Extended Intermission: Publicists

By Alyana Vera, contributor

Photo by, Maggie Friedman

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.

For this edition, The Family Reviews checked in with the people who help expose artists to the rest of the world to see how that job has changed during the pandemic. Below you’ll find reflections from Emilio Herce, a native New Yorker and the in-house publicist for Q Prime Management.

As told to Alyana Vera

Meet Emilio Herce - Publicist for Q Prime Management

A native New Yorker, Emilio was raised by a working-class family in the Bronx. Describing music as “not a natural path,” Emilio first got his start as a drummer. But a musician’s life wasn’t great for his health and meant a lot of time away from home, so Emilio transitioned into working as a music journalist—which came with few benefits and job instability. Emilio eventually got a job at Shore Fire, a music PR firm founded by Bruce Springsteen, where he learned the ins-and-outs of how to be a publicist. A chance encounter at the Cake Shop (RIP) brought him to his current job as the in-house publicist for Q Prime Management, where he’s worked for the past four years.

I went to a show literally the week of everything shutting down in New York. I had a band in town and we had gone to do some press, and it turned out that at one of the places we'd gone to someone had been infected. We had to quarantine but luckily I never got it. We were all very naive about it. SXSW was when I knew that this shit was serious and it was going to lock us out for at least a year. The last show I went to was a Silversun Pickups show and people kind of knew that this was slowing down. It was very joyful, like the last hurrah. There's something to be said about the importance of getting together in a sweaty room and watching a band you love and singing along. I probably wouldn't be okay if there were another year without live music.

It seems like such a trivial thing compared to all the people who are dying or out of work, but it's our life. Without music, I don't know how anyone would have made it through the pandemic.  I wonder how artists are going to suffer because there isn’t that platform to develop from a DIY band to playing small clubs. A lot of these places have closed down. This was an issue even before the pandemic. I used to play in DIY bands at Shea Stadium and Silent Barn, which were gone before the pandemic started. The city didn't support these venues and because of that, there was no cohesive scene before the pandemic. Even when music does come back and everyone's vaccinated, there's still going to be a buffer period where all the infrastructure is built up again.

I had this band, The Murder Capital from Ireland, who were playing New York for the first time. I think of all the bands I've worked with, their career might have been affected the most by this. A lot of bands had tours canceled but they were already more established. This was the jumping-off point for The Murder Capital. There were so many bands where this was going to be the year for them, and then they had to cancel the album or postpone it, or just spit it out and have it fall on deaf ears. This is unprecedented; it's an indefinite pause on your career. Do you just put out the music now or do you wait, with no guarantee this will ever end? 

At the start of it, we were all for postponing and waiting it out because a lot of the money that artists make is from touring and selling merchandise at shows. Without the ability to do that, you can't fully promote an album. But I think it's also had a psychic toll on people. If you're playing the same songs for over two years, you might not be in that place anymore; you might have new stuff to put out. It kind of stunts your growth if you can't release the music that you're writing. At this point I'm like, you should put it out and work on new music and future tours.  

The hardest part of being a publicist—besides not going to shows—is that the media landscape has changed a lot. There's been a lot of layoffs and freelancer budgets have gone down. There's less space for media coverage because a lot of these publications have lost ad revenue because no one's promoting albums or tours, so they have to cut back on coverage. I think the hardest part is just telling an artist that there's not as many opportunities for them. Just seeing my artists struggle has been really hard. It's just a scary time to work in music.

Besides work, I've been working on two pro-bono projects. My friend Rosie started an organization with her sister called Fuck the Pietriarchy and three years ago we started putting on concerts. We've put on two concerts so far: one for Planned Parenthood and one for the Immigrant Defense Project at Baby's All Right. So we're planning a third virtual concert coming up, but that's something we want to do more of once live music comes back. I'm also helping a friend who's interviewed and taken photos of 31 musicians about their life in quarantine. I'm not good at not being busy so I just try to fill my time as much as possible.

artists in isolation by, claire marie vogel

At the initial stage of the pandemic, everyone was kind of in a fog and no one wanted to create. I bought a bike during the pandemic so my friends and I started a bike gang; we just ride around Prospect Park on our bikes. I've also tried to rekindle friendships I've had that have lapsed. I started taking guitar lessons from my friends; playing guitar has gotten me through so much, it’s provided a sense of purpose. I've just tried to engage in as much art as I could. Me and my roommate will have gatherings where we'll project a concert onto a wall and watch it with friends. That’s helped a bit. More recently, I've felt an urge to create more, like writing songs or writing in my journal. I think we all figured this out in our own way and we're all trying to survive.

Naturally, I'm an optimistic person. It seems like by June or July, everyone in the States who wants the vaccine will be able to get it. That gives me hope. So hopefully there'll be enough herd immunity that we'll be able to return to live music by then. I think there will be DIY shows before the major ones open up. There needs to be a balance between people putting on shows and not disrupting or hurting the community further. But once vaccines are available to most people, it'll be the perfect storm for it. Hopefully, everyone who's picked up an instrument over the last year starts bands and there'll be a resurgence of music in New York.

I think that once we're getting back, we need to focus especially on emerging artists and smaller venues to try to preserve them because that's where the next batch of mega-stars are going to come from. That's why I think funding is really important. We basically need to preserve the ability of an artist to develop and have a career and make a living on it. The U.S. has not historically had a great system for that like Canada has with grants. That's something we shouldn't overlook once we return.