Brilliant Corners’ Jordan Kurland: Musical Activism From The Bay To The White House (Executive Profile)

Anastasia Blackman – Jordan Kurland
Jordan Kurland

Jordan Kurland has been shepherding careers of acclaimed artists since the ‘90s, with an acclaimed roster of personal clients along with being part of cutting-edge and progressive events such as Noise Pop’s multi-genre Bay Area indoor festival and the multi-genre outdoor Treasure Island Music Festival.

As a founding partner in Brilliant Corners Artist Management, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Seattle, Kurland’s company represents an acclaimed roster including Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service, Toro Y Moi, Best Coast, Soccer Mommy, Real Estate, New Pornographers and Pup. Kurland’s passion for music has always been a labor of love, which the pandemic and 2020 made that much more difficult, of course. “For Best Coast, we literally pulled them off the road in Detroit when the world shut down, they were about 40% of the way through a tour,” says Kurland, who, like many, had notable clients, with new albums out at the end of February 2020 and ready to tour as usual throughout the rest of the year. Although creative projects like Soccer Mommy’s “virtual music video tour” in May, Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard’s daily livestream concerts, Toro Y Moi’s DJ sets and lots of writing kept artists busy, Kurland says the pandemic provided some time for related personal passions as well.

“For me personally, it meant a lot more time to work on political initiative stuff, the music compilations we did that raised more than $500,000 for voter’s rights organizations, things I normally might not have had time to do.”

It’s humble words coming from someone who’s always been politically active and using music as a way to bring change. In 2020, that meant, along with colleague Nick Stern quickly forming the “Team Joe Sings” advocacy efforts for Joe Biden’s Presidential campaign, which comes after Kurland’s experience as part of the entertainment advisory committee for Barack Obama (2012), Hillary Clinton (2016), and in 2004 launching election-related efforts with acclaimed author and novelist David Eggers, including the 2020 digital compilations “Good Music To Avert The Collapse of American Discography” which raised more than $550,000 in 48 hours for voter’s rights organizations. Kurland spoke with Pollstar while recovering from a first-in-a-while snowboarding trip to Lake Tahoe, reflecting on 2020, looking forward to the future, and the proud owner of a shelf full of jigsaw puzzles as a type of souvenir.

This interview is part of Pollstar’s 2021 Artist Management Directory, which can be purchased here.

Photo by Mike Windle/WireImage – Jordan Kurland
Kurland, pictured with Nicole Pepper, Carianne Marshall and Matt Marshall at the GRAMMY Foundation and MusiCares House Concert featuring The National on December 8, 2013, in Pasadena, Calif.

Pollstar: How did the “Team Joe Sings” project come together? With the pandemic situation it seemed it took longer than usual to get the music component going for the campaign. 

Jordan Kurland: I started conversing with the campaign pretty soon after it was clear Biden was going to be the candidate. I reached out to Michelle Kwan – one of the director of surrogates, the same former U.S. Gold Medal Olympic ice skater. A friend of mine who I’d worked closely with on Hillary’s campaign put me in touch with her. I was kind of surprised that I was one of the first people in the music business to get in touch. That’s largely because of the pandemic, there was so much confusion in the world. I knew I wanted to get involved again and I just decided rather than waiting around, I was proactive about it. They hadn’t really built out the team yet, Biden had just become the presumptive nominee, and they were trying to figure out how to run the campaign during a pandemic. In those early days I tried to connect people in the business to the campaign that were interested in being involved.

I voiced to Michelle in our first conversations, one of the frustrations with Hillary’s campaign was there were so many artists that wanted to get involved that were sidelined, because the focus was on the bigger talent. Of course I get that, but it felt like they had overlooked quote-unquote “tastemaker” artists. Michelle really heard that. Long story longer, in June Michelle called and said they had started having conversations with YouTube on how to do stuff there, and this eventually led to Team Joe Sings. 

Team Joe Sings ended up with a contingent of notable artists, such as Jazon Mraz, Chromeo, Kurt Vile, Colin Meloy, Los Lobos, Kesha, Jim James, Rob Thomas, Portugal. The Man, and many others doing weekly installments. How did it go?

The whole idea with Team Joe Sings was ‘What’s an easy lift for artists to get involved in the campaign?” – not asked to play the virtual convention on television, not asked to play a campaign fundraiser, like a John Legend or Barbra Streisand, but still want to lend their voice of support and bring along the fans. In the early days, it was hard to get people excited. Biden is not Obama, he didn’t bring out the same fervor as a Bernie or Elizabeth Warren but, also, having done some work around elections since 2004, I knew as you get closer, the stakes become more real and people will jump on board. And that was what happened. And a lot of artists, even if they weren’t excited from the get-go, a lot ended up channeling that energy to get out the vote. We did launch it during the DNC, my client, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service, was one of the first ones to go up. He played a Postal Service song and that was during the big brouhaha about what was happening at USPS and what was going on to slow down the mail. That got a lot of pickup, just the nature of that. There were memes and internet jokes about “such great heights” and The USPS and that stuff. The timing worked really well, and from there it got a lot easier to get artists.

Gibbard was one of the main faces of the COVID-era livestream. How did that come about? 

– Soccer Mommy
Soccer Mommy during the Austin stop of its “8-Bit Music Video Tour” that took place in May, with a different old-school videogame style video made for each market.

That first weekend of lockdown or shelter in place, I shot Ben a note, and at this point we’re thinking this would last a month or two. I said I was thinking It might be cool maybe to hop online every day for a week to play a song, just to give people something to do or something to look forward to. He said, “You know, I’ll do a full set, and it grew from there.” It was really great. Understandably it started being a lot, so we scaled it back to one show a week, and then eventually wound it down.

How about others on your roster?

For our clients in general, some have really thrived in terms of songwriting, some have found it hard to write because they’re so taken out of their day-to-day lives. Almost all of our roster was active in some regard. We were digging in on that.  Best Coast did a 10-year anniversary for their first album, we created a short pre-recorded performance with interviews and some archival footage – we did that back in August. Toro Y Moi did a handful of livestream DJ sets, so we’re just trying to keep busy. Whenever I talk to my dad he asks how I’m doing, and I say, “I’m busy.” He’s like, “Well what are you doing?” (laughs). He assumes without touring there’s nothing to do. For me personally, it meant a lot more time to work on political initiative stuff, the music compilations we did that raised more than $500,000 for voter’s rights organizations, things normally might not have had time to do. And for the clients, too. I manage She and Him and I plugged Zooey (Deschanel, the actress and singer) into the Biden campaign and she did a number of different events, some public-facing but one was more campaign worker facing and an inspirational type.

We also released a lot of puzzles (laughs). I have a shelf full of client puzzles now, because puzzles became so popular during the pandemic. 

Touring seems to be an inevitability but it’s still a matter of when. What do you see happening when the time comes?

We just have to operate with the idea or assumption that it’s going to happen and we’ll adjust accordingly. If Coachella doesn’t happen, do they roll the lineup over? Things like that need to be figured out. Clubs, we have a bunch of tours held for the fall and next year but don’t know when we can announce it. Is capacity going to be reduced, what are extra security costs going to look like? Assuming we’re going full bore into 2022, every artist is going to be on the road, so what’s that going to look like? On the one hand, there’s so much fervor to be out celebrating and seeing live music, but are we going to be in a recession? How cautious are people going to be in these circumstances? Are people going to see shows outdoors at the Hollywood Bowl or Greek but not the Echoplex? You have to hope for the best. For Best Coast, that tour that was canceled, we’ve re-booked it three or four times already. That is happening a lot. We’re trying to get holds for summer or next year, but you may be coming in at fifth or 10th hold, because artists are holding multiple time frames. No one knows what’s happening. We have to keep pushing the record date back.

For our roster, our income went down close to 80% because of the pandemic, and most managers are that way. No one wants to put a record out not knowing if they can tour to support it. I worked with Bob Mould of Husker Du for a number of years, are we’re still close. He put a record in September and said this is the first time in his career, that started in 1979, that he wasn’t able to support a record. 

Getty Images – Kurland
NoisePop: Two Peas In A Noise Pod? Kurland is a partner and co-founder of Bay Area multi-venue festival Noise Pop, as pictured with Les Claypool in 2007. Kurland says Noise Pop will continue in some fashion, serving a need to the creative and artist community.

With the vaccine rollout under way and case numbers going down, the current mindset is at least different as compared to last summer, right?

I feel confident there will be touring in 2022, what the fall looks like is still up in the air, but I am confident there will be touring next year. For us, looking at our roster at least, if you’re in a van and have minimal costs, you can go out. If you’re a larger band with two or three buses and a couple trucks, maybe you can scale down for less production and less crew for a variety of reasons – the deals have changed because of security costs or capacity is scaled down, but you can make it work. Bands touring in a bus, there’s not a lot of room for error, they’re not going back to van touring, and if the deal structure changes and you’re playing the Fillmore at 700 capacity rather than 1,200 capacity – that’s where I see the challenges. I think you’re going to see a lot of packaging next year, you’re going to be fighting for dollars, so how do you make it compelling? Say The National / Arcade Fire / The Shins/ The Killers are all coming through town one month, it’s going to cannibalize at some point. You’re going to have to see bands really packaging up to sell tickets, which is great but means less money for everyone. Perhaps there’s more sponsor dollars out there to get, because sponsors have been holding back on event-based dollars, but I don’t know. These are things that, I wouldn’t say keep me up at night, but concern me. I think it’s 2023 at the earliest where things start to normalize. Everyone is going to have to cooperate. Are promoters going to try to take advantage of the situation? No, but they’re going to want to pass through some of the costs. If you have to play a small club, new ventilation and COVID protocols, are you putting plastic between urinals in the bathroom?

I think in June we’ll have a pretty good idea if there’s going to be touring soon. That’s not a lot of time because normally if you have a tour going out in September, tickets might be on sale now. I think that’s when we’ll know; is the country hitting vaccination goals? I’m feeling confident. The Biden andmistaration has only been in a couple weeks at this point. We are operating under the assumption that there will be shows in the fall, until we hear differently. We’re not announcing yet but we have holds and dates.

How about Save Our Stages, a big victory for venues but others in the community as well?

We are able to apply for a grant, but there is still a lot of confusion around it. It’s wonderful it passed and it was incredible work by NIVA and NITO and those folks who dedicated all that time. $15 billion is a massive amount of money, but it’s not just concerts, it includes the opera and museums and it’s going to go fast. There’s still questions about that. The PPP deadline is March 31, here we are in February and still don’t know when we’ll be able to apply for Save Our Stages. What’s scary is we could apply for Save Our Stages and then not hear back by the time we missed the PPP deadline. The difference from PPP and SOS is different enough to take the risk, but I’d be worried a lot of people might not get either. Save Our Stages is amazing and going to help so many people and businesses that need it, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty for sure. 

Management is your core business but you also dabble in the restaurant business as an investor in a few local restaurants as well as co-founder of the influential Noise Pop Industries.

Music management is about 97% of my time, I’m still a part owner in Noise Pop so I have a promoter hat, too. I did Treasure Island Festival for 10 years, through the bitter end. It was great. The festival landscape had changed so much since we started Treasure Island in 2007. Looking around at the time, Outside Lands didn’t exist yet, so, aside from the Live 105’s BFD and other radio festivals there wasn’t really a festival here. We wanted to take the Noise Pop model and move it outside, with artists that appeal to our fanbase and create an intimate, inexpensive outdoor event. By the end of it, there were just so many festivals. 

You have the flagship festivals like Outside Lands, Bonnaroo, Lollapaloozas, Coachella, but it’s like everything. The festival marketplace needed to be shaken up a little bit – not in this way, of course. But what I used to say about Treasure Island and still believe is when you do a festival you need a point of view. You can’t just be about – we’re going to get disparate sounding bands and put them in a field and sell a bunch of tickets. Coachella was launched with a view, Outside Lands was launched with a view, with the great location and with open arms took in the Bay Area and San Francisco culture. I think that was it with Treasure Island, we never wanted to be 30-40-50,000 people, it was a music festival for people who don’t like music festivals. Noise Pop will be back. We don’t know if it’ll be back next year, we’re hoping it is. But Noise Pop is not a financially motivated festival. Kevin Arnold founded it in 1993 and I’ve been working with him since 1997. Kevin launched it because there was a need for something like it. People still appreciate it, the Bay Area music community has been through much with rising rents and the technology industry and everything else. It was a consistent musical event. Most headliners are international or national artists but it was always at least 50% local artists. We are definitely dedicated to bringing it back after the world opens up. There’s a lot of conversations on what Noise Pop will look like. And we do other events, we’re exclusive talent buyers for Cafe Du Nord and Swedish American Hall for the last five or six years.  

Anastasia Blackman – Kurland
2021 Artist Management directory cover

That was a lot of money raised for voter’s rights organizations with the “Good Music To Avert The Collapse of American Democracy ” and other releases. You’ve worked with author Dave Eggers before but this was monetized on a different level. 

We finally cracked the code on how to monetize it with Bandcamp Friday. Pup had done a Bandcamp Friday live album, and it did really well. Then a lightning bolt struck me, “What if we did this as a fundraiser?” I was hoping we’d raise $50,000. We got Shepard Fairey to create the artwork and poster and I knew that would sell well. My thought was maybe to raise 100 grand between the poster and record, and it ended up grossing $300,000, and we decided to do that again, in October. We had about 40 tracks on the first one, 77 tracks on the second one and that raised even more. It had Pearl Jam on it, and it helps to have an unreleased Pearl Jam track. It was a way for artists to get involved and for fans to support the election. All the money went to voters rights organizations. Then in December 

the Death Cab guys recorded a five-song EP of cover songs from artists from Georgia – R.E.M., Neutral Milk Hotel, Vic Chesnutt, TLC and Cat Power. We released that on Bandcamp Friday and raised $100,000 for Fair Fight. Those are definitely bright spots for us in a dark year. Death Cab was part of the star-studded Vote For Change Tour in 2004. It was mostly big artists like Pearl Jam, Springsteen, Dixie Chicks, John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, but it had Death Cab and My Morning Jacket and Bright Eyes supporting. Seeing Bruce Springsteen and Stephen Van Zandt talking to each other at the Bowery Hotel in New York, about to publicly endorse a candidate for the first time, it was pretty amazing. We flew on a private jet with Pearl jam and Tim Robbins the actor, he was doing a political satire movie at the time, as the Bob Roberts Band. So it was Pearl Jam and their tour manager, Death Cab, their tour manager and me, and Tim Robbins. So this is the first and probably last time I’m ever on a private plane, I’m like, “Can you imagine if this went down?” No one would even get to my name (laughs). 

You work with and personally know big music stars but you still get star struck. 

You get to know people, and they are just people, but I think it’s important to still hold some on a pedestal. I’ve had the good fortune of hanging out with Pete Townshend a handful of times. He wouldn’t walk up to me on the street but would know me if I came up and said hi.

Still, every time, I have to pinch myself, it’s like one of the greatest things in my life.