IMAGINE BEING IN YOUR EARLY
20’s practically fresh out of college and managing the biggest band on the planet, The Fray. Impossible? Not at all. Josh Terry made it happen but it took a lot more than blood, sweat and tears to do it. It took dedication, taking risks and an insane work ethic. Although he accomplished an obscene amount in the music industry at a young age he wasn’t fast at saying it all came over night. At 18 years old, Terry attended South Carolina University in hopes to graduate with a masters in Journalism. His dream: to become a newspaper editorial writer. After the first week of college his original dream had died; journalism was not at all what he expected. To figure out what he would do for the rest of his life, Terry joined two collegiate activities: the university’s Bi Centennial Celebration and the concert board. Both activities had a strong emphasis on how operations worked in the entertainment industry and both would drive him straight into the heart of it. The concert board consisted of only three people: he and two others. The first band brought in while on the board was Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, and the concert did not go well to say the least. The girl in charge had a nervous breakdown and resigned her position, as one would imagine after a concert held in a room capacity of 2,000 had only 13 audience members attend. For the next three years Terry took over and rocked it like the school had never seen before. By the time he graduated the board went from his lonesome to a bursting 75 members. The budget that had consisted of $80,000 a year skyrocketed to $345,000. They scheduled a show a week bringing in local acts as well as national and scheduling tours to stop in like the MTV Campus Invasions. They even came as close as to getting Dave Matthews, Ryan Adams, and John Meyer to roll through. Over that summer Terry interned for a small management company in his hometown that consisted of three people. Walking in for the first time, he remembers it being the craziest thing he had ever seen: the three people were screaming, making deals and writing checks in a poster-covered room. All he did that summer was make copies and listen, “I just listened to how they talked to people and how they negotiated deals and how they dealt with artists.” And then he realized that a management company dealt with everything in an artist’s life from how they make their money, what contracts to sign, and how life on the road is set up. “And it clicked and I was like, ‘this is what I want to do.’” Not only was it the operation process that drew him in, it was the people of that small company in his hometown. “I think a lot of it had to do with the passion of the people at that company. They were a small company who didn’t represent a lot of things but it was very important to them. That sold me on management.” And the next summer he interned for them again, only was much more involved. However he thought, “’I don’t want to be just this small town guy doing this,’” and still in his junior year of college, he became a college rep for Aware Management. He shortly found out that he was the only rep in the entire southeast. The company would call when one of their bands were driving through and he would drive from South Carolina to as far as Mississippi to sell merch and meet the bands. “I saw John Meyer play in my college town in front of three people at a show and he played a full on John Meyer set like you’d see at The Bridgestone but for 3 people. And we went and had dinner afterwards, he bought me a coke, and I got to know him and a lot of the artists Aware was breaking at the time before they blew up.” Aware was his dream company and he knew he had to do something big that summer. Fortunately for him an internship was up for grabs
in the big windy city. He flew out of state for the first time for the interview and thought it went absolutely horrible. Much to his dismay, he got it and thought, “‘Fuck! How do I do this?’” Like any responsible college student moving to another state for the summer, he took out a $5,000 loan. But he also lived like a college student that summer as well, “I spent every fucking cent of $5,000 in 4 months. And lived off of nothing, lived in the worst neighborhood I could find. Ate cheese toast off of recycled paper plates that I reused because I had no money.” But he worked his ass off the entire summer and made a name for himself that the company would be able to get to know and appreciate. When he went back to school for his final year, he began to manage small artists and bands for the first time practically on his own. He worked hard like any manager should, and it worked because they got signed to major labels like Capital and Warner Brothers, “I learned how to be a lot more professional at 21 than I should have been.” But once again, a roadblock was put in his way, his artists seemed to be getting dropped from their labels right before the summer he graduated. He was stuck with no money and no job. But once again, a light shone onto his problems. Terry got a call from his friend Vance who was on the road with Howie Day offering him a merchandise job on probably the biggest tour of the summer, a co-headliner with Gavin Degraw and Dave Matthews Band. “Me being 23 years old and being like, I run my own business and I’m a hot shot, was kind of arrogant and was like ‘I don’t know if I want to sell t-shirts for a summer,’” but he did, and after three days he wasn’t just selling t-shirts, he was settling the entire tour each night for sold out 30,000 capacity arenas. He did everything: “everything from press to everyone getting paid, dealing with two different busses and a semi truck, and from being the small town kid who had worked with bands that sold like 50 tickets, to being on the biggest tour of the summer and if I wasn’t there it wouldn’t have happened without someone getting kicked off the tour.” Then the day he had been waiting for came, a call from Aware inviting him to interview for their open position, “I didn’t ask how much money because that was my dream, to work at Aware.” He got the job. Aware allowed him to bring one artist of his own and then he would be doing the unthinkable, managing The Fray at the time they were the biggest band on the planet, and also managing a newcomer by the name of Mat Kearney. And he worked furiously, “I could either sit and collect a small paycheck and just do my job, or I can kill myself and maybe make enough of a name for myself to where artists are going to trust me with their career.” There is a certain equation to get artist managing right. Terry explains how listening, detail oriented, a work-o-holic, and being an ethically driven good person are all apart of the secret. “If I make a bad decision it could affect whether their children eat that month or whether they have enough money. Or I might make a deal and put them with a company that’s not going to support them the way they should.” And even though he’s accomplished everything he’s ever wanted, he still has a dream. “My biggest goal is to continue to find people that excite me about wanting to work in music and to achieve their goals. You do this for thirteen years, not a lot of things excite you anymore, but that is more exciting than drugs and sex…it’s that moment where you can look at that person and say ‘we did this together.’” PHOTO: Tom Falcone INTERVIEW & STORY: Jenn Stookey
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