Imagine Dragons

Take Salt Lake City, for instance. The band is about to play a sold-out club show there. At the same time, it is expected to return to SLC in May, playing to a room that will probably hold about 6,000.

“They haven’t even played their Salt Lake City club show yet and they’ve already sold out an arena,” Adam Brill, who books the band alongside Corrie Christopher at APA, told Pollstar. “They haven’t even played the market.”

“People ask if we want to move up the room sizes and we said we wanted to leave meat on the bones, and we wanted to make it the hottest ticket in town. Clearly it’s worth taking those steps. We could have sold out an arena but why miss that club step? …  I remember seeing John Mayer at a House of Blues. He could have done Aragon Ballroom at that time, but it’s important for the fans to see them in a smaller setting. It’s always good, and it’s always refreshing.”

The band released its album on Interscope in September and toured opening for Awolnation. Meanwhile, songs like “It’s Time” and “Radioactive” went up the charts. But the agents at APA stressed this isn’t a sudden success – the band has been grinding  on the road for a while now, and Brill talked to band management several years ago after seeing them play to about 100 people at the Viper Room.

“Just by seeing them for the first time, I knew these guys were going to be big,” he said.

“It’s like an arena show in a club right now. You can tell they’re poised to become a real presence,” Christopher added. She noted the band sold out a show at San Francisco’s new outdoor venue, America’s Cup Pavilion, scaled at 6,700, so it got expanded to 9,000. They’ve been on sale for about two weeks for Denver’s iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre and have sold 9,000 tickets. And the international dates are on their way.

Not only does success sometimes happen, it can happen in a hurry.