MUSIC LESSIONS WITH LEGENDARY CONCERT PROMOTER PAT DICESARE
\n By: Chris Groblewski<\/p>\n
\u201cYou gotta be crazy to want to work in this business right?\u201d Pat says as he laughs. He\u2019s joking, but not really. The music business is a crazy business, it defies logic. Booking agents screw up, then call you and yell at you for their mistakes. If the show gets cancelled as the promoter you\u2019re stuck with the bill. If you ask for compensation, you\u2019ll never get another act from that agent again. That\u2019s just how it is. Pat has seen it all. If you\u2019re read his book Hard Days, Hard Nights you know what I\u2019m talking about. He practically invented the stadium concert. But you\u2019ll never hear him gloat about his success. In fact, if you have the pleasure of speaking with Pat, you\u2019ll find that he\u2019s got a lesson for every situation that can arise and more often than not, he\u2019s got some valuable information you can learn from. <\/p>\n
\tI met Pat for the 1st time about two years ago. I had a funny thing happen to me. I had 3 different people say to me in a 2 week period \u201cDo you know Pat DiCesare? You should meet him.\u201d I thought that was interesting that 3 people unaware of each other, said the same thing to me. It\u2019s like it was a sign. So I looked Pat up on Facebook and shot him a message. I asked him if he\u2019d meet me for lunch, if nothing more, so that I can pick his brain. I didn\u2019t know him, and he for sure didn\u2019t know me. But he said yes. So I met Pat for lunch and I guess the rest they say is history. We\u2019ve been working together on many things over the past two years and without a doubt he has hands down been the most influencial person in my music career. I can\u2019t thank him enough. He\u2019s taken me under his wing and given me great advice. Like this gem I use every day. Like most musicians, I want to be compensated for my time. I had an offer from a club owner in Cleveland for SuperMonkey to headline but she couldn\u2019t come up with the money we needed as a band to at least cover our expenses. So I passed on the gig. When I told this to Pat he said \u201cYou have a venue in Cleveland that wants you to headline?! That\u2019s great!\u201d I couldn\u2019t have been more confused. \u201cHow is that great, they won\u2019t come up with a fair guarantee and I can\u2019t pay my band?\u201d I said. Pat replied \u201cYou gotta quit worrying about the money and just focus on being a great band. If you can do that, the money will come. Let\u2019s think about this, how can you leverage this opportunity to create another opportunity where you can make money?\u201d I was enlighten. So I booked the show with no guarantee at Pat\u2019s advice and started to think outside the box. I also told everyone in my band what Pat said and next thing I knew, everyone was focused on being a great band and not the money. I put out an ad, I found some local Cleveland acts that wanted to open for us that were willing to presell some tickets. The owner of the club gave me contact info for all of the influential music bloggers, writers, critics in Cleveland. The next thing I knew I was driving to Cleveland to do an interview with the Cleveland Scene magazine. I meet with their staff, who did a great write up for SuperMonkey & SuperMonkey Recording Co. I sent that write up to my former college Kent State, and next thing I know, they did a whole write up on me as one of their successful graduates, who has turned his marketing degree into a career in the music business. I was also able to use these articles to help book SuperMonkey in some better clubs in the city, radio, & TV appearance\u2019s because now people had heard of SuperMonkey. Same deal for Philadelphia, as a matter of fact, the owner of Legendary Dobbs liked SuperMonkey so much, she was nice enough to write me a letter of recommendation that I use every time I am breaking into a new market and anytime I want to play in Philly, I just let her know what date, and its mine. We\u2019ve played Philly 3 times and each time we\u2019ve made more money than the last time, and we\u2019re now at a point where we have to start looking for a bigger venue. All because of that one thing Pat DiCesare told me – quit worrying about making money, focus on being great at what you do and the money will come. <\/p>\n
\tPat is a wealth of knowledge and my greatest resource. If I have a question or a situation that I don\u2019t know what do to or how to react, I call and ask Pat for his advice and he\u2019s always there to take my call. Sometimes he calls me and asks me for my advice which blows my mind. Everyone in Pittsburgh knows his name from owning the Stanley Theater to all his years running DiCesare-Engler Productions. Two years ago, we didn\u2019t know each other and today I\u2019m glad to call Pat DiCesare my friend and mentor. I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019d be doing if I had not met Pat. Probably working a job somewhere that I hate instead of doing what I love which is playing guitar and making records. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MUSIC LESSIONS WITH LEGENDARY CONCERT PROMOTER PAT DICESARE By: Chris Groblewski \u201cYou gotta be crazy to want to work in this business right?\u201d Pat says as he laughs. He\u2019s joking, but not really. The music business is a crazy business, it defies logic. Booking agents screw up, then call you and yell at you for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1517","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8aPSh-ot","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1518,"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1517\/revisions\/1518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nightwire.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}