Birds Of A Feather Rock Together: Pigeons Playing Ping Pong’s Flock Is Reaching New Heights

Jay Blakesburg – Pigeons Playing Ping Pong

Going to a Pigeons Playing Ping Pong show is always a bit of an adventure, as you can never really be sure which songs you are going to get. The band may choose to keep the setlist tight, to play alternate versions, or may veer into 15-minute jams at various points, depending on the energy in the room. That fluidity in the show gives band members freedom to remain creative onstage, and it gives the members of its growing fanbase, “The Flock,” reason to follow them from city to city, a la The Grateful Dead.

“A lot of our fanbase tours with us for weeks on end. Some fans are coming along for the entire four-week West Coast run this year … which is really exciting and inspires us as musicians to write unique sets every night,” PPPP guitarist Greg Ormont told Pollstar. “It’s quite an honor to have these people give up a week of their life to join us on the road. We really don’t take it lightly.”

A Pigeons show does guarantee goofy jokes and onstage antics, dynamic improvisation and musicianship, and tons of positive energy. The band has been making waves in the jam band scene and at various festivals around the country since forming in 2009, and has proven it draws a crowd and engages new fans through its soft ticket sales.

“Obviously, they’ve been playing more and more festivals, bigger festivals,” one of the band’s agents, Karl Morse of Paradigm, told Pollstar. “We’ve been carving out the smaller 2,000- to 4,000-cap jam band festivals in the Northeast and Midwest, trying to minimize those and hit some of the bigger ones where they can convert new fans who might not know the band.”

Ethan Berlin, the band’s other agent, also of Paradigm, told Pollstar that PPPP’s routing strategy is to take on various 5,000- to 10,000-cap festivals in the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast during the festival season; to tour the West Coast soon after the fests; and to follow up on the festival markets in the late fall to avoid radius clauses.

“It is hard to crossover a jam band, especially these days. But we feel strongly that if anyone can, it can be them,” Berlin said.

“We’re at a place right now where we are lucky to use the power of ‘no,’” Morse added. “We can pass on things that conflict with the plan, whether [a festival] is asking too much on play restrictions or the timing is not right. The band is in demand and there’s a lot of festivals out there, both in the jam world and the greater landscape.”

The schedule shouldn’t be hard for Pigeons to handle, as at its peak the band was playing nearly 200 shows a year. During those formative years, many of the band’s managerial, press, and booking duties were done by the members themselves, effectively routing tours on their own.

Josh Brasted / WireImage – Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
Don’t Let The Pigeons Drive The Bus: Greg Ormont and Ben Carrey of Pigeons Playing Ping Pong play Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., June 7. The band is proving to be an in-demand festival act because of its musicianship and ability to engage different audiences with different versions of its songs.

“[Now] we’re realistic with what we ask,” PPPP guitarist Jeremy Schon told Pollstar. “We’ve been there asking venues for gigs; festivals for slots ourselves. We know they can’t just wave the magic wand and get us an amazing slot. We know what we need to do now that we’re not booking ourselves is deliver the best possible show we can.”

The band’s knowledge of its own business helped manager Dave DiCianni of Mammoth Music Group cut his teeth and grow into the role, initially bringing primarily financial expertise.

“They were more adept at a lot of things than I was,” DiCianni said. “The nuts and bolts of what they were doing, [especially in touring] they were way more versed in it than I was. Jeremy and Greg kind of showed me the ropes and built me into a band manager.”

Now that DiCianni has relieved the band of managerial responsibilities, he said a key challenge all jam bands face is getting fans to buy tickets early.

While that mountain has not yet been fully climbed, a key strategy has been nurturing the sense of community among fans.

“I think our fans feel like we’re normal people and they’re able to reach out and provide feedback,” DiCianni said. “The community is flourishing right now. People are coming to see the band 20-plus times a year. It’s just invaluable, the support this community has shown us.”

In order to nourish this sense of community, DiCianni helps to encourage meetups for fans before shows and coordinates with superfans who organize many of the regional fanbases.

“There’s fans that I talk to every day, or nearly every day,” DiCianni said. “I wake up in the morning … I’ll have 50 notifications of people asking me what the merch is gonna look like, when can they expect a recording to be available, etc.

“We definitely try to make sure those people realize we appreciate them, are hearing their questions, are addressing them and making them feel like a valuable part of the Flock.”

The Flock is giving PPPP a new way to hedge against the late-buying patterns most jam bands face: multiple-night stands in established markets. Rather than make the jump to sheds and arenas immediately, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong is taking multiple nights in markets like Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore and Boulder, Colo., to draw fans from tertiary markets, offering discounted tickets for multiple-night attendees, and finding other creative ways to incentivize early buying.

Since the fanbase is young and lots of the business is still walk-up, ticket prices tend to be less than $25 for most PPPP headline shows, though Berlin and Morse acknowledge that the price will eventually have to increase as they move to bigger rooms.

With the band’s growth, it is checking career goals off its bucket list: Bonnaroo, check, (with a Thursday night play that drew a massive crowd to their tent); Red Rocks Amphitheatre, check, (alongside headliner

But the band’s biggest accomplishment remains something it has been doing since its beginnings: its own music festival, Domefest, which was held in Bedford, Pa., this year.

“Domefest was the first music festival I ever attended,” Ormont told Pollstar. “I kind of had that

life-changing music festival experience. What I didn’t quite realize … is how much work it really is. … When we drive into other festivals, we are looking at port-a-potty placement, the amount of fences they had to rent, the layout of their parking lots, how they are using volunteers.

“It’s the same thing if we open for a band we respect, we observe how their team operates and [which ones] are trying to be a smooth and happy organization, doing things the way we would want to do it.”

Schon concurred that Domefest, which was originally his brainchild with a friend from the University of Maryland, is a ton of work, but has given the band that much more of an understanding of the business surrounding their craft.

“Every time we play a music festival we are taking note of all the little details the organizers put into the event and we know how much work that took,” Schon said. “My favorite thing is being able to curate an artist lineup every year that our fans may or may not know. I love being able to expose our fans to new music.”

It is the love for music, Schon and Ormont said, that helps the band draw on energy from the crowd and provide a unique, high-quality musical experience, each night.

“I think the fact that we play live so much has shaped our approach as songwriters. Our songs are kind of serving the live purpose,” Ormont said. “If we do an improvised section that has people dancing, maybe we write a song, we try to recreate [that] moment.”

Even on weeks when the band isn’t on tour, Ormont said the members try to get quality rehearsals at least once a week. “The more we play together, the more we can anticipate each other’s tendencies.”

While the band is all about positivity, Ormont said PPPP has to work hard to stay in flight: “We love working hard, it’s engrained in us. We know that this is a dream job, but it’s work and anything worth having takes work. It’s been pretty surreal from the earliest days, but we feel like we are just getting started.”

Justin Mierzejewski of Miz Changes Photography – Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
Alex Petropulos, Greg Ormont, Ben Carrey, and Jeremy Schon.