Talent Buyer Profile: Kell Houston
We sat down with Kell Houston, Vice President of Talent Buyers Network, to find out how he got into the business, what he thinks the biggest issue is in live entertainment, and an anecdotal account of a surprising musical highlight he experienced with Tower of Power. For more information visit www.tbn.net
What type of entertainment do you usually book?
Talent Buyers Network is a talent buying company basically, and our main focus is Indian casinos around the country. It’s primarily, almost exclusively high-end national entertainment.
Could you name some notable acts you’ve bought?
Just about the gamut of everyone you can imagine, including Rodney Carrington, Foreigner, Smokey Robinson, Cheap Trick, Hootie and the Blowfish, Josh Turner, Gretchen Wilson, Randy Owens, Leann Rimes just to name a few.
What resources do you use to buy entertainment?
We use our relationships with all of the major agencies. Our company’s been established for a long time and we have strong relations in Los Angeles, Nashville, and New York with major agents. We work very closely with them, and that’s why IEBA is such a great conference. We network with them, we working on routing, and we get availability sheets almost daily from major agencies, and then we basically work with our properties to block dates and tours.
How do you get involved with the casinos that you work with?
We work with the casinos to basically educate them as to which acts will work well with their venue. For example, there are a couple different types of acts: casino acts and promoter acts. Casinos are in the gaming business not the promotions business so we educate them as to which acts are going to promote gaming. That usually means that we steer them away from the contemporary acts because they aren’t really going to do anything for the gaming venue. The issue is this: casinos have been really willing to a lot of the classic rock and classic country acts that really had no place to play 10 years ago except festivals or fairs. These acts weren’t going to sell tickets, promoters weren’t interested, they received no regular air play, they had no television appearances and eventually became forgotten acts. What the casinos have done is provided a marketplace for those older acts to actually get back out there and perform and make a living because the clientele that come into casinos are the 40+ demographic. Acts like Wayne Newton, Bob Newhart, and The Smothers Brothers are doing well in casinos because of the demographic they draw. The casinos then price tickets reasonably, comp seats for players, and use concert entertainment to drive the gaming business. They can lose money on the show, but they make it up on the floor of the casino by drawing gamers to the show. Some casino buyers think “Well gosh, we need to bring in The Steve Miller Band, The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Staind, and Breaking Benjamin”. Those acts aren’t going to necessarily drive gaming. They’re going to bring in a younger demographic that’s going to come into the show and leave. It’s about educating casinos into the real world. For example, in Las Vegas and Atlantic City most of those seats are comped seats, comped to gamers. They’ll give a gamer a couple free tickets because they know that they’ll go to the show, then drop anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 that night [on games].
Talent Buyers Network was originally located in Minnesota, where that kind of gaming first came out so we were educated quickly and got in on the ground floor of the Indian gaming business. Now I sit on the board of Indian Gaming Magazine, and we do a lot of consultations with casinos, helping and educating them about the entertainment business.
Tell us a personal highlight of your career.
Playing trombone on the Back to Oakland album with Tower of Power. I got my music education degree and went and took a left turn and got into bands and spent about 12 years recording. That’s my musical highlight. As far as this end of the business, a great story was booking Sugarland for $7,500 at a small club in south Seattle, and booking the Dixie Chicks at Freemont Street in Las Vegas for $15,000 right before their big album. I had Freemont Street experience with my venue for 10 years, at an outdoor venue in downtown Las Vegas. We had two stages and were running entertainment 2 weekends a month. We cracked Brad Paisley and the Dixie Chicks early on in their careers. Catching an act just before it hits is a really special experience. We’re saving everyone a lot of money and they’re excited about these acts.
How did you get into the talent buying industry?
I started at a booking agency and started my own company in 1984 and strictly focused on colleges and special events. In 1994 I was chosen as associate of the year for NACA (National Associaton for Campus Activities). I transitioned from band leader/producer to a booking agent. Colleges were getting difficult to book so I had an offer from Good Music agency, which later became the Talent Buyers Network. I took the job in 1992 and moved to Las Vegas. We went from being a lounge agency to being the premier buyers for national talent.
Do you have any advice for young professionals?
[Laughs] Well biggest issue with this business is that there are no books. You really have to find a mentor and be learning from people. Interning, apprenticing, live experience, whatever you can do. If you like this business, learn everything you can about it; from how to set up an event and set up a room to learning all of the processes involved in production. You need to get your hands dirty to get into the business and you need to learn it from the ground up. It will make you a well-rounded person and a great buyer, booking agent, and manager because you’ll understand what an artist goes through. You can’t just go to school and walk into an office and think you’re going to understand this business.
What do you see as the biggest issue/problem in live entertainment today?
Pricing is a tough one. The variables in artist pricing. That’s always a problem. Variable pricing for acts it can be extreme sometimes and not really justified by ticket sales. Another problem is uneducated talent buyers. By “uneducated” I don’t mean it in a negative way, but more as people who do not understand the business that are trying to book entertainment. It’s not something that you can walk out on the street and do; there’s a lot of details and there’s a lot of respect needed in the industry and I think running into people who don’t get it, who don’t understand it is really aggravating.
Casinos that don’t understand the business decide “We want Willie Nelson and we don’t care where we get him or when we get him, we just want him”. Say Willie’s priced $50,000, you’ll be charged $100,000 because it’s a weird date and the casinos will pay it. The casinos then jack the prices up on everyone else because they’re paying an unrealistic price. There’s a fair price for everything and some of these acts deserve a ton of money because they’re drawing the numbers, but when you’re not selling tickets, and you’re taking the price up through the roof, you’re taking advantage of these casinos. You have isolated date pricing, corporate pricing, and now you have casino pricing and it can vary 300%. I don’t think that’s particularly fair but that’s the world we live in.