Michael Strickland

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Steps podcast.
My guest today is founder and chairman of Bandit Lights,
Michael Strickler, but he also is a driving force behind
a new organization called the Entertainment Association. Michael, what is that? Bob?
Thank you very much for having me and thanks for

(00:30):
asking the question. Uh. Many people know me and know
who I am now because the last two and a
half years I've worked with Congress to affect change and
get financing basically for our industry. But what is the
Entertainment Association? Probably the most important thing that we will
do that we need to do as an industry. And
here's why. What I discovered first and foremost in the

(00:53):
last two and a half years UH in Congress is
that this industry holistically has no voice. Two and a
half years ago when I began my journey and last
week when I'm still in my journey, what you hear
every day is go away. You have no voice, because
what did we as an industry do when the pandemic began?

(01:16):
The Restaurant Association WIN is one, the Airline Association WIN
is one. All of the other industries that you would
think of automotive. They went is one one voice you
didn't have in the restaurant situation, the waiters fighting, the cooks, fighting,
the clean up people fighting the suppliers. What did entertainment do?

(01:37):
We went in a thousand canoes. They all went in battleships.
We went in a thousand canoes. There were so many
voices that the senators and the representatives did not even
want to deal with us. So that brought me to
the moment that I realized, we've got to have a
unified front, just like all these other industries do. And

(01:57):
it's it's much bigger than just music. Anyone that needs
to gather a crowd to our no living would qualify
as being in the entertainment association. And that's basketball, baseball, football, ballet, hopie,
Indian dancing, children's UH Dance ensemble, you name it, anyone

(02:18):
that needs a crowd. When the country shut down, they
had no voice. And as I went through my endeavors,
UH it was really the small people that got hurt
the most. All of the cultural organizations around the United
States that promoted regional or or or in some cases

(02:40):
even national UH dance troops and and cultural things, they
had absolutely no voice, and we've got to correct that
because their bottom line, there's just no voice before Congress
other than a thousand voices, and the thousand voices before
Congress do not get heard. Okay, let's go back to

(03:03):
the beginning. It's March. Obviously your company is affected by
the shutdown. How do you get involved in this whole
money from the government lobbying voice thing? Another great question, Bob.
I've got a degree in business and degree in law.
Started in the show business at age twelve, but along
the way, I've done a number of things Politically. I

(03:28):
ran the Chamber of Commerce here in Knoxville for four years.
I'm on the board of directors at the local hospital.
UH lobbied for the university at the state and the
federal level, and I know a lot of politicians. So
I had this weird background that never came into play,
and I used to wonder, why do I have this
weird background. Well, on March thirteenth, which was a Friday,

(03:49):
Friday thirteen, that was the day that Live Nation a
g n C double a NFL, all of those people
said we're done, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve.
When that happened, I picked the phone up and I
called Marcia Blackburn, who was one of my two senators
who I've known for forty years. And I also called
Lamar Alexander, by other senator, and I said, what do

(04:11):
we do? Help us? Help us, you know, we we
need some help politically. Uh, And so we began the
conversation Lamar when I called him, you know, we spoke
a bit, and then I called him back on Sunday
and he was with Stephen manuch In, the Secretary of
Treasury at the time, and Lamar put the cell phone
on speaker and I explained to manuch In what was

(04:34):
going on. And he said, well, surely you have contracts
and I said, well, you know, yes we do, but
so what And he goes, well, surely these people are
gonna pay you. And I said that's not the way
it works now now, Manute and I don't know what
you know about him, but he was in the movie
business and he made a lot of huge movies you
can google. And he made a whole bunch of those
action thrillers in the eighties and early nineties, so he

(04:55):
understands entertainment. And I said, Stephen, you don't get paid
and he goes, we'll sue them, and I said, the
first time you sue somebody is the last time you
worked with him in in show business. And I think
he knew that. And his comment when I got through
explaining how our industry works was he paused a moment
and said, what a stupid business. You know. That was

(05:19):
kind of how it started. So they began introducing me
to other people. Now I knew some other people at
the time. Okay, let's let's just go back for a second.
Your two senators, how do you literally know them? You
get a call back, you gotta pick up right away. Yeah,
I've got their cell phone numbers. I knew Marcia before
she was in politics, and her first job was running

(05:43):
the State of Tennessee's Tape and Film Commission, which promotes
movies and television within the state. And uh, I was
on the that board, and I worked with her and
set up a Knoxville Tape and Film Commission. So we
worked hand in hand in her first what you would
call political job, and then from there she became a
state representative in the state senator and then the US

(06:05):
representative in the U. S Senator. So we go back
forty five years. Lamar Alexander is actually from this area.
And uh, you know, he's been in federal government forty
five years. But along his journey, uh, he was the
president of the University of Tennessee. He was the secretary
of Education. You know, he did a lot of different things.

(06:26):
So I knew him locally as he grew up. And
you know, I had both their cell numbers, and they're
what you would consider friends. Okay, So Minutan says, it's
a stupid business. What happens next? I told him there
are stupid things about it, and Marcia and and uh,

(06:47):
Lamar immediately began helping me with introductions. And one person
led to another. And uh, in my life, I have
had the good fortune to meet a lot of people
which have led me to other interesting people. Uh. Jimmy Haslam,
who owns the Cleveland Browns, is a good friend of mine.

(07:08):
His family owns Pilot Flying J the truck stops. That's
the sixth largest private company in the United States. So
I called up Jimmy, and Jimmy introduced me to Rob Portman,
the senator from Ohio, h Barry Switzer, the Oklahoma football coach,
and the Dallas Cowboy coach, dear dear friend of mine

(07:28):
for years and years and years. So I called up Switzer.
He introduces me to the Arkansas UH and the Oklahoma
senators UH and and so on and so forth. I
would call people. I knew that that new people who
would introduced me to people, And suddenly I'm talking to
senators and representatives all over the United States and we're

(07:48):
gathering steam and UH. Eventually that led me to UH
Senator Todd Young from Indiana, and the Senator Young had
written a bill along with Senator Gold from Colorado called
the Restart Act. And if you trail back in history,
and I'm not sure if you're aware, but but the
Restart Act, we an entertainment launched a really impressive thing

(08:12):
back in two thousands, which we called regular Restart. We
lit two thousand, eight hundred buildings in the United States
at the same time on the same night, and it
ranged from uh Niagara Falls to the Empire State Building
to the Seattle Space Needle, to half of the buildings
in Las Vegas, UH, to stadiums all over the United States.

(08:33):
And then you move into little towns and we had
people in the same night all over America donating their time,
their equipment, and then we had a live webcast that
the cameras you know, we switched from this city to
that city, to the next city to bring attention to
the fact that this industry needed the Restart Act past.
Now you may say, what's restarting? Why did you back

(08:54):
at Well, I spent February, March, April, May, June, July
all the way through to December being the driving force
behind Restart. There were ninety two out of a hundred
Senators that signed on to restart. There were three hundred
ninety House members that signed on to restart, and restart

(09:14):
was not for our industry. Restart simply said any small
business which has less than five hundred employees and suffered
a twenty five percent reduction and income in any one
quarter in would get from the government forty five percent
of their two thousand nineteen income. The only exclusions were

(09:38):
you couldn't be in the adult entertainment industry and you
couldn't be publicly traded. So this was a broad based
bill that that would help all of American business. And
I'm sure Bob that that you noticed as this went on,
you had restaurants in trouble, and I mean a lot
of businesses were in trouble. We'll restart was going to
be the vehicle. So the day that I go first

(10:00):
testify before the Senate December, uh, I'm giving my spiel
and and and it was a two and a half
hour Senate testimony and Q and A. Everybody said, Yep,
we're gonna pass it. We're gonna pass it. And long behold,
they didn't pass it. And to this day, no one
can give me why other than uh, Todd Young had

(10:22):
kind of backed off of it in November. To this day,
I don't know why. And his girl. Every senator, senators
and representatives are are the entertainers. Uh, their staff are
the songwriters. Their staff hands them a sheet before they
go into a meeting or before they go into an event,

(10:44):
and you know, it's a one pager that gives them
the high points. And unless they're invested in it, they
kind of get the high points and go in and
do the spiel and then they move on. Most people
don't understand that the average senator and or representative have
between eight hundred and four red bills that they're dealing with,
So how much attention can they give anyone. Uh. I

(11:05):
believe that Senator Young was all in on this bill,
and I think that he was at some point, but
he had a girl that that was his chief songwriter,
if you will, well, she left at the end of
November and went to work for Rob Portman. And what
I didn't know at the time was when she left,
the bill left. If you know what I mean, this,
this was the person. This was the engine that drove

(11:28):
it all. So when when she disappeared, her name was
Anne Gordon. When when Anne disappeared, the engine disappeared. There
were two engines to that bill. One was me and
the other was Anne. I didn't even know she'd left.
So here I am before send it, testified and pushing
this darn thing, and you know, the heart's gone out

(11:49):
of it on the on the Senator side, and it
just laid there and died. And and at that point
in time, I was also in a parallel fashion working
to make sure it's what started out to save our stages,
uh and ended up being called s v o G
Shuttered venues, operators, grants got passed, And in my testimony

(12:10):
I pushed for both of those. And the analogy that
I used was that s v O G UH was
needed and was landing on the beach in Omaha, but
we needed to get to Paris. So once we landed
with s v O G and taking care of the
venues and the venue related people, we then had to
go up the cliff into Paris. And how did we

(12:30):
do that? We did that with restart and when I
left that that that that evening, I knew we had
gotten both of them passed, and in fact, they told
me we had, and I've got the congressional record. It
tells you in there that they're going to be passed.
But then it didn't pass. So then I shifted all
my attention to save our stages, s v O G.

(12:53):
And that's that's how it begun. Okay, save our stages. Uh.
I'm not taking any money from that. I don't own
a venue. But it seemed like at first the money
wasn't available, and then if you weren't early, you didn't
get any money. What was going on there? There was
a whole lot of steps and missteps from the beginning

(13:16):
in execution, which led to UH misunderstanding Again. I became
the voice for all of live entertainment, and I ended
up with an email chain at one point three million people,
and that I still have it. That email chain included
not only traditional live show people, music people, if you will.

(13:37):
But I ended up advising the Screen Actors Guild, the
Director's Guild, the Producers Guild, the Broadway League, the National
Association of Broadcasters, International Association of Venue Managers and own
and international associations, Affairs and Expositions, the rodeo people. I mean,
it just got bigger and bigger, the air show people,
and every day I got another group that that that

(13:59):
looped in and I put all of the names into
my email things. So I became the go to guy.
And when that bill started, they excluded UH. The first
thing that happened was the SBA came out with UH
frequently asked questions. And at this time a lady named
Barb Carson was running the s B, A lovely lady,
very cooperative, UH, a lot of help. So I guided

(14:23):
them through the fact that why are you excluding fairs?
Because there was this big push that if you didn't
have any venue and if you didn't sell tickets, you
couldn't have any money. And and and the frequently asked
questions that first came out pointedly said that fairs, rodeos
and festivals couldn't participate. I had a whole bunch of

(14:43):
festival people that I talked to, include including Danny Wimmer
and all of his people at d w P, great people,
uh and and and uh, Gene Cassidy up at I
f E, a lot of great people. Well, we worked
really hard for about three months, and we got him
over the hump. And so they slowly said okay, okay, fairs,

(15:04):
fares can come in, Okay, rodeos can come in, and
then eventually, okay, festivals can come in. So so in
the first three, four or five months we got those
people in. But the only exclusions, and you have to
read the law were adult entertainment and publicly traded companies.
And all of a sudden, these frequently asked questions just

(15:25):
just started putting boxes that weren't there in the law.
They just weren't there. So I began to point out
to them, that's not what the law says. Well, Barb
Carson left and Isabella Gusman came in. And Isabella Gusman
had a very strict and narrow view of this law,
based on a lot of conversations that she had had

(15:47):
with other people, And there were those who believed that
that the money in the program UH wouldn't cover anybody
outside of the initial round, and people think it was.
There are two thoughts. One, most people, including the senators,
thought that this money was for everybody. Why is that

(16:08):
because the message was broadcasting Give it to the venues
and it will trickle down to everybody. Well, that's simply
not true. The venues didn't open forever and ever. But
but it wasn't just for venues. If you go read UH,
Save our Stages, it's pointedly for for independent venues. In
other words, Live Nation and A G had nothing to
do with this, absolutely nothing to do with it. So

(16:32):
it's for independent venues, managers, agents, and promoters. So those
people were included. If you were not in one of
those four groups, you were on the outside looking at
And that goes to your question. So there was a
whole lot of confusion, which which you know, led to
me counseling people, sending people copies of the lead of

(16:53):
the law, UH, doing notes and whatnot. And we never
really changed Isabella good Usman's mind. You know, she she
never relented. And and then the darned software crashed, and
this happened, and that happened, you know, and it took
four or five months to open up. And then when
it did open up, the initial ask was for fourteen

(17:13):
million dollars. Well, after I testified and I told him
in my testimony, take care of all of us, they
put sixteen point to five million and by billion in
the excuse me, and uh again it's in the congressional record.
My name is in there, and it says after my testimony,
they put another two point five billion in. Well, fast
forward to when it shuttered about a year ago. It

(17:37):
shuttered with about four billion dollars in it, and then
they gave some second rounds and they did this and
they did that, and it ended up with guess what,
two billion sitting there. And that two billion is still
sitting there. That's the money that was for the other people,
which should have included radio and television and and you know,
people supporting service, people like myself. Uh. But but it

(18:00):
was never open to those people. And and and that
is why I wrote another bill called the Music Act,
which stands from music under severe income crisis. You have
to have a good an acronym. And uh, we dropped
that over a year ago with bipartisan support, and it
just hasn't gotten passed yet. We couldn't get it into

(18:21):
the omnibus bill because Rand Paul wouldn't let it come
out of the Small Business Committee because Rand Paul wants
all money claud back. And but he's now not on
the Small Business Committee, and uh, we're reintroducing it and
we hope to get it passed in Q one of
this year. And I don't know what you know about legislation,

(18:45):
but the big thing that stops any legislation is funding.
What they call pay for us. When you have a bill,
you're technically supposed to have a pay for This doesn't
need to pay for Why there's there's two point two
billion dollars sitting in sb o G just sitting there. Now,
what are we fighting. We're fighting reallocation, in other words,
take that money away from us and give it to

(19:07):
save the whales or whatever the cause may be. So
for the better part of a year, I've been fighting
to make sure that that money a doesn't get reallocated
and be that we passed the Music Act and get
that money to the people in the entertainment industry that
have been left behind. So everybody who qualified and who

(19:34):
applied ended up getting money. Over the hoops you had
to jump through rough how did it play out? Practically?
Great question, and and know everybody that that that should
have qualified didn't get money. And here's why the hoops
were incredible. Uh, the things that they made everyone do.

(19:54):
We're we're studying Lee stupid. Uh. And probably what exacerbated
did it was the s b A had never administered
a program like that, it's not what they do. So
they just basically brought people a step above manpower in
to be reviewers. What you you know, because you're in
the entertainment industry. Very few people understand how the entertainment

(20:18):
industry works. So now you've got these reviewers looking at
this data, reading these answers. It might as well have
been nuclear physics. And then they had to make value
judgments Okay, this person does or this person doesn't. And
so so the reviewers had absolutely, absolutely no ability. Even

(20:38):
myself to this day, people in this town think that
that bandit Lights does all the Rocks shows in Knoxville,
and that's how it works. Well, it's not how it works.
You sign a contract with an artist and follow them
and trying to explain this industry to anyone would take
a month. So you have all these great people that
had no knowledge of the industry grading the papers, if

(21:01):
you will. It would be like me grading a nuclear
physics test. I wouldn't have a clue. And there was
no one answer because the answers were esoteric. And uh
So there were promoters that didn't get money. There were
managers that didn't get money. There were venues that didn't
get money because they weren't skilled enough to execute this

(21:23):
monolithic set of paperwork. And they are still out there,
and these are people I'm still fighting for. Uh. The
bulk of them did. But the odd thing was the
only qualification was that your entity lost at least in
any one quarter. In well, I think everybody lost at

(21:44):
least in one quarter. But then when you take a
really small entity, uh that has no ability uh to
to do this this very sophisticated paperwork, when you get
to that moment, that poor entity didn't fill it outright
and didn't get any money. So fast forward to today,
I'm trying to get it reopen, not only for the

(22:06):
people that were flatly denied the money, but but for
the promoters and the managers and the agents and the
business managers. A lot of business managers didn't get any money.
How do you think they felt? Uh, most of the
TV people didn't, most of the movie people didn't. Wedding
planners didn't. Uh. All of the ethnic organizations across America

(22:29):
that I spoke about didn't. Uh. Just a lot of
folks didn't. But but but even if it were open
to them to answer your question, the paperwork was so
onerous that that it kicked most people out. Okay, assuming
you got money, was it a loan or a grant?

(22:52):
It was a loan that could be turned into a grant.
There was a uh for each of the categories you revenue,
a promoter, a manager, or an agent. There was a
list of things that you could and couldn't spend the
money on. And UH that wasn't really the tough part,
because it was pretty pretty broad. At the end of

(23:15):
the day, I think almost everybody, if not everybody, that
got alone did convert it to a grant because they
were so very very forgiving. And what you could spend
it for. You couldn't spend it for political contributions. Uh.
You couldn't buy real estate with it you couldn't pay
off a pre existing loan. Uh. And that was really

(23:36):
about it. Other than that, you could do about anything. Okay.
The obvious question is it bend at Lates get money? No,
we we did not. Uh. The when this all began,
think about think about a war. Now, bear in mind,
I was never mean, I was never nasty. I was
I was always polite. But but you know, in a

(23:58):
wartime situation, who do they shoot at first? The guy
carrying the flag. You know, that's certainly back in the
you know, back in the old days, that the guy
carrying the flag and battle got shot first. How was
the guy carrying the flag? I was a guy that
was on the phone daily with the s b A
and with Isabella Gooseman and with all of her people,

(24:20):
not being ugly but pointing out daily uh. And in
the present again never accused it if never ugly, never mean,
but just when that's not what the law says. You know,
they are an administrative agency. Their function is to take
the law and apply it, not to interpret it. And
they interpreted it. Okay, Bandit Lates is not a public company,

(24:42):
is it. No, we're not public and we're not in
the adult entertainment industry. Right, So why didn't you get money?
Because they said, we are a supporting service company, and
then they're frequently asked questions. They said, support and service
companies can't have money. So how did bandit late to
make it through the shutdown? H. I am very fiscally conservative, UH,

(25:03):
and UH hoard cash. So we are the only company
in the industry that I'm aware of globally. We have
three hundred employees and we laid nobody off. We gave
no pay cuts, we didn't reduce benefits. I bet on
my people because I knew whenever this ended, whenever we
got to the other side, I wanted to have my

(25:23):
team together because I knew that the strength in any
company is the people. And I got great people. And
I knew that if we shut down and laid people
off and gave pay cuts and did those kinds of things,
which which everybody else did because they had to. Uh.
I knew when we got to the other side, I
would have this great team still with me. And guess
what we did, so when the world crank back up,

(25:44):
I wouldn't have having to hire people. I don't mean
that negative toward any of the people that did. Uh,
there probably aren't. There's probably no one in live entertainment
is fiscally conservative and debt diverse and cash have as
I am or was because we went through you can
imagine what it costs for sixteen months to pay three

(26:07):
hundred people, uh info with benefits and all of them. Okay,
if we shut down today, how much longer can you
keep open the doors? You know, I asked that question
December of excuse me February of because you just don't know. Uh,
you know, the industry was at zero income. A lot

(26:28):
of people in the industry. You know, you heard the
word back in the early days, remember pivot, pivot. You know,
I said you did this, and you did that. We
did a lot of strange things that brought in a
little bit of money. We were very fortunate that the
company has to operating pieces. One is the live show
piece with the Garth Brooks and Alice Cooper and Widespread

(26:51):
Panic and Jimmy Buffett and Carrie Underwood and all these
Barry Mantle, all these wonderful artists. Uh, and I was
shut down. We have an integration side that does venues worldwide.
You know, we put lights and illumination things, and all
kinds of venues and museums and things that didn't stop

(27:12):
because all those contracts were let. And and and that's
a funny point because three or four or five months
into COVID, when New York and l A were totally shut,
we had three jobs in n y C in New
York City, two jobs in l A, two jobs in
Dallas and and they were union control jobs. And it
was so funny because you never heard this. Those jobs

(27:35):
never stopped. And and and the legal forces that would
come in and try to shut a job, they came
in once and and and the powers that be on
that job site just kind of looked at him and said, nah,
we're not shutting down. And that was the end of that.
So that a continued. Right. Acts got money, okay because

(27:59):
they have a road crew under what bann or did
they get the money? Very few artists got money. And again,
what I'm telling you, Bob, is not opinion. It's it's
I worked eighteen hours a day and still do for
two and a half years talking to everybody. Uh, clearly
you had you know, your A level action. Madonna's your weekend,

(28:21):
your Garth Brooks, your your you two's you're rolling stones.
These are people that could actually shut down hibernate and
b okay, very few people are at that level. Uh.
Then you got everybody else. Uh, everybody else, to one
degree or another, struggled mightily. And the perception from the
public and the perception from Congress was that all stars

(28:46):
are wealthy, and that all stars should pay all their
people go away. I mean and I heard that every day.
Go away. You work for these really famous people. What
they don't realize is small handful of really wealthy people
in entertainment. Then there's everybody else and and uh so
those people struggled. Most None of the big acts got money. Really,

(29:11):
none of the sort of next level acts got money. Uh.
The few artists that did get money, many of them
worked with me. And I'm not going to name names,
so that wouldn't be fair. But but they worked with me,
and I would walk them through the paperwork. And most
of them were what we would call legacy acts. You know,
big acts in the seventies and eighties that still sell tickets,

(29:32):
still do quite well. But a lot of the legacy
acts did get money. And uh, most of them when
they would get their money, Uh, most of them would
turn around and pay their crew, which which was really neat.
You know that they wouldn't just keep it. They wanted
it to pay their crew. And uh, you know that
that was very very admirable. Uh. And I'll name one

(29:55):
act because I think I'm close enough with the act
to to do this. And and you know, part of uh,
Toby Mammos Alice Cooper. I mean, Alice jumped in there,
got p p P. Even before p p P, he
kept his people paid. I mean, what a guy. You know,
Alice has perceived as the guy with the makeup and
all that he is, But Alice is one of the

(30:17):
nicest guys in the world. He's you know, he's a guy,
you know. And he was one of the artists that
just said, Hey, I'm taking care of my folks. That's
what I'm gonna do. And then they got some p
p P and then they got the second round of
p p P and they took care of their people.
But but there were a lot of legacy acts that
did that through p p P but but not sp

(30:39):
O G. But again, there were a small handful of
artists that did get s v O G money. Because
I walked him through it, and a primarily legacy. I'm
unaware of what we would call a big act that
got in the s v O G. Money. Okay, so
you're the ring leader. Are there any other Michael Strickland's

(31:01):
in this world? Or was it everything on your shoulders? Uh?
From the holistic point of view, it was just me
when this, when this whole thing began, I didn't realize
that literally no one else in the show business that
I knew or met had any experience in politics or
in lobbying. And I thought along the way, well, people

(31:24):
will join me, and eventually I would talk to people
and they go, well, I can't do that, but I've
never done that. I don't know what to do. And
at the end of the day, no one directly joined me. Now,
having said that, hundreds of thousands of people indirectly joined me.
Each time I would send out a newsletter, which was
two times a week, three times a week, I would
send out a link. Right, your Congressman, Wright, your senator,

(31:45):
write this letter, do this thing, make this phone call.
Hundreds of thousands of people sprung into action. So you know,
it wasn't me. I was just sort of the guy
carrying the flag and the first big initiative we did
was was read Alar Restart, which was phenomenal. But but
then we went through NAM National Association of Music Merchandisers

(32:06):
and Joe Lamond and the great people there, and uh,
they put up a website and we got hundreds of
thousands of people to go onto the website and it
automatically sent letters, you know, to your senators and and
and representatives and whatnot. And we had a bunch of
initiatives like that, so it started out really broad based.
And then then we then we began to focus on

(32:28):
state by state, region by region. And yes, I had
millions of people that made this happen. Where it would
disintegrate or fall apart would be twofold one. When people
got money, many of them said oh, I'm good and
walked away from the cause. Uh. And then the other

(32:49):
thing was people just lost their heart and they walked away.
So I shifted from from leader to cheerleader and trying
to keep people's spirits up. And I'm still in that role,
but was two and a half years later. If you're
one of those folks that haven't gotten money, it's probably
very hard to maintain hope. But as human beings. That's

(33:10):
all we have is hope. And so my role has
been to keep people pumped up and and uh, you know,
at first I thought that some of these big entities
could and would participate. But then the principles that these
huge entities would explain to me. You know, we're publicly traded,
you know, we we can't we can't legally be go
involved in this kind of a thing. And you know,

(33:31):
I never thought about that, so but but I can
tell you that. And again I'll use a name. Uh,
there's a lot of misconceptions, and I'm not getting into
the politics of whether you like or dislike Live Nation
or a g or oak View or any of the
big boy companies. But but Michael Rapino was more engaged

(33:53):
and more involved and did more things quietly behind the
scenes for the good of the industry than anyone because
Michael knew how vertically uh integrated this industry is, and
he knows that it's in the best interests of Live
Nation from you know, all of the downstream people if
you will to survive, because you know, if if if

(34:16):
like the Chana Tower, if the bottom two thirds collapses,
the big piece on top is in Trouble and and
Michael and and and I and uh Ja Marciano and
Corn Capshaw and Charlie Walker at C three uh and
uh two or three other people UH conversed regularly. Uh

(34:39):
Wayne Forte Uh you know the the agent. Uh. These
people were also heavily involved. Uh. And we have these
weekly conversations and daily emails. And these people did stuff
behind the scenes. Yet none of them benefited from it.
But but they wanted to help the industry. And people
will never know that. And a number of times I

(35:01):
have talked to people who had a very negative opinion
of some of the big folks. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
you don't realize these these guys and gals were out
there fighting for you. Uh. And they found that hard
to believe. Uh, but I'm here to tell you it
is true. Uh. It's amazing. So what's the status of

(35:22):
the Entertainment Association right now? And what is the pitch
to people? What I began doing November one of last
year and I'm going to do through April the fifteenth
of this year is Uh. I have already done hundreds
of zooms and personal meetings and phone calls. I've done
to date fifteen public speaking events to larger crowds like

(35:46):
the one I did it Aspen. Uh. I'm going to
post Star to speak, and next month I'm going to
NAM to speak. I've got some other sort of large things.
I'm spreading information, which is why I appreciate what you've
done here today. Uh. And I'm going to continue to
do that. And then I email people the PDF file

(36:06):
and and I'm listening to people, and I'm having a
lot of conversations. And I already have through conversations with
entertainment people as well as with political people. I'm shaping
a vision of what this might look like. And and
bear in mind, this involves the NFL, the NBA, major
League base anybody that needs a crowd. And uh, you know,

(36:29):
going back into the early days, I was going home
one day and Wayne Fordy called me up and it
was ten o'clock at night and I was headed home.
And this is right, remember right when the COVID shots
first came out, Wayne said, hey, you know what we
need to do? And I said what Wayne? This was
his his idea. He says, we need to stand up

(36:51):
all of the venues and make them places to get shots.
And I said, well, how would we do that? And
he goes, Corn Capshaw has already doing it. So what
do you means? Well, Corn's got an old shopping center
there in Charlottesville and he's you set up whatever he's
set up, and and he's helping the community and people
are getting jabs at the and now your kiding and

(37:12):
he went and now I said, well we could never
do this. He goes, yeah, And we had this great conversation.
So I hung up and called Corn right then and
Corn said, yeah, that's what we're doing. You know, we're
doing these shots here in Charlottesville. So I told him
what Wayne had said. Well, him and Wayne had already
talked and and uh and and that that whole group
I mentioned to talk. So literally, in three days time,

(37:34):
uh Rapino agreed to offer all of the Live Nation venues,
Marciano all the a G venues. Uh. I called up
Jimmy Haslam and within a day I'm talking to Roger
Goodell and I had all the NFL venues and uh
then uh Ruten Smith, who who owns he passed away

(37:56):
last year. He owned eleven NASCAR speedways. He hooked me
up with Frances and we had all all of the
NASCAR speedways and and and and all these other So
in four days time, we had all these venues all
across America. Was it was amazing how people came to
the table and offered their venues up to give shots.
And and that was because of this this community that

(38:20):
we had and these people simply saying yes. And all
of a sudden, and you saw it on the news,
we had all these shot clinics. I went up to
the speedway in Bristol, the Bristol Motor Speedway where they
have the Bristol five, and NBC interviewed me up there
because that's when it was just starting. And uh, it
was just amazing to watch the synergy of how all
these people could and would work together. So I'm sitting

(38:43):
at my desk one day and my cell phone rings
and it's John Tyson, CEO of Tyson Foods. And he
introduced himself and he said, I've got more refrigerator tractor
trailers than anybody in the world. I want to offer
them up to all the uh thevaccine around. So I
immediately connected him with Jeffrey Zentz, who at the time

(39:04):
was the COVID czar in White House, and John provided
the uh, the tractor traders to haul the the vaccines
around and and John and I became great friends, and
all of that became tremendous friends. And and Rapino put
his people to work when this that initiative started, and
we sent a letter to the president. You may have
seen it, and it's it's signed by Live Nation and

(39:25):
a G and all those entities that I mentioned to
the President saying we're here to help you. And and
it was the power of Live Nation and a G
in the NFL and all these big names. Uh, that
thing that letter broke on the on the Wall Street Journal.
I mean, and that's pretty big to get something of
that nature in the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

(39:48):
But but again, that was the power of these people
making these things happen. And we moved forward with that
team ever since then and and got all the vaccines distributed. Okay,
but today the world has opened up today anyway, what's
the pitch to meet for someone to become a member
of the Entertainment Association? And if they do become a member,

(40:10):
is there going to be money involved? How's it all
gonna work? That's why I'm having conversations. There is what
I call my belief. I don't want to own it.
I don't want to steer it. I don't want to
control it. I just want to make sure we do it.
Here is my belief today, and it hasn't moved, this
core belief. No, I don't think you build it by

(40:31):
having Uh all these people pay ten dollars pick a number.
According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, we are
a one trillion dollar industry with ten million people. That's sizeable. Uh,
restaurants are are Restaurants are a six hundred almost a
seven hundred billion dollar industry with five million people. So

(40:52):
we're ish twice the size of the restaurant industry. But
what do they have that we don't. The National Restaurants Association,
you know, they have a voice on the hill. Two
thousand nineteen, all of what we would call entertainment gave
two million dollars political contributions. That counts Live Nation in

(41:13):
the NFL and Major League Baseball and everybody else. So
what's what's the pitch here? The pitches? It will never
work if we have to have an organization in a
structure and people giving money and people keeping up with it.
I believe we're gonna end up with an organization seated
in d C in a lobbying firm, uh, that represents

(41:34):
our goodwill and the major players, the big organizations within
this industry. There is a number and and I think
that number was asked when you were an Aspen and
you know, I don't want to answer it here, but
but there is a number where if you take these top,
say twenty large entities, and each one put in X dollars,

(42:00):
it wouldn't be a line item on their budget, yet
it would be enough money to fund operations. And what
are operations? Operations very simply are You're gonna have to
give some level of funding to one hundred senators. That's
the most elite club in the world, the U. S. Senate.
So you're gonna have to give some level of money
every year to one hundred senators and probably twenty five

(42:23):
House members representatives, the people that are on the right committees.
So you're gonna be making annual donations to probably a
hundred and twenty five people. You're gonna have to pay
some amount of money, obviously to the firm to do
the lobbying, and all of a sudden when you go
in and sit down and talk to them, which I
have done for two and a half years, when their
guy or gal picks up that piece of paper and goes, huh.

(42:47):
Entertainment Association. They give us fifteen thousand dollars every year.
Send them in, whereas what we went through now was
the Rodeo Association. Send them away. I mean we had
no voice. No one had a voice because no one
you know, whatever you think of politics, uh, And you've

(43:07):
probably heard me say this and ask me that there
is no red or blue, there is only green, and
and that's that's not a funny statement, that's the truth.
It's it's all about the money in d C. And
if you're not doing something uh for a politician, they've
little reason to do anything for you. And I don't
mean that negative or ugly, but we have to create

(43:32):
this entity and it has to have one purpose. And
you can't vary off this because there's only one thing
that brings everybody that needs a crowd to make a
living together, and that is to either prevent and or
deal with a future shutdown period into report. We can't
go beyond that because the minute you wander away from that, well,

(43:54):
what about ticket pricing or you know, ten thousand issues.
Some people would before that, some people would be against that,
but we're all needing to deal with potential shutdowns. And
again right now, there are several conditions that people in
Congress want to shut us down right now. There are

(44:16):
people in Congress that don't believe we should be having
crowds right now. There are people in Congress that believes
if any act of war anywhere in the world happens,
we should shut down. Thank nine eleven, you know, the
country shut for five days after nine eleven. Uh. There
are people in Congress right now that think we shouldn't
be having public gatherings today because of the social unrest

(44:39):
that's going on. So, you know, there are a lot
of what we would call fringe thoughts out there in Congress. Uh,
left and right, red and blue about shutting down and
what if one of those takes hold. You know, what
if one of those takes hold. There are two industries
that were totally shut live live in entertainment and cruise lines.

(45:02):
And cruise lines. You know, that's that's a handful of
companies and they all went to the sauties for money.
So that's their solution, and that's why they're not really
in this conversation. But for us, we are tens of
thousands of little and big companies that need a single voice,
and we need a plan, and we need an agreement

(45:23):
with Congress, and we need a voice with Congress to
first prevent and then second and or deal with a
future shutdown. And that's pretty much it. It's it's a
real simple it's a real simple process. And and anyone
that that takes the position it will never happen again.
Did you ever think it would happen the first time? Okay,

(45:53):
playing Devil's advocate here, your heart's in the right place.
You've done a lot of work, but it's seems pretty
amorphous to me. How do we nail it down and
make it happen? First and foremost, it's talking to as
many people as I can. And again that's why I
appreciate this offer, uh, in this opportunity, Bob, because a

(46:16):
lot of people are going to hear this, UH, and
it's you know, it's winning hearts and minds one at
a time. But but the ultimate, the ultimate god to
achieving this or the decision makers in the largest firms
at the highest levels believe it or not. Sports leagues

(46:37):
are probably the easiest because they have a league. If
you get to buy in from Roger Goodell, you've got
the NFL. All of the sports leagues sit in that situation.
So most of the sports things are are actually easier.
But when you get into all of the tens of
thousands of people in entities within the traditional live entertainment

(47:00):
music and that kind of a thing. Yeah, you've got
the big boys, the Live Nation, day a G, the
c a A, the William Morris, the Oak View, you
know those people. But then there's so many other ones
aren't there. And if if if the top twenty firms
can understand this and can agree to this and and

(47:23):
confunded this, then there's this, then there's this mechanism that
will take care of everybody. And and no one firm,
no one person can control it. Can can be the person.
And that's why I say it's got to have a
single focus. You. You can't wander off into other causes
because then other people will say, well, you know, company

(47:43):
X is controlling this and they're going to pass legislation
to benefit themselves about whatever. No, the whole thing has
to be focused on what do we do to prevent
and then and or deal with the future shutdown? And
and I've have for a lot of talking. I've got

(48:03):
some pretty good ideas of a very effective path, and
I'll share this with you. Uh. This is the first
time I've said this publicly. Most people don't know, but
the United States is cut up into UH sectors and
UH the FEMA has cut America into sectors. And FEMA

(48:26):
issues five year contracts to each sector, to construction companies
to do remediation. In other words, Katrina non eleven, those
kinds of things. When not eleven happened, they didn't go
out and get bids to clean it up. A good
friend of mine, oddly enough, had the contract for for
New York. So when the towers came down, UH Phillips

(48:50):
and Jordan's the name of the company, they went up
to New York. And they're still up there doing remediation.
But that deal was struck before that Katrina deal was
struck before that. And that's what the government has done,
UH for for national emergencies, for for for dealing with
things of that nature. They have five year contracts for

(49:12):
every area of the country so that they're not chasing
bids at that moment. I believe our solution lays in
something like that. I believe that that we get a
lobbying firm and that we have conversations with the federal
government that if indeed they ever shut the country down again,

(49:32):
here's the plan for those of you in the live
entertainment sector. Whatever that plan is, let's go ahead and
get it done. Now, let's get it in paper. Now.
It's almost an insurance policy. Uh. And the federal government
has done that in many other areas. It's it's not
just in the in the recovery area. And again I've
had this conversation with legislators, uh, and and they're all

(49:55):
kind of given me the you know, the the positive
head Bob. Obviously that has to be funded. But uh,
going back to the beginning of COVID, and I think
you know what I'm about to say, Uh, you couldn't
turn the TV on that you didn't see sympathy for
restaurants and gems. Restaurants and gems, restaurants and gyms, never

(50:17):
for entertainment. Why you work for rich pop stars, they
should take care of you. Everybody eats at restaurants. A
lot of people go to gyms. A lot of sympathy
for those two UH fields. There was no sympathy for us,
none whatsoever. But they do now know. And indeed, going
into the inauguration, when when uh, when when UH Trump

(50:42):
went out of office and UH Biden came into office.
I got together a bunch of industry leaders and I said, guys,
here's what we need to do. Let's just refuse to
do any production services for anything to do with the inauguration.
That'll get their attention. And one company, including mine, did that,

(51:05):
and we all sat in the meeting and everybody, we
can't do that. Why we had just come out of
ten months of no income and all of a sudden,
you've got this, you know, two million dollar contract to
do whatever the show is. Nobody would not do that.
My company did that field of flags. If you saw,
you know, all those thousands of flags down the mall,

(51:25):
that that was bandit lights. We lit those flags. We
got paid very well for it. It was a C
three production. Uh. It was a big, big, big thing.
And I have to say I didn't walk away from it.
But would I have walked away from it if everybody
else would have? Yes, I would. But but nobody wanted to,
and I get it it was economic, but those are

(51:46):
the kind of moves that we're gonna have to make.
I think it will take the better part of a
year and a half to two years from today to
get us all together, to get a lobbyist and to
work with Congress to them up with a plan. Because
we were the only people that were shut down. We
didn't have takeaway, we didn't have delivery, we didn't have

(52:07):
a muted version of being open where we could keep
people six ft apart. It just doesn't work for what
we do. So I think we can come up with
a solution. Uh, there's there's a lot of bright minds
out there. It's going to be a private public partnership
to figure out that solution. I'm willing to spend whatever
time it takes. Everything I have done in two and

(52:27):
a half years, I've personally funded every airplane ticket, every hotel,
every plane flight, every meal, every everything that There's no
organization behind me, there's no funding behind me. This is
just the right thing to do. And and and that's
that's my mission, is to keep having these conversations. Okay,

(52:48):
the music business, other than the big corporations is a
very street business, and a lot of entertainment is run
by an intimidation. To what degree were the sports leagues
and all these other things to what did we were
they open to you? What what do you mean open
to me? They would say, oh, that's that guy you

(53:08):
know in entertainment concerts. That's a fraction of our income.
We have our own people. We don't need it, you know.
The you're kind of leaving out the interesting part. The NFL,
the NBA, and uh, the MLB had phenomenal and college
football and college basketball had phenomenal television revenue, so you know,

(53:34):
they had a model that, Okay, we know we've got
this phenomenal money just from TV. But having said that,
an NFL stadium that was empty with the protein plane
getting phenomenal TV money is one thing. But putting the
fans in the butts. Uh. The incremental revenue just in
the ticket sales is in and of itself, is not

(53:56):
that much. But it wasn't just the fans in the
seats that was missing. The fans and the seats drove
merchandise sales, drove beer sales, drove food sales, drove sales
within the city. You know, people coming and staying in hotels,
and in many cases the people that own those teams
have interests in real estate and restaurants and other things.

(54:19):
So there is a bigger net loss, and it's primarily
the big proteins. When you get into the semi pro
and and and and a lot of the other sports.
You know, there's not television revenue money. So those people
are on board, and they're listening to me. I mean,

(54:39):
even the big people are listening on Yeah, I get it. Now,
how much let's assume we've created this house, how much
revenue would go to say, and I'm making this up
in NFL are Alive Nation or inn a G. There
are all kinds of laws, There are all kinds of rules.
There are all kinds of regulations that will probably prevent

(55:01):
those people from directly benefiting from any kind of federal
funding because they're all out there. Uh. Having said that,
the buildings around it, the stadiums, the restaurants, the things
that they may or may not have a vested interest in,
will all benefit. And and therein, you know, is why

(55:22):
it would work. Uh. And finding employees, you know, as
you know, when they opened back up all of these
sporting arenas and whatnot. They couldn't find people, They couldn't
find ticket takers, they couldn't find janitors, they couldn't find
people that work on the field. I mean, it was
just so upside down and still is still is. You know,
the people problem hasn't recovered. So there are so many

(55:45):
economic plays, uh, you know outside of just the pure
gives some money to a great big to the NFL. Uh,
there's so many wins around the NFL because the NFL
and the NBA and Live Nation and Age, all these big,
big people they know they don't exist without the echoes
system around them, and supporting that echosystem around them, uh

(56:10):
is necessary to their survival. Okay, we're back up now
presently looking in hindsight, how many people left the business?
Companies went out of business? You know what was the
attrition factor? Did most of the people muddle through? The
great question? Bob? And again, what I'm about to tell
you is not a not a theory. This comes from

(56:32):
talking to one point three million people for two and
a half years. About thirty of organized entities within the
live entertainment industry are gone. Now that they're just gone.
Most of them were small. You know there was a
mom and pop shop that did this, that or the

(56:52):
other thing, and and they just went away. Will they
be missed? Would anybody know the name of the company
and say, hey, that comes And probably not, But tens
of thousands of people, some of which spent their entire lives.
I had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman from southern California.
He was eighty years old. He and his wife, and
his two sons and their two wives did four state

(57:13):
fairs in southern California. They did cotton candy and corn
dogs and elephant ears, and they had done it forever
and ever and ever. And this gentleman ended up on
the phone with me repeatedly, help me, help me, help me.
And of course at the end of the day he
got no uh, he got no uh S V O G.
He ended up getting some P P P. But but
this is a guy you wouldn't think about, you know,

(57:34):
he's a concessionaire for four state fairs. He had a building.
It was worth two million dollars. So we end up
on the phone and he went to several lenders to
get seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He pledged the
building as collateral, and he wanted the seven fifty, you know,
to carry him and his family through through COVID. He
couldn't get anybody lending the money because he had no

(57:56):
balance sheet and he had no income statement that stood
up because they were zero. So he was kind of
in catch twenty two. That's just one example, because that's
a really odd business and you wouldn't think about it.
And eventually, you know, I helped him, and eventually he
got to work out. And but there's there's so many
people like that that There's a dry cleaner in in
New York City that does the bulk of the dry

(58:18):
cleaning for Broadway. You know. They have a big plant
over on Long Island and at night they go to
Broadway and pick up all the costumes and take them
and clean them and then bring them back. They can't
do your dry cleaning and my dry cleaning. You know,
they're not set up to do it. They were shut down.
There's a lovely lady that has a company in New
York and in Los Angeles. All she does is rent

(58:39):
furniture to Broadway in movies. There's nothing else she could do,
you know, because she can't just go on the street
and rent furniture. Uh So, there's so many of those
stories that you don't know about that are out there,
and so many of those people that need help. And
I've gotten to know all of those people, tens of
thousands of them. Well, many of those people went away.

(59:03):
About oddly enough, about thirty percent of the people in
live entertainment. Now I'm leaving sports out of this, but
about thirty percent of the people in live entertainment left.
Who who left primarily people under twenty five who had
just come in and they said to themselves, you know,

(59:23):
this is nuts. I don't want to go through this again.
I'm I'm gonna do something else. And and the people
and currently and gen Z or whatever it is, they're
gonna have h depending on who you believe, about seventeen
jobs in their life. You and I, Bob are old enough.
We were gonna have one point four jobs in our life.
I haven't hit the point for yet. I've had one.
But so a lot of the younger folks left because

(59:46):
they were going to have multiple jobs anyway, and they said, okay,
I'm bailing. Then you had people fifty five plus that
were near the end of their run in rock and
roll if you will, and and and daring COVID. They
got a job at home Depot or Amazon, and guess what,
they had health insurance and they had retirement things they
had never had. And they said, you know what, I

(01:00:07):
got five more years, I got ten more years. I'm
gonna stay here at Amazon. And they they left. You
had a lot of truck drivers for show business that
just got a day rate and that's it. They ended
up driving for Amazon and all those kinds of people
and they went, holy cow, I'm home at night, get
to see the family and benefits. So they left. So
that kind of left. Uh, that was thirty percent of

(01:00:30):
the industry that left. The seventy in the middle tended
to be between thirty and fifty. And those were people
that were kind of trapped and it was all they
knew to do. And again I'm not making this up.
I know it from talking to tens of thousands of people.
And that's where we sit right now. A lot of
really good people left and because of the labor shortage
all of a sudden, and this is not unique to entertainment.

(01:00:52):
It has happening everywhere. Uh. We we have people, unqualified
people coming into our industry who don't know what they're doing,
demanding tremendous sums of money and in many cases getting
it because they're the only body standing. And I think
you know that's happening everywhere else. The typical warehouse worker

(01:01:14):
went from twelve dollars an hour to twenty five dollars
an hour overnight. Well, it happened in rock and roll too.
And uh, well I know a very big promoter he
had he pieces people everybody, ushers and etcetera thirty bucks
an hour because he found less than thirty You don't
know if they'll show up. Ye. Yeah, And and it's
not it's not sustainable. Okay, let's talk about you. Where

(01:01:37):
did you grow up? I grew up in extreme East Tennessee,
in a little bitty town called Kingsport. And and that
that's why we're sitting here talking today, because of where
I grew up. And what did your parents do for
a living? My father was a nuclear physicist and a
research chemist, and he worked for Eastman Kodak. What a
lot of people don't know is, uh, parts of atomic

(01:02:00):
bomb were built in Oakridge, Tennessee. Uh, the enriched geranium
came out of Oakridge. My father was one of the
people in Oakridge enriching uranium. Kodak ran the plant under contract.
My dad worked with Oppenheimer and uh Einstein directly, and
I've got pictures of Dad with with those two people.

(01:02:21):
So when the war was over, he could either go
to Rochester, New York, which was Kodak's headquarters, or to
their plant in this little backward town called Kingsport, Tennessee,
which Eastman. Kodak made all their film there at the time.
That's where he went. So that's where I grew up
and and to to connect the dots, that's how I
got in rock and roll. I fell into love with
show business at age five. I had seen concerts and whatnot.

(01:02:44):
In the sixties there were no lights, you know that.
The band came in two station wagons, set up their
own junk, had two little tucked and rolled custom Pa speakers,
set their own stuff up, had one guy that mixed
sound and got to check and and then left. Well,
I took the lights out of the high school theater
and put them on the handrails around the gym. And

(01:03:04):
this was with the Monkeys, the Beach Boys, part of
the enerrators. Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons, which is
where I met first met Roy and Jane Claire from
Claire Brothers, uh and all these acts. In the late sixties,
the grassroots weren't it, and from the grassroots to this
day is one of my dearest friends. But but so
I started taking these lights from the theater down and
why did we get these rock shows? Well, in nineteen

(01:03:26):
sixty eight they built a new high school and we
had a big Jodesic dome that had two very unique features.
Air conditioning which was unheard of in nineteen and no poles,
so no obstructions. Knoxville used to get the rock shows.
And it's two it's a it's a hundred miles away,
but they're big venue, had poles and no air conditioning.
So this little backwater town started getting these major rock shows.

(01:03:50):
And here's this kid putting lights on the stage. And
they would get a little business card from me that
I made in a v class in school, you know,
with my phone number, own it and and say they
would say, can you come to Chattanooga, can you come
to Lexington, can you you know whatever? And so I
started going wider and wider and wider as I was
doing it, there was a guy in New York doing it.

(01:04:11):
You know, there was people in southern California doing it.
But that was the psychedelic here. I remember when you
saw the Jefferson airplane with all the psychedelic stuff and
and the Grateful Dead and all of that. I was
emulating those people. I was getting projectors and putting oil
and water in slithes and doing all this goofy stuff,
emulating these people in New York and l A and
and that was the genesis of it. And and uh,

(01:04:34):
my senior year in high school, we grossed two hundred
thousand dollars, which was pretty incredible. No, we spend it all.
But then I went came down to ut to get
my undergraduate degree, and uh we did two million dollars
out of my dorm room my senior year at high school.
And uh then when I went to law school. Uh,
one of the acts I had signed was Kenny Rogers

(01:04:55):
and he was nobody. Well he Lucile or the Gambler
or whatever the hell. His first hit was hit and
the next thing, you know, Kenny Rodgers the biggest artist
in the world. And I'm in law school and I'm
also Kenny Rogers production manager running his show. And uh
it just when I got out of law school. My

(01:05:15):
parents thought, Okay, he's going to be a lawyer. And
I looked at Mom and Dad and I said, I'm
with the biggest artist in the world. Why would I
give up this business? And it wasn't just Kenny. I
mean we were doing new writers of the Purple Sage
and and Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons and the
Grassroots and Conway Twitty and Loretta le nd I mean,
we had all these clients and and I just kept going.

(01:05:37):
But but those formative years and that formal education, which
I'm a fierce believer in education again enabled me to
do what I've done for the last two and a
half years. But that's sort of the long short version
of a new high school and a little rednecked town
putting me in our trajectory for the rest of my life. Okay,
you finished law school. Did you take the part exam?

(01:05:58):
Never never intended to. Let's go back. Your father is
an academic. Essentially, where do you get your entrepreneurial spirit?
Really two or three things, And I think a lot
of people probably have this same story. Um, do you

(01:06:20):
remember in high school, they had accolades, you know, uh
best personality, you know, all those things. They were in
the yearbook. Uh. We had off the record in in
in the school newspaper sort of anti uh accolades. And
my senior year at high school, I was voted least

(01:06:43):
likely to succeed. And as stupid as that sounds, that
was that was a real motivator. I mean, I'm like, well,
I'll show them. And at the same time, when we
wrapped up high school and we're getting ready to go
to college, uh, my group of five or six buddies
that that were we were doing this together, high school buddies.
They all looked at me. You know, we had ten

(01:07:03):
thousand dollars in the bike, and we took it and
went to the beach and got a house and drank
as much beer as we possibly could. And they said,
now there's no point in carrying on. This will never
be anything. So between my buddies telling me this will
never be anything and that newspaper telling me I was
the least likely to succeed, I've always been one of
those people that, you know, tell me what I can't do,

(01:07:26):
and I'll go prove you wrong. Even if it's bad
for me, and and that really drove me. But again,
the classical education is what prepared me for it, you know,
the going to school stuff and and learning all of
that stuff. Okay, why lights is supposed to sound reinforcement
or whatever? Simple answer. You never see anybody leave a

(01:07:48):
rock show going. Boy, that looked terrible, but half the
people that leave a rock show go that sounded terrible.
True story. I mean, to this day, you can't make
everybody happy with the audio. Did you ever go to
any concert and everybody going out going, Now that was amazing,
that sounded really good. Some of them do, maybe most

(01:08:10):
of them do. But I never heard anybody complain about
the lights. So I just figured that's a better path.
And how did you get the light side of the
theater to install them when you wanted? Well, again, let's
go back. This was night in the South. Nothing was locked.
Churches didn't lock, schools didn't lock, theaters didn't locked. Nothing locked.

(01:08:30):
So by the time I was a senior, on any
given weekend back then, rock shows always played in high
school gym's uh and or National Guard armories. They didn't
have the you know, the monolithic basketball arena as yet
so that's where they played. And uh so the shows
were fairly small comparatively, and they always played with the
roof light zone. So what I would do, uh would

(01:08:51):
be take all the lights out of the high school.
And by the time we were seniors, if we had
two or three different gigs going on in a given weekend,
we would take the lights from the high school, from
both of the junior high schools, and then we would
work our way down to the two movie theaters downtown
and take gear from the movie theaters. But but on
Sunday night we would always have to go back and
put all the lights back. And hence the name bandit

(01:09:13):
we we we were taking the equipment, but we always
gave it back and and no one knew that. And
fast forward to two thousand and eight, the city of
Kingsport gave me the keys to the city and it
was quite an honor, and we had this whole big thing,
and I got to speak and I told this story.
And you should have seen these people sitting in the
audience and their jaws dropped because no one knew. You know,

(01:09:35):
we didn't tell them. We just took the lights and
put them back. And that was the first time I
ever talked about it, and I started that conversation with
I've checked the law and the statute of limitations his run.
But that's how it began. And then we came to
u T. I prioritied equipment from the University of Tennessee
Theater because nothing was locked. And then I started buying
equipment and here we are today. Okay, how old were

(01:09:57):
you when you did your first gig? Twelve? And did
you consistently do that thereafter? Ever since? Ever since that day? Wow?
And did you learn about lighting on the fly? Yeah?
And you gotta remember back then what was lighting. It
was a lightbulb that had two wires going to it,
not three, you know, hot and neutral. There's no ground

(01:10:20):
yet really, so if the lightbulb didn't work, it was
one of two things. One of the two wires was
broken or the filament and the lightbulb was gone. And
what we started with was the R forty floodlights like
you have in the corner of your house. We had
red ones, blue ones, and yellow ones and and and
we made literally coffee cans like you've heard out of

(01:10:40):
and ran the wires to them. So a typical rock show.
When we started building equipment was extension cords and coffee cans,
and lightbulbs in the coffee cans, and or the bard
lights from the high schools, and the whole pile of
extension cords. And we made little wooden boxes that literally
had househole light switches in it. So all of these
cords just plugged into the back of this wooden box

(01:11:00):
and you sat there and flipped the same switches you
have on the wall today in your house. And and
the way we turned them all on and off at
the same time was we had a stick. You had
a four ft stick, and you'd rake it across all
the switches, either own or off. So it was really simple.
And again through time you you started to begin to
learn things about light and texture and color and shape

(01:11:23):
and shade, but none of that existed in sixty nine
and seventy. It was all owning off, owning off. And
then we had the overhead projectors with the Pyrex dish
with oil and water and red and blue and green
food coloring. And oddly enough, when you stir it with
a pencil with your hand, your hand and the pencil
are not in the focal path, and all you get
is that psychedelic look and and we were doing all

(01:11:45):
that kind of garbage. But you know, through time it
got more sophisticated. And yes, through time you began to
learn what lighting was all about. And how did you
decide how much to charge? In the beginning, it was
twenty five dollars, and it stayed twenty five dollars for
a year or two, and then it was fifty. And
you know, we didn't really get into a real pricing

(01:12:07):
model until probably my senior year of college, when I
started to figure out, we're doing this for fun. We
need to do it for money, you know. So about
my senior year of college is when we began to
figure out that, okay, there has to be a business
plan here that actually makes money. Okay, so you had
these friends. When did band it actually start on the

(01:12:30):
path today? Will you say, hey, was that why you
were still in school or after school? It started in
I mean, when I did that first show, I thought,
this is the coolest thing in the world. I'm getting
to hang out with rock stars and see free shows,
and and uh, I knew that's what I wanted to do.
Having said that, the reasons were kind of wrong at first.

(01:12:53):
The reasons were just to see the show and meet
the band and meet girls, and you know, all of
those things. And then I realized you could actually make
money doing this and say that. That began to shift
in college and we had to make the full transition,
probably my senior year, and that's that's where I started
to apply what I had learned. Herbie Herbert was the

(01:13:14):
manager of Journey Journey during their heyday recently passed. He
famously bought all the equipment and the lights and stage
and he leased it to other people. I've talked to
a lot of these major major ACKs. He said, why
don't you own this stuff? And they say it changes
too much? So does anybody own it? What do you mean,

(01:13:37):
does anybody own their own lights? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Herbie bought it obviously first to do Journey and and
so he owned lights and and and stuff, video and whatnot,
and he rented it to his band. Uh. He was
he was the first one that I remember that did it. Uh.

(01:13:57):
There's a company still is, but it's its own by
Claire Brothers now. But there was a company in Europe
back in the heyday of Pink Floyd called Brett Row
or Britannia Row Well that was owned by Pink Floyd.
Pink Floyd decided, Okay, we're gonna buy our own stuff
and we'll call the company Brett Row based on Britannia
Row the street. At the about the same time a

(01:14:17):
company in California you may have heard of. They're still around,
Delicate Productions. Delicate was started by Supertramp when when they
became a big deal, they bought their own p A
so they owned their own stuff. Uh. So there there
there were several stabs at artists doing that, a few
where managers did it. Most of them didn't work out.
Uh and but but there were stabs that that stabs

(01:14:42):
it doing that. Eventually, the whole nock Turn model, which
is what Herbie called that organization, uh, ended up uh dissipating,
I guess is the right word. And eventually the assets
were sold off. But it was a way to do it,
and I think it probably worked well for for Herbie.
I don't know who the other partners were. I don't

(01:15:02):
know if he had the band in on it or not,
whether any of the band members ran on it. Uh.
You've heard a very light there. The original moving light
was very light well, Rusty Bruschi and Jack Maxim were
the face of it, but Tony Smith, the manager of Genesis,
and indeed the band Genesis were the original financers of it.
So Genesis benefited greatly from the world's first moving light

(01:15:26):
U and eventually that dissipated. But but I think they
probably did very well. That's purely a guess. But things
like that we're not really talked about openly. Uh. I
think the world did know that Herbie was doing what
he was doing because it was Herbie, wasn't it, and
he wanted to tell you about it. But yeah, there
there have been stabs at that, but none really really successful. Okay,

(01:15:50):
So of the business are you worldwide or just in America?
How does it split? You know, we've built offices in
in uh, we had offices in Europe, in America, and
we did have him in Asia, but we've withdrawn from
Asia because of everything we did that three or four
or five years ago, when you know, we had we
had an office in Hong Kong and an office in Taiwan.

(01:16:11):
And then when when the Chinese took Hong Kong over,
you know, I saw the handwriting on the wall that
they weren't going to live up to the twenty five
year commitment. And I'm not being political. I'm a business guy,
and so we withdrew from from Asia at that point.
And I don't think anybody's doing business in Asia anymore.
That's that's not Chinese are from that part of the world. Okay,

(01:16:34):
what percentage of the overall market does BANDED have, that's
a great question. The industry doesn't report to anyone. No
one knows how big this industry is. There's a lot
of guesses, and the guesses ranged from a low of
probably four billion dollars a year, uh two a hive

(01:16:55):
probably ten billion dollars a year. I don't know that
any of those numbers are correct. Honestly don't know. And
I'm not trying to not answer your question. Uh just
no one really knows how big the industry as a
whole is because there is no method of reporting. Okay,

(01:17:16):
so an act wants to get lating for their tour,
let's go tour. What are their options? Who can they
go to? Well, there are probably six companies in the
United States of any size that that could do what
we would all call an a level tour. And there

(01:17:37):
are probably eight to twelve what you would call mid
level firms, and then lord god, there's probably a hundred
small firms. But you can't discount the small firms. Uh.
There is a company in uh Omaha, Nebraska called t
MS Great Company. They do a little act called uh

(01:17:58):
Dave Matthews. They do a few other things, but but
but the folks that run the company have an old
and a strong relationship with Dave Matthews. There's a gentleman
down in Alabama that does Brad Paisley. He does a
couple of other things, but he grew up with Brad
or something, and he'll always do Brad Paisley. Uh. There's

(01:18:19):
a company in California called Morpheus that used to be
a major player, not so much anymore, but they've always
done Bruce Springsteen. Not a bad account to half. So
there are a lot of companies like that that that
have a major client or two major clients, and and
you know, the odds of taking those clients away from

(01:18:41):
those people are pretty slim, because in most cases it's
a personal relationship. Just like, Uh, I have a great
personal relationship with a little bit of artist called Garth Brooks.
And you know, rumors have always been out there. Well
Garth owns bandit? Well, no, he doesn known band. They
were just great friends. I start with Garth when he
was in a bar, and we like each other. Uh

(01:19:04):
So I'm not sure how you would pride Garth Brooks away.
I've been with Jimmy Buffett thirty eight years. I've been
with you know, Brooks and Dunn start to finish, Carrie
Underwood start to finish, uh and Hollas Cooper twenty five years.
I mean, you know, so many of these stories shine
down the rock bands from the very beginning. Uh, you
know a lot of these. For us, we look for

(01:19:25):
long term relationships as opposed to just bidding known tours.
We like to be a part of the family. And
that's how this company's built. And how do you convince
someone someone who's in play as opposed to loyal? I mean,
I was talking to Garth's manager. He says, Garth is
super loyal. He's not leaving you unless something serious goes down.

(01:19:45):
But and that comes to you. What happens, You ultimately
make a sketch. How is the pitch and how do
you differentiate your spend it from competitors? Two ways to pass. Uh.
Some are to to have their own creative person and
or team. And in that case, that creative person and

(01:20:05):
or team comes to us with the blueprints, if you will.
They're the architect and we're just the house builder, and
they come and they go, here, here it is, Here's
what I want. How much is it? Uh? The other
model is what you just said. They come to us
for what we call a turnkey solution. They go tell
me what I need, you know, give me the blueprint,
give me the plan, and designed the house and sell

(01:20:26):
it to me. So you know, we do both of those, uh,
and we like them both. But ultimately, uh, there are
a number of bands who just want the absolute cheapest
price possible. Uh, and we'll do You'll do a tour
with them and the next year everything goes out to bed. Again.

(01:20:47):
I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's not where
we prefer to go. We want to build a relationship
and and greater than of the people that we work
with throughout time. That's what we do. We developed career relationships.
Now that's becoming harder and I think I think Bob,
that you'll know this because going back to the Rolling Stones,

(01:21:10):
and the Eagles and and all of those what we
would call super legacy bands. What did they wanted? What
did the Stones want to do? They wanted to be
a rock band forever and ever and ever you come
up to today these people, a lot of these young artists,
that's not their vision. They don't want to have a
forty year career like the Stones, are the Eagles or

(01:21:31):
Kiss or those. They want to do it for three years,
five years, seven years. They want to make a lot
of money and they can now and then get out
and go do something else. Uh. And again, as you know, Bob,
because I know you were there, bands didn't make any
money in the sixties and seventies, really into the mid eighties,
and uh, you know we do Crosby Steals, Nash and

(01:21:52):
Young and any combination thereof those guys, they're like me,
we all do it for what the love of the game.
And and some of the newer artists don't have that.
So today is we're building relationships. We wonder will we
get three years out of this artist, will we get
five years out of this artist? And sometimes it's not
even their fault, as you know. Sometimes the artists put

(01:22:16):
out the music, but then, but then music moves on,
doesn't it. You know, grunge died, didn't it. You could
still be great at grunge, but it died. Or the
boy bands or the girl bands or whatever the you know,
whatever it was. We did a band that you've probably
never heard of, Westlife. Have you ever heard of Westlife?
Of course English Act. Yeah, the world's biggest boy band
twice in business, twice the business of the Backstreet Boys

(01:22:39):
are in Sync, or any boy bands, but Americans have
never heard of them because they never cracked America. But
we did them start to finish. Now they're back together now,
but but they never cracked America, and and and and
they they literally have done twice the business of any
of the other boy bands that all Americans know. So
what percentage of your revenue as concerts right now? We do?

(01:23:03):
It depends on the year, but but somewhere between fifty
and sixty as concerts, and it depends on the year.
And then of course, and the rest the rest is integration, Okay,
so basically installed permanent installation different locations like Fillmore's and
House of Blues and and the World War Two Museum
down in New Orleans, and and Shop at Home Television

(01:23:26):
Network and and and all kinds of theme parks and rods.
And we do cruise ships, you know, we outfit cruise ships.
Just these extraordinarily boring things that you know, you you
go tell people, hey, we put the lights in the
they but then you go talk about a rock show
and they get excited. I mean, we just did Tom Jones.

(01:23:48):
I mean, how cool is that I did. I did
the last four years of the rat Pack, you know,
with the last four four years, they did two tours
across four years before they never did anything again. That
was really cool. Getting to meet Frank Sinatra and Peter
Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. And those people. You know,
it was really cool. Uh But but that's sort of

(01:24:10):
the sexy side of what we do. And then there
are things that we do that we don't talk about
and that we can't talk about. Anything you do for Disney,
you sign an n d A and you can't talk
about it. Most of the stuff you do for any
White House you can't talk about. I can't tell you
that I did uh Obama's parties for his children in
the White House. I can't tell you that maybe I

(01:24:33):
did do it but I can't tell you that. Okay,
so you're enlightening. Did you ever think of broadening to
something else production staging? No. I'm one of those guys
that believes, you know, do what you're good at. I'm
not saying the other people are wrong, but uh, most
of the people that I know that start out in

(01:24:54):
one discipline are really good at it and really average
at the other things they sneak into. Uh, And I'm
not really aware of anybody that that. I think you
dilute your core business. And that's just the thought process.
I mean, right now, there are a lot of artists
that want a turnkey solution, they want a one stop shop.
And you know, my point of view is, Okay, you're

(01:25:15):
gonna get average sound, average lighting, average video, or you
can go up to a really good lighting company and
a really good sound company and a really good video company.
But you know, that's just two different modes of doing business,
and I respect the other methods. Okay, how hands on
are you? Well, it's ten o'clock at night and I'm
sitting in my office. I mean, you're talking about flying

(01:25:37):
all over the country and you're a million member mailing lists.
How much are you working on bandit. Oh, I work
fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Uh. Again, that balance shifts.
It's some days it's fifty fifty. Some days it's one
way and or the other. But no, I'm extraordinarily hands

(01:25:58):
owed and and all of my peers are retired, all
of them are dead. Um in fact, fact, in fact,
we had an original Bandit passed away yesterday. And Uh.
But but I'm one of those guys. A. I'm a workaholic,
and B I really enjoy what I do. I really
enjoy it. I didn't just do it for money. I
did it for the love of the game. I'm also

(01:26:19):
big into football and college football, and I know a
lot of football players, and I played football, and and
the emotions the same. You do it for the love
of the game. The difference between me and Peyton Manning,
who's a friend of mine. Peyton can't play football anymore, right,
he's too old. I can still do rock and roll. Okay,

(01:26:45):
if you go on your LinkedIn peage, you have like
a million companies. What are all those companies? Through time? Um,
the the in America up until nineteen one, everybody made
their own everything in the world of lighting. Made your

(01:27:05):
own lights. You made your own trust, you made your
own cable, and there was no continuity to it. In
England and Europe because of legislation. Over there, it was
illegal to make your own trust. It was illegal to
make your own lights. You had to buy them from
a certified manufacturer that met certain standards. So, uh, there
were standards that existed over there, and there were companies.
There was a guy named Eric Pierce owned a company

(01:27:27):
called show Group Production Services. Eric sadly passed away last fall.
Eric actually invented a number of the devices that to
this day you're used. As the standardization began to happen,
so in Europe everything was standardized. Well. I went over
to Europe in nineteen eighty and met Graham Thomas and
John Walters who made all the aluminum trust structure a

(01:27:49):
company called Thomas Engineering, and I said, I'm going to
buy the American rights and set that up. And I
did so. I bought the American rights and set up
Thomas Engineering. Within three years, everybody in America equipped making
our own trust and started buying from from Thomas. They
didn't know that I owned. I kept my ownership secret. Uh.
Later on there was helped set up another company called

(01:28:11):
tom Kat, which was another trusting company. So I had
the two largest trusting companies in America. Then there was
a control company that made the lightboards in England called
ah Lights. Well I bought the American rights to that.
So now I owned the two largest trusting manufacturers as
well as the console company. And uh so all of

(01:28:33):
my competitors used stuff that I sold. Now again I
kept my ownership secret. That's that's three of the companies
that were on their Uh. Some of the other ones
that are owned their, Lord god, I'm trying to remember.
Uh own a company called b pH was a property
holding company. I own a company called for All Air

(01:28:53):
owned some airplanes, and the airplanes are in that Uh
what else do I own? Uh? Oh, Lord God, I'd
have to look at the website. I've got several other
entities of that nature, but but a lot of them
are tied to that. I was for five years. I
was part owner of skycam. I know you know what
sky cam is, the flying camera. I was part owner

(01:29:14):
of that for a number of years. Uh, I'm sure
I'm leaving some stuff off. Do you do you still
own the board making in the trust? No? No, I've
sold all that. I've sold all that. No, And I
had a company for ten or twelve years called Authentic Stars.
And what we did at Authentic Stars was we sold

(01:29:34):
rock and roll merchandise uh into into mass mark merchandizing.
And we started with Walmart. So when you go in
Walmart and see a big rack full of Kiss T
shirts and Alice Cooper t shirts and you know what
whatever in merchandise and all that, that was me, Me
and and a guy named Charlie Anderson who put all
the records and all the tapes and all the books
and all the Walmarts and then all the best buys.

(01:29:56):
So I just cotailed with with Charlie, and it was
it was myself, Charlie Anderson, and Bill Battle. Bill Battle
was once the football coach at ut and and eventually
the athletic director at Alabama. Well, we had this company
together where we put all this show business merchandise into
the music sections at all the Walmarts and then all
of the best buys, which had everything to do with

(01:30:19):
rock and roll and nothing to do with bandit lige,
you know what I mean. I just I just knew
the right people, and so for years and years and
years we put merchandise across all those stores, and then
we eventually sold that company. That's one of them that's
owned there. Okay, how often are equipment failures and uh,
crew injuries? I mean you don't hear about them all

(01:30:41):
the time, but you hear about a trust falling or
a light falling. What what's going on in that world
in the last twenty years. Not so much. I mean
it's it's very rare because of the safety. Again, standardization
of all of this stuff came into play years ago,
and it is really safe, and the p are getting
trained better and and uh. And in the funny story,

(01:31:04):
in nine two or three, R E. M was going
out on a tour and they hired a new production manager,
a gentleman named mikey Weiss who also did Neil Diamond
for years and years. Mike, he's a great guy. Find
myself on the phone before the tour goes out, and
this is when R. E. M is just as big
as as big as they can be. And Mike, he's
telling me, and you're gonna put fall protection on all

(01:31:25):
of your lighting trusses so no one falls for twenty minutes.
I'm arguing with the guy because I'm gonna have to
spend ten thousand dollars to buy that, and I'm going
if I have to. You know, I've got thirty tours
out times ten thousand dollars, that's three hundred thousand dollars.
I'm not doing this. And about ten minutes and it
hit me, what are you doing? One fall will cost
you way more than three. So I thanked Mikey, We

(01:31:49):
bought the equipment, we put it out, and from that
date forward, Bandit lights wouldn't let anybody go up on
the Trust without fall protection. And for five years we
lost market share because everyone hated it. The unions hated
Oh boy, you get to New York to Local one
and try to tell a local one stage hand that
they've got to put on fall protection to go up there,

(01:32:10):
and all you get is, I'm not petting that ship on.
I've been doing this my whole life. Who the hell
do you think you know? And and I would get
phone calls and we lost business because tours said, you
don't use bandit, they insist on fall protection. Were fast
forward five six years, the whole industry did it, and
of course now everybody does it. Now no one goes up.

(01:32:31):
But we were the industry leader in that. And again
it's all because of Mikey weiss Us. For those for
those unaware, what exactly is fall protection? You know that
wearing a harness and being attached to a rope so
that you know when you're up in the air thirty
fifty sixty feet, if you do fall, you you fall
four or five feet and then you just dangle and

(01:32:52):
you know you don't fall to your death. And and
really we you know, I'm aware of you know, two
or three deaths a year globally. They're never really from
people falling it. It's from when a structure collapses, a
stage roof falls or or tragically the uh the sugar
Land thing where the top blew over. I actually designed

(01:33:13):
the thing that blew over was a Thomas top and
I was one of four designers of it. Now by
then I had sold the company, but I was called
as an expert witness because I had to go sit
and testify as to why it failed. And it failed
because the people that owned it didn't follow the instructions.
The instructions are very specific that when you put the
top up, you've gotta have a certain amount of weight

(01:33:33):
on the bottom and and and you got to do
a B, C and D and they didn't and it
blew over. So I remember the stones went on toward
seventy two and they said we have to have the
super Trooper lights. I remember seeing yes early eighties, uh
when uh nine, O two, one five or whatever it was,
and they had the lighting trusses that went down and up.

(01:33:57):
Supposedly Genesis did that first. What is what are the
things on the cutting edge and lighting right now? Everything
you just mentioned, all of the moving trust is. I mean,
there's not a lot right now that hasn't been done
because we're so technologically advanced. Right now, we're sort of
in year five of of variations on a theme. Uh.

(01:34:24):
You know, think about smartphones. You know, you've got iPhones
and this phone and that phone and the Google phone.
They're all kind of the same, but by degrees they're
a little bit different. You know that. I think it's
the Google phone that will take any picture and smooth
it out and make you look better. Uh, that's their
unique thing. There are by degrees things of that nature,

(01:34:45):
but for the most part, light's just moving, wiggle and
change colors and make patterns. And and you know that
there was a race to make them smaller and lighter
and faster, and you know that continues to go on.
But again, think iPhone. Uh has there been a quantum
shift in iPhones? Not really, it's by degrees from phone
to phone. And that's really where entertainment lighting is. Right now,

(01:35:08):
people are dabbling with lasers as a light source. And
there is a small handful of lights that are lasers.
We own several hundred of them. We've got a bunch
of the new carry Underwood tour. But in America, anything
that's called a laser falls under the control of the
f d A and you have to get it, just

(01:35:28):
like Pyro. You have to get a permit in every city,
and you have to have a laser guy come over,
and they can't shine on the crowd and so on
and so forth. So, uh, will laser lights ever become
mainstream in America? Not until the legislation changes. Well, how
dangerous are these laser lights? If you ask the f
d A, they're extraordinarily dangerous. If you ask the people

(01:35:51):
that make them, not at all. I mean, you know what,
what's the real answer? Who knows? Okay, you grew up
when the South was still considered redneck correct certainly been
to Nashville, which is pretty cosmopolitans some country element Memphis,
which is really more Mississippi than Nashville. What's Knoxville like Knoxville, Uh,

(01:36:19):
is you've got the Delta down in Mississippi and all
of those sort of Delta influences and and and and
jazz and blues and soul and all of that stuff.
And it's always been there, you know. But because of
of the cotton trade and all that went with that
for generations. Uh, Nashville uh and Knoxville we're both port

(01:36:40):
towns because of a river. And if you go back
a hundred and fifty years, and again because of my
role here running the Chamber of Commerce and being involved
in all of that, if you go back on a
hundred and fifty years, the Knoxville and Nashville were just alike,
with one difference. Nashville had Norfolk and Southern Railroad and
Ellen n Railroad, and so it grew faster and it
became bigger because it had both rail and water. Knoxville

(01:37:03):
only had uh water. Uh. Knoxville got a little bit
of rail. Uh. So Knoxville remained much more rural, much longer,
and even today Knoxville is more agrarian. It's more of
an agricultural society. And there is no agrarian component too. Nashville,

(01:37:24):
there isn't. I mean it's you've been there recently probably. Uh.
So we're still very agrarian, and you know, very agriculturally
oriented and and very uh uh slow and uh. Quality
of life's higher, costs, the livings lower. Uh, great place
to live. I live on the lake, I can see
the mountains. Uh. Most people that come here uh to

(01:37:49):
work with bandit that lives somewhere else move here for
all the reasons that I said. People are nice, cost
the livings low, quality of life is high, airs clean, Uh.
And you don't have the uh, you don't have the
traffic and all the issues that you do in a
Nashville or a Memphis, which both of those are approaching
the Los Angeles type situation. So what to coastal people

(01:38:12):
or northern people not understand about the South. I think
they understand the South much better now, because again you
you brought up something that you may have read through.
My competitors were all in New York, Los Angeles, in
London and the first thing they would say to potential

(01:38:34):
clients was, you can't use Bandit Lights because it's a
bunch of rednecks. They don't wear shoes, they don't have teeth,
they don't know what they're doing. And and that's sold.
I mean that that did sell um. But in ninety
three they turned around and looked and and Bandit Lights
was doing Queen and Arrowsmith and Van Halen and r
E M and Faith No More In Raging against the

(01:38:55):
Machine and and and and Garth Brooks and so on
and so on, and all of a sudden, and we
had in the hair band days we were doing Quiet
Riot and Crocus and Twisted Sister and Rat and all
of those bands. And all of a sudden, Holy cow,
these rednecks are bigger than we are. And they got
more lights, and they're doing more stuff, and and they

(01:39:18):
started taking us seriously. And I don't know if you
remember years ago there was a magazine called Performance. Do
you remember, Yeah, well, Performance in ninety three did a
bunch of accolades and uh, I forget exactly what the
words were. I think it was Bill Littleton that wrote it. Said, Uh,
the company this year with the biggest bump in the

(01:39:42):
biggest bump or whatever, and it was banded out of
all the companies, not just lighting but everything and did
a whole hearticle Ognis and so many. Way fast forward
to two thousand and uh three, every major production company
in America as an office in Nashville, Tennessee. You know

(01:40:02):
the Rednecks. That they've all come to the Rednecks. And
for the most part, UH, production companies have deserted New
York in l A for a number of reasons. First
and foremost the cost. Uh. Secondly, they finally figured out
that with my lights sitting in Nashville, I could beat
to two thirds of the venues in twenty four hours.

(01:40:23):
When you're when your lights are sitting in l A,
you can be to ten of the venues in twenty
four hours. It's why I fed x IS in Memphis.
It's centrally located. Put a pin in the map everywhere
there's a venue, and you got this tremendous cluster east
of the Mississippi, a small handful across the desert, and
then a bunch up and down the west coast. And
that's what I did at an early age. I put

(01:40:44):
pins in maps and so today, everybody has an office
in Nashville. Think of how many pop stars actually live
in Nashville. It's it's countless. Cost the living's lower, quality,
LIFs higher. Uh. I've got a lot of friends that
have sold their house in l ah you know, and
gotten you know, one point five million dollars for their house.

(01:41:05):
This is pre COVID, and then moved to Nashville and
bought a house twice that size for seven hundred thousand
and and got acreage with it and put the rest
of the money in the bank. So, you know, the
rest of the world kind of discovered what we always
knew about cost of living and how friendly the people were,
and how centrally located it is. And of course everything

(01:41:26):
is cheaper. The warehouses are cheaper, the labors cheaper. Uh
and and the rest of the world is finally caught
on to that. Okay, leaving aside bandit lights in the
entertainment business to what degree? Just using you know, the
pejorative descriptions, don't shoot the messenger. Is the South still racist?

(01:41:48):
Red neck deep behind? Or is that passe to me?
It's pass a of course I would say that I'll
live here, but let me let me tell you how
I grew uh in the in the late fifties early sixties,
at war Worse and mccruary's and Crests, which were the
big department stores. We had men's and women's restrooms. We

(01:42:10):
also had white and colored restrooms. We had white and
colored water fountains, We had white and colored lunch counters.
As a kid, I didn't see that distinction as anything
other than men and women. In other words, I didn't
look at men and women's restrooms and think that women

(01:42:30):
were less than men. You follow me, and the same
thing between black and white. To me, it was different,
that was all and and I, I and most people
I knew, never had what you would call a racist
point of view. Did those people exist, absolutely, you know.
Did they use the inappropriate language? Sure they did. But
but I didn't grow up in that, you know. I

(01:42:51):
grew up around it, But but I never saw it
and was never aware of it really until uh jeez,
I to college, probably because it was just how it
was now by the time. By the time I was
a senior in high school, the segregation was over the
black and white water fountains and all of that stuff.
But but but I never experienced people mistreating one another, never

(01:43:14):
ever experienced it, and uh, you know, no, I don't
think it exists. Now. I have a really unique view
about equality and racism and all of those things. And
I'm not saying I'm right, but my opinion is just
really simple. The best way to treat everybody fairly is

(01:43:34):
just to quit talking about differences. You know that just
we're all human beings, you know, we're we're all one,
and and that's that's how I feel. I don't look
at someone as black or white, or male or female,
or transgender or gay, or they're just people. You know,
they're just people. And I think the sooner we stop
pointing out distinctions, uh, the quicker will get to a

(01:43:59):
better place. Now. Having said that, I understand the argument
against it that if if we're not proactive, it will
never end. And I do think most of the preconceived
notion about racism and and rednecks and all of that
in the South most so that is not true. Having
said that, my son played football all through high school,

(01:44:22):
On any given Friday and Saturday night, my house would
have eight or ten guys there after the game, and
they'd spend a weekend and there'd be three white kids
and seven black kids, and and nobody saw color. Nobody
saw color, and and and the parents would come over
and we were friends. And but there was this one kid.
And he was that kid that that gives us all

(01:44:44):
the black eye. You know, his dad was a hardcore racist.
And then whenever this kid was was not around any
of the black kids, he would he would go there,
you know, he would use all the inappropriate behavior. And
I'd look at him and go, you know, you know, Bob,
stop it, you know. But that's just how he was wired.
You know. Are they out there? Sure they are? You know,

(01:45:06):
there's anti Semits that don't like Jewish, you know. I mean,
there's there's people everywhere that that you know, that don't
like somebody. Uh. And I'm not sure how you overcome that.
But but no, buy and large, I don't think the
South is anymore or less uh backwards than anywhere else
at this point. Okay, of the three hundred people who

(01:45:29):
work at Banded, how many are women are people of color?
That's a great question of the people that Banded or female,
and that includes road staff. We've probably got more uh
female road staff than anybody else. Uh And uh nineteen
percent of the people that banded are people of color. Uh,
And we don't hire people based on anything other than

(01:45:53):
ability and a funny story. We've got eighteen people now
in accounting. They're all women. And it's not about his
it's not you know, we interview each time we make
a hire. Guess what, it's usually females. We We've had
males in accounting, but right now they're all females because

(01:46:13):
the most qualified person through that door was a woman,
so we hired her. Okay, So you say, you work
sixteen eighteen hours a day and you're flying all over
the country, how do you maintain a relationship. I'm single? Yea.
How many times you've been married? I've had five very
serious failed relationships too, of which were marriages, and and

(01:46:38):
and after the fifth one, I figured out it was me.
And is that because you're so dedicated to the work. Yeah,
I mean each you know, people would say you're married
to Bandit lies. No, I'm not, you know. And and
then finally, after this last one, which which ended right
right as COVID hit, I realized it is me, and

(01:47:00):
they are right and and and my story now, which
I believe had I had a girlfriend when COVID started,
I wouldn't have one now because I was in d C,
in l A and New York. You know, I was
doing what I'm doing. And you know I've got a
meeting tomorrow morning at six thirty that will probably run
two hours to do with all of this, and uh,

(01:47:21):
who would put up with that? I wouldn't. But it's okay.
I love it. Okay, Michael, this has been very edifying.
I want to thank you for taking the time to
speak to my audience. Bob, thank you very much, and again,
please let me wrap up by urging anyone that hears this. Uh,
we've got to get this entertainment association going. And once

(01:47:43):
we get it going and living and breathing and in
the shape of fashion and a format that everyone is
comfortable with, we will have a defense mechanism against the
future shutdown. And if someone wants more information or wants
to make contact with you or be active, how might
they do that? Since one point three million people have
all of my personal information, I have no problem in

(01:48:05):
sharing it. Its first initial last name, M. Strickland S
T R I C K L A N D at
bandit B A N D I T lights, l I T.
E S dot com. Shoot me an email and you
can talk to anybody that's in my circle. I answer
them all and Buddy back in the middle of COVID.

(01:48:26):
That was quite a task. It's not as daunting as now,
but I answer everyone. There's no cookie cutter thing. It's
it's an answer. But I find I get I get
more traction that way. Well, you're doing yeoman's work. It's
really admirable. Hopefully Law come to Fruition. Thanks again for
doing this. Thank you, Bob, appreciate it. Have a great
evening until next time. This is Bob left Sex

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