when she disappeared, her name was Anne Gordon. When when Anne disappeared, the engine disappeared. There were two engines to that bill. One was me and the other was Anne. I didn't even know she'd left.

So here I am before send it, testified and pushing this darn thing, and you know, the heart's gone out of it on the on the Senator side, and it just laid there and died. And and at that point in time, I was also in a parallel fashion working to make sure it's what started out to save our stages, uh and ended up being called s v o G Shuttered venues, operators, grants got passed, And in my testimony

I pushed for both of those. And the analogy that I used was that s v O G UH was needed and was landing on the beach in Omaha, but we needed to get to Paris. So once we landed with s v O G and taking care of the venues and the venue related people, we then had to go up the cliff into Paris. And how did we do that? We did that with restart and when I left that that that that evening, I knew we had gotten both of them passed, and in fact, they told

me we had, and I've got the congressional record. It tells you in there that they're going to be passed. But then it didn't pass. So then I shifted all my attention to save our stages, s v O G. And that's that's how it begun. Okay, save our stages. Uh. I'm not taking any money from that. I don't own a venue. But it seemed like at first the money wasn't available, and then if you weren't early, you didn't

get any money. What was going on there? There was a whole lot of steps and missteps from the beginning in execution, which led to UH misunderstanding Again. I became the voice for all of live entertainment, and I ended up with an email chain at one point three million people, and that I still have it. That email chain included not only traditional live show people, music people, if you will.

But I ended up advising the Screen Actors Guild, the Director's Guild, the Producers Guild, the Broadway League, the National Association of Broadcasters, International Association of Venue Managers and own and international associations, Affairs and Expositions, the rodeo people. I mean, it just got bigger and bigger, the air show people, and every day I got another group that that that looped in and I put all of the names into my email things. So I became the go to guy.

And when that bill started, they excluded UH. The first thing that happened was the SBA came out with UH frequently asked questions. And at this time a lady named Barb Carson was running the s B, A lovely lady, very cooperative, UH, a lot of help. So I guided them through the fact that why are you excluding fairs? Because there was this big push that if you didn't have any venue and if you didn't sell tickets, you

couldn't have any money. And and and the frequently asked questions that first came out pointedly said that fairs, rodeos and festivals couldn't participate. I had a whole bunch of festival people that I talked to, include including Danny Wimmer and all of his people at d w P, great people, uh and and and uh, Gene Cassidy up at I f E, a lot of great people. Well, we worked really hard for about three months, and we got him

over the hump. And so they slowly said okay, okay, fairs, fares can come in, Okay, rodeos can come in, and then eventually, okay, festivals can come in. So so in the first three, four or five months we got those people in. But the only exclusions, and you have to read the law were adult entertainment and publicly traded companies. And all of a sudden, these frequently asked questions just just started putting boxes that weren't there in the law. They just weren't there. So I began to point out

to them, that's not what the law says. Well, Barb Carson left and Isabella Gusman came in. And Isabella Gusman had a very strict and narrow view of this law, based on a lot of conversations that she had had with other people, And there were those who believed that that the money in the program UH wouldn't cover anybody outside of the initial round, and people think it was. There are two thoughts. One, most people, including the senators,

thought that this money was for everybody. Why is that because the message was broadcasting Give it to the venues and it will trickle down to everybody. Well, that's simply not true. The venues didn't open forever and ever. But but it wasn't just for venues. If you go read UH, Save our Stages, it's pointedly for for independent venues. In other words, Live Nation and A G had nothing to do with this, absolutely nothing to do with it. So

it's for independent venues, managers, agents, and promoters. So those people were included. If you were not in one of those four groups, you were on the outside looking at And that goes to your question. So there was a whole lot of confusion, which which you know, led to me counseling people, sending people copies of the lead of the law, UH, doing notes and whatnot. And we never really changed Isabella good Usman's mind. You know, she she

never relented. And and then the darned software crashed, and this happened, and that happened, you know, and it took four or five months to open up. And then when it did open up, the initial ask was for fourteen million dollars. Well, after I testified and I told him in my testimony, take care of all of us, they put sixteen point to five million and by billion in the excuse me, and uh again it's in the congressional record. My name is in there, and it says after my testimony,

they put another two point five billion in. Well, fast forward to when it shuttered about a year ago. It shuttered with about four billion dollars in it, and then they gave some second rounds and they did this and they did that, and it ended up with guess what, two billion sitting there. And that two billion is still sitting there. That's the money that was for the other people, which should have included radio and television and and you know,

people supporting service, people like myself. Uh. But but it was never open to those people. And and and that is why I wrote another bill called the Music Act, which stands from music under severe income crisis. You have to have a good an acronym. And uh, we dropped that over a year ago with bipartisan support, and it just hasn't gotten passed yet. We couldn't get it into the omnibus bill because Rand Paul wouldn't let it come out of the Small Business Committee because Rand Paul wants

all money claud back. And but he's now not on the Small Business Committee, and uh, we're reintroducing it and we hope to get it passed in Q one of this year. And I don't know what you know about legislation, but the big thing that stops any legislation is funding. What they call pay for us. When you have a bill, you're technically supposed to have a pay for This doesn't need to pay for Why there's there's two point two billion dollars sitting in sb o G just sitting there. Now,

what are we fighting. We're fighting reallocation, in other words, take that money away from us and give it to save the whales or whatever the cause may be. So for the better part of a year, I've been fighting to make sure that that money a doesn't get reallocated and be that we passed the Music Act and get that money to the people in the entertainment industry that have been left behind. So everybody who qualified and who applied ended up getting money. Over the hoops you had

to jump through rough how did it play out? Practically? Great question, and and know everybody that that that should have qualified didn't get money. And here's why the hoops were incredible. Uh, the things that they made everyone do. We're we're studying Lee stupid. Uh. And probably what exacerbated did it was the s b A had never administered a program like that, it's not what they do. So they just basically brought people a step above manpower in

to be reviewers. What you you know, because you're in the entertainment industry. Very few people understand how the entertainment industry works. So now you've got these reviewers looking at this data, reading these answers. It might as well have been nuclear physics. And then they had to make value judgments Okay, this person does or this person doesn't. And

so so the reviewers had absolutely, absolutely no ability. Even myself to this day, people in this town think that that bandit Lights does all the Rocks shows in Knoxville, and that's how it works. Well, it's not how it works. You sign a contract with an artist and follow them and trying to explain this industry to anyone would take a month. So you have all these great people that had no knowledge of the industry grading the papers, if you will. It would be like me grading a nuclear

physics test. I wouldn't have a clue. And there was no one answer because the answers were esoteric. And uh So there were promoters that didn't get money. There were managers that didn't get money. There were venues that didn't get money because they weren't skilled enough to execute this monolithic set of paperwork. And they are still out there, and these are people I'm still fighting for. Uh. The

bulk of them did. But the odd thing was the only qualification was that your entity lost at least in any one quarter. In well, I think everybody lost at least in one quarter. But then when you take a really small entity, uh that has no ability uh to to do this this very sophisticated paperwork, when you get to that moment, that poor entity didn't fill it outright

and didn't get any money. So fast forward to today, I'm trying to get it reopen, not only for the people that were flatly denied the money, but but for the promoters and the managers and the agents and the business managers. A lot of business managers didn't get any money. How do you think they felt? Uh, most of the TV people didn't, most of the movie people didn't. Wedding planners didn't. Uh. All of the ethnic organizations across America that I spoke about didn't. Uh. Just a lot of

folks didn't. But but but even if it were open to them to answer your question, the paperwork was so onerous that that it kicked most people out. Okay, assuming you got money, was it a loan or a grant? It was a loan that could be turned into a grant. There was a uh for each of the categories you revenue, a promoter, a manager, or an agent. There was a list of things that you could and couldn't spend the money on. And UH that wasn't really the tough part,

because it was pretty pretty broad. At the end of the day, I think almost everybody, if not everybody, that got alone did convert it to a grant because they were so very very forgiving. And what you could spend it for. You couldn't spend it for political contributions. Uh. You couldn't buy real estate with it you couldn't pay off a pre existing loan. Uh. And that was really about it. Other than that, you could do about anything. Okay. The obvious question is it bend at Lates get money? No,

we we did not. Uh. The when this all began, think about think about a war. Now, bear in mind, I was never mean, I was never nasty. I was I was always polite. But but you know, in a wartime situation, who do they shoot at first? The guy carrying the flag. You know, that's certainly back in the you know, back in the old days, that the guy carrying the flag and battle got shot first. How was

the guy carrying the flag? I was a guy that was on the phone daily with the s b A and with Isabella Gooseman and with all of her people, not being ugly but pointing out daily uh. And in the present again never accused it if never ugly, never mean, but just when that's not what the law says. You know, they are an administrative agency. Their function is to take the law and apply it, not to interpret it. And they interpreted it. Okay, Bandit Lates is not a public company,

is it. No, we're not public and we're not in the adult entertainment industry. Right, So why didn't you get money? Because they said, we are a supporting service company, and then they're frequently asked questions. They said, support and service companies can't have money. So how did bandit late to make it through the shutdown? H. I am very fiscally conservative, UH, and UH hoard cash. So we are the only company in the industry that I'm aware of globally. We have

three hundred employees and we laid nobody off. We gave no pay cuts, we didn't reduce benefits. I bet on my people because I knew whenever this ended, whenever we got to the other side, I wanted to have my team together because I knew that the strength in any company is the people. And I got great people. And I knew that if we shut down and laid people off and gave pay cuts and did those kinds of things,

which which everybody else did because they had to. Uh. I knew when we got to the other side, I would have this great team still with me. And guess what we did, so when the world crank back up, I wouldn't have having to hire people. I don't mean that negative toward any of the people that did. Uh,

there probably aren't. There's probably no one in live entertainment is fiscally conservative and debt diverse and cash have as I am or was because we went through you can imagine what it costs for sixteen months to pay three hundred people, uh info with benefits and all of them. Okay, if we shut down today, how much longer can you keep open the doors? You know, I asked that question December of excuse me February of because you just don't know. Uh,

you know, the industry was at zero income. A lot of people in the industry. You know, you heard the word back in the early days, remember pivot, pivot. You know, I said you did this, and you did that. We did a lot of strange things that brought in a little bit of money. We were very fortunate that the company has to operating pieces. One is the live show piece with the Garth Brooks and Alice Cooper and Widespread Panic and Jimmy Buffett and Carrie Underwood and all these

Barry Mantle, all these wonderful artists. Uh, and I was shut down. We have an integration side that does venues worldwide. You know, we put lights and illumination things, and all kinds of venues and museums and things that didn't stop because all those contracts were let. And and and that's a funny point because three or four or five months into COVID, when New York and l A were totally shut, we had three jobs in n y C in New York City, two jobs in l A, two jobs in

Dallas and and they were union control jobs. And it was so funny because you never heard this. Those jobs never stopped. And and and the legal forces that would come in and try to shut a job, they came in once and and and the powers that be on that job site just kind of looked at him and said, nah, we're not shutting down. And that was the end of that. So that a continued. Right. Acts got money, okay because they have a road crew under what bann or did

they get the money? Very few artists got money. And again, what I'm telling you, Bob, is not opinion. It's it's I worked eighteen hours a day and still do for two and a half years talking to everybody. Uh, clearly you had you know, your A level action. Madonna's your weekend, your Garth Brooks, your your you two's you're rolling stones. These are people that could actually shut down hibernate and b okay, very few people are at that level. Uh.

Then you got everybody else. Uh, everybody else, to one degree or another, struggled mightily. And the perception from the public and the perception from Congress was that all stars are wealthy, and that all stars should pay all their people go away. I mean and I heard that every day. Go away. You work for these really famous people. What they don't realize is small handful of really wealthy people in entertainment. Then there's everybody else and and uh so

those people struggled. Most None of the big acts got money. Really, none of the sort of next level acts got money. Uh. The few artists that did get money, many of them worked with me. And I'm not going to name names, so that wouldn't be fair. But but they worked with me, and I would walk them through the paperwork. And most of them were what we would call legacy acts. You know, big acts in the seventies and eighties that still sell tickets, still do quite well. But a lot of the legacy

acts did get money. And uh, most of them when they would get their money, Uh, most of them would turn around and pay their crew, which which was really neat. You know that they wouldn't just keep it. They wanted it to pay their crew. And uh, you know that that was very very admirable. Uh. And I'll name one act because I think I'm close enough with the act to to do this. And and you know, part of uh, Toby Mammos Alice Cooper. I mean, Alice jumped in there, got p p P. Even before p p P, he

kept his people paid. I mean, what a guy. You know, Alice has perceived as the guy with the makeup and all that he is, But Alice is one of the nicest guys in the world. He's you know, he's a guy, you know. And he was one of the artists that just said, Hey, I'm taking care of my folks. That's what I'm gonna do. And then they got some p p P and then they got the second round of p p P and they took care of their people.

But but there were a lot of legacy acts that did that through p p P but but not sp O G. But again, there were a small handful of artists that did get s v O G money. Because I walked him through it, and a primarily legacy. I'm unaware of what we would call a big act that got in the s v O G. Money. Okay, so you're the ring leader. Are there any other Michael Strickland's in this world? Or was it everything on your shoulders? Uh?

From the holistic point of view, it was just me when this, when this whole thing began, I didn't realize that literally no one else in the show business that I knew or met had any experience in politics or in lobbying. And I thought along the way, well, people will join me, and eventually I would talk to people and they go, well, I can't do that, but I've never done that. I don't know what to do. And

at the end of the day, no one directly joined me. Now, having said that, hundreds of thousands of people indirectly joined me. Each time I would send out a newsletter, which was two times a week, three times a week, I would send out a link. Right, your Congressman, Wright, your senator, write this letter, do this thing, make this phone call. Hundreds of thousands of people sprung into action. So you know,

it wasn't me. I was just sort of the guy carrying the flag and the first big initiative we did was was read Alar Restart, which was phenomenal. But but then we went through NAM National Association of Music Merchandisers and Joe Lamond and the great people there, and uh, they put up a website and we got hundreds of thousands of people to go onto the website and it automatically sent letters, you know, to your senators and and

and representatives and whatnot. And we had a bunch of initiatives like that, so it started out really broad based. And then then we then we began to focus on state by state, region by region. And yes, I had millions of people that made this happen. Where it would disintegrate or fall apart would be twofold one. When people got money, many of them said oh, I'm good and walked away from the cause. Uh. And then the other thing was people just lost their heart and they walked away.

So I shifted from from leader to cheerleader and trying to keep people's spirits up. And I'm still in that role, but was two and a half years later. If you're one of those folks that haven't gotten money, it's probably very hard to maintain hope. But as human beings. That's all we have is hope. And so my role has been to keep people pumped up and and uh, you know, at first I thought that some of these big entities could and would participate. But then the principles that these

huge entities would explain to me. You know, we're publicly traded, you know, we we can't we can't legally be go involved in this kind of a thing. And you know, I never thought about that, so but but I can tell you that. And again I'll use a name. Uh, there's a lot of misconceptions, and I'm not getting into the politics of whether you like or dislike Live Nation or a g or oak View or any of the

big boy companies. But but Michael Rapino was more engaged and more involved and did more things quietly behind the scenes for the good of the industry than anyone because Michael knew how vertically uh integrated this industry is, and he knows that it's in the best interests of Live Nation from you know, all of the downstream people if you will to survive, because you know, if if if like the Chana Tower, if the bottom two thirds collapses, the big piece on top is in Trouble and and

Michael and and and I and uh Ja Marciano and Corn Capshaw and Charlie Walker at C three uh and uh two or three other people UH conversed regularly. Uh Wayne Forte Uh you know the the agent. Uh. These people were also heavily involved. Uh. And we have these weekly conversations and daily emails. And these people did stuff behind the scenes. Yet none of them benefited from it. But but they wanted to help the industry. And people

will never know that. And a number of times I have talked to people who had a very negative opinion of some of the big folks. I'm like, no, no, no, no, you don't realize these these guys and gals were out there fighting for you. Uh. And they found that hard to believe. Uh, but I'm here to tell you it is true. Uh. It's amazing. So what's the status of the Entertainment Association right now? And what is the pitch

to people? What I began doing November one of last year and I'm going to do through April the fifteenth of this year is Uh. I have already done hundreds of zooms and personal meetings and phone calls. I've done to date fifteen public speaking events to larger crowds like the one I did it Aspen. Uh. I'm going to post Star to speak, and next month I'm going to NAM to speak. I've got some other sort of large things. I'm spreading information, which is why I appreciate what you've

done here today. Uh. And I'm going to continue to do that. And then I email people the PDF file and and I'm listening to people, and I'm having a lot of conversations. And I already have through conversations with entertainment people as well as with political people. I'm shaping a vision of what this might look like. And and bear in mind, this involves the NFL, the NBA, major

League base anybody that needs a crowd. And uh, you know, going back into the early days, I was going home one day and Wayne Fordy called me up and it was ten o'clock at night and I was headed home. And this is right, remember right when the COVID shots first came out, Wayne said, hey, you know what we need to do? And I said what Wayne? This was his his idea. He says, we need to stand up all of the venues and make them places to get shots. And I said, well, how would we do that? And

he goes, Corn Capshaw has already doing it. So what do you means? Well, Corn's got an old shopping center there in Charlottesville and he's you set up whatever he's set up, and and he's helping the community and people are getting jabs at the and now your kiding and he went and now I said, well we could never do this. He goes, yeah, And we had this great conversation. So I hung up and called Corn right then and Corn said, yeah, that's what we're doing. You know, we're

doing these shots here in Charlottesville. So I told him what Wayne had said. Well, him and Wayne had already talked and and uh and and that that whole group I mentioned to talk. So literally, in three days time, uh Rapino agreed to offer all of the Live Nation venues, Marciano all the a G venues. Uh. I called up Jimmy Haslam and within a day I'm talking to Roger Goodell and I had all the NFL venues and uh then uh Ruten Smith, who who owns he passed away

last year. He owned eleven NASCAR speedways. He hooked me up with Frances and we had all all of the NASCAR speedways and and and and all these other So in four days time, we had all these venues all across America. Was it was amazing how people came to the table and offered their venues up to give shots. And and that was because of this this community that we had and these people simply saying yes. And all of a sudden, and you saw it on the news,

we had all these shot clinics. I went up to the speedway in Bristol, the Bristol Motor Speedway where they have the Bristol five, and NBC interviewed me up there because that's when it was just starting. And uh, it was just amazing to watch the synergy of how all these people could and would work together. So I'm sitting at my desk one day and my cell phone rings and it's John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods. And he introduced himself and he said, I've got more refrigerator tractor

trailers than anybody in the world. I want to offer them up to all the uh thevaccine around. So I immediately connected him with Jeffrey Zentz, who at the time was the COVID czar in White House, and John provided the uh, the tractor traders to haul the the vaccines around and and John and I became great friends, and all of that became tremendous friends. And and Rapino put his people to work when this that initiative started, and

we sent a letter to the president. You may have seen it, and it's it's signed by Live Nation and a G and all those entities that I mentioned to the President saying we're here to help you. And and it was the power of Live Nation and a G in the NFL and all these big names. Uh, that thing that letter broke on the on the Wall Street Journal. I mean, and that's pretty big to get something of that nature in the front page of the Wall Street Journal. But but again, that was the power of these people

making these things happen. And we moved forward with that team ever since then and and got all the vaccines distributed. Okay, but today the world has opened up today anyway, what's the pitch to meet for someone to become a member of the Entertainment Association? And if they do become a member, is there going to be money involved? How's it all gonna work? That's why I'm having conversations. There is what I call my belief. I don't want to own it. I don't want to steer it. I don't want to

control it. I just want to make sure we do it. Here is my belief today, and it hasn't moved, this core belief. No, I don't think you build it by having Uh all these people pay ten dollars pick a number. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, we are a one trillion dollar industry with ten million people. That's sizeable. Uh, restaurants are are Restaurants are a six hundred almost a seven hundred billion dollar industry with five million people. So

we're ish twice the size of the restaurant industry. But what do they have that we don't. The National Restaurants Association, you know, they have a voice on the hill. Two thousand nineteen, all of what we would call entertainment gave two million dollars political contributions. That counts Live Nation in the NFL and Major League Baseball and everybody else. So

what's what's the pitch here? The pitches? It will never work if we have to have an organization in a structure and people giving money and people keeping up with it. I believe we're gonna end up with an organization seated in d C in a lobbying firm, uh, that represents our goodwill and the major players, the big organizations within

this industry. There is a number and and I think that number was asked when you were an Aspen and you know, I don't want to answer it here, but but there is a number where if you take these top, say twenty large entities, and each one put in X dollars, it wouldn't be a line item on their budget, yet it would be enough money to fund operations. And what are operations? Operations very simply are You're gonna have to

give some level of funding to one hundred senators. That's the most elite club in the world, the U. S. Senate. So you're gonna have to give some level of money every year to one hundred senators and probably twenty five House members representatives, the people that are on the right committees. So you're gonna be making annual donations to probably a

hundred and twenty five people. You're gonna have to pay some amount of money, obviously to the firm to do the lobbying, and all of a sudden when you go in and sit down and talk to them, which I have done for two and a half years, when their guy or gal picks up that piece of paper and goes, huh. Entertainment Association. They give us fifteen thousand dollars every year. Send them in, whereas what we went through now was the Rodeo Association. Send them away. I mean we had

no voice. No one had a voice because no one you know, whatever you think of politics, uh, And you've probably heard me say this and ask me that there is no red or blue, there is only green, and and that's that's not a funny statement, that's the truth. It's it's all about the money in d C. And if you're not doing something uh for a politician, they've little reason to do anything for you. And I don't mean that negative or ugly, but we have to create

this entity and it has to have one purpose. And you can't vary off this because there's only one thing that brings everybody that needs a crowd to make a living together, and that is to either prevent and or deal with a future shutdown period into report. We can't go beyond that because the minute you wander away from that, well, what about ticket pricing or you know, ten thousand issues. Some people would before that, some people would be against that,

but we're all needing to deal with potential shutdowns. And again right now, there are several conditions that people in Congress want to shut us down right now. There are people in Congress that don't believe we should be having crowds right now. There are people in Congress that believes if any act of war anywhere in the world happens, we should shut down. Thank nine eleven, you know, the

country shut for five days after nine eleven. Uh. There are people in Congress right now that think we shouldn't be having public gatherings today because of the social unrest that's going on. So, you know, there are a lot of what we would call fringe thoughts out there in Congress. Uh, left and right, red and blue about shutting down and what if one of those takes hold. You know, what

if one of those takes hold. There are two industries that were totally shut live live in entertainment and cruise lines. And cruise lines. You know, that's that's a handful of companies and they all went to the sauties for money. So that's their solution, and that's why they're not really

in this conversation. But for us, we are tens of thousands of little and big companies that need a single voice, and we need a plan, and we need an agreement with Congress, and we need a voice with Congress to first prevent and then second and or deal with a future shutdown. And that's pretty much it. It's it's a real simple it's a real simple process. And and anyone that that takes the position it will never happen again.

Did you ever think it would happen the first time? Okay, playing Devil's advocate here, your heart's in the right place. You've done a lot of work, but it's seems pretty amorphous to me. How do we nail it down and make it happen? First and foremost, it's talking to as many people as I can. And again that's why I appreciate this offer, uh, in this opportunity, Bob, because a lot of people are going to hear this, UH, and it's you know, it's winning hearts and minds one at

a time. But but the ultimate, the ultimate god to achieving this or the decision makers in the largest firms at the highest levels believe it or not. Sports leagues are probably the easiest because they have a league. If you get to buy in from Roger Goodell, you've got the NFL. All of the sports leagues sit in that situation. So most of the sports things are are actually easier. But when you get into all of the tens of thousands of people in entities within the traditional live entertainment

music and that kind of a thing. Yeah, you've got the big boys, the Live Nation, day a G, the c a A, the William Morris, the Oak View, you know those people. But then there's so many other ones aren't there. And if if if the top twenty firms can understand this and can agree to this and and confunded this, then there's this, then there's this mechanism that will take care of everybody. And and no one firm, no one person can control it. Can can be the person.

And that's why I say it's got to have a single focus. You. You can't wander off into other causes because then other people will say, well, you know, company X is controlling this and they're going to pass legislation to benefit themselves about whatever. No, the whole thing has to be focused on what do we do to prevent and then and or deal with the future shutdown? And and I've have for a lot of talking. I've got some pretty good ideas of a very effective path, and

I'll share this with you. Uh. This is the first time I've said this publicly. Most people don't know, but the United States is cut up into UH sectors and UH the FEMA has cut America into sectors. And FEMA issues five year contracts to each sector, to construction companies to do remediation. In other words, Katrina non eleven, those kinds of things. When not eleven happened, they didn't go out and get bids to clean it up. A good friend of mine, oddly enough, had the contract for for

New York. So when the towers came down, UH Phillips and Jordan's the name of the company, they went up to New York. And they're still up there doing remediation. But that deal was struck before that Katrina deal was struck before that. And that's what the government has done, UH for for national emergencies, for for for dealing with things of that nature. They have five year contracts for every area of the country so that they're not chasing bids at that moment. I believe our solution lays in

something like that. I believe that that we get a lobbying firm and that we have conversations with the federal government that if indeed they ever shut the country down again, here's the plan for those of you in the live entertainment sector. Whatever that plan is, let's go ahead and get it done. Now, let's get it in paper. Now. It's almost an insurance policy. Uh. And the federal government has done that in many other areas. It's it's not

just in the in the recovery area. And again I've had this conversation with legislators, uh, and and they're all kind of given me the you know, the the positive head Bob. Obviously that has to be funded. But uh, going back to the beginning of COVID, and I think you know what I'm about to say, Uh, you couldn't turn the TV on that you didn't see sympathy for restaurants and gems. Restaurants and gems, restaurants and gyms, never for entertainment. Why you work for rich pop stars, they

should take care of you. Everybody eats at restaurants. A lot of people go to gyms. A lot of sympathy for those two UH fields. There was no sympathy for us, none whatsoever. But they do now know. And indeed, going into the inauguration, when when uh, when when UH Trump went out of office and UH Biden came into office. I got together a bunch of industry leaders and I said, guys, here's what we need to do. Let's just refuse to do any production services for anything to do with the inauguration.

That'll get their attention. And one company, including mine, did that, and we all sat in the meeting and everybody, we can't do that. Why we had just come out of ten months of no income and all of a sudden, you've got this, you know, two million dollar contract to do whatever the show is. Nobody would not do that. My company did that field of flags. If you saw, you know, all those thousands of flags down the mall, that that was bandit lights. We lit those flags. We

got paid very well for it. It was a C three production. Uh. It was a big, big, big thing. And I have to say I didn't walk away from it. But would I have walked away from it if everybody else would have? Yes, I would. But but nobody wanted to, and I get it it was economic, but those are the kind of moves that we're gonna have to make. I think it will take the better part of a year and a half to two years from today to get us all together, to get a lobbyist and to

work with Congress to them up with a plan. Because we were the only people that were shut down. We didn't have takeaway, we didn't have delivery, we didn't have a muted version of being open where we could keep people six ft apart. It just doesn't work for what we do. So I think we can come up with a solution. Uh, there's there's a lot of bright minds out there. It's going to be a private public partnership to figure out that solution. I'm willing to spend whatever

time it takes. Everything I have done in two and a half years, I've personally funded every airplane ticket, every hotel, every plane flight, every meal, every everything that There's no organization behind me, there's no funding behind me. This is just the right thing to do. And and and that's that's my mission, is to keep having these conversations. Okay, the music business, other than the big corporations is a very street business, and a lot of entertainment is run

by an intimidation. To what degree were the sports leagues and all these other things to what did we were they open to you? What what do you mean open to me? They would say, oh, that's that guy you know in entertainment concerts. That's a fraction of our income. We have our own people. We don't need it, you know.

The you're kind of leaving out the interesting part. The NFL, the NBA, and uh, the MLB had phenomenal and college football and college basketball had phenomenal television revenue, so you know, they had a model that, Okay, we know we've got this phenomenal money just from TV. But having said that, an NFL stadium that was empty with the protein plane getting phenomenal TV money is one thing. But putting the

fans in the butts. Uh. The incremental revenue just in the ticket sales is in and of itself, is not that much. But it wasn't just the fans in the seats that was missing. The fans and the seats drove merchandise sales, drove beer sales, drove food sales, drove sales within the city. You know, people coming and staying in hotels, and in many cases the people that own those teams have interests in real estate and restaurants and other things. So there is a bigger net loss, and it's primarily

the big proteins. When you get into the semi pro and and and and a lot of the other sports. You know, there's not television revenue money. So those people are on board, and they're listening to me. I mean, even the big people are listening on Yeah, I get it. Now, how much let's assume we've created this house, how much revenue would go to say, and I'm making this up in NFL are Alive Nation or inn a G. There are all kinds of laws, There are all kinds of rules.

There are all kinds of regulations that will probably prevent those people from directly benefiting from any kind of federal funding because they're all out there. Uh. Having said that, the buildings around it, the stadiums, the restaurants, the things that they may or may not have a vested interest in, will all benefit. And and therein, you know, is why it would work. Uh. And finding employees, you know, as you know, when they opened back up all of these

sporting arenas and whatnot. They couldn't find people, They couldn't find ticket takers, they couldn't find janitors, they couldn't find people that work on the field. I mean, it was just so upside down and still is still is. You know, the people problem hasn't recovered. So there are so many economic plays, uh, you know outside of just the pure

gives some money to a great big to the NFL. Uh, there's so many wins around the NFL because the NFL and the NBA and Live Nation and Age, all these big, big people they know they don't exist without the echoes system around them, and supporting that echosystem around them, uh is necessary to their survival. Okay, we're back up now presently looking in hindsight, how many people left the business? Companies went out of business? You know what was the

attrition factor? Did most of the people muddle through? The great question? Bob? And again, what I'm about to tell you is not a not a theory. This comes from talking to one point three million people for two and a half years. About thirty of organized entities within the live entertainment industry are gone. Now that they're just gone. Most of them were small. You know there was a mom and pop shop that did this, that or the other thing, and and they just went away. Will they

be missed? Would anybody know the name of the company and say, hey, that comes And probably not, But tens of thousands of people, some of which spent their entire lives. I had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman from southern California. He was eighty years old. He and his wife, and his two sons and their two wives did four state fairs in southern California. They did cotton candy and corn dogs and elephant ears, and they had done it forever

and ever and ever. And this gentleman ended up on the phone with me repeatedly, help me, help me, help me. And of course at the end of the day he got no uh, he got no uh S V O G. He ended up getting some P P P. But but this is a guy you wouldn't think about, you know, he's a concessionaire for four state fairs. He had a building. It was worth two million dollars. So we end up on the phone and he went to several lenders to

get seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He pledged the building as collateral, and he wanted the seven fifty, you know, to carry him and his family through through COVID. He couldn't get anybody lending the money because he had no balance sheet and he had no income statement that stood up because they were zero. So he was kind of in catch twenty two. That's just one example, because that's a really odd business and you wouldn't think about it.

And eventually, you know, I helped him, and eventually he got to work out. And but there's there's so many people like that that There's a dry cleaner in in New York City that does the bulk of the dry cleaning for Broadway. You know. They have a big plant over on Long Island and at night they go to Broadway and pick up all the costumes and take them and clean them and then bring them back. They can't do your dry cleaning and my dry cleaning. You know,

they're not set up to do it. They were shut down. There's a lovely lady that has a company in New York and in Los Angeles. All she does is rent furniture to Broadway in movies. There's nothing else she could do, you know, because she can't just go on the street and rent furniture. Uh So, there's so many of those stories that you don't know about that are out there, and so many of those people that need help. And I've gotten to know all of those people, tens of

thousands of them. Well, many of those people went away. About oddly enough, about thirty percent of the people in live entertainment. Now I'm leaving sports out of this, but about thirty percent of the people in live entertainment left. Who who left primarily people under twenty five who had just come in and they said to themselves, you know, this is nuts. I don't want to go through this again.

I'm I'm gonna do something else. And and the people and currently and gen Z or whatever it is, they're gonna have h depending on who you believe, about seventeen jobs in their life. You and I, Bob are old enough. We were gonna have one point four jobs in our life. I haven't hit the point for yet. I've had one. But so a lot of the younger folks left because they were going to have multiple jobs anyway, and they said, okay,

I'm bailing. Then you had people fifty five plus that were near the end of their run in rock and roll if you will, and and and daring COVID. They got a job at home Depot or Amazon, and guess what, they had health insurance and they had retirement things they had never had. And they said, you know what, I got five more years, I got ten more years. I'm gonna stay here at Amazon. And they they left. You had a lot of truck drivers for show business that

just got a day rate and that's it. They ended up driving for Amazon and all those kinds of people and they went, holy cow, I'm home at night, get to see the family and benefits. So they left. So that kind of left. Uh, that was thirty percent of the industry that left. The seventy in the middle tended to be between thirty and fifty. And those were people that were kind of trapped and it was all they knew to do. And again I'm not making this up.

I know it from talking to tens of thousands of people. And that's where we sit right now. A lot of really good people left and because of the labor shortage all of a sudden, and this is not unique to entertainment. It has happening everywhere. Uh. We we have people, unqualified people coming into our industry who don't know what they're doing, demanding tremendous sums of money and in many cases getting it because they're the only body standing. And I think

you know that's happening everywhere else. The typical warehouse worker went from twelve dollars an hour to twenty five dollars an hour overnight. Well, it happened in rock and roll too. And uh, well I know a very big promoter he had he pieces people everybody, ushers and etcetera thirty bucks an hour because he found less than thirty You don't know if they'll show up. Ye. Yeah, And and it's not it's not sustainable. Okay, let's talk about you. Where

did you grow up? I grew up in extreme East Tennessee, in a little bitty town called Kingsport. And and that that's why we're sitting here talking today, because of where I grew up. And what did your parents do for a living? My father was a nuclear physicist and a research chemist, and he worked for Eastman Kodak. What a lot of people don't know is, uh, parts of atomic bomb were built in Oakridge, Tennessee. Uh, the enriched geranium came out of Oakridge. My father was one of the

people in Oakridge enriching uranium. Kodak ran the plant under contract. My dad worked with Oppenheimer and uh Einstein directly, and I've got pictures of Dad with with those two people. So when the war was over, he could either go to Rochester, New York, which was Kodak's headquarters, or to their plant in this little backward town called Kingsport, Tennessee, which Eastman. Kodak made all their film there at the time.

That's where he went. So that's where I grew up and and to to connect the dots, that's how I got in rock and roll. I fell into love with show business at age five. I had seen concerts and whatnot. In the sixties there were no lights, you know that. The band came in two station wagons, set up their own junk, had two little tucked and rolled custom Pa speakers, set their own stuff up, had one guy that mixed

sound and got to check and and then left. Well, I took the lights out of the high school theater and put them on the handrails around the gym. And this was with the Monkeys, the Beach Boys, part of the enerrators. Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons, which is where I met first met Roy and Jane Claire from Claire Brothers, uh and all these acts. In the late sixties, the grassroots weren't it, and from the grassroots to this

day is one of my dearest friends. But but so I started taking these lights from the theater down and why did we get these rock shows? Well, in nineteen sixty eight they built a new high school and we had a big Jodesic dome that had two very unique features. Air conditioning which was unheard of in nineteen and no poles, so no obstructions. Knoxville used to get the rock shows. And it's two it's a it's a hundred miles away, but they're big venue, had poles and no air conditioning.

So this little backwater town started getting these major rock shows. And here's this kid putting lights on the stage. And they would get a little business card from me that I made in a v class in school, you know, with my phone number, own it and and say they would say, can you come to Chattanooga, can you come to Lexington, can you you know whatever? And so I started going wider and wider and wider as I was doing it, there was a guy in New York doing it.

You know, there was people in southern California doing it. But that was the psychedelic here. I remember when you saw the Jefferson airplane with all the psychedelic stuff and and the Grateful Dead and all of that. I was emulating those people. I was getting projectors and putting oil and water in slithes and doing all this goofy stuff, emulating these people in New York and l A and and that was the genesis of it. And and uh, my senior year in high school, we grossed two hundred

thousand dollars, which was pretty incredible. No, we spend it all. But then I went came down to ut to get my undergraduate degree, and uh we did two million dollars out of my dorm room my senior year at high school. And uh then when I went to law school. Uh, one of the acts I had signed was Kenny Rogers and he was nobody. Well he Lucile or the Gambler or whatever the hell. His first hit was hit and the next thing, you know, Kenny Rodgers the biggest artist

in the world. And I'm in law school and I'm also Kenny Rogers production manager running his show. And uh it just when I got out of law school. My parents thought, Okay, he's going to be a lawyer. And I looked at Mom and Dad and I said, I'm with the biggest artist in the world. Why would I

give up this business? And it wasn't just Kenny. I mean we were doing new writers of the Purple Sage and and Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons and the Grassroots and Conway Twitty and Loretta le nd I mean, we had all these clients and and I just kept going. But but those formative years and that formal education, which I'm a fierce believer in education again enabled me to do what I've done for the last two and a

half years. But that's sort of the long short version of a new high school and a little rednecked town putting me in our trajectory for the rest of my life. Okay, you finished law school. Did you take the part exam? Never never intended to. Let's go back. Your father is an academic. Essentially, where do you get your entrepreneurial spirit? Really two or three things, And I think a lot of people probably have this same story. Um, do you remember in high school, they had accolades, you know, uh

best personality, you know, all those things. They were in the yearbook. Uh. We had off the record in in in the school newspaper sort of anti uh accolades. And my senior year at high school, I was voted least likely to succeed. And as stupid as that sounds, that was that was a real motivator. I mean, I'm like, well,

I'll show them. And at the same time, when we wrapped up high school and we're getting ready to go to college, uh, my group of five or six buddies that that were we were doing this together, high school buddies. They all looked at me. You know, we had ten thousand dollars in the bike, and we took it and went to the beach and got a house and drank as much beer as we possibly could. And they said, now there's no point in carrying on. This will never

be anything. So between my buddies telling me this will never be anything and that newspaper telling me I was the least likely to succeed, I've always been one of those people that, you know, tell me what I can't do, and I'll go prove you wrong. Even if it's bad for me, and and that really drove me. But again, the classical education is what prepared me for it, you know, the going to school stuff and and learning all of that stuff. Okay, why lights is supposed to sound reinforcement

or whatever? Simple answer. You never see anybody leave a rock show going. Boy, that looked terrible, but half the people that leave a rock show go that sounded terrible. True story. I mean, to this day, you can't make everybody happy with the audio. Did you ever go to any concert and everybody going out going, Now that was amazing, that sounded really good. Some of them do, maybe most of them do. But I never heard anybody complain about the lights. So I just figured that's a better path.

And how did you get the light side of the theater to install them when you wanted? Well, again, let's go back. This was night in the South. Nothing was locked. Churches didn't lock, schools didn't lock, theaters didn't locked. Nothing locked. So by the time I was a senior, on any given weekend back then, rock shows always played in high school gym's uh and or National Guard armories. They didn't have the you know, the monolithic basketball arena as yet

so that's where they played. And uh so the shows were fairly small comparatively, and they always played with the roof light zone. So what I would do, uh would be take all the lights out of the high school. And by the time we were seniors, if we had two or three different gigs going on in a given weekend, we would take the lights from the high school, from both of the junior high schools, and then we would work our way down to the two movie theaters downtown

and take gear from the movie theaters. But but on Sunday night we would always have to go back and put all the lights back. And hence the name bandit we we we were taking the equipment, but we always gave it back and and no one knew that. And fast forward to two thousand and eight, the city of Kingsport gave me the keys to the city and it was quite an honor, and we had this whole big thing, and I got to speak and I told this story. And you should have seen these people sitting in the

audience and their jaws dropped because no one knew. You know, we didn't tell them. We just took the lights and put them back. And that was the first time I ever talked about it, and I started that conversation with I've checked the law and the statute of limitations his run. But that's how it began. And then we came to u T. I prioritied equipment from the University of Tennessee Theater because nothing was locked. And then I started buying equipment and here we are today. Okay, how old were

you when you did your first gig? Twelve? And did you consistently do that thereafter? Ever since? Ever since that day? Wow? And did you learn about lighting on the fly? Yeah? And you gotta remember back then what was lighting. It was a lightbulb that had two wires going to it, not three, you know, hot and neutral. There's no ground yet really, so if the lightbulb didn't work, it was one of two things. One of the two wires was

broken or the filament and the lightbulb was gone. And what we started with was the R forty floodlights like you have in the corner of your house. We had red ones, blue ones, and yellow ones and and and we made literally coffee cans like you've heard out of and ran the wires to them. So a typical rock show. When we started building equipment was extension cords and coffee cans, and lightbulbs in the coffee cans, and or the bard lights from the high schools, and the whole pile of

extension cords. And we made little wooden boxes that literally had househole light switches in it. So all of these cords just plugged into the back of this wooden box and you sat there and flipped the same switches you have on the wall today in your house. And and the way we turned them all on and off at the same time was we had a stick. You had a four ft stick, and you'd rake it across all the switches, either own or off. So it was really simple.

And again through time you you started to begin to learn things about light and texture and color and shape and shade, but none of that existed in sixty nine and seventy. It was all owning off, owning off. And then we had the overhead projectors with the Pyrex dish with oil and water and red and blue and green

food coloring. And oddly enough, when you stir it with a pencil with your hand, your hand and the pencil are not in the focal path, and all you get is that psychedelic look and and we were doing all that kind of garbage. But you know, through time it got more sophisticated. And yes, through time you began to learn what lighting was all about. And how did you decide how much to charge? In the beginning, it was twenty five dollars, and it stayed twenty five dollars for

a year or two, and then it was fifty. And you know, we didn't really get into a real pricing model until probably my senior year of college, when I started to figure out, we're doing this for fun. We need to do it for money, you know. So about my senior year of college is when we began to figure out that, okay, there has to be a business plan here that actually makes money. Okay, so you had these friends. When did band it actually start on the path today? Will you say, hey, was that why you

were still in school or after school? It started in I mean, when I did that first show, I thought, this is the coolest thing in the world. I'm getting to hang out with rock stars and see free shows, and and uh, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Having said that, the reasons were kind of wrong at first. The reasons were just to see the show and meet the band and meet girls, and you know, all of those things. And then I realized you could actually make

money doing this and say that. That began to shift in college and we had to make the full transition, probably my senior year, and that's that's where I started to apply what I had learned. Herbie Herbert was the manager of Journey Journey during their heyday recently passed. He famously bought all the equipment and the lights and stage and he leased it to other people. I've talked to a lot of these major major ACKs. He said, why don't you own this stuff? And they say it changes

too much? So does anybody own it? What do you mean, does anybody own their own lights? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Herbie bought it obviously first to do Journey and and so he owned lights and and and stuff, video and whatnot, and he rented it to his band. Uh. He was he was the first one that I remember that did it. Uh. There's a company still is, but it's its own by

Claire Brothers now. But there was a company in Europe back in the heyday of Pink Floyd called Brett Row or Britannia Row Well that was owned by Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd decided, Okay, we're gonna buy our own stuff and we'll call the company Brett Row based on Britannia Row the street. At the about the same time a company in California you may have heard of. They're still around, Delicate Productions. Delicate was started by Supertramp when when they became a big deal, they bought their own p A

so they owned their own stuff. Uh. So there there there were several stabs at artists doing that, a few where managers did it. Most of them didn't work out. Uh and but but there were stabs that that stabs it doing that. Eventually, the whole nock Turn model, which is what Herbie called that organization, uh, ended up uh dissipating, I guess is the right word. And eventually the assets were sold off. But it was a way to do it, and I think it probably worked well for for Herbie.

I don't know who the other partners were. I don't know if he had the band in on it or not, whether any of the band members ran on it. Uh. You've heard a very light there. The original moving light was very light well, Rusty Bruschi and Jack Maxim were the face of it, but Tony Smith, the manager of Genesis, and indeed the band Genesis were the original financers of it. So Genesis benefited greatly from the world's first moving light U and eventually that dissipated. But but I think they

probably did very well. That's purely a guess. But things like that we're not really talked about openly. Uh. I think the world did know that Herbie was doing what he was doing because it was Herbie, wasn't it, and he wanted to tell you about it. But yeah, there there have been stabs at that, but none really really successful. Okay, So of the business are you worldwide or just in America?

How does it split? You know, we've built offices in in uh, we had offices in Europe, in America, and we did have him in Asia, but we've withdrawn from Asia because of everything we did that three or four or five years ago, when you know, we had we had an office in Hong Kong and an office in Taiwan. And then when when the Chinese took Hong Kong over, you know, I saw the handwriting on the wall that they weren't going to live up to the twenty five

year commitment. And I'm not being political. I'm a business guy, and so we withdrew from from Asia at that point. And I don't think anybody's doing business in Asia anymore. That's that's not Chinese are from that part of the world. Okay, what percentage of the overall market does BANDED have, that's a great question. The industry doesn't report to anyone. No

one knows how big this industry is. There's a lot of guesses, and the guesses ranged from a low of probably four billion dollars a year, uh two a hive probably ten billion dollars a year. I don't know that any of those numbers are correct. Honestly don't know. And I'm not trying to not answer your question. Uh just no one really knows how big the industry as a whole is because there is no method of reporting. Okay, so an act wants to get lating for their tour,

let's go tour. What are their options? Who can they go to? Well, there are probably six companies in the United States of any size that that could do what we would all call an a level tour. And there are probably eight to twelve what you would call mid level firms, and then lord god, there's probably a hundred small firms. But you can't discount the small firms. Uh. There is a company in uh Omaha, Nebraska called t MS Great Company. They do a little act called uh

Dave Matthews. They do a few other things, but but but the folks that run the company have an old and a strong relationship with Dave Matthews. There's a gentleman down in Alabama that does Brad Paisley. He does a couple of other things, but he grew up with Brad or something, and he'll always do Brad Paisley. Uh. There's a company in California called Morpheus that used to be a major player, not so much anymore, but they've always

done Bruce Springsteen. Not a bad account to half. So there are a lot of companies like that that that have a major client or two major clients, and and you know, the odds of taking those clients away from those people are pretty slim, because in most cases it's a personal relationship. Just like, Uh, I have a great personal relationship with a little bit of artist called Garth Brooks. And you know, rumors have always been out there. Well Garth owns bandit? Well, no, he doesn known band. They

were just great friends. I start with Garth when he was in a bar, and we like each other. Uh So I'm not sure how you would pride Garth Brooks away. I've been with Jimmy Buffett thirty eight years. I've been with you know, Brooks and Dunn start to finish, Carrie Underwood start to finish, uh and Hollas Cooper twenty five years. I mean, you know, so many of these stories shine down the rock bands from the very beginning. Uh, you

know a lot of these. For us, we look for long term relationships as opposed to just bidding known tours. We like to be a part of the family. And that's how this company's built. And how do you convince someone someone who's in play as opposed to loyal? I mean, I was talking to Garth's manager. He says, Garth is super loyal. He's not leaving you unless something serious goes down. But and that comes to you. What happens, You ultimately make a sketch. How is the pitch and how do

you differentiate your spend it from competitors? Two ways to pass. Uh. Some are to to have their own creative person and or team. And in that case, that creative person and or team comes to us with the blueprints, if you will. They're the architect and we're just the house builder, and they come and they go, here, here it is, Here's what I want. How much is it? Uh? The other model is what you just said. They come to us

for what we call a turnkey solution. They go tell me what I need, you know, give me the blueprint, give me the plan, and designed the house and sell it to me. So you know, we do both of those, uh, and we like them both. But ultimately, uh, there are a number of bands who just want the absolute cheapest price possible. Uh, and we'll do You'll do a tour with them and the next year everything goes out to bed. Again. I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's not where

we prefer to go. We want to build a relationship and and greater than of the people that we work with throughout time. That's what we do. We developed career relationships. Now that's becoming harder and I think I think Bob, that you'll know this because going back to the Rolling Stones, and the Eagles and and all of those what we would call super legacy bands. What did they wanted? What

did the Stones want to do? They wanted to be a rock band forever and ever and ever you come up to today these people, a lot of these young artists, that's not their vision. They don't want to have a forty year career like the Stones, are the Eagles or Kiss or those. They want to do it for three years, five years, seven years. They want to make a lot of money and they can now and then get out

and go do something else. Uh. And again, as you know, Bob, because I know you were there, bands didn't make any money in the sixties and seventies, really into the mid eighties, and uh, you know we do Crosby Steals, Nash and Young and any combination thereof those guys, they're like me, we all do it for what the love of the game. And and some of the newer artists don't have that. So today is we're building relationships. We wonder will we get three years out of this artist, will we get

five years out of this artist? And sometimes it's not even their fault, as you know. Sometimes the artists put out the music, but then, but then music moves on, doesn't it. You know, grunge died, didn't it. You could still be great at grunge, but it died. Or the boy bands or the girl bands or whatever the you know, whatever it was. We did a band that you've probably never heard of, Westlife. Have you ever heard of Westlife?

Of course English Act. Yeah, the world's biggest boy band twice in business, twice the business of the Backstreet Boys are in Sync, or any boy bands, but Americans have never heard of them because they never cracked America. But we did them start to finish. Now they're back together now, but but they never cracked America, and and and and they they literally have done twice the business of any of the other boy bands that all Americans know. So

what percentage of your revenue as concerts right now? We do? It depends on the year, but but somewhere between fifty and sixty as concerts, and it depends on the year. And then of course, and the rest the rest is integration, Okay, so basically installed permanent installation different locations like Fillmore's and House of Blues and and the World War Two Museum down in New Orleans, and and Shop at Home Television Network and and and all kinds of theme parks and rods.

And we do cruise ships, you know, we outfit cruise ships. Just these extraordinarily boring things that you know, you you go tell people, hey, we put the lights in the they but then you go talk about a rock show and they get excited. I mean, we just did Tom Jones. I mean, how cool is that I did. I did the last four years of the rat Pack, you know, with the last four four years, they did two tours across four years before they never did anything again. That

was really cool. Getting to meet Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. And those people. You know, it was really cool. Uh But but that's sort of the sexy side of what we do. And then there are things that we do that we don't talk about and that we can't talk about. Anything you do for Disney, you sign an n d A and you can't talk about it. Most of the stuff you do for any White House you can't talk about. I can't tell you that I did uh Obama's parties for his children in

the White House. I can't tell you that maybe I did do it but I can't tell you that. Okay, so you're enlightening. Did you ever think of broadening to something else production staging? No. I'm one of those guys that believes, you know, do what you're good at. I'm not saying the other people are wrong, but uh, most of the people that I know that start out in one discipline are really good at it and really average at the other things they sneak into. Uh, And I'm

not really aware of anybody that that. I think you dilute your core business. And that's just the thought process. I mean, right now, there are a lot of artists that want a turnkey solution, they want a one stop shop. And you know, my point of view is, Okay, you're gonna get average sound, average lighting, average video, or you can go up to a really good lighting company and a really good sound company and a really good video company.

But you know, that's just two different modes of doing business, and I respect the other methods. Okay, how hands on are you? Well, it's ten o'clock at night and I'm sitting in my office. I mean, you're talking about flying all over the country and you're a million member mailing lists. How much are you working on bandit. Oh, I work fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Uh. Again, that balance shifts. It's some days it's fifty fifty. Some days it's one

way and or the other. But no, I'm extraordinarily hands owed and and all of my peers are retired, all of them are dead. Um in fact, fact, in fact, we had an original Bandit passed away yesterday. And Uh. But but I'm one of those guys. A. I'm a workaholic, and B I really enjoy what I do. I really enjoy it. I didn't just do it for money. I did it for the love of the game. I'm also big into football and college football, and I know a lot of football players, and I played football, and and

the emotions the same. You do it for the love of the game. The difference between me and Peyton Manning, who's a friend of mine. Peyton can't play football anymore, right, he's too old. I can still do rock and roll. Okay, if you go on your LinkedIn peage, you have like a million companies. What are all those companies? Through time? Um, the the in America up until nineteen one, everybody made their own everything in the world of lighting. Made your

own lights. You made your own trust, you made your own cable, and there was no continuity to it. In England and Europe because of legislation. Over there, it was illegal to make your own trust. It was illegal to make your own lights. You had to buy them from a certified manufacturer that met certain standards. So, uh, there were standards that existed over there, and there were companies. There was a guy named Eric Pierce owned a company

called show Group Production Services. Eric sadly passed away last fall. Eric actually invented a number of the devices that to this day you're used. As the standardization began to happen, so in Europe everything was standardized. Well. I went over to Europe in nineteen eighty and met Graham Thomas and John Walters who made all the aluminum trust structure a company called Thomas Engineering, and I said, I'm going to buy the American rights and set that up. And I

did so. I bought the American rights and set up Thomas Engineering. Within three years, everybody in America equipped making our own trust and started buying from from Thomas. They didn't know that I owned. I kept my ownership secret. Uh. Later on there was helped set up another company called tom Kat, which was another trusting company. So I had the two largest trusting companies in America. Then there was a control company that made the lightboards in England called

ah Lights. Well I bought the American rights to that. So now I owned the two largest trusting manufacturers as well as the console company. And uh so all of my competitors used stuff that I sold. Now again I kept my ownership secret. That's that's three of the companies that were on their Uh. Some of the other ones that are owned their, Lord god, I'm trying to remember. Uh own a company called b pH was a property

holding company. I own a company called for All Air owned some airplanes, and the airplanes are in that Uh what else do I own? Uh? Oh, Lord God, I'd have to look at the website. I've got several other entities of that nature, but but a lot of them are tied to that. I was for five years. I was part owner of skycam. I know you know what sky cam is, the flying camera. I was part owner of that for a number of years. Uh, I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff off. Do you do you still

own the board making in the trust? No? No, I've sold all that. I've sold all that. No, And I had a company for ten or twelve years called Authentic Stars. And what we did at Authentic Stars was we sold rock and roll merchandise uh into into mass mark merchandizing.

And we started with Walmart. So when you go in Walmart and see a big rack full of Kiss T shirts and Alice Cooper t shirts and you know what whatever in merchandise and all that, that was me, Me and and a guy named Charlie Anderson who put all the records and all the tapes and all the books and all the Walmarts and then all the best buys. So I just cotailed with with Charlie, and it was

it was myself, Charlie Anderson, and Bill Battle. Bill Battle was once the football coach at ut and and eventually the athletic director at Alabama. Well, we had this company together where we put all this show business merchandise into the music sections at all the Walmarts and then all of the best buys, which had everything to do with rock and roll and nothing to do with bandit lige,

you know what I mean. I just I just knew the right people, and so for years and years and years we put merchandise across all those stores, and then we eventually sold that company. That's one of them that's owned there. Okay, how often are equipment failures and uh, crew injuries? I mean you don't hear about them all the time, but you hear about a trust falling or a light falling. What what's going on in that world in the last twenty years. Not so much. I mean

it's it's very rare because of the safety. Again, standardization of all of this stuff came into play years ago, and it is really safe, and the p are getting trained better and and uh. And in the funny story, in nine two or three, R E. M was going out on a tour and they hired a new production manager, a gentleman named mikey Weiss who also did Neil Diamond for years and years. Mike, he's a great guy. Find myself on the phone before the tour goes out, and this is when R. E. M is just as big

as as big as they can be. And Mike, he's telling me, and you're gonna put fall protection on all of your lighting trusses so no one falls for twenty minutes. I'm arguing with the guy because I'm gonna have to spend ten thousand dollars to buy that, and I'm going if I have to. You know, I've got thirty tours out times ten thousand dollars, that's three hundred thousand dollars. I'm not doing this. And about ten minutes and it hit me, what are you doing? One fall will cost

you way more than three. So I thanked Mikey, We bought the equipment, we put it out, and from that date forward, Bandit lights wouldn't let anybody go up on the Trust without fall protection. And for five years we lost market share because everyone hated it. The unions hated Oh boy, you get to New York to Local one and try to tell a local one stage hand that they've got to put on fall protection to go up there, and all you get is, I'm not petting that ship on.

I've been doing this my whole life. Who the hell do you think you know? And and I would get phone calls and we lost business because tours said, you don't use bandit, they insist on fall protection. Were fast forward five six years, the whole industry did it, and of course now everybody does it. Now no one goes up. But we were the industry leader in that. And again it's all because of Mikey weiss Us. For those for

those unaware, what exactly is fall protection? You know that wearing a harness and being attached to a rope so that you know when you're up in the air thirty fifty sixty feet, if you do fall, you you fall four or five feet and then you just dangle and you know you don't fall to your death. And and really we you know, I'm aware of you know, two or three deaths a year globally. They're never really from

people falling it. It's from when a structure collapses, a stage roof falls or or tragically the uh the sugar Land thing where the top blew over. I actually designed the thing that blew over was a Thomas top and I was one of four designers of it. Now by then I had sold the company, but I was called as an expert witness because I had to go sit and testify as to why it failed. And it failed because the people that owned it didn't follow the instructions.

The instructions are very specific that when you put the top up, you've gotta have a certain amount of weight on the bottom and and and you got to do a B, C and D and they didn't and it blew over. So I remember the stones went on toward seventy two and they said we have to have the super Trooper lights. I remember seeing yes early eighties, uh when uh nine, O two, one five or whatever it was, and they had the lighting trusses that went down and up.

Supposedly Genesis did that first. What is what are the things on the cutting edge and lighting right now? Everything you just mentioned, all of the moving trust is. I mean, there's not a lot right now that hasn't been done because we're so technologically advanced. Right now, we're sort of in year five of of variations on a theme. Uh. You know, think about smartphones. You know, you've got iPhones and this phone and that phone and the Google phone.

They're all kind of the same, but by degrees they're a little bit different. You know that. I think it's the Google phone that will take any picture and smooth it out and make you look better. Uh, that's their unique thing. There are by degrees things of that nature, but for the most part, light's just moving, wiggle and change colors and make patterns. And and you know that there was a race to make them smaller and lighter and faster, and you know that continues to go on.

But again, think iPhone. Uh has there been a quantum shift in iPhones? Not really, it's by degrees from phone to phone. And that's really where entertainment lighting is. Right now, people are dabbling with lasers as a light source. And there is a small handful of lights that are lasers. We own several hundred of them. We've got a bunch of the new carry Underwood tour. But in America, anything that's called a laser falls under the control of the f d A and you have to get it, just

like Pyro. You have to get a permit in every city, and you have to have a laser guy come over, and they can't shine on the crowd and so on and so forth. So, uh, will laser lights ever become mainstream in America? Not until the legislation changes. Well, how dangerous are these laser lights? If you ask the f d A, they're extraordinarily dangerous. If you ask the people that make them, not at all. I mean, you know what,

what's the real answer? Who knows? Okay, you grew up when the South was still considered redneck correct certainly been to Nashville, which is pretty cosmopolitans some country element Memphis, which is really more Mississippi than Nashville. What's Knoxville like Knoxville, Uh, is you've got the Delta down in Mississippi and all of those sort of Delta influences and and and and jazz and blues and soul and all of that stuff.

And it's always been there, you know. But because of of the cotton trade and all that went with that for generations. Uh, Nashville uh and Knoxville we're both port towns because of a river. And if you go back a hundred and fifty years, and again because of my role here running the Chamber of Commerce and being involved in all of that, if you go back on a hundred and fifty years, the Knoxville and Nashville were just alike,

with one difference. Nashville had Norfolk and Southern Railroad and Ellen n Railroad, and so it grew faster and it became bigger because it had both rail and water. Knoxville only had uh water. Uh. Knoxville got a little bit of rail. Uh. So Knoxville remained much more rural, much longer, and even today Knoxville is more agrarian. It's more of an agricultural society. And there is no agrarian component too. Nashville,

there isn't. I mean it's you've been there recently probably. Uh. So we're still very agrarian, and you know, very agriculturally oriented and and very uh uh slow and uh. Quality of life's higher, costs, the livings lower. Uh, great place to live. I live on the lake, I can see the mountains. Uh. Most people that come here uh to work with bandit that lives somewhere else move here for all the reasons that I said. People are nice, cost the livings low, quality of life is high, airs clean, Uh.

And you don't have the uh, you don't have the traffic and all the issues that you do in a Nashville or a Memphis, which both of those are approaching the Los Angeles type situation. So what to coastal people or northern people not understand about the South. I think they understand the South much better now, because again you you brought up something that you may have read through.

My competitors were all in New York, Los Angeles, in London and the first thing they would say to potential clients was, you can't use Bandit Lights because it's a bunch of rednecks. They don't wear shoes, they don't have teeth, they don't know what they're doing. And and that's sold.

I mean that that did sell um. But in ninety three they turned around and looked and and Bandit Lights was doing Queen and Arrowsmith and Van Halen and r E M and Faith No More In Raging against the Machine and and and and Garth Brooks and so on and so on, and all of a sudden, and we had in the hair band days we were doing Quiet Riot and Crocus and Twisted Sister and Rat and all of those bands. And all of a sudden, Holy cow,

these rednecks are bigger than we are. And they got more lights, and they're doing more stuff, and and they started taking us seriously. And I don't know if you remember years ago there was a magazine called Performance. Do you remember, Yeah, well, Performance in ninety three did a bunch of accolades and uh, I forget exactly what the

words were. I think it was Bill Littleton that wrote it. Said, Uh, the company this year with the biggest bump in the biggest bump or whatever, and it was banded out of all the companies, not just lighting but everything and did a whole hearticle Ognis and so many. Way fast forward to two thousand and uh three, every major production company in America as an office in Nashville, Tennessee. You know

the Rednecks. That they've all come to the Rednecks. And for the most part, UH, production companies have deserted New York in l A for a number of reasons. First and foremost the cost. Uh. Secondly, they finally figured out that with my lights sitting in Nashville, I could beat to two thirds of the venues in twenty four hours. When you're when your lights are sitting in l A, you can be to ten of the venues in twenty four hours. It's why I fed x IS in Memphis.

It's centrally located. Put a pin in the map everywhere there's a venue, and you got this tremendous cluster east of the Mississippi, a small handful across the desert, and then a bunch up and down the west coast. And that's what I did at an early age. I put pins in maps and so today, everybody has an office in Nashville. Think of how many pop stars actually live in Nashville. It's it's countless. Cost the living's lower, quality,

LIFs higher. Uh. I've got a lot of friends that have sold their house in l ah you know, and gotten you know, one point five million dollars for their house. This is pre COVID, and then moved to Nashville and bought a house twice that size for seven hundred thousand and and got acreage with it and put the rest of the money in the bank. So, you know, the rest of the world kind of discovered what we always knew about cost of living and how friendly the people were,

and how centrally located it is. And of course everything is cheaper. The warehouses are cheaper, the labors cheaper. Uh and and the rest of the world is finally caught on to that. Okay, leaving aside bandit lights in the entertainment business to what degree? Just using you know, the pejorative descriptions, don't shoot the messenger. Is the South still racist? Red neck deep behind? Or is that passe to me?

It's pass a of course I would say that I'll live here, but let me let me tell you how I grew uh in the in the late fifties early sixties, at war Worse and mccruary's and Crests, which were the big department stores. We had men's and women's restrooms. We also had white and colored restrooms. We had white and colored water fountains, We had white and colored lunch counters. As a kid, I didn't see that distinction as anything

other than men and women. In other words, I didn't look at men and women's restrooms and think that women were less than men. You follow me, and the same thing between black and white. To me, it was different, that was all and and I, I and most people I knew, never had what you would call a racist point of view. Did those people exist, absolutely, you know. Did they use the inappropriate language? Sure they did. But

but I didn't grow up in that, you know. I grew up around it, But but I never saw it and was never aware of it really until uh jeez, I to college, probably because it was just how it was now by the time. By the time I was a senior in high school, the segregation was over the black and white water fountains and all of that stuff. But but but I never experienced people mistreating one another, never ever experienced it, and uh, you know, no, I don't think it exists. Now. I have a really unique view

about equality and racism and all of those things. And I'm not saying I'm right, but my opinion is just really simple. The best way to treat everybody fairly is just to quit talking about differences. You know that just we're all human beings, you know, we're we're all one, and and that's that's how I feel. I don't look at someone as black or white, or male or female, or transgender or gay, or they're just people. You know,

they're just people. And I think the sooner we stop pointing out distinctions, uh, the quicker will get to a better place. Now. Having said that, I understand the argument against it that if if we're not proactive, it will never end. And I do think most of the preconceived notion about racism and and rednecks and all of that

in the South most so that is not true. Having said that, my son played football all through high school, On any given Friday and Saturday night, my house would have eight or ten guys there after the game, and they'd spend a weekend and there'd be three white kids and seven black kids, and and nobody saw color. Nobody saw color, and and and the parents would come over and we were friends. And but there was this one kid. And he was that kid that that gives us all

the black eye. You know, his dad was a hardcore racist. And then whenever this kid was was not around any of the black kids, he would he would go there, you know, he would use all the inappropriate behavior. And I'd look at him and go, you know, you know, Bob, stop it, you know. But that's just how he was wired. You know. Are they out there? Sure they are? You know, there's anti Semits that don't like Jewish, you know. I mean, there's there's people everywhere that that you know, that don't

like somebody. Uh. And I'm not sure how you overcome that. But but no, buy and large, I don't think the South is anymore or less uh backwards than anywhere else at this point. Okay, of the three hundred people who work at Banded, how many are women are people of color? That's a great question of the people that Banded or female, and that includes road staff. We've probably got more uh female road staff than anybody else. Uh And uh nineteen

percent of the people that banded are people of color. Uh, And we don't hire people based on anything other than ability and a funny story. We've got eighteen people now in accounting. They're all women. And it's not about his it's not you know, we interview each time we make a hire. Guess what, it's usually females. We We've had males in accounting, but right now they're all females because the most qualified person through that door was a woman,

so we hired her. Okay, So you say, you work sixteen eighteen hours a day and you're flying all over the country, how do you maintain a relationship. I'm single? Yea. How many times you've been married? I've had five very serious failed relationships too, of which were marriages, and and and after the fifth one, I figured out it was me. And is that because you're so dedicated to the work. Yeah, I mean each you know, people would say you're married

to Bandit lies. No, I'm not, you know. And and then finally, after this last one, which which ended right right as COVID hit, I realized it is me, and they are right and and and my story now, which I believe had I had a girlfriend when COVID started, I wouldn't have one now because I was in d C, in l A and New York. You know, I was doing what I'm doing. And you know I've got a meeting tomorrow morning at six thirty that will probably run two hours to do with all of this, and uh,

who would put up with that? I wouldn't. But it's okay. I love it. Okay, Michael, this has been very edifying. I want to thank you for taking the time to speak to my audience. Bob, thank you very much, and again, please let me wrap up by urging anyone that hears this. Uh, we've got to get this entertainment association going. And once we get it going and living and breathing and in the shape of fashion and a format that everyone is comfortable with, we will have a defense mechanism against the

future shutdown. And if someone wants more information or wants to make contact with you or be active, how might they do that? Since one point three million people have all of my personal information, I have no problem in sharing it. Its first initial last name, M. Strickland S T R I C K L A N D at bandit B A N D I T lights, l I T. E S dot com. Shoot me an email and you can talk to anybody that's in my circle. I answer them all and Buddy back in the middle of COVID.

That was quite a task. It's not as daunting as now, but I answer everyone. There's no cookie cutter thing. It's it's an answer. But I find I get I get more traction that way. Well, you're doing yeoman's work. It's really admirable. Hopefully Law come to Fruition. Thanks again for doing this. Thank you, Bob, appreciate it. Have a great evening until next time. This is Bob left Sex