Pollstar Live! Keynote Preview: ‘The Kids Are Alright’ Featuring Peter Shapiro

Pollstar Live!, the world’s largest gathering of live entertainment professionals, returns to Los Angeles April 14-16 and will be held at Loews Hollywood Hotel. The three-day conference is a flagship event for Pollstar magazine with compelling keynotes, panels, roundtables and the Pollstar Awards, celebrating the best in the business, along with plenty of opportunities to network and engage in insightful discussions.

Pollstar Live! kicks off with Production Live!, the one-day companion conference that features panels on all topics related to staging live events, including lighting, video, stage management, sound technique, concert production, regulations, security and more.

Click this link for the Production Live! and the Pollstar Live! schedules. Register for Pollstar Live! here.

Rainmaker 4: The Kids Are Alright

Moderator
Ray Waddell – Oak View Group

Speaker
Peter Shapiro – Dayglo Presents

Peter Shapiro has been called a Renaissance man of the music industry, having taken on a range of roles including music documentary filmmaker, venue owner (starting with New York’s Wetlands Preserve from 1997-2001), magazine publisher, hero of the Deadheads as the promoter behind the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary “Fare Thee Well” shows, LOCKN’ festival co-founder, and activist as chairman of nonprofit voter registration organization HeadCount. Shapiro is the owner of the beloved Brooklyn Bowl music venue, bowling alley and restaurant (with additional locations in Las Vegas, Nashville and Philadelphia), as well as the man behind the renovation and reopening of the historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. And he’s the co-founder of the kid-friendly live concert series Rock and Roll Playhouse, which has hosted over 1,000 shows in more than 25 live music venues across the United States. He’s also a devoted husband, father and, as always, a music fan.

Shapiro, head of live music and media company Dayglo Presents, will sit down with Oak View Group Chief Content Director Ray Waddell at Pollstar Live! to lay out his vision for the future. The Rainmaker conversation, “The Kids Are Alright,” will help close out the conference’s final day of programming on April 16.

“Talking biz with Ray Waddell is one of the funnest things in the world to do,” Shapiro told Pollstar. “I know we all learned in school that we are not supposed to use the word funnest, but it’s the correct word in this case. Very excited to get to do one of my favorite things, along with an audience of music lovers, too. Rock and Roll!”

Waddell added, “Peter Shapiro hears ‘can’t’ as ‘maybe’ and is willing to put in the hard work to turn ‘maybes’ into reality. I look forward to catching up with one of live’s true renaissance men at Pollstar Live! 2026.”

One of the can’ts Shapiro turned into reality was renovating and ultimately purchasing The Capitol Theatre, which dates back to 1926, by reopening the refurbished venue with a Bob Dylan show in 2012. To get there, Shapiro had to win over owner Marvin Ravikoff during negotiations about the lease that stretched more than a year, during which Ravikoff raised the price after they’d agreed to terms – twice. Shapiro discussed The Cap’s journey in a 2022 Pollstar cover story as well as his book co-written with Dean Budnick, “The Music Never Stops: What Putting On 10,000 Shows Has Taught Me About Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Magic.” Along with reopening The Capitol Theatre, Shapiro transformed an empty storefront adjacent to the building into a 250-capacity space dubbed Garcia’s that could host intimate gigs on nights The Capitol was dark.

“People put [Shapiro] in the same category as, let’s say, a Bill Graham or Ron Delsener … legendary concert promoters and concert producers,” Bruce Wheeler, who then served as the general manager at The Capitol Theatre and is now the GM of Loew’s Jersey Theatre, previously told Pollstar. “And he just has that energy that draws so many great people into his circle, into his orbit. You know, it’s rare that you see somebody in the industry not only in tune with agents and managers, but also with artists, with touring people. He has a real talent for being able to communicate in that 360 way.”

One thing’s for sure – the Rainmaker conversation is guaranteed to be a good time. After all, as Shapiro explained in his book, a meeting with the novelist
Ken Kesey taught him the art of the hang.

Upcoming shows at The Capitol Theatre include Band of Horses, Ani DiFranco, DEVO, Gary Clark Jr. with Nat Myers, Indigo Girls, An Acoustic Evening With Trey Anastasio and more.

On Sept. 19, the venue will mark its 100th anniversary with a Centennial Celebration featuring fan-favorite supergroup Pink Talking Fish, performing as “The Centennial Band” and BERTHA: Grateful Drag, described as the world’s first all-drag Grateful Dead tribute band, along with special guests and surprises.