Patrick Evans and Randy Florence bring us a nostalgic encore episode of Big Conversations, Little Bar, featuring an insightful interview with Garry Kief, the newly appointed Chairman of the Board at the McCallum Theatre and President & CEO of Stiletto Entertainment. This special episode, originally aired in 2023, dives into Kief's dynamic career in the entertainment industry, his remarkable journey with Barry Manilow, and the transformative vision he has for the McCallum Theatre. Kief shares anecdotes from his extensive experience, from managing high-profile artists to innovating merchandising strategies that shaped the landscape of concert merchandise. As a leader in the arts, he discusses the importance of expanding the theatre's programming and ensuring it resonates with the growing Coachella Valley community, which has evolved into a vibrant cultural hub. The conversation highlights Kief's commitment to education in the arts, as he reflects on initiatives like the Manilow Music Project, which aims to provide musical instruments to local schools, ensuring that future generations have the opportunity to appreciate and engage with the arts. This episode not only celebrates Kief's achievements but also emphasizes the significance of community involvement in the cultural landscape of the Coachella Valley and beyond.

Takeaways:

• Garry Kief discusses his journey from being the youngest GM at ABC Television to becoming the CEO of Stiletto Entertainment, highlighting the importance of innovation in entertainment.
• He reveals the fascinating story behind the first musical made for television, which was based on Barry Manilow's famous song Copacabana.
• Kief shared his experiences managing high-profile artists like Donna Summer and Fleetwood Mac, emphasizing the challenges and rewards of talent management.
• The conversation touched on the significance of community involvement in the McCallum Theater's success and its role in the Coachella Valley.
• Garry emphasizes the need for educational outreach in the arts to inspire future generations and foster a love for theater.
• He also mentions the importance of expanding the theater's programming to serve a growing and diverse population in the Coachella Valley.

Chapters:

• 00:14 - The Birth of Copa
• 03:35 - The Rise of Stiletto Entertainment
• 13:02 - Early Life and Family Background
• 31:05 - The Evolution of Arts Education
• 40:53 - The Journey of Copacabana
• 48:13 - The Evolution of Entertainment at McCallum Theatre

Companies and Artists mentioned in this episode:

• Barry Manilow
• CBS
• McCallum Theater
• Palm Springs International Film Festival
• Bank of America
• Kaiser
• ABC
• Smithfield
• Holland America Cruise Lines
• Yamaha Music
• Seabourn
• Disney on Ice
• Caesars
• Fleetwood Mac
• American Music Awards
• Rod Stewart
• Diana Ross
• Stevie Wonder
• Donna Summer
• Juice Newton
• John Mellencamp
• New York Pops

#Copa #CopacabanaMusical #GarryKief #StilettoEntertainment #McCallumTheatre #BarryManilow #PalmDesertEvents #CoachellaValleyArts #MusicalTheater #EntertainmentIndustry #BroadwayShows #LivePerformances #PalmSpringsFilmFestival #ArtsEducation #CruiseShipEntertainment #DickClark #AmericanMusicAwards #MusicManagement #PerformingArts #TheaterLeadership #SkipsLittleBar #MutualBroadcastingSystem #RandyFlorence #PatrickEvans #JohnMcMullen #BigConversationsLittleBarPodcast

On this episode, Copa started because it.

Was the first original musical made for television.

Okay.

That was Barry and Dick Clark and I went and met with Bud Grant who was running CBS at the time.

And Barry said, well, we want to take the song Copacabana and turn it into a two hour musical.

And Bud said, okay.

And that was about the end of the deal.

From the coveted corner booth in a little bar at the center of the welcome to the Coachella Valley universe.

Welcome to another big conversation with Patrick Evans and Randy Florence.

Presented by the McCallum Theater.

Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you back to another big conversation at Little Bar, our little podcast that we host right here at Little Bar in Palm Desert, California.

My name is Patrick Evans and I'm very pleased to be here today with Mike Co host, Mr.

Randy Florence.

Are you really pleased to be here with me today?

No, but I'm selling it.

Last week was rough.

What is this, Rodney Danger?

Oh, I tell you, last week was r flow.

I'm glad you're here.

I'm glad.

We both like to be anywhere.

That's right.

Hey, I get to introduce our guest today.

Well, yes, you do.

And a real feather in our cap, I think, for this podcast.

Yeah.

Well, I'm pretty excited about this.

Sitting across me right now, we have Gary Keefe.

Gary is the CEO and president of Stiletto Entertainment, but most importantly in the valley right now, you were just recently named as the chairman of the McCallum Theater, correct?

That's right.

Randy.

Congratulations.

Gary, hold your congratulations.

Let's see how it goes for a while.

So tell us about how that came together.

Harold Massner, who's been the chairman for 13, 14 years that I've known for probably 20 years, called me up one day and said, so you're going to become vice president for a few months and then I'm going to resign and then you're going to be become chairman.

And I said, who is it?

It's good to have a succession plan.

Because that's kind of the way Harold operates.

You know, like, hold that thought, Harold.

And.

And then it went before the board and they.

Fortunately not a lot of people showed up, so they voted me in.

Just barely a quorum.

Yeah.

Both of them said yes.

Now you also have been working with Harold on the board of the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which also has had a recent leadership.

Yeah, yeah.

That was also kind of out of the blue that Harold decided he was going to become, I guess he's chairman emeritus of both organizations now.

So he's still involved.

He's not.

He's not walking off into the sunset.

Which would be unlike Harold, which would.

Be totally unlike Harold.

A few months ago, he was actually very concerned about his health, but he's had a miraculous recovery and he's.

I think he's got more energy and smarts and involvement now than he's ever had.

Well, that's really great news because we've all been worried and we, you know, it's been known that he has had some struggles, but it is official.

He did send you.

You said he sent you the gavel, so.

Sent me the gavel, yeah.

For the McCallum.

It's glued in the box, so I can't use it yet.

Sword in the stone, trying to pull it off of there.

He didn't do it personally.

I think he was probably afraid I was going to hit him with it or something.

So now talk a little bit about your background and what brought you here ultimately to the Coachella Valley.

You.

You were a telev.

I worked for ABC tv, yeah.

For about four or five years.

And did I read that you were the youngest GM at ABC?

27 years old.

Yeah.

Long time.

That's a long time ago.

But yeah, the.

I had a background in marketing.

I worked for initially for bank of America and then for Kaiser, which was a big real estate development company.

And ABC recruited me to bring me into what they call their scenic and leisure attractions division.

And they had some amusement parks and.

Oh, kind of.

It was called Smithfield, New Jersey.

We had the ABC Entertainment center in Century City.

So they brought me in as GM in the entertainment center.

And then I worked on marketing on the other projects.

Couple water parks down in Florida.

Wiki Watchy.

Never could get that on a T shirt right.

Or say it after a couple of drinks.

That's right.

Come get your wiki.

But yeah, I did that.

And the.

One of the project in Century City was just losing a bundle.

And it was kind of the pet project of Leonard Goldenson, who was the chairman of the board and the principal stockholder of abc.

And I was doing everything I could in order to try to make money.

And one of the things that happened was this was so long ago before people were buying branded merchandise with logos and everything on it that didn't exist yet.

And people would come up to us and there was a Strike.

And we all had to fill in as cameramen, and they'd come up to us and want to buy our ABC official jackets and stuff like that.

So I started that.

My guys, we were printing that and selling it at the ABC Entertainment.

Totally against all the corporate policies.

And I always remember, because Leonard came.

He was based in New York, but he came out to the west coast every once in a while.

He said.

He said, gary, show me what you're doing here.

And he came down the elevator, and I had my guys build a retail store.

Called it the ABC Superstar Store, full of Frisbees and everything with the ABC logo.

What a great idea.

Well, it could have been my.

It could have been my demise because, you know, he had all these uptight lieutenants with him who were, you know.

The guys that say, you can't do that.

The guys who say, you can't do that.

And that's not the corporate logo policy and everything.

And they were all ready to see me be, you know, tarred and feathered right there.

And Leonard walked in the store, and he gets a big smile on his face.

He said, where'd you get all this stuff?

I said, Mr.

Goldenson, I'm trying to do anything I can to make money for you, sir.

And I said, I had it all made.

This stuff is great.

I want 50 of everything.

Send it to my office.

I'm giving it out for Christmas presents.

And I can see all these guys just go, oh.

All of a sudden, they became believers.

Well, it took them a while.

So you kind of invented merch.

Well, kind of feels like.

I feel like that, yeah.

You know those $50 T shirts your kids buy?

Yeah.

Oh, I know.

Blame me, dude.

Oh, way to go, Gary.

Well, you owe me a couple of hundred bucks, dude.

So we did.

You know, I saw.

I mean, listen, there was a lot of money to be made in merchandise.

And a friend of a friend knew Rod Stewart's manager, and he was interested, and we all scraped together whatever money we could, and we bought the merch rights from Rod.

He was a fascinating guy.

He didn't.

I think he had been run over by people who promised him royalties.

He didn't want a royalty.

He wanted a check up front, and that was it.

Which, you know, I told people Rod Stewart put me in business because if I'd had to pay him a royalty, he would have made about three times what I gave him as an advance or as a flat fee.

And so that grew, and then real quick, we added Barry Manilow to it, and we added we had Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder and Melissa Manchester and Juice Newton and John Mellencamp.

And we had about 15 or 20 major mainstream acts.

So we were doing all their merchandise.

And that is under the umbrella of Stiletto.

Yeah, yeah.

At the time, we didn't call it Stiletto for about five or six years.

And we merged some other companies together and we were trying to.

We pulled a name out of a hat, truthfully.

We were going to call it Triad because there were three companies.

And I called my friend Arnold Rifkin and he said, don't do that.

He said, I'm merging my talent agency with another one and we've already registered the name Triad, which Triad became actually part of William Morris eventually.

So we did the concert merchandise for all those guys.

And then maybe about the following year we were on the road doing these big outdoor amphitheaters, which I don't know what.

Glen Helen would be the closest one here, like the Greek Theater in la.

And in those days there were no merchandise concessionaires.

It quite often was the two truck drivers who more often than not were both named Bubba.

And they'd make a deal and they'd say, you guys can have the merchandise and that's how you get paid.

So that you'd go to a big venue like that and there'd be two guys with a folding table selling bad T shirts out front.

And I went to Jimmy Neenlander, who owned a lot of those outdoor amphitheaters.

And truthfully, not knowing any better, I said, let me come in and we'll do all the merchandise concessions and we'll.

It's all done on consignment, so we'll sell it, we'll give money back to the act who owns the rights, and we'll give money to the Needle Landers.

And much to my chagrin, he said, okay.

And so we set up merchandise concessions.

We had, I think, about 15 different buildings around the country, like the Pantages in LA and the Greek Theater and the Wilshire in LA.

And we had the Pacific Amphitheater and Toronto and Baltimore all over the country, and a couple in Germany, two in England.

Wow.

It was wild.

It was an all cash business in those days.

No credit cards.

And we always.

One of our.

One of the services that we provided was we had centralized accounting, so all the money went into la.

And we did reports and accounts and checks.

And we had one artist who didn't want to take a check.

He had had probably about a 30 year relationship with the IRS that wasn't going in his direction.

So sounds like Willie Nelson.

I'm not naming.

I didn't say anything.

Was he high?

And I remember he was playing the Greek theater and we would hire like high school teach teachers to be the manager.

And we get a lot of college kids to work the booths because these are mostly summer venues.

And the kid who is running the place, he calls me at like 2 in the morning and I don't know what to do.

I said, what's the matter?

There's two guys outside the door.

They won't leave unless I give them cash.

I said, you don't understand.

He's not signing anything.

He wants cash bubble wants his money.

He wants to leave.

There's two guys, they may or may not be armed.

I don't think those are water pistols.

The bottom line is he got a bag of cash.

I said, don't worry about it.

We'll report it and they can do whatever they want to.

They were fun days.

So.

So we talked about Wild Wild west of Barry Miles.

That's a pretty sophisticated business now.

But you guys were really in the infancy of it.

Yeah, it became.

Yeah, I mean, we, we eventually got to, you know, computerized accounting and all that kind of stuff.

And, and did report everything, but we did that, oh, maybe 20 years, probably up till about 10 or 15 years ago.

And then it, it, it turned into a much.

The record companies got involved.

They bought up a lot of the concessionaires.

There were like two or three other guys cut by that time doing the.

Same thing because they saw how much money was.

They saw how much money.

And then as what often happens sometimes when big business gets involved and they all lost money and then they all sold off the rights again.

And it's gone back and forth a few times, but we were there in its infancy and it was a lot of fun on both things.

On doing the road concessions and also doing the permanent concessions at a building.

I don't know if you've ever.

A lot of places now they use like a black and case.

It opens up and it's the display.

We actually have the trademark on that.

We created that a long time ago.

We let the trademark run out because it's like, you know, it's not worth spending a fortune.

Who am I going to sue?

Hey, hey, that's our trademark.

Big deal, you know.

So, hey, I want to go back to the path that got you heading this direction?

So born in Houston.

I read.

Grew up in Houston.

Grew up in Houston, yeah.

Moved there when I was two weeks old.

So not by my choice, I mean, but.

Yeah, you weren't the driving factor.

I'm out of here.

I'm out of here.

My first two weeks have not been fun.

I'm out of here.

Going back to Houston.

Well, my dad had been transferred and my mom for some reason stayed in Chicago with my grandparents to give birth.

So she.

And then like two weeks later, she was on the train to meet my dad and older brother in Houston.

So lived there until I was about six years old.

Old.

And then we moved to Covina, which most people know Covina because it's where the in and out is.

Marenka, you know.

Yep.

Well known.

Oh, yeah.

You know, it's kind of like not West Covina because people know where.

What West Covina is for some reason.

So I grew up in Covina when, you know, it was all orange groves and horses and hills and countryside.

Oh, it was still countryside.

Freeway stopped in like, or something like that.

It was fun.

What did your dad do?

Well, he was.

He worked for a big company out of Chicago and he ran the Western U.S.

it was.

They did everything from jukeboxes to cigarette machines to the commissaries at all the movie studios and major plants in flight feeding vending machines.

So you kind of had business in your blood.

Yeah, yeah.

He was quite an entrepreneur.

And you know, it was funny, I was thinking about it earlier today when I was driving over here.

I looked off and I could see Windy Point in the distance.

You know where111.

Cause my family's had.

Different parts of.

My family have had homes down here since probably early 50s.

So we used to come down here.

And I always remember my dad would go around Windy Point and he would joke that there were misters up there spraying Valium.

Cause all of a sudden all of his cares and woes about, you know, 10,000 employees in LA, just like, whatever.

I don't care anymore.

I don't care anymore.

I'm going to go sit by the pool.

And really that's what it's always been, I think, for everybody.

My wife says the same thing.

She works.

She's an attorney in la, and she says as soon as she sees the windmills, a lot of that anxiety and care and worry about work just melts away.

And so that's the magic of this valley.

And you know, and it's strange.

I mean, I just spent a week in New York And.

And someone asked me earlier today, and I said, listen, New York's great.

I love it.

It's fun.

You go there for four or five days.

It's energetic and everything.

But when you fly into the valley and all of a sudden you see the mountains around it, and I just take a big sigh of relief, like, oh, and all the weight goes away.

Just don't tell too many people that.

No.

Well, we don't want the word.

More and more of them seem to be finding out.

Well, that's true.

So when did you make this your headquarters, permanent home base?

Probably.

It was probably about 20 years ago.

22 years ago.

I thought that my career was kind of in a dip.

Barry's career, he thought, was kind of slowing down.

And we said, well, we love Palm Spring.

It's funny.

You should probably mention at this point that Barry Manilow is your husband.

Yes.

I thought that was a given.

You've referenced this.

I just thought we.

Where have you been?

Barry, who?

I have some of his records.

We thought we.

In fact, he asked me earlier how I met Harold.

So came down here.

I thought everything was going to slow down.

I joined the tennis club, which, you know that.

Not as posh as it is now.

I mean, it's kind of a dump.

You know, Spencer's was a.

I tell people Spencer's didn't exist.

It was a Formica counter and two old lawn chairs out in front, right?

And I played tennis three times a week.

And I'd go.

It was so cool because I'd go over there.

You had to play doubles.

And I'd just sit there and somebody come along and say, hey, kid.

And I thought, want me to play?

I thought, where else can I be, kid?

We're moving here.

50 years old, they call me kid.

I love it.

You were fresh meat in this town.

But the thing was, those old duffers, they were like.

They were magnets.

You could.

They wouldn't even move a foot either direction.

You couldn't get a ball past them somehow.

It's just like you return the shot and went right to them, and they'd just kill you.

They were great.

They were fun guys.

Gary, I was, like, 22, and I played in a singles tournament against a gentleman who was a club player, and he was in his mid-60s.

And I was like, I'm gonna wipe this guy off the court.

He beat me 6, 060.

I barely touched any of his serves because they were moving in so many different directions.

The really sad thing is, I invited eight or nine people to Come watch the match.

So it was pretty quiet afterwards.

God works in strange ways.

And he got you.

He did.

Karma backed over you.

Now you went to usc.

Yep.

What did you major in there?

Majored in journalism.

Okay.

I was gonna, I thought I was gonna be an on air newscaster.

You made the right choice.

But then you made the mistake of going to college.

Back.

No, I made the mistake.

I graduated.

Right before I graduated, one of the guys in class with me came in one day, he was all excited because he had gotten a job at the LA Times, which is like the holy grail, right, to come out of journalism school in those days.

And I asked him how much he made he was going to make.

And I was making more money as a part time ride operator at Disneyland.

And I.

Maybe journalism isn't my future.

There is a lesson in that.

And I wasn't going to get the job.

That job was gone.

You know, I was going to end up at the Podunk Daily or something like that.

Where did the creative side come from?

Did you have siblings and was this kind of prevalent through the family?

Yeah, I mean I have an older brother who's actually worked for me forever.

He just retired a few years ago.

He was into, he had his.

Got his masters in cinema from usc.

Wow.

And he worked in the TV industry for a while until I was able to convince him to come work for me.

And I don't know, we both were raised with right brain, left brain use both sides.

Yeah.

You know, your dad was obviously an entrepreneur.

What about your mom?

Yeah, well, my mom worked, you know, was in the days when women didn't work.

But you know, she was always entering cooking contests and decorating things and that kind of thing.

So yeah, she was, she was creative, you know, that was the background.

So I tell people we were, we were in a good way and a bad way.

My brother and I were both raised without limits.

So the expectation was always that you could do anything.

It was never that you can't do that.

It was of course you'll do that.

You know, I remember my mom decided she wanted to.

They had a swimming pool put in in the backyard and she wanted a brick patio and a cabana and all this kind of stuff.

And my dad got a Sunset magazine book on how to build a brick patio and handed it to my brother and I.

Good luck.

Here you go.

I'll order the bricks.

Here's some bricks and cement.

We build it.

I mean if.

Sometimes I think if kids aren't told no, then maybe they expand and they Learn how to do all kinds of things.

Yeah.

When you're not told you can't do it.

Yeah.

You have no reason to think you can't.

Yeah.

And I was thinking about it the other day, I was talking at the McAllen, speaking with the gal who runs the education department.

And I was telling her, I remember when I was in seventh grade, we called a culture class.

They picked 40 kids, and every day we went to.

This was summer school for like six weeks.

Every day we went over to the.

To the school.

They loaded us up into a bus and we went to some different.

I guess experience would be.

We went to the Laguna Art Festival.

We went downtown to the Music Center.

We went to Padua Hills, to the.

We went to Millard Sheets Gallery in Clermont.

They just exposed us to all different kinds.

And I don't know, I think maybe education was more open in those days or less regimented or they could do more things with you.

And so they exposed us all that stuff.

I remember in seventh grade, they.

I don't even know what class it was.

Maybe it was an English class.

We all had to go make a movie.

Really?

What equipment did you use?

I was at Crane Black and White.

A giant horn cone coming out of it.

What?

A 16 millimeter home movie camera.

You know, no sound or anything like that.

But, you know, we could do stuff like that.

And the parents weren't protesting that we weren't learning calculus or whatever they have to do now.

So you got involved.

You mentioned Rod Stewart earlier, but you've worked with some pretty big acts in the entertainment industry.

You did some work with Donna Summer.

Yeah, I managed Donna for about five years.

Wow, that's awesome.

She was a blast.

She was really fun.

So how did you.

Tell me a little bit about how you go from the merchandising side to the actual managing of the talent.

Probably did the merch thing.

Probably had done it for about three or four years.

And Barry was not having a great time with his manager.

And he interviewed some other people, some other managers to consider them and wasn't really getting anywhere.

And he finally just said, why don't you do it?

You do all this other stuff.

Why don't you do it?

And I didn't know any better.

And I said, sure, no one told you you can't.

So.

Well, it was interesting because I joke about it, but there is a certain truth to it.

I didn't know that you could be a manager and just have an assistant in one phone, because by then I had a staff of 10, 15 people I had my own art department, I had my own accounting department.

I just assumed that's how you do it.

It took me a while to find out that all these other guys were getting by.

Hardly any overhead at all.

But I've always done that.

I still have that in la.

I still have a dozen people, people who handle different parts of the thing.

And I think it's probably, you know, in, in a way it's contributed to the longevity of Barry's career because we've always.

We're usually two years ahead of what is happening now.

And we do our own marketing, we do our own accounting, we do our own logistics.

And you know, for a long time we had our own in house travel agency.

And I don't know, that's just kind of the way I like to do things.

You were talking about how you guys just decided things might have been calming down or slowing down a little bit so you moved out to the Valley on a more permanent basis.

Yeah, basis.

We used to had a home down here forever, a second home.

And then decided, no, we want a base.

I was going to share this.

So we looked at different places.

Florida, Connecticut, San Juan Islands.

I remember I called it the Diana Ross tour because every place we were looking they said, oh, Diana Ross was here two weeks ago and looked at this house.

So she really had.

She ended up in Connecticut.

I don't think she's still there, but she ended up living in Connecticut.

And every place we looked, the realtors would say, there are two months that are just beautiful.

And I'm too.

We already got a house in someplace where there's two months that are hot in hell.

Hot as hell, but 10 months that are beautiful.

Why do we want to move to some place that's a Swamp for 10 months and has just the opposite?

And it was kind of like the light bulb went on and we said, oh, yeah, why don't we just get a different house in Palm Springs?

And that's what we decided to do.

And you're right, it feels different here too.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, all those areas, listen, they're beautiful areas, but they really do maybe have two months of great weather.

And the rest of the year you.

Get a great month in spring and a great month in fall.

You know, October is fantastic or November's fantastic, but then it's a terrible winter and humid summer.

So.

Yeah, and it's humid and they're bugs.

And just contrary to what I said earlier, don't anybody believe what I just said.

It's terrible.

It's really hot down here.

You don't want to come down here.

You're going to hate it.

You're going to hate it.

There's only one road in and out.

One road is in.

Before we continue, we have to take a quick break and we want to acknowledge our presenting sponsor, the McCallum Theater.

So a quick word from our good friends at the McCallum Theatre.

The world's top artists, from jazz, pop, classical and comedy to the best of Broadway, only at the Valley's favorite place for great entertainment.

Tickets are on sale now at the McCallum Theater box office by phone or online at mccallumtheater.org Tickets sell quickly, so order yours.

Today, a new exciting only at the McCallum.

And we are back with Gary Keefe, our guest who is the chairman now of the McCallum, talking about his career.

So once you, you arrived and you were here more frequently and if not year round, you got involved in a number of different organizations, including the McCallum and the film festival.

And now you find yourself with the gavel of the McCallum Theater, which Harold has done a masterful job of making a great entertainment venue.

What do you see?

What's your vision going forward?

Well, I think we kind of alluded to the growth in the valley.

I think, you know, the population in the valley now is, I think full time is around 550,000 people, which I was telling a friend of mine, she's getting her doctorate in Oklahoma and she in higher ed and she was kind of thinking about where she wants to locate.

And truthfully, before I opened my big mouth and suggest she come here, I thought, well, I just want to check something.

So the population of Coachella Valley is actually larger than Oklahoma City.

We all heard of Oklahoma City.

We all think Oklahoma City is a big deal, right?

And Coachella Valley I think we all assume is kind of smaller, but it isn't.

So when you look at compare Coachella valley to big quote, big cities around the U.S.

we are a big city.

And that's a significant change in the last 10, 15 years, certainly since the McAllen was built 30 some odd years ago.

So I think we have to look at expanding our season.

I think, you know, we are no longer a four or five month resort community.

I mean there's certainly four or five months where the population goes up another 2, 300,000 people.

But I think as a community theater As a.

We're public on public land.

We're supported by the public.

I think we need to expand our season.

I think we need to expand how we program and who we program to.

I think we need to keep what we have, but we also need to pay attention to everybody who lives in the Valley.

You know, we.

Harold has done a, truthfully, a masterful job in the 14 years that he's been chairman of, taking the theater from.

They were struggling every year to raise enough money to keep the lights on.

We've got a very nice endowment in the bank right now that spits off a significant amount of money every year that helps subsidize what we do, because ticket sales alone don't pay for everything.

They pay for about half of the expenses.

So.

And that's pretty good because a lot of theaters don't even derive half of their operating income from ticket sales.

Right.

And listen, a lot of theaters.

Covid put a lot of theaters under out of business, you know, and the McCallum didn't.

We were able to keep a lot of people on payroll.

And granted, we got PPP money and we got save our Sages money, but still, we're in fine shape.

So I, you know, I don't want to.

I don't want to change what we have.

I don't want to take any risk that would hurt what we.

What we managed to put aside.

But I do think we can expand cautiously and cater to different markets in the Valley.

You talked a little bit.

You mentioned the education wing of the McCallum.

And I know Kaiser, and she's been a frequent guest in.

She's great.

She's terrific.

And I think a lot of people don't know how much educational outreach the McAllen was doing.

I think that's a great area.

Kaiser's done a fantastic job.

There's growth there as well.

I think Kaisen and I have had that conversation because I'm a big believer in that.

And I referred earlier back to culture class that I took when I was in seventh grade.

And what she does is, is expose kids to the arts.

And, you know, you can't appreciate the arts.

You can't dream about being in the arts.

You can't support the arts if you've never been exposed to them in the first place.

And she gets kids who would never have that opportunity and gets them to see what modern dance is like or what music is like.

And I think we need to do more of that.

I think it's.

It's the future of theater and the arts.

In our country is only by exposing.

Young kids to them, you're developing the future audience.

I mean, those are the kids that will go on then to bring their kids back to the theater and buy the tickets.

And I think we've seen where that hasn't happened.

If you look at the symphonies in the United States, most of them did not do a good job of passing interest and support of the symphonies to the next generation.

And it's kind of a shame because symphonies are shrinking and going out of business.

A lot of symphonies in small and mid level towns just don't exist or barely exist.

Big city symphonies thrive, but that's about it.

Is there a tie in to the Manilow Music Project with all of this or tell us a little bit about that if you wouldn't mind.

Well, that started whenever it was 20 some odd years ago because one of Barry's good friend and doctor down here asked him one day, he said, hey, my daughter plays a saxophone.

You got an old sax in the warehouse.

And you know, this is from a middle upper income school in the Coachella Valley.

And the question was, well, what do you mean you don't have.

They needed a saxophone.

They need a saxophone.

So Barry, he told me, he said, why don't you call the music teacher and find out what they need.

So I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of the high school right now, but so I called this gal and said, what do you need?

And she gave me a list of, you know, I remember it was like $15,000 worth of instruments.

And she said, you know, very apologetic, you know, if there's anything you can do to help us out.

And da da da da da.

So I told Barry what they wanted.

He said, let's just buy all of them.

So we got all the instruments.

It's a big number for a school.

But well, I mean you would have thought we gave them a million dollars because nobody does that.

They don't have the budget or anything.

So then we got on this kick and we said, well, let's call all the.

I remember, I think there were 22 maybe high schools and middle schools in the Coachella Valley.

And we asked them all to give us a wish list.

And we were able.

We have friends at Yamaha Music at the time.

And we said they gave us a great deal and we gave them all the instruments.

But I remember.

So the Manline Music Project, really kind of a grassroots thing.

So I remember speaking to one of the music teachers and they said, well, you know, we can't accept this, it has to go to the district.

And then the district will inventory everything and tag it and then they'll distribute it.

And I said, okay, nobody's ever going.

To see it happen.

Bureaucracy was killing a great idea.

So we did a big ceremony at Palm Springs High School.

We had four or five trucks and I brought all my, all the gang, my staff down from la and they all got in the trucks and we called the teachers.

We said, okay, we're dropping off the instruments at 9:00.

Well, they gotta go.

I said, they're gonna be boxes on the sidewalk.

You can either come pick them up.

Do what you want with them.

And that's what we did.

Of course, once we told them that they were all yay.

Because they knew, well, I'm going to put down the school districts.

But they were much more optimistic that they would end up with the instruments they needed if we just handed them to them.

Rather than go through a year of going through the system.

Anytime you have, I mean, every time it passes through another set of hands, it gets more complicated.

Yeah.

And it was less.

Yeah, right.

The numbers diminished.

I grew up in an Italian family.

That was always true.

My allowance dinner.

Everybody had to take a vin.

Hey, hey.

Vinnie didn't get his cut and he wants it now.

All of a sudden I don't get a meatball.

So this is, this is how that works.

So this would be a real mistake if, in my relationship with my wife, if I don't ask you this.

Yeah.

You did some work with Fleetwood Mac.

Uh huh.

Can you tell me about that?

Oh, they were fun.

And what time frame was that?

We did Tango.

Was it Tango in the Dark?

Was that the album?

We did Tango the night.

My buddy, who is a lawyer, called up and said, hey, would you meet with John McBee?

He wants someone to manage him.

And I met with John.

And that was probably about a 14 year relationship with John.

And I had a business partner at the time.

And first we figured out that Fleetwood Mac is technically owned by John and Mick.

Really, they own the name, they own the company, the underlying company and all that.

Now maybe that's all changed now because that was probably.

That probably ended about 10 years ago.

So the first thing we did was we put out Fleetwood Mac, but it was only John and Mick and four other musicians.

But still they sounded close.

And then, you know, they sold 5,000 tickets a night, played around the US, played in the UK, did a very successful tour.

And then somewhere along the line we got Stevie back.

And then we got, we got Lindsey back for a tour and kind of put the whole thing back together.

We ended up.

We did a TV special or a HBO special with them and did two or three albums at least while we were working with.

But they were fun.

They were just.

Was there ever a time when you.

You.

When you just kind of sit back and, you know, from that kid that went into USC to go into a journalism major, and all of a sudden you're sitting there in front of Mick Fleetwood and John McBee and eventually Barry Manilow and Stevie Wonder and Donna Summer.

Did it ever just seem unreal to you?

Every day.

Truthfully.

Every day, yeah.

Like a dream.

Yeah.

It was nothing that I projected, but I find it, you know, I'm grateful.

It's been.

It's been a really fun ride.

I remember they did.

On the night before Clinton's inauguration, they did a big concert.

I think it was called the Senator Dome or the Arena Out.

It no longer exists in D.C.

and all the artists were there.

Barry, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac.

And in the vom.

In the.

Like the exit from the arena floor, they had all these trailers backed up and they had a black curtain down and so in line, creating like a street backstage.

And when President elect Clinton came in, everybody was told, stay behind these curtains.

So you look down the curtains and there's Goldie Hawn peeking out from.

Secret Service is going ballistic.

I bet they were.

You gotta get behind a curtain.

But I always remember because they had a monitor backstage and Barry was on.

Barry was the opener.

It was in the round.

There was a stage out in the middle of the floor.

And I look over and John and Mick are standing like a foot away from this monitor.

And I don't know if John would remember this.

He'd probably say, I made it up.

But it's true.

And I go over there and John.

John says, what the are we doing here?

He knows what he's doing.

That's awesome.

But, you know, and John would be, you know, there.

I mean, there are, you know, singer songwriter performers, and there are sing singer songwriters who just like to get up and play their bass and just have a nice time.

Right.

You know, and it's different, but I remember him just look staring at this thing going, oh, God, what are we getting?

He had to open.

That's great.

I remember we pitched him one and Dick Clark wanted him to do something on the American Music Awards.

My business partner Steve Wax and I, we take John and Nick out to lunch at Le Dome and we start over.

Lunch we're doing the pitch and say 10 million people are going to see this show.

It's going to be by the end of lunch.

We're up to a billion people.

Half of the world.

Half the world.

We're getting more desperate because they're not saying yes.

Right.

And finally at the end the lunch, John looks at us and he says, how many people are going to see this thing?

Oh, 5 billion people are going to see this show.

He says, why the fuck we want all those people to see how old we are?

Like, okay, thanks, John.

Well, there goes that idea.

Well, we went down the wrong cell there.

If I had said two people were going to watch it, he might have said, well, okay, we'll do it.

I know.

I had to call Dick.

I said, dick, I'm sorry, your audience is too big.

You know, it's funny you mentioned Dick Clark and the American Music Awards because one of our previous guests, a guy named Fred Bronson Johnson, worked for Dick Clark and wrote.

I remember Fred.

Okay, Fred.

Fred was just a guest on the podcast and he was talking about writing for the American Music Awards.

And what an interesting experience that was because there's so much going on at the time.

Yeah, well, it was fascinating because Dick basically created that show to compete with the Grammy Awards, which are always been on CBS and ABC wanted an award show.

So he came up with the American Music.

Still not sure how you win.

That's what we should have asked Brad.

That's right.

Damn it.

I think Dick and Carrie would sit around at home in Malibu and say, yeah, I like them.

I like them.

You win.

He was funny.

They would.

They wouldn't tell you if you were going to win.

They didn't.

You didn't know ahead of time.

But he would say, I really think you ought to go to the show.

You probably want to be there.

You probably don't want to miss this one.

You don't want to miss this one.

I want to talk about something else that I thought was pretty cool.

Gary, you put on what I believe was the first musical on a cruise ship.

Yeah, we did that.

Accurate.

We did, but that turned into something a little bit bigger.

Wait, really?

Yeah.

Copacabana, right?

Yeah, well, it kind of.

Kind of reverse.

No, Copa started because it was the first original musical made for television.

Okay.

That was Barry and Dick Clark.

And I went and met with Bud Grant who was running CBS at the time.

And Barry said, well, we want to take the song Copacabana and turn it into a two hour musical.

And Bud said, okay.

And that was about the end of the deal.

Now you do these long pitches and it's, you know, you gotta do all the work.

And then they say, we'll think about it.

And after that, my daughter was about, oh, I don't know, six or seven years old, and I took her to see Disney on Ice at the sports arena.

And it was me and all the other solo dads, kids spending $30 on flashlights that made Mickey Mouse ears on the ceiling.

They'd hand them to the kid first, so they get used to it.

I need two and which, you know, respect for a good merch guy, you know, Fine by me.

And I'm sitting there and I'm watching this thing.

And this was long before, like, Hiawa or any of the big production shows at Disney would do.

So it was basically boy and girl, couple skaters, a villain, a comedic foil, a chorus line and a bad pit band.

And I made the deal with Dick that he was very.

Dick was.

Dick handled the budget on everything on Copa, on the.

On the TV movie.

So Dick was worried because I wanted Barry to have full control over the music.

And he was nervous that.

That what if it goes over budget?

And I said, okay, I'm on the hook.

If Barry goes over budget and producing the music, I said, I'll pay for it.

I'll cover it.

You're covering all the overages.

I'll call the.

I'll cover the.

Over over there on the.

On the music.

And I said, but in return, I want to own the ancillary rights to the production.

Now, there were no ancillary exploitation.

I mean, other than the DVD that, you know, no one knew what they.

Were going to do with it next.

Well, we didn't even know what they were, if there was going to be any.

Right, right.

So I go to this ice show and I say, ah, this is the same characters as Copa.

Cute boy, girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, comedic foil, villain and a chorus.

Plus I own the music.

So you had a good pit band.

I had a full orchestra on a recording.

So I went to all the ice shows, both of them, whatever, Ice Capades and the other.

I said, hey, why don't we.

No, no, no, you don't understand.

Nobody does ice shows with all those costumes and blah, blah, blah and all this kind of stuff.

Okay, they do now, but they didn't in those days.

So a buddy of mine was head of entertainment at Caesars at the time, and he called Me up out of the blue one day.

And he said, do you still have that idea to turn Copa into an ice show?

I said, yeah.

And he said, well, would you do it at a casino?

I said, yeah, I guess so.

And he said, would you do it without ice?

I said, well, wait a minute.

In the dark.

We start to laugh.

I said, what is that?

And so we create.

Usually you do a Broadway musical and then you cut it down, you turn it into what's called a tab version, like a 75 minute version, okay?

So we started out with a 75 minute version.

And we didn't.

No one knew how to write a deal.

So we wrote it like a TV deal.

And it was a 13 week in those days, TV deal, a series deal would be 13 weeks.

If it didn't get canceled by a certain day, it automatically 13 weeks.

So that was the deal.

And we put it into Caesars in Atlantic City.

And it ran for.

Barry directed it.

It ran for nine months.

It sold out.

It was a big hit show.

And then from there we took it to London and went on the West End for a little over a year.

Then it toured.

Then it came over here and we did another deal with Pittsburgh Civic.

And then by that time, an outgrowth of all of this was the same.

Buddy had moved from Caesar, had moved to Holland America Cruise Lines, and they had three ships at the time.

And he said, dorie Sanchez was the choreographer.

She went on and did a lot of shows with Cher.

She did all of Cher's live shows, and she was a choreographer in London.

And I said, well, we had opening night and had to spend another week.

She said, I can't be here because I'm doing the ship show.

What are you to us?

Turns out my buddy.

Although later I later heard that it kind of was because they fired Dory and they asked me to come in.

And fix damn ship show.

But then we put Copa.

We had a shorter version of Copa that ran on three ships for, God, four years, five years.

But we ended up doing all.

Holland America kept growing.

We had 15 ships.

We had 20 kids on each ship.

They learned.

My brother and I would write shows.

You know, hello, Hollywood.

Hello.

Here's to Las Vegas.

Let's hear it for the movies.

You know what this.

You know.

You know what they are, right?

Yeah.

And so we did that for 22 years.

We had all their ships and kids all over the place.

Did you take a lot of cruises during that time?

I did.

I originally went on.

On one called.

We call them Schmooze Cruises, because it was when they launch a new ship and all the bankers, everybody who financed it, would go and go and say hello and thanks for coming kind of thing.

And the first time I went, I thought, oh, God, what has happened to me?

I'm on a ship with a buffet and a chocolate extravaganza at midnight, right?

This is my worst nightmare.

This is hell, and I'm living in it.

This is hell.

I do T shirts for Rod Stewart.

I manage Barry Manilow, and I'm on a ship in the middle of nowhere.

Wow.

My career is really taking off, not going up.

Plus, it's not something I can talk about at the club.

But I remember I had dinner at.

They have, like, a specialist steakhouse.

Probably the best steak I had ever had in my whole life.

I then found out that Carnival owns ranches in Australia for their own.

For the beef.

Really?

I didn't know that.

And I said, you know, maybe this cruising thing isn't so bad.

This is kind of nice.

It was.

I mean, the ship was beautiful, nice restaurants.

And to this day, my daughter and I take a week every year and we go on Seabourn, which is their, like, Four Seasons level branch.

And I gotta tell you, I'm a.

I'm.

I saw the light.

I'm converted.

It's a really nice way to travel and see different parts of the world.

That's great.

And you unpack once and you don't slip your luggage through this airport.

My wife and I, the first cruise we both ever took together was to Alaska, and it was also the first time she was away from the kids for a full week.

But it is such a relaxing way to vacation because you see a lot, but you live in the same room, which is so nice.

I want to jump back to today in addition to the McCallum, which is going to be an awesome responsibility.

And I like what you said about looking at ways to expand, but obviously the landscape has changed a bit because we now have the Acrosure arena, which brings in a different level of entertainment in terms of the size they can accomplish, accommodate.

How to.

How do you counter program against something like that?

Oh, I think there's a niche for us, truthfully.

We're, you know, we're not going to compete with Aquashore.

We're not going to, you know, they're going to be involved in the new Palm Springs theater and the restoring the old theater.

That's what, 600 seats?

Yeah, that's.

You know, six or eight.

Yeah, there's a lot of people in there in that 1,000 seat pocket, you know, like the Patti LaBelles of the world, people like that, that she's not going to play an 8,000 seat arena and she's not going to play a 600 seater.

We're not agriculture.

2500.

So there's a sweet spot in there.

I don't see the rest of the guys doing Broadway.

I think we've done very well with Broadway shows.

We just had come from away that sold out all eight shows, which was fantastic.

Well, it's a part of the fabric of the community, too.

Well, I do believe, more so than some of these other venues, that we're talking about the McCallum.

I think people feel ownership of it.

The community feels an ownership of the McCallum Theater.

Well, and it is.

It's our theater.

You know, it doesn't belong to anybody else.

It belongs to all of us.

And I think the people take great pride.

Listen, I've seen hundreds of theaters around the world.

None are as nice as the McAllen.

It's spotless, it's safe.

It's.

You know, they went probably, you know, maybe not overboard, but they went to the max on making sure everybody was protected regarding Covid.

They were one of the first ones to put in a vaccination policy, even for people in the cast and crew and everybody, months before anybody else even thought about it.

And I think we all take a pride in ownership.

I mean, you know, yeah, I'm the chairman, but, you know, I live here and I'm very proud of our little theater.

I think it's, you know, it's a jewel box.

You know, Gary, I volunteer.

I've been an usher there for the first time this season.

You're not going to hit up for pay, are you?

Yeah, I mean, I'm not.

I'm not eating very well right now.

I have some merchandise ideas.

Now we know who's been selling the program.

I have some big conversations.

Little bar T shirts.

Sell them for three bucks.

He's getting three bucks a program.

Don't go to door six because Randy's there.

He won't give him.

You can't even have a program.

My point is that as I, you know, we all gather up there an hour and a half before the show starts.

And you can feel it among the volunteers that that's why they're there, because McCallum means something to them and it means something to the community.

And I think that that's Something that I'm hoping will continue with the MacCallum is the use of the volunteers and bringing them in.

Yeah, but they're going to have to wear socks.

That's going to change.

I know.

Now you have to quit.

I just paint my ankles black.

It'd be a lot cheaper.

Gary, this has been fantastic.

I was so looking forward to having you on here.

Let me ask him.

What's next for Barry?

Well, let me see.

He just.

The New York Pops just honored him at Carnegie Hall a couple weeks ago.

That was a big deal.

He's gonna do some arena shows this summer.

His play Harmony opens in Broadway on November 13, which has only taken us 30 years to.

You know, I gotta.

I gotta start working on the next one.

You got a lot of work to do.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Barry a few years ago ago prior to performance at the McCallum.

And what I really thoroughly enjoy is his passion for the music itself.

That's his thing.

Yeah, really, that's his thing.

We're gonna be back.

He's gonna do some more shows in December.

Well, two weeks ago was the 40th anniversary of the first time my wife and I saw Barry.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Where was that?

Circle Star Theater up.

No, San Francisco.

Part of.

They were part of the same group.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was just fantastic.

And I can't wait to see him again this Christmas.

That was run by Don Joe Mendel.

Circle Star was, huh.

Had no neck.

You should.

The stage used to circle and you would see a guy with no neck on the side.

You know why Italians have no neck?

It's a visual joke.

It doesn't go over on a podcast.

But that was on.

Joke.

That's the joke.

He was a fun guy.

Hey.

This has been a delight.

We thank you guys.

We would like a commitment that you'll come back and do this again.

Sure.

Come back.

Yeah.

After a couple of weeks in the mcali, you can say.

Okay, I'm going to stick around.

Next time though, will you buy me a real drink?

I mean the water drink right now.

Thank you, guys.

Gary, thanks for being here today.

Gary Keefe, our guest, who is the chairman now of the McCallum and on the Palm Springs International Film Festival Board.

Just a delight to have you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

We appreciate the candid, candid conversation.

My thanks to Randy Florence, my co host, who does a brilliant job.

And it was your idea to have Gary on.

John was very heavily involved in that.

Producer John McMullen.

Nobody's actually ever said yes to me.

So that's not true.

You've been married for 42 years, and how many kids do you have?

And he's still hoping she says yes.

Well, we slept together twice.

We've got two sons.

That has to be the exclamation mark on this podcast.

This is Big Conversations Little Bar, and keep it tuned right here to your favorite podcast platform, because we'll be dropping another episode very soon.

We appreciate your listenership.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Big Conversations Little Bar Recorded on location at Skip Page's Little Bar in Palm Desert, California, the center of the Coachella Valley universe, and Presented by the McCallum Theater online at mccallumtheater.org this program is a production of the Mutual Broadcasting System.

All episodes are available from bigconversations, littlebar.com and most major podcast portals, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.