Executive Profile: Live Nation's Kelly Kapp Bridging The Gap Between Clubs & Theatres And Beyond

– Kelly Kapp
with Dora, the 2-pound Pomeranian.

The story of Kelly Kapp is one of seeming contradictions. The former fashion design student, daughter of longtime concert promoter Bruce Kapp, had no intentions of getting into the concert business – let alone becoming a metalhead promoter booking up to 800 shows a year and championing bands like Amon Amarth and their actual-onstage Viking ship.

“I saw what stress it was, I thought it was weird that my mom had all the same friends from when she was in fifth grade in Chicago, and my dad’s friends were Howard Kaufman and Dennis Arfa and Howard Rose,” Kapp says. ‘Why doesn’t my dad have normal friends like everybody else?’ My friends’ dads would go golfing on a Saturday, and my dad would be on the phone rolling calls to get the Aerosmith count in the arena. I just thought it was so weird.”

The SFX rollup of the ’90s and early 2000s brought Bruce Kapp to Los Angeles, where Kelly was attending design school, “And I got kind of roped in to doing part-time ticket counts.”

“I used to spend from nine o’clock to six o’clock pulling every audit for every Cher farewell show, every Josh Groban show, really looking through the audits … Had anybody told me I was going to do math for a living, I would have told them they were full of crap.” She reluctantly took a position with Ozzfest producer Jane Holman, who’d worked with Bruce Kapp at PACE, and quickly found her calling.

“The guys that I work with in clubs and theaters with, most of them don’t even know anything about my father. They just know me,” she says. “I was able to really carve my own path and got to cut my own relationships.”

– Kelly Kapp
presenting a cake to Corey Taylor at Sunset HOB with then-project manager, Denise Gonzales. “Part of the cake was a House of Blues stage and the lights on the stage cake actually worked.”

Now reporting to both Live Nation Clubs & Theatres President Ron Bension and head of U.S. Concerts Bob Roux, whom Kapp has known since she was 6 years old, the second-generation concert promoter has seen much change since her dad’s era, which included years at PACE Concerts, Cellar Door and others and continued to the sudden and unexpected end of his life in 2008, not before proving naysayers wrong with smash hit tours like David Lee Roth’s return to Van Halen and the New Kids On The Block toward the end of the 2000s.

“I think my dad passed away on a Tuesday and New Kids on the Block went up that Friday and blew out in a few minutes, and I felt like it was my dad still telling the world, ‘Hey man, even in my death you guys kind of second guessed me a lot of stuff, and I’m still selling out tours from the beyond.’”

Armed with the 2-pound Pomeranian named Dora, “the adorable duchess of Fluffington,” Kapp is now so deep in it that she actually got married between Lamb of God sets at a show she was promoting at the Palladium, walking down the aisle with acoustic guitar accompaniment by Nuno Bettencourt and with celebrities like Kat Von D wanting to attend.

This interview is part of Pollstar’s 2020 Talent Buyer directory, which can be purchased here.

Pollstar: So you got your start in the amphitheatres division.

Kelly Kapp: I said maybe in a year or two I’ll go over to House of Blues and just tell them, “Hey, I want to do this from a more developmental perspective.” And we happened to acquire House of Blues while I was biding my time. The touring division wasn’t that robust because there were only a handful of House of Blueses, and people like Kevin Morrow had that on lock, and they would get together and kind of put the tour offers together as the buyers at HoB, so I was kind of the first one over in the club and theater department. That grew very quickly. We’ve acquired so many venues since I’ve been in the division. I used to put these little tour offers together and now we own a million Fillmores and a million HoBs, and then the one-off branding that we have with the iconic venues from the Irving Plaza that we’re renovating right now in New York to the Tabernacle down in Atlanta and its rich history.

Live Nation has been clear about its goal to bring artists up through the club level with recent acquisitions like SoCal’s Chain Reaction and Spaceland.

And it’s so important in a market like LA, right? So many artists, if you’re going to make a statement, it’s LA, it’s New York, it’s national. So you want to be able to have that first step and say, “We’re able to be here from the beginning, and you’re not fighting on that level once an artist has kind of come up, and kind of say, “Okay, but now we want to get involved.” You get to say, “We’ve been here from day one,” and we can take it from the top to the bottom, bottom to the top.

It’s really exciting to be able to put together tours when we really do have every touchpoint. And then when you hear people say, “Oh, you guys don’t have a venue here.” Literally you feel like within six months then we end up having a venue there. I was looking at something the other day, and it’s like we can book an eight-date tour in the Carolinas and not be within radius of any market. So anybody can go tour the Carolinas for over a week and not even butt in to ticket sales in another market.

But it’s always the artist’s choice where they ultimately play, right? If a band wants to do the 9:30 Club, they do the 9:30 Club.

– Amon Amarth cake
“the craziest cake I have probably done to date. It is a Viking ship on a map of America with all the guys rockin’ out on the ship.”

I think that every once in a while there is an artist and it’s important to them, and I don’t think that we necessarily throw them out with the bathwater. I think that people used to think we took this hard line and it was this or nothing. If you want to work together, you always find a way. The 9:30 Club’s smaller than Fillmore (Silver Spring), so if that means, hey, it’s really important to the manager and agent and label (to play the 9:30 Club), and they think this is what’s going to kick off their career, then guess what? Second time in the market we’re selling out a Fillmore, 2,000 cap.

But I think that what we bring to the table is helping sway a lot of those decisions, right? When you just put the marketing out there and say, “Guys, here’s the reach. We own the amphitheaters in the region. We’re booking all of these places in Baltimore. Here’s what your affinity list is going to look like in comparison.” A lot of times that logic can win the fight.

Does Live Nation operate with an unfair advantage and therefore harm indies?

My father was an independent promoter and when I was born there certainly wasn’t AEG and Live Nation. So I know the old school way of having to fight to get that one show in Chicago, that one show in Houston, and I have a great respect for the independent promoters, but I think it’s also really interesting to see because we really are a network of independent promoters. That’s what Live Nation is, right? And to be able to have the wherewithal to listen to people like a Mike Belkin or a Rick Franks, but also have these younger guys that are coming up. Josh, who we just picked up in Pittsburgh, and Adam Baronfeld in Salt Lake City. It’s really cool to see a generation, and I’ve got to tell you, I have never met one person on our network that was an independent promoter, came under the fold of Live Nation and regretted it for one second. Every person that has been out there to be an independent promoter is just like, “I’m so happy that I did this because just the resources that Live Nation has makes it so much easier for me to have people go, ‘Absolutely I want to do business with you.’” That’s, I think, a really big testament to what (CEO) Michael Rapino has built. I think everybody always looks at us as, “Oh, the big bad. The largest or the whatever,” and this is a company of people that fought really, really hard, cut their teeth in the business, their particular market.

Working with Ron and Ben, they have a lot of respect for the independent promoters. They’re talking all the time about who are the guys and women that are making strides? Who are the people that we want to cut deals with? We’re dealing with Andy Serrao down at Chain Reaction now, just because of what that building means to this scene, and I think that’s really exciting that we still have such a respect for the independent.

One of the biggest changes in recent years has been marketing on the national level, right?

Live Nation does such a good job in marketing. I think about it all the time, it’s so bizarre to me. In my dad’s generation you were a concert promoter. Buying the show was step one. You had to get it away from all the other promoters, then you had to figure out how the hell to sell it, right? You had to go get your radio proposal, you had to print your flyers, you were the marketer.

Now, we have whole marketing divisions. We have a whole social media division. So as a concert promoter, it’s a much different job than it used to be because you’re sitting down with teams of people talking about social, talking about radio, talking about if print still has an impact, and that’s not what the job was decades ago. Sometimes I feel like, “My God, my dad would be just so out of his mind excited.” That’s what he would be sitting up on Saturday morning doing now. He’d be looking at his ticket counts on his TM app, while he looked at the marketing mix, and it’s really exciting to see that. And I think that the agents, the managers now understand that, yeah, they could grind for the extra dollar or say, bring the ticket down, but having a partner that truly understands their band, how these fans are consuming the band and the tickets, is almost priceless.

– Kelly Kapp Frank Turner
Frank Turner and The Sleeping Souls, with manager Charlie Caplowe, agent Nick Storch, and Tre their TM at Lost Evenings Three this year at Boston House of Blues where the band played four sold-out nights.

It’s good to be able to have somebody in it with you nationally. It used to be this thing of having this promoter over here, having that promoter over there, but really being able to talk about 20, 25, 30 dates at one time and looking at it from the perspective that a label or manager or agent used to and now have a promoter in that perspective with you is really beneficial. Because you can say, “Oh wow, Chicago blew out in two seconds. Our Monday in Cleveland seems a little light. What spending can we move over from Chicago? What was working in Albuquerque on their Monday that we can apply over here to Cleveland?”

You’ve seemed to find a real way to stay connected to your father while not living in his shadow.

I was shitting my pants. I felt like my dad had such a reputation that these people we’re going to expect of me, and because I didn’t want to do this, I wasn’t intently listening on Saturday morning. I wasn’t sitting right next to him going, “Oh, what does this mean? How does that work?” To be honest with you I begrudgingly took this project manager job working for Jane Holman, and a few weeks in I realized that through osmosis I really did know more than I thought I did, just from being there and hearing the conversations.

You know, when my dad passed away I think I really realized that everything happens for a reason, and my dad set me up to be able to take care of my family. He knew what my destiny was, and even though I miss him every day, the job is what keeps me connected to him. It’s very interesting too because I made the moves to clubs and theaters. I used to see my dad 10-12 hours a day, even though I wasn’t working for him, he was an office over from me. When I made the move to clubs and theaters I moved to a different office, and when my father passed away, again it was kind of a blessing in disguise. I wasn’t used to being with him 10-12 hours a day anymore. I had my own office, a different location that I was going to.

And what’s interesting is I’ll have this generation of the Bob Roux who my dad gave his first job to and Rick Franks and people like that, that are like, “Your dad’s a legend.” It’s so interesting to be a second generation concert promoter. I feel so lucky to be in this unique space with the Belkins, with the Kopliks, with the McElraths of the world.

Do you think business is done differently now?

In my dad’s day, nobody thought that they were doing a good job or getting things done unless you were enraged, screaming bloody murder, cursing at each other. And I think that our generation has taken a little more of the page of, “Look, if we want to work together, we know that there is a deal that’s going to be able to be worked out.”

Of course I have to chase things that I really want. Maybe a band doesn’t want to do a tour deal. Maybe they think there’re specific venues and markets that we don’t operate that they think is really important to making their career, but I think that kind of going in and having the passion for the music and the bands really makes a difference.

I think it’s another generation of agents, too. They used to just grind you against the local guy or the other guy. “Well, this guy’s paying me two more dollars, well this guy’s paying me $5,000 …” and it used to be a grind.

And the agents have to realize when they come to you and they’re like, “Cool. I want the ticket price to be $2, but I need the band to make 50 grand.” Unfortunately those numbers just don’t jive, right? So it’s always greasing the wheels of how low can we get the ticket to super serve those fans, but still make sure that the band can pay their mortgage, get a bus, be comfortable on the road.

Is rock back, has it never gone away, or have things just sort of become more sophisticated and specialized?

Everybody tells me that I’m kind of an anomaly. I’ll book over 800 shows this year, most of them being hard rock and metal.

A lot of people say, “To be a woman, you book more hard rock and metal than anybody in the world.” Look, I think that rock and metal has always been kind of dismissed. It’s always been the underdog. It’s always been the lonely island, but its fans are diehard. If you’re a Slayer fan, you’re going out to those farewell shows, and you’re talking about the years and decades you’ve been seeing Slayer, right? You’re talking about the first time you saw them, the time you saw them here, the time you traveled there. I think that unfortunately our genre of hard rock and metal doesn’t really get the respect it deserves.

The hard rock and metal stuff can take a slow and steady build, but once you hit in that genre, you can have a career until you decide you no longer want to be a band.

And a career where you’re able to pay your bills, you’re not having to take a second job when you’re not on the road, and that’s really exciting, right? I think there’s a lot of bands in that genre that just because they’re not headlining amphitheaters on a regular basis, they’re really not given the respect. A band like Lamb of God, Killswitch Engage who’ve gone in between singers, and a lot of these up and coming bands. Dance Gavin Dance, Parkway Drive, I mean, Parkway Drive is a huge band in Australia. They’re headlining 100,000-person festivals, and here we’ve slowly been building them from a Sunset HoB back in the day to a sellout Sunset HoB, and finally with Killswitch Engage and Parkway Drive, there we were at a Palladium, at a sellout. It’s kind of sad, but I don’t think that there’s necessarily a resurgence, I think that the light just isn’t shone on the genre and the fans.

Let’s hear more about your Lamb of God wedding (condensed version).

– Kelly Kapp
with Dream Theater manager Frank Solomon.

My husband and I thought we wanted to get married in Vegas on New Year’s Eve. Went to Vegas, everything was paisley carpets, smelled like chicken, and I was devastated. I was like I don’t know where to go from here. I had a huge sponsored Lamb of God tour coming to the Palladium.

Live Nation had just spent millions of dollars renovating the Palladium, taking the chandeliers from the ‘50s down and gold leafing them and the venue was just gorgeous. And I went, “OK, can I get married at a Lamb of God show? Does this make sense? Is my husband’s grandmother going to come to a Lamb of God show?”

We literally said we’re going to do this insane cake, and if they say that they can make this cake with huge skulls all over it and everything under the sun, if they can make this cake in time, we’re going to process it, getting married at this Lamb of God show based on that. And we called the cake place and they said, “If you can be here by 4:00 p.m. today.” So it was on, it was ridiculous.

So I walked down the aisle to Jane Holman, who was my mentor who had probably drank a little too much at that point, with my husband’s grandmother in a leather jumpsuit at a Lamb of God show.

How does Dora The Duchess of Fluffington, who you call the real star, fit in?

Yeah, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve become the quintessential L.A. asshole who carries a 2-pound dog in a bag everywhere I go. I actually tell Live Nation, “Dude, she’s making more money for the company than I am because the tour managers used to call and scream about “earlier loading, more catering.” And now they’re just like, “Can the adorable Duchess of Fluffington come please?” I showed up to Boston for our sold-out Frank Turner festival, sold 10,000 tickets for four Boston House of Blueses in literally less than 90 minutes, and I walk in and Frank comes around the corner, “Adorable. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.” I’m like, “Hi Frank. Good to see you. How’s it going? How you been my friend.”

So he’s calling his fiancée, “Dora’s here. Dora’s here.” I’m like, “You know what? We literally need to start a new generation of promoters and they need to be 2-pound dogs,” because when people are on the road and missing their family and missing their pets, they’re super happy and excited to see a dog.