Welcome back to The Club List, a newsletter about making a business out of what you love.

A momentary client update, which may be relevant to many of you! I’m thrilled to be leading the charge for Circus 84 in the US as part of the ever-expanding scope of Me In The Club’s Fractional CMO services. I’m joined in this by my friend and rightful legend Colin Wallace in the UK, and as time goes on, industry vets may recognize quite a few other faces contributing. They’re a for-artists-by-artists label and platform that’s deeply invested in the history of rock and independent music, in a part of the world where champions of punk, psych, and noise rock are tough to come by. Want to hear more? We’re a ways from the big official rollout, so this is ground-floor. Reach out.

Today’s newsletter is about the first business partnership I ever had, in all its gravity and inspiration for what I would do with the rest of my adulthood since. If you’ve got any American Apparel in the closet, get it out for this one.

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My Actual Origin Story

This story isn’t as widely known as it probably should be, so this is a great day to tell it.

My entry point to the music business, as many of you know, was my college radio station. 

But my entry point to the for-profit music business (and I use the word “profit” loosely) was as half of a short-lived local concert promoter. It was never incorporated, DIY as hell, and it had no formal structure beyond, “You and I are going to accept this risk together if the bands we book can’t draw enough to cover the venue’s fees.”

This is the story of Self-Destruct Promotions, which looked a lot like the countless handshake deals you see across creative industries. It didn’t last for very long (I mean, it’s right there in the name, come on!), but it set things up for how I’d want the next half of my life to go in ways I could barely have anticipated.

In the summer of 2008, I wound up sharing an apartment in Morgantown, WV, with a summer sublet I had met just weeks before. Her name was Nicole Welty, and when we were introduced through mutual friends who knew we both needed a roommate, we were immediately shocked by how much we had in common musically. She had grown up in the Columbus area listening to CD 101 regularly (before its shift to 102.5 and then 92.9 - RIP!), which meant she knew stuff about Violent Femmes and Devo and a ton of other bands I liked that nobody around me seemed to know. So she started DJing with me at the station, we traded new stuff and old faves constantly, and we were fast friends. 

And from her Columbus days, she knew it was possible to grow an independent show destination in college towns, and I knew I wanted to work in the music industry full-time. So, we decided to team up.

(Ironically, Self-Destruct Promotions would not be the first perfectly-named partnership that I didn’t name myself; seven years later, Moose would suggest naming our agency Marauder after a few attempts by both of us, and I agreed just as instantly on hearing it as I did on SDP. Both names perfectly described the intention behind them.)

Today, she’s just Welty to me. We haven’t been in the same room in close to 8 years, but we still talk plenty, and I’ve heard so many stories about her daughter that she feels like someone I’ve met many times as well.

But in 2008, there were things I unlocked in myself from seeing how she moved in the world that helped send me firmly down my path.

For one thing, Welty’s music taste was impeccable. She would find songs that could be a hit to other people, then make people care about them. We didn’t agree with most people’s taste, but we almost always agreed with each other to a degree I had never experienced. This was a major reckoning with music taste as a skill, one that I had believed in at my core but never seen play out with an accomplice. 

And besides that, I have never - to this day! - seen someone who could write a cold pitch as effectively as Welty. Well, okay, I would argue that my friend and frequent trainer Maryelizabeth Carter is equally as effective. But she ran radio at Razor and Tie for a while, has managed bands for years, you name it. She’s known for being a badass who can get a boulder to sing to her, and she’s gone the distance with it. Welty wasn’t known for anything yet, and she never went into the music industry as a career choice. And yet she was hitting on a comparable level at 19, from seemingly out of nowhere.

Here’s how she’d reach out to a band to play our college town:

“Hi! I really love your song [insert name here] a whole lot. My booking partner and I like your whole record too, soooo…we want to see if you’ll come play in the beautiful mountains of West Virginia!

[insert an oversized photo of a mountain that almost looks totally cartoonish]

“The thing is, there’s a whole college town hiding here named Morgantown that has 50,000 people in it. And there are thousands of kids here who only get to see a few touring bands a year. So, this venue agreed to let us book shows. It’s 200-cap, and on a typical Wednesday night, we can get at least half that in for anyone touring because we DJ at the college radio station and people dig what we like. They don’t even have to know the bands yet.

“So, we want them to know about you. What do you think? What would you need from us?”

And this email changed a little every time, because Welty would get bored and do it a different way. We were both writers, but she was visual with it. I don’t even know if she sent the mountain photo more than a couple of times, and for bands who played, she often figured out creative care packages past the tour rider because we were still broke college students and needed to be scrappy. She viewed everything she was doing as a multi-sensory promo pack delivery.

Some of the people who got back to us were like a who’s-who of who we’d all be hearing about 10 years later in other industry lives. Walter Meego had never played a headlining show away from home before we booked them through an agent who was super-responsive to Welty, a guy by the name of Tom Windish who had started his agency from a Chicago apartment a couple years before. 

Walter Meego never broke large, but the band they were direct support for at the time - Ra Ra Riot - wound up being direct support themselves for Vampire Weekend, and even reprised that tour package with them last year. As for Windish, he would become Lorde’s agent, then Billie Eilish’s agent, and never really stop working with the indie pop acts he started on. (Even then, he knew what he was doing; you should have seen Walter Meego’s faces when they got a full gift basket and bottle of Absolut in the green room. They had no idea they even had a tour rider!)

Then there was Ricky Reed from Wallpaper., who we knew from his weird and hilarious YouTube videos and a silly electro-pop EP we both liked. He didn’t wind up making it through due to a venue schedule conflict, but his project had a real moment in the early 2010s once he dropped the surreal parts of it (unfortunately my favorite parts, but what can you do?), and then he became a Grammy-winning pop writer and producer who gave Lizzo’s biggest hits a lot of their definition.

We would spend time talking at length about how everyone interconnected, even then, and trying to understand how to connect to it further. I’m still wired that way.

For the early shows we did, we hustled. I’d do a lot of hand-to-hand promo with people I knew and also over the air, Welty would do the same while also designing flyers, and then we’d post them everywhere and repost any that got taken down. If a problem needed dealing with and the problem was acting sketchy, I would use my size and reputation around town to be the bad cop, within reason. For the most part, people knew we both wanted to see more new music in our college town and that we were eager to book locals with those bands too, and we gained a lot of goodwill over time.

Welty booked with others more as I got busy with coursework for a MBA and couldn’t take the same time for show booking. Then she got Surfer Blood through, right as the hype for Astro Coast was cresting, for an early 2010 show that was the most packed thing she’d done to date. I got to just be in the audience for that one, and it’s been burned into my brain for a long time. By that point, a reputation had been built up, and then our old station U92 got in on shows when I moved to the big city, and Morgantown was on the map again as a place where young bands could reach the people.

I’ve heard the phrase “born marketer” before, and I’ve known people it applied to, and I’ve heard it applied to me (not always in agreement there). But I don’t think I’ve ever applied it to anyone more than Welty. She just got it. So much of what helped make me great at radio promotion, when I started working in it, came from those moments of standing back from my booking partner and just watching what she could make from thin air. And as I grew into myself, I would recognize what I offered where somebody that impressive to me could say, “None of this would be happening without you,” and mean it as much as I would to them in return.

When I talk about seeing marketing as a creative art of its own, I am thinking of those early days.

My official start at working in the music business was later in 2010, through an internship at Terrorbird Media that led to me getting my first proper gig at CMJ (RIP to that, too). But for all intents and purposes, Self-Destruct was where I really started, with its core combination of hustle and street-smarts mixed with the confidence you get from knowing what the room we were in was missing. I think it’s part of why I’m always drawn to working with the self-starters, the underdogs, the people making something great outside of the traditional industry. Yes, the “disrupters,” if you want to go all startup buzz-word with it.

And looking back on it, Self-Destruct worked because it had this incredibly rare combination of a clear interest in art (brand identity!), bookings that were approachable but unknown enough to require some faith from the audience, and a chance to operate from a place of goodwill in a culturally-rich place that could surprise outsiders. We weren’t the only people booking in town, but we were the only ones doing it our way, with that kind of style and focus on new indie pop acts. And that helped empower other people to do it later.

But most importantly, it worked because we were both sick of people telling us it wouldn’t, before we even started. And there was a LOT of that. “Morgantown’s just not a place for touring bands like that,” I heard more than once. We were basically scoffed at by everyone until we had done multiple shows and had them work. Everyone rolls their eyes at the dreamers until the dream is in the world.

I definitely think there is a particular kind of optimism you have to have to start and sustain any kind of creative business. But let’s not get it twisted, either: when you’re doing something that nobody else is doing in your immediate circles, I absolutely think you need to be a little contrary. And we were.

We trusted our creative senses first and everyone else’s second. There’s something meaningful to be gained from that, too.

One Thing You Can Use Today

Hi, Americans! It’s tax season.

Are you new to creative business, or to self-employment? Don’t panic!

Do you work with someone who is new to either of these things? You’ll likely appreciate this, even if it just reinforces stuff you’re telling them.

I’ve crafted a Useful Diversion for you, which started as me thinking, “What would make me type ‘OH SHIT’ in 96-point font faster than figuring out taxes as a total newcomer?” If you like it and find it useful, let me know. I might just make more Useful Diversions like these that are meant as evergreen extensions to the newsletter.

USEFUL DIVERSION #1: TAX TIPS FOR THE SELF-EMPLOYED

View it above, and copy or download it to make notes on it for yourself.

Track of the Week

The Murder Capital - “Swallow”

Somewhere between Bambara’s scenery-chewing delivery and the street-wiseness of those earlier Fontaines DC records, you’ll find The Murder Capital’s new album Blindness, which seems formulated to reach to the rafters with both boots planted firmly in the dirt. Irish post-punk has no shortage of talented bands in it, but there’s an ambition to Blindness and its equal parts songcraft and grit that offers something to Mark Lanegan devotees, and I’m not just talking about the gravel in James McGovern’s vocal cords. “Swallow” is a change of pace from the album, but it’s the emotional core of it, and one of many songs here demanding repeat listening.

Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

List of Clubs

These are the kinds of clubs I’d like to be in around NYC! Wherever you might find music, art, or a compelling experience under one roof, that’s a club to me. I only list clubs I’d enjoy going to. If I list a client, you’ll know.

Wednesday, April 9 - FACS, Activity @ TV Eye
It’s rare that I see a bill where I stop and go, “Whoa, BOTH of them are playing?” That’s how I feel about seeing FACS and Activity share a bill on the same night. I’m glad this one is earlier in the night, because I have something else I’ll want to hit the dance floor about when this gets out…

Wednesday, April 9 - Distort x 343 Labs @ Mood Ring (free!)
The music production school I dropped in on back in January, 343 Labs, is co-branding a whole night of free electronic music on Wednesday this week. So, you should probably go. I’ve seen what their students are cooking.

Thursday, April 10 - Gold Casio @ Our Wicked Lady
Every time you go to see a band at Our Wicked Lady, it’s a good thing. Every time you see Gold Casio, that’s a good thing too. This fits like peanut butter and chocolate.

Thanks for reading! And now, an image of me in the club…

The Club List is a newsletter from MeInTheClub.com. All issues are available at TheClubList.net. To inquire about marketing services for your work, contact [email protected] and include "Services” in the subject line.