Most musicians have never heard how a venue actually thinks about a door split, a guarantee, or that catering line in a rider that quietly turns a $5,000 show into a $6,500 one.

Scott Happel has.

Scott is a co-owner of three of Denver's independent live music venues: The Oriental Theater, HQ, and The Federal Theatre. He built that footprint one venue at a time, almost entirely by accident. In this episode, he pulls back the curtain on what happens on the other side of every deal a musician signs. He breaks down door splits versus guarantees, what a first email to a venue needs to include to actually get opened, and what breaks trust between an artist and a room that could otherwise have them back again and again. He gets specific about the parts of the business that rarely get explained clearly: merch splits, catering buy-ins that quietly change a deal after it's signed, and who should really cover the cost when an artist wants to sell a VIP meet and greet. He also tells the story of bringing The Federal Theatre back to life after roughly 40 years of sitting dark, a reminder that even the venues musicians play started somewhere and took real risk to exist.

If you're a working musician, this episode is about your side of the table too. Every choice a venue makes, from splits to load in times to catering budgets, connects directly to decisions you're already making about your own money. Knowing what a venue is actually pricing when it makes an offer, and what earns an artist a callback, puts you in a better position to negotiate and manage your own income with more clarity.

If this helped you think differently about the money side of your career, share it with another musician who needs to hear it.

Scott Happel & The Venues

The Oriental Theater: https://www.theorientaltheater.com | https://www.instagram.com/theorientaltheater | https://www.facebook.com/OrientalTheater

HQ Denver: https://www.hqdenver.com | https://www.instagram.com/hqdenver | https://www.facebook.com/HQDenver

The Federal Theatre: https://www.thefederaltheatre.com | https://www.instagram.com/thefederaltheatre | https://www.facebook.com/thefederaltheatre

Backstage Money

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Free guide for musicians: https://1024wealth.com/music

Jason K Powers: Welcome to Backstage Money: Real World Finance for Musicians.

I'm your host, Jason K. Powers, and this is where music and money collide.

Every episode, we sit down with working musicians and industry insiders who

have been figuring it out in the trenches, so you can learn from people

who are actually making it work.

Today's guest is a co-owner of three different of Denver's live entertainment

venues, the Oriental Theater, HQ, and the Federal Theater, and he built

that footprint one venue at a time.

The Oriental Theater was originally built in 1927, and

Scott helped take it over in 2013.

HQ came next when he and his partners reopened that space in 2020.

And then there's the Federal Theater, originally a 1923 movie house that

went dark back in the '70s or early '80s and sat empty for nearly 40

years before Scott and his partners brought it back to life in 2025.

He also runs Carnaval De Sensual, Colorado's longest-running

burlesque variety show, which he started back in 2012 and is

still going strong 14 years later.

Scott, welcome to Backstage Money.

Hi.

Thank you for having me

Jason K Powers: I appreciate you getting on.

it was fun to meet you, recently at one of the venues and just kinda

hanging out and seeing your involvement in… I think I, I think what stuck

out to me was a lot of venue owners that I've run across aren't actively

day-to-day participating maybe, and

Oh, wow

Jason K Powers: there and checking on things and how's it going and what have

you, and that's where it was good to get to visit with you quickly in there.

Yeah

Jason K Powers: yeah, so, so I always like to start with everybody

on kind of an origins story.

How did you even get into this scene?

I mean, you've been in this scene now for over 20 years, right?

y- well, no, not quite.

About 15.

Yeah.

You know, pretty randomly, uh, the… I moved to Denver in 2009, and I,

I actually had been a, a big fan of Elliott Smith in my college years, and

A documentary was made called Searching for Elliott Smith, and… But it was

super indie and it didn't come to Denver.

So I just, on a whim, emailed the, uh, the website and was like, "Hey,

how do I see this film?" And he's like, "Well, if you wanna bring it

to Denver, you can pay me X amount.

I'll fly out with the film, show it.

You can sell the tickets, whatever." And I'm like, "Well, I've never

done anything like that before, but I really wanna see this film."

So I decided to do that.

I ended up finding the Oriental Theater, through this.

Rented the Oriental Theater, brought Mary Lou Lord out from Boston, showed the film,

the filmmaker talked, got… met a bunch of local musicians to play, like, a solo

Elliott song after the film, and just produced my first event kind of on a whim.

And never thought I would ever do anything like that again.

But it was super fun, had a great time, and met the people

at the Oriental Theater.

I owned a bar that was not at all a music venue at the time.

It was just a small local neighborhood bar.

And two of the owners at the time of the Oriental Theater lived

near there and would come in.

So I eventually sold the bar.

They asked me to come join the Oriental Theater, and the rest is history.

Jason K Powers: There you go.

And there you are.

Yeah

Jason K Powers: So what, what prompted your first, big thing I think you had

was the, the Carnival De Sensuel, right?

Yeah.

So I then I also, after doing the Elliott Smith thing, I maybe had the bug.

I actually kind of wanted to own a haunted house.

W- I had this weird plan of owning a haunted house and went to some conventions

and took some classes and, like, did all this stuff and thought I might own

a haunted house and then thought, "You know what I should do is produce a Ha-

a Halloween-themed event one year and try to get just, like, 4 or 500 people

to come to something one night before I commit the time and money to try to

get thousands of people to come to a haunted house over a month," right?

So I, uh, I met the venue owner that the space, the address that is now HQ

for a long time before COVID was a punk rock bar called Three Kings Tavern.

Um, and I met, Rev Jim, who was one of the owners of Three Kings.

He booked me to, to produce a show.

I came up with the name Carnival de Sensuel and, and did my first

kind of Halloween-based show there.

And it was a great time.

Sold it out.

Did a great… had a lot of fun, and kind of thought, "Well, I'll never do

that again because I'll own a haunted house." And then later that winter

is when I decided to sell the bar and was then joined the Oriental Theater,

and we needed content at the Oriental Theater, and it was like, "Well, I

could try to do that show again."

And the shows never stopped ever since

Jason K Powers: Then, and the rest is history also, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dot, dot, dot

Jason K Powers: w- what made each step feel like the, guess, the right next

move rather than an overextension?

Because you now have a lot of things going on

I don't know if I recognize or feel overextension, I suppose.

my, my entire career has been pretty random, and I just always,

like, things fall into place.

And at the end of the day, I think it all falls under operations, like

putting an event together or running a venue or anything, all end up taking

kind of a similar skill set to be successful is one-- from what I've seen.

And so, each step just sort of happened.

The Oriental Theater happened as I described.

Then COVID happens.

Three Kings Tavern goes out of business immediately, and Peter and I were like,

"We should try to get that space, 'cause what if one of the big, corporate giants

takes it over instead, and this, place that's been a punk rock club for 15, 20

years becomes a brewery or a Live Nation venue or an AEG venue or something?"

So we just kind of went and did it.

And I remember we, we did a shot one night.

It was July of 2020 when we got the lease, and we, we took a shot and said, "Well,

we're either smart or the dumbest people on planet Earth. I guess we'll, we'll

find out." and then years later, the Federal-- the turns out the family that

owns the property that is the Oriental Theater also owns the property that is the

Federal Theater, and we just never knew.

They had never told us.

it's a family, they're pretty insular, and we just never talked about it.

And the, the son who kind of runs the operations called me November of

2024 and was like, "Hey, would you guys ever be interested in trying to open

the Federal?" And I was like, "What?" so we came, we walked through it.

It was in mu-much better shape than we thought.

And a year-plus later, we got it open

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

And the Federal closed, you say somewhere in the early '80s, mid

it was, we don't know exactly.

There's no official records and the family doesn't remember exactly that kind of

owns the property, but it was somewhere in the '83, '84, '85 range, and that's

really based off customers that come in telling us, "Oh, we saw this movie

at the Federal before it closed." And you're like, "Okay, so that was '84."

But we couldn't find any official records to say when it last closed,

Jason K Powers: Interesting.

but somewhere in that time frame

Jason K Powers: yeah.

And I remember when the news came out.

I mean, it was a pretty big splash here to hear of it reopening after all that.

We tried, yes.

We tried to get the word out as much as we could.

We're real proud of it.

The neighborhood has been great.

Everyone has been really supportive and happy to see it not be, you know, kind

of an empty, unused giant building, you

Jason K Powers: Great

the marquee had really fallen into disrepair, and

we had to spend a lot of money.

Uh, the great people at Morry's Neon, who have been refurbishing neon signs and

marquees for generations now, came out and did all the research, found out what

it looked like back in the '60s, and, and fixed it back up to that, to that look

Jason K Powers: Very cool.

Well, so how do you think about now running basically entertainment

operations, if you will, through, through… And what changes

financially and operationally once you're past just one venue?

Like, is it just re-

Like when you go from one to multiples?

Jason K Powers: Yeah

Yeah.

you know, it's, it's all kind of the same, right?

Each one has its own little quirks,

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

but the nuts and bolts of it, of making sure you're, you're making

some money and paying your staff and getting the artists paid and doing all

that, the sort of nuts and bolts of it duplicate themselves over the venues.

And so the real advantage is booking power, is like, hey, if we've got the

smaller size club of HQ and the medium size theater of The Federal and the larger

theater of The Oriental, we can work with artists at various points in their career.

And so like if you're a newer band and, you know, three newer bands, you might

draw 100 people total on a Thursday night.

You could play at HQ and it kind of makes sense, right?

Whereas you couldn't really play at The Oriental 'cause we hold 1,000

people and it would be odd, right?

and so it gives us just a more kind of line to be able to work with artists

at various stages in their career, and build that relationship with their

booking agents and that, their artists

Jason K Powers: Yeah, that's great.

Was there a point i- in that build where, I guess it almost didn't

work or where the math didn't really pencil in, where you had to kind of-

I mean, honestly, it's been, COVID, but that was a

outside force that was unforeseeable.

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

right?

But, but the last couple years have been really hard for everybody, I think.

The, the economics of the music industry have shifted a couple

of times over the decades, right?

You know, the late '90s, early 2000, when people essentially stopped

buying music and artists had to look to live performance to be their main

source of income, whereas in the '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s and kinda

through the '90s, live performance was, for a lot of artists, a marketing

expense almost to sell their music.

and so the vast majority of their income came from selling music,

and a minimal came from performing live, and that is totally flipped.

Selling music has essentially gone away, right?

it still exists, but it's now a very tiny piece of an artist's pie chart,

and live performance and merch is almost all of their pie chart, unless

they're big enough to get songs placed in movies and TV or something

Jason K Powers: Right.

So

Talk to us about, a venue perspective, where, what places

the actual money comes from.

So on the artist perspective, we always talk about, obviously, like we just

alluded to, you've got streaming, you've got, sync deals, you've got now t-

touring live music comes a lot from that.

Sure

Jason K Powers: for them comes a lot from that.

And so from a venue perspective, you know, you guys also do private

events, you do non-music events

We do different things.

We don't, you know, I would say 85% of what we do is live music.

Jason K Powers: Yeah

and then we do some comedy, we do some burlesque,

we do some private rentals.

We do some what I would call kind of adventure lifestyle films, like ski

films and rock climbing films and, and this sort of thing, fly fishing,

that people come out to that are really into those particular hobbies

to get hyped up for their seasons.

so, you know, we have a wide range of types of entertainment, that we do.

But at the end of the day, we really have two income streams, right?

We have ticket sales, which largely go to whoever the artist is

performing that night, and bar sales.

and that's, it's the bar sales that have really started to…

I'm not going the way of live mu- of music sales sounds overly dramatic

'cause I don't think we're facing a world where no one drinks ever.

But, you know, there's plenty of articles all over the internet and the news

talking about how younger generations aren't really drinking much, and even

older generations are drinking less.

Every beer company, every liquor company is struggling and all of

a sudden has massive quantities of their product sitting around because

people are just drinking less.

And I'm not sure that the music industry is truly facing how much of a sea change

that will be for everybody because, when artists lost the ability to sell music as

an income stream, they turned to venues and live performance as being, "Hey,

we need a bigger chunk of this pie in order to make any money, and we need to

charge more for tickets and whatever."

And that totally made sense, and the venues were like, "Well, we can make

money from beer and liquor sales, so we can still survive." But as beer

and liquor sales go down, venues are like, "Well, if we don't make any money

from ticket sales and we're making less and less money from beer and, and

liquor sales, while the cost of our employees and everything else is going

up, something has to give somewhere."

And, and I think that that's going to become a rock and a hard place

for the music industry more and more every, every year that goes by

Jason K Powers: sure.

So when things get tight, where's the pressure show up first?

My right shoulder.

I mean, you know, w- I spent a lot of time… I'm kind of the

operations, kind of, money counter, member of my, of my team, and so I

spent a lot of time this January.

Last year was not good in any way, shape, or form.

And so I went through January.

Of all the different places we could become a little more efficient, find

some places to cut costs, everything from the cups we use to hold the

drinks to, every little thing we use.

Could we find a different vendor that's a little cheaper?

could we do something a, a little better?

Is there… You know, we had to make some staffing cuts.

We had to, we had to do some things that, weren't ideal for us, but were the only

option we had to stay viable, right?

Like, part of the reason you met me the day you met me at the theater and were

maybe surprised that the owner was around being involved is because we had to make

some staffing changes, and as ownership, we had to be around in a different way

to try to fill in for some of those cuts because we couldn't pay the salary

anymore, so we had to take it on ourselves

Jason K Powers: Yep, yep.

But I think there's still value in that, you know, the artist

and those being there and meeting the owner, certainly the manager,

Oh, 100%.

Jason K Powers: excuse me, the manager

I was never not there.

It's, it's wild to me that, you know, venue owners who are never

at their venues, that doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Uh, especially at the independent level, like, whoever the CEO of

Live Nation is, I don't imagine is at shows very often, right?

But, um, but if you're an independent company and you run one to two to

three venues, and the owners aren't ever there, like all three of us are

in our venues all the time, you know?

So I don't-- I can't wrap my head around how it would work for the

owners to, to not ever be around.

Jason K Powers: Well, and you guys have… I mean, there's three of…

How many venues like this are in the metro area, Denver metro area?

In Denver that are independently owned?

Well, I could get in trouble for discussing what

independently owned means maybe.

But, the High Dive is like a 250-cap like historic amazing club that's been

doing, uh, doing the thing for decades.

the Skylark is a smaller room.

I think it's maybe 150, 175 cap.

It's actually owned by Nathaniel Rateliff and, and is an independent cool club.

There's some other places people think of as independent that are

owned by executives at AEG, so I consider that to not be independent.

but there's no other theaters, there's no other larger spaces,

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

anywhere in town.

for the Federal Theater at 600 cap and the Oriental at, 850 cap,

for these level of venues to be independent is unique in our area

Jason K Powers: I agree.

I agree.

So from a artist and musician standpoint, let's talk about what, maybe one

thing you notice or some things you notice that musicians consistently

misunderstand, uh, about how b- booking actually works at venues like this

Sure.

I think from a booking standpoint, at our bigger venues, we largely

deal with artists that have a booking agent, so that's sort of handled.

But at HQ, we deal with a lot of either local artists or smaller touring artists

that don't have a booking agent yet.

and I think that when they contact us, 'cause what'll often happen is we'll get

an email, and some of them will be great.

They'll have a, a press kit, they'll have links to videos, and their Spotify and

all that, so we can look at it and get a, some sort of judgment of what this

artist might pull and whether we'd be interested in booking them and stuff.

But oftentimes we just get an email that says something like, "Hey,

we'd love to play your venue,"

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

and a band name.

I'm like, "Okay.

I, I don't know what to

Jason K Powers: Cool story

So I just think the more information you can give us, links

to your socials, links to videos on YouTube, links to your Spotify, and

any sort of information of have you played the market before and how,

where did you play and how did that go?

If you, if I got all of that information in the first email I got, I am

1,000,000,000% more likely to look at it and consider that artist than

I am if I have to try to go research you because you sent me one or two

pieces of that information, but not all

Jason K Powers: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's a good point because artists need to continue developing

their self-promotion ways, right?

W- we've gotten really reliant on social media, for example, and trying

to drum, drum up an audience and we always have conversations about you

could be a really good musician but a really bad business person, and how do

you improve your, the business side of what you're doing and get more educated?

We're al- of course, always talking finance, and so how do you become more

financially literate in your own industry, and what kind of decisions and what-

hard, right?

I think, I think there's a, there can be an attitude that people like managers

and booking agents kind of siphon off of artists more than they help artists.

But I think that there's some truth to the idea that the sort of type that becomes a

great artist isn't often always the same personality type that is great at managing

money and doing the sort of nuts and bolts and operations of making money and

becoming a more successful artist, right?

if you're just sort of a weekend warrior and happy to play in a band

with your friends and not to make it a career, then that's great.

That's fine.

But if your goal is to make it more of a career, then I think that early

on it would be useful to talk to s- someone who's a professional manager or

a professional booking agent and having them help you with those things, because

probably there's not a member of your band who's also great at those things

Jason K Powers: Sure, sure.

What kind of

Deals do you prefer?

That's not the word I wanna use, but we think of things like guarantees versus

door splits and, things like this.

What's kind of the ideal situation in your own opinion for the various venues?

I don't-- I mean, I think every situation's different, right?

Like, there's plenty of artists we've worked with who are brand new or early

in their stages when we started, and they played shows with us at example,

on a door split because they didn't know and we didn't know if 10 people

or 100 people would show up, right?

And then as those artists have grown and as artists and played more shows

and established an audience, then they might come to us and say, "Hey, we're

gonna have a record release, and we don't wanna do it on a door split.

We want a guarantee." And we have some history with them and have seen

them play around to know, hey, they're gonna not lose us a bunch of money

by asking for this guarantee, so we get it, and we're happy to do that,

So it's-- I don't think there's any one ideal situation for anything.

I think it's tough to impossible to give an artist that is unknown a guarantee,

because we are, as a concert venue, we are just totally ticket-based, right?

It's a different thing if you own a place that is a restaurant or whatever

it is, where people are there regardless of who, whether there's live music or

not, and they might enjoy that there is live music, but they don't even

necessarily know who the artist is, what the industry often calls a, kind

of a soft ticket situation, right?

and those places should be paying guarantees because they're just paying

to have someone there entertaining their audience that already exists.

live music venue doesn't have an audience that already exists generally, right?

No one just walks into The Oriental to say, "Hey, who's playing tonight?"

They come because they know one of the artists that's playing or they're

familiar with a song or something like that, and they come out to check it out.

And so that sort of hard ticket situation, early in an artist's career,

I don't know how that's not a door split because that's just kinda how it works.

But I'm aware that some places do terrible door splits.

They do, "We'll give you 40% or 50% of the door," and that's horrible, and I

think those are venues that are sort of taking advantage of artists in a way that

Jason K Powers: What's a reasonable

our typical door splits are 70% or 80% to the artist, and

that is a thing that makes sense to me

Jason K Powers: So what are you, even on the guarantees, right?

or if that 70, 80% variant, what are, what's the venue actually

pricing when it makes that offer?

Like

Um, we're trying to… our general goal is to come as close to

breaking even on our staffing expenses with whatever cut we get from the door

as possible so that whatever bar sales we get be profit for the evening.

does that work out most of the time?

No.

But that is our goal, right?

So if we're getting 20, 30% of the door, we're hoping that that dollar amount

m- will pay for the sound engineer that's there, and the door and security

staff that's there, and whatever kind of marketing we might have spent 100

bucks or 200 bucks on a social media ads for a local show, something like that.

So maybe we're 1,000 bucks in, 800 bucks in on just those things, and our

hope would be that our 20, 30% will come close to or cover that that the

bar can be profit to cover, and by profit, I mean cover things like rent

and power and insurance and yada, yada, yada, plus piece of profit, right?

if the door's cut for us is way below the expenses of the night, and then the

bar is mostly just covering the expenses for the night, then you're in a bad

place 'cause then you're not covering rent and power bills and insurance and

all the other stuff you have to cover before you can make a buck for yourself

Jason K Powers: Right.

Right.

So what kinds of things occur that

break down the trust between artists and venues?

What kinds of things are people doing that maybe make people obviously not

wanna have them back, or that get you really on edge about having them back?

I think, well, acting poorly.

we- we- we've had artists damage equipment, damage the green room, you

know, get- become kinda messy by the end of the night and puke in the green room

or whatever, or have a bad interaction with a fan or what- you know, just

sort of being generally a jerk, right?

Is never a good thing that you want.

like generally things like microphones and the monitors and all that stuff

is our equipment, and if you throw the microphone on the ground and break it,

or during the midst of your performance, or you stomp on the monitor and break

it, like, we can't really legally hold you responsible for that, but, you

just broke our equipment and now we're gonna spend hundreds of dollars to

fix it, like, we're probably not gonna

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

right?

so those things are bad.

just sort of, there are artists out there who feel like it is not their job to

help get fans to come to the show, right?

And that can manifest in different ways.

If you're a small local band, that might just manifest in you never

even told anyone about it or did

Jason K Powers: Right

But even if you're a larger touring artist you don't have

a team to help you, and you never post on your socials, "Hey, I'm gonna

be in Denver today, and I'm national touring artist who has a fan base that

if they knew that, would probably come out to the show that I can reach more

easily because they're my direct fans.

And we can't get things like advertiser access to your Facebook to be able

to let us spend money to push out ads through your socials to your direct

fans, but they just never get around to letting us do it because they just don't.

Jason K Powers: Yeah

I don't know.

things like that make it just a lot harder, Like, we're- we're trying to

pay you to show up and play a gig, but we do need some help so that your fans

know and might come out and buy a ti-

Jason K Powers: Right.

Right.

Well, 'cause you guys do all your own internal promotion with your own lists

and your own, y- I get emails from, I get all the emails from all the venues

We've got a big email list.

We've got our social medias that have a wide ranging of

Jason K Powers: Yep.

base, right?

But if you're a heavy metal band, I don't know what our pie chart is

of heavy metal fans to punk rock fans, to country fans, to indie

fans, to hip hop fans that might our

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

but it's not 100% heavy

Jason K Powers: Yep.

Bret

fans, right?

And even within the genre of heavy metal, I don't know, are you a death

metal band or a prog metal band?

Whatever.

So like, yes, we will have people that we are bringing to the table that might meet

you as an artist because you're playing at our venue and become a new fan, you

have a fan base already, and it's just important that we can reach them so that-

'cause if you come and go, we've had this happen where national touring artists

will come through and we'll get an email the next day like, "Oh man, I didn't know

Band X played at The Oriental last night."

And then you go look at Band X's socials and they never even

mentioned that they were playing in

Jason K Powers: Yeah

night.

And we did, but it just didn't work out.

And then they made a post-show post and had on their socials and had

fans be like, "Oh no, we didn't know you were there." And I'm like,

"Well, that didn't really do anybody

Jason K Powers: Yep, I've had that happen f- certainly for myself.

all right, so advice for the artists who are, I mean, anywhere in the country

who are booking their own or for their management team doing it and their booking

agents, things to watch out for maybe with a venue to, like, be… Make sure

you're asking these kinds of questions

Sure.

I think there's a long history in the music industry, and obviously

I wasn't around for most of it, but I've read and whatever.

It's always been this weird adversarial relationship almost, right?

Like, we had Leon Russell play at the Oriental Theater, just a few

months before he passed, years ago, and I w- I was there for this, and

he insisted on being paid in cash.

I'm like, "That's insane." He got paid enough money that paying him

in cash felt insane to me, right?

He's not getting paid $800.

Like, he's getting paid over $10,000, and I didn't wanna

go have a duffle bag full of

Jason K Powers: Right

And Leon and his tour manager are like, "Listen, I've been

doing this a long time, and you have no idea how many times I've been screwed

and not paid by a promoter, so I'm gonna get my cash before I go on stage, and

I'm gonna count my cash before I go on stage, or I'm not going on stage."

Jason K Powers: Wow

And so we had to comply, and everything went fine,

but, but I sort of appreciate that.

Like, he didn't have that attitude because of no reason.

He played shows and didn't get paid, because it was sort of the

Wild West for so long, in the music industry that that's that's hard.

but that's, I think, more and more rare, today than what it-

than maybe it was in the '70s or

Jason K Powers: Sure

like that, but, so things to ask.

I don't know if I have a great list of questions to ask the venue other than

if, make sure you're getting professional responses to whatever your questions are.

Like, if you book a show, there should be an advance, right?

Three, four weeks before the show, there should be someone from the venue,

production manager or whoever it is, that reaches out and says, "Hey, you're

playing our venue in three or four weeks.

What do we need?" "Do you have stage plots?

Do you have this?

We're getting prepared for the show.

What time do you wanna load in?" All of this.

If you're not getting that weeks in advance, then that's maybe a bad sign,

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

right?

and in the opposite, we always try to do that weeks in advance, and we

sometimes struggle to get information back from artists, who are touring.

And then all of a sudden we'll get an email 24 to 48 hours before saying, "Hey,

we need XYZ." And we're like, "Well, that would've been great to know a few

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

um, sort of a thing.

So I just think communication with venues, between venues and artists

several weeks before their show to make sure that everyone's on the same page,

important, and if you're not getting that from either side, it's probably

a bad sign about how that show might

Jason K Powers: Sure, sure.

Yeah, I noticed that even the, group I was there with where I met you, it was

kind of that way where, I was being asked by the venue, 'cause I got there before

the crew showed up, and I was being asked by the venue, "Hey, are we setting it

up this way or that way?" 'Cause they still hadn't heard back from the artist.

And I was like, "I'm sorry, man. I'm, I just don't know. I'm not gonna speak

for them." And, and they were running late and everything, so I, I could see

kind of that tension, pretty quick.

And, but everybody was very cool to roll with it.

It's kind of not, unfortunately not abnormal for that to happen it seems like.

Yeah.

There's a level of it that's just sort of rock and roll, right?

and it's not that we can't and won't roll with it, but we would… Everyone

is happier when they can be a little prepared for their day at work,

Jason K Powers: Sure

Most people don't walk into their job that day with

no idea what time it might start,

Jason K Powers: Uh-huh.

what time it might end, and what might happen.

but if we can't sort of lock down a load in time and all those sort of

bits of information, it just, creates a little bit of unease and stress.

And from an artist standpoint, if you're not getting that from a venue, if I

was the artist, I would worry, what is my experience gonna be like when I

Jason K Powers: Yeah

Am I gonna… I think when I load in at 3:00, and I show

up and the doors are locked and no one's there, and no one doesn't show

up till 4:00, or disorganization I would think is bad for both

Jason K Powers: Sure, sure.

So let's talk about one subject briefly that I know can be a tension point

for artists, but maybe misunderstood possibly, would be merch splits Yeah

I have-- So I have my venue owner, opinion on this, right?

I think merch splits are silly,

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

but I think merch splits exist because venues struggle to

make a lot of shows be profitable.

There's another thing that I think is silly that may or may not go over

well with your artists on this, which is, which is catering buy-ins, right?

Like, if I-- if we sign a contract to pay a touring band, w- I'm just

gonna say $5,000 as a generic amount.

Okay, it costs five grand for this artist to come play my venue.

We agree to that, sign, deal's done.

And then months later, we get a rider that says, "Hey, we want $1,500

in catering." And I'm like, "Well, now it's $6,500 for this artist

Jason K Powers: Yeah

not $5,000." that doesn't make any sense to me at all, right?

Do I think it's great for a venue to give an artist some drinks or some whatever?

I'm not saying it should be zero, But it is often 500, 750, $1,000

or more, and they always, more and more, they want it in cash.

They're not sending us some, "We want only green M&M's," and

whatever sort of weird riders.

it is a cash bonus

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

that they're asking for.

And so while I don't suspect this would be wildly popular, I have always-- I've

often had the thought, like, "Listen, let's get rid of both of these things.

have never have any merch cuts, and let's make catering budget for every single

show 100 bucks per band call it a day." And I think that would, that would be

great for both sides, except for I'm not sure artists would be happy with that

Jason K Powers: Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I mean, I, it cuts both ways, right?

And I think the artist, both sides really need to see the other perspective, and,

and the artist, I don't think a $1,500, a catering budget could, could be,

at all.

It's really isn't.

And that's at our level.

I can't even imagine, you know, that's an artist playing an 800-person venue.

What's an artist paying a-- playing a 2,000-person venue

or a 5,000-person venue?

I d- I don't own one of those, so I

Jason K Powers: Yeah

but I can't believe that number goes

Jason K Powers: Sure

right?

So I just think there should be more transparency.

If they want $6,500 and not $5,000, then that should have been the deal

negotiated at the beginning and not tacked onto a rider that's sent along later.

Jason K Powers: Yeah

Like, there's just a lack of transparency involved

in that, that I personally find

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

Yeah.

any other

another thing I'll-- that I think ties in with the merch thing

that is becoming more and more of a thing is this sort of VIP meet and greet

Jason K Powers: Yeah

which again, is a touring artist thing and not necessarily a

local artist thing, but these things end up costing us money, right?

The artists either sell it themselves or sell it through a third party,

or sometimes even ask us to sell it.

Like, "Hey, can pay 50 bucks, 75 bucks, 100 bucks," whatever it is, to come

and take a selfie with the artist and maybe get it signed, whatever, right?

the artist wants 100% of that, which I get, except the artist wants security and

door staff and help handling that, and the venue has to open a little early, and

there's-- So there's costs involved in all of that, that we just have to eat.

and that isn't a great

Jason K Powers: Sure

either.

So, I think there's starting to get more and more pushback from that

because everyone's doing it and, it's-- it becomes, know, everyone's

struggling for money, so everyone tries to steal from the next

Jason K Powers: More

and it's hard.

Like, and I think we all sat down around a table and talked in a transparent

way, that there'd be ways to sort of get a better handle on understanding

it all and come up with a plan that was sort of fair for everyone.

Like, you should get the vast majority of that meet and greet money.

I'm not saying you shouldn't get but for you to get 100% and then

make me spend two, 300 bucks on security and door staff and opening

early and whatever make any sense

Jason K Powers: Sure, sure.

I think that's a great perspective and one that is not ever

mentioned is that perspective.

I, we have this conversation a lot about the meet and greet and, and

who gets what, and I think just that understanding is necessary, right?

More, more people understanding there's, there is an actual…

The, the lights are on.

you gotta turn the lights on.

The lights are on.

Jason K Powers: you gotta pay for stuff and-

it's not meet and greet related, but a- another thing that this

conversation has brought to my mind that maybe was a better answer for an earlier

question was, again, for touring bands, we often get pushback on, "Oh, we wanna load

in earlier. We wanna load in earlier. We wanna get in… Can we get in at 10:00 AM,

00 AM, noon?" And what they cr- what that creates for us and our staff is a

day that is now 12, 13, 14, 15 hours long.

Well, guess what?

We gotta pay overtime for that.

We got tired staff and frustrated staff by the time we get to the show, and

99% of the time, the artist doesn't want that because it takes them that

long to be ready before doors open.

The artist wants that because they want a couple of hours between

soundcheck and show to relax.

But I-- But that's not how it works for the staff, right?

And so, and it's also an expense that wasn't in that original.

Again, I agreed to pay you $5,000 and have a sound engineer and a light engineer

and whatever there, but now you want those people to be there for 15 hours

instead of eight, and so now I've gotta pay those people hundreds and hundreds of

dollars more because it's not just more hours, it's time and a half and double

Jason K Powers: Yeah

and you've made the show exponentially more expensive

for the venue, and that's a problem

Jason K Powers: I love the, just the big picture thought of transparency.

it, it would be so much more advantageous for all parties

if that were possible, right?

I mean, just to, just to find a way, sit at the table, get on a call,

have this discussion, just have open dialogue about it, versus, versus

trying to hide your cards in a way.

I, yeah, I think that goes back to what I kind of mentioned

about I just think the history

Jason K Powers: Yeah

industry was such sort of Wild West, right?

And, like, the sort of old-time famous promoters that you read books

about or hear stories about were always doing insane things, right?

Like, like those stories are interesting to read because

they're insane, but they're also

Jason K Powers: Right

and no one would sort of choose a business to be like that,

And there's gotta be something between becoming so highly corporate, as a

couple of the biggest players are.

Like, you could be professional without having to become so highly

corporate, and I think that the industry could use a little more of that

Jason K Powers: yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

all right, let's pivot for a minute.

I wanna hear a fun story or two.

I have, just for this show, I put it up in my background for those

watching the video, I've got a autographed guitar here by Val Kilmer,

you know, for his role in The Doors, and he signed it, "Light My Fire."

And so I have that sitting here over my shoulder.

But, I hear you have a couple of good stories as well

So we were contacted, Val Kilmer did a, a whole Mark

Twain thing, uh, back in like, hmm, I wanna say it was 2017 or so.

He did a Mark Twain one-man show that he, like, wrote and

performed live, like as theater.

then he started to have his health problems, and so he

couldn't perform it anymore.

But before that, he had filmed it.

so he did a little tour, and came to the Oriental Theater on this tour, and he

came to the venue, he showed the movie of the one-man show, and he spoke, to

the audience, and that was great, so.

And Val, like, was just literally the nicest man on planet Earth

for the entire time he was around.

he walked the street.

We've got a street, we're on the corner of 44th and Tennyson, and along

Tennyson there's a bunch of restaurants and shops and art galleries, and Val

went and visited a bunch of them.

He walked into the art gallery on the corner and bought a piece of art that

was of dollars, and just because he wanted to support the businesses that

Jason K Powers: Yeah

And he came into the venue and he went up to every single one of

my employees that was working that night and offered them, and, like, thanked

them personally, offered them a piece of merch, offered them an autograph.

His manager was, like, trying to stop him.

She's like, "You're giving everything away, Val.

Stop it." And, they clearly had a long time, very friendly relationship

and, that's her job to try to protect.

But, like, he's a very wealthy man, right?

He, the money he was making from that show couldn't have, would've

made as much difference to him as it would for me to make $5, right?

And so, but not everyone acts like that, and he just was just, just

so legitimately the kindest, nicest man that I've ever had around.

And also by far the most famous person we'll ever have there, right?

'Cause he's a giant movie star.

Like, no, are rock stars that would be equivalent, but they're not

gonna come play an 800-person venue.

Jason K Powers: Sure

so to have Val Kilmer there was, was really amazing and

just couldn't have been a more

Jason K Powers: Yeah, that's great.

I've, I have heard that about him and just his personality and kindness.

and he loves the arts, right?

He, he loved the arts and he sold his own art, you know, for a

long time and until his passing.

And yeah, that's, that's fun.

How about,

Yeah.

No, he was, he was, he was great

Jason K Powers: any other, You got any Corey stories?

Oh.

So I booked Corey Feldman, when it was Corey Feldman and The Angels tour.

and I was very excited for it.

And, Corey's show is, is what it is, and I wasn't sure what Corey's attitude

towards his and stuff was, right?

You don't know.

Like, got a lot of sort of play on the internet, but I wasn't

sure how he felt about it.

So the day of the show comes and the tour manager calls, and she's

a little lost trying to get there.

Turns out the tour manager is driving the RV.

And so I go out front of the venue, she comes down the street, but she's, like,

facing the wrong way or whatever, and she's like, "Well, hey, will you just

jump in and, like, tell me how to, how to park or where to park?" I'm like,

"O- Okay." So I jump into this RV, and I look in back and there's just…

There's Corey sitting back there with his arms around two of the Angels just

Jason K Powers: Yeah

in the back of his RV.

And he's like, "Hey." I'm like, "Hey.

is weird." And so we get him parked, and we get inside, and I realized

pretty quickly that Corey the music very, very seriously. Like, it meant

a lot to him, and he cared that his fans enjoyed it a level that is like,

it was impressive. Like, m- I think artists care, but Corey would be like,

"Do, do you think that sounded good?

Like, do you, do you think the people are happy?" And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah,

man, the sound check sounded great." And then he came out again after the

show and shook some people's hands, and it was just like, "Did, did you like,

did you like this song in particular?

Did you think this sounded good?" Like, he just in a way that was unique.

And I'm not gonna say people didn't have their chuckles with Corey and his

performance, but a lot of people came, and I gotta tell you, it was fun, and

it was interesting to see an artist that some might imagine care or think it's a

joke or is in on the joke or whatever, and I don't think that's the case at all.

I think that he takes his music very seriously, and he hopes to

get better at it all the time.

And, it was, it was a fun experience

Jason K Powers: Nice.

Nice.

All right, let's pivot before we wind it down to… I wanna talk about the

Federal Theatre for a few minutes.

What did it actually take, financially, logistically to bring

a venue back to life after some 40 years of sitting in the dark?

I mean, this was a 1923 built movie house

Yeah.

It wa- a lot of work, I guess.

so the biggest challenge is there were two things.

Like financially, the biggest challenge was the marquee in the front.

Like we, at the very beginning of this project, the three of us were like,

"We can't do this if we can't bring the marquee back to being beautiful."

Like it's… 'Cause it, looked like something out of

a nuclear war, it hit movie.

Like it was, there's wires hanging out, pigeons had torn it apart.

Everything was broken, all the neon was gone, right?

And the paint was destroyed.

So we had to first make sure we had the financial wherewithal to do that, and that

was, the price of a very, very nice car.

to just be able to bring that marquee from where it was back

to beautiful and operational.

We got lucky in the inside and I say lucky, but we probably wouldn't have

done the project if the inside had, had required… You know, we didn't

have a million dollar budget, right?

We weren't gonna-- We didn't have a million dollars cash laying around to,

to spend on this place to bring it back.

So we, when we came in and initially walked through it, we're like, "You

know what? It hasn't been destroyed inside." It's, the roof is in good

shape, which is really important on old buildings and had been maintained.

So it had never gone through like a roof leaking and really

damaging the inside of the venue.

The, we… I had people come out and inspect the plumbing.

The plumbing was in good shape.

We had people come out and look at the electrical.

The electrical needed some work, but was in good shape.

And so the interior of the building was a scope that we could handle.

still took a lot of work, but it was largely cosmetic work.

It was, it was a lot of paint, it was a lot of fix this up, fix that up, but

it wasn't plumbing, roof, elect- ton of electrical that could really push

you into hundreds of thousand- hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands

of dollars or a million dollars.

we had to put PA in, we had to put lights in, didn't have any of that.

We had to fix up the stage some.

All the sort of things to, you would expect to move it from an old

movie theater to a live music venue.

But it was within the scope of something we imagined we could do

and, it turned out we were able to do it, so, so that was good.

But it- we were-- We had the keys to the building for almost

two years before we opened.

Jason K Powers: Okay.

Yeah

it was a long process.

And then the other real challenge was taking a place that had never had a liquor

license and walking that through all the steps with the city to get a liquor

Jason K Powers: Yep

Because it, it had, had not been going through inspections as

from, went from one business to another over the decades, so it was a lot of,

"Oh wow, it needs to dot this I and cross this T to get to the point where the

city will sign off on a liquor license."

Jason K Powers: But then at the time of this recording,

it's been just about a year?

Yeah, September

Jason K Powers: Okay.

was our opening

Jason K Powers: And so far, so good.

we're 11

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

So far so good.

I've heard nothing but good things about it

we've been having a lot of fun.

We've had some great shows.

We've got a bunch of really great shows coming up this fall.

This, the spring-- Last fall, we didn't know for sure when we would open until

about right now, about a year ago now.

So it was kind of too late to really book out a full fall from a touring band's

ex- perspective and stuff because the, that stuff was largely already locked in.

so we had a bit slower fall than we, we might have hoped just because we

didn't, couldn't really start booking stuff until mid to late August.

this ye- so that pushed us to the spring.

We had a really good March, April, May, busy spring season.

Summer is again slow inside, but we've got a really good fall coming up.

September, October, November are gonna be great and, we're really looking

Jason K Powers: Good.

I love what you did, when it first started to open.

You were selling basically passes, right?

Where, where-

Yeah.

We had, we had a

Jason K Powers: Yes

we called it.

Yeah.

So it was part of, you know, it was a lot of money, and so we're like, "Hey,

let's sell some merch. Let's sell some, some opportunity to be involved, a little

bit to people." And it's not like it was a million dollars, but, we sold some

T-shirts and some hats and some hoodies and little founders club cards, and stuff

to people and people were really excited.

We sold more than we imagined we would.

and it was great.

it went a decent amount of the way towards spending the money we did on

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

I thought it was a great idea.

I think I'm, I'm not surprised it did well, you know?

Yeah

I, it wasn't that I was s- didn't think it would

do well, it just exceeded our

Jason K Powers: Yeah.

Yeah.

Good.

All right.

So every episode, we kind of wind it down with what we call final riffs.

It's just rapid fire questions, rapid fire answers.

You ready to jump in?

Let's do it

Jason K Powers: right.

What's the first concert you ever went to?

KISS, 1979, the Dynasty

Jason K Powers: Dynasty.

Cedar Rapids,

Jason K Powers: There you go.

What, who was your biggest musical influence growing up?

Oh, something, it was 50% Guns N' Roses, Kiss, Skid Row

sort of metal, and 50% like Nirvana.

You know, I graduated high school in '92, so half of it then became this

sort of punk rock, alt rock, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Elliott Smith, that sort of

Jason K Powers: Favorite artist personally that you've ever

had at one of your venues?

I've ever had at one of my venues.

oh, I feel like I had an answer for this in my head and now I'm bl- oh, Ace

Jason K Powers: Ace Frehley?

Yeah

We had Ace Frehley twice at the Oriental Theatre,

and getting to meet Ace.

I learned to play guitar because of that concert in 1979 and my obsession

with Ace Frehley, the Spaceman.

Like, I…

And so getting to meet him and having him be nice, I was so

worried he was… That I'm like, "Oh, if he's a jerk, I'm gonna be

Jason K Powers: Yes.

and he was

Jason K Powers: Yes.

Yes.

That's always the fear, right?

When you meet one of your biggest musicians, Okay, if you weren't doing

this, what would you be doing in life?

my career has been so random that I have, no idea.

I could tell you I went to college to be a writer and imagined

myself being the next Tom Wolfe or Ernest Hemingway or something.

It didn't really work out.

But, you know, I will dream that it would be something like that

Perfect.

Good.

All right, Scott, this has been great.

I love the, you know, you sharing a look behind the curtain of what it takes

Sure

Jason K Powers: run venues and helping the artist see things

from a different vantage point.

The open communication perspective I think is great, so I appreciate you doing that.

If you guys are in Denver, go check out the Oriental Theater,

the Federal Theater, or HQ.

And if you wanna see Scott's Other World Carnival De Sensuelle

Halloween shows coming up, it is… What is the Halloween show?

And it's, October 9th at the Federal Theater and October

10th at the Oriental Theater.

all the shows, they combine burlesque and a little bit of drag with aerial.

it's a very performance art kind of interesting situation.

And, if you think you know what burlesque is and you imagine feather fans and boas,

I highly recommend you come out and see, the sort of wackiness that we put on

Jason K Powers: There you go.

time

Jason K Powers: And we'll put links to all the venues in the show

notes for you guys to check it out.

Get on their email list so you get notified in case your artist doesn't tell

you that they're coming through Denver.

And we'll, get you connected that way.

So that's it for this episode of Backstage Money.

If this helped you think at all differently about the money side of

your career, share this episode with someone you think needs to hear it.

And for your own world in music and finance, if I can help you

in any way, head on over to my website at 1024wealth.com/music.

And that's it for now, Scott.

Thank you so much, and we'll catch you guys next time.

Thank you