JCHBrooks & Dunn Open the Aussie Door
February 7th 2008 12:02
I had to repost this article that touches on the upcoming Brooks & Dunn Australian tour as well as the future of American country acts hitting the Aussie shores in the future. Enjoy:
Brooks & Dunn Open the Aussie Door
By Tom Roland
February 05, 2008
Feb. 29 isn't just another Leap Day for Brooks & Dunn. On that date, the superstar duo will do something never before attempted in more than 16 years together, as they open their first-ever string of dates in Australia.
But in the Southern Hemisphere's largest commonwealth, it's something even bigger - a milestone that may be remembered as a pivotal moment in Music Row's quest for worldwide success.
"This was a big test case for us," said Michael Chugg, Executive Chairman of Chugg Entertainment, whose company is promoting the Brooks & Dunn dates in conjunction with Rob Potts Entertainment Edge.
Of course, Country acts have been drawing large crowds in Oz for a while. Hometown boy Keith Urban and the Dixie Chicks stormed through Australia in the past few years, but both also received significant airplay on pop radio stations. In contrast, Brooks & Dunn are the first major Country act this decade to launch an arena tour Down Under without that crossover exposure.
It worked. Tickets for their debut night at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre sold out, prompting the addition of a second Brisbane show on March 1 followed by dates at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne and at the Acer Arena in Sydney. All four shows eventually sold out, according to co-promoter and CMA Board member Rob Potts, CEO of Rob Potts Entertainment Edge. And that's with an average ticket price of $125.
"The Brooks & Dunn thing is a big, important tour on many levels," said Potts. "Certainly it's going to give this market a big shot in the arm. But it will also help connect with the American management and agencies to have them see that when Brooks & Dunn went on sale, their show in Brisbane sold out in an hour. The Brisbane Entertainment Centre is like a 10,000-seat arena. That's a real achievement, right up there with Keith Urban - and that's in Keith's hometown."
Before the sales floodgates broke for these dates, conventional wisdom was that Country artists would make strong impacts internationally only by committing to a global strategy from the very start of their careers. Otherwise, success in the United States would outdistance other territories so quickly that it would cease to make financial sense to perform abroad.
Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, a former President and Chairman and current member of the CMA Board, agreed that it's best "for young acts to go over and seed an audience. I feel like it's probably a little late for us to get started over there."
According to the band's manager, CMA Board Chairman Clarence Spalding, President of Spalding Entertainment, Brooks & Dunn came close on two previous occasions to booking concerts in Australia, until conflicting obligations forced them to suspend discussions.
Nowadays, though, the duo is performing only 50 to 70 dates per year, which makes it easier to fit a foreign tour into their schedule. Plus, their latest album on Arista Nashville, Cowboy Town, was out long enough that the Australian shows, in February and March, didn't conflict with promotional plans in the States.
It also helped that promotion in Australia is easier than it had been in the past. The advent of the Country Music Channel (CMC) there, in 2002, re-established a 24-hour television presence for the genre, an obvious promotional forum for American Country Music, which benefits as well from several Country-formatted stations and a handful of syndicated radio shows. In a November 2007 CMC chart, Brooks & Dunn's video for "Proud of the House We Built" topped the list of viewer requests, with seven other American acts also present in the Top 10. With this ready-made market, the duo didn't have to brace for as big a financial hit as they may have previously sustained to make the trip.
"The thing that's helping us at the moment is the value of the Australian dollar," Potts added. "We can afford to up the offers. When you're trying to make an offer on a half-million-dollar act with a 50-cent dollar, it gets pretty expensive."
"In the past," Chugg observed, "it's always been, 'Look, they make so much money in America. They're not really interested.' Also, up until the last few years, a lot of the managers in America didn't care about touring the rest of the world."
There's bitter truth in this observation, but the Brooks & Dunn tour makes the point that many managers of Country artists have developed a more nuanced view of the global market, with a particular focus on Australia and Canada.
"They all have a similar history in terms of the way those countries were settled and developed," Potts said. "They all have that Western influence, if you like - not as in 'Country & Western' but as in cattle, the out-West type of life, that sort of pioneering heritage and similar timeline origins. As a result of that, this genre has real traction in those markets."
Some hurdles remain for those who would take their show on the Aussie road. Plane fare to Australia isn't cheap, and most touring within its borders is done by plane rather than bus. But shipping equipment isn't nearly the problem it used to be. "There are so many sound and lighting systems down here now, it's ridiculous," Chugg said, laughing.
Perhaps the biggest barrier, though, is simply inertia. Country artists haven't typically thought of themselves as international figures, and some are slow to come around now to that point of view.
"If you were an artist from Louisville, Ky., and you were in a pop genre or a genre that was more accepted internationally, you would think that way," Spalding explained. "You'd get on the Internet and you would see that John Mayer tours extensively throughout the world. So if you were anything like John Mayer, or if you were a rock band, you would see historically that the big arena-rock bands don't just tour the U.S., they tour the world. But I think a lot of Country acts are thinking, 'I need to make it here [in the United States] first.'"
That explains why this Brooks & Dunn tour is such a major step. They're a pure Country act whose impressive sales suggest that some of the conventional thought about taking one's business to Australia is already out of date. And Potts, Chugg and their fellow promoters can point to one success story in hoping to persuade other acts - Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw are mentioned often - to consider making the leap.
"There's a lot of Country Music freaks in this country that don't get to see much," Chugg summed up. "I think they're ready for it."
www.brooks-dunn.com
2008 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association, Inc.
By Tom Roland
February 05, 2008
Feb. 29 isn't just another Leap Day for Brooks & Dunn. On that date, the superstar duo will do something never before attempted in more than 16 years together, as they open their first-ever string of dates in Australia.
But in the Southern Hemisphere's largest commonwealth, it's something even bigger - a milestone that may be remembered as a pivotal moment in Music Row's quest for worldwide success.
"This was a big test case for us," said Michael Chugg, Executive Chairman of Chugg Entertainment, whose company is promoting the Brooks & Dunn dates in conjunction with Rob Potts Entertainment Edge.
Of course, Country acts have been drawing large crowds in Oz for a while. Hometown boy Keith Urban and the Dixie Chicks stormed through Australia in the past few years, but both also received significant airplay on pop radio stations. In contrast, Brooks & Dunn are the first major Country act this decade to launch an arena tour Down Under without that crossover exposure.
It worked. Tickets for their debut night at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre sold out, prompting the addition of a second Brisbane show on March 1 followed by dates at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne and at the Acer Arena in Sydney. All four shows eventually sold out, according to co-promoter and CMA Board member Rob Potts, CEO of Rob Potts Entertainment Edge. And that's with an average ticket price of $125.
"The Brooks & Dunn thing is a big, important tour on many levels," said Potts. "Certainly it's going to give this market a big shot in the arm. But it will also help connect with the American management and agencies to have them see that when Brooks & Dunn went on sale, their show in Brisbane sold out in an hour. The Brisbane Entertainment Centre is like a 10,000-seat arena. That's a real achievement, right up there with Keith Urban - and that's in Keith's hometown."
Before the sales floodgates broke for these dates, conventional wisdom was that Country artists would make strong impacts internationally only by committing to a global strategy from the very start of their careers. Otherwise, success in the United States would outdistance other territories so quickly that it would cease to make financial sense to perform abroad.
Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn, a former President and Chairman and current member of the CMA Board, agreed that it's best "for young acts to go over and seed an audience. I feel like it's probably a little late for us to get started over there."
According to the band's manager, CMA Board Chairman Clarence Spalding, President of Spalding Entertainment, Brooks & Dunn came close on two previous occasions to booking concerts in Australia, until conflicting obligations forced them to suspend discussions.
Nowadays, though, the duo is performing only 50 to 70 dates per year, which makes it easier to fit a foreign tour into their schedule. Plus, their latest album on Arista Nashville, Cowboy Town, was out long enough that the Australian shows, in February and March, didn't conflict with promotional plans in the States.
It also helped that promotion in Australia is easier than it had been in the past. The advent of the Country Music Channel (CMC) there, in 2002, re-established a 24-hour television presence for the genre, an obvious promotional forum for American Country Music, which benefits as well from several Country-formatted stations and a handful of syndicated radio shows. In a November 2007 CMC chart, Brooks & Dunn's video for "Proud of the House We Built" topped the list of viewer requests, with seven other American acts also present in the Top 10. With this ready-made market, the duo didn't have to brace for as big a financial hit as they may have previously sustained to make the trip.
"The thing that's helping us at the moment is the value of the Australian dollar," Potts added. "We can afford to up the offers. When you're trying to make an offer on a half-million-dollar act with a 50-cent dollar, it gets pretty expensive."
"In the past," Chugg observed, "it's always been, 'Look, they make so much money in America. They're not really interested.' Also, up until the last few years, a lot of the managers in America didn't care about touring the rest of the world."
There's bitter truth in this observation, but the Brooks & Dunn tour makes the point that many managers of Country artists have developed a more nuanced view of the global market, with a particular focus on Australia and Canada.
"They all have a similar history in terms of the way those countries were settled and developed," Potts said. "They all have that Western influence, if you like - not as in 'Country & Western' but as in cattle, the out-West type of life, that sort of pioneering heritage and similar timeline origins. As a result of that, this genre has real traction in those markets."
Some hurdles remain for those who would take their show on the Aussie road. Plane fare to Australia isn't cheap, and most touring within its borders is done by plane rather than bus. But shipping equipment isn't nearly the problem it used to be. "There are so many sound and lighting systems down here now, it's ridiculous," Chugg said, laughing.
Perhaps the biggest barrier, though, is simply inertia. Country artists haven't typically thought of themselves as international figures, and some are slow to come around now to that point of view.
"If you were an artist from Louisville, Ky., and you were in a pop genre or a genre that was more accepted internationally, you would think that way," Spalding explained. "You'd get on the Internet and you would see that John Mayer tours extensively throughout the world. So if you were anything like John Mayer, or if you were a rock band, you would see historically that the big arena-rock bands don't just tour the U.S., they tour the world. But I think a lot of Country acts are thinking, 'I need to make it here [in the United States] first.'"
That explains why this Brooks & Dunn tour is such a major step. They're a pure Country act whose impressive sales suggest that some of the conventional thought about taking one's business to Australia is already out of date. And Potts, Chugg and their fellow promoters can point to one success story in hoping to persuade other acts - Alan Jackson and Tim McGraw are mentioned often - to consider making the leap.
"There's a lot of Country Music freaks in this country that don't get to see much," Chugg summed up. "I think they're ready for it."
www.brooks-dunn.com
2008 CMA Close Up News Service / Country Music Association, Inc.
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