Source: https://www.gazettextra.com/archives/local-bands-big-names-and-owners-booking-skills-helped-build-up-the-back-bar/article_5c290851-c40d-50df-8db0-df7b1b548396.html -"Janesville Gazette" Article (GazetteXtra) **Title:** Local bands, big names and owner's booking skills helped build up The Back Bar **Date:** June 2016 ## Article Bob Kerman might have kids, but it's clear The Back Bar is his baby. Visit the historic bar at 1901 Beloit Ave. and you'll immediately notice its clean exterior, spotless outdoor patio and well-kept gravel parking area. Walk inside and you'll find a large bar, a sea of neon and, on most nights, Kerman himself. At the center of it all is the owner's pride and joy—a spacious concert area featuring a main stage, brilliant lighting, state-of-the-art sound equipment and enough room to accommodate a few hundred metalheads. You can almost taste the intensity. It wasn't always this way. When Kerman took over in 2003, the place was Extreme Nights, a dance club playing Top 40s music. Before that it had been everything from a cattle auction barn to a bowling alley to a country bar. The place was in dire need of an identity. Despite entering the venture with relatively little bar experience, Kerman melded his business acumen and intense love of rock music—along with a pinch of social psychology—to resurrect the tavern into a hard rock destination. Kerman—who also owns Bobbleheads at 2709 S. Highway 51—also assumed all booking responsibilities—a skill he has mastered on the fly. His approach is two-fold: Focus attention on acts that play original rock music and "book bands that don't suck." The formula seems to have worked. Today, The Back Bar is not only a launch pad for up-and-coming local bands but also a sought-out venue for regional and national touring acts. Local bands such as Roxtar (the bar's house band) mesh with recognized rock names that include Sponge, Bobaflex, Soil, Powerman 5000, Jake E. Lee and Red Dragon Cartel, Adler's Appetite … the list goes on and on. Recently, Kerman sat down to discuss his booking system, to explain just how The Back Bar finally got its groove back. Q: Is this the first bar you've ever owned? A: Bobbleheads is the first bar I ever owned. In 2002, Diane and I bought half, and we were partners with Jim and Becky Halbach. We bought half of that and he said, "Well you might as well buy half of this one, too," so we did. Then he went to Vegas, came back one day and said, "Meet me at Bobbleheads at noon." So I meet him at noon. He says, "I don't want a partner." So I suggested to Jim that we flip for it, let's make it interesting. So, we tossed a coin—loser has to buy the other guy out. I lost, so we owned the whole bar. We weren't intending to get into the bar business. Q: What had you been doing prior to that? A: My main career was Electrolarm Security Systems, which I'd sold for 30 years. Then we started JVL-Net Internet Services, which was one of the first Internet companies in the Midwest. Halbach wanted a website for one of his businesses, and we did that. That's how we met. Then we ended up buying half the bar, then the whole bar, now we're in the bar business. Q: When you bought The Back Bar, it was a little different. What was your first change? A: The first time I came in here, it was a hip-hop club called Extreme Nights. They were playing Top 40s hip-hop, and it was the only place in town doing it at the time. So I'm doing that and one day Dan Buehl, the original lighting guy for The Back Bar when it was (a rock bar), comes in one day, looks around and says to me, "What the f---, Bob?" The very next day I announced we were closing the hip-hop club and going back to rock 'n roll. Dan never said a word to me other than, "What the f---?" but I knew exactly what he was telling me telepathically. That was it. Dan and I basically brought it back. All the lights were in storage backstage, so he put them in his pickup truck and scrubbed them down while standing in the back of his pickup. We put all the lights up, hooked up the sound equipment, redid all the cables and the amps and fired them up, replaced all the tubes, and bang, I started booking bands. Q: What was it like booking bands in those early days? A: When I first started, we only booked local bands. The first band to play here was Automatic, a popular local band. They did all the marketing and advertising because all they had to do was tell their fans what bar they were at on a particular day, and they would come out. Q: How did the decision to book regional/national acts come about? A: I started getting calls asking, "Hey, how would you like to book this touring band?" I thought, "OK, let's see what happens." I'm not afraid to try. I'd get phone calls like, "Hey, Steven Adler wants to play The Back Bar," and I'm like "Really, the guy who got fired on stage by Guns N' Roses?" "Yeah, that's the guy. He's doing a tour, and he wants to stop." They would just Google "live music venues" in the Midwest and I'd pop up because I owned an Internet company and I know how to embed everything properly. Q: Was Adler received well here? A: Adler did well. People know him and they like him. He was popular at the time because he was on a couple of TV shows talking about his addiction. People would say, “Oh, I know Adler. I hope he's doing well.” Id' say, “Well come on out and find out for yourself.” He was a very sweet guy, and he thanked every single person that came out, shook their hands and signed their stuff. It took a half-hour for him to get out of here. Q: Are most big names as considerate to their fans? A: Some want that (bad) image on purpose. Marilyn Manson wants that image because it's what makes Marilyn Manson Marilyn Manson. Not everybody in the band business cares if they are liked or not. About 80 percent are in the middle putting out good music and they care about their fans, and they set their price based on affordability. On one end you've got the bands that are strictly about the money, and they don't care if they have a fan that likes them or if you (the venue owner) make any money. Then you have the bands that almost care too much. They don't charge enough because they are financially set and they just want to play. Q: Can you give me an example? A: I asked Gallagher, why are you only charging (his asking price). He started out as a stagehand for Jim Stafford, who died suddenly while on tour. Gallagher said, “Here I am faced with his shows coming up. I've got all his stage props and I figured, 'I could do this.' So he did. He went from nothing to being a hugely successful guy. He said, “Now I'm going back and doing the clubs I should have done to build my career and I'm using those clubs to wind down my career.” Great guy. Q: You make this booking thing sound pretty simple. A: It took 10 years to figure out there is a right and wrong way of doing things, but there's still no guarantees. You don't know when it's going to snow. I booked Zim Zum, the guitar player who replaced Daisy Berkowitz in Marilyn Manson, at $25 a ticket. We had a snowstorm on both sides of the highway, and I had 18 people here. Nobody could get in or out of Janesville. So after paying the band and getting less than $500 in income, I got you know what. That one didn't work out. Q: What has changed with booking since you first started doing it? A: My attitude has changed a lot over 13 years. I used to pay locals to play Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then one day I thought, “You know what, I'm bored.” So we started bringing in touring bands and I'd have covers open for them. Then some headliners would call and I thought “Let's try that,” so I had one or two local bands open for one or two touring bands, which would open for a headliner. So you'd come for the locals, the touring band or the headliner but I've given you three reasons to come. That was kind of the formula that worked. Then instead of covers I started booking originals, and that put The Back Bar on the map as a live music venue. Q: How do you determine ticket prices? A: It's a matter of what can I afford for a headliner before the ticket price is too high for this venue of 300 capacity in a town that has been seriously depressed for half the time I've owned this place. My rule of thumb is whatever the headliner wants, or whatever I negotiate them down to, I divide that by 100 and that's my guideline that I think I should have for a ticket price. I have to have 100 people come in to break even for the act. That doesn't include the hotel, the rider, all the time it takes to prepare sound, lights, cleaning, repairs, snow plowing, lawn mowing. That's probably another 100 people. Q: Is there another place after which you're modeling The Back Bar? A: My favorite place is Whiskey a Go Go in Hollywood, California. I go there all the time. I've got a place in Palm springs so I'm 10 minutes away. I meet a lot of bands and I have a lot of friends in bands that I meet out there. I think The Back Bar is actually a little bit bigger, but it's not laid out as open as Whiskey a Go Go. Q: Where does your love for rock music come from? A: In Chicago I used to go to a place called Aaron Russo's Kinetic Playground, which was nicknamed 'The Electric Theater.' You had the Fillmore West in L.A., the Fillmore East in New York and the Kinetic Playground in Chicago. Those were the three big music venues in the U.S. The first concert I ever went to cost me $5 and it was Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and Vanilla Fudge. Jethro Tull was being introduced for the first time in the U.S. and Vanilla Fudge was the headliner. I thought that was really cool. Q: Aside from performances by your house band, Roxtar, you open the stage on Thursday nights to local bands. Why? A: We try to bring those bands in on Thursday, which is Local Night. I don't pay them, but I give them pizza and drinks if they are 21. They can hang out and learn; they can get on a stage so they don't have to play in a garage anymore; they have a real PA system and a modern mixer. It gives them a feel (of what it's like to perform live). If they like it and they get better, they can come back anytime. Q: Do you consider The Back Bar a launch pad for local acts? A: We had the first heavy screaming band here. I don't remember their name at the time, but they turned into several other bands, and then Serianna and now it's Versus Me. Randy Hawke (the program director at 94.1 JJO) chose them to open Sonic Boom. It was like, “Wow, I knew Lee (Milbrandt, the band's bassist) when he was just an 18-year-old kid.” Now he's moved up significantly. Q: How do you respond to people who consider The Back Bar's brand of music to be 'noise'? A: I hear all the time that “that place” only plays screaming metal music. I ask, “Do you ever go to a movie theater?” They say, “Yeah, we go all the time.” “Well have you ever seen a bad movie at a movie theater?” “Yeah.” “Well that doesn't mean you're never going back to that movie theater again.” A bad movie doesn't blackball a movie theater any more than a bad band blackballs a live music venue. We have bad bands once in a while, and we don't book them again. Q: What is The Back Bar's legacy? A: The Back Bar has been here a very long time. It's an entity on its own and it's bigger than me. It's a very cool thing that's going on here, and I hope it goes on for a long, long time.