MISSOULA – It’s not often that Missoula’s music scene receives national attention but Pollstar magazine changed that last week.
They added Logjam Presents, a Missoula entertainment promotion and production company, to it’s list of top 100 promoters in the country.
“The fact that were 83rd in the world in the top 100 promoters but 100% of our ticket sales come in the Missoula market,” Logjam Presents owner and talent buyer Nick Checota. “So most of those promoters that are on that list are promoting multiple cities across the country.”
The company’s ranking is a testament to the enthusiasm Missoula has for live music.
“The appetite for music in Missoula is, per-capita, has got to be some of the best in the country,” Checota said. “You know we are behaving very much like a Seattle or a Portland or a Denver market with the amount of music we are bringing through and the amount of tickets that we are selling.”
Logjam attributes some of their success to the company’s ability to offer different venue sizes to artists and their agents.
“What we have is, we have a 550-capacity venue in the Top Hat, a 1,500-capacity venue in the Wilma a 4,250 capacity venue in the Kettlehouse Amphitheatre and a 10,000-capacity venue in Ogren,” Checota said. “By having all those different layers of capacity we are really able to attract more artists. Agents give us more respect and give us more attention because we are buying that much more music.”
So how does a promotion company carry this success into the next season? By adding about 10,000 more seats.
“You know I just think that we have great momentum. We had 20 great shows at the amphitheater last summer. All sold really well, so the agent community and the artist community really have a lot of faith in us,” Checota said. “Adding the ballpark is the big move for next year. Having a 10,000-capacity venue is going to really let us go after artists that we just can’t go after with a 4,000-person venue.”
Checota told MTN that one of the favorite events they hosted this season was the Nathaniel Rateliff show, which they said sold out quickly. They also said they were excited to get Sheryl Crow at the Kettlehouse Amphitheater because she normally plays in bigger venues.
Reporting by Connor McCauley for MTN News
