Industry Profile: Richard Mills— By Larry LeBlanc

This week in the hot seat with Larry LeBlanc: Richard Mills
Placing Richard Mills, vice-president of performing arts, S.L. Feldman & Associates in Toronto, alongside other booking agents may be a mistake.

Apart stylistically from the pack, Mills follows his own goals (certain that the single thing that has any real value in his sphere is his clients working), labors largely away from the limelight, and achieves what he does from paying attention to fundamentals.

With offices in Vancouver and Toronto, S.L. Feldman & Associates, Canada’s largest full-service talent agency, represents over 125 artists, including Michael Bublé, Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden and Nelly Furtado, and the Tragically Hip.

Mills, working with the SLFA team, oversees bookings for such Canadian acts as Jesse Cook, Sophie Milman, the Canadian Tenors, Molly Johnson, Ron Sexsmith, Natalie MacMaster, Leahy, Quartetto Gelato, Michael Kaeshammer, Jorane and others.

As well, he does bookings for the Chieftains, who are managed by affiliated Macklam/Feldman Management that also handles the management of Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, Ry Cooder, and others.

Mills’ business style, if not his persona, has much to do with him being from the isolated prairie city of Winnipeg, Manitoba where the nearest interesting Canadian city is Calgary; and it's a 14-hour drive. Toronto is 24 hours away.

Music figures from Winnipeg tend to be individualistic, jack-of-all-trades types like, incidentally, Neil Young and Randy Bachman.

In 2003, the Weakerthans’ frontman John K. Samson penned a tongue-in-cheek homage to the hometown he shares with Mills. The tribute song was called "One Great City" and featured the chorus of “I hate Winnipeg.”

That might seem understandable when you come from a western Canadian city—with a population of slightly more than 700,000— where temperatures average below freezing from mid-November through March, dropping most nights below 11 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit.)
Despite this frosty backdrop, Winnipeg has had a vibrant music scene for decades. The city, in fact, stars in Neil Young’s multimedia autobiography “Neil Young Archives Vol. 1: 1963-1972.” In the box set's first disc, entitled “Early Years,” 7 tracks recorded by Young's Winnipeg band, the Squires are included.
Over a street map of Winnipeg, in the 236-page hardbound book that comes with the package, are photos of Young playing local high schools, and standing outside the 4th Dimension coffeehouse where he first met Joni Mitchell.
Among the city's best-known bands around that time were Chad Allen & the Expressions (later renamed the Guess Who), Sugar 'N Spice, the Mongrels, the Fifth, Blakewood Castle, and the Gettysburg Address.
Many of these acts recorded for Franklin Records run by accountant Frank Weiner, whose Hungry I Agency provided Mills with his first entertainment contact.
The ‘70s and ‘80s brought a hard rock vibe to Winnipeg’s music scene with Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Harlequin, and the Pumps leading the way. In the late 1980s, the Crash Test Dummies emerged.
Mills started his career as the director of programming for the University of Manitoba. Then he worked for two years as an in-house agent at Paquin Entertainment Group which managed such popular children acts as Fred Penner, Norman Foote and Al Simmons.
Mills joined S.L. Feldman as an agent for the launch of its Toronto office in 1993. He became dir. of performing arts touring in 2004, and vice-president of performing arts in 2007.
In his various positions, Mills has worked closely with Canadian government officials planning Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa for the past 12 years; overseen bookings for the Du Maurier Concert Stage's performing arts program in Toronto for 7 years; and bookings for First Canadian Place's Arts and Events Series , also in Toronto, for 15 years.
At the same time, Mills has also increasingly developed opportunities for his clients internationally, including in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, and Japan.
Last month, he was part of a team that organized a concert event in Giza, Egypt featuring veteran Canadian singer Tom Cochrane.
You now travel a great deal. Are you trying to grow a more international business?
We are a global company, and have been for a number of years. Jeff Craib (senior vice-president) works extensively in Australia, and South America; and Shaw Saltzberg (senior vice-president) has been working extensively in Australia, South America, and quite a bit in Europe.
This business is evolving, and the opportunities for great talent are evolving. Canada is not a big place, and we have some great talent. Molly Johnson has had success in France, for instance. Sophie Milman is successful in Japan. This year, Jesse Cook is going to Turkey, Poland, Ireland, Germany and England. Last year, he was in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.
The way the Internet works -- with people having the ability to now find product, and how talent is seen in different places -- there are more markets available. Development (of international markets) has probably happened in the past 8 or 9 years, but the Internet has sped it along. We have promoters from all over the world, and different parts of the United States, contacting our office, looking to connect with our clients. So opportunities reside with that (activity). We are following that, and growing outside of the (core) business. But you really have to do your research (to be successful in international markets).
Do you book in the U.S.?
I’m doing more bookings there now because of the relationships I have built up over time. I am now booking the Canadian Tenors there. They are currently on tour with David Foster. They have had a very good year. I think we have 75 dates on the books for them this year. I believe in them, and I have a sense of what’s going on with them.
Were the dynamics of booking family acts early in your career any less adversarial than booking rock or pop acts?
It was pretty congenial (booking family acts). There’s sort of an old school way of doing business, when you are trying to talk a person past the number, and make them do what you need them to do--as opposed to understanding their business, and figuring out what the best thing is to do, and coming up with something that is effective. With my early experiences, I didn’t have that feeling (that was happening). If you listen to the other person, and figure out what the reality is, you can usually stitch together something that is effective for both sides.
Given the tough economic times, shouldn’t booking agents today look at a promoter’s overall business in the market when booking?
Well, you have to. If you are doing things without consideration of the marketplace or an understanding of what a relative ticket price is; and, if you are not listening to the local promoter saying, “We can’t get that ticket price here” and things start failing all around you, you only have yourself to blame.
I think that back in the day, when people threw stuff at a wall, and were trying to figure out what would stick, there were going to be winners and losers. It was a volume business based on certain things. As that thinned out, it came down to being a business of relationships.
If you understand the long-term interests of clients, and you can create a balance that people can win at -- if they are contributing to each other -- then you are going to have a long-term business.
The recession isn’t as bad in Canada as it is in the U.S., but venues are scaling back or cutting guarantees. How are your acts reacting to that?
You have to have a dialogue back and forth with clients. If you don’t, you aren’t really servicing the clients that you are working with. You educate the artist or whoever is involved in their business. Then they can then choose whether they will go forward or not (with a booking). Or you create a different option. Or you choose not to play (the date), and you come back a different day when things are stronger, and more vibrant.
Artists come and go, but venues or promoters generally remain in place, and you have a continuing relationship with them. Don’t agents really have two masters?
We work and service the artists that we represent.
If an agent has a 20-year relationship with a promoter don’t lines get blurred?
It’s a balance. If you are dealing with people fairly, and if you go through each transaction as it is; and if you are upfront about how things are going to go, you will maintain the relationship (with a promoter). Some times things just don’t work out. Some times, you have to work with different promoters. Some times, an artist is evolving through a system. You have to be aware of what is going on in the marketplace.
What are the differences of working in Canada from the U.S.?
It’s easier to create a national identity in Canada because we are smaller (as a marketplace), although we have a large geographic space. We have fewer markets. So, if you want to build a national story, you have fewer markets to go to get to that place. In America, you have to hit a lot more markets to be a success, regionally or nationally. That takes more doing there.
You have had considerable success in building jazz singer Sophie Milman’s career.
When I took her on, the most tickets she had sold in Toronto was probably 200. I recognized that her potential, given the records she had sold in the region, was much higher. The step of creating a ticketed event that was in line with her ability to draw, had not been done. So, we took on the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto with roughly 980 seats three years ago. We worked with Live Nation, put the story out there, and she sold out the show. She didn’t believe that could happen. But it was due; the step just hadn’t been taken.
If an artist makes their mark in Toronto, does that give you a story for the rest of Canada?
To a degree. Certainly, by selling out the Winter Garden Theatre, people started taking notice of Sophie, and we worked with some of the jazz festivals. But, because she was still emerging (nationally), many people also didn’t care what she was doing. And, the record was two years old at that point. [Linus Entertainment released Milman's self-titled debut in Canada in 2004.]
What was the next step taken in Sophie’s career?
We had a new record ("Make Someone Happy" in 2007), and we wanted to make a larger statement. To their credit, Live Nation was buoyed by the success that we had created with her. They worked with us in partnership, and we were able to find space at Massey Hall in Toronto.
Before that, an opportunity came up for Sophie to open for Cesária Évora at Roy Thompson Hall.
Sophie ended up on the front cover of the in-house program that goes in both Massey Hall and Roy Thompson Hall. It’s a striking picture. All of the brochures disappeared. You couldn’t find one.
Then, at the Roy Thompson Hall show, Sophie made a bunch of fans when she shared her story of being at Roy Thomson Hall as a young girl with her father, who didn’t have much money at the time, and he bought two front row tickets to see Oscar Peterson. She shared that story, and won everybody’s hearts.
When it became time to do Massey Hall the following year, the marketing department there chose her to be the cover of their (subscription) brochure. A couple of hundred thousand brochures were done. She went on to sell out Massey Hall.
[Milman was born in Ufa, Russia -- on the slopes of the Ural Mountains -- but her family immigrated to Haifa, Israel, when she was 7. At 16, Milman was uprooted again when the family moved to Canada.]
What stage is Sophie’s career at now?
Her third album (“Take Love Easy”) has come out. She’s been to Japan four times. This coming year, we will be focusing on Europe. Her career in America is continuing. We are doing performing arts business there with her and her bookings have grown. I work closely with Ed Keane (Ed Keane Associates) who does the day-to-day in the (U.S.). We have to co-ordinate a lot of information back-and-forth for the different territories we are working on with her.
There has also been a remarkable career evolution with guitarist Jesse Cook in the past few years.
I’m going into my 14th year working with Jesse. A festival buyer in Quebec; Jean Beauchesne at Festival D’ete in Quebec City; gave me a record one day. I was staying in Quebec City on a Sunday, and I was in a hotel that had a CD player. I only had one CD to play, and it was his. By the time I had finished, I had worked myself up into a frenzy to get on the phone and connect (with him). The music really spoke to me. It was different than what I had been working with before. I connected with his then manager. Two weeks later, an opportunity (for a show) came up that I knew he would be great for, and I sent it to them with no obligation. Two weeks later, I did it again. Eventually, they decided to make a change, and we’ve been working together ever since.
One of the first shows we did together was in Montréal for 200 people in a little room above the Spectrum (club) that isn’t there anymore. This summer, Jesse filmed his DVD for PBS in front of 60,000 people during the 30th anniversary of the Montreal Jazz Festival. He has now sold over a million records throughout the world.
Last month, you organized a concert event in Giza, Egypt near the site of the Great Sphinx, the Great Pyramid, and a number of other large pyramids and temples.
This was an event for a Canadian firm that I can’t disclose The company was creating a special incentive experience for 900 people. The company has been doing these events every two years for 12 years. Since the owner is attached to music in the past, it usually has involved a concert. In this case, it was a cruise to Greece, a day trip to the pyramids, and a concert event at the pyramids with Tom Cochrane performing. We were part of a team that executed it. It was an amazing experience. It was the first private event ever done there.
Difficult to pull off?
There were a lot of logistics, and many challenges in doing it, including that we had to load in the middle of the night. While we had to overcome a huge number of obstacles, the setting was amazing.
Coming out of a situation like that only reinforces my ability to do more things