Winky Fairorth

would go to Michael Tate. And so Michael Tate his Australian and probably seventy three years old ish by now, and he'd be pissed at me to tell the world that. But is he involved in the business with already know, sir. But he loves going there and he loves building ship for his bathroom or something like that. And his name is still on the sign. And you know it was part of my doing was to create this legacy for

this man who he goes back. So he started in Australia, he immigrated to England in the city D's and he was working at the speakeasies in London and fell upon Yes and became you know, he answered the magical question in the industry of can you drive the van which was resounding yes, and he became the fifth member of the Let's just speak clear the van right, like is gonna take us to the next game? Like a raised his an and said I'll do it. So he was

interested in lighting at the time. He was, you know, rummaging the streets of London with Richard Hartman, stealing park hands off the street and building them in their apartment together. And his passion was lighting. And so when he joined with Yes, he did all their lights. And it was his idea to put the group in the round in eight, which changed the game. It totally changed the game, and in what way to change the game several ways. So number one, you're now selling every ticket in the arena.

And when you think about what the arenas were like then, it ain't what they're like now, right. You weren't hanging a million pounds from the ceiling. You're ground stacking. You could barely get a lighting rig. And and you know, those buildings weren't built for sports back then. Who knows what the hell they were built for. So in addition to selling the tickets, he had to solve the production requirements. So what is different in playing in the round the

sounds quite different. Well, he just happened to have a best friend named Roy Claire who was doing sound for Yes, who happened to be the biggest sound company in the world at the time, and they figured it out, right, how do you light a show in the round? It's completely different. You don't have a backdrop to light. You're now kind of the rig becomes an iconic kind of structure that's almost like a sculpture. And if you go back and look at Yes in the round, it was

a big star that was beautiful to look at. And then you got to teach your band to play in the round because they don't know how to do that. And so Michael overcame all those obstacles and with great success, and because of his relationship with Claire Brothers at the time, he was getting ready to be boot it out of England and he came to Lititz, Pennsylvania, which is where

Claire Brothers started. They were both Roy and Jean were born in in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and we were in or maybe geographically challenge were it is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, five miles north of the city and lancas or sixty miles

outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dutch Country. Total like, we'll have Amish buggies strapped to our building at any given moment, on any given day, which is a great contrast of rock and roll, right, Like, it's a great you know, you could be building Ozzy Osbourne at the time and you'll have an Amish buggy at your front door. It's pretty pretty wild. And so he started a shop there and as soon as he came to America, Barry Manilow wanted to play in the round, Diana Ross wanted to

play in the round. Kenny Rogers played in the round. So he was that he specialized in the round only because that's what he succeeded in and people wanted to follow suit. He was a lighting guy, right and so if you go back, I started in were and today today maybe the day that is the thirty fifth anniversary, I'm not sure what the day was, but it was the first two weeks of April, so I have no idea, but it's thirty five years to the day that I walked in that door. And at the time we were

a lighting company. But we were a lighting company and no fucking idea what we were doing, Like let's let's slow down a little bit. So when he got into lighting, were was there, like Claire was the big sound company, and there was Shoko there. Well, there was Shoko which was just getting to They were just starting right like the very Lights that went out with Genesis at the time. We're just happening right in. The way I tell the story is Shoco was probably spending more on research and

development at that time than we were grossing. Right. We knew there was going to be a problem, and it was the staging that was consistently bailing us out. Because to be a lighting company at that time, you would go to the bank, you'd borrow a bunch of money, you'd build your system, you'd hire the guys who were freelance guy, and you would hope to God that the band would pay for the equipment before it became obsolete. But it never did. Right, Well, that would that would

me that you're running it in the red. It was happening, but the technology was innovating so fast and being driven mostly by very Light. But we had some great clients at the time. We had YouTube, we had Kenny Rogers, so we had something just because not everybody sophisticated. Go on, tell them what a very light is. That was the first moving light with a dichroic filter that could change color at any moment. And I think it was Genesis. I don't remember the exact tour. Yeah, they had four

hundred of them. He was the most mind blowing thing you've ever seen. And from that moment on, it was a game change. Okay to the degree you know what was going on before before? Yes, in the round, Um, well, there was there was a ton of companies doing this. You know, there was t TF, there was Bob C. There was a bunch of company is that we're doing it, but nobody was doing it on the level that Genesis and Choko were doing it. Nobody was doing it on

the level that Claire brothers were doing it. And so we had something to aspire to, right, We had something. We we fell into a niche that we could specialize in, and that was building stages. Nobody, you know, stages weren't stages then, they were drum risers. They were risers. And Okay, when you say stage, you mean the stage, the lights and everything. No, I mean the set. I mean the set. It's it's the performance environment. For the artists, it's their

living room. Lights are a commodity there rented. Video is now a commodity, it's rented. Sound is now a commodity. It's rented. But when you get to staging, that's very customed to the artist and it has to go in and out just as fast as everything else does. So you have to kind of commoditize it in a very custom way so that it works for everybody. And we

consistently spent time reinvesting in our company. Like so when a show arrives in the morning, which most people have no idea, right, so just take any show these days, that's twenty trucks of equipment. It gets to the gig at seven o'clock in the morning, right on the day of the show. You've got until sound check to put it together. And ideally, for what we do, we put it together with no fasteners and no tools because guess what you lose at the gig, right, fasteners and tools.

So what holds it together? If there's intuitive connections which are very proprietary and very innovative and something that we have collected in our arsenal for thirty forty years, what is what would that be it would be a conical connector of some type that is very intuitive and very safe and might be spring loaded, might have a clip on it. You know, there's all kinds of ways that you can make clever connections these days with innovation and

technology and machining. Okay, let's go back to the narrative film. Okay, so you're doing everybody in the round, and then what's the next step. Next step is selling the lighting company in nineteen eight seven to Nock Turn Herbie and Journey for argument's sake, because they were also very forward thinking in the fact that hey, we're a huge band, We're going to do this a lot. I don't we in our own production company, and they did it right, and we were pretty attractive to them. At the time. We

had a bunch of clients. Bruce Springsteen was just going out um with what the hell was the name of the tour? No I was born in the USA. I believe that was like his big commercial break, and that was the Stadium Giant Stadium tour. We had some crazy Okay, you're talking about YouTube, you talk about the very lights are basically in that break from eight to yourself to Herbie, what services is Tap providing lighting and staging and we're losing money on the lighting and we're we're breaking even

on the staging to pay for the lighting. So we're thinking we're doing well or not? Okay, just to be clear, since you start within the round, how does it evolve to staging in general? Uh? I don't understand that question. Be more specific. Okay, it sounds you know, Michael Tap, that's his first name, Michael. He started off doing Yes in the round, Kenny Rodgers in the Round, etcetera. So he's the in the round guy. But in the round

was just another form of staging, let's say. I mean there were there were plenty of other shows we were doing at the time, but the boutique, you know that the expertise came with playing in the round because we had solved the problems right, and it's like it's like

doing a boxing match in a in an arena. Michael aspired to getting a seating chart from a Frank Sinatra show when he first did Yes, Like, I'll just use a boxing seating chart because that must work, right, Okay, But the main motivation was to sell the back of the house, which you couldn't do absolutely the promoters and the managers just loved him to death. Okay. So now to sell the lighting to Nocturn Journey and Herbie Herbert, Yes,

and what does that leave you with? The stage that leads you with enough money to go decide that you want to build a real company. And so that was about we broke ground on the first facility I believe in the world that was custom built to build staging and scenery for the touring entertainment business. And we designed the building so that we had enough space to set something up, and we designed the building to be a real factory. So like the last place that that all

the gear ended up was in the paint booth. The paint booth was by the loading dock, and off it went in the truck. And it was the beginning of kind of professionalizing and maturing a carnival industry, right okay. And when that happened, when you sold to Nocturn and you built your building, how many people how many employees were there then? Oh? My, probably twenty okay, And right

now there are si okay. And that building, my might add, was a postage stamp compared to the five hundred thousand square feet of production facilities that we now currently operate with. Just to jump ahead, you built a rehearsal hall like six or eight years ago. Oh no, two years ago? Is it that recently? Yeah? Okay, how ten years to get it together? Right? Right? Right? So another game changer. Okay,

tell my audience. It's a game changer because prior to having a facility like that, these shows have been getting complicated since the nineties, and when you take a show to go rehearse it, and and rehearsing sometimes means we don't really need the artists. We need to rehearse this. Technically, there's no place to do it, right. Where do you

do it? The a market arenas or books solid with basketball hockey concerts, So you'd go to like Sheboygan nowhere or Baton Rouge nowhere somewhere that's a sea market building. And now all of a sudden, you have to compromise the show that you're trying to flush out because the building is not big enough, tall enough to support it. Something that drove us crazy for a long time to be able to have the luxury of having basically, we have a staple center in Littitz, Pennsylvania that has no seats.

We can hang a million pounds from the it's just the stage, Agari. It's not something like as big as an arena. It is as big as an arena with no seats. You take you take that hockey dasher and get rid of the seats. It's a hundred feet tall. You can hang. We we've we've rehearsed stadium shows inside our rehearsal facility. It's that big. Okay. So in a year, approximately how many shows do you do? Wow? No freaking clue. I mean we probably have twenty five shows on the

road right now, just touring shows, just touring. Okay, so those touring shows. If you have one rehearsal hall, it sounds like you needed an additional rehearsing hall. Yeah, but it took ten years to get this one, and it's in Lidditz, Pennsylvania. Like the thought of doing something like that out here in California it's crazy. It's it's unaffordable, you know, it's almost unaffordable where we live. But it's a luxury to us, and it supports an industry that

we feel very strongly about. So if the thing can pay for itself, we're quite ecstatic about it because to be able to take the show that you're building next door, it's really it's it's helping everybody, Okay, And how many acts after you build it literally come rehearse. It's booked. It's booked all the time. Ariana Grande just left last week. There's something incredibly top secret in there right now and it's going. Okay, So let's just assume I'm going to

rehearse in your room. What how much time do I need? Depends on how big your show is, um, and it depends on your artists, right. Some some artists rehearse for a month. They want to get the choreography, they want to get the programming. Some artists rehearse for three days. Some artists don't rehearse it all. You know, some well and John his show within our rehearsal facility. But that man can go sit at the piano and bang it out for a show with no problem. Right. The guy

does not need to rehearse. His environment doesn't matter. Right. His environment is his seat at his piano with the relationship to his musicians. He doesn't even know where he is. Okay, let's go back. I've seen the show. The show is great. But at the end he goes on like a little you know, elevator rod. Okay, but there's a change that he looks. Okay, Well, of course there is, because he's got an insurance agent who's probably stressed out of his brain, like,

oh my god, what are we gonna do if he falls? Okay? So that was driven by insurance usually those things. I mean, hey, if if it would make you feel comfortable, we'd strap you in. Like ideally you want to keep everybody safe. We have other redundancies of safety, but who knows what could happen to somebody you know? Okay, but that was driven not by the act, by insurance. Can't speak to the directly, Okay. Let me ask you a quiet question, do you know? Yeah? Okay? Okay. I don't need to

push that because you know Elton's hips. He's not moving to fight, right, Okay. But let's go back. So you sell to doctorne you're in the staging business, and you professionalize it by our facilities. Yeah. And and then the next thing that happens in this world is our friends at Q Prime in Metallica decide to fight with Napster, which for us was the best thing that ever happened in the world. Okay, you gotta explain it. Well, there we are. You know you could say, oh god, you

guys were genius, what a great strategy. Have nothing to do with it, didn't even know what was happening at that point in time. The paradigm has shifted, as you write about, as you talk about, artists don't make money selling records. They don't make money on their recordings. They make money in the arenas. And now, all of a sudden, touring becomes a brand. Touring becomes your revenue stream and

becomes the way you make your money. And so the show I think has changed dynamically immensely, right, Like it's it's not even the same as it used to be. It's now a spectacle. Right, There's a few artists who still have the musicality to go into an arena and use an oriental rug and a microphone stand. Very rare, right, very rare. Even some of the legends who have gone through their careers without having big productions, all of a

sudden have a nicer living room. Okay, in terms of ticket sales, I know this is not literally your area of expertise. Do you think that production makes it so people come or these if you assuming you can play, you can sell the tickets without production. Uh, it's a tough question answer based on the fact that I don't have the facts, but I can tell you what I

feel like. I mean, there's so much competition out there, and I think that the buyers are incredibly educated and they know who's putting on a spectacle and who's not. And so it's a choice, right. It's how much of a groupie or a music fan are you where you don't care about the production. But if you look at what social media has done to being at the event and having a big splash at the event, game changer. It's a total game changer. And every artist that we

deal with knows what every other artist is doing out there. Okay, just to be clear, you seem to say that a lot of musicians couldn't play without the staging anywhere. No, no, no, I didn't say that. I I don't think that they could sell as many tickets. They certainly can play musically, Come on, they could go play at a club. Well, some can and some can't. Okay, But okay, so now you professionalize it when you say Cliff Bernstein que prim in Napster. You're just talking about the change in the

scene or something specific that they did. Well. They they took Napster down, right. They they single handedly changed the the landscape of the industry. I believe it wouldn't have gone the way it is had that not happened. I don't believe if the artists are still making money like they used to make on those records. Maybe touring is not as important as it as it is now, but it became the source of revenue. Right, So it's your brand.

What do you want your brand to look like? It didn't used to be, right, what did it used to be look like? You'd go on tour, you'd lose money to promote a record. Now, I don't know why they were losing money. So they didn't realize how much money was out there, and a lot of times they didn't want to charge, worrying about fan alienation. But okay, I know from talking to the Metallica guys whatever that generally speaking, let me put it this way, does the act own

the stage? No, sir, you own it all. Well. We used to sell it in the eighties and the nineties, and I traveled around the world to several depots. There was one in upstaging in Chicago. There was one in Um explain it's a lighting in and trucking company that has a depot in Chicago. There was Mojo Barricades in Holland, which had a great storage facility. We had a storage facility and it wasn't good for the earth. It just

wasn't like this. So that the scenario that existed back then is somebody would spend a lot of money for a stage that they would own it. The lawyers and the accountants and the manager of the artist could never agree what to do with it when they were finished with it, because they thought it was this giant asset that was completely reusable. But the fact of the matter

is it was completely depreciated. Nobody was going to bring that thing out, and it was stored in such a way where very few humans could go find it and know what the hell to do with it to begin with. So it was hundreds of trucks. You think about some of these shows that you two's, the Rolling Stones, the Teena there are shows were big and they toured often, so hundreds and hundreds of trucks throughout the world just sitting there now there were people like us who were

collecting rent on storage. But aside from that, it was a terrible thing for the environment. Okay, just to be clear, I come off the road fifty city tour. It literally sits in the truck for years. No, no, well that it could sit in the truck. In some places, they would literally because trailers are cheap, they'd go stew it somewhere in California, Arizona. But we had, you know, climate controlled environments where we would put things they would never

see the light of day ever. And so now it bothered me to the point where I tried to change the business model, and I thought to myself, it's like renting a car. Right. There is a very specific armature of every stage set that's like an erector set, the decking,

the stairs, that elevators, a lot of the mechanics. There's a guts to that show that you see every time you walk into arena that nobody's actually seeing, right, it could be aft of the guts, but you dress that guts up with all the stylistic versions of how we portray these shows, and now all of a sudden, you've got something that's actually sustainable and we're able to give more of a show to an artist than we could before because we're getting some of it back, and we're

getting the useful bits back. We're getting all the automation, all the computers, we're getting all the power transmissions, and they're quite easily recyclable. And what is not recyclable at this time scenery? Right, scenery or something that's so stylistic for that artist or that show that it would easily be identified. Oh that was for so and so or this was what do you do with that stuff? Chuck it? Okay?

So there's this big switch in the internet napster era where you know, the tour is supposed to being advertisement for the Record of Flips, and the record is the advertisement for the tour. In the twenty years that have gone by since the advent of Napster, what other changes of taking place? So I I would attribute the next biggest change in our business and in our industry to the Rolling Stone Steel Wheels tour. I think it was.

And Mark Fisher was a set designer for that show who since passed away, but he was one of the pre eminent stage designers. To stop your for a second, I know from reading your materials. You have a scholarship. Und Mark was a dear friend of mine. He passed away from a cancer that he should have never passed away from. He was English, didn't go to the doctor as much as he should have. Um Mark was the first guy in this world who could take the discipline

of architecture and move it over into set design. And Mark's history goes back with Roger Waters the inflatables from the Wall. Mark Mark built the very first wall by himself and operated with his partner Jonathan at the time. And our scholarship is to try to show architectural students in England that this opportunity exists, because our industry is a secret and it's very hard for young talent, whether their engineers, designers, architects, it's very hard to bust into

this industry. I've made it a challenge to myself to go around and speak at schools through the scholarship whatever it is, to explain those opportunities that exist. But it's hard convincing people that that that does a real job, right, It's a real job, not like going to an engineering firm. Right, Well, what your desiders. But I don't want to lose the threat. So what happens with Mark Fisher in the snow Wheel sto So it's the first time that outdoor stadium show

was stylistically architecturally done. Prior to that, every show you would have seen outdoors had looked like two cereal boxes with a shoebox in the middle, like a diorama. And this the two towers on each side held the p a and the tower in the middle was a roof, which we thought would keep an artist dry in the rain, which it never because the roof was so high and

it always raised sideways. And Mark was the first guy to talk Mick Jagger to the fact that hey, you're gonna do an outdoor show and you're gonna get wet, and if you get wet, I can make you something that looks like something. And it happened, and on steel wheels. It was a big deal. That was a big deal. That thing was like three hundred ft wide in the stadium, which you'd never be able to do if you tried to keep the artist dry, right, And so I think

that changed the game. It also led to these massive globally produced tours which became much more logistically challenging. So the The Steel Wheels Tour was the last tour that Michael Ahearne did with the Rolling Stones and the next tour, Jake Berry came into play. And Jake really the role of those people are, so Jake would be the production manager of the tour man, you know, the organizer of moving this army of people and equipment around and Jake

funny enough, right, there's always six degrees of separation. Jake was Rick Wakeman's keyboard road you with Yes, and so he had known Michael Tad for quite some time and he was out with you know, Motley Crue and Metallica. He had a huge career leading up to this, so he had enough information, but it had never been executed the way that he executed on the next Rolling Stones tour, which was the Voodoo Lounge and so on that particular tour, we changed the way the show moved. What was called

universal production became a much bigger system. So when you do a stadium. When you do a stadium show, you will have two or three sets of steel, which is your infrastructure to hang everything that kind of moves in and out and leap frogs as we call it. So if one's being built in one city, one's being performed on in another city, and the other ones being torn down, and you're playing a shell game of city to city. But Jake kind of took the bull by the horns

to make universal production a much bigger scope. So the things that we can take in and out the day before a stadium show and the night after the show has grown exponentially to the point where it's probably bigger than what you're taking on any arena show. Right Taylor Swift, the last Taylor Swift, where we had fifty two trucks just of our equipment universally going in and out of

a stadium. It's unheard of. And Jake pioneered that to change the game, to make it more efficient to have these giant shows touring in a stadium, right, because it's all to the bottom line. Now, okay, so that's changed. What else is happening in the modern era? Now? If you go past that, it's automation, So flying artists, flying cameras, uh what we we refer to it as axes of motion. So if you go to a Circuit de Sela show in Las Vegas Strip, we're automating all of those shows

that's now spilled into rock and roll. Rock and roll has always had automation in a show, but maybe like three axes of motion. Now the Red Hot Chili Peppers have a thousand axes of motion on the show. How do you control that? That's all done with automation, and so we we used to have little gray boxes with switches on him and you'd pray to God the light was green and you press the button and something would happen. That's not safe anymore, and that's not the way you

can control a huge show in the marina. So the software now has a ton of flexibility to control the movements. It's all time coded, usually to the music with the lights in the video, and it provides several safety layers of redundancy. So like if I tell the computer to do something and it knows that something is happening over here that's not where it should be, it won't let you do it. That ain't how it used to work. You'd press the button and if somebody's foot was in

the way, you'd hear him scream. Right, that's not what we want to be doing anymore. So automation now it's another company, almost within our company. Right, we have a software platform. It's called Navigator and it runs probably a hundred shows every night in the world. Okay, so if you use this stuff, how do you sink it with a performance? You program it. You program it, just like automated lights are being program and in fact, we could control the lights, we can control the video we go in.

We're usually underused in that environment, but we have to be robust enough to anticipate anything. And if you look at it in a seirarqu show or in a theater show, it's it's very robust. So these these types of software are now controlling the Metropolitan Opera House, right, Any old opera house that had line sets in their in their stage, old fashioned counter, they're all being replaced with automation. Now okay, I mean with the sand bags and you pull it

up again. Okay, but let's assume you're a rock band and you have all these things. So how do you keep everything and think the band as a click track or what depends on the band, But usually there is a time code that things are being clicked too. I mean, let's face it, bands always want a jam bands, right, but not everybody's a band. And if if if somebody like the Red Out Chili Peppers want a jam, you can make it happen. You can put spots in the set where you can do it. Some spots might be

highly programmed, some spots might not be. But then there's other artists where every breath and every step is highly choreographed and everything has to be in sync, so there's click tracks happening all the time. Okay, let's go back to you personally. You're from where Philadelphia, Philadelphia, and you grow up. What does your father do for a living? Oh, he was a professional alcoholic, professional alcoholics. That's kind of rare for I could say that. Yeah, No, none of

this had anything to do with family upbringing. I lived in Philadelphia. I went to college in Millersville University, which just happened to be four miles away from Lidditz. My best friend in college was a man by the name of Barry Claire who I met day one and it was Roy Claire's son, and we became best friends. And at some point in college I needed a job and I met Michael Tate, who was like the Willie Wonka of entertainment, who my interview was basically, what can you

do I was like, I don't know. I was nineteen years old. Can you operate a router? I'm like, no, I'm Jewish, we don't use tools. What are you talking about? He said, what's the square to forty nine? I said seven? He said, can you start today? And it went pretty well. And at the time you were employee number I mean, how many people were working? Well, okay, eleven sometimes seen I mean obviously talking to you, you have the gifted gap,

You're a very smart guy, whatever. But if someone sees you, you're a guy in a T shirt, how did you end up as CEO UM because we were I saw the vision. I saw this man, and I had the vision of what of what could happen with this? I mean I was growing up as a kid. I was a drummer. I used to go to shows at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and sneak a camera in to shoot.

You know. I would take my my zoom lens and I would hollow out an Italian role and wrap it up in Suran rap, put letters and tomato on the top. I go shoot David Bowie, I go shoot jet I just love music and to see that opportunity like me, like everybody else would go to all those shows and have no idea what it took to make those shows. None, you'd say, oh, the Spectrum did a great job tonight. Right, had nothing to do with the Spectrum. So he was a very inspiring man with a great sense of humor.

He's Australian, he's had a great sense of humor. And we were living the dream. It was a hobby, right, but it was a business. But I had to professionalize that. I was going to split. I was going to go to Universal Studios. I had some friends that were going to build the theme park in Orlando. Michael had some weird business partner. And I was done and I said I'm out of here, and he said, no, you're not. I'm firing that guy. You're sticking around and we took off. Right,

that was part of building the building. I said, if you want me around, this has to You have to be invested in this, just like I'm invested in this. I had no idea I was going to be invested in something for thirty five years. But fuck, it's been a good ride. Right, Okay, So ultimately, even though Tate's name was on the building, so to speak, you were

the man with a vision. Yeah, I mean Michael. Obviously he had a vision before I showed up, But I don't think he had a vision this far into the future that I don't think that's how his brain worked. And did you have to put any money in it? Personally? Sweat? I didn't have any money, Okay, no money. I mean back then, we would be working eight nine hours a week. Nobody ever told us that. You know, you had to

come to work, and nobody left at five o'clock. Right, You left when you knew that was all you could do for the day. But you knew when the show had to leave, and that's all you cared about. And it ain't like that anymore. We'll tell us how it's like today. It's millennials, you have personal experience. What does that look like? No, I, in all fairness, right, we

have a great organization of people. Like. The thing that's very difficult that I experienced younger in my career is every show is a fire drill, and after ten buyer drills, you don't want to go outside anymore. You're like, I don't care if the buildings burning, right, Like, it's it's not right for a human to just get up every day for a new emergency. And we had to learn that in our business, which is why our business is

so robust right now. Right there was a moment in time where I turned around and and the business was so robust because the industry was so dysfunctional. Everything was an emergency, nothing was planned. Most of the time, we're building a show after tickets go on sale. Right It's it's crazy phenomenon, and it's not for no reason other than we can make up our mind. So I looked at that and said to ourselves, ship all of a sudden, our business is actually more robust than the industry. It

can't support us. So we had to go find other avenues of work, which we've done very successfully now but it's taken a long time, but it was driven by the dysfunction of rock and roll. And then tell us what the other avenues are. So we have the automation company as a very big avenue. You we can be doing shows that we're controlling that we've built nothing. We

have a theme park business that's off the hook. We have proprietary software that's in all the theme parks with whosever name is on the title, that doesn't involve driving a roller coaster, but it involves driving everything else that's in a in a theme park that's not a ride, And there's a lot of that, Right, how do you keep people amused? Why they're waiting in line? There's a lot of stuff happening. Uh, Kinetic architecture has become a

huge thing. So if you stand at Times Square these days and you look up at the billboards, you say to yourself, why aren't these billboards moving? Wouldn't it be so much cooler? And next thing you know, there's a coke thing that's moving in and out. So we're building scoreboards in arena that have kinetic architecture because all these people get a buzz from rock and roll, right, Like, if you go do a corporate event, they want to have a rock star there. All of a sudden, a

corporate event is now a rock show. But there's speakers and there's sales people, but at the end of the day, it's a rock show. And so we've always been the red headed step children of theater. But theater has always stole our ship and put it on Broadway and put in the West End. The same thing has happened in architecture Now it's not really good enough to go build

a billion dollar building. You've got to build a billion dollar building that has a gag in the lobby or has something on the side of it to attract people, to get the social media, to have people gathering, and it's happening every day. Now, Okay, you got into it for the music. Are you still as excited about the music? Absolutely? Yeah, it's challenging, right, like it's um, it's a different type of music the days. But you know, let's just talk about the show we went to the other night, right,

the Michael Bublet Show. It's all about the music, right, But there's an awful lot of work there to get that performance environment to be about the music, right, you still have to have an elegant delivery of that show. And you know, Bruce Allen and Randy Berswick, they've been doing this for a long time, right, that's the management company.

They they see the value in it. Um, Randy, it's funny that you know both my friends Tony Chatto and Randy Burwi, because I've always assimilated those two organizations, which are on either side of the country, is very similar. The way that they worked with their musicians and the way that they worked with production. And that's que Prime and Bruce Allen Town and Randy has been doing this. I did my first show with Randy Bryan Adams, Waking Up the Neighborhood in or something, and we've had a

great relationship since and he gets it right. Like every element that you saw in that show. We have toiled over it with designers with costs because at the end of the day, a guy like Randy and myself have to make the decision between art and commerce, right what cost what what kind of bang do you get for your buck? And what are we doing here? And it's that's a pretty pretty product that we have out there. Okay, let's talk about YouTube for a second, just to separate

things out. YouTube did their arena tour with the screen in the middle they walk through, Okay, experience, how much of that is you? Is? The screen? Screen is ours? But I mean the video product is a commodity. It's rented, it comes from somebody else. But everything that that's mounted to the way it's deployed, the structure that holds it, and the winches that low raise and lower it are all ours. Okay, since you're talking about winches. Let's talk about safety. You go to the gig and you see

all this stuff hanging. Are these buildings strong enough to hold all that stuff? Sure? There's a ton of advance work that goes into these shows, you know, from the production manager to the house rigger, to the engineers of the building to the end third party engineers that we all hire. It is advanced months before you get there. And buildings, you know, these production teams will travel. If there's a building that they're not sure of, they'll go there.

They'll go to the building and do a site survey. And it's very well thought out. And you've been doing this for thirty five years. Have there ever been any accidents? Uh, accidents happened? Yeah, there have been accents. There was an accident that happened last week in Cotchella on Saturday. Right, Um, but they're rare. But that guy wasn't wearing a safety harness, right, true, But most people don't. I don't know. I can't speak to that. I mean it's you know, years ago, safety

harnesses didn't exist. Right, people were walk in the beams of a rafter. Um, it's called an accident. Yeah, But if you look at the amount of shows that happens. I would assimilate it to the airline industry. Right. You look at the amount of shows that happened versus the amount of plans to take off every single day, and the times you hear about an accident, it's an accident. Just to be clear that we could I don't know the details, but we could attribute that accident couchel to

human error. Does the equipment ever fail? Sure? Yeah, it's like a car, right, does your car ever run out of gas? Does your car run out of oil? Does a bearing pop? Absolutely? But we spend a lot of time trying to mitigate anything that we can expect. We've probably had every single thing go wrong that you could imagine in testing or in our life. So when we go to build something, we kind of know what could fail. Okay,

So you talking about all these new businesses. They come to you, or you pitch them, they come to us. But there's a few pitches I mean, are are Our shows are our best form of advertising. Right when when you go into a building, you'll see our set cards, You'll see our product. We are very well branded. People know our equipment and the stage hands throughout the country

welcome our equipment. Right. We we spent a lot of time trying to empower local stage hands who put our shows together, to make them feel part of the show. That was never done before. Right. So what I mean by that is if you pull a cart off of a truck in a building, that that cart is going to tell you everything there is to know about what's in that cart, where it goes on the show, what it's called. So instead of starting, Hey, where do you want me to put this, they now have the vernacular

to speak that the entire show speaks. They know where everything is. They feel empowered, and they feel part of the show, and that's made a huge difference and it's great for our brands. So let's say you have an arena show. How many stage hands are with the tour and how many are picked up at the gig? You know,

that depends on how big the show is. That's that's not an easy question answer, but I would say somewhere there's usually somewhere between forty and hundred people traveling with the show, and that might include all the touring personnel as well as the band and the artists and that party. And then on the average and arena show, might have somewhere between sixty and a hundred stage hands for the

load in and the load out, So it's a busy day. Okay, let's just assume for the sake of argument, I need a stage and I don't go with Tate. Who are the competitors? You could be a competitor tomorrow. Right. The barrier of entry to build one show is very low, but the barrier of entry to support that show around the world for add and twenty performances is out of hand high. So there's other companies that exists that have

found niches in the business. And look, we don't want to do every show, right, that's not what we're that's not what we're here for. And some shows we might not be able to make a difference some show those might be small enough. Is where I can't make a difference. On savings during the road, right, operational savings is where we really shine. We may be very expensive at the beginning, but at the end of that tour we will be a lot cheaper than anybody else. That's how we mark.

Is there any company close in stature or size? I don't think so. And is everything's for sale? But is your vision at the end of the day to cash out and sell it or do you decline offers or what. Um. It's an interesting question because we what we go through is investors to evolve the company. Right Like, it's gotten to the point where it's quite large, and every time you want to go do a merger and acquisition, buy a new machine, you'll get a little sick of going

to the bank to borrow money. So we have taken on some partners, but the core group of the manager timan team is in it, and we're all in it. And if you told me tomorrow that I can't do this for a living, I don't know what the funk I do? I really don't, Okay, speaking of you personally, you know the facilities and lit it's how many other facilities you have around the world. We have a place in Las Vegas, we have a couple of places in London. We have some offices in Asia. Um, but that's pretty

much it. The major fabrication is happening in Pennsylvania. Now you used to live there and you recently relatively recently moved to l A. What does that look like for you with the main enterprise there. It's it's saving my life right, because I was never put on this earth to be in charge of operations. It was survival and at some point it becomes brutal that you know, I would have never expected that the business got to be as big as it is now, and that's not what

I was putting on this earth to do. So for me to live in l A, we work on ourselves phones, that's how we work. We work communicating. I still speak on telephone calls to all my clients, and I think that's really important. And to live out here in l A, there's enough. It's it's actually created more work, right. We're in the center of it, all right, It's nuts. I was renovating our house over the summer last summer and I spent a bit of time at the Beverly wilsh

I had more. I did more work there, but I did being at home. It's a crazy town, it really is. And I'm very close to Sony Studios, which is still the best room in Los Angeles to rehearse the show. Right when the Forum changed going back to being the Forum, there are in a lot of places to rehearse out here anymore either, So being close to Sony is also quite nice. How often do you go as often as they want me? Which is what once a month, once every four months? There's no I was there two weeks ago,

there's there's no schedule, okay. And how often are you on the road in general? Well, I've come upon a time in my life where I'm very fortunate to be able to work and work with the people that I want to work with, and work with the people who are setting you up to succeed. And I know that sounds a bit odd, but there are some shows out there that are very hard to navigate, and that's a great proving ground for our younger employees, which I don't

have the mental capacity to deal with anymore. Okay, So let's say, let's say let's start with a brand new act. There are acts now that are go on arena tours for their first tour, Sam Smith, this first tour other than some private shows? Was it an arena? So someone's gonna be working with me with savvy enough to make contact with you? Right then, how does the discussion begin? Well, the discussion always begins with what's the germ of the

idea and who is providing it? And it's never the same, right, So It could be the artist vision, it could be the artist's interior designer. It could be the lighting designer. It could be a real set designer that they they went to see so and so, and how how do I get one of those? But it's never the same. It's never the same. Does anybody ever come and say, I want something spectacular, but I don't know what it is? Absolutely?

And then what happens? And then we'll point them towards some people that we think might help them and will interact with all of them, because at the end of the day, no matter who the designer is, there is nobody better than us that can interpret art and commerce. Right, we're the only people that are going to be able to say, hey, this thing right here, it's gonna cost a million dollars if you want to do it this way, you could do it for four grand, and maybe it's

not worth doing at all. Right, we have the ability to take things off the paper, create a project list and items list, and basically handed to management as a Chinese menu. Okay, so generally speaking, you're doing no designing, uh, none that we will take credit for be paid for it. So now, uh, I have an intermediary okay, I'm I. I'm the manager. Whenever I have a vision and I give you the vision, what's the next step, we'll draw it, will create that item list and we'll you know, how

long are you going on tour? Are you going internationally? Are you going in airplanes? Like, we've got to find a bit out. How many shows can you amortize this over? We've got to do a bit of the work that a good manager would do, because sometimes those managers aren't clever enough or don't have the experience to understand what they're getting into. So for us, everybody's got to be successful.

If the tour ain't making money and we're we were doing great on the tour, it's a it's a disaster, right. The vibe has to be perfect for success, and so we spend a lot of time trying to make sure that everybody is successful at the end of a tour. I don't have a lot of them that I could speak to that weren't. Okay, So you give your proposals. Do you charge for the proposal? Sir? Okay? So let's go back and you're talking about the timeline. Everything is

an emergency. Okay. I just thought I want to go on the road, and then I'm talking about what buildings I'm gonna play with. Ticket prices are generally speaking, they have not contacted you yet, Ish, but we we know what's going on in the market, right like we know who's going on tour, and we know you know, once a building hold happens, the world kind of knows about it. So you we can start preparing for something that we

think we're gonna do before they actually even contact us. Okay, So when they do contact you, generally speaking, how many months out? Two? Really that's that quick, could be six, that'd be a luxury. Usually if you're talking about it six months out and you're drawing it, you're not actually contracted in beginning fabrication. It's it's rare in the in the touring scenario to get more than two months. Just

to go back, you did Youtubo's Claw. We've done every YouTube show since they've been a band, back to the first one I did was Joshua Tree and Michael and Willie Williams had done too before that, Boy and I can't remember what was the other one October something okay, so unforgettable fire but so um okay, So I come to you, I tell you what I want. How long was it going to take you to make to draw it up and say, you know, this is what's involved?

A couple of days back quickly? Absolutely? Is there one person who does that or there's an army of people that do that? So you drawed up in a couple of days, Uh, then what's the next step? The next step would be telling somebody how much it costs and then expecting somebody to yell and screament that's too much. And now you've got to figure out how to reverse engineer it. Because if I give you a picture or

something I want, there's ten ways to build something. We have to find the way to build it that's best for logistics but also best for art. And sometimes it might just be a bad idea and you've got to throw it out. Okay. Does anybody ever say, okay, I like it, the cost is good. Where everybody's arguing about the price, I don't think they're arguing. I don't think

it's it's not usually an argue. It's it's kind of like a commitment, and it's and it's based upon budgets, and somebody might make a budget and this is what we spent last year, Well, guess what it costs more this year, or where does the budget come from? Like, we're not privy to that, nor do I want to be, to be honest with you, I'm much happier to figure out how to get to a common ground. And that involves loyalty and trust, which is a word that's not

usually spoken in our industry. But we've managed to collect some of that trust and loyalty through some people that are legendary, right like managers in this business. If you can get a couple of good ones, your credibility goes way up, right. The Roger Davies of the world, the Barry Marshall's the World, the que Primes of Bruce Allen's.

There's a ton of those relationships that we've had and those people are the best at what they're doing, right, So if you're loyal and and supported by those people, it's the best way to work. Okay, so you've created the drawing, Now you're discussing budget. But how long is that process? Usually too long? It's it's it's a it's it's too long. It can go until we have to say we're not going to make your date. That that can go on for a little while. Okay, that's probably

the longest lag. It's like, oh ship okay, and then once you decide, I know, every show is different, how long does it take to build it? It's funny because the building part is actually the easiest part, right, it's the figuring it out that you have to figure out how you're going to build it, to price it, Okay,

you can't just price it on a whim. You really need to engineer it, which is why you have to be very careful that you're doing this with people that are actually going to do it, because you're going to go invest a bunch of time and money into it. And the how long does it take? That's that's not a fair question because how big is it? Right? Like, some of these things are pretty sophisticated, but it's very

rare that you get more than eight or ten weeks. Okay, So just to be clear, if it takes a couple of days to draw it, that's not what we're talking about figuring out how to build it. No, No, it probably takes two weeks of engineering to actually rip it out, right, like to to narrow it down to every element, every bit of engineering, and you know you can. You have to go through a couple of iterations to get there.

And some tours are so big, like a massive Rolling Stones YouTube Madonna Stadium show, they'll take a little longer to work out every single item. Okay, so once it's worked out, it takes how long to build? Obviously, whatever you got, it takes whatever you got to get the opening night. Okay. When you have one of these one of a kind shows and you put it together, how often does it work right the first time? Percent of the time? Yeah? Okay, so you're building the stage, Okay,

what about sound reinforcement? How does that figured it? In the lights, etcetera. It figures into the the overall design. And you'd be surprised how many bands and designers will present you with a design that absolutely doesn't have any musicians on the stage. There's no sound in the drawing. It's just a pretty picture of an object that they call us set design. I think what we do really well is we integrate all the other people. We were kind of like a general contractor, but we're not hiring

the other people. We usually have what's called the master drawing in our file, and we're able to help all those other people succeed, and we're able to lend some expertise to if there's integration between sound and video and lights like sometimes there's not, sometimes it's just hanging off

by itself. Sometimes it's incredibly integrated as well. As the Steel Stageco in Belgium is one of the premier companies that kind of works the way we do, but with big pieces of steel to hang the p A and the sound I'm sorry, in the lights and there's a lot of integration that happens amongst there. There's a lot of conversation amongst the vendors talking back and forth, but we stand head and shoulders to be able to provide master drawings and drop things into these drawings. That helps

everybody make a real decision. Okay, So I came with you. We we agreed on what it's gonna look like. Uh, you talked about these you know, the way you don't use fasteners, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So on one hand, you have a group who's constantly coming up with new ideas. Is that you have like an innovation team? Absolutely okay? And then so the people you you innovate to survive, right, you.

You're constantly faced with the challenge. It needs to be figured out almost on every show, whether you innovate something that you're going to use again for the next twenty years where it's it works once, we don't know about that, but we absolutely are innovating on every single show. Prototypes. Give me an example of I don't think my brain could do that right now, but um, stand by and I'll see what comes to my mind. I'm not going there, right, okay?

Then right, it's whatever, right okay? And then uh's part of the budget, of course, is how do you break it down? And how many trucks it's gonna be, right, not my budget, but somebody else's budget for sure, And does it fit on airplanes? And does it fit and sea containers? And how are you going to deal with all that? Right? And you go out an arena, I mean, who takes the stuff by plane other than to Europe Asia?

Madonna rolling stones you to Um, it's just a game of numbers, right, like how much does the air freight costs? And what kind of revenue are you gonna get to be able to get it there quicker? Because the boats a month to go oversee you so Some bands don't want to hang it up for a month. Why the ship sales? Some bands want to go play and make the money. It's it's really up to the artists in

the schedule. You know what you're in the market though, like the US, it's not gonna go by plane, that's correct. Truck truck truck. Okay. So you've been in this business a long time. What shows you proud of stuff? Wow, I'm gonna ask that question quite a bit and um, usually I'd say if it's not the show that I'm currently working on, there's something wrong. But I think some of the standouts for me have been having the privilege to work with the Rolling Stones time and time and

time again are you doing to? They are the epitome of rock and roll right like it's it's just amazing, and make is like the true CEO of an organization, and and the people they surround themselves with, there's there's nothing like The Tina Turner seven show was so memorable to me. She was such a legend. Mark designed that show,

Jake was a production manager. It was amazing. Um. Some of the Live Nation Global tours where we're fortunate enough to work with Arthur and his gang on are on YouTube and Madonna have been just mind blowing right, like they take technology to the next level on a Madonna show, and and and on a Youtubo show. I mean, I I feel that you two has single handedly been responsible for the evolution of video in stadiums and arenas. Like nobody's pushed the envelope. You two has pretty much been

the prototype for what everybody's doing. That that follows as it relates to video, Well, certainly you know the first Innocence an Experience tour that was mind blowing, like four or five years. Yeah, but go back to like pop Mart, I mean, whether you like the music or not, that show is insane. Actually, I go back to the one before that, Zoo TV Indoors with the trabants and everything. I saw it outdoors too, but Indoors just one of the three best shows. Heard That show at Hershey Park Stadium.

By the way, it's kind of convenient. At the time, we didn't have a rehearsal facility, but we had a football field in Hershey, which is where we rehearse that show. And again, like these artists that have this cycle of touring, they do it like nobody else, right, Paul McCartney, it's incredible. You work with Paul, Yeah, it's just incredible what he does. And Roy Bennett is his lighting designer and his set designer.

And Roy's a legend as well who comes from Prince and he is constantly pushing the envelope with lighting and video. And you get a guy like Paul McCartney who then goes and plays for three hours right right, Like, not only does his show look amazing, but you got that it's crazy. Well, if that peak, I think we've come to the end of the feeling, we know, unless there's something you need to add. No, I don't even I don't know how I got here, and I don't know

where we're going. Like that's it's that's what it feels like like you walk into these shows these days. It's mind blowing, right, Like you know, I read your column and it's funny because I can remember the olden days of getting your your stuff. And it's always funny when I read it because you have such stubborn opinions about a lot of things. I would never funk with you with any of them. I would never, But like the music, right,

it's it's got to come from the music. I don't care if you like the music or you don't like the music, but what we do has to be inspired by the music. And so it's very refreshing to me when I like when I went to Boobley the other night, or I just did Kelly Clarkson in Nashville. Was our second to last show and we had rebook come out and do a ten minute Facebook live with Kelly, which was super meaningful to me because I had done Reba

shows in the nineties when she had twenty trucks. But to see real musician in these arenas now, it's so refreshing, right, Like you saw forty horn and string players right. Where do you get to see that anymore like I've ever seen it other than as the symphony, And to see it's so well presented in that in that environment, I just love it. I mean, Bruno Mars, you had musicians, right, It's so refreshing that I get such a buzz out of that that when you see that mixed in with

our stuff. It's one thing when you're building a show and you're you're like, Wow, nobody's really playing here or there's too much care, But when you see that it's captivating, and I think we embellish it. Well. On that note, you've gotten full insight it to take towers by weeky, fair oarth and some levels just a tip of the iceberg. I mean sometimes I saw hard days night during the afternoon and litter, so I think I've told you that. But someday I have to go there just see what's

going on. Yeah, I mean you should. I mean just to see. I mean this whole bit of how the the sets come together without fasteners. I'm fascinated by that, and I certainly know all the managers and I heard Dan Brown talk about it, Tony, etcetera. But basically just telling you were too expensive though, right, I won't go into everything they say. I don't want to make sure we must be doing something right. We're constantly invited to

absolutely absolutely and uh okay, until next time. Thanks so much for