Out West and the Live Music Industry
Alright let’s get the things that most of you care about out of the way.
Fav city of the travels: San Diego prob fits me the best. As a state I appreciated Oregon’s intentions the most.
Fav people: SD or Boise (every interaction was pleasant and welcoming)
Fav service industry folks: Portland
Best ice cream: Seattle
Most dog friendly: Tahoe or San Diego/Ocean Beach specifically (Boise was #1 until the late night gunshots lol)
Fav stretch of the drive: the first few hours leaving Seattle headed to Boise and going through the Cascades (though, the truck drivers are by far the worst of anywhere). Second up is LA to SD and being on the coast
Prettiest scenery: Seattle (it was a perfect, clear blue sky St. Patty’s Day)
Favorite venue: The Regency Ballroom in SF takes it for best representing the west coast historical ballroom vibe
Best album listened to on the drive: Abbey Road
I won’t include favorite food but I think most people would agree that San Francisco has the best food.
One more section for you non-jammy fans.
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(Note: I’ve been writing this for off and on a month and a half now. The Guardian just wrote this article with the same theme on 4/25. Great read and more formal than my tone.)
“If you really just presume that's my impression now of you
Well there's a lot of ground to cover and even more that we need to talk through.”
-No Diablo, Umphrey’s McGee
Touring with a jam band is a fun way to learn about the world. Especially in this day and age where it seems like more and more of you are terrified by your phones and don’t know how to differentiate between reality and propaganda. I’m not perfect either but I do like to think my public relations undergrad and Dr. Wittig at UAB prepared me enough for this current situation no matter how bad of a student I was.
I’ve had multiple people ask me if I went to Phish at the Sphere in Vegas. I did not for personal reasons but also like, a lot of you need to understand that spectacles happen night in and out around you. You’re passively missing out (maybe actively, I don’t know). Phish at the Sphere was a monumental achievement for the band and I think the music industry at large and I watched every minute of it.
But personally? I don’t really love being at the shows with a lot of noise and buzz around them. If I got a 4-day pass at onsale, yeah I would’ve been there in a heartbeat. I am never going to pay more than $1000 for a ticket to any show though. These are just my personal values and I’m not knocking on anyone for doing so. Give me an off-the-beaten path Tuesday night Umphrey’s show in Boise over the Saturday in LA anytime.
Because the Tuesday in Boise is going to be so much more intimate and everyone who was there will never forget any minute of the entire experience. You’re friends for life at that point just for having been there.
Since the setlist and sounds change every night, there’s a distinct energy in each place that only reveals itself to you in the confines of the venue in that specific moment. When you try to explain this to anyone who does not listen to this genre (the closest is probably EDM), they are likely confused and will look at you like you’re on drugs. It’s a hard thing for anyone to wrap their head around until they experience it.
Because it’s never about you. It’s paradoxical. Once you realize the experience is not about your wishes but the experiences of everyone, you let go and something greater happens where you democratically contribute to how the show’s energy goes (Dave’s WOOO is very audible in Boise’s No Diablo and his reaction is etched into my memory forever). The first time you get that about live music is profound, then you adjust your life perspectives for awhile before settling into a collaborative mindset in a lot of what you act on. Some people get it, others never do, and that’s fine too.
When you do this long enough, the shows you look forward to the most with your friends or anyone you may loosely know and meet when you spend days/weeks/months planning ahead are the shows with a long drive on a weeknight. The exact place where the people in your life not on this adventure wonder, What the fuck is he doing in Boise? Is he okay? Like yeah, I’m a bit uncomfortably in the minority there, but that’s where music takes us and you feel safe within this little bubble. It always works out and it’s wonderful.
And you know what? The people of Boise are incredibly nice and chill while being realistic about their city. I got some Japanese lunch at the food hall and got to talking to one of the guys working there. He worked in San Francisco for years, I told him about my buddy Matt wanting to take us to a great omakase spot in SF he’d heard of, and the guy could tell me about how his new storefront would be great but wouldn’t have the experience or fresh fish to be able to meet the quality and standards of a true omakase experience. It is Boise after all, but that knowledge and awareness told me he knew his shit, and the food he made was confirmed really good.
Tuesday night in Boise capped off on Wednesday by mediocre chicken wings in Winnemucca (now forever known as Wingemucca)? Sounds amazing. This is what we looked forward to for 3 months. And yes, it was made even better when the waitress at the restaurant responded, “I guess our wings are decent.”
We have our biases and our realities. Boise is a beautiful city you could make a weekend out of, but also my gay friend who’s had a medical weed card for a long time opted for the boys to stay the night in Ontario, Oregon an hour away instead of finishing the drive because of how strictly conservative Idaho’s laws are. But also also, he’s the biggest fan of Ontario, Oregon ever and no one can convince me otherwise.
So, go do that thing you’ve always been unsure of doing with people you care about. It can be anything (for me, it’s clearly live music). Things don’t need to be perfect and they will get weird. You’ll learn a lot about each other and you’ll grow together. You’ll create memories and your bonds will get stronger.
That’s what it’s all about anyways, right? Like, all of this.
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The problem though is that in the current state of the world, everything is getting more expensive. Less people are able to go on a tour, so bands will make their productions more expensive to go all out for the local show. For the masses, this means we’re just going to get accustomed to spending way too much for a ticket. Some of us will get lucky with our connections and get on a guest list or get a free ticket to the show.
We can point fingers at Ticketmaster and Live Nation but they are totally playing cover for the acts. Taylor Swift publicly chides them while her fans pay an exorbitant amount for one show. There was a guy at my gym talking about going to every one of Beyonce’s shows, and I immediately shuttered because that likely cost upwards of $15k on JUST tickets. I can do like 5-8 jam band tours for that much. A whole summer with Phish can cost me somewhere between $2-3k.
In the case of Umphrey’s though, people are becoming less willing to even go to a show within their cities because it’s getting so expensive. The only reasonable live music experience you’re going to get anymore (meaning not spending $100+ for a night out all things considered) is at your local venue or bar checking out a small act that’s trying their best to make it in this environment.
And even that is becoming difficult because of capitalism! Venues are taking more cuts out of merch (I’m looking at you, 9:30 Club). My life philosophy for ages has been to see live music because that was the way to directly support the arts. Go to a show and buy a shirt. And now some hedge fund bros are out there somewhere looking at this industry like hawks soaring through the sky looking for their next vulnerable prey.
I am unsure what the best way to support is or what the next model should be for the arts without a government or state solution (i.e. libraries being our venues for artists to play at, and local artists are their state’s ambassadors in a way). I don’t think the answer is going viral for a brief moment because there’s no continuity really (at that point, the live music experience is purely just that — seeing something in person because you saw it on your phone, you enjoyed it, and you want to experience that exact thing for $X). We still need a communal experience to give us reprieve from the bullshit of our lives, but if it costs us a big chunk of our budgets then we’ll likely make it out less to these events and inevitably end up more depressed in the long run. So is it really just going to end up being working class musicians putting stuff up online into the algorithmic void (maybe a Twitch stream) hoping to get recognized further with hopes of people then buying records and merch with no middle man, all in order to fund a net-negative tour and repeat the cycle? Or is it just going to be that the arts are only for the already wealthy going forward? And that the Taylor Swifts and Beyonces of the world take everyone’s hard earned money leaving people with interested only in spending on having exactly one best night of their life as opposed to numerous?
We certainly can’t only hate Elon Musk for being an attention and validation seeking billionaire with daddy issues while absolving the major live music profiteers. Taxing the rich applies to all industries, and realistically Wall Street needs to allow room for Main Street. And finance bros, you know who’s next once you’re done pillaging Main Street? That’s right. Wall Street. Logically. Because there would be nothing else for the capitalist monster to eat.
(If you don’t believe that that’s a possibility of human nature, we only need to look at the UK’s NHS in my opinion. For a long time the NHS was the global gold standard of healthcare and what made it beautiful/one of humanity’s greatest achievements was that the rich and poor all used and contributed to the same system. No one dared to touch that noble concept… until the Tories decided in the 21st century that selling it off piece for piece and being closer to the US insurance model was best. Which, lmao, but anyways as a US citizen, you can see how that logic applies from pensions no longer existing -> 401ks taking their place -> everything funneled towards the stock market -> social security inevitably collapsing under its own weight -> where does any sort of financial social good come from?)
Our human history goes back to late nights in Africa where everyone gathered and joyously danced around a fire and made shit up. We must find a way to keep that tradition going. We can’t lose that fire, and we can’t lose the night to be stuck in a 24/7 hamster wheel to keep up some unnecessary appearances to make some already incredibly wealthy person even richer.
Otherwise, what even is the point of any of this?
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So, what did I ultimately take away from following Umphrey’s with my buddy Dave and his friend Matt who is now my friend?
Umphrey’s is like seeing your friend’s super musically talented band. It’s all family. From Brendan Bayliss and Ryan Stasik at the forefront all the way to the intern in probably Chicago to the fans. There’s a straight connection every night and it’s palpable.
It’s just big enough for a venue to be packed and ready to have their faces melted, and the whole thing is just small enough for your email requests to get recognized with a solid hope of having a song or multiple songs on the setlist for that night. It is not like that with Phish ever because it’s too big and they’re in their ways (how could you play a request as an arena act?). But with UM, they want to put on a show while making their fans feel appreciated because what would their lives be without their fans’ support?
(Quick aside: I’m 100% convinced that Bassist Ryan Stasik (Basik, for short I guess) played poker before we got to Tahoe but not while we were there because he didn’t want to lose money to Matt. And Stasik if you see this, 10 pc wing combo bet on the next Steelers/Colts game.)
I guess if there’s anything I learned from the trip out West, it’s to be open-minded and leave room for multiple realities. Go try something you’d never do that people won’t understand because it’s not trending or they’ve just never heard of it because social media algorithms didn’t tell them so. There’s so much life has to offer and it’s all pretty great. Sure, we can find negatives and imperfections in everything, but we can still find a way to enjoy it and laugh with people we care about and create memories we’ll never forget.
Go find that release from your day-to-day bullshit and be free like no one’s watching.