Talent Buyer Directory Executive Profile: John Peters, Founder & Owner, MassConcerts

John Peters mostly stepped away from the business of concert promoting in 2007 after years of success, having carved out his own niche in Western Massachusetts over the course of a couple of decades. Hustling in the early ’90s as a relative youngster and newcomer in a region dominated by ruthless elder statesmen like Don Law in Boston and John Scher and Ron Delsener in New York, Peters, who attended Tufts University and grew up largely abroad, found opportunity and success in his native market, gaining trust of peers, going with his gut and putting his money where his mouth is to make sure “the math” is always “mathing.”

This interview is part of Pollstar’s 2027 Talent Buyer Directory, which can be purchased here.

After bouncing around as a club buyer after taking an internship at Concerted Efforts out of college, Peters’ stomping grounds included booking a solid network of college venues, finding some chaotic success with Warped Tour, the purchase of the 2,844-cap. Worcester Palladium and landing early arena shows by major artists like Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, and Deftones. Long-lasting relationships with artists like Bob Dylan meant at one point doing up to 300 shows per year, with highlights including large gigs with Metallica, Radiohead and many others.

However, seeing the writing on the wall with the roll-up of SFX, becoming Clear Channel and the new normal of nationwide tour deals at corporate-owned and -booked venues, Peters took a step back.

“We moved to London, and I didn’t tell people for the longest time,” says Peters, now residing in Concord, Massachusetts. “They’d call me up and my phone would forward. I would answer it, and they didn’t know I wasn’t in Boston in an office or something. That just kept it going and it was the greatest thing. I lived there for 10 years.”

Peters enjoyed time with his wife and three children, coaching sports and running an adult baseball club in the UK, enjoying an active semi-retirement well earned after his passion and hard work navigating a volatile industry.

“I still kept the rooms I owned — Town Ballroom in Buffalo (1,000 capacity), Webster Theater in Hartford (1,350), Palladium in Worcester (2,840), and would dabble in shows here and there,” said Peters. “But I was semi-in, semi-out, because there were no arena shows for promoters anymore. (Then-WME agent) Marc Geiger and (now CAA Nashville head) Brian Manning separately asked me, ‘Hey, dude, are you in? Are you out?’ Brian got me when I was literally in Positano, Italy, walking on the beach, and I was like, ‘Honest, man. I don’t know. I’m on the fence.’ That was the trade-off, for me, my kids, my family – my lifestyle was more important than grinding for every dollar and every opportunity that came up,” Peters said. “And honestly, I made enough money. I didn’t have to work anymore.”

But, back on New England soil a few years later, where one of his children would attend college in Boston, all it took to reel him back in was a little peer pressure.

“Adam Weiser, one of the greatest people in the business, calls me up and is like, “Hey, so me and Britannie (Delava, AEG Presents VP of global touring) got the Bring Me The Horizon Tour, and I know you got all the history in Boston, but we want you to co-promote with us,” Peters says. “I said, ‘I don’t know man, I might get out.’ He’s like, ‘Come on, don’t be a baby! Let’s do the show together.’” The show sold out, or close to it, and Peters felt right at home.

“I go into my little former office there, at Tsongas Arena. It was like the referee’s room, and there’s all these people there,” Peters says. “And I said, ‘What are you guys doing at my desk?’ The show was great.”

Fast forward a few years, through the COVID-19 pandemic and putting up some money to spruce up the Palladium, Peters continues to proudly operate MassConcerts, solely independently and employing a full-time team of about 12 talent buyers, production and marketing staff. Owned and operated venues spread into the southeast U.S., including the Worcester Palladium, Headliners Music Hall in Louisville (750), Bowl in The Pines (5,500)and Town Ballroom in Buffalo, Asheville Yards in North Carolina (4,500) and Revival (500).

The company also serves as primary talent buyer or partner for venues including Crystal Ballroom (550), Water Street (1,100), House of Independents (550), The Strand (1,900), Canal Club (750), Criterion Theater (800), Wally’s & Bernie’s Beach Bar (800, 1,200) and the new Asbury Social.

Now able to offer more than 12 dates at a time to prospective agents and looking to expand further, Peters says there’s more than enough room for indies — although his path may be unique and unlikely to replicate — and those interested in a career in music need only to pay attention and make themselves useful, primarily avoiding the phrase “I don’t know.”

“As a young promoter on Long Island, we had a great network of independent promoters throughout the northeast, and John was kind of the end game for all of us,” shares Adam Weiser, SVP of Global Touring for AEG Presents. “What he had created with MassConcerts as a leader in the New England scene is what we all strived to be. When I joined AEG in 2007 and started to branch out doing shows in secondary markets throughout the Northeast, it was only natural for me to partner with the promoters I knew and trusted, because they thought like I did.”

Peters also helped launch Kenmore Agency in Boston, where notable music agents like Matt Galle (CAA), Mike Marquis (CAA) and Matt Pike (33 & West) came up.

“Whether it was building stages at the Northampton Warped Tour or loading gear in at Pearl Street, John gave me a shot as a teenager in Western Mass that just wanted to be around music,” shares Pike, agent for artists including Converge, Dance Gavin Dance and now running 33 & West agency.

“Eventually, he let us start putting on shows of our own in Northampton at Pearl Street and in Worcester at the Palladium. John was always a big supporter of mine, and in 2001 when I started the Kenmore Agency, John was hugely influential on getting that off the ground. I owe him a lot.”

Kevin Lyman, founder of Warped Tour, applauds Peters’ hands-on approach, which led to mutual respect between the two right off the bat when building early Warped dates in Northampton from scratch. Lyman admires Peters’ ear to the ground and genuine passion for new music. It seems the results speak for themselves.

“If you book a tour or a show with him, he’s always going to be one of the top sellers,” Lyman said, mentioning the Worcester Palladium specifically.

“Isn’t he the guy who went to teach baseball in England?” jokes longtime agent Steve Martin of Paladin Artists, adding that Peters sympathizes and understands the role of agents better than most promoters. “You can always trust that he’s going to do his best, that the artists are treated right and more importantly, there’s a face to the company. When you’re playing for John Peters, you know who your promoter is, and too often now that gets lost, the personal touch. The fact he’s grown the business the way he has is fantastic. He’s a very creative, clever guy and most of all, he’s always been consistently just a great guy.”

Pollstar: So you were born in Boston, went to American school in Japan, lived in London and then came back to New England.
John Peters: My first show I went to was Aerosmith at the Budokan. It was 1976, maybe—the “Toys In The Attic Tour.” We moved to London by my last two years of high school, and I started going to Bournemouth gigs, getting turned on to different music. The first record that changed me musically from being a pop radio guy was Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? I love that record.

I got into Tufts in Boston; I got in as an engineer freshman year. The kid in my hall was like, “Hey, I’m running this concert board.” This is back when more bands would play in colleges, and it was a big part of their touring. Most of the colleges were closed dates; they weren’t advertised. So I run the concert board, and I’m pretty knowledgeable on music, but there are a couple things I really remember. I really wanted to book R.E.M. for a spring concert. They were just popping on the first record, and I got overruled by the student activities director, and we booked James Montgomery Band or something instead. Then, I booked a campus club, and U2 had a fill date. This was probably on October, the second record. It was before they blew up with War. Same thing, got overruled. We ended up booking John Hall, who had a record and founded Musicians United For Safe Energy. Then I was like, “All right, I’m out. I can’t do this.” I wasn’t a great student. I go to school and it’s like, all right, I want to get a job in music.

After applying for internships at anything remotely related to music, you got a call back from Concerted Efforts agency and started booking Night Stage in Cambridge, and even booked Phish’s first Boston gig. But you wanted to have more skin in the game yourself.
By now I’m 24 or whatever, and it’s like, “This is great, but I’m not gonna make a living booking a 300-cap club.” I didn’t want to own a club. I didn’t want to manage a club. I wanted to find cool bands and do shows. So I started to dabble in Boston. You know the history of promoters — Don Law, Ron Delsener, John Scher, Bill Graham — you’ve read the books. Frank Barsalona says, “All right, this is your territory.” They ruthlessly protected their territory, if anyone even tried to do something. So it’s like, yeah, that’s cool, I get it. I see the writing on the wall here. So I’ve got to get out of town and go somewhere where I can build up my own things. I got offered this job at a club in Northampton called Pearl Street, and now I got a raise and I’m making $300 a week, so that’s awesome, for one. I think it was on payroll, even. Now I’m in, and I got a place. I’ve already got incoming calls from agents.

Nice when the calls start coming in for a change.
Now I’m dealing with trying to get real agents on the phone and chipping away here and there. CAA was the hardest part to crack, because CAA’s got all the best bands at the time. Mitch Rose was the territory club guy for us. I knew not to be a pest, but I would call Mitch once a month. It’s like, “Oh, let me check. Um, he’s not available. He’ll call you back.” Never hear anything. Finally, fifth, sixth time, he picks up the phone. He’s like, “All right, John. I know you’ve been calling a lot. Here’s what I got for you. Do a good job with this, and then we’ll take it from there.”

It was a Chris Whitley / Toad the Wet Sprocket co-headline tour date. They were getting played on the radio there and wanted to play Northampton. We did the show; they did like 500, 600 people or something, and then I was in. Then I get Counting Crows and all sorts of stuff starts coming in. Probably got Deftones with them. (Agent) Steve Martin was great. He would always take my calls. So now I’m booking this club and I’m four or five years in, and all these great shows we did — Blues Traveler, Widespread Panic, Phish, Deftones, Dave Matthews Band, I’m just getting great shows. I developed all these bands in the club. I knew who could sell tickets in that market.

Fast forward to your first shows with your own money and risk.
There were two. One was Ani DiFranco I did at Mount Holyoke College. She was only, like, 19. Mount Holyoke is an all-women’s college, and when she played those early shows, it was like The Beatles. Girls just screaming. I did a lot of shows at Green Hall at Smith College. There’s no bars, no concessions. There’s probably four stalls in the bathroom and a drinking fountain.

With (agent) Chip (Hooper), my first show was The Samples. They played the club a couple times and sold it out the last two times there, and Chip was like, “They really wanna play a bigger place.” So I said I could do Smith College. It’s 2,000 seats and the money was, like, $6,000. It wasn’t crazy. But Chip was like, “Are you sure you’re good? If it doesn’t work, I don’t want you to have to sell your car to pay the band or something.”

I wasn’t selling a house because I didn’t own a house yet. I probably had $3,000 in my bank account at the time. I was like, I need a name, so it was just “John Peters Presents.” On my word processor, I came up with a little logo and got a separate bank account and just went from there. I worked my ass off. Now, I have a baby who’s like six months old. I’m pushing a baby stroller and putting up flyers all over campus, radio stations and all that.

The show goes through. It does the same 800 people. I’m like, “OK, I break even or whatever.” I didn’t really think anybody lost any money. Chip calls me the next day and says, “Hey, John, I know it wasn’t great. Appreciate you doing it. The band loved the show, loved the day. Do you want to do Dave Matthews at the same place in January?” It was a Dave Matthews / Big Head Todd co-headliner. I never would’ve got the show from Premier. Again, these are the original promoters. They would never sell to an independent. But Chip was like, “We’re doing it.”

Todd was the closer when it started, but by the time our date played, Dave was closing all the shows, because everyone was leaving after Dave.

This period led to arena shows by bands like Fall Out Boy, Green Day, Ja Rule, Ashanti, Black Eyed Peas and others.
By now I’m doing 300-plus shows per year. Honestly, I was lucky to be in a great market, and my winning percentage was high, so I almost never passed on a show. I’m getting all these arena shows, I’ve done a ton of Bob Dylan shows, probably 25 Dylan shows, and his manager Jeff Kramer was at most of them. We do college gyms, theaters, small markets, minor league ballparks, venue openings, all this sort of stuff.

Like many in the industry, Warped Tour was big for you as well. You were tipped off by agent Bruce Solar and heard about the buzz with Sublime.
I found a place in Northampton. It literally was a functioning airport, a little propeller plane airport. It was right near the fairgrounds. I think I four-walled the airport for $3,000. I had to bring in a stage and fencing and clean it up. It was all kids. We didn’t even think about selling beer. It was “John Peters Presents Vans Warped Tour,” a $15 ticket. It goes on sale Saturday and I call Monday to see where we’re at. We sold seven tickets the first weekend.

Seven tickets. I was like, “Fuck.” So I spend the next two months thinking, “This is it. My career ends now if I don’t turn this thing around.” I’d have to sell my house to pay it back or just walk away. So I go to the library on Saturday with my 1-year-old, and I get the yellow pages for Hartford, Connecticut, Manchester, looking up skateboard shops, record stores, tattoo parlors, anything I can think of, call them up to get their address and their zip code, mail them flyers, anything I could come up with. I’m calling every college radio station. Everybody was so supportive.

Did it work?
The show literally walks up 2,000 people. Our perimeter was a snow fence. They could have just knocked it over and all walked in. They all went in line to pay their $20 door price. It was the most insane, chaotic day of my life at that point. We ran out of bottled water at like three in the afternoon. I didn’t know 2,000 people were going to show up. It was like, “Here’s $200, go to Walmart and buy as much water as you can fit in your car and bring it back.” We were so unprepared. Someone said, “Where’s the garbage cans?” And it was like, “Oh, we didn’t get any garbage cans.” “How are you gonna clean this place up?” I hadn’t thought about that.

But you got many more Warped dates.
(Warped Tour founder) Kevin (Lyman) to this day is one of my very best friends in the business. I’ve told him so many times: “You made my whole career,” you know?

That earned trust led to a lot of arena dates with rock bands that were blowing up, and later your biggest show yet.
John Scher was the Dead guy in the East Coast for the longest time and John was very nice to me early on and very supportive and taught me a lot. He still managed Art Garfunkel and when Simon and Garfunkel did the reunion in 2002, he says, “You’re gonna get the show. I want you to do it.” So (CAA’s) Brian Greenbaum calls me up. It was too nice. I said, “How much?” It was well into the seven figures. I don’t think I’d paid a band more than $200,000 at that time. I was like, “Oh, wow. That’s a lot of money. Are you sure?” He goes, “Uh, trust me. It’s a gift. It’s a lay-up.” I was like, “All right. I believe you.” We do the show. The show sells out, two shows on the first day. So we settle the show, and the money comes in. I swear to God, they got paid by a company check that I wrote out in pen. I don’t even know how I got all the letters to fit on the line. It was crazy, down to the penny.

The arena dates mostly dried up around this time?
All these bands that I have history with start doing tour deals. I had partnered on some things in the past, like we did a Limp Bizkit / Eminem tour and things like that. But once they went to the amphitheaters, it’s like, “No.” Can they give me a marketing buyout or a dollar a ticket? Nothing. I was like, “All right, this kinda sucks.”

So you mostly went away for a while, but you’ve been back for a bit and are growing, recently acquiring Legacy Concerts in Richmond, Virginia, and operating the Asheville Yards in North Carolina.
There’s plenty of work for everybody. You just gotta find it. The live music industry keeps growing. When I was a kid, my grandfather was 70 and he was not going to a Rolling Stones concert. I’ll tell you that much.

In the music business, there’s not a lot of people that went to Yale or Harvard or Stanford. They’re grinders, people that love the music, love the scene. The talent likes being around people who are fun and interesting and have character, too. Now, there’s still those people at the big companies, but there’s a lot of suits and pencil pushers and stuff. People don’t cover shows.

Early on, I was there all day doing everything, but later, when I got bigger and had kids, I would go but I would never meet the talent. I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning to get the kids to school and sports and whatever. Now, I’m at the point where I’m having fun again. I love being able to go hang out with Claudio (Sanchez) and Coheed and Cambria and watch the basketball game in their dressing room and tell them the Knicks won Game 7.

Lately, I’ve been going to a lot of shows that aren’t my own shows, and agents love that. “Wait, you went to see our band, and you didn’t have to?” It’s like, “Yeah, I love this! They’re so good!”

We have more than 10 full-time employees now outside of people that run the clubs, and I always tell my team, “My goal is to never hire above any of you. If you guys do your job, we’ll only hire underneath and you’ll just keep rising up.”

A lot has changed, but some things are the same.
Peers of mine when I started, except for Chip and Dave (Shapiro of Sound Talent Group), who everyone misses more than anything, everyone is still here. Steve Martin, Jonathan Levine, Darryl Eaton is running CAA, Brian Manning’s running the Nashville office, Tim Borror (STG) and Nick Storch (IAG), those are my OG’s. We all came up and have different paths. My path is why I have so much energy now. I’m 63, and I’m going hard for the next 10 years. I’m having a lot of fun because I already took my retirement. So now I have energy and I’m having a good time.”