Chad Heimann

After moving to San Francisco in 2008, Chad Heimann became immersed in the Bay Area and national music scene.

As a student at the University of San Francisco, he began exploring all of the industry options available to him; he held positions as the Student Director for his college radio station (KUSF), and was a senior music writer for his college paper (The Foghorn). Off campus, he interned for a variety of locally based music businesses, including: Zeitgeist Artist Management, Goldenvoice/AEG, Yours Truly, and Noise Pop Industries. He was hired by Noise Pop in 2011, having graduated from USF with a bachelor’s degree in Media Studies and co-founded the boutique artist management firm, Salty Artist Management, with his best friend and managing partner Christopher Crowley. Currently, he’s the Talent Buyer at Noise Pop where he handles all the talent buying for the Noise Pop Music Festival, Swedish American Hall, and 20th Street Block Party. He is also part of the team that books for Treasure Island Music Festival. As a managing partner and founder of Salty Artist Management, he advises the careers of every artist on the management roster, such as: Skylar Spence, Mitski, Mutual Benefit, Diet Cig, as wel as the electronic producer Giraffage and indie artist Jay Som.

I grew up in Alta Loma which is a part of greater Rancho Cucamonga in Southern California. It's a bit out of the way of LA proper but not too far away enough to where you could be in Downtown LA in less than an hour.

While I didn't personally dive into music or care for it too much till my early teens my parents were big music fans who had cabinets full of CDs they'd blast in the backyard on weekends. I also grew up camping a ton since my parents owned an RV. I spent a lot of time picking out CDs from their collection to listen to on the drives to make the time go by faster on the four hour drives we'd make out to Arizona.

I think from my mid-teens I knew I really liked going to shows and wanted to be involved in the scene but didn't have a clear path to how to make money doing it. I remember wanting to be a music attorney back in high school but by the time I went to college law school was the last thing on my mind. Within the first week of going to school (at the University of San Francisco) I popped into the campus radio station that was mostly community run and told them I'd like to get involved. From there I had my first taste of the SF music scene. After getting into the groove of it I figured that working the music industry was my calling.

On campus I had become the head of student recruitment at KUSF and spent some time as a music writer at USF's newspaper The Foghorn. While those were great ways to get involved at school and grow my resume I knew I wanted to try and get a real world internship or two to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I really resonated with Zeitgeist Artist Management's roster and was lucky enough to spend 8 months interning and seeing how much work goes into management. That experience also helped connect the dots to the roles managers, agents, publicists and label product managers play in an artist's career.

After Zeitgeist I spent some time as a marketing intern at Goldenvoice's SF office where I saw more of the corporate side of the industry being that GV is a part of the concert behemoth AEG Live. Being that they're a large and diverse company one day we could be marketing a hip rap show while the next day it could be trying to connect with a burner crowd for jam act. From this internship I learned I was less interested in marketing nor in being part of such a large corporate promoter where bookings are kind of all over the place.

After spending some time helping remotely with the folks at Yours Truly and the new defunct music site The Daily Swarm I started interning at Noise Pop as a general marketing intern. Shortly after my internship ended I was offered a part time job as the festival's marketing coordinator.

Chris and I met the first day of school in our intro to media studies class. I was a freshman; he was as a transferring sophomore. We both had band tees on so we had an immediate bond. During my junior year we started booking a local college night at a pretty terrible bar down the block from campus where we booked small garage bands and oncampus DJs. Through those shows we started managing a few friend’s bands by helping them get other local slots around town. That was around 2010/2011. By 2012 we starting managing Giraffage which really was the turning point for us professionally.

Since the beginning it's always been Chris and I supporting independent artists as best we could. The only thing that has changed is our team which has grown larger over the years. In 2015 we brought on Jessi Frick as our third partner whose artist friendly management style is very in line with Chris and myself. We also have managers Jeanette Wall and Ariel Bitran on the team as well operating under Salty.

I think the biggest challenge is knowing when to not take on too much and make time for yourself. On the management side specifically there's always another band or three I'd like to work with but it's knowing when you have enough without sacrificing a current or future client's time.

A talent buyer is the person who books on behalf of a promoter and handles the day to day relationships and negotiations with booking agencies that represent bands. I have the job of balancing the Swedish American Hall calendar making sure I’m not booking on days we have private rentals while also not booking too many shows to overload our marketing team. I also then draw up initial financial offers to send to agents and work to come to a final agreement for each show.

For the most part Swedish American Hall offers are all coming from me while Treasure Island is a committee of myself, Noise Pop's owners and the booking team of Another Planet Entertainment discussing slots as well as fees.

There are so many elements at play to building a bill each night. Sometimes it's an agent coming to you with a full package of a headliner + touring support band that you know are going to be the next big thing while other times it's you, the agent and headliner working through a list of locals to bring together the right bill.

I think over the years the growth in festivals and promoters all over the state have all affected the landscape of booking bands. You might have perfect act you want to bring to town for Halloween but they reach out to the agent and find out they're booked already for New Year’s Eve and not coming into the market till then. It makes for each promoter having to build relationship early with bands by booking them while they're just starting out.

There can be a bit of competition at times. I can be submitting an offer for a tour and going up against one to five other venues in the city for the show. It necessarily come down to money either but more so which room is the best fit for the show as well. Sometimes an agent would rather have a band in a sold out 350 cap room than a half empty 600 cap room. The date can also affect it too.

Not counting the Swedish American Hall I'd have to say my favorite venue in San Francisco is The Independent. The room isn't too small to where bigger bands won't play it but intimate enough to where it always feels special.

Working for Noise Pop I really love being a part of team of fun passionate people who are all excited about producing events as I am. It's so cool to spend months of work on an event and then see 20,000 all enjoying it because of the work we put in. As a manger it's so fulfilling to start working with an artist who's literally making music out of their bedroom and help grow them to a level where they've turned that passion to where they can make a living and see the world.

By far one of the coolest shows this year was getting a chance to work with Beach House's team on producing an intimate seated 200 cap show in a DIY space where no phones or cameras were allowed in. Getting to enjoy a band of that size in such a small space was so rewarding to me.

MENTORS Yes, early on since I met him my good friend Steve Brodsky mentored me up until he passed away from a leukemia at the age of 34 in 2013. Steve was an artist manager with strong ties to the SF music scene who was always there for me when I needed a label contact, advise on a legal issue or just an introduction to a local promoter. When I find myself questioning something I still find myself asking "What would Brodsky do?"

Photography by Shauna Saneinejad | Interview by Heather Hawke