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According to music manager Grady Poe, the puzzle in the East Coast music industry is this: “To take a great artistic group of people and make it greater, so it sustains the artist—and supports the folks who support them.”
Grady counts himself in “that league of people” who take on that work. “I have a gut interest in the artistic side of things,” says the former manager of ECMA-winners Barachois and current manager of the ECMA-nominated Chucky Danger Band. “How do we take this concept and make this all you do?”
He says, “What’s cool about the Maritimes is that you get a lot of respect for people who start to solve parts of that puzzle…. We’re all braving this Everest! People are really willing to share ideas, though their first allegiance to their artists. But they’re very excited when any group from the Maritimes breaks out.
“Even if you’re based in Winnipeg,” says Grady, “it’s the kind of business that as long as you’re content with part-time, you can carve out something locally. If you want to do it full-time, you have to look to the global market.”
And that’s not easy: “There’s a bunch of different niches which only have a certain size audience that’s small. Mass tastes have huge potential audiences, but only a little bit of room at the top…. In the Top 40, after 40, number 41 doesn’t count,” he laughs.
As a musician himself, Grady offers advice on more than package and presentation. “My favourite thing is to get right in there with the artist and help them create their product, their show or whatever…. It’s all about entertainment. As tour manager for Barachois, I was in the audience a lot. I felt what the audience felt a lot. When you had a hand in creating the experience, the drudgery seemed minor. You could see the effect on people’s lives.”
Creating an experience for—and with—an audience is central for Grady. “I work with artists who are aware there’s an audience out there…. The artist is special because they are able to give the audience an experience to be inspired in their own life…to transport them to another mindset.”
But the manager’s role is as often focused on business as on aesthetics. The manager has to help figure out how to bring the artist and the audience together in the first place. Grady’s insights come from an unexpected source: “My background as a carpenter helped me to think several moves ahead at once. In carpentry, you have to plan the cut sequence. The artists I worked with, that wasn’t their strong point. I could be a good complement to them.”
Grady’s current work with the Chucky Danger Band brings together his ear for audience response with his sequential planning skills for a good artist/manager fit: “I had noticed that they were already able to grab an audience when they performed. They grabbed me, and I’m not easily grabbed…. I made some suggestions, and they took me up on it. And that’s the basis of an artist/manager relationship. It’s all about trying to figure out how to make the experience better for the audience.”
The ECMAs will be an opportunity for the Chucky Danger Band to woo audiences, but it will have benefits for their manager. “The ECMAs brings awareness to the powers-that-be of the validity of what we do,” says Grady “The ECMAs are not just a chance to meet with regional colleagues…. It’s all about becoming a member of a world group of touring artists—and a nice cross-section of the world scene comes here. It’s to the credit of the ECMAs to make it a world-view event, not insular. It’s so much fun to break something new into it.”
Among all those music industry folks will be managers, doing their best. Says Grady Poe, “They have different methods to solve the puzzle, based on their own way, and their own sense of aesthetics.”