by Adam Hildebrand
Depending on how you look at it, the 90s was Trey Many’s decade. It was a solid decade of drumming for projects like Pedro the Lion, Liquorice, and His Name is Alive. He even started one of his own projects, Velour 100. You might never have heard of any of these bands. If you have heard of the projects, you’re probably still listening to the albums. You might even be one of the faithful fans who still post comments on Velour 100’s Myspace, where few comments deviate from this general theme: Please! Make more music!
Ultimately, Trey’s involvement in these bands was transitory. “The bands I played in weren’t very big–respected maybe, but that doesn’t mean dollars. That’s the weird part about the music business . . . writing great songs and playing great shows doesn’t equal income necessarily. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. I got to a point where I thought, well I love playing music but I’m not really making enough in any of the bands I’m in to support my family. And I wanted to have a family.”
In 1998 he started his own agency, Aero Booking, where he worked his “fake job” as a booking agent for friends’ bands in the nursury of his apartment and taking care of his son, while his wife went out and worked “the real job.” Meanwhile, Many continued pursuing music on the side, and started a band called Half-life Souvenir. In 2004 Seattlepi.com included Half-life Souvenir as one of the bands they had their “eye on in 2005.” But this ultimately proved to be Many’s last endeavor–to date–as a musician. Despite the attention he gathered with Half-life Souvenir, the project ended without a bang.
His agency, on the other hand, eventually turned into a “real job.” He grew out of merely representing friends’ bands, and he eventually merged with The Billions Corporation, where he now represents bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Dntel, Fleet Foxes, and the Postal Service among others.
The Billions Corporation is a booking agency that works with artists, getting them shows in venues that are realistic to their audience size, and in ways that are profitable for everyone involved—from the venues to the artists. Billions places its manifesto like an honored plaque next to its list of agents and their respective clients. The company’s manifesto is an inspiring set of proclamations articulating the company’s philosophy of business, penned by the president and founder, David T. Viecelli. The manifesto is so clear-cut and candid, you might think it was first written in a Jerry Maguire-esque fit of idealism. If one were to sum up the philosophy in a few words, it would be this: honesty, transparency, and common sense.
For fledgling bands, the odds are stacked pretty high. It’s a wilderness out there, and without people like Trey Many, even the most talented artists are about as vulnerable as a middle-aged camper caught between a mother bear and her cub, if they don’t know what they’re doing. All too often these bands get mauled by an increasingly vicious market.
“The cost of touring continues to skyrocket,” says Trey. “So on one hand you’ve got U2 charging $250 for a ticket, and on the other hand you’ve got people playing the small clubs where fans are upset if they have to pay more than $10 to go see a band play. But ticket prices have been $8 or $10 for ten years, while the cost of gasoline has gone up, the cost of hotels, the cost of buying a car, and even the tax laws are different now, where more and more places around the US are withholding tax from out-of-state entertainers that come and play shows. It has become more complicated and more difficult to tour on a small level, because those ticket prices are not changing that much and it’s just difficult for bands to make ends meet on the road when they’re starting out.
“We work hard to strike fair deals for everybody that’s involved,” says Many. “Obviously we are going to put our clients above everybody else’s interests. But still, it’s about sustainability. We’re trying to help our artists succeed in the long term, and dishonest negotiating and dishonest practices are not good for the long term. If I try to artificially inflate the size of one of our artists to make the promoter think they will sell out their room, and we need X amount of dollars to play, and then they show up and there are twenty people there, that’s the last show they’re going to do for this band.”
It becomes clear after talking with Trey Many that his work requires a certain uncommon common sense, decisiveness, and a healthy dose of brutal honesty. Because when it really comes down to it, more is at stake than the artists’ careers. “I realize that just because a band is great doesn’t mean that they’re going to succeed. And as an agent, I can’t invest all my time in things that I love artistically, but have no promise of financial gain on some level. As agents we don’t invest capital, we invest time. So for an agent, I would say it’s a lot easier to spend 15 dollars on an album than 1500 hours on a band that doesn’t have the potential to succeed.
“When I say that a band has to have some promise of financial gain I mean, if I feel like this band could eventually sell out small clubs like Spaceland, or the Troubadour in LA, or the Crocodile Lounge in Seattle, that’s enough for me. I don’t look at a band and think if I don’t see this being an arena act in three years, then I’m not interested. There is success at different levels for me.”
“Success at different levels” doesn’t mean success at any level. Billions is extremely picky about which artists it deals with. But they’re upfront about that as well. Their expectations are high, but they’re not difficult to understand. “The number one thing is the music,” says Many. “I have to love the music that an artist is making to approach it. We’re not trying to dupe anybody or trick anybody into liking our bands. I’ll come across bands that I don’t like, but they will make millions of dollars for somebody—it’s just not me.”
In a day where finding “corporation” and “scandal” in the same headline has lost all its shock value, the cynic in me wants to think that the kind of honest and upfront business Trey Many talks about are just idealistic theories about how business should be. But what’s shocking is that Billions functions by this crazy theory of honesty—and it’s working. Take a look at the bands that Trey or any other agent working for Billions represents; you’re looking at some of the most galvanizing bands in the industry.
Although he’s no longer a part of the album-making process, for now Trey is a family man. He wouldn't have it any other way. About his current position he says “I feel honored to work with some of the bands that I get to work with. Because I’m a fan first and then their agent.” But in the midst of writing this article Trey expressed a reluctance to say that he had given up creating music altogether. "[I] can't promise that Half-life Souvenir will be my last musical endeavor," he says. For those of us who remember the 90s as "Trey Many's decade" we couldn't be more excited to let the future unpack that cryptic statement.
(Photo Credit: Laura Totten)
A drummer-turned-booking agent, Trey Many reveals the challenges facing up-and-coming bands.
