Marc: <\/em><\/strong>Hello <\/em><\/strong>Adam, where are you and how\u2019s the weather? Marc:<\/em><\/strong> You need layers in England! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam: <\/em><\/strong>Ya, well, sometimes it\u2019s warm, sometimes cold. It changes, and it\u2019s island weather, I guess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>Live is important, but it\u2019s been a long time to find the right guest to talk about live concerts. COVID had no one going to gigs, so it\u2019s scary to talk about it. So, Adam, I am thankful you\u2019re here. Can you give us the highlight of what you do and The Great Escape<\/a>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam:<\/em><\/strong> It is only highlights. There are no boring parts! It\u2019s all just pure highlights! So I\u2019m the Head of Music for The Great Escape Music Festival. The Great Escape Festival is Europe\u2019s largest new music showcase and conference; for music discovery. We have around five-hundred artists perform each year. We also have a conference that runs in tandem with The Great Escape\u2019s live shows. So about four-thousand music delegates from around the globe. We work with many different countries and try to have around thirty countries represented in an official capacity each year. That\u2019s it in a nutshell, really! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>The Head of Music, what does that mean? There\u2019s a Head of Music at Radio 1<\/a> at BBC, but that\u2019s not the same as what you do, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam:<\/em><\/strong> No, not the same. We have a conference<\/a>, and that isn\u2019t live music. The conference is panels and discussions and business-to-business networking. The Head of Music is anything that isn’t that. It\u2019s everything that involves live music. That could be offering and booking bands via agents or managers or working with record labels on their showcases. I Work with export offices, each country usually has an export office that pushes and promotes the best music from that country and gives them some funding, so I\u2019ll liaison with them and with a broader team as well. So, Head of Music is anything to do with live music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc:<\/em><\/strong> How did you get into what you are doing, and how did you end up at The Great Escape? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam: <\/em><\/strong>I was always interested in music. I used to go into my brother’s room because he was older than me, and he was really passionate about gigs and music, so I\u2019d always go and steal his music. Then I started DJing and collecting records myself. I grew up in a really small town, and there wasn\u2019t much going on\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>Which one? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam:<\/em><\/strong> It\u2019s Towcester<\/a> (pronounced toaster). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>What? Where\u2019s that? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam:<\/em><\/strong> It\u2019s not near jam or butter. I have heard that joke before! It\u2019s in Northamptonshire! It\u2019s like the farthest place away from the sea! If you were by the seaside and you\u2019re very relaxed and easy come, easy go. Every time you take a step back, it becomes more and more aggressive and angrier, and the people start hating life – it\u2019s like that! It\u2019s in the middle of England. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I moved from there. We used to put on a lot of house parties because there weren’t any clubs or gigs. I moved to the next big town and started DJing at the Roadmender on a friend’s night and then moved to London when I was twenty. I kept on putting on my own nights, but the whole time I was working in retail because I didn\u2019t go to College or University, I went straight into work and putting on parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I moved to London, I was working for Fred Perry<\/a> in Covent Garden and putting on gigs once a month and DJing at the Barfly<\/a>. One day they asked me if I wanted to be a Junior Promoter. I was kind of running the door at the Barfly in Camden at that point and DJing and had my own night, so I was always active in the late-night scenes and going out a lot. Junior Promoter, I didn\u2019t know what that was, and they told me it was what I was already doing, and I said, \u201cOh, you can do that as a job?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>And <\/em>for people who don\u2019t know the Barfly, it was like an (air quotes) showcase venue. Right? Was it at least six or seven nights a week and at least three bands a night? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam: <\/em><\/strong>Oh my god, we had to do thirteen to fourteen weekly shows. It was constant. It was like riding a juggernaut. You just couldn\u2019t stop it. If a band cancelled the night before, we would have to do all sorts of stuff for the next day. We\u2019d have to ring around to the venues in Camden and get them to pull their show and have them put it in our venue. We\u2019d book the opening band from somebody else\u2019s gig and get them to headline our show. We have to come up with all manner of shady things to get the venue full, but yes, it was seven nights a week. Every day you go to bed and wake up, and that is the day that needs to be booked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>My experience with the Barfly is when I did A&R at Creation<\/a>, being in Camden saying to myself, \u201cOh, ok, I\u2019m going to see something at 8 pm at the Barfly, then I\u2019m going down the road for something else, then I\u2019m coming back.\u201d For bands, managers, or artists that have never played in London, that\u2019s the way it starts! You do a week of gigs in London at all these venues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So you were a Junior Promoter. What happened? Did you start booking more of those gigs? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam: <\/em><\/strong>Well, instead of doing one night a month, I was trying to bring in stuff. There\u2019s a combination of bringing in your own shows or bringing in other people\u2019s, like promoters or doing afterparties. If there was a bigger show at KOKO<\/a>, and if they had a show, we would get in touch with the headliner of that gig and try to get them to come to our club for an afterparty and late night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To be honest, it was about catching the new band but also maximising our budget and bar sales. It was a great place to meet everybody in the industry. It had such a good reputation, and it was one of the only, well, there were only a handful of venues you\u2019d go to as an A&R\/tastemaker, and that was one of them. I was quite fortunate really to have been hanging around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>And then how did you transition into The Great Escape? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam:<\/em><\/strong> Well, when I was a Junior Booker, The Great Escape started around that time, 2006. The company that I worked for then, I think it was ChannelFly or Mama and Comp.<\/a>, started The Great Escape. Jon Mack<\/a>, who books Reading<\/a> & Leeds<\/a> now, and Martin Elbourne<\/a>, who work and books parts of Glastonbury<\/a>, said, \u201cWe\u2019re a showcase event, in another part of the world, and there\u2019s nothing like this in the UK. We need to start one.\u201d So they started this around 2006. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I went from being a Junior Booker to Head Booker, and then I went into some weird spot where I managed and oversaw three or four calendars. Then I was vaguely a national promoter, but it\u2019s pretty challenging to be a national promoter. You need to either be all in or out. People sign up bands so early now that you have to take a hit on selling a show in Birmingham and then making your money in London, so it\u2019s not something you dabble in. You have to commit fully, and I never really did. So when I was offered The Great Escape job, I\u2019d always wanted to do it, and I had been involved as a venue rep or helping out since the beginning. So here I am now, seven years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>The national promoter stuff is interesting to mention because I don\u2019t know how many people understand that dynamic. There\u2019s quite a lot of politics, isn\u2019t there? Who your booking agent is, who they work with, which promoter, and certain promoters want you to sign with them to do a whole tour around the UK, and they\u2019ll take, just like you said, a loss on the first few tours, knowing it\u2019s going to blow up. Is that the way it works? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam: <\/em><\/strong>Well, what happens typically is that they\u2019ll cherry-pick. National promoters will take London, Manchester, and maybe one other city and leave the other ones to independent promoters. The agent will say to the independent promoters<\/a>, \u201cOh, no, we\u2019ll keep you on!\u201d and then nine times out of ten, it\u2019ll just revert to a national promoter because they have bigger budgets to spend on marketing and advertising, they\u2019ll have a monthly page in a national publication. Most of the time, they\u2019ll be able to offer festivals, but that\u2019s why you have an agent. It\u2019s to negate that shark-infested choppy water. There\u2019s definitely a low layer of politics with national promotion, and it wasn\u2019t something that excited me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Marc: <\/em><\/strong>I think that\u2019s good for everybody to understand. An agent is great for booking tours, but this is why you build a team and have people around you who know all the ins and outs of this kind of stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s get into the festival because there is so much to unpack. You mentioned four thousand people, five hundred artists. Did you say there were forty stages? That sounds big to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Adam:<\/em><\/strong> I\u2019m based in Farringdon in East London. It\u2019s pretty overcast, but to be honest, I don\u2019t mind it. I like it when it\u2019s like this. It means I can wear a coat, but not a big coat! You can layer; I\u2019m more of a layers man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Adam](\"https:\/\/byta.com\/howwelisten\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/adam-1.png\")
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