This is the downbeat one, all right. So here in a second, we'll talk to the guys, the CEO of the company that's creating the Sunset Amphitheater in McKinny. Now, we did the story last week, and uh, it's a big, you know, two hundred and twenty million dollar open air venue that they're opening in McKenny. And there's a lot of things that we discussed about it last week, and we'll get into it with the CEO
of that company, JW. Roth, a minute ago. One of those things I think that really stood out to us was a twenty thousand person capacity, you know, amphitheater, but also the idea of how do you keep a place like that cool in the hot Texas summer. But before we get there, guys, so there's a guy by the name of Julio Ferrari. I've reached out to him on Facebook and on Instagram. No message back, but you know, he might be busy because he has a pet macall parrot.
It's a fifteen year old brightly feathered Catalina macaw parrot, beautiful color plumage. You know, if you get him on the phone, he's probably he's probably Julio, it's red it maybe it's red blue. Healthier relationship before it begins green yellow. I've seen it on the TV behind you quite a bit this morning. The fifteen year old macaw parrot is named Samba. Samba flew
the coope Sunday afternoon while at a photo shoot at Louisville Lake. A big gust of wind blue ND scared him and he said, I wasn't fast enough to run after him. He just flew. So for hours he was trying to get him back, he said, until nine thirty pm, and then we went to sleep. And he says he was shooing off the hawks until he went to sleep. So there was a parrot at the base of this tree, and he left a flashlight to mark his place. He left water
and a note for those waters looking by. The note read, my macaw flew up this tree. If you can help, please call. On Monday morning, Ferrari returned to that tree and Samba was there. So he's squawking and going, huh get me ah, I'm here a right rah. Are you reading a transcript of what the U said? Uh? No. Several visitors did stop by to help. He said the call I heard. Wasn't your typical bird, though it was a little different, is what another person
who walked by I said. It sounded way different than a bird because it's a parrot. It's different than a normal bird. But he sat. I kind of walked up to it. I noticed it was a macaw stuck up in the tree. He's in distress. He's stuck up there. He's trying for help, almost like a person. I'm concerned for him. So that thing is still up there. The goal yesterday was to get him to fly to a smaller tree so they could get him. But his wing is clipped,
so he can't fly long distances. He's gonna he can only fly about one hundred yards. So they had a Lewisville Fire Department fire truck there yesterday and they're just palms, and he kept flying away to do he was a bird. They're trying to get him in the bucket of the truck and he kept flying away. This says in the article. On Monday evening, Samba was attacked by several hawks, but he survived a fighting spirit. So Julio or Julio, we're going with Julio. No one says Julio Julio Julie lit
Leo. Okay, Juvee Ferrari, Julie g Ferrari, Well, was there a G. He's not g g U I l I o oh yeah see yeah, okay, you're not an idiot. Yeah no, not right now. Both things can be true. But he said, this is the third day. They've got construction company trying to get it, and they still have not get that. He's been scared by fireworks. I mean there's that was in the past. He got He had stuck in a tree in twenty twelve
as well for three days. So he's back at it, and Yulio Ferrari is like, I want my bird back, and it's on the news and they still can't get it because every time they get goose to it he freaks out. And free Spirit is a bird. Yeah, incredible, it's a beautiful parrot. When you see it on the TV, it's nuts. I'll point it pointed out to you. This is I will make fun of this because I know what it is like to have lost a bird that you have
truly loved. What happened I have loved or you have loved because you said you have loved. I have a bird currently, and you do is I have a MCAU named dirty Dirty Wayne, and I appreciate it if that's the last we ever mentioned it or talk about it on this show. I've been to your house a number of times that I've never seen all of them looking and going, yeah, it was rifling through your sock drawers. Appreciate if that's the last that is ever mentioned on the show. And I don't you
Wayne sounds like a terribly named cocktail. Dirty Wayne. Ask Christina if I have a bird named dirty Wayne, and I'd appreciate it. Once again, if that's the last this has ever talked to him, Probably name there he is? There's there's coming out a joke stroke because he got excited because the bird showed up on TV. The rush of emotions. I freaked out. Oh this idiot's just sitting in the tree. Come down, Googlio, peanut butter, look at it. No, his name is Samba. Gulio's the
person he sees his dad Samba. No, Samba is the bird. Goodio's the owner. Come get your peanut butter. Okay, now he's never gonna come on the show. Goolo, the bird's not coming on the show. I mean you could at all look at him. Look at him. Actually we have some mutual friends with him, Mike. So okay, we do we do? Is your Guestston or No? Yes? Joining us now in
the Freak Hotline. It is the CEO of the company Notes Live who is building the Sunset Amphitheater and McKenny. We did the story a little bit last week. It is the CEO again of Notes Live. J w Roth. Good morning, j w how you doing? Good morning? Thanks for having me, Thanks for doing this. First of all, the boy, when the Lord was handing out names for CEOs, you got one of the good ones because jw Roth just sounds like a big wheeler. Well, I don't
know about that, but we're gonna try to build a big amphitheater. I know that. Nice hell there they are. Yeah, So McKenny as the destination here. Obviously a lot of big venues here in DFW, whether it be Dicky's Arena, American Airlines, No, SECI's pavilion. You know the trick now, I'm not even mentioning what's all going on in Arlington? What made you want to choose McKenny as a location and to shoot that big for
a twenty thousand person Amphitheater. Well, first, you know, we have a site sort of selection process that we go through that starts with sort of the competitive advantage that we would have in a market, and in that market for outdoor sort of premium venues, we felt like ours would fit. You know, we are very premium, maybe even over the top venue, So in that particular market, we just don't think we have the competition there for
our particular style of venue. Number one, number two. It's one of the busiest intersections in the country and we like the visibility of that of that location. But first and foremost, I would say that the leadership in the
City of McKinney has just been They've just been phenomenal. So, you know, in terms of when you start to build one of these, you know the process, it's entitlement process, and it's dc work with the economic development councils, and you know, if you don't have good leadership in the in the municipality that you're going to your you're screwed from the from the beginning. So anyway, in our particular case, we're very happy to belding there and
we're excited about it. We'll get we'll get a shovel in the ground sometime this fall. Yeah, it also takes a pretty extensive and inefficient leadership group from from your company as well, Notes Live, Inc. Because look, man, number one, you've got to you got to select a city or an area and then you kind of settle on this one seventy five, which, as you said, is a very busy intersection. It's a very highly visible intersection from the renderings that I've seen on the Dallas Morning News. It's
very visible from the freeway, and the drawings of course look spectacular. But as far as your team, you've got to find that location and then you've got to deal with the city. I mean, how many people do you have working on one specific project at any given time. We have about forty folks that are assigned to a specific project. Bob Mudd, who is is our president and chief operating officer at Notes, he oversees all our developments.
We're just finishing one here in Colorado, which we believe will win win most of the awards this next year. It will be the most luxurious amphitheater ever built in history, and it opens here in about eight weeks or so. Will be finished but Bob has overseen that project with about twenty folks here here in Colorado. It's an AEG project. We're also building in the Tulsa market
in Broken Arrow that's a Live Nation is our is our partner there. That's a twelve five hundred seater and in that particular market, we have about thirty four people that are assigned to that project. Here in McKinny, it'll be a little bit bigger than that, simply because the entitlement team will be bigger. We don't have that many people on the project right this second, because
we're early in the in the project. We have eight people on the project in McKinny that will take us through entitlement, and they are mainly our architects, our engineers. But then later on down the road we'll get our you know, naming rights folks involved, and our marketing folks involved, and and all of that kind of thing. But right now it's schematics. We're getting ready to launch a massive campaign in Dallas, in the Dallas wort Worth market
here. I believe it's the fifth of April when we start selling all of our fire pits. So you know, one of the things that we do in all of our markets, is we we build fire pit suits into all of our venues. In this particular one, the will be two hundred and ninety five firepit sweeps and those will be those will go on the market. I believe it's April the fifth CEO of Notes Live Incorporated, J. W.
Roth, who is bringing the Sunset Amphitheater to McKinney, Texas. It seems like if largely, if not all, of your projects are geared towards live music. Was this something that was born of a passion of yours for live music or was this a conduit to a means to be a successful businessman? You know, it's interesting I get asked that all the time. You know, I did not grow up in the hospitality and entertainment business. I have just been a live music fan my entire life. I'm actually the founder
of Roth Premium Foods. Roth is one of the largest prepared food manufacturers in the US. So, you know, I think we serviced every grocery store in America every day. But about six years ago or so, I sat down with my family and our partners and I said, you know, I've been here at Roth for a long, long time. And I'm at the
point in my life where I could go chase something that I love. And I watched what the NFL had done in building their venues and elevating the fan experience in new venues, and I just looked across the music scene and it just hadn't happened. And so I took the opportunity at that time six years ago. I took twenty of our my top people out of out of Roth and we took a year, we transitioned, and we built notes loot.
Even the whole purpose of not Slide was to chase my passion and that is the that is to build venues that are that are artists and fan centric. In other words, it's their their venues that are that are elevated. The experience is elevated, the ambiance is elevated. And that's what I did. I built two small ones, one in Colorado, one in the northern Atlanta market of Gainsville. This is sort of test the philosophy that people would gravitate
toward a more elevated venue, and we were right. So we started with the one here in Colorado that were just finishing. It's been a two and a half year projects ninety million dollars and it's phenomenal. And that's just led us to the other ones that are doing so. To answer the question, it is, it is born one hundred percent out of passion. But it's built with a team that you know built Rock Pram New Foods. All right,
So Bob Mudd's in charge of this thing. When you made mud, the mud the man in charge of this mission, you know it's going premium. Look, we saw the rend We love them. They're always fun. I love all renderings. But the thing that caught our eye in our ear is what I consider to be what air conditioned turf. Is that the dumb or easiest way to say it, because ampitheat is hot when you're out of the lawn, it can be miserable at a lot of these spots, tell
me what's going on? Are we blowing air through the grass? Is it fake grass? Oh? Here's what we're doing. It's super cool. So it's called hydrochill. Hydrochill technology. I just built it into my venue here in Colorado. And what it is. Picture these small beads. They're a little bit smaller than a marble, a little bit bigger than a Beabie. And you know how you watch a baseball game and before the game, a lot of times you'll see it and have big fire hose out there wetting the
turf. Exactly what we all do here. We'll put cold water onto the turf. The turf absorbs the absorbs the water into these beads and these beads will then take on the cold and hold that cold for five hours, so the turf will bring it'll bring the turf down to seventy degrees the hydrochill technology. We're also building a roof system on this one, very similar to the
one that we're building in Tulsa that moves the air. So we will move the air and bring the temperature down about twenty degrees from whatever that whatever the outdoor temperature is at the time. So you know, when you deal with markets like Dallas Fort Worth, whether it have to be your number one concern and so you know, we have built this so that we can create the
uh create the environment that's necessary to enjoy this concert. Okay, So moving into the DFW market, it's going to be very competitive and albeit yes, a great passion for the arts, for music, for a great artist experience, for a great fan experience, but ultimately your goal is to be a profitable business. And do you do you have any concern when it comes to the game of booking, because what we've seen a lot of times when venues, newer venues pop up down here, they will over pay for artists to
to wu them to play their venue. But ultimately there kind of comes a point of of diminishing returns, so where you've kind of got to go back to the market value of what these artists are generally paid to so so they
have other options and you've got to make money too. Do you do you see that as being a concern starting out the business and and is that something that you kind of budget for to Look, look, we're gonna outbid Dicky's arena, We're gonna outbid uh dose Eki's pavilion and get these artists to to you know, beef up our roster for the first six months to year of our existence. But at some point if you're losing money, that's not sustainable. Do you find that to be a concern now or has that been a
concern in the past. Yeah? There, I mean, when you when you start to build a business, that's the first thing, you're got to kind of it's got to work on paper first. And so we are very comfortable with where we're at in the business model in that in that market. At the end of the day, it's about putting great artists on the stage, and right artists on the stage will result in butts in seats right so
and butts in seats pay per tickets. They they they buy beer, they buy parking, they they do all the things that it takes to drive the revenue to make a profitable business. On the other hand, you have to you have to be careful in how you book your artists and how you run the promotion side of your business. We are not the operator of our venues. We are partners with the operator and our venue. So in Denver, for example, here in Colorado, we are partners with AEG, and AEG
operates the venue from both a booking standpoint and operation standpoint. Tulsa, we are partners with Live Nation. Live Nation is our operating partner. We are the owner of that of that owner operator partnership. So in Dallas, in
McKinney, we have not made that decision yet. We are we are working through all of the agreements that we currently have with our partners, and at the end of the day, over the course of the next nine or so months, we will we will on that's our partner down there, as you know, the you know sort of the leading leading promotion organizations and those operators are key to a profitable, profitable venue. So we will not book this
ourselves. We will book this in conjunction with a with a partner that is you know, has their hand and finger on the pulse of the routes and the artist. If you look at Sunset Amphitheater in Colorado Springs, for example, all those tickets are up for sale for this summer and you can see how they have sold. And we've sold out about every show that we've put up, twenty two of them so far for the summer. We'll put up another ten here in the next few weeks and it'll be a profitable it'll be
a profitable summer truck. Hey, JW, thank you for your time. We appreciate what we following the developments and the news about Sunset Amphitheater coming to a McKinney very soon. Can't wait to go check it out. Thanks a Millien guide ye Man bye bye j W. Mike, what this thing looks cool? Yeah, it looks amazing, he explained. The marbles. He
explained, that's interesting, cooling magic marbles. How are they not doing that to high school football fields that are expensive, like the expensive high school football fields that play on those the the beats, they don't need to cool. You're not laying around on a leisurely afternoon on the high school field, Kevin. You're playing sports. You don't need to You don't need cooling marbles there.
I think it would helps, though, help? What help? Who I see someone who recovers a fumble and gets a couple of people on top of them. It gets Kevin, Okay, you said off? Yes he's off? Did I yeah? When you made your you're ce or whatever your president? Okay, His lying is coming back because he immediately went to the
defense tactic of did I you said? That's about fifteen minutes after he said that he has a bird that near and dear to him, said, if you didn't bring up dirty Wayne ever again on this show, do not talk about my parents. So the hall's good, the hallways anywhere. Look, I was lost in the interview. I'm excited about this new venue notes live. That's why I have no recollect it's actually the sunset empathy the company notes. I know, I like the companies with chat innnings on the board of
directors. That he's the CEO of Wroth Foods. Dude, I didn't know he had someone quite so powerful. That's probably the richest guy we've ever had. No like that. Dude. If he doesn't already could own one of the big sports teams. He might look the what's his name? I'm serious, it's is the bill he's getting back on and ask for some money. He's not a bill, but it's a J. W Roth's like one hundred and twenty million J w Roth. He's got to be worth more than that.
If he's Wroth Foods, that's jd Roth. J d Roth. No, jw Roth, j w Roth. You get him with boy, that's the CEO name calculator. It really is up there, I mean, isn't it. Yes, jw Raw, you know you're rich before you Yeah, yeah, you were. You're wheeling and dealing. If you're a JD. W Row, they're they're doing pretty good, I would imagine. So you have his email, Kevin, we all know this was just a trick for you to get tickets down the road. It was a hundred. I would
never operate that way. You always operate that way how currently, that's why I trying to get the guy who's missing the parrot on, because he's going to get me tickets to his art gallery. No, that's just to cover up for all of your other all of your other inequities. I would not waste time covering up things. I don't think we're in really a good enough place to just mail it in and do stuff like that. Just doesn't waste time covering up things. We can't just sit in here and make stinkies and
get tens. Well there was a time, though, wasn't there. Guys? We have to try great job, good booking. There's a lot of information and I did know that. You know, they just look, they build the buildings, they own the buildings, and whatever happens in the buildings is run by probably it probably will be ag. It seems like they're the leader in the clubhouse for any of these things that come up. But hear what goes into the decisions behind building a massive concert venue in McKinney in our
area. Yes, that's interesting. Yeah, it's a little bit of business speak. But guess what, listener, maybe you should come up to the level that we guys like me and j w Roth are at instead of being confused by this stuff. And if all you took from that is how they're going to cool the yard to the lawn, fine, that's fine. That's still good information. But trying to get your head right. Don't act like up here, like you're on the same level as jw Roth. You set
over there during that entire interview looked like you were rolling a booger. You were given the throat slash sign about five minutes into it to go to break. I did pull out the air hand guns. Jesus, I cocked their finger gun and set it on the table. But I do that and earned
a lot of interviews in my defense. Just when callers call in cock the finger gun and just sit on the table and stare at you, guys, just know that when you send tw to make you laugh while you're asking a question, just know that when you send in a talkback, pretty much three seconds into it, he's had enough airshot. You pulled the finger gun,
just set down. Okay, that one. Tiger Wood's note Tyron Smith has left his lasting statement for DFW and your talkbacks from the iHeartRadio Up next on I Have One Freak