Over the next two weeks the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY will play host to its longest artist residency to date as Furthur will perform nine shows at the venue. This will be a culmination of sorts for owner Peter Shapiro, whose first film project when he was a student at Northwestern was And Miles To Go Before I Sleep: On Tour with the Grateful Dead Summer 1993. It will also be satisfying stretch for the theatre’s founding production manager Jon Dindas, who has enjoyed his share of Phil Lesh and Bob Weir shows over the years. Although he recently stepped away from his day-to-day role at The Cap to help Shapiro with his next series of venues and events, Dindas maintains a deep connection to the theatre where he worked (and sometimes slept) over the past two years. In the following conversation he talks about his path: from managing the Dude of Life to his present day activities, which includes interludes with the Disco Biscuits, Wilco, the Gathering of the Vibes, Mountain Jam, Pete Seeger, Christmas Jam, and much more.
Let’s work our way to the present. When I first met you, 15, 16 years ago, you were managing the Dude of Life. How did that come about?
I went to school and I studied government and specifically campaigns and elections. When I was done with school I knew I wanted to end up in the music field, I didn’t want to end up in government. I had friends who went to D.C. and I had job offers in D.C. but I didn’t want to do that. The first job I had in music was working with Sammy Ash of Sam Ash. Sammy himself hired me, and I ended up working at Sam Ash in White Plains, in their guitar department, where I actually hired Steve Pollak [aka The Dude of Life]. Which was kind of weird, at that point, this was mid-nineties, I was a huge Phishhead.
I was a Deadhead and I made the switch in ’94 on the famous summer day when the Dead played at Highgate and Phish played Big Birch. Most of my friends went to Highgate and I went to Big Birch, at that point being more of a Phishhead than anything else. It was, I think, the next year when I met Steve, so I was a big Phishhead who was thinking about what I was going to do in the music business. Obviously, I wasn’t going to sell the guitars for very long, and he told me about the aspirations he had for his career. He had new songs, he had a band, which was for the most part Pork Tornado without Fishman, and had some gigs and we became friends.
Eventually he asked me to manage him and we took off on this little journey. My initial thought was that there were a lot of similarities between politics and campaigns and artists and careers and I think that was right. Where I really learned a lot though was from John Paluska [Phish’s initial manager]. I learned a tremendous amount about artist management, about careers, working with the Dude of Life. I would go to Trey’s house with Steve and see what was going on in their organization. It was an amazing for me and we did some great touring in the northeast and we got a record deal, which is what Steve wanted. The record was Under the Sound Umbrella, which was recorded with Dan Archer, as was the first one, so we were successful on that level. When I did that deal with Tad Flynn and Phoenix Rising Records, I ended up going to work at Phoenix which brought me to an independent label at the time when independent labels and independent distribution were still a viable outlet for musicians.
I think many have forgotten about Phoenix. What was it like working there?
I think the thing I most enjoy and treasure about Phoenix is the core group of people that work there. Jon Schwartz, who has gone on to be Jon Schwartz of Sirius and Jambands, and Rich Schaeffer. Rich Schaefer was my intern and then my assistant and then the first hire for my company. As you know he now is running Gary Gersh’s The Artist’s Organization and has worked for [John] Mellencamp and tons of other people. Jeff Kilgour was there, major label and major artist management people like Larry Braverman and industry legends, like Sam Kopper, and so there were all these great music people. Phoenix was run by Tad Flynn who was a music fans and also a businessman. He did really well on Wall Street and I think it’s kind of the cautionary tale of trying to start a business that is in some ways somebody’s hobby.
We did a Foxtrot Zulu record, we did the Dude of Life record, we did the Big Wu, their first record, which is still a great record when I listen to it, but what I think people remember us for is the Phoenix Live series. Where we did a lot of things at the Wetlands and other places. I gave Joe Russo his first record deal, it was for a Phoenix Live thing: Fat Mama. None of them sold any copies and none of them put anybody on the map per se, but they all were steps for a lot of those bands. The experience for Schwartz and Schaefer and I was great, and that led me to my next step, which was being the co-founder and owner of a label myself. That was something I could do because of what I learned at Phoenix, from Braverman and Kopper and a lot of other people.
As I remember it, you also worked with Agent Porridge around that time as well.
Agent Porridge was a SUNY Fredonia band led by this kid Alex Weinstein, who was really talented. He looked like Trey and he played guitar like Trey, he was one of those guys. I managed Agent Porridge and that got me into the studio again, and I actually did some producing on that record. Very clunky, I think we did the first record in six hours with an engineer I knew. That was an experience.
Have you been in touch with any of those guys? Do you know what they’re doing?
With the social media stuff it sort of happened. I’m Facebook friends with Alex, he’s in music now. A friend of his, Brett [Rothenhaus], who was in the band, he’s now a highly regarded children’s musician artist in the area. I actually got a message from the kid who was the tour manager/production manager for Agent Porridge about a year ago saying “Hey man, thanks for all you did for us.” It’s cool those connections are there. For the most part, the people who were in that part of my life I keep in some sort of touch with.
Jimmy Landry, who was a good friend, his band was one of my favorite bands I’ve ever worked with, called The Wine Field. They did a record, which you can probably still find somewhere, that was fantastic. The thing was the Indigo Boys, with the acoustic guitar, great harmonies, really great stuff. We ended up doing that on the label we started, Watchtower Records. It was a good name because we were thinking of [Jimi] Hendrix, until we went over the bridge one day and saw Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witness thing, and thought maybe it wasn’t the best thing. But that was a great record.
Agent Porridge and Wine Field came out on Watchtower and we got a national distribution deal through Koch Records, which at that time was a big deal and that was kind of the next step in the label stuff. Jimmy worked at Elektra as one of the A&R guys working on Phish. He was working around the Phish scene, so I knew him through that and we came together, made some great music.
Actually, with Wine Field, I learned more about management in some ways. In other areas, just because it wasn’t the jamband scene. They were clean-cut rocker guys and it was a different experience in terms of trying to get an agent and trying to play the game on that level. That opened my eyes a lot and it would be really important for me later on when I started to get into music that was not just this scene.
In terms of moving from management to the production side, all that begin when you started working with the Disco Biscuits, correct?
That was an education of the other side of the music and another cautionary tale of working for and with your best friends. Marc Brownstein was one of my closest friends, at that time, I mean they all were, so going out on the road with them was challenging. Anyone who has worked with them will understand what I mean, and I say that with love. They’re no better or worse than other people.
I’m a musician, I’ve been playing music my whole life. I started playing French horn in the second grade, and violin, and I’ve been playing guitar now for twenty-five years, and at some point I realized I would never go on to be able to play in front of five, ten thousand people. But the moment when the lights go down on the crowd and the electricity in the room becomes vocal and then the band comes out, and it hits that crescendo—that’s all I really want to do with my life. I realized that while being a production manager and a tour manager on the road with the Disco Biscuits and contributing to this greater thing.
Trey used to talk about the hose and all of our favorite musicians talk about the experience with the crowd. At least all the good ones do because they understand that music made for yourself, by yourself that no one else hears doesn’t matter in the same way. Music is a language of sharing. My ability to contribute to that changed my life.
I had never been a tour manager or a production manager on the road but because of my friendship The Biscuits gave me a shot. And my time with them, what I learned and what I did, changed me. Robbie Taylor [Longtime Grateful Dead/Phil Lesh & Friends/Furthur production manager] who at that point in my life was just a really scary, intimidating guy—I first experienced him when we opened for Phil & Friends at the Greek Theater. That was actually the craziest weekend of my life. I think it was the first Jammys we did at Roseland, in 2001. So we did the Jammys, we got in a van and drove to the Gathering of the Vibes at Indian Point, and then drove back down after our set, got on the first plane out of JFK, flew to the Greek Theater and opened for Phil & Friends. That was like, “Hey, welcome to the world of touring.” Three states, two coasts, Phil & Friends, and that weekend is where my current professional life really started.
Making the shift, it’s dramatically different in terms of the day-to-day. What pushed you in that direction?
I think some of the skill set is similar, I mean the management part of it. You know, running the label or being an A&R VP, or being a tour manager, or being a production manager or being a festival director—that skill set goes back to college, that’s what I learned at Cornell, how to lead events and things. So that is applicable, but you’re right, everything else is different. I was able to do it because I’m a musician, and I was able to take my knowledge of playing gigs in high school and in college, and my rough audio and lighting knowledge and start to learn that. I will say that I have been playing catch-up in a lot of the technical aspects since then.
There are two types of production managers—there are production managers who grow up and go to school for audio engineering and then kind of work their way up the ranks to positions of management, and then there are people who are experienced music people and managers who have less of a technical background and who pull on other people’s expertise. I am much more the latter. I made that switch and I think I’ve been very lucky to learn what I’ve learned in the past thirteen, fourteen years. The lifestyle is very different. The road is incredibly exciting, but for me it’s not the right thing.
I was just reading something on Facebook where they had a list of “How to Survive in the Music Business on the Road” and this was actually a pretty good one. Number eight was “Everyone is Bi-Polar on the Road,” there are good days there are bad days, just get through it and don’t make any decisions when you’re having a good day or a bad day. And that’s true, it’s absolutely true and I’d never seen it written like that. For me that’s not what I love.
The natural progression for me was to do that but do it in a situation when I wasn’t on the road and not sleeping for weeks or months at a time. The way to do that for me, initially, was festivals. The Green Apple Festival in 2005—I worked the Jammys and that stuff at the Jammys and Green Apple was more as an artist relation person than a production person. It’s a grey line sometimes, but I wasn’t the production manager in those things. Then I went to Irving Plaza as an assistant production manager, and did that for a year and a half of really just primo shows and that’s where I learned from Daniel Petrafesa and Jeff Webster and some of the other great people who work there.
For me, working out of an office for a couple months and then having a festival come through, or doing your festival for a week or two, that’s much more desirable to me than the road. And you still get that sense of being out there and doing shows and bringing that to people, whether it’s in the venue or at a festival. And all this stuff I’ve been doing with [Pete] Shapiro or at the Cap, or before that with Bob Kennedy, it’s always been, “Hey, I’m going to do whatever we’re going to do but I need to make sure I have these events so I can get that, stand on the stage, put the lights down, share in that communal experience.” That’s the key for me.
You’ve worked at so many of our readers’ favorite festivals. Can you talk about some of those experiences?
It’s been great. Talk about the festivals that we love. The Vibes I have worked off and on in different roles since 1999. I believe, actually it was 1999 that we brought the first internet tent to a festival. We had one tent up in the corner in Bridgeport where people could come and check their emails, so that was the precursor for everything you’ve seen since then. Actually, thinking about that, it was amazing that we actually made it work for short periods of time. Lately I’ve been doing the Gathering of the Vibes with Ken [Hays], and also some other things: the Greenwich town party and some big China Care shows with the Allman Brothers, and Clapton and some of the bands your readers know well. Mountain Jam, I have been to seven of the eight Mountain Jams. I started working Mountain Jam for Hard Head about six years ago, working as an extra production person, taking care of their needs for the festival. I’m now at the point where for the last few years I have been the promoter/producer of the festival, involved in booking and production and security and everything else. So Mountain Jam is a favorite and goes to my heart. This year it seems that we got the line-up that we’ve always wanted so hopefully people will come and this festival is going to grow and be amazing.
I had the honor of running Pete Seeger’s Clearwater Festival for a year. When I was two and a half and my parents, who gave me my love of music, brought me to the original Weavers at Carnegie Hall. That’s where it started. I mean, all of this, who I am, the music and the politics, came from my parents. I remember very vividly going through and pulling out the LP for Satanic Majesties [the Rolling Stones] and Bob Marley and Dylan, these were all in my parents record collection and that was the music I grew up listening to. And then I was asked by Tao Seeger, his grandson, who I knew through a mutual friend, to get involved. I went and met Pete and hung out at Pete’s house and he told me stories.
We did a benefit before the festival and we booked Jeff Tweedy and that was one of the first time I got to work with Tweedy, and basically drove Tweedy down to Pete’s little boathouse and had a rehearsal with Pete and Jeff and me. They made me play guitar, so I played guitar and Pete played banjo. Pete opened the show with some local school kids and Tweedy came out. So I got to jam with Pete and Tweedy and I would consider Jeff and Pete as two of my top five influences in my life, politically, socially, musically, so that moment goes at the top, having that little private jam session with them.
Was that ultimately your entry point to working on Solid Sound?
Yeah, that was. I had been around enough Wilco shows, I was a huge Wilco fan, to have gotten to know some of the players a little bit. But that was the first time I had been able to bring them a gig. Jeff wasn’t planning on doing shows, but he wanted to do that show because of Pete and we made a little tour out of it and at that show I got to spend a lot of time with Tony Margherita [Wilco’s manager] and Ben Levin and Jason Tobias, their tour manager at the time.
Jason and I became really fast friends, so the next year, when Alex Carothers was looking to build his relationship with them into either a multi show run or a festival, he called me and said, “I know you know these guys a little bit, so do I, we want to do these things I want to bring you on.” So that was the entry to it. The first year was a couple of ballparks, one in Lowell, Mass and one near Poughkeepsie, which were fantastic.
The first time I really had a long conversation with Jeff was driving to that Pete Seeger thing and when people say, “Oh they’re better people than they are musicians” kind of thing, it’s trite and it’s contrived, but in this case it’s true. When you meet a band you love and you want to go see anyways, and you get to help them put forth their creative vision, that is as good as it gets. Talking to Alex the other day, we were talking about finances and at some point he said, “Dindas, we all know that none of us get rich on Solid Sound,” and I said, “Yeah, but the wonderful thing is that none of us care.” Solid Sound is what everything should be. It’s brave and it’s on its own merits, it’s on its own terms. It’s done for the right reasons by the right people.
One of the things I love about Solid Sound and one of the things I love about Pete Shapiro, is that when Tweedy or Tony or Alex or Pete say to me “Dindas, we should try this!” and I say, “Sure, it’s never been done.” Most people would hear that and say, “Oh, it’s never been done,” and they find a reason to not do it. Pete and Alex and Wilco say, “Oh, it’s never been done? Great! That’s what we’re looking for. Let’s do that.” That’s art. The creation of Solid Sound is art on its own. Forget the music and forget the actual art in the museum, the creation of the festival, the way it came about to me is art and being a part of that is amazing.
Since you mentioned Peter Shapiro, let’s talk about the Capitol Theatre and how you became involved there.
Well let me just take a step back, because I’m telling the narrative of my career over the past ten years or more and kind of at the same time there’s this alternate past that has always involved Peter. I met Peter at the same time you did, when Chris Zahn said, “You have to come down and meet the new guy running the Wetlands.” I said, “Cool” and I went down to the office and I started talking to Chris and Pete because he was there, and I said, “Chris, where’s the new guy because I got to go.” And he looked at Pete and said, “That guy.” I said, “Cool,” but then Pete left and I looked at Chris and said, “That guy?” He was twenty-four, you know?
From Wetlands we worked together on the Jammys and we worked together on the Green Apple. Green Apple grew from me running Central Park which was really cool—a Laurie Berkner show that again my daughter went to—but then the Green Apple festival turned into the shows at the National Mall and I was the co-executive producer with Peter and Kathleen Rogers from Earth Day for two years.
The second year [2010] was the 40th Anniversary and that was the show that had Sting, and John Legend, and the Roots, and Joss Stone and Bob Weir, and being the co-exec I was involved with everything. So I went from putting Weir together with Jimmy Cliff, and going to rehearsals with John Legend and showing him my Slingbox and him being like, “Oh I need to get that thing, I need to watch basketball on it.” I could spend an hour just telling stories about being poked in the face by the woman who runs security for the National Park Service because we let Wayne Coyne set off his confetti canons. Those shows are amazing—think about running a festival in Tennessee or wherever else and then think about running a festival where we had 300,000 people the second year between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, on national land with the U.S. Park Police watching you. That was an incredible thing.
For Peter and I both, with all we went through to make that happen, the culmination of those shows was really amazing. But then we decided not to go back in and Peter called me and we talked about the Cap and we talked about what he was thinking of doing, and that he had met with Marvin [Ravikoff], and he said, “Well I think we’re going to do this and you’re going to be the production manager.” And I said, “Okay, I am?” You know, what I’ve learned is that when Pete makes a decision about these kinds of things I tend not to disagree with him because most of the time his instinct is correct.
I went to do a site walk with Pete at the venue in October 2010 but it was a year and a half before we got the lease signed and actually moved up there, and it was another few months of dealing with crazy landlords before we could actually get to work. All of a sudden it was April/May of last year and I think luckily, sometime around then Pete and I said, “Look, we’re going to open in the fall and we’re going to take the shot because if we keep thinking we’re not going to be ready then we’ll never open.” And it was the most intense six months of my life, from April until September, several of us sleeping in the theater, pretty much living in the theater, being there for sixteen, seventeen hour days. Knowing that we had to get it done, knowing that we would get it done, but knowing that what we were doing was impossible. Heady times at the Capitol Theater, if you will. At the beginning it was a very small crew, and obviously it grew, but we pulled it off.
You’d attended shows there when you were growing up?
Yeah, I was at the show where Phish opened for Blues Traveler, which later became famous because it was the one where Phish opened for Blues Traveler and not the other way around [10/6/90]. That was the first show I saw there, and then I saw a couple others, and the next year Phish played again, and I was up in the balcony and they played “Bouncing Around the Room” and the balcony bounced. At that point I’m sure I wasn’t sober, and it may be hyperbole, but I was telling people, “This thing was moving like a foot! Two feet, it was crazy!” And remembered that until the day we went back and actually did some testing on the thing. I saw Strangefolk there, I saw MMW there, I would guess there were eight to ten shows in that run from 1990-1993.
So when Pete said the Cap, I was working with Bob Kennedy doing festivals, basically the Vibes, Mountain Jam, Solid Sound, and I loved what I was doing. I was in no way really looking to go back to a room the way I was at Irving. But, the combination of it being Peter and being that room, I couldn’t say no. I grew up in Mamaroneck, which is three towns over, my parents still live in New Rochelle, in some way, though I’m a city kid through and through, in some way I was going home. It was critical mass, there was no way not to do it. It was daunting and definitely uncertain at times but it was something we had to do and something we had to do right.
I have no idea what it looked like when you first walked in there. Can you describe the biggest production challenges?
When I walked in I had to go in under the guise of doing a show there, because that was the only way the current management would let us walk. It had been an event space. It was no longer a rock and roll theater, let alone the rock palace that we were envisioning. It was an event space; it was a place where people would have Bar Mitzvahs and wedding receptions. The floor was built up, the stage was twelve inches high, and I knew that was going to be a problem. The downstairs looked well enough, it was fine. The upstairs, my favorite thing is, at some point they had to raise the steel railing at the top point of the lower seats, and we went up one day and they had taken some PVC tubing and spray painted it grey to match the steel and zip-tied that on. So it wasn’t show ready.
One of the problems was that in the interim, in 1998, MTV did two shows in there. They scheduled a Rolling Stones show that the Stones cancelled two weeks out but David Bowie went in and did the show and then they had the Stones show a few weeks later. So what we heard a lot was, “Well we had the Rolling Stones here, everything is fine.” Look at the videos on YouTube and it wasn’t the same thing. MTV came in and ripped things out and put in lights and had things replaced.
Pete’s term, that I think is very apt, is the “bones were there.” The dome is the amazing architectural feature and that was there. Everything needed to be painted—the most difficult thing was getting into the modern era. Getting the power, ethernet cables, getting wiring redone. That was the most difficult part because some stuff had never been run or run in a way that didn’t make sense. So there was a lot of that and then there was the aesthetic and the decorative, stuff that in the long run, people notice. People don’t care about wiring, but the carpet or the now famous wallpaper in the second lobby with Janice and Jerry in it; that stuff really does set it apart and that’s where Peter is brilliant in his visual sense. The front of the house was trying to make it into a useable space in terms of ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] and as far creature comforts and we were just trying to get it ready to rock. Let’s put on a big rock show.
It could have been opened with fewer amenities and people wouldn’t have known. Clearly there was a commitment to make the experience appreciably different. Can you talk about that process?
In terms of the attendee coming in, the term we kept coming to was Rock Palace. We wanted to take the best of the great theaters—the Vic, or the Warfield or the Orpheum—we wanted to take a little bit of Bill Graham and make it historic. There’s a picture of Jerry that you’ve seen backstage talking about how the Fillmore and the Capitol Theater are the only two venues that have made any difference to him, so we wanted to do that. The mission was to enhance the history while bringing it in to the future.
There are two entrances to the Capitol Theater, the front door and the stage door. Through there we have the two demographics we need to keep happy: the audience who are buying the tickets and the bands who are coming and playing to those audiences. The stage door was my domain exclusively and I wanted people to come in—managers, and tour managers and artists—and say, “Wow, these guys thought of it all.” When I was on the road it was so obvious the difference between the rooms where people gave a shit and where people didn’t. That sets the tone. So when you walk into a rundown, dilapidated room, people are like, “The owners don’t care enough to put money into fixing this for us, they want to keep whatever money they have in their pocket.” And you get that kind of show.
Artists aren’t machines, if they have a good experience in a room before they go on, that’s going to change the show. And if the crowd is feeling great and that energy hits them, that’s going to change the show. I’ve been doing this a long time, and the places that make magic are the places that get the energy of the band to a certain level because they’re being treated right and given what they need to perform, and getting the energy level of the crowd together because they’re giving them things that they’re not used to seeing.
Our projection system was much thought about. Part of that is for the shows absolutely, we want the bands to be rocking out—the American flag for Phil or for MMJ have the moon for those songs. But part of it is walking in. For the first two months, my favorite thing to do was just to watch people come in after doors and look at the things on the walls, taking pictures, and that helps make a difference. On Tuesday night at a lot of venues, things can be take it or leave it, but a Tuesday night at the Capitol Theater is going to kick ass regardless, and that’s the whole point.
What are some of those things that the audience never sees but bands and crew appreciate?
The first thing for me and the crew that we hired, most of them had been on the road, was an understanding that [musicians and crew] are not always going to get off the bus and be in a good mood or have had a good trip the night before. One of the things we wanted to do was make it easy for bands by giving them the best gear anywhere in a room that size and I think we have done that. By allowing them to leave some of their gear on the truck or allowing us by having great people running our gear, having them feel like they were embraced as soon as they walked in. There are some shows where the artists may not spend much time in the room, but the crew will, and if the crew’s happy, the band’s happy, and if the band’s happy the crew’s happy. It’s a living, breathing thing.
The one thing we couldn’t change about the Cap was the backstage; I often refer to it as the Beacon Theater without an elevator. It’s six stories and there’s no elevator. So if your dressing room is on the sixth floor, then you’re walking up there. In every room backstage there is a T.V. screen that shows the concert when it’s on. So if you’re a wife or a girlfriend or boyfriend, or some guy working for the label and you just want to sit back in the dressing room for a second, you can watch the show. Some places have that in the headliner dressing room, but very few have it in every room. It’s the little things we can do, a little VIP area with a couch and big TV downstairs where Biz Markie watched the entire Celtics Game when Yo Gabba Gabba was there.
It’s thinking about these things. When I did my first talk with our crew, I said, “Part of this is a hotel. We have guests and we’re paying a lot of money for these guests to come here. We need to make sure they feel like they’re part of the family.” I did sixty shows in five months and that’s insane just saying it, but I don’t think there was a night where somebody in the crew or somebody in the band didn’t come to me and say, “You guys did this right” or “Hey, can we have a t-shirt, because we want to tell people we played the Cap.” And on stage, almost every night someone is like, “This place is amazing, it’s our favorite place to play…”
I think some of it is creature comforts, some it is just attitude, but I am a big believer that if the artists are happy and well tended to, they will play better. And that’s something we can offer to our fans. The people out there are like, “It’s a great place to see a show, it’s fun, and every time I go there the band is just killing it.”
Finally, can you share your memories of the opening nights and then talk about what you’re doing now.
The second opening night, the night that was supposed to be the opening night, was Peter’s 40th birthday. We ended up doing a montage on the walls for him and it was very celebratory. For us, with the Dead and their history there, having Bob Weir come out and be first was going to be really special for us. Bobby, and The Roots and a jam, that ended up being in my production office with Trey, Warren and Grace borrowing my guitars to work out arrangements. I was like, “Great, this is the second show, I guess we’re having some fun.”
That was going to be the big thing, the opening night, and then Peter called me and said “I think we’re going to do something the night before,” and I said, “No, you promised me we weren’t going to do anything before. We’re not going to be ready.” And he said, “Dude, it’s Dylan.” I said, “Right” and you know, it was Dylan. Dylan rehearsed there for years. Completely honestly, the opening night of the Capitol Theater is not quite a blur, but I feel like I was there for parts of it. I have very specific memories of seeing my parents and talking to Bob Dylan for a moment, and hanging out with Jeff Kramer, Dylan’s manager, and trying to get him not to smoke cigarettes in my office. There are lots of those, but overall, the combination of doing a huge production, the first show, and this was the day we had been looking forward to for two years, it was just so much. It really took weeks for me to sit back and try and go through that and see what it was. And it worked! Dylan looked happier than I’d ever seen him.
I’ve seen maybe fifty Dylan shows in my life and I would count that as one of the better ones, in terms of his song selection and everything else. So that was special, and Dylan is Dylan. I never thought I would do a Dylan show in my room, forget opening night. It was pretty heady. The second night, Pete’s birthday, that was the real opening of the Capitol Theater because it was our friends. The Roots have been doing shows with Pete and I for five or six years, we both know their management very well. Bobby was there for the room and for us, and Grace and Trey and everybody coming down wanted to be a part of something. Everybody in that room knew what we were trying to do.
We had a book we got everybody to sign and Warren said, “What you’re doing in this room reminds me of why I want to play music.” I took a picture of that and texted it to Pete and said, “Pete, we did good.” That was the beginning.
Speaking of Warren, I also want to say how much I’ve enjoyed worked with him over the years and in specific, Christmas Jam, because it’s a charity and it’s an event where great artists play for free to literally build a house. Wilco is an amazing experience because of the artistic nature of it, but Christmas Jam because of who we do it with, Sheryl Crow and Phil Lesh and all these people, and what it actually means may be the most meaningful thing I do.
Going back to the first night I also will say that I mentioned to Dylan that I named my daughter Johanna after “Visions of Johanna” and he said, “Hey, cool” and then walked away from me. I was up in my office doing paperwork during his set and he started playing “Visions of Johanna.” That was already on the set, he didn’t play it for me but his tour manager, was like, “Dude, stop what you’re doing and go listen to the song you named your daughter for.” I was like, “Yeah, okay.” That was a cool moment.
What are we doing now? As Peter does, he came to me in December or so and said, “Hey, we did it. The Cap, it’s everything we wanted it to be.” I really think it’s true, the hours of talking about what we wanted it to be, I think that’s what it is and it will only get better. But he said, “We did this and now it’s time to do the next thing.” Again, when he asked me about the Cap, I love the Cap, I literally put a year, a year and a half of my life into it and I wasn’t thinking about leaving anytime soon, but Peter has a company that basically own the Capitol and the Brooklyn Bowl and the other Bowls that are being worked on and some other projects that we’re doing that will soon to be announced. But the team they’d brought together didn’t have a voice for production, of how the shows were going to be put on in all these places. How these entities will run from that point of view. So he asked me to come on as the director of production for the company and since February first that’s what I’ve been doing.
It’s very interesting; it’s another moment in my life where I’m taking a slight turn on my career path because now I’m still involved in the Capitol Theater and the shows they put on there and other things we will be announcing later that are show related, but a lot of what I’m going now is helping to design the production stuff, the audio/video projection screens for Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, which has been announced and other things that will come. So this is a little bit of a new thing. I did it at the Capitol; I knew how to go into a field and build a little town and put on a festival but I had never built a room before, and doing it at the Capitol was an amazing place to learn. So now I’m taking that new skill and bringing it to some of Peter’s other ventures, all of which are exciting and some of which we’ll be able to announce soon and I think will really catch people’s eyes.
Can I throw one thing in? At this point I realized that we’re grownups, which is amazing to me, but one of the things I’ve started to get a lot was younger people in the industry asking me for advice and the theme all along that I’ve followed is “Do everything that you can” and “Learn everything that you can” about all of them because they all have an impact on what you end up doing. Then while you’re doing that, figure out what you love. Figure out what this industry is about, learn everything you can, do whatever you can, figure out what you love and do it. This job is incredibly difficult, it’s very cool and it has a cache, but I think a common misconception of a lot of people is with jobs in rock and roll or sports is that it’s easy. All those people work harder than anybody, so you’ve got to love it if you’re going to put in the eighteen hour days and put up with all of the other stuff. So if you love it then go for it, but if not than then just go to the shows and enjoy.
