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Executive Profile: Jeff Fortier, Josh Hunt Talk Mammoth’s Growth & The Relationships Forged Along The Way

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Spend a few minutes with Jeff Fortier and Josh Hunt and it’s obvious that the two are not only business partners but also best buds, finishing each other’s sentences and mixing in some banter while chatting about their history in the live entertainment business.

“You really going to go there?” Fortier asks after Hunt clarifies that his friend did indeed have dreadlocks in the past.

“That used to be his signature [look],” Hunt says. “Everyone knew him by the dreadlocks. You’d see that someone would say, “You know the 5-foot-two guy with dreadlocks down to his waist?’”

It didn’t take long for Fortier to get back at his friend, mentioning that Hunt had built a working relationship with Vanilla Ice back in the day.

“Oh, you’re going to throw me under the bus with Vanilla Ice? Hey, in 1998, Vanilla Ice paid my rent. Start to finish, that dude paid my rent,” said a defensive Hunt as Fortier smiled.

It’s wisecracks like those that make them such endearing figures in the live business, exuding authenticity and friendliness that people gravitate toward. The family-like atmosphere and willingness to work with others are major reasons why the company Fortier and Hunt co-own, Mammoth, Inc., has continually grown since its inception in 2006. The indie promoter has worked with artists like Cardi B, Turnpike Troubadours, MAMAMOO and Clay Walker.

Most recently, Mammoth found success through one of its many partnerships in Rod Wave’s “Nostalgia Tour” last fall. The arena run, which was co-promoted by AG Entertainment, grossed more than $42 million, according to 28 headline reports submitted to Pollstar Boxoffice, and is a testament to the Lawrence, Kansas-based promoter’s growth outside of the Midwest.

“Jeff had built a theater [performing arts center] network for touring for years with some of our other partners in the theater network,” Hunt says. “It was always the plan, but we hadn’t really tackled arenas on the level that we needed to.”

Mammoth’s expansion and aspirations to work in bigger buildings aren’t anything new to the co-owners, who collectively have more than six decades of experience in the live music industry working with all kinds of acts and venues.

Hunt’s origin story is similar to many others who work in the live business: he simply stumbled into it. He was a 17-year-old college student living in Lawrence in 1994 and was asked by a roommate who staffed concerts if he wanted to work security.

Cover Jeff Fortier and Josh Hunt of Mammoth (1)
Jeff Fortier and Josh Hunt started Mammoth in 2006 and have stayed true to their indie spirit since then, even as the live entertainment company expands into additional markets through key partnerships. (Photo by Katie Rich / Mammoth)

“I checked it out and next thing you know, I’m like watching everything going on,” Hunt says. “I’m like, ‘This is pretty neat. I can wrap my head around this.’”

An observant Hunt was intrigued by the machinations of putting on a show and noticed a “small-build guy just running around taking care of stuff.” It just so happened that the person was Fortier, who owned an entertainment company called Avalanche Productions. Hunt began working with Fortier’s company and carved out his own position, and as Avalanche grew, so did its network. The company soon began working with House of Blues Entertainment’s venues and concerts.

It was then that Fortier and Hunt began working with music industry luminaries who played a role in the success of House of Blues — such as Jay Marciano, Melissa Ormond, Adam Friedman, Alex Hodges, Kevin Morrow, Larry Vallon and Bob Shea — and it’s where they got a taste of the corporate world.

“Being there for the House of Blues network clearly gave us a lot of insight on how to navigate the business side of concerts,” Fortier says. “ … It really opened our eyes. It allowed us to grow, and really opened doors for us because we came at it from an independent [mindset], and we never really had mentors at that point.”

The experience also reiterated the value of friendships and relationships. Hunt moved to Cleveland to work the club network and recalled being backstage at a Bruce Springsteen show and how he couldn’t believe how Vallon, who was essential to making Los Angeles the market it is now, pulled off such a show.

“I remember being blown away because it was the type of deal I couldn’t wrap my head around,” Hunt says. “I was just walking around and then I came around the corner wondering, ‘Where is Larry?’ He’s just in the dressing room hanging out the entire night. That’s all he did. He knew everybody, but you learn a lot from those people. You absorb their authenticity.”

It’s a trait shared by the best in the business. People gravitate toward authenticity and are more willing to work with those who have it. Hunt saw that in the late Larry Vallon, a person who was not only producing shows but also making everyone involved in the process better.

“That’s why we have the relationships that we’ve had that whole time,” Hunt says. “Agents, managers, artists, they’ve all recognized us as the developing people.”

It only affirmed Hunt’s indie spirit, and after booking amphitheaters and “next-level stuff,” Hunt felt it was time to go back to working with and for people rather than purely for profit.

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THE TALENT BUYER: Jeff Fortier, co-owner and president of Mammoth, Inc., wears many hats but focuses on booking and buying shows and has played a big role in making the company a tight-knit work community. (Photo by Katie Rich / Mammoth)

“There’s kind of a crossroads,” Hunt says. “Do I want to go this route and work for somebody else, or do I want to start my own thing?’”

While Hunt and Fortier ended up in the same industry, the latter’s journey was very different. Like many others in the biz, Fortier started as a fan, visiting all the punk rock clubs in Connecticut as a teen and seeing metal bands like Def Leppard and Black Sabbath in arenas. His heart, however, was in the culinary arts, but he couldn’t afford an apprenticeship and so he joined the army.

“I had spent a couple of years prior going to New York City and catching that whole [rock] experience [in clubs] and next thing you know I’m in a freaking cornfield,” says Fortier, who was stationed in Kansas. “It’s the dustbowl. It was just a culture shock.”

But it didn’t take long for him to get a piece of home as rock acts began making their way to Kansas. Fortier quickly found himself working some of the shows with the friends he came across, and he saved up enough money to buy the lease of The Outhouse in Lawrence, a venue that he operated from 1989 to 1993. He started booking shows in the area and working with artists like The Offspring and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones as alternative rock rose to prominence in the early ’90s.

“Pretty soon, it became apparent that the chef apprenticeship wasn’t going to happen,” Fortier says. “I kind of drifted more into the rock ’n’ roll thing. It never really occurred to me that there would even be an opportunity to work in the concert business.”

In addition to Avalanche, Fortier founded Renegade Productions and had a deal with SFX Entertainment. He had what he called “a third-row seat” to SFX being bought out by Clear Channel Communications, which then became iHeartMedia. The company’s concert business spun off and became Live Nation in 2005.

“It was really interesting sitting on the sidelines and navigating the changes between SFX, Clear Channel and Live Nation,” he says. “And it really was one of the reasons that I thought I wasn’t ready to go back and do the corporate thing.”

One person who gave him hope and guidance was the late Annie O’Toole, a former Live Nation exec who came from an indie background and vouched to keep him on board. He stayed for a while at SFX to not only continue learning about the business but also observe O’Toole, who genuinely listened to her colleagues while dictating, Fortier says.

But that chapter ended in 2005 when Live Nation decided to close the Midwest office, and Fortier took it as a sign to go a different direction. A little less corporate, a little more renegade.

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SEEING THE BIG PICTURE: Josh Hunt, co-owner and CEO of Mammoth, shares the load with his partner Jeff Fortier and oversees operations, employee development, company strategy, market and venue development and maintaining relationships with agents and artists. (Photo by Katie Rich / Mammoth)

The first thought that came to Fortier after leaving SFX was similar to Hunt’s: staying true to your independent roots. Fortier reconnected with Hunt, who was running Hunt Industries at the time, and the two launched Mammoth, a fitting name for a company brimming with potential thanks to the relationships they cultivated with agents, promoters, artists and venues over the course of decades, especially when working with the House of Blues.

“We could have named it something like Tiny Productions because it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy to name it [Mammoth; it] really has been expansive. It’s continued to grow and grow,” Hunt says.

It continued to grow because of the seeds Fortier and Hunt planted years before with their inclusive and transparent approach to booking shows, but there were challenges at the start of the venture because they had so many different partners in different cities. They realized that they needed to really dedicate a lot of time and strategy to each event.

“For us, it becomes kind of ‘live within your means,’” Hunt says. “If you make a mess, you’re going to have to clean it up, and it really pushes the paying-attention game, and we have to be really strategic. We don’t have the fortune to lose $700,000 in a season in one of our markets and brush it off as a bad venue experience or those shows just didn’t work. We’re really trying because of our environment and because of where we’re at. We’re trying to over deliver all the time, and you can’t do that when you’re too busy.”

Fortier and Hunt admittedly weren’t overly ambitious, and it took them some time to find they were ready to tackle bigger treks like a 2019 tour with Cardi B, but just as Mammoth was taking on more shows, momentum ceased in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like other independent promoters, Mammoth struggled to keep the lights on and retain employees while not being able to produce shows because of health restrictions. Fortier and Hunt burned through funds to keep all 30 employees on the payroll as long as they could, but they had to let them all go once the cash was gone.

The pandemic was a period of reflection for the world at large, especially for everyone in the live music business, but rather than sulking and ruminating on what could have been, the Mammoth co-owners continued working, even during a time when live shows couldn’t be produced, planning for a new era of Mammoth.

Even in a time of peril, Fortier and Hunt never lost sight of what has kept them in the live business. The two had conversations about where their company was going, and it became pretty clear to many in the industry that the touring biz was going to explode as soon as health restrictions were lifted.

That also meant it was open season for promoters, an advantage the larger companies had over the independents.

“You saw what Live Nation did to get everything they could possibly do to start buying every single tour [they could],” Hunt says. “Whether the numbers made sense to anyone else or not, it didn’t matter because they had different revenue streams and they can produce it. To a lot of independents, it kind of put us in a corner where you couldn’t compete. For us, we weren’t willing to accept that. There’s always a way to adapt, to evolve, and we knew we needed to.”

Fortier and Hunt knew they couldn’t do it alone. They never strayed from their identity of placing relationships over profits and began reaching out to friends and colleagues they’d met over the years. They even managed to bring back all but one of the employees they let go during the pandemic.

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BUILDING A DREAM: Mammoth partnered with 1% Productions and developer City+Ventures to develop The Astro Theater and Astro Amphitheater in La Vista, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha. Josh Hunt and Jeff Fortier joined La Vista Mayor Douglas Kindig, City+Ventures’ Danny White and Chris Erickson, and Marc Leibowitz and Jim Johnson of 1% Productions for the project’s groundbreaking in September of 2021. The Astro opened last year and has drawn acts like Sum 41, Goo Goo Dolls, The Gaslight Anthem and Tech N9ne.

One relationship that got Mammoth in a rhythm as the world transitioned to life with COVID was Northwest promoter Mike Thrasher Presents. Fortier and Hunt met Mike Thrasher at Pollstar Live! over 20 years ago and kept in touch with the Portland, Oregon-based promoter.

Thrasher died at 48 in March 2020, and his mom called the Mammoth duo asking them to take over the company. It’s not a phone call a friend would ever want to get, but it was also a major opportunity for Mammoth to expand into another region.

“It really became, ‘What do you do?’” Fortier says. “You’ve got people calling you, and you’ve got a lot of opportunity in front of you. We wanted to move forward independently, but I think we wanted to give it a go. The challenge for us was: do we take a check and go along with someone else and what their vision is? Or do we look back at the past 10 years that we’ve started to branch out nationally and give it a go and see what happens when we develop a national network with our friends?”

Merging with Mike Thrasher Presents led to even bigger moves, including the hiring of former Live Nation Vice President Sean Striegel in June 2022, who now heads Mammoth’s Northeast office. With a presence in New York, it was only a matter of time before Fortier and Hunt expanded into the Southwest. It actually was only a month after the hiring of Striegel 2022 when Mammoth announced a partnership with Sugar Monkey, a Los Angeles-based company headed by Tommy Ginoza, who previously worked at Goldenvoice, Live Nation, House of Blues Concerts and Universal Concerts.

The following year, Mammoth made even bigger splashes, partnering with AG Entertainment to develop the latter’s hip-hop and rap artists within Mammoth’s network of venues across the country. That partnership led to the two companies going global and joining forces with CTS Eventim, one of the world’s top promoters, strengthening the German company’s footprint in America while giving Mammoth’s tours access to European markets.

Eventim holds a majority stake in the joint venture and has significant influence over the operations of the joint venture while Mammoth remains an independent entity. The partnership allows all companies to use their resources and networks to strengthen their positions in the global touring market.

“I’d say it was a little bit of fate and a little bit of just the right place at the right time, and everything just kind of fell into place,” Fortier says. “It felt really organic. It didn’t feel like we were reaching. It didn’t feel like we were trying to do all of this. It just kind of happened, and it felt right.”

And most importantly for Hunt, it’s been fun to see where the company is now since the COVID shutdown. It may have taken Mammoth some time to get where it is, but the way Hunt sees it, they needed that time to figure some things out and find the confidence to execute their bigger ideas with artists from all genres.

“Having these partnerships and booking Slayer one night and Michael Hedges the next, it’s who we are,” Hunt says. “But we also know volume can kill you, and so you have to take it one step at a time. For us as independents, we’re not allowed to do a bad job. We know that to do a great job, that means we need to take the steps slower when we’re starting to take on some of these bigger massive [arena] tours. We’re already three years into this project of taking the next step into arenas, and I feel like we’re poised to take those next big steps.”

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A TOUCH OF FINESSE: Mammoth worked on Cardi B’s tour back in 2019. The rap star (third from left) snapped a photo backstage the night she performed at Pinnacle Bank Arena and is pictured with Charlie Schilling and Kaci Natale of the venue, Mammoth CEO Josh Hunt, Tom Lorenz and Pat Fielder, senior director of talent buying at Mammoth. (Courtesy Mammoth)

With such alliances and a portfolio of venues (including The Astro and The Astro Amphitheater in Omaha Nebraska, which was built in partnership with 1% Productions) and artists, Mammoth is living up to its name with the strides it has made in the past three years. However, it’s not easy to navigate that success during a time when ticket prices are high and some larger live events like festivals and tours are struggling.

“We’re all facing that narrative, and I don’t think there’s any benefit to pointing fingers at why [some festivals are gone], but I think that definitely affects things,” Hunt says.

It’s especially tough on secondary and tertiary markets and smaller venues, businesses that served as the foundation of Mammoth and struggled after the pandemic. Interest rates are rising, and real estate is tricky, Fortier says, so it’s important for indie companies like Mammoth to move organically rather than forcefully and with an identity.

Fortier and Hunt know who they are and what Mammoth stands for. They see the new generation of artists as trailblazers, elevating genres and cultures around the world, something some may say about Fortier and Hunt’s efforts over the past three decades.

“At the end of the day, we’re growing the business with our friends,” Fortier says. “That’s really what it boils down to. I mean, we’re all growing older. This is year 35 for me and year 30 for Josh. To be able to still be working in live music and having these friendships and to be on the journey with all these great people, we’re just fortunate and blessed. Not everyone gets to live their dreams, be in rock ’n’ roll, in the music business. Most people never get that opportunity, and I don’t think we take it for granted, and we’re really grateful.

“COVID was a restart, and it’s exciting to think about where things are going to go, and hopefully there’s a level of positivity that continues to move the music business forward.”

With that mentality, how could it not?

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