SFR: So Jamie, since you're the proprietor of the biggest, most well-known music promotion company in Santa Fe-FanMan Productions-do you sometimes feel like a rock star yourself?
JL:
No. Far from it. I thought I might when I started. I was like, 'Wow. I'm gonna be cool. I'm gonna be hanging out with rock stars,' and I think it was about the first show I ever did that I realized that was not going to be the case. I'm just another stop on the road. I mean, Santa Fe's a nice town and people like coming here, but it's just a business thing. I've had some good times along the way certainly and made some nice connections with a lot of artists, but it's business.
What would you say the state of Santa Fe music is right now?
It's come out of the post-Paramount funk and I think there's a sense of optimism. This El Paseo Music Hall is going to be a cool scene for the next few months, but it is temporary. And it's not gonna be a club like the Paramount was-it's just an empty room. But it's downtown, it's a really attractive room. It's gonna sound good and we're gonna do some things to make it cool. It bridges the gap nicely to get us through the winter, and then there's a lot of possibilities to do a wide variety of different things this summer. The Santa Fe Brewing Company's outdoor stage and their patio, which is something Santa Fe's never had before, I think it's gonna be a really cool thing to have an all-ages, outdoor kind of a club vibe, something where we can do a Paramount-sized show. Santa Feans belong outside in the summertime.
That's true. Do you…
And I've been working with a group called You Are the Music, an organization seeking to increase people's contact with music through concerts and various things, and also with fundraising for music education and music programs. We were talking with Paolo Solari about doing a series there, because one of the sad aspects of the summer music scene is the complete and utter demise of Paolo Solari, basically because of the casinos and also Journal Pavilion. And also, for instance, there's something like the 4th of July picnic from last year; the city's interested in the possibility of having more shows like that there. That picnic will happen again. I do think Santa Fe is ready for and has missed that kind of concert in the park kind of vibe. We can do that at Fort Marcy, the College of Santa Fe's quad is a possibility and the people at the horse park just called me, so that's a possibility too. I want to branch out on that a little bit-do a straight country show, do a world music show, do a jazz show, do a classical show-I'd love to work with the Santa Fe symphony.
It seems like you've evolved into larger shows and focusing more on the outdoors. Is that permanent?
I love those indoor shows and I love club shows. I don't ever see myself giving up on club shows. One reason why I'm doing this El Paseo Music Hall thing is it was killing me the shows I was saying no to. So the El Paseo thing has come along to fill the gap and I've got some pretty interesting possibilities brewing there. I just got Sun Volt for Dec. 8. And we're gonna have a show there on Dec. 10 for the grand finale of the Santa Fe Film Festival-last year that was the show the Arcade Fire played at and it was one of those really cool Paramount shows that came out of left field.
You've had bands like the Arcade Fire here who are super cutting-edge-you read about them everywhere-but people don't show up. What's the deal with that?
It's weird because it's an artists' town and you'd think artists would be hip to that, but we're not a college town; there are colleges here but they're very small and they certainly don't have the numbers to support like Albuquerque's central entertainment corridor does.
I'm sure people think your job is glamorous and fun; can you explain some of the reality of what putting a show together looks like?
The story I always tell as far as the glamor of it goes is that one of the things that exists in every artist's rider is towels. And the number of towels is in direct proportion to the fame of the artist. Some artists, little club shows, a dozen hand towels, not a big deal. But Dwight Yoakam just hit me up for 72 bath towels. There's only 16 people, what are they going to do with 72 bath towels? And then the final non-glamorous thing is, at shows where the crew might actually be taking showers, like the opera or Lensic, at the end of the night, I am going around picking up stage towels, the towels the drummer wiped the sweat off his brow with. Those are all heaped up, and then you gotta go around to the bathroom and find all the wet towels on the floor that the crews throw there. That's the epitome of the glamor of the rock 'n' roll business.
What's the strangest rider request you've ever had?
Underwear.
Male or female?
Male. And I just told the guy, I don't do clothes, man. I haven't had any of the classic green M&M thing. A lot of female artists want flowers in their dressing room and they always request no carnations, but being a person who likes flowers, I can completely understand that. But there's varying levels of specificity to it all. And it's always in relation to how big the artist is. And the worst is, the artists who have been big once but who are on the downturn of their career. They tend to be the most demanding.
