Q’s With Corrie Christopher Martin: LoveLoud Festival Raises $1 Million, Paradigm Agent Talks Imagine Dragons, Riot Fest, ‘DAII Team’ Initiative

– Corrie Christopher Martin

Corrie Christopher Martin, who joined Paradigm in 2013, has been with Imagine Dragons since their early club days nearly a decade ago and has guided the band into a worldwide touring force that is playing stadiums clear from Moscow to Salt Lake City. 

That city, often thought of a socially conservative stronghold, is where Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds has made it a personal mission to raise awareness of LGBTQ issues. He has become more than just an ally for the cause – his LoveLoud Foundation has led to a second-year music festival in the city selling close to 30,000 tickets, raising $1 million for charity and counting support from luminaries such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, musicians like Tegan and Sara’s Tegan Quin, and even from the Governor of Utah and the Church of Latter-Day Saints itself.

Christopher Martin was instrumental in the creation of the “Believer” documentary in which Reynolds explores the Mormon church’s attitude toward the LGBTQ community and the rising suicide rate of teens. 

Christopher Martin, who formed her own Fierce Talent in 1999 which joined The Agency Group in 2005, before she became VP at APA, represents other major artists such as Rise Against, K.Flay, Dirty Heads, Sublime With Rome, and Sir Sly. She spoke with Pollstar about her involvement in LoveLoud as well as Chicago’s Riot Fest, and Paradigm’s inter-office initiatives to raise inclusion and diversity within the agency. And she’s already busy working on next year’s LoveLoud, jokingly adding, “Bring me your artists!”  

 

Corrie Christopher Martin: The festival plays a pivotal role in the documentary. It was a last-minute thrown-together idea. Dan had this idea and wanted to do it in a park. It started off very small. The Dragons were just going to show up in a park and play and support this cause and bring attention to this issue, and then it evolved and became much bigger. My experience in festival production from Riot Fest really helped me dive in and help him pull this thing off and bring it to life. It certainly wasn’t ideal with such a last-minute lead time but we pulled it off. 

We put it on sale five weeks out, and sold out with 17,000 people and it was an incredible moment, it was just this experience that I don’t think any of us will ever forget. It was incredibly emotional and important and the energy that came out of that led us to realize that we need to continue the cause and continue with the festival. So we immediately got to work on 2018, and were fortunate enough to make it work with the Dragons’ schedule, and had some incredible artists like Zedd and Mike Shinoda and Tyler Glenn, who was also a part of the documentary and the first LoveLoud, also came on board and we sold out again. 

This time we moved into the Rice-Eccles Stadium and did nearly 30,000 people, and raised $1 million. 

(Apple CEO) Tim Cook introduced the band and Apple made a donation and was absolutely incredible. All our partners were incredible. AT&T, which was our title sponsor, really showed up in a spectacular way, not just from a financial standpoint but really used all of their assets to push the message and they did it in a way that we were incredibly happy with and they were a fantastic partner. They were very much a big part of how we were able to pull off that $1 million donation.

We could not have pulled off 2017 – or 2018 – if not for Dave McKay and his team (at United Concerts, now part of Live Nation Salt Lake City). They were incredible and put in a tremendous amount of time – nobody is getting rich off of this. They jumped on board right away without hesitation and went above and beyond what I think they thought they would be needed. I think it became a much bigger job than they thought (laughs). 

Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara was incredibly instrumental this year. I reached out to her team about them performing – Dan and I are both big fans – they’re both very vocal about LGBTQ issues, and thought they would be a perfect addition. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out for them to perform but those conversations led to Dan and Tegan starting even more important conversations. Tegan became very involved in many moves that we were making and ways that we were communicating with our LGBTQ community and how we really wanted to make sure that this year we were represented by a full spectrum of artists, especially LGBTQ artists. So Tegan was very involved in helping curate the lineup and speakers.

I think that what we are accomplishing is much more important and worth discussing than any naysaying that may be happening. I know Dan really tries to focus on that part of it. Obviously he acknowledges that there may be questions of why him, but I think I speak for both of us when I say that he’s absolutely the perfect person to be taking on a cause like this. He’s a well respected member of his community and has a loud voice and large platform and I think it’s incredibly brave and beautiful what he’s done.

On a social level, the most important thing that’s come out of both “Believer” and the LoveLoud Foundation and festival is the conversation – bringing awareness to the church’s stance on LGBTQ issues and just making people aware that we have a suicide epidemic happening. And that applies outside of Utah as well and outside the Mormon church. We just want to make sure that the kids are supported and loved and choosing life over ending it because they don’t have community support, which is what has been happening in Utah specifically.

It’s been an incredible ride and it just keeps getting better. I started working with them in early 2010. They didn’t have a record deal and they were playing teeny tiny rooms like The Viper Room. This touring cycle we’ll have sold over 1 million tickets in North America alone. They did play a few stadiums in North America, and obviously a substantial amount of arenas and amphitheaters. It’s been primarily an upward growth the entire time, we haven’t seen a dip at all, knock on wood. It’s very exciting to be a part of that. To ride that wave with them, I feel very fortunate.

Selling out Hersheypark Stadium, and Tinley Park in Chicago, the two nights at the Forum, that was all very exciting, and obviously LoveLoud was incredible as well. They had a sold-out run in Australia in May in arenas and a very successful run with Lollapalooza in South America. It’s definitely a very strong global artist, that’s for sure.

Jerod Harris / Getty Images – LoveLoud Festival
The second-year LoveLoud Festival brings nearly 30,000 people to Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City July 28, and raises $1 million for Dan Reynolds’ LoveLoud Foundation whose mission is to unconditionally love, understand, support and accept LGBTQ friends and family.

My involvement with Riot Fest is completely separate from Paradigm. I’ve been involved with Riot Fest longer than Paradigm, actually, and they were good enough to allow me to continue my involvement with Riot Fest when I joined the Paradigm family. LoveLoud I work on as representative of Paradigm in the fact that I’m Imagine Dragons’ and Dan Reynolds’ agent. Paradigm is not producing the festival. 

I simply act as the festival chair and I’m on the board of the LoveLoud Foundation.

I’ve certainly been involved in putting together festival properties for my artists, whether they’re curating it or partners, and I’m always looking for outside-the-box ideas for them to keep the train rolling. 

I think it’s become more common for artists to be multi-faceted and have different revenue streams and stay current. Especially if they don’t want to tour year-round, perhaps they want to have other properties they’re involved in. 

As far as being an agent and also being involved with a festival and dealing with agents, hopefully at this point most agents I deal with, whether it’s Riot Fest or regarding LoveLoud, understand that I do keep those things very separate, especially as it relates to Riot Fest. 

After being an agent for going on 25 years, it’s exciting to work on different projects and different aspects of the business. The fact that Paradigm allows me to do that is one of the reasons I’m here.

We’ve started the “DAII Team” – the diversity and inclusion initiative, which is to make sure that the underrepresented are represented at all levels at the company and that everyone has a voice and a seat at the table. My involvement with Time’s Up has really helped further that DAII Team goal along. It’s comprised of a group of people from our agency that are well-versed in struggles that happen in our industry with regards to being an underrepresented group. We’ve all made it a priority to do better, and this is a huge priority for (Paradigm Chairman) Sam Gores as well.

It’s hard to balance that and I can say that as a person who puts a lot of value in equality and diversity as does my partner, Michael Petryshyn at Riot Fest. It’s not for a lack of trying, it’s for a lack of options, especially when you’re programming a very specific type of festival. Hopefully 10 years from now we’re not having this conversation because we don’t need to. If we’re focusing on bringing women and other underrepresented groups up and making sure that they have a louder voice across all different platforms, we’re helping so that it looks more like the fanbase does.