All Aboard The Yung Gravy Train: Midwestern-Born Rapper Becomes A Hard-Ticket Touring Draw

It’s hard to find a better example of the modern direct-to-fan, bottom-up artist development than Yung Gravy, who barely out of college now has more than 100 headline shows under his belt, 1 million-plus Instagram followers and his upcoming co-headline tour with Dillon Francis is sponsored by video sharing social network TikTok.

“The gravy train keeps rolling,” says Paradigm’s Matt Adler who has been with Yung Gravy, 23, real name Matthew Raymond Hauri, since the beginning, although the beginning wasn’t very long ago. “The kid hasn’t stopped since January 2018.”

Rewind back to the University of Wisconsin, Madison alum’s pre-touring days while still in college and it all adds up.

With a knack for style, charisma (6’7” tall with blonde locks) and college studies in marketing and finance, Gravy started putting out music with clever, provocative lyrics – a nod back to classic soul stylings but with a current, trap-infused sound.

“With that music in mind, and with my branding background, all of that related to how I built the brand and over time adjusted it,” Gravy tells Pollstar, adding that he started putting music on SoundCloud, “which is totally dead now,” around 2016.

“Whoever discovered me at the time, it was special – ‘Oh, he doesn’t show his face and it’s really unique music.’ I think it was really a word-of mouth-thing where people would really get into it and become cult fans and then show their friends.”

The humble beginnings led to a coming out of sorts, with the “Mr. Clean” EP and video that dropped in late 2017 now having more than 47 million YouTube hits.

Gravy himself laughs that the video had a budget of about $50, “directed by me and a friend with a camera.”

Adler admits the touring strategy early on wasn’t overly complicated, with Gravy sending screenshots of tweets showing fans wanting him to play their city.

“‘Come to Orlando, I’ll bring 60 people. You gotta come to Atlanta. Please come to Seattle,’” Adler recalls of the tweets. “These types of comments weren’t happening once or twice. It was the standard general comment on social media.” From there, always headlining, the word of mouth and hard-ticket sales just kept growing. Last year’s headline touring demonstrates a clear trajectory between the spring “Experience The Sensation Tour” and fall’s “Experience The Sensation PT. 2.”

For instance, April 26’s Brighton Music Hall show in Boston sold out at 500 tickets while Sept. 27’s House of Blues Boston stop moved 1,833 tickets, grossing just shy of $60,000.

 “Basically we’ve been of the mindset of ‘Let’s not overthink or be super precious or wait til a song is dropping,’” Adler says, mentioning sellouts in markets like San Antonio, London (1,600-capacity five months in advance) and Gravy’s native Michigan, where he sold 1,500 tickets to the Intersection and, after that, was the first artist announced to be playing the new Fillmore Minneapolis Feb. 21, which sold out well in advance at 1,900 tickets.

Strong fall showings reported to Pollstar include more than 1,000 tickets sold at Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, The Orange Peel in Asheville, N.C., and Boulder Theater in Colorado.

For the next run, Yung Gravy is teaming with Dillon Francis for the “Sugar, Spice and Everything Ice Tour,” which takes in 3,000- to 5,000-capacity rooms largely in college markets March 23-April 25.

“They both knew of each other and really liked what they were doing,” says TMWRK Management’s Henley Halem, who noted Dillon Francis is also a TMWRK client. “It started with them collaborating on a song, and we thought it could be interesting to do this tour together.”

The fit seems to have worked, with early strong sales at the Echostage, Sylvee in Madison, The Masonic in Detroit, and Stage AE in Pittsburgh among others, and fans on social media eating up the collaboration.

“I’ve never seen an artist like him where he’ll go play a small room at the House of Blues and then they’ up us and he’ll sell out the bigger room,” Halem says.  “You don’t see that a lot. Before the show even happens we’re bumped up to a bigger-capacity room.”

Gravy himself adds that it’s important to stand out and do things differently to make a lasting impact with fans.

“Every tour, I’m always thinking about how to make the best impression and create the long-term cult fans,” he says, adding how during shows they’d pour “Gravy” milk into cups in the front rows, or give away rotisserie chicken to fans during his “Rotisserie” track.

“Some venues got kind of mad at first about that,” he says. “But I think that’s a good way to set yourself apart from what other artists are doing.

“At one point in the set, if the crowd hadn’t really been moshing, we’d say, ‘OK guys it’s time to start moshing, we got the perfect mosh song for you,’ and we’d play ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua.

“It was just hilarious to watch people mosh super hard to that song. It’s just different. Do the meet and greets, do weird things.”

The upcoming tour is “Powered by TikTok,” showing the artist’s social media savvy and self-marketing chops paying off in real time.

“For my fanbase, Instagram is huge but also TikTok, I do have the younger fans,” Gravy says, adding he gained 1 million followers in two days after posting a video there.

“Then I posted another video, it was just me performing it and I had the crowd yelling the lyrics, it had 60 million plays, and it was ridiculous because that’s more than the song has on Spotify,” he says.

While the fans have eaten up the gravy like candy, the press admittedly hasn’t picked up on the sensation quite yet.

“What it comes down to is in 2020 and over the last few years, the discovery of music has completely changed,” Halem says. “He really paid attention and learned to use social media in a certain way.

“This is really word-of-mouth, discovery, Spotify played a big part of it, YouTube is a big part of it. Early on he made friends with influencers at YouTube that would drive fans to his music. TikTok has also been a huge place for Gravy.”

While star power is hard to quantify even for those who possess it, Gravy says he got used to the limelight quickly.

“I guess it was kind of scary at first, but I’ve been always an outgoing and charismatic dude,” he says.  “It just felt like, OK, if I can be personable, that’s a good start at least. The first few [shows] I was nervous for, but I figured it out.”

With a new album released with collaborator and friend bbno$, Baby Gravy 2, on Valentine’s Day, the Gravy train continues to run.

“Dillon and I are dropping small project before our tour,” he says, adding, “and I’ve been writing a bunch of other solo stuff. I’m not exactly sure when it’s going to be released but I want to keep getting music out. It’s fun that way.”

Going forward, he says he hopes to headline outdoor shows and perhaps come up with a festival concept.

“We’ve sold out each level and keep going up, doing the big indoor House of Blues or whatever.

“I think it’d be cool to do an amphitheater tour in the summer, something like that,” he says. “Also the idea of setting up cool festivals, like Camp Flog Gnaw, I think I’d like to do something like that.”

His reach is worldwide, with Halem adding that Australia/New Zealand and Europe were fully sold out in 2019.

“I really want to get back to Australia,” Gravy adds. “I haven’t toured there in a while, and that place is so fun.”