Qs With Louis Messina: The Influential Promoter On Nashville’s Realness, 6 Degrees Of George Strait & His Big 2018

– Louis Messina at TJ Martell Awards

Louis Messina, 70, has had a long and illustrious ride in the concert business and rolled with more punches than most. If he were a cat, he’d be on about his fourth life.

In his current incarnation, as CEO/founder of Messina Touring Group, which he formed in 2001 with partner AEG, he’s carved out the kind of niche that suits him – and it’s a unique one.

In a way, he personifies what’s been happening in Nashville over the last several years. Though he’s not from Nashville – his business is based in Austin, where he’s been located since a previous life with Pace Concerts, which he co-founded in 1975 with Allen Becker and sold for $130M to SFX in 1998 (which rolled over to Clear Channel and then Live Nation) – and a non-compete, the New Orleans native began promoting country stars including George Strait, Kenny Chesney, and discovering a teenaged Taylor Swift.

The latter relationship changed Messina’s career. Swift introduced him to other pop and rock artists who, in turn, also became clients – like Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Vance Joy, and The Lumineers.

So, like Nashville itself, if you want to associate Messina with country music, that’s okay. But dig a little deeper and you’ll find they both embrace the full range of popular music and are pushing it forward in a big way.

Messina talked with Pollstar about changes afoot in his career and in Nashville – among agencies, artists and the scene in general.

Tell us what you do, and how it differs from a typical concert promoter.

We are a full-service concert promoter. And we like to look at ourselves as an extension of management, agency, and the artists. That’s how we work and why I don’t try to book everybody. I turn down more artists than I take. I’m one artist at a time – that’s how I operate.

I’m no agent, by any means. Every act I have technically has an agent, in a roundabout way, or has an agent that does different functions for them. Some may be touring, some may be movies, some may be TV. We’re a very independent, boutique company. That’s what MTG is.

We’ve got a handful of artists we believe in and we work for.

Over the years, CAA and WME have been dominant agencies in Nashville and competing for not just artists but agents, with some like Scott Clayton changing out business cards in the last year. Is there a realignment happening?

William Morris has gotten very aggressive over the last few years. They’re aggressive and I think it cycles every few years.

It’s all just evolution … you see the same thing with agency business. William Morris may be on top but, next year, Paradigm may be the one that’s going to come out and take over Nashville. They’ve got Lumineers and we sold out almost every arena that we played. We started with 4,000-seaters but then we went and played arenas across the country and they sell out. Paradigm’s got some really cool bands playing for them.

It did appear that 2017 was a somewhat slower year for country artists. Of course, two of your biggest artists – Kenny Chesney and George Strait – weren’t doing stadium tours.

Last year I only had a few acts working. We had Eric Church, George Strait, The Lumineers, Shawn Mendes, and a few more. This year we have Blake Shelton, and George doing his handful of shows. Taylor Swift is getting ready to launch a world tour. Kenny’s ready to launch his biggest tour that he’s had in years. We’re in planning stages for a lot of other artists.

So, I think it cycles. If you look at the last five years, you may look at the next five years and the landscape may be totally different.

That’s certainly been the case for you and your business.

You look at me, you look at my career, my resumé was rock. It was Texxas Jam, Ozzfest, Van Halen’s Monsters of Rock. And when I left [Clear Channel] and kind of had to do my two-year non-compete, I was able to carve out five acts: I had George, Tim [McGraw], Faith [Hill], Dixie Chicks, and Kenny Chesney.

I was working purely country for a while and then, when my non-compete was over, I tried to go back to claim my stake and realized I didn’t really want to do that. I stayed in country and then met this little girl when she was 17 years old named Taylor Swift and she’s a country darling.

She had one song on the radio. And her career evolved to make her the biggest artist in the world.

Through Taylor, I met Ed Sheeran. I met Shawn Mendes and Vance Joy. And through Lenore [Kinder], who works in Nashville for AEG Presents, I met the Lumineers. Right now, I’m pretty balanced with what I’m doing between country and pop. We’re going to work with Kelly Clarkson when she tours. But I still have George, Kenny, and I picked up Blake last year, Eric Church, so I shifted in the last few years.

So you and Nashville are a bit analogous?

I’m originally a New Orleans boy and I moved to Texas in 1975. I follow where the music takes me. I get excited about music still.

When Taylor was the first of three with George, I saw a star. It took me all of 15 minutes, with one song on the radio. She was special. Same thing with Ed Sheeran and Lumineers and Shawn Mendes when he was opening for Taylor. It was the same thing with Kenny, when he opened for George.

I look at my current career, and I say this as kind of funny but real: My career is six degrees of George Strait. Everything that I do in some way, with the exception of the Lumineers, is connected to George Strait.

Nashville is, I think, a town that is very, very progressive and a very artist town. It’s got everything and the cost of living there – they don’t have a state income tax, so some people are saying, ‘I don’t want to live in California or New York!’

In looking at Nashville, we realized you can’t just look at just the country business as a mirror image of the city’s business any more.

Look at who’s moved there. You have Kings of Leon down there, The Black Keys, Steven Tyler, Gary Tallent from the E Street Band lives down there now. There’s so many people who have slipped into Nashville who are not typical, yippee-ki-yay acts. That’s just who I can think of off the top of my head.

Look at the demographics. The lifestyle is so different than it was many years ago. You’ve got women in power there. Gay women and gay men in their business. It’s so diversified right now. Nashville is a pretty cool town. It’s something that’s real.

You live in Austin, the “Live Music Capital of the World.” But Nashville is “Music City.” What’s the difference and why?

I live in Austin, which is a big music city. Nashville has, like Austin, a music scene. But Nashville has a music business scene where Austin doesn’t. There’s no music business [in Austin]. There’s no management companies. There’s a few opening, but nothing like Nashville. There’s a handful of recording studios here.

Austin should be parallel in every respect with Nashville but it’s not. It’s Austin. It’s still got that “Keep Austin Weird” mentality. It’s the truth! It’s crazy.

I’m from New Orleans and everything is in slow motion there, and Austin is the same way. Gotta keep Austin weird. I don’t want to keep Austin weird; I want shit to happen!

New Orleans is the center of music history. You breathe history when you get off the plane or out of your car. It’s not progressive at all, which drives me absolutely insane. They’re still in that “Who dat?” moment.

I love New Orleans. It’s my hometown. I love Austin. But I don’t really work in Austin. My office is here and my home is here, and you’ve got two of the world’s biggest concert promoters here in Austin between me and the Charlies at C3 Presents. All three of them are buddies of mine. We live down the street from each other! They’ve got their thing and I’ve got my thing. We see each other at restaurants and airports, but that’s about it!