Extended Intermission: Bookers
By Alyana Vera, contributor
Extended Intermission is a new interview series that invites people within NYC’s music ecosystem to reflect on the year without live music. Coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the live music shutdown in NYC, we’ll be sharing the perspective of bookers, artists, publicists, sound techs, photographers, and bartenders.
This edition focuses on the people who help organize and put on the shows we all love and miss; we check in with Isaac Ziman, the local musical jack-of-all-trades behind the BKyard Boogie events, and Alex Gleeson, the talent buyer at beloved Brooklyn venue Baby’s All Right.
As told to Alyana Vera
Meet Isaac Ziman, Event Curator, and DJ
Isaac’s path in the music industry is a little less traditional. Originally living in Chicago and working in healthcare, Isaac first got involved in music by volunteering with SoFar Sounds. He continued to work with SoFar in a freelance capacity after moving to New York four years ago. Eventually, he branched out and started his own event series, BKyard Boogie, in 2018. In addition to hosting his own events, Isaac also works as the general manager at the Crown Heights DIY venue Mr. Rogers and runs social media for the music promo company Co-sign.
That last show I went to I saw this really dope band called Underground System. They're probably my favorite live group I've ever seen, to be honest. They had a monthly residency that they were going to do at the Sultan Room with DJs like Eli from Soul Clap and Funky Seshwa. That was literally a few days before the world shut down. At that point, it was one of those things you heard about, but we're out here in Brooklyn running around thinking we're invincible. I was actually supposed to have a Boogie event on March 14th. Things were starting to shut down that week so I put a poll on my Instagram asking "If we go forward with the event, would you come or not?" It was 50/50 so I decided not to go through with it. The reality was weighing down progressively over the course of the next couple of weeks. You're just realizing that no one has answers right now, and the more we’re learning the worse it’s sounding.
Working with So Far, booking Mr. Rogers, and my own events—those worlds were colliding in a good way and things were starting to really happen for me. It took a few months for me to realize that I kind of needed to really change everything I'm doing, at least until the fall. It's pretty disheartening to have the rug pulled out from you like that. For a couple of months I was disoriented, like "Where do I put this energy?" I wasn't able to apply that energy to anything that meant something to me, and I think that's the hardest part.
The first couple months of the pandemic I was putting so much pressure on myself to pivot to live-streaming and change everything and succeed in this "new normal." When you're trying to create out of place of "I need to be doing this, this, and this," you're never going to be satisfied. Social media just amplifies all those feelings, because you see DJs who are doing live-streams and think "I should be doing this." If you get in that loop it's toxic. Everyone's got their own way of navigating this. It was a difficult first few months but I've since figured out some new projects to focus on. I live with my sister, who's been a part of building the Boogie brand, and we're actually starting our own creative agency.
I just miss being in a space hearing music and people being on that same wavelength. Humans need that. I've had little tastes here and there; our roommate upstairs shot a video in our apartment a few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun, but also overwhelming. I forgot how to be around different people. There were four people in the room dancing and I was on such a high. You take that for granted when you're doing it multiple days a week.
Meet Alex Gleeson, Talent Buyer
Originally from Australia, Alex got his start in the music industry as a journalist at Ripe, later working as a booker for a Melbourne venue at the age of 20. He moved to NYC in 2019, however, due to COVID-19, was forced back to Australia in 2020. He is now Talent Buyer for Baby TV, working remotely from Melbourne.
From what I gather, as early as February the head of operations at Baby's, Brandon Collins, was really starting to be wary of what was going on. The rest of the team didn't take it as seriously as they should have, looked at it as being something that was probably concerning but was going to be contained. Baby's started putting hand sanitizer on tables and taking as many precautions as it could without actually knowing what precautions to take. I remember being at a show in early March—when the Mystery Lights played at Baby’s—and that same night there was a photo series of women in music. I heard from a few people that there was a bit of an outbreak there, and that was sort of the realization that, "Oh shit, this is pretty real."
The next week Billy (Creative Director) got a call from an agent at UTA who was like, "We've got three shows this week and everyone's freaking out about New York". It was a shock because the team thought it felt fine in the City, and it really did. It didn't feel like it was going to collapse that week. Baby's had six sold-out shows that week and lost every single one of them. It was then that Brandon decided, "Okay, we're just going to be the first one's to close because it's the right thing to do and we've lost all these shows, so there's no point in opening in this current state.
With the lack of knowledge surrounding the pandemic and how long it was going to last, along with the fact that my visa was expiring, I decided to cut my time in New York a little early. Brandon offered me the role as head of Baby TV, to work remotely from Melbourne, with the prospect of Talent Director on my hopeful return.
I left towards the end of March, just before it really exploded. I'm very much in limbo in terms of where I'm actually based, and a lot of my life plans are based around when Baby's returns to live music. In terms of New York, I feel so unfinished. I like the idea of ending on my own terms, of having a natural conclusion instead of a sudden one. I'm committed to returning and I'm really excited about the prospect of helping the city find its feet in the live music scene.
Weirdly, from the other side of the world, I'm really enjoying working out Baby's flight path back to normality. Basically, our job at the moment to just continue to take holds and avails and cancellations and rebook. I think one of the biggest frustrations for me is the lethargy that can creep in and the monotony. Mid to late last year it felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again like there wasn't any real movement. Now that there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. All these agents are coming out of the woodwork and offering us shows. Honestly, I think there is some chance that shows will resume in September. But no one knows what it's going to look like.
We've got some really exciting things on the horizon, such as the Save Our Stages bill that was passed in Congress, which will not only help us stay on our feet but also help us grow towards reopening. It would mean that we could really set up the venue to be actually better than it was when we went into the pandemic. There's a frustration in limbo, but also excitement at that renewed hope