Manager to Manager: Topper Talks
by Jeff Waful

To avoid an obvious conflict of interest, I generally downplay my role as Uncle Sammy's manager when writing for Jambands.com. However, for this assignment Dean thought it would be interesting to conduct the interview from the point of view of a manager of a younger band questioning the veteran guru. Many of my questions are based on similar experiences I've encountered with Uncle Sammy along the way.

JW: You went to college for History and American Studies and wound up managing a rock band. How did that whole transition take place? You went to school with some of the guys from moe. and started helping out as a hobby, right?

JT: Yeah, I started doing activities on campus. In '91, I did Earth Day, so I started bringing bands to campus for that. Then I starting becoming friends with a couple of agents and it occurred to me that I could start bringing bands into some of the clubs in Buffalo. Basically, the way I kind of did it was I used to open up the Village Voice and just see who was playing Saturday night at Wetlands and whoever was headlining there was the band I'd go after to bring to Buffalo. SUNY Buffalo has 30,000 kids and a large population comes from the New York City/Long Island area.

JW: Who were some of the bands that you remember working with?

JT: God Street Wine, Savoy Truffle, Shockra, Zen Tricksters.

JW: So this is around the time that moe. began playing bars.

JT: Yeah, moe. was just sort of playing around town and Al (Schnier), who came from Oneonta, had just joined the band and so the guys just started leaving Buffalo and going to Oneonta to play some gigs. Al came and asked me if I wanted to help out because I was kind of doing the same thing.

JW: Was there another agenda at the same time since you were going to school for American Studies and History? Was that something that you had planned to go into as a career? Was there any pressure from your parents?

JT: Well, no actually. I kind of chose those because I always liked the history thing and American Studies is more like Sociology. It's kind of an easy major. [Note: The jambands.com editor-in-chief holds a Ph.D. in the "History of American Civilization" from Harvard University and might dispute this point in a different forum] You get out of it what you put into it. My concentration in History was Asian History, because I wanted something a lot more challenging than just American Studies. I mean, American Studies is cool. I got to do things like help people do research on people that were in Attica Prison. It was very hands-on. It actually got me very motivated to get involved with things. I didn't really have any idea of what I wanted to do when I was in college. Because I loved the History and the American Studies so much, when I left college I applied to SUNY Buffalo's Library Science department to become a librarian.

JW: So when did you decide to make the music business your career?

JT: When the Library Department didn't accept me (laughs)

JW: Was there any sort of weird vibe from your parents or friends? Did people say things like, "Oh you're throwing away your career to go work in music?"

JT: Not really because my dad's a professional musician and my parents are very entrepreneur-ish, so they've always been supportive. I've got to say that all around, for anyone that's ever been a part of moe., our parents have always been very supportive. Everybody's parents are so cool.

JW: Since you didn't have any formal training, when you first started managing the band, were there other bands that you sought advice from? Any mentors?

JT: Well, most things that you learn, you learn by pretty much just talking to other people on your level. I never really went out to get advice from anyone who was bigger than us until we actually went through our Sony deal. I would always talk to Chris Tamis, who used to manage the (Ominous) Seapods. Mostly we'd talk about what clubs we were playing and what we were getting paid from different venues. That's basically the kind of advice I was getting from talking to a lot of the club people and whatnot. When we were negotiating our Sony deal and issues came up about allowing people to tape and stuff like that, I actually made my round of calls and called like John Paluska (manager for Phish), Coran Capshaw (manager for Dave Matthews Band), Dave Frey (manager for Blues Traveler) and Bullethead (Scott Ambrose Reilly God Street Wine management company), just to see what they did and how they handled those situations when they were signing their contracts. Everybody was so killer. There was never anyone who wouldn't give me the time.

JW: When young bands are first starting out, there is a period of time where all of the gig money has to be put back into the band. In order for the band to develop it is often necessary for the band members to put in long hours for gigs on the road and rehearsals, which can sometimes make it difficult to hold down a full-time job. In the early days when moe. was playing places like Broadway Joe's in Buffalo, how did the band members survive financially?

JT: Well, everybody worked. The way it worked was everybody worked part-time. I think Rob (Derhak) used to deliver flowers and Chuck (Garvey) worked at New World Records, one of the record stores in Buffalo. I think Al used to cook chicken wings and then he was doing graphic design for some paper. So everyone was kind of working, pretty much up through September of '94. Everyone worked part-time and all of the gigs were done Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Everyone had jobs that they were able to kind of take off when they needed to. I think Al may have had a little more trouble when he had the newspaper job. I did day care up in Buffalo. I did some telemarketing crap and was even a bartender for a couple weeks. The one thing about Buffalo is that you don't need to make much money.

JW: It's not like Boston.

JT: Right. I lived in a luxury building in a fucking amazing, killer apartment with Vinnie (Amico) and Rolf (Witt). Rolf plays in Al & The Transamericans. He plays violin and fiddle and played fiddle in the Merry Danksters and Sonic Garden. So I lived with those guys and I think we each paid about $200 a month in rent for this huge apartment, and that was expensive. My apartment before that I paid like $130 for my share. So basically, if you were making like $700-$800 a month, you were all set. You would have had plenty of spending money.

JW: Was there a point where the band needed or received outside funding? Is it possible for a band to grow organically and never have a large sum of money loaned or donated?

JT: We pretty much have done it about 98-99% ourselves. Like I said, all of our parents have been very supportive, but their backgrounds are like.teachers. It wasn't like we could go and say, "Hey can you fund our band?" "Can you buy us a sound system?" or anything like that. Everything for us was reinvestment and trying to figure out each problem as it came. Financially, we were pretty much always on our own.

JW: Was that frustrating? There are certainly a lot of stories about other bands that receive money from rich relatives and die-hard fans. That certainly gives them an advantage and kind of speeds up the whole developmental process.

JT: Yeah, it was definitely frustrating, but at the same time, now we're at a point where we can actually go to a bank and get a loan. It's a good feeling.

JW: How do you weigh your options when it comes to losing money to put out the best quality product, whether it be an album or a major concert. If you stay within your budget and put out a just a pretty good product, that might yield a higher profit margin, but sacrifice a little bit of quality.

JT: We don't really weigh those options. We pretty much put less money in our pockets to make all that stuff happen. That's how it basically works. Production, especially in the past four or five years, has been number one to us. Halloween has seemed to grow into being "The Gig." It's become the gig that we go all out for, production wise and whatnot. It just seems that no matter how big the place gets and how many people we draw, we're never going to make a buck on Halloween (laughs).

JW: But how valuable is the fans' reaction and the buzz on the Internet as a result of high production standards?

JT: Very valuable.

JW: It certainly out-weighs the financial loss.

JT: Oh, it totally out-weighs it. Halloween has definitely become "The Gig" for the band. They're already planning it right now for next year. The debate has already started. A lot of what they plan on depends on where we can do it.

JW: The band has been around for the last ten years and the Internet has come to life during that time. How has the Internet and its evolution impacted the band and how you promote the band?

JT: You know, when we first got on the Internet, somebody did the webpage for us and we didn't even pay attention to it, cause we were just like "whatever." Everyone at that time was just talking about "The Well." So at first, with moe.org, we didn't really even pay attention to it. But after a year or so, the whole Internet thing caught on so fast that it definitely became a huge part of how we run our daily business and how we get the word out on things. I have so many mixed feelings on the Internet. I'm kind of confused on it. A couple of years ago I would give away anything, whether it was downloads or videos or whatever. In the last few years, the Internet has scared me from doing some of that stuff.

JW: Just because it's gotten so out of hand?

JT: Yeah. There's always a big discussion on what to do.

JW: There's that famous story of you and (former Wetlands Preserve talent buyer) Chris Zahn writing a contract on the napkin at Wetlands. As the band grows into larger venues, how much of your business is still done on trust and how much is handled contractually?

JT: Well, pretty much everything is contracted now. There's nothing that isn't contracted. Sometimes there are one or two gigs that we do that are really based on trust. I mean, when the guys go out and do a Monkey's On Ecstasy gig, that's usually based on trust. When we went up and did the Bearsville Theatre gig, that was all based on trust. Every other gig that we do is contracted, even people that we've done business with since 1991 or whatnot. Greg Bell, who did our Albany show at the Palace, he's done us fifty out of fifty-one times that we've played in the Albany area, but we still contracted that gig.

JW: How significant is loyalty to a promoter based on your history in a given market?

JT: Loyalty to a promoter is very important. My feeling on being loyal to a promoter is that sometimes you have to make moves and kind of steer away from someone who's been doing things for you for a while, no matter how big they are. People get mad at you, and you just have to realize why they're mad at you and sometimes you might want to explain to them why you're doing what you're doing. Sometimes it's your business and you've got reasons that you don't want to explain to them. You've got to always keep those people in the back of your mind and say to yourself "no matter how angry they get, I'm going to go try to go back to them some day or give them a piece of what I do to make things happen." Sometimes you can do five or six gigs with someone and you don't see anything happening. With some promoters, you have no choice. You have to go to them, because there's nowhere else to go.

JW: What's your relationship like, on a personal level, with the band members now, compared to the early days? Are they receptive to your creative input? Are you buddies with them or is it more of a business relationship now?

JT: When it's business, it's business. When it's hanging out and being friends and playing golf or doing the bachelor party thing for whoever is getting married this week, it's friends and it's fun. We're good at separating both. We're all super honest with each other. I try my hardest to keep the band informed on pretty much everything that's going on. Sometimes a manager has to make a decision without the band. Decisions have to be made right away sometimes. If I fucked up on a decision, the band's response to it usually is "Topper, this sucks," but they'll back me up on the decision because they know that I'm speaking for them.

JW: I know that from my own experience as the manager of a younger band, sometimes it's hard to draw that line between friendship and managerial responsibilities. Plus, I live with the band.

JT: Well I did that too. I lived with the band for a year. Back when they all had their jobs in Buffalo, I moved to Manhattan and got a job at the West End Gate, being the talent buyer for a small club up near Columbia University. Through that, I got to know other promoters and agents. I lived on the Upper West Side and became friends with Zahn and other people by doing the promotion thing in the city. When the band started to really happen in New York, they were already happening in Buffalo and Albany. All the sudden, we were making like $1,000 or $2,000 a night, so the decision was to go for it and everyone decided that we were going to all move into one house together in Albany. So I spent that whole year from '94 to '95 living with the band, which for me sucked because I was in the middle of nowhere in Albany without a car or anything and those guys were gone all the time and I was working (laughs). I was just sitting in a house for like, weeks at a time by myself. I was bored out of my mind, you know? (laughs) Come 5 O'clock in the afternoon and I'm just sitting in a house that's cold and damp and haunted.

JW: How is your role classified within the organization? Who is the boss, the band or you? Are you all equal partners?

JT: Well, in the end, I work for them. In the end, they are definitely the bosses, but it's not really looked upon like that. If one of the band members makes a suggestion to me, I might go out and look into it before it's even brought to any of the other band members. A lot of times I'll come up with an idea and I'll bring it to the band like, "Hey, we should have Ani Difranco on the moe.down." moe.down itself was a concept like four or five years ago that was supposed to be the Brain Fest and that didn't wind up happening. Then the band came to me and told me they wanted to try to do that again and I said, "o.k., well let me make some phone calls and see if anyone out there is interested and has a spot for us to do it. That's kind of how it goes from there.

JW: It's an interesting relationship because you work for them, but you're the manager.

JT: But at the same time, if someone calls me up and says "hey, can the band be at this radio station at such and such a time.?" I have to give them an answer right away. So the guys are going to do this morning radio show in Rochester on March 5 and they have to be there at 7 a.m. When you're dealing with radio people, you have to either tell them yes or no, right on the spot. So, I have to call the guys and tell them "Hey, you're going to have to leave right after New Haven and be in Rochester at 7 a.m."

JW: And they are not thrilled.

JT: No, they're bummed, but in the past, it's not like a radio station would call us up and request having the band on the air. It's just sort of happened now.

JW: Have the band members ever come to you with an idea that you totally disagree with? How do you solve that conflict?

JT: Oh yeah. The way I usually solve it is by telling them my reasons for disagreeing and asking them to think about it for the next couple of days. A lot of times, they'll change their minds and a lot of times I'll change my mind and say, "You guys are right, you know." As you know, when you're doing this grassroots thing, everybody's got a different opinion and sometimes it takes as long as a month to make a decision, especially for us because we're not all together. The hardest decision, I think to get everyone on the same page, is artwork-type of decisions.

JW: In the early days, when a band is trying to make a name for itself, what's the balance like between money gigs and exposure gigs? Certainly you have to make money to survive, but at the same time, you need to play in front of new audiences.

JT: Exposure always over money. We learned early on and I think it was one of the best moves we ever made in our career. The guys always hated college gigs when they were a younger band, because they had no control over them. You'd go in and end up with terrible production and you'd be in a room that holds 1,000 people and like three people would show up.

JW: But you're getting paid like $1,000.

JT: Yeah, you're getting paid like $1,000, but you know what, we always took the club gig that would pay us $100 over the college gig. It seems to have worked. People have to get used to paying to see you. There were a lot of bands at the same time that were playing when we were playing, and were doing the same circuit and seemed to be making a ton more cash than us doing all these college gigs, but then they would go to Valentines in Albany and would do like ten people. That was after doing the fraternities and the colleges up in Albany. We'd go into Albany and by our third or fourth time there, we'd be doing like 150 people. We'd go and open up for the right band in Albany and then come back and headline two or three times later and we'd be making that same $1,000. To me, getting people used to paying for the ticket and doing the club gig over the college gig, always seemed to be much better for us. It wasn't really until about two years ago that we actually started getting a lot of college offers. We would never really get more than like one or two a year. Then all the sudden, we really started getting the college offers. This year's been a pretty big year for us and I've saved four days for colleges, this year.

JW: Can you a talk a little bit about your logo and how it has helped to promote the band. I mean, it's pretty simple, yet very effective. The bumper stickers alone have done wonders for the band.

JT: Oh, the logo is huge. The M-O-E-Period yellow on black or yellow on blue. You could be at Madison Square Garden and be sitting on one side and see someone wearing a shirt on the other side. It was definitely a huge thing seeing the bumper stickers everywhere. We went through some shows where we would sit at the door and everybody who left would get a free sticker. So, early on, we'd go do a show and there'd be 300 people there and 300 people would leave with a sticker and hopefully 50 cars would be riding around town with a moe. bumper sticker on it.

JW: Was that your idea?

JT: I don't even remember (laughs). I think it was my idea to give out as many bumper stickers as we could for like six months or something.

JW: Yeah, I can remember being on tour in '97 in Wisconsin or something and seeing moe. stickers on road signs.

JT: (laughs) You know, it's so funny. I was at a rest area, not too long ago on the thruway up in New York right before Buffalo and I looked all the way up on a pole and I saw one of our stickers. All I thought to myself was "wow, I guarantee like Al stood on top of our R.V. and stuck it up there or something." Those guys used to stick them everywhere. The stickers are a great marketing tool. I'm not even real sure who came up with the moe. logo, with the typewriter font, but it was great that they did. I do have to say that Rob is a great marketer. He comes up with a lot of ideas and they're usually great.

JW: In the grand scheme of things, it seems like 99% of the bands out there don't ever go anywhere or make a career out of playing music. There are so many elements besides being a good band musically. Can you cite a few things that helped moe. make it to the next level?

JT: Luck. A lot of it is being at the right gig at the right time in the right place. I think we're really pretty good about sitting around and planning out what our moves are going to be. I think that has a lot to do with it. For me, I'm constantly looking at what other people are doing and what their routing is and how they're growing. A huge part of it is just finding good people that really want to work and grow with the band. I honestly feel that there's not a better crew in the country.

JW: Was there ever a certain point in the band's career where there was this urgency to make a living sooner rather than later? Did anyone ever say anything like "this is make or break. Either we are going to make a living at this band and really go for it or we're going to have to call it quits because we can't survive financially"?

JT: I think every couple of years that happens. That probably happens to every band, at least to one or two people in the band because they get that feeling like they're not growing. My reaction, as a manager to it always has been "look, we're not growing, but we're not going backwards. As long as we're not going backwards, we're doing much better than everybody else." I think there has definitely been points where that has been questioned. But, everyone is into it so those thoughts go away pretty quick.

JW: The band just released the new album. At the point where the band members are now in their lives, with wives and kids, is there more pressure to put out an album that's going to sell a lot of copies? With families to support and houses to pay for, does the band still feel like it has 100% creative freedom to put out something crazy like a forty-five minute single?

JT: Well, again it comes back to how supportive the families have been. Everyone has wives or girlfriends. The families of everyone involved, even the crew, are very supportive and see the potential. It comes back to the same question: When do you call it quits? It's so hard to say when you keep growing. I think the guys definitely feel pressure about supporting their families though.

JW: Would you be inclined to take a money gig today because of that?

JT: Well the money gig now, isn't always so much a financial gain for the band personally, as much as it is for the business of Fatboy. There are ten people that make salary from Fatboy Productions, which is moe.'s production company.

JW: What's your relationship like with your partner, Dan Getz? Do you split up the tasks or do you have specific responsibilities?

JT: Well everything for us is done on a case-by-case basis, depending on what's going on. I do most of the work. I probably do 75 or 80% of what goes on. Dan is pretty much there to keep everything organized and work with the business manager, to balance out what bills are getting paid this week and what bills are going to wait until next week. He's a great asset because he's also an entertainment lawyer. Although the band has its own lawyer that represents them, it's great because Dan can look over smaller contracts like an Internet broadcast agreement or something like that. Dan can look at it and we don't have to go to the big law firm. When we did the new deal with Red Distribution, the way that kind of worked is that Dan and I went out and negotiated the deal and then it went to the band's lawyer before the band would sign it. So, having Getz around is huge. If you saw my office, it's not the most organized office in the world. Having Dan there to keep all the contracts in order and all that kind of stuff is important to me. I'm kind of an idea person and that's kind of like my big thing. I like to say that I have a lot of common sense and I get along with a lot of people. Those are my biggest assets and that's definitely what my gig is when representing the guys.

JW: It certainly seems like this is a great time to work in this particular genre. There's a lot more attention from mainstream press these days and it seems that the scene's overall popularity is growing. Certain bands are taking time off and others have broken up.are you expecting big things for this summer? I assume you'll be announcing your plans pretty soon.

JT: Well it definitely seems to be a pretty good time to be out there. I'm hoping to announce our summer plans in the next month. We've been throwing different ideas around and checking into things and hopefully those things will work out.

JW: Any plans for another multiple band tour in the tradition of Summer Sessions?

JT: No, nothing like that, for us anyway. Right now we've been more or less just concentrating on going out and doing our thing this summer and then coming back and finishing with moe.down again this year.

JW: Do you ever get the chance to just go and party at a moe. show anymore and just dance around?

JT: Oh yeah (laughs). Well, when I'm in New York or L.A., I don't really party or anything, cause it's usually a lot of business. I've got nothing but amazing things to say about our tour manager, Skip. When the band's on the road, he's the manager. He's basically in charge and we're lucky to have that. But, you know, I just saw the band in Vegas and I just went out and had a great time. I stood in the middle of the crowd and I danced and for that night, I was a fan.