Features
Q’s With Emo Nite’s Babs Szabo: ‘It’s About The Culture And Listening To The Music You Love’
Photo by Beth Savaro – Emo Nite founders
T.J. Petracca, Babs Szabo and Morgan Freed
After singing Dashboard Confessional karaoke at a friend’s birthday party a few years ago, Emo Nite co-founders Babs Szabo and T.J. Petracca realized there weren’t many bars in Los Angeles that played pop punk or emo music. An idea was sparked to create an event where people could listen to the music they loved and the first Emo Nite (formerly known as Taking Back Tuesday) was held in December 2014 at a small Los Angeles bar called Short Stop.
What began as a simple concept, with Szabo, Petracca and fellow co-founder Morgan Freed taking turns playing DJ, expanded to events across the country and appearances at major festivals.
While the founders, who range in age from 29 to 34, still DJ at the events, they often share the stage with guest DJs such as Skrillex, Post Malone and members of The Used and Good Charlotte. Last year Emo Nite hit the road with 3OH!3 and Lil Aaron for a five-week fall tour and teamed with Goldenvoice to put on the Emo Nite Day festival. Plans in 2019 include nationwide tour dates and an Emo Nite set at Firefly Music Festival.
We recently called Szabo to talk Emo Nite.
Pollstar: Did you have previous experience putting on events?
Babs Szabo: Before we started Emo Nite I worked at Creative Artists Agency for a year and a half as an assistant in digital strategy and an assistant in touring. While I was in college I worked at Sony Music as a college marketing rep. All of that helped with Emo Nite but I didn’t necessarily plan any events before starting Emo Nite.
What about DJing?
We had zero experience DJing. In fact, we played off of an iPad for about a year. So we were literally winging it. Now I know the exact songs that people really react to. Artists will send us their playlists ahead of time and we give feedback but at the end of the day I want people to play what speaks to them.
Emo Nite’s slogan is: “We are not a band. We are not DJ’s. We throw parties for the music we love.” When Emo Nite started did you have to explain what it was about?
Definitely. Unless you’ve been to Emo Nite it’s kind of hard to understand what it is. But as soon as you go to Emo Nite you realize it’s not about who’s DJing, it’s not about anything other than the culture and everybody gathering under one room and listening to the music they grew up listening to and still love.
We always invite people from the crowd on to the stage. … It’s an event that brings people together, where nobody is above anyone else. You’re not far away watching a member of your favorite band DJing – you’re on stage with them and get to take photos with them and meet them. It’s kind of like a house party essentially and that’s the vibe we always want.
By the third Emo Nite you had Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus appearing as a guest DJ. How did artist involvement come about so early on?
With Mark DJing the third one, it kind of just happened accidentally. I reached out to All-American Rejects’ manager, who I knew from working at CAA, to book them and they weren’t available. He was friends with Mark and asked if he could do it instead and we were just like, “Um, I guess, sure!” (laughs)
Now the way we book artists is kind of all over the place. Sometimes we DM them on Twitter, sometimes we’ll go through the agent and manager, sometimes we’ll meet them at an event in person. At this point enough people know about it where it’s 50/50 us reaching out and artists reaching out to us.
Has it been a challenge to market Emo Nite and differentiate it from similar events?
In the beginning if we had an Emo Nite in San Francisco and we saw one pop up, we would try to figure out how to set ourselves apart. Overall our branding is really strong at this point and it’s never really affected the attendance so we just try to focus as much as we can on what we’re doing and figure out better ways to run our event rather than looking at what other people are doing.
Do you have any takeaways from participating in Pollstar Live!’s post-Warped Tour panel?
Everything Kevin [Lyman] said was really insightful. It’s really cool that he sees a lot of himself in us and that he said we’re doing it for the right reasons. That really resonated with me.
We really look up to him because he’s been such a fundamental member of this whole culture. Every day I think about that and I’m like, “I don’t want to let Kevin down!” (laughs)
Can you talk about Emo Nite’s involvement with community?
One of our founders, Morgan, started a community meeting almost a year ago [where] a bunch of people get together and talk about addiction, anxiety and anything they have going on. And they have presentations about helping people when they’re overdosing. It’s a [chance] to talk about all these underlying issues in society that not a lot of people discuss.
And Emo Nite helped put on LA Gives Back in December.
That was the third year of that charity event and 100 percent of the proceeds go to homeless shelters in L.A. It was really cool to [team up] with a bunch of other promoters that run parties similar to ours, with different genres of music, and to throw this event where we could give back to the community. We try to do things like that as often as we can.