CAA’s Matt Galle Talks New Agency Home

Matt Galle: I started at CAA on June 15, then we had a short week for the Fourth, so a little less than a month, three weeks. Back in February I told Paradigm and the Wasserman people I was not going to renew my contract that was coming up this August, that I was going somewhere else. From then till about June, it’s been back and forth to figure out what I wanted to do, and getting my exit agreement done. Luckily, they let me out early, so that was good. There was a lot of back and forth, and I just stayed out of it and let the lawyers figure it out.

I’m excited and diving in, getting to know the different people and departments. I’m going to LA next week to meet a bunch of people in person, literally on-boarding the different artists and different departments so they’re familiar with them, know their pricing, what they’re trying to do and their interests.

It was, it totally was. This past year really opened my eyes to what other revenue streams you gotta be focusing on and tapping into, and new ones for the artists you represent, to really be a valuable member to the team, especially when a lot of them are sitting at home trying to pay their bills.

I wanted to be Switzerland about it – I was at Paradigm for 12 years – and wanted to talk to everyone and get a feel for what other places felt like and would be like, and find where I would fit the most. I feel that’s at least justice to give to my clients, rather than to just choose one place. After all the due diligence, several meetings and conversations, leaning into my recent colleagues that left Paradigm to join CAA and telling me how it’s been for them, what’s different between the companies and services – I felt like there was a fit for me. And then [CAA music execs] Rob Light, Darryl [Eaton], Mitch [Rose] and Rick [Roskin] told me about the void and need for leadership in the New York office, that was really important to me. When people think of CAA, a lot of times they’re thinking of Beverly Hills, that’s the mothership and headquarters, but I feel like now there’s a path and a challenge to build up the New York office and make it as badass as possible. 

There’s no drama, we’re super cool. I love everyone at Paradigm, I learned a lot from a lot of people there and I love everybody there. I just have to do what feels right to me at this point. It’s just a different regime now.

It’s busy! It’s busy now. Everybody wants to work, it’s go-go-go! It’s time. It feels like we’re behind the ball. We stopped waiting forever and now it’s like “Oh, what are we doing now?!” (Laughs) We’re far enough ahead now that you can get good venues on holds and have enough lead time to put your shows and tours on sale to sell out. It’s still a little harder to do a world tour because there’s places that aren’t as far as the U.S. You’re going to have to not care about the days of the week. You’re going to have to play a Monday or Tuesday. If you want to play the Bowery Ballroom or Troubadour or 9:30 Club or Madison Square Garden or whatever, you’re going to play the date that is available. You’ll get your anchors first in the hottest venues with the toughest schedule and then you route your tour around those. If you want to play a Friday or Saturday night, you might have to play a sub-par venue, or plan and work further out in advance. 

It’s client-by-client. My Chemical Romance was back in March or even February. They wanted to make sure the tour happened, indoors and arenas, at 100% capacity, without restrictions. At that point it was hard to tell them – and still right now it’s hard to tell them – 100% that this fall it could happen everywhere. Obviously, Europe was not ready, so we made the executive decision to play it safe, to push it all to the same time next year. Nobody had a problem waiting, and we don’t think the fans will either. Everyone’s been holding on to their tickets.

I have Jxdn on the MGK (Machine Gun Kelly) tour, he’s direct support on that. That’ll be cool. He’s also doing Lollapalooza in a couple weeks. That’ll be his first real show, really, so that’ll be a cool first show. I have individual shows – Nessa Barrett is going to do her debut shows, Bella Poarch is going out doing her debut shows with Sub Urban, they have a co-bill. Dove Cameron has some shows that sold out before COVID, we’re going to move those to fall, those will happen in October. We’re excited for her to finally get out playing because she has a huge fan base. Emo Nite, which is a brand Rachel Pestik and myself represent, they’re going to be doing their bi-weeklies in a bunch of cities and a destination event with Pollen, a Vegas vacation weekend for four days in October. Taking Back Sunday is doing Riot Fest, Furnace Fest and Firefly, and they’re routing in with Thursday as support. Then on the West Coast they’re doing Chain Fest as a co-bill with Jimmy Eat World and doing shows together around that. 

It’s tricky, there’s a lot of border restrictions even to get in there now. I think their vaccinations are getting better. With Shawn, we’re going to focus on ‘22 and ‘23 for the most part, for a world tour. He dropped a new single today with a Latin artist, Camilo. Shawn actually sings in Spanish on the song too. It’s really good. He’s got some new music coming out, so it’ll be exciting. It’ll be worth the wait.