Booking & the works at Crash Mansion LA

I've been working at Crash Mansion LA now for about 2 1/2 months. The job has been very good to me. It started as a booking job--to book opening bands on the all the national acts that were coming through the venue, and it's grown into more.

I've now worked at 2 premier venues in LA. Nothing to boast about, but enough to say I've learned a ton about how venues in LA work. Many of them are very similar, because people skip around and work at different ones and carry the same approaches to running a venue to each one. If you've worked at two premier venues, you know people that work at just about every venue in LA. It's a tight-knit family, that most people don't realize. I'm good friends with people at The Key Club, The Avalon, The Whisky, The Coach House, The Canyon Club, and the list goes on. If you go along the daisy chain, every venue is connected some which way or another.  I have dinner regularly with the events coordinator at Key Club and her sister who is the box office manager at the Avalon. 

Anyway, since I've started working at Crash, I've taken on booking. But when budgets get tight, hours get cut, and people aren't around as much. So I got asked to take on other responsibilities. Even when it's a premier club, people are ALWAYS trying to cut budgets. Any LITTLE thing to save a buck will happen. This happened at Key Club and Crash. 

So people get asked to multi-task. For me it's good. I've learned the Ticket Master system because we had to cut budgets in our box office. So I started learning about how to submit events on Ticket Master, how to print in-house tickets, how to return tickets, etc.  They ask me to keep an in-house calendar for the staff, and make set-up sheets for each show. I'm also in charge of all the contracts for every show, and I'm the production contact for tour managers and agents(because I have a history in live sound. They wanted me to be the middle man between the tour managers and our production manager).

It's not all gravy, though. There are hard days. Sometimes pay checks don't get out on time. People get fired. Hours get cut. It's a reality. I've already seen 6 people get hired and let go at Crash. It's not always fired. I've seen 3 people get fired. The other 3 were let go, because they weren't doing enough, and they weren't worth it for the venue to keep them around. The most important things that the General Manager told me are:

1. Pull your own weight, and make life easier for everyone else. Get your work done. Do what YOU have to do, and do it well. People don't want to work with people that make life harder for them.

2. Have a good attitude even if things aren't going well. Things can get difficult and stressful, and the managers don't want to be around people that complain about stuff. You have to do your best to keep attitudes up, especially when everyone else is complaining. And being cheery isn't always the answer either.  A lot of people think 'cheery' people are annoying and fake. I've found that good ol' midwestern sarcasm gets people smiling.

Those are the 2 most important things. Other things like punctuality are good, but not imperative. As long as you get ALL your work done and make life easier for your co-workers, it's not always crucial that you get to work on time. Seriously... at least in the club scene, that is.

Hope everyone's good in Minnesota. I hear the weather's getting better after a long, grueling winter. Be well, and if you see Debbie Sandridge in the halls at McNally...still, give her a hug from all of us out in LA.

All the best,

Conall Walsh

ps- If anyone has any questions about coming out here, or how things work out here, feel free to email me at conall@crashmansionla.com.

 

LA LA Land of opportunity

So it's been a good amount of time since I last blogged. A period full of Hollywood-spontaneity at its finest. The last blog I posted was about meeting Stevie Wonder, a purely incredible night with about as much elation in me that I'd felt up to that point in my time in LA. Since then a lot's happened. I continued my internship at Key Club and my part-time job as concierge, and in the first week of December the office manager and head concierge at the Key Club got a brutal case of pneumonia and was hospitalized and out of the office until mid-January, at which point Key Club appointed me as head concierge and office manager until he came back. That was probably the most educational experience I got out of the Key Club. For a month-and-a-half, I was at the center post of operations for a real live venue. I handled the tickets, the schedules, the office supplies, the phones, the messages, the visitors, the customers, and at the core of it all held the most neutral position between customers and staff. It was great. I had about as many learning experiences in one day as there are Benz' on Sunset Blvd. 

Then came the day. A Thursday. The office manager IMed everyone in the office and said he was feeling better and would be coming back on Monday. At which point I would go back to working the part-time concierge night shift a few days a week. At the time Key Club didn't have a position nor the budget to hire me full-time at another position, and the job of office manager had a rightful and loyal owner. So I came in the next day, Friday, after a night of absorbing and accepting the bittersweet news, and proceeded to wrap up my final day as office manager with every ounce of pleasure as I'd gotten from it.

But as Hollywood would have it, at around 11:30am that day, the local booking girl at the Key Club came running up to me and said, "Conall, I think I might have a job for you! Call my husband, Adam, right now." So I did. And he offered me a job as the local booker at a brand new venue in downtown L.A. called the 'Crash Mansion LA'! I was literally doing backflips down Sunset Blvd. Ok... not literally at all, but definitely figuratively-speaking. It was exhilarating, and a perfect example of the spontaneity and the intertwined karma that revolves within Hollywood everyday. 

And it all happened because (see if you can follow this) I knew the national-talent buyer at the Key Club, Roger, who also worked all over LA including Crash Mansion. And I knew his assistant, Adam, because I worked with his wife, Carrie, at the Key Club and had shared a few sporadic conversations with both Adam and Roger in my time here in LA. When they were trying to think of a person to hire as Crash Mansion's local talent buyer, my name had popped up.

So I've been working as the local booker for a couple weeks now. It was tough adjusting at first; a new job at a new place with a new order of operations, (not to mention that the guy they had before me got fired leaving a file cabinet full of unamended contracts for upcoming shows fro me to revise and fax back to the agencies, and more opening slots than I could swallow) but it's been amazing so far. We had Boyz II Men and The Bravery performing on two different nights for our grand opening weekend (Feb 1st & 2nd). I booked my first openers for Umphrey's McGee (Feb 13th), Faster Pussycat (Feb 14th), Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (Feb 22nd), and The Coup(Feb 23rd). It's been fun. Really fun. Fast-paced and extremely challenging, but for a dream-job like this, I can take it. Each day is getting easier than the last.

So may the sun shine upon your face, and the -20 degree winds of Minnecolda at your back, and if anyone sees Debbie Sandridge walking around McNally give her the biggest bear-hug you can from everyone out here in LA, and tell her thanks for having a heart golden enough to give any aspiring music student a chance to make something of their dreams in the place where it all happens--everyday. 

All the best,

Conall Walsh

I Couldn't Have Dreamed It Any Better

Los Angeles, California. The second largest city in the United States, but it's best known to McNally-Smith and the rest of the music industry as the music business mecca of the world. This metropolis has been the city where I've kicked back my weary head at the end of every night for the past 2 months to catch a couple hours of sleep before tearing into my next day of music madness. From nights behind the sound board of raucous rock shows of L.A.'s finest, or fulfilling all-day event plans on the Sunset Strip, "La-La Land" is where I've made my new abode.

I came out here after I received word from Debbie Sandridge(Director of Career Development at M.S.) that she was able to get me an internship at the Key Club, the famed club/venue in the heart of West Hollywood on the legendary Sunset Strip. This club's stage has been the performance pedestal for artists ranging from Hoobastank, Snoop Dogg, and Black Eyed Peas all the way to Sarah McLaughlin, John Mayer, and Tony Bennett. It's been my goal and dream to open a venue one day, and by the graces of Debbie Sandridge, I start my journey at one of the hottest venues in L.A.!

The first day I came in, the fantastic peeps of the Key Club offered me a job as concierge for the office. Within the first week I was able to intern in the club doing live sound. My first gig was doing monitors for the KottonMouth Kings--all of this on top of doing my internship in the club's offices everyday of booking, promoting, and special events coordinating.
One night I was hanging out after my internship, and the production manager, Brad, said "The sound girl didn't show up! Can you do F.O.H. in the VIP Lounge tonight??" At first I thought he was kidding but within 15 minutes I was in the club setting up mics for a hip hop show that was starting in a half hour!
Ok, so that stuff's all good and great, but one of the main highlights of my time out here happened on a day I wasn't expecting. I opened up the club at noon on a Sunday. Q-Tip, the legendary lyricist from A Tribe Called Quest--and one of my main influences--was playing that night. His production crew showed up early, and I was the only one at the club at that point so I let them in. Tip's production manager, Maynard, asked me if I did production at the club and if I could help him. "Yeh. What do you need?"
MAYNARD: "We have a huge surprise guest coming in tonight to play with Tip, and I need to know stuff about the stage."
ME: "Who's coming in? Are we talking Phife Dog... or Prince?"
MAYNARD: "Stevie Wonder. But that's top secret information that no one else can know except the appropriate people."
ME: "For sure. But I need to tell my production manager so we can get ready for it."
With that, I called Brad and asked him FIRST if I could intern at monitors that night, and SECOND that Stevie Wonder was going to casually stroll through and do a number. I had to go the whole day and night without saying a thing. Q-Tip came in for sound check, and it was an honor to meet him mostly because 'Beats, Rhymes, and Life' was the first hip-hop album I ever bought back in 7th grade. I watched him perform and helped run things backstage, and then he came out for the encore, and sure enough over the P.A. everyone started hearing the vocals to "Superstition"...but they weren't playing on a CD. Stevie himself came walking out on stage and went right up to the piano and started jammin the song right with Q-Tip and his band. What a sight, and I was standing about 4 feet behind them. After the show the club cleared out and I got to go up and have a couple words with Stevie, and by chance the other sound guy had my camera and snapped a quick picture of the moment. I'll post it soon, but I don't have it with me now.
Well that seems like a good place to end this blog. All the other stuff about running amuck with coworkers at the Sunset Strip Block Party catching the performances of Linkin Park and Common at the Key Club and the Roxy; Rod Stewart playing at the Key Club, and all the other crazy stories will be for another blog.

More later,
Conall Walsh