Ahead of the thrice-rescheduled Coachella music festival, Billie Eilish’s longtime agent Tom Windish talks about his star client’s growth as a live artist, COVID’s disruption of touring and joining Wasserman Music as head of business development and A&R.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M H. Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties weekly podcast featuring
conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment.
This is Shirley Halperin, executive editor of Music for Variety,
(00:20):
and my guest today is Tom Wendish, the head of
business development and a r for the town agency Wasserman Music,
where his clients include the artists Lord the XX and
Coachella headliner Billie Eilish. Like the most seasoned of booking agents,
Tom got his start while still in college Binghamton, New York,
(00:41):
to be exact. That's where he first caught the bug
for buzzing bands that were sort of left of center.
Upon graduating, he had a short lived internship at William
Marris where he would bug the agents to show him
the ropes. It's why Tom would name his own company, Bug,
launched a little over thirty years ago as the rock
scene was exploding. In fact, the word indie is practically
(01:04):
baked into Tom's last name, which makes his career track
seemed practically predestined. Circumstances led him to Chicago, where he
would build a formidable roster of bands most people had
never heard of, and he would scale up to include
dozens more. That led to gaining the attention of the
budding Midwest booking agency Billions, which took Tom under its
(01:26):
wing from to two thousand four. For the next thirteen years,
Tom called the Windish Agency home. He operated a lean
and mean machine that looked after hundreds of artists, but
it was his own skills as a talent scout and
being in the right place at the right time that
resulted in identifying the singular talent that is Billie Eilish.
(01:50):
As Billy and other clients got more popular competing agencies,
he says, we're all trying to steal them. The solution,
as Tom Windish saw it, was to align with bigger entity.
He chose Paradigm in seventeen as it was absorbing several
small to mid size indies like his own. Among them
the firm's Little Big Man, a m Only Coda and
(02:13):
X Ray Touring, which brought to the roster such touring
giants as Ed Sharon Coplay, David Getta and Fish, among
many many more. Not long after arriving at Paradigm, Tom
Windish marveled at the health of his industry. Little did
he know what was coming in the form of COVID.
The pandemic not only disrupted touring in its physical form,
(02:36):
it turned the business of live music upside down. All
agencies were impacted, but Paradigm in particular lost its financial
footing and began exploring a merger or a sale. The
buyer would turn out to be Ksey Wasserman, grandson of
Lou Wasserman, who was among Hollywood's founding fathers, working for
(02:56):
over eight decades to completely reshape entertainment. The deal for
Paradigm closed in March, and the agency was re christened
Wasserman Music. Not surprisingly, Tom was well read on the
Wasserman dynasty, and it's proven to be an asset as
he and his new boss navigate the post COVID landscape,
(03:18):
passing on that guidance to his artists. As Tom Winters
prepares to fly from his home base of New York
to India, California for Coachella, where he has multiple acts
on the bill, he cautiously exhales while recounting the routing
and supply chain problems COVID has wrought. How Billie Eilish's
(03:38):
live career progressed memphodically despite second guessing by his peers
and what he's learned from decades spent directing artists on
the road. We pick up Tom Story in Chicago in
the early nineties. Welcome back to Strictly Business. Here's Tom
(03:59):
win Dish. So, Tom win Dish, thanks so much for
being on Strictly Business. Welcome, nice to be here. Thanks
for inviting me. M the indie rock music scene in
Chicago at that time, this is like ninety something was great,
Touch and Go Records, Thrilled Jockey, Drag City, Tupelo. Yeah,
(04:25):
so I ended up like meeting tons of people. Everyone
was super nice, very supportive of each other. Everyone was
saying you should move here. I think maybe I was
living with my parents at the time because I was broke.
I was spending all the money I made on the
booking on the phone bill, like literally, and he said,
you can live up above the club. He lived above
the club too. You can live in this other one
(04:48):
bedroom or something or studio for a hundred fifty bucks
a month. So I then went over to Lounge Jackson
met the people on that place, Sue Miller, and that
was from Julia and those two clubs were they hated
each other. Arrivals they were trying to book the same bands.
They get really upset with you if you booked your
band at the other club. And they took me out
(05:09):
to dinner. I said, I'm thinking about moving here. Oh really, yeah,
I think I might live above the empty bottle. He
said I could live there for a hundred fifty dollars
and they were like that, you can live above our
club for hundred bucks a months utiles included. And I
drove out in January three weeks later, like my car
(05:32):
full of stuff basically like a file cabinet and dot
matrix printer and an old McIntosh ch s e this
big cube computer thing. And and I lived about I mean,
this was not really an apartment. It was like, I
don't know what you described it as a room at
four walls. My kitchen was in a bathroom. The rent
(05:52):
was great, and I lived above this club. And and
I never thought twice about like this is a dump.
This is awful. I was in heaven. You must have
seen so many amazing shows I did. And the talk
about Uncle Tupelo. This is when Jeff Tweedy was playing
their solo all the time and was dating or engaged
(06:12):
to Sue Miller. They ended up getting married at the
club when I lived there. It was like the one
time that I had to like go away for a
while because they like used my room as like dressing. Yeah. Yeah,
But I went to the wedding and everything. It was fantastic.
And then you know, like probably six months after I
got to Chicago, Batch from Billions called me up and
(06:36):
asked if I'd be interested in joining Billions. Tell me
about him because the listeners of this podcast are definitely
not familiar with these characters, So describe him. Okay, Well,
he booked Pavement and John Spencer, Blues Explosion and loads
of bands on Touch and Go and was a legend.
And I mean he just had one of the best
independent booking agencies in the country and was on the
(06:58):
up and up. Jesus A Zero it was another band
and they were all like doing really well. I had
so much respect for him. I was afraid of him,
so I kind of worshiped this guy. Maybe we worked
out I deally. I went and worked there and it
was great. Learned a lot. So when did you form
your own agency? Um? I think I was at Billions
six or seven years something like that. Maybe a little
(07:20):
more and I had a little roster of thirty or
so artists. Remember I put it up. There was like
one page on the website. Yeah, I have like a
link to that somewhere or something. It's pretty funny. I
think there's like a spelling error on it. One of
the bands was spelled from for a minute. Yeah, it
was a long time ago. I my office was the
(07:43):
second bedroom of my condo and I had an employee.
That was the main thing, Like, the main reason I
wanted to start my own thing was I didn't have
an assistant, and I was booking a lot of bands
and doing a lot of the contracts and stuff myself,
and I thought if I have an assistant, I could
book more shows. I was there for like eight for
(08:05):
ten years quite a while. It was great. I'm really
glad that I started things there and not New York
in l A. Why do you say that I didn't
really have like a handle at all on what was
going on in New York in l A with you know,
this hot band and that hot band. But I'm happy
(08:27):
that I wasn't comparing myself to others and losing out
on things to others. We really carved our own Lane.
I would say probably other people in the business probably
hadn't even heard of a lot of the stuff that
we were signing. God Speed You, Black Emperor Low. We
signed Diplo early on. I was doing a lot of
electronic stuff to a lot of people on Warp records
(08:49):
like Apex Twin really never played, but Square Pusher, aw
Teckers group, Cold Cut, who started a label called Ninja Tune,
Kid Koala, and on Tobin, Saint Germain or Sanchoman. So
like electronic live, which hardly anyone was booking that before
other than Jerry Girard and his was more mainstream live
(09:10):
electronic stuff in DJ's and ours was like quite underground.
They would sell some of them would sell a hundred tickets,
two hundred tickets, not not very big. And then when
streaming happened, it was like someone turned a floodlight onto
these things. Like before a lot of these records you
just couldn't find. There might be one store or two
stores in New York and l A and a few
(09:32):
other spots, and you'd go there and order it and
it would show up like a month or six weeks later.
So all of a sudden, streaming and I guess illegal downloading.
Even I noticed more tickets being sold. Interesting, I mean
discovery is that that is the challenge of the people
who make music, who sell music. So one thing about
(09:54):
the Windows Agency that I remember, even before you joined Paradigm,
is that you had a lot of acts. Is like
you scaled up even as an indie. What was the
thinking behind that and what do you look for in
an artist? I mean fundamentally, like I'm looking I'm listening
(10:14):
for music that gives me butterflies or goose bumps, or
that I just really enjoy that. I like things that
are a little bit different than anything I've ever heard before,
whatever element, the way the voice sounds, the way the
drum sound, the style, and if I hear something that
I like, especially back then, like you'd hear things you
like and there was like an audience. You didn't really
(10:36):
know how big it was, but you could book it
and put up a few shows, see how it did,
and then if it went well, like then you do
some more. I remember signing in this band Jagga jazzi
Ist or Yaga Yazzis. They were on Ninja Tune. It
was like an eight piece in Norwegian electronic jazz band.
(10:58):
I had never heard anything like it. They were incredible.
I had no idea how it was going to go.
And we did like three to five tickets to night
on the first tour in like eight or ten cities,
and the shows were incredible, and everyone said that was amazing. Um,
that was a success for us to you know, selling
that number of tickets was really good. I would sign
(11:19):
bands or artists that I had never seen before, and
I remember back then other agents really looking down on that.
I would never sign a band I haven't seen, and
I did that because I didn't have the financial means
to go sign these bands. It didn't make sense for
me to fly to Norway first to see Jagga jazz
(11:40):
Is to make sure they were good. Because when they
toured and they did sell eight cities and three to
five tickets, that meant we made like four thousand bucks
or something, you know, or three thousand bucks. You know,
if I had flown there and stayed in a hotel,
that would have been half the money. It almost always
worked out. There's very few times I can remember where
(12:00):
the band wasn't good, and then you flash forward to today,
Like Billy had never played a show when I signed her.
Lord had never played a show when I signed her,
so and I was fine with it. I just thought,
they make great music, they'll figure it out. I'll do
whatever I need to help, but they'll figure it out.
And if they don't, then we won't do many more shows.
But they did, I'll figure it out. That's so interesting
(12:21):
because it's like, that's not how it used to be.
It was like you had to pay your dues, you
had to start at the clubs and make your way up.
And today it's like you can have a giant hit,
your first record out be playing arenas in no time
with zero touring experience. I think streaming had a lot
to do with everything changing, at least for the kind
(12:42):
of people I worked with, because I mean I saw
I remember with Hot Chip we did one tour, it
went well. Streaming kind of took off that. Back then,
it was like Pirate Bay or whatever it was. You
could practically google things and find places to like download
this stuff, and everybody like certain people are just doing
(13:03):
They had computers running twenty four hours a day just
downloading stuff. It was like it was like getting the
keys to fdo Schwartz or something. You have whatever you want.
But then the next tour they did like there were
a lot more people there. I'd say, like the chunk
of their fans were doing that stuff right, probably because
they couldn't afford to buy the music. That was the
(13:24):
whole thing. Afford and it's like hard to get your
hands on it, hard hard to find, of course. Okay,
so tell me about when disjoined Paradigms in something like that.
What was the thinking behind that. At the time, you
had a staff of more than eighty in six cities
(13:46):
and over a thousand clients. Clearly things were working. So
what did Paradigm offer? I guess what I felt was
that the more successful we became, and the more successful
our artists became m and at the time that meant
Lord the x ax diplo Odessa Flu, the more intense
(14:10):
the competition became. It was great when we were under
the radar and no one had heard of the bands
in terms of the competition and the stress. And but
like then, these artists got more popular and the agencies
were all trying to steal them, and they would say no,
but then the agency would go back again a month
(14:30):
or two or three later, and that went on for years,
so that it felt like towards the end like these
people were offering their relative enough they would change I'll
give you my my my house or something, and I
was like, jeez, what else is going to happen? And
I was always thinking what this started almost day one
when I started Windance Agency. What can we do to
(14:52):
provide a better service to the artist. I know it
sounds like everyone does that, but I was the first
agency to start password protected webs site where you could
see how much you were being paid and if we
had the deposit and the signed contract and all those things.
Very sounds incredibly simple. Now. We had a tour marketing department.
I think before anybody, we had a branding department. These
(15:14):
were all things like I was either thinking, what's gonna
be helpful for the artists, what are they gonna appreciate,
what's gonna help sell more tickets? Or what is everybody
else saying they do? And we need to compete with that?
We need to like have an answer. We had people
that would like help with acting or would meet with
our artists and basically asked like, what are your dreams
outside of music and then go and try and implement
(15:37):
them and they did very interesting things, and we did
that for years. I basically got to a point where
I thought it's never gonna be enough. I could have
twenty people doing these things instead of six and still
wouldn't be enough because it's all about perception, not reality.
So I need to join one. And the perception is
(15:58):
like bigger, bigger, better, we'll get more from the artist.
So I did it. You know, I went with ones
that were nice people, and they had all been indies too.
They were really cut from the same cloth. Paradigms or
Party Diamonds Company, Little big Man Am Only Monterey, Dakota
(16:18):
may have come after, I can't remember. And when I
would speak with these people, the former owners of these agencies,
they sort of had the same experience as me in
different ways. They all started these things like in the
second bedroom or in a little garage or whatever, and
it group And I don't know, there's something about that
(16:38):
DNA that makes you feel comfortable, right, Were you being
courted by the other agencies? Yeah? What was that like?
I mean, it's nice to be wanted. Did you feel
like the way that they sort of sell the artists.
I'm like, we'll do this for you and this will happen.
We have these whatever tools. I mean, it's interesting because
(17:00):
back then, like I didn't really know they say that, Yeah,
they say they have all these things, they say they
do all these things. I wasn't really sure like which
one is telling the truth or which one is the
most true? Right, Well, so that's really going to do it.
This is what the artists go through, right when CIA
and W M E and U t A are all yeah,
and when they have to choose a label. Yeah, that's true,
(17:22):
you know, um, and I guess ultimately it kind of
comes down to your gut again where you feel most comfortable,
which was obviously paradigm for you. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk
a little bit about festivals, because we're coming out of
this very dark couple of years which really upended the
touring industry. But we're days away from Coachella at this point.
(17:46):
Lollapalooza went off without a hitch. What's your view of
the return of festivals, Amid Covid. I mean, I went
to the Lalla Closa. I figured it was great. I
went to us the city limits. It felt like every
other obsously limits. I went to it was great. They
waited in lines for food. I saw a ton of bands.
(18:07):
It was really good. How do I feel about it?
I mean, I'm really happy it's back. What was the
pandemic like for you? As a booking person? It was
brutal and horrible in a lot of ways. You like
to see everything you've built and what you do. I
would say booking and live shows, that's the thing that
(18:27):
that makes me tick, that's the thing that excites me.
And to not have that sort of it swept out
from under you and and sometimes thinking like this is
ever going to come back, just not really knowing it
really sucks. Yeah, and probably something you've never experienced. Hell no,
of course not. Yeah. It was I mean sometimes very awful,
(18:48):
very stressful. And then also it's a responsibility to guide
artists make them feel like it's going to be okay.
It was really brutal a lot of ways. There were
a lot of silver linings, but definitely being able to
spend lots of extra time with my son when he
was one and two years old, it was amazing and
I feel just so grateful that I got to do
(19:10):
that because normally I would travel every week or two
and go out to a show every other night and
that's what I do. Now you're back. I'm back. Yeah.
I was talking to someone today. It was asking me, like,
do you think that, like we'll do less small trips
and not go to as many shows. I said, I'd
like to think that would be the case. But I'm
(19:33):
going to shows every night now and I'm on a
plane every week for the next eight weeks. I feel
like it will go back to that, at least for
a while. I mean, yeah, maybe I'll say no to
some things, but there's an awful lot going on, and
I'm also happy and grateful that it's going on. We
need to take a quick break, but we'll be back
(19:53):
with more from Tom Wendish, and we're back with Wasserman
Muse six Tom Wendish. I mean, Billie Eilish's tour was
one of those tours that that was impacted. It seemed
like she was able to pivot, do a lot of
other projects, be available for awards shows and things like that.
(20:15):
But what were those conversations like about having the postpone
a tour for a year or maybe two years. Who knows,
she might have a new album by then. You could
be a completely different cycle. They were repetitive because we
did it several times. Yeah, and it wasn't just with hers,
with everybody. You'd get to the point where you're moving
moving the thing for like the third or fourth time,
(20:37):
and it feels like you're beating a dead horse or something,
and it's I mean, it's not great. I've had this
feeling the other night. I've been feeling really happy to
be out at shows. There have been moments where I've
been overwhelmed with emotion or goose bumps or tears. I mean,
it's actually like quite a beautiful thing to be even
(21:00):
it doesn't matter how big the artist is, whether they're
playing the twenty people or a hundred, to be there
and just to be so happy that like this amazing
musical moments happening, you're in a room with all these people,
you realize, like this is why I do it, and
this thing that the reason I do it, being in
the room and experiencing these things and helping to bring
(21:21):
this joy to these fans and musicians. Like not having
that and doing it for two years, like it was dark,
Like it kind of sucks talking about shows that are
sort of fictional might happen. And I'm really glad that
the things I'm talking about now are really happening. It's
(21:43):
the same for the artists and for the fans and
for the promoters. It's amazing. Like sometimes I go backstage
after the show and we're hugging each other and we're
all like so happy that they have that feeling too,
and when they're on stage they get it. It's not
just me. It comes to like rescheduling a tour, like
there are many challenges that pop up with that, the
(22:05):
availability of venues and what kind of things were you
up against when you were moving a major tour two three,
four times, other people that want the buildings to and
as you push things back further and further into the future,
you just run into more and more people that are planning.
Everyone's planning a tour, and it feels like you're kind
of squishing into a time when just everybody wants the
(22:27):
same real estate and it's hard to get. And yeah,
I mean we were talking about it before. How when
I first started doing this, artist booked themselves so they
kind of understood the routing process and stuff. But most
are almost all artists these days, have not done that
at least like at the level that I'm dealing with.
(22:48):
I was talking too artists the other day. It was
like they couldn't understand why they had to drive from
Washington to Boston and it was like nine and a
half hours or something, and it's like, I know, that
sucks it as of bales, And normally, I'm sort of
known for booking things very far in advance, and part
of the reason for that is to just get perfect rating.
But that's not really possible these days. I mean, I'm
(23:10):
booking shows for next spring, and so is everybody else basically,
and summer and fall, and even the tours that like,
let's say got going like the end of one, they
had to deal with like different state laws about COVID,
(23:31):
so the routing really could be funky where it's like, oh,
we can't play that venue because they don't require masks
or whatever. I mean, were you running up against that too.
I didn't run into that so much. It was mostly
what's going to be happening with COVID next week? And
I just felt like every day I still sort of
(23:51):
feel this way, but definitely like last fall when I
had a lot of people on tour again, every day
you wake up and wondering, like, what's going to happen today.
Is it gonna be okay or not? I will say
like this year, there's been a very high number of
just odd things that have happened that lead to cancelations,
like one of them, and they're all like sort of
(24:12):
active god type things. One of my bands, one of
my clients they had there, the trailer was stolen, all
the equipment, so they can't play the show that day.
Some of the supply chain related. Also, something breaks in
your van, they can't get the part. That's happening with
busses a lot. You know, last night the sound was
all messed up, but at a really good club, and
(24:34):
I was asking the club, the owner or whatever, what's
the deal. We've had four different sound people in the
last four weeks, and this is like a premier venue,
really good club. Well, they can't find a sound person
that is like a very good sound person. A lot
of sound people when it got another job. So that's
also a supply chain issue. That's the supply chain issue.
And then they also had issues with the equipment and
(24:56):
they can't get it fixed because the parts have and arrived.
And then people are getting COVID left and right. Still
they're sick, they can't play, they're sick. You wake up
and just like, what's going to happen today? Thankfully I
haven't had any like major issues, but it's really keeping
you on your toes. I mean I remember talking to
an agent years ago about like how great it all was.
(25:19):
Everything is just selling tickets and we work at amazing
artists they're selling tickets. This I don't see this changing ever,
went from that to uh stressful, really stressful. Did you
ever question like, oh my god, maybe I didn't I
got into the wrong business. I mean, I'll tell you
I had extra time even though I was booking these
(25:40):
tours over and over again. I started a small record label.
I have like a label called Wilder and I named
after my son that I did with Future Classic and
I put out about ten records, some were single, one album,
a few EPs. That's been really interesting. I'd manage an
artist named Daniel Ponder, who incredible. I think a lot
(26:01):
of people will hear her. I became a partner of
School Night, which is a live music showcase in in
l A. And all those things. I did them not
to change to replace my day job, but to help
me understand other aspects of the business a lot better
to make me better at my day job. And it's
(26:21):
been remarkable. I feel like I've learned more in the
last two years. I feel like I've learned a lot.
Let's talk about Billie Eilish. You started working with her
when she was fourteen. Tell me what you saw in
her back then. The main thing is I was just
so lucky that Justin Loveliner, I didn't know him. He
signed her to his label and just reached out to
(26:44):
me and said, I'm Justin. I have a record label.
I found this as young woman. I think she's going
to be huge. I really like what you've done with Lord,
go meet her. And he sent me Ocean Eyes and
I love that song like like every and you heard that.
That's a great song. It was not rocket science. It
wasn't like I was taking a huge gamble. Her first show,
(27:08):
I set up a so Far Sounds in my office.
She had never played, and we didn't want like all
these people to go that actually wanted to go see her.
We just wanted her to play in front of an
audience that didn't know what they were getting, which is
so Far Sounds, that's their whole thing. And she got
up there and played and it was great. I think
it helped her sort of break the ice and we
(27:30):
went from there. Was it just her in Phineas. Yeah,
it must have been like twenty minutes or so, twenty
five minutes. She played the ukulele and they literally sat
on the stools that were in our kitchen, these sort
of like taller stools, uh, and played to fifty people.
So did you envision like the future that she would
(27:53):
end up having, like as a real groundbreaking artist and
arena filler festival draw she's headline in coach Alla. I
never really think about it in those ways. I don't
know what it is about my mentality. I just get
excited by the music and in the moment, I try
and book the best show possible, the best show for them,
(28:15):
the right size. Not always that doesn't always mean the
biggest show. Just one that's going to be great, that
they're really gonna like, and that the fans are really
gonna like, because those are important and those are great
for developing an artist and a lot of for a
lot of different reasons. And I'm always thinking, like, what
is this show going to lead to? If we sell
this out, then we'll go sell that place out and
set that place out. But I'm trying not to get
(28:37):
too ahead of myself. But I mean also, I like,
I knew this thing is going. This is a rocket
we're holding on. And I think one of the biggest
things that did was like really discourage everyone from going
too big, too fast. I said, Billy needs to play
in in the place that fits a thousand people. If
(29:00):
where she plays in front of the place that fits
four thousand people, even though maybe she could play there,
Let's let her have that experience in front of a
thousand people. It'll be a comfortable experience for her. The
fans will be like so excited that they were able
to get in, and people second guests that along the way,
I had to get these calls like why isn't she
(29:21):
playing here? Why isn't she playing there? Why is she
headlining the main stage the second Why is she headlining
the second stage? She should be on the main stage. No,
I think it's gonna be great when she headlines the
second stage, because where would we go if we were
second or third on the main stage and should just
be on the main stage every time. That second stage
is pretty cool. There's been a lot of amazing moments
(29:42):
over there, and let's have one, um, and I think
that worked out. Think it's really cool. Are you talking
about the specific festival where she played the second stage Coachella? Coachella, Okay,
so this will be her as she headlines. This will
be her first time headlining Coachella. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm
not thinking, like how many other times she's going to
do that? Right, I got you. I haven't thought about
(30:05):
the next one yet, you know, I'm looking forward to
this one. I was just going to say that it
is amazing that she can command an audience that big.
I mean, I saw her at the Greek and her
some of her songs are very quiet. She's her voice
is not projecting the way a belter like a pop
artist would. I think that's amazing that she can. Actually
(30:27):
I find this with few artists, but when they do
it really well to be able to capture the attention
of a room that big or a festival. The loudest
part of her shows is not the sound system, but
the audience. The screaming. Yes, I know, it's like when
bad Guy, when she's sang bad Guy was like, I
really could not hear her sing at that point, it
was just screaming teenage girls, but such a fun experience.
(30:50):
It is super competitive to get that slot at at
Coachella though, right, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't just one phone call.
It was a very long time. I told Paul to
Let that he could write a book about booking coach
Ella this year, but I don't think many people would
read it. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's just like dorks
(31:11):
and geeks like Paul and I and people in the
weeds that would be really excited about it. Why do
you say that? Was it just the again, the COVID
of it all and the switching it up and confirmed
then they're not Scott. Yeah. And the mix of coach Hella.
It has to be a mix. It used to be
(31:32):
like you'd have that one huge retro or sort of
multi generational artist, but now it's like you have to
have hip hop, you have to have pop, and you
have to have whatever is cool of something else. Yeah,
exactly something. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be amazing.
Yeah you're excited. Yeah, I am excited. I've got some
other bands playing there too that I'm excited about. Yeah,
(31:53):
who else do you have? I have this woman named
Rena Sawa Yama. She is amazing and it is going
so well for her. What's her story. She's from the UK.
She's kind of a cross between imagine a Japanese version
of The York and Lady Gaga. Wow, that sounds awesome,
(32:13):
very interesting. And she's playing New York coming up. And
we sold almost ten thousand tickets really fast. I love that.
Like an artist that almost no one I know has
heard of and then they're selling town thousand tickets. That happens. Great,
that happens these days. It happens. Yeah. I mean I
book a lot of those artists. Wolf Peck is one
(32:34):
of those artists people. So this band Wolf Peck, never
heard of him, you know, they just sold out Master
Square Garden, who likes them, like a lot of people.
And then I had this other band called Biagra Boys.
They're playing Coachella. They're from Sweden. They're like a punk
rock band. And I booked this this tour that they're on.
I just had no idea how it was gonna do.
(32:56):
And the whole thing sold out and we or something
really fast. And like every one of those bands that
got bigger in the pandemic and there's not really the
data to support it. I don't really follow data very
much because I still have a very hard time telling
what it means. There's bands that they don't stream, what
they sell a lot of tickets. There's bands it's stream,
(33:18):
they don't sell tickets. And then there was also a
two year break there where it's just someone just like
threw the cards up and we're figuring out where things
are at. Now, let's talk about the transition from Paradigm
to Wasserman. I know it got a little chaotic there
for a second. Yeah, yeah, but it all worked out hopefully.
(33:39):
What's your view of it? Was it the right thing
to do? What happened at the beginning with Paradigm, so
it's nothing to do with Wasserman, Like, Paradigm let go
of a lot of people from the music department, a
lot of agents and staff that were formerly Windish people.
So these people that I really worked a long time
with and worked hard to build their foster's and we're
(34:02):
all great agents. That was devastating. It's like having two
thirds of your family kicked out or something and there
was nothing I could do about it. So that sucked.
It was awful. I mean I felt really bad and powerless.
And then the Wasserman thing, like that was a great thing.
We wanted to like join a different entity. When the
Paradigm ut a thing happened, I met Casey. I had
(34:24):
heard about him, I had heard about the grandfather, read
the books about um, watched the movie. I mean, of
all the old Hollywood agent manager legends, this was the top.
His roster was insane. So I met his grandson, cool guy.
And then when the Wassman stuff came start came up,
I was like cool, and I feel very good about it.
(34:46):
I'm excited about the resources that they have and a
lot of the people I've met, and I feel like
it's going really well into changing the name, almost like
give you guys a fresh start, because I feel like
Paradigm kind of took a beating those last few years.
I feel like I was so focused on my roster
(35:08):
and doing things that I don't know and also sort
of powerless. If people said things about Paradigm, I think
a lot of times I didn't even hear it, but
also didn't pay much attention to it because there wasn't
anything I could do about it. Like I was booking
to the Eilish tours, I was booking a whole bunch
of other things. No, it was it was really mainly
(35:30):
about the leadership and the financials of the agency. I
didn't really like know much about that until the pandemic.
They definitely weren't walking around talking about it. It may
have said spend less on your travel or something, but
I mean they I don't spend a lot on travel.
I fly coach most of the time. I was saying
(35:52):
that to me. I don't take subs two shows. I've
ride a city bike. You can never take the d
out of tom windows. Yeah, I take subways. You practically
have the word indie in your last name. Yeah, I
never really thought about that. This is my takeaway from
(36:12):
our conversation. You are a risk taker. You take on
bands that you don't know if that tour is going
to sell well or not. And it seems like connecting
with Paradigm was also kind of a risk and I
can see why when it came to layoffs that would
have been really difficult for you because you decided to
take that step, right. Did those employees find other places
(36:36):
to work, Were you able to hire people back at all,
or we've hired people back. I mean, the the agents,
like the Formula windowsh agents that they let go have
all gone and started independent agencies and and I'm sure
they're all going to have the best year they've ever had,
and I'm very happy for them. And every agency is
(36:58):
going to be trying to buy them, just like they
tried to buy my agency. And I think they're all
going to find a lot of happiness. I think that
they're really psyched, just like me, are very psyched that
their shows again, you know, they can go and experience
this stuff that they've been talking about for two years.
So are we back? Is that it? I mean? I
wish I knew. I'm afraid to say, who knows? Yeh,
(37:22):
who the heck knows? Um? I sure hope. So when
the pandemic started, everyone was like, oh, yeah, it was
going to be two weeks. I remember reading, uh was
it Mark Geiger, Who's who said the industry wouldn't be
back until two And I was like, that's crazy. He
was right, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. All right,
here's hoping for better times and a healthy live industry.
(37:43):
It sure feels good now. I go to a show
almost every night. Sometimes too. Yeah, it's feeling great. That's great, Tom,
thanks so much for talking to us, and have an
amazing time at Coachella. Thanks Tom. All right, thank you,
thank you. Tune in next week for another episode of
(38:07):
Varieties Strictly Business.
M H. Welcome to Strictly Business Varieties weekly podcast featuring
conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment.
This is Shirley Halperin, executive editor of Music for Variety,
(00:20):
and my guest today is Tom Wendish, the head of
business development and a r for the town agency Wasserman Music,
where his clients include the artists Lord the XX and
Coachella headliner Billie Eilish. Like the most seasoned of booking agents,
Tom got his start while still in college Binghamton, New York,
(00:41):
to be exact. That's where he first caught the bug
for buzzing bands that were sort of left of center.
Upon graduating, he had a short lived internship at William
Marris where he would bug the agents to show him
the ropes. It's why Tom would name his own company, Bug,
launched a little over thirty years ago as the rock
scene was exploding. In fact, the word indie is practically
(01:04):
baked into Tom's last name, which makes his career track
seemed practically predestined. Circumstances led him to Chicago, where he
would build a formidable roster of bands most people had
never heard of, and he would scale up to include
dozens more. That led to gaining the attention of the
budding Midwest booking agency Billions, which took Tom under its
(01:26):
wing from to two thousand four. For the next thirteen years,
Tom called the Windish Agency home. He operated a lean
and mean machine that looked after hundreds of artists, but
it was his own skills as a talent scout and
being in the right place at the right time that
resulted in identifying the singular talent that is Billie Eilish.
(01:50):
As Billy and other clients got more popular competing agencies,
he says, we're all trying to steal them. The solution,
as Tom Windish saw it, was to align with bigger entity.
He chose Paradigm in seventeen as it was absorbing several
small to mid size indies like his own. Among them
the firm's Little Big Man, a m Only Coda and
(02:13):
X Ray Touring, which brought to the roster such touring
giants as Ed Sharon Coplay, David Getta and Fish, among
many many more. Not long after arriving at Paradigm, Tom
Windish marveled at the health of his industry. Little did
he know what was coming in the form of COVID.
The pandemic not only disrupted touring in its physical form,
(02:36):
it turned the business of live music upside down. All
agencies were impacted, but Paradigm in particular lost its financial
footing and began exploring a merger or a sale. The
buyer would turn out to be Ksey Wasserman, grandson of
Lou Wasserman, who was among Hollywood's founding fathers, working for
(02:56):
over eight decades to completely reshape entertainment. The deal for
Paradigm closed in March, and the agency was re christened
Wasserman Music. Not surprisingly, Tom was well read on the
Wasserman dynasty, and it's proven to be an asset as
he and his new boss navigate the post COVID landscape,
(03:18):
passing on that guidance to his artists. As Tom Winters
prepares to fly from his home base of New York
to India, California for Coachella, where he has multiple acts
on the bill, he cautiously exhales while recounting the routing
and supply chain problems COVID has wrought. How Billie Eilish's
(03:38):
live career progressed memphodically despite second guessing by his peers
and what he's learned from decades spent directing artists on
the road. We pick up Tom Story in Chicago in
the early nineties. Welcome back to Strictly Business. Here's Tom
(03:59):
win Dish. So, Tom win Dish, thanks so much for
being on Strictly Business. Welcome, nice to be here. Thanks
for inviting me. M the indie rock music scene in
Chicago at that time, this is like ninety something was great,
Touch and Go Records, Thrilled Jockey, Drag City, Tupelo. Yeah,
(04:25):
so I ended up like meeting tons of people. Everyone
was super nice, very supportive of each other. Everyone was
saying you should move here. I think maybe I was
living with my parents at the time because I was broke.
I was spending all the money I made on the
booking on the phone bill, like literally, and he said,
you can live up above the club. He lived above
the club too. You can live in this other one
(04:48):
bedroom or something or studio for a hundred fifty bucks
a month. So I then went over to Lounge Jackson
met the people on that place, Sue Miller, and that
was from Julia and those two clubs were they hated
each other. Arrivals they were trying to book the same bands.
They get really upset with you if you booked your
band at the other club. And they took me out
(05:09):
to dinner. I said, I'm thinking about moving here. Oh really, yeah,
I think I might live above the empty bottle. He
said I could live there for a hundred fifty dollars
and they were like that, you can live above our
club for hundred bucks a months utiles included. And I
drove out in January three weeks later, like my car
(05:32):
full of stuff basically like a file cabinet and dot
matrix printer and an old McIntosh ch s e this
big cube computer thing. And and I lived about I mean,
this was not really an apartment. It was like, I
don't know what you described it as a room at
four walls. My kitchen was in a bathroom. The rent
(05:52):
was great, and I lived above this club. And and
I never thought twice about like this is a dump.
This is awful. I was in heaven. You must have
seen so many amazing shows I did. And the talk
about Uncle Tupelo. This is when Jeff Tweedy was playing
their solo all the time and was dating or engaged
(06:12):
to Sue Miller. They ended up getting married at the
club when I lived there. It was like the one
time that I had to like go away for a
while because they like used my room as like dressing. Yeah. Yeah,
But I went to the wedding and everything. It was fantastic.
And then you know, like probably six months after I
got to Chicago, Batch from Billions called me up and
(06:36):
asked if I'd be interested in joining Billions. Tell me
about him because the listeners of this podcast are definitely
not familiar with these characters, So describe him. Okay, Well,
he booked Pavement and John Spencer, Blues Explosion and loads
of bands on Touch and Go and was a legend.
And I mean he just had one of the best
independent booking agencies in the country and was on the
(06:58):
up and up. Jesus A Zero it was another band
and they were all like doing really well. I had
so much respect for him. I was afraid of him,
so I kind of worshiped this guy. Maybe we worked
out I deally. I went and worked there and it
was great. Learned a lot. So when did you form
your own agency? Um? I think I was at Billions
six or seven years something like that. Maybe a little
(07:20):
more and I had a little roster of thirty or
so artists. Remember I put it up. There was like
one page on the website. Yeah, I have like a
link to that somewhere or something. It's pretty funny. I
think there's like a spelling error on it. One of
the bands was spelled from for a minute. Yeah, it
was a long time ago. I my office was the
(07:43):
second bedroom of my condo and I had an employee.
That was the main thing, Like, the main reason I
wanted to start my own thing was I didn't have
an assistant, and I was booking a lot of bands
and doing a lot of the contracts and stuff myself,
and I thought if I have an assistant, I could
book more shows. I was there for like eight for
(08:05):
ten years quite a while. It was great. I'm really
glad that I started things there and not New York
in l A. Why do you say that I didn't
really have like a handle at all on what was
going on in New York in l A with you know,
this hot band and that hot band. But I'm happy
(08:27):
that I wasn't comparing myself to others and losing out
on things to others. We really carved our own Lane.
I would say probably other people in the business probably
hadn't even heard of a lot of the stuff that
we were signing. God Speed You, Black Emperor Low. We
signed Diplo early on. I was doing a lot of
electronic stuff to a lot of people on Warp records
(08:49):
like Apex Twin really never played, but Square Pusher, aw
Teckers group, Cold Cut, who started a label called Ninja Tune,
Kid Koala, and on Tobin, Saint Germain or Sanchoman. So
like electronic live, which hardly anyone was booking that before
other than Jerry Girard and his was more mainstream live
(09:10):
electronic stuff in DJ's and ours was like quite underground.
They would sell some of them would sell a hundred tickets,
two hundred tickets, not not very big. And then when
streaming happened, it was like someone turned a floodlight onto
these things. Like before a lot of these records you
just couldn't find. There might be one store or two
stores in New York and l A and a few
(09:32):
other spots, and you'd go there and order it and
it would show up like a month or six weeks later.
So all of a sudden, streaming and I guess illegal downloading.
Even I noticed more tickets being sold. Interesting, I mean
discovery is that that is the challenge of the people
who make music, who sell music. So one thing about
(09:54):
the Windows Agency that I remember, even before you joined Paradigm,
is that you had a lot of acts. Is like
you scaled up even as an indie. What was the
thinking behind that and what do you look for in
an artist? I mean fundamentally, like I'm looking I'm listening
(10:14):
for music that gives me butterflies or goose bumps, or
that I just really enjoy that. I like things that
are a little bit different than anything I've ever heard before,
whatever element, the way the voice sounds, the way the
drum sound, the style, and if I hear something that
I like, especially back then, like you'd hear things you
like and there was like an audience. You didn't really
(10:36):
know how big it was, but you could book it
and put up a few shows, see how it did,
and then if it went well, like then you do
some more. I remember signing in this band Jagga jazzi
Ist or Yaga Yazzis. They were on Ninja Tune. It
was like an eight piece in Norwegian electronic jazz band.
(10:58):
I had never heard anything like it. They were incredible.
I had no idea how it was going to go.
And we did like three to five tickets to night
on the first tour in like eight or ten cities,
and the shows were incredible, and everyone said that was amazing. Um,
that was a success for us to you know, selling
that number of tickets was really good. I would sign
(11:19):
bands or artists that I had never seen before, and
I remember back then other agents really looking down on that.
I would never sign a band I haven't seen, and
I did that because I didn't have the financial means
to go sign these bands. It didn't make sense for
me to fly to Norway first to see Jagga jazz
(11:40):
Is to make sure they were good. Because when they
toured and they did sell eight cities and three to
five tickets, that meant we made like four thousand bucks
or something, you know, or three thousand bucks. You know,
if I had flown there and stayed in a hotel,
that would have been half the money. It almost always
worked out. There's very few times I can remember where
(12:00):
the band wasn't good, and then you flash forward to today,
Like Billy had never played a show when I signed her.
Lord had never played a show when I signed her,
so and I was fine with it. I just thought,
they make great music, they'll figure it out. I'll do
whatever I need to help, but they'll figure it out.
And if they don't, then we won't do many more shows.
But they did, I'll figure it out. That's so interesting
(12:21):
because it's like, that's not how it used to be.
It was like you had to pay your dues, you
had to start at the clubs and make your way up.
And today it's like you can have a giant hit,
your first record out be playing arenas in no time
with zero touring experience. I think streaming had a lot
to do with everything changing, at least for the kind
(12:42):
of people I worked with, because I mean I saw
I remember with Hot Chip we did one tour, it
went well. Streaming kind of took off that. Back then,
it was like Pirate Bay or whatever it was. You
could practically google things and find places to like download
this stuff, and everybody like certain people are just doing
(13:03):
They had computers running twenty four hours a day just
downloading stuff. It was like it was like getting the
keys to fdo Schwartz or something. You have whatever you want.
But then the next tour they did like there were
a lot more people there. I'd say, like the chunk
of their fans were doing that stuff right, probably because
they couldn't afford to buy the music. That was the
(13:24):
whole thing. Afford and it's like hard to get your
hands on it, hard hard to find, of course. Okay,
so tell me about when disjoined Paradigms in something like that.
What was the thinking behind that. At the time, you
had a staff of more than eighty in six cities
(13:46):
and over a thousand clients. Clearly things were working. So
what did Paradigm offer? I guess what I felt was
that the more successful we became, and the more successful
our artists became m and at the time that meant
Lord the x ax diplo Odessa Flu, the more intense
(14:10):
the competition became. It was great when we were under
the radar and no one had heard of the bands
in terms of the competition and the stress. And but
like then, these artists got more popular and the agencies
were all trying to steal them, and they would say no,
but then the agency would go back again a month
(14:30):
or two or three later, and that went on for years,
so that it felt like towards the end like these
people were offering their relative enough they would change I'll
give you my my my house or something, and I
was like, jeez, what else is going to happen? And
I was always thinking what this started almost day one
when I started Windance Agency. What can we do to
(14:52):
provide a better service to the artist. I know it
sounds like everyone does that, but I was the first
agency to start password protected webs site where you could
see how much you were being paid and if we
had the deposit and the signed contract and all those things.
Very sounds incredibly simple. Now. We had a tour marketing department.
I think before anybody, we had a branding department. These
(15:14):
were all things like I was either thinking, what's gonna
be helpful for the artists, what are they gonna appreciate,
what's gonna help sell more tickets? Or what is everybody
else saying they do? And we need to compete with that?
We need to like have an answer. We had people
that would like help with acting or would meet with
our artists and basically asked like, what are your dreams
outside of music and then go and try and implement
(15:37):
them and they did very interesting things, and we did
that for years. I basically got to a point where
I thought it's never gonna be enough. I could have
twenty people doing these things instead of six and still
wouldn't be enough because it's all about perception, not reality.
So I need to join one. And the perception is
(15:58):
like bigger, bigger, better, we'll get more from the artist.
So I did it. You know, I went with ones
that were nice people, and they had all been indies too.
They were really cut from the same cloth. Paradigms or
Party Diamonds Company, Little big Man Am Only Monterey, Dakota
(16:18):
may have come after, I can't remember. And when I
would speak with these people, the former owners of these agencies,
they sort of had the same experience as me in
different ways. They all started these things like in the
second bedroom or in a little garage or whatever, and
it group And I don't know, there's something about that
(16:38):
DNA that makes you feel comfortable, right, Were you being
courted by the other agencies? Yeah? What was that like?
I mean, it's nice to be wanted. Did you feel
like the way that they sort of sell the artists.
I'm like, we'll do this for you and this will happen.
We have these whatever tools. I mean, it's interesting because
(17:00):
back then, like I didn't really know they say that, Yeah,
they say they have all these things, they say they
do all these things. I wasn't really sure like which
one is telling the truth or which one is the
most true? Right, Well, so that's really going to do it.
This is what the artists go through, right when CIA
and W M E and U t A are all yeah,
and when they have to choose a label. Yeah, that's true,
(17:22):
you know, um, and I guess ultimately it kind of
comes down to your gut again where you feel most comfortable,
which was obviously paradigm for you. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk
a little bit about festivals, because we're coming out of
this very dark couple of years which really upended the
touring industry. But we're days away from Coachella at this point.
(17:46):
Lollapalooza went off without a hitch. What's your view of
the return of festivals, Amid Covid. I mean, I went
to the Lalla Closa. I figured it was great. I
went to us the city limits. It felt like every
other obsously limits. I went to it was great. They
waited in lines for food. I saw a ton of bands.
(18:07):
It was really good. How do I feel about it?
I mean, I'm really happy it's back. What was the
pandemic like for you? As a booking person? It was
brutal and horrible in a lot of ways. You like
to see everything you've built and what you do. I
would say booking and live shows, that's the thing that
(18:27):
that makes me tick, that's the thing that excites me.
And to not have that sort of it swept out
from under you and and sometimes thinking like this is
ever going to come back, just not really knowing it
really sucks. Yeah, and probably something you've never experienced. Hell no,
of course not. Yeah. It was I mean sometimes very awful,
(18:48):
very stressful. And then also it's a responsibility to guide
artists make them feel like it's going to be okay.
It was really brutal a lot of ways. There were
a lot of silver linings, but definitely being able to
spend lots of extra time with my son when he
was one and two years old, it was amazing and
I feel just so grateful that I got to do
(19:10):
that because normally I would travel every week or two
and go out to a show every other night and
that's what I do. Now you're back. I'm back. Yeah.
I was talking to someone today. It was asking me, like,
do you think that, like we'll do less small trips
and not go to as many shows. I said, I'd
like to think that would be the case. But I'm
(19:33):
going to shows every night now and I'm on a
plane every week for the next eight weeks. I feel
like it will go back to that, at least for
a while. I mean, yeah, maybe I'll say no to
some things, but there's an awful lot going on, and
I'm also happy and grateful that it's going on. We
need to take a quick break, but we'll be back
(19:53):
with more from Tom Wendish, and we're back with Wasserman
Muse six Tom Wendish. I mean, Billie Eilish's tour was
one of those tours that that was impacted. It seemed
like she was able to pivot, do a lot of
other projects, be available for awards shows and things like that.
(20:15):
But what were those conversations like about having the postpone
a tour for a year or maybe two years. Who knows,
she might have a new album by then. You could
be a completely different cycle. They were repetitive because we
did it several times. Yeah, and it wasn't just with hers,
with everybody. You'd get to the point where you're moving
moving the thing for like the third or fourth time,
(20:37):
and it feels like you're beating a dead horse or something,
and it's I mean, it's not great. I've had this
feeling the other night. I've been feeling really happy to
be out at shows. There have been moments where I've
been overwhelmed with emotion or goose bumps or tears. I mean,
it's actually like quite a beautiful thing to be even
(21:00):
it doesn't matter how big the artist is, whether they're
playing the twenty people or a hundred, to be there
and just to be so happy that like this amazing
musical moments happening, you're in a room with all these people,
you realize, like this is why I do it, and
this thing that the reason I do it, being in
the room and experiencing these things and helping to bring
(21:21):
this joy to these fans and musicians. Like not having
that and doing it for two years, like it was dark,
Like it kind of sucks talking about shows that are
sort of fictional might happen. And I'm really glad that
the things I'm talking about now are really happening. It's
(21:43):
the same for the artists and for the fans and
for the promoters. It's amazing. Like sometimes I go backstage
after the show and we're hugging each other and we're
all like so happy that they have that feeling too,
and when they're on stage they get it. It's not
just me. It comes to like rescheduling a tour, like
there are many challenges that pop up with that, the
(22:05):
availability of venues and what kind of things were you
up against when you were moving a major tour two three,
four times, other people that want the buildings to and
as you push things back further and further into the future,
you just run into more and more people that are planning.
Everyone's planning a tour, and it feels like you're kind
of squishing into a time when just everybody wants the
(22:27):
same real estate and it's hard to get. And yeah,
I mean we were talking about it before. How when
I first started doing this, artist booked themselves so they
kind of understood the routing process and stuff. But most
are almost all artists these days, have not done that
at least like at the level that I'm dealing with.
(22:48):
I was talking too artists the other day. It was
like they couldn't understand why they had to drive from
Washington to Boston and it was like nine and a
half hours or something, and it's like, I know, that
sucks it as of bales, And normally, I'm sort of
known for booking things very far in advance, and part
of the reason for that is to just get perfect rating.
But that's not really possible these days. I mean, I'm
(23:10):
booking shows for next spring, and so is everybody else basically,
and summer and fall, and even the tours that like,
let's say got going like the end of one, they
had to deal with like different state laws about COVID,
(23:31):
so the routing really could be funky where it's like, oh,
we can't play that venue because they don't require masks
or whatever. I mean, were you running up against that too.
I didn't run into that so much. It was mostly
what's going to be happening with COVID next week? And
I just felt like every day I still sort of
(23:51):
feel this way, but definitely like last fall when I
had a lot of people on tour again, every day
you wake up and wondering, like, what's going to happen today.
Is it gonna be okay or not? I will say
like this year, there's been a very high number of
just odd things that have happened that lead to cancelations,
like one of them, and they're all like sort of
(24:12):
active god type things. One of my bands, one of
my clients they had there, the trailer was stolen, all
the equipment, so they can't play the show that day.
Some of the supply chain related. Also, something breaks in
your van, they can't get the part. That's happening with
busses a lot. You know, last night the sound was
all messed up, but at a really good club, and
(24:34):
I was asking the club, the owner or whatever, what's
the deal. We've had four different sound people in the
last four weeks, and this is like a premier venue,
really good club. Well, they can't find a sound person
that is like a very good sound person. A lot
of sound people when it got another job. So that's
also a supply chain issue. That's the supply chain issue.
And then they also had issues with the equipment and
(24:56):
they can't get it fixed because the parts have and arrived.
And then people are getting COVID left and right. Still
they're sick, they can't play, they're sick. You wake up
and just like, what's going to happen today? Thankfully I
haven't had any like major issues, but it's really keeping
you on your toes. I mean I remember talking to
an agent years ago about like how great it all was.
(25:19):
Everything is just selling tickets and we work at amazing
artists they're selling tickets. This I don't see this changing ever,
went from that to uh stressful, really stressful. Did you
ever question like, oh my god, maybe I didn't I
got into the wrong business. I mean, I'll tell you
I had extra time even though I was booking these
(25:40):
tours over and over again. I started a small record label.
I have like a label called Wilder and I named
after my son that I did with Future Classic and
I put out about ten records, some were single, one album,
a few EPs. That's been really interesting. I'd manage an
artist named Daniel Ponder, who incredible. I think a lot
(26:01):
of people will hear her. I became a partner of
School Night, which is a live music showcase in in
l A. And all those things. I did them not
to change to replace my day job, but to help
me understand other aspects of the business a lot better
to make me better at my day job. And it's
(26:21):
been remarkable. I feel like I've learned more in the
last two years. I feel like I've learned a lot.
Let's talk about Billie Eilish. You started working with her
when she was fourteen. Tell me what you saw in
her back then. The main thing is I was just
so lucky that Justin Loveliner, I didn't know him. He
signed her to his label and just reached out to
(26:44):
me and said, I'm Justin. I have a record label.
I found this as young woman. I think she's going
to be huge. I really like what you've done with Lord,
go meet her. And he sent me Ocean Eyes and
I love that song like like every and you heard that.
That's a great song. It was not rocket science. It
wasn't like I was taking a huge gamble. Her first show,
(27:08):
I set up a so Far Sounds in my office.
She had never played, and we didn't want like all
these people to go that actually wanted to go see her.
We just wanted her to play in front of an
audience that didn't know what they were getting, which is
so Far Sounds, that's their whole thing. And she got
up there and played and it was great. I think
it helped her sort of break the ice and we
(27:30):
went from there. Was it just her in Phineas. Yeah,
it must have been like twenty minutes or so, twenty
five minutes. She played the ukulele and they literally sat
on the stools that were in our kitchen, these sort
of like taller stools, uh, and played to fifty people.
So did you envision like the future that she would
(27:53):
end up having, like as a real groundbreaking artist and
arena filler festival draw she's headline in coach Alla. I
never really think about it in those ways. I don't
know what it is about my mentality. I just get
excited by the music and in the moment, I try
and book the best show possible, the best show for them,
(28:15):
the right size. Not always that doesn't always mean the
biggest show. Just one that's going to be great, that
they're really gonna like, and that the fans are really
gonna like, because those are important and those are great
for developing an artist and a lot of for a
lot of different reasons. And I'm always thinking, like, what
is this show going to lead to? If we sell
this out, then we'll go sell that place out and
set that place out. But I'm trying not to get
(28:37):
too ahead of myself. But I mean also, I like,
I knew this thing is going. This is a rocket
we're holding on. And I think one of the biggest
things that did was like really discourage everyone from going
too big, too fast. I said, Billy needs to play
in in the place that fits a thousand people. If
(29:00):
where she plays in front of the place that fits
four thousand people, even though maybe she could play there,
Let's let her have that experience in front of a
thousand people. It'll be a comfortable experience for her. The
fans will be like so excited that they were able
to get in, and people second guests that along the way,
I had to get these calls like why isn't she
(29:21):
playing here? Why isn't she playing there? Why is she
headlining the main stage the second Why is she headlining
the second stage? She should be on the main stage. No,
I think it's gonna be great when she headlines the
second stage, because where would we go if we were
second or third on the main stage and should just
be on the main stage every time. That second stage
is pretty cool. There's been a lot of amazing moments
(29:42):
over there, and let's have one, um, and I think
that worked out. Think it's really cool. Are you talking
about the specific festival where she played the second stage Coachella? Coachella, Okay,
so this will be her as she headlines. This will
be her first time headlining Coachella. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm
not thinking, like how many other times she's going to
do that? Right, I got you. I haven't thought about
(30:05):
the next one yet, you know, I'm looking forward to
this one. I was just going to say that it
is amazing that she can command an audience that big.
I mean, I saw her at the Greek and her
some of her songs are very quiet. She's her voice
is not projecting the way a belter like a pop
artist would. I think that's amazing that she can. Actually
(30:27):
I find this with few artists, but when they do
it really well to be able to capture the attention
of a room that big or a festival. The loudest
part of her shows is not the sound system, but
the audience. The screaming. Yes, I know, it's like when
bad Guy, when she's sang bad Guy was like, I
really could not hear her sing at that point, it
was just screaming teenage girls, but such a fun experience.
(30:50):
It is super competitive to get that slot at at
Coachella though, right, Yeah, yeah, it wasn't just one phone call.
It was a very long time. I told Paul to
Let that he could write a book about booking coach
Ella this year, but I don't think many people would
read it. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's just like dorks
(31:11):
and geeks like Paul and I and people in the
weeds that would be really excited about it. Why do
you say that? Was it just the again, the COVID
of it all and the switching it up and confirmed
then they're not Scott. Yeah. And the mix of coach Hella.
It has to be a mix. It used to be
(31:32):
like you'd have that one huge retro or sort of
multi generational artist, but now it's like you have to
have hip hop, you have to have pop, and you
have to have whatever is cool of something else. Yeah,
exactly something. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be amazing.
Yeah you're excited. Yeah, I am excited. I've got some
other bands playing there too that I'm excited about. Yeah,
(31:53):
who else do you have? I have this woman named
Rena Sawa Yama. She is amazing and it is going
so well for her. What's her story. She's from the UK.
She's kind of a cross between imagine a Japanese version
of The York and Lady Gaga. Wow, that sounds awesome,
(32:13):
very interesting. And she's playing New York coming up. And
we sold almost ten thousand tickets really fast. I love that.
Like an artist that almost no one I know has
heard of and then they're selling town thousand tickets. That happens. Great,
that happens these days. It happens. Yeah. I mean I
book a lot of those artists. Wolf Peck is one
(32:34):
of those artists people. So this band Wolf Peck, never
heard of him, you know, they just sold out Master
Square Garden, who likes them, like a lot of people.
And then I had this other band called Biagra Boys.
They're playing Coachella. They're from Sweden. They're like a punk
rock band. And I booked this this tour that they're on.
I just had no idea how it was gonna do.
(32:56):
And the whole thing sold out and we or something
really fast. And like every one of those bands that
got bigger in the pandemic and there's not really the
data to support it. I don't really follow data very
much because I still have a very hard time telling
what it means. There's bands that they don't stream, what
they sell a lot of tickets. There's bands it's stream,
(33:18):
they don't sell tickets. And then there was also a
two year break there where it's just someone just like
threw the cards up and we're figuring out where things
are at. Now, let's talk about the transition from Paradigm
to Wasserman. I know it got a little chaotic there
for a second. Yeah, yeah, but it all worked out hopefully.
(33:39):
What's your view of it? Was it the right thing
to do? What happened at the beginning with Paradigm, so
it's nothing to do with Wasserman, Like, Paradigm let go
of a lot of people from the music department, a
lot of agents and staff that were formerly Windish people.
So these people that I really worked a long time
with and worked hard to build their foster's and we're
(34:02):
all great agents. That was devastating. It's like having two
thirds of your family kicked out or something and there
was nothing I could do about it. So that sucked.
It was awful. I mean I felt really bad and powerless.
And then the Wasserman thing, like that was a great thing.
We wanted to like join a different entity. When the
Paradigm ut a thing happened, I met Casey. I had
(34:24):
heard about him, I had heard about the grandfather, read
the books about um, watched the movie. I mean, of
all the old Hollywood agent manager legends, this was the top.
His roster was insane. So I met his grandson, cool guy.
And then when the Wassman stuff came start came up,
I was like cool, and I feel very good about it.
(34:46):
I'm excited about the resources that they have and a
lot of the people I've met, and I feel like
it's going really well into changing the name, almost like
give you guys a fresh start, because I feel like
Paradigm kind of took a beating those last few years.
I feel like I was so focused on my roster
(35:08):
and doing things that I don't know and also sort
of powerless. If people said things about Paradigm, I think
a lot of times I didn't even hear it, but
also didn't pay much attention to it because there wasn't
anything I could do about it. Like I was booking
to the Eilish tours, I was booking a whole bunch
of other things. No, it was it was really mainly
(35:30):
about the leadership and the financials of the agency. I
didn't really like know much about that until the pandemic.
They definitely weren't walking around talking about it. It may
have said spend less on your travel or something, but
I mean they I don't spend a lot on travel.
I fly coach most of the time. I was saying
(35:52):
that to me. I don't take subs two shows. I've
ride a city bike. You can never take the d
out of tom windows. Yeah, I take subways. You practically
have the word indie in your last name. Yeah, I
never really thought about that. This is my takeaway from
(36:12):
our conversation. You are a risk taker. You take on
bands that you don't know if that tour is going
to sell well or not. And it seems like connecting
with Paradigm was also kind of a risk and I
can see why when it came to layoffs that would
have been really difficult for you because you decided to
take that step, right. Did those employees find other places
(36:36):
to work, Were you able to hire people back at all,
or we've hired people back. I mean, the the agents,
like the Formula windowsh agents that they let go have
all gone and started independent agencies and and I'm sure
they're all going to have the best year they've ever had,
and I'm very happy for them. And every agency is
(36:58):
going to be trying to buy them, just like they
tried to buy my agency. And I think they're all
going to find a lot of happiness. I think that
they're really psyched, just like me, are very psyched that
their shows again, you know, they can go and experience
this stuff that they've been talking about for two years.
So are we back? Is that it? I mean? I
wish I knew. I'm afraid to say, who knows? Yeh,
(37:22):
who the heck knows? Um? I sure hope. So when
the pandemic started, everyone was like, oh, yeah, it was
going to be two weeks. I remember reading, uh was
it Mark Geiger, Who's who said the industry wouldn't be
back until two And I was like, that's crazy. He
was right, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. All right,
here's hoping for better times and a healthy live industry.
(37:43):
It sure feels good now. I go to a show
almost every night. Sometimes too. Yeah, it's feeling great. That's great, Tom,
thanks so much for talking to us, and have an
amazing time at Coachella. Thanks Tom. All right, thank you,
thank you. Tune in next week for another episode of
(38:07):
Varieties Strictly Business.
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