You know, it’s been six months since my pal Tony Pollstar took over the family tour date operation. Sure, it’s a cutthroat business posting dates for The Wallflowers and Richard Cheese & Lounge Against The Machine, but Tony takes it all in stride and says that it ain’t no different than the old waste management biz back in Jersey. Except, of course, you need to dig a few more holes out back to cover your mistakes.

But Tony ain’t worried. In fact, he’s made an effort to explain the finer points of tour date management to the members of each Pollstar.com department. Like telling the sales department how much they should skim from the posting fees resulting from listing the dates for Herbie Hancock and The B-52’s, or explaining to the tech department why we need 500 phones in the back room. Like Tony sez, you never know when you’ll need to reach out and clip someone.

However, not all of these sit-downs with the staff have gone as smoothly as heisting a Hoffa. You see, the big guy likes mixing it up with his employees. He’s real keen on exchanging ideas when it comes to discussing the vig-per-click ratio on Celebrity and Ben Harper, and he just loves showing the loading dock crew how to track three different sets of invoices for each date that comes off of the trucks for Bon Jovi.

But the employees ain’t exactly taking to Tony’s business practices like schmucks out of water. In fact, every time the big guy holds a meeting, like the one he held last night to discuss the Electric Barnyard Tour starring Merle Haggard and Marty Stuart, the employees get all uptight. They start shaking and stuttering until, well, we’ll just say until they suddenly become reacquainted with their breakfasts.

But that don’t bother Tony none. No, sir. You see, Tony’s a hands-on operator and he’ll do what it takes to get this company up to snuffin’ capacity. And all that shaking, gagging and retching that goes on whenever he pops in for one of his surprise visits? Well, I got a theory about that.

I think the big guy just loves to watch his employees cringe and purge.