halibut sinclair said:

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AboveAndBeyond said:

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We had a festival with some HUGE names at the racetrack a few years ago. NIMBYs *****ed about the noise and they had to close down early.

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That was the Big State Festival in October 2007. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, Miranda Lambert, Tim McGraw, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Trace Adkins, Leon Russell, Kelly Willis and more.

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Yup. And that "venue" is becoming a housing development, so we're not likely to see too many more concerts like that out there. At least we've still got Chilifest.

AGnCS said:

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There really is no good excuse why we don't have big acts here. George Strait played Lubbock.....I say again, Lubbock.... on his farewell tour, and the tour before that and there is no bigger name in country music than him.

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Lubbock isn't 90 miles between Austin and Houston.

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Clearly you didn't read the rest of my post.

Small towns/venues all over America attract acts that are way above what you would expect for that area.
Elton John played some small college on South Dakota a few years ago for crying out loud. Being "90 miles from Austin and Houston" is a pitiful excuse, its lame and weak.
We can't do it, so we shouldn't even try. Nothing to see here move on.

Umm, no. I'm talking about 3 years ago. It was a lot of edm and rap, some rock. A few months ago at the medieval place. There's only a few hundred of us who'd like the music you're talking about. Why lose money on that when people fly in from other countries for the kids music? The NIMBYS shut both down for being loud.

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Being "90 miles from Austin and Houston" is a pitiful excuse, its lame and weak.

We can't do it, so we shouldn't even try. Nothing to see here move on.

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well why don't you open your own music venue instead of complaining and get Elton John to come here. Good luck!

AGnCS said:

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Being "90 miles from Austin and Houston" is a pitiful excuse, its lame and weak.

We can't do it, so we shouldn't even try. Nothing to see here move on.

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well why don't you open your own music venue instead of complaining and get Elton John to come here. Good luck!

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We have one......big one on campus, two of them actually. You may have seen them.

I work in the music industry and work with many BCS venues and artists. There are a few things... there are only so many venues in town currently that could support big acts. Wolf Pen is decent but it is extremely risky to do any concert or event/festival out there because of the potential for rain. All big acts would require the full payment even if the event was cancelled due to rain. When you are talking about a BIG act, this means $80k + down the drain.

I do not know how much it costs to rent Reed Arena but I imagine it is a lot...a 2015-2016 Texas A&M Facility guideline I saw online had Kyle Field at $25,000 to rent just for the field alone. Then you have to add in security costs, etc.

Artists do care about routing but if you found an artist who was already going to Houston, Austin or Dallas, they would happily come here for the right price.

So this all boils down to a huge amount of money and risk to the promoter of the show. I think local/regional acts are going to rule this town for a while (and there's nothing wrong necessarily with that.) I think the only person/entity with deep enough pockets to bring in a big artist is Texas A&M and unfortunately they don't seem to interested (they stopped doing First Yell.)

Is MSC Town Hall even an organized student group anymore? I think A&M is more committed to OPAS type events ... smaller crowds and less risk.

Yes, they are. They bring in medium sized music acts and have brought in what I would consider big comedians (Daniel Tosh and Kevin Hart.) I am not sure where they get their money from to do that? I think MSC Opas does a great job. Most of the shows they bring in are great, but they do also have underwriters that probably really help.

I stated it earlier, but the town needs a Hall of Fame type joint. That place hosted many a star in their prime and many others just before or just after they hit peak commercial success. Many of the shows were affordable, I can think of one show in 10 years i thought was too much for that venue. The drinks were certainly affordable as well.

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Stafford is closing next month.

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Great. No place to hear bands that aren't country now.

FlyRod said:

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Stafford is closing next month.

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Great. No place to hear bands that aren't country now.

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Rev is the place for !country!

Sometimes. Often amateur hour there is exactly that.

No beer sales at Reed, many artist are sponsored by beer companies, not getting one without the other

nought said:

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Those you saying that being 90 miles from Houston and Austin is what is hurting us in terms of getting bigger names here are wrong. When promoters brought bigger names here in the past, plenty of people drove here from Houston and Austin (and Waco and even Dallas) to go to those concerts. Fans of a particular band or singer will often hop to nearby cities to see them more than once.

Being 90 miles from Houston and Austin means there is a bigger potential audience for any act here.

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You are misinformed. Every artist that has a booking agent has a contract. That contract can vary from one to the next, but it always has a Radius Clause. This prevents an artist from being booked within the same geographical area within a certain number of days. If we didn't have the Radius Clause then bands could play in Bryan one night, CS the next night, Navasota the next and so on. This is no good for the band OR the venues OR the promoters.

Every Radius Clause I have ever seen is at least 100 miles and 60 Days. So these bands can not play within 100 (as the crow flies) miles of a venue within 60 days of the show date at that venue. Bigger bands have bigger miles/days amounts on their contracts. Bands in the Texas Country scene are all 100 miles/60 Days.

So these bands can book a show in Houston or Austin and be knocked out of playing in College Station for 2 months because of this. Be happy though, because TX country guys know their audience is in College Towns, so most of them play here INSTEAD of Houston. That will not be the case for bigger acts that draw from a wider audience. Muse will never play here, sorry.



Combine the Radius Clause with the lack of a decent venue and that makes BCS very unattractive to any large band. They can't sell as many seats here (anywhere) as they can in Houston, but if they DO play here, it knocks them out of being able to play in houston for at least 2 months. Terrible for routing if you want to play 3-4 dates in Texas. Where do you play? Austin, Houston, DFW, and the Panhandle and that's about it. Maybe you play San Antonio instead of Austin, if you are a latin-flavored band.





So the thing about the venue's in town is that there's no market. If you built a 20k seat venue there would be nobody to play in it because they would still rather go to Houston so they could also play Austin on the same trip. It costs a lot of money to drive those busses around (about a grand per day) so a multi-bus-and-truck tour wants to minimize driving between stops. It makes no sense to play Austin then Boise and then back to Houston. They'll knock out as many venues as close as possible that they can.


Wolf Pen Creek is a good venue for the fan that wants to sit on the hill and sip a beverage while watching a band (and I wish we had more of these shows) but it is a TERRIBLE venue for most other forms of music. It is awful from the production and band point of view because there is no GOOD loading area. A truck has to back down a curved hill, be unloaded on a slope that is trying to dump all the gear on top of you, and then pull out before the next truck can back down the curved hill. TERRIBLE! Also, there's no real private backstage area or storage. Multiple band shows need space to stage their stuff while they wait to get on deck. WPC has very little space for this and 2 double doors to go in/out.

Also WPC is not cool if you like to get an up close and personal look at the artists. Hope you know how to swim, and have had all your shots. I've also heard many artists complain about being separated from the fans. So they don't like it either. This stage would be awesome for a folk festival.

FlyRod said:

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The Grand Stafford is awesome for live music.

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No its not. The sound system in there is beyond bad.

I used to run sound in there when it was the Dixie Theatre. I remember doing bands like Bowling for Soup, Storyville, Bonnie Bishop, Jason Bonham, Matchbox 20, even the Red Hot Chili Peppers played there. The old PA looked like a couple of garbage cans hung from the ceiling, but they worked and actually covered that room REALLY well.

The new PA in there has a couple of toy speakers hung way too high and not pointed anywhere usefull. I could expand, but trust me. It's about the worst thing you could possibly put in there and call a "PA".


I went to see an artist I really like (Andrew Duhon) and even though there was hardly anyone in the room (daytime show) I could barely understand anything. The stage volume was overwhelming the main PA pretty badly and the whole thing just turned into mush.

Not cool for an actual "Music venue".

Tim Weaver said:

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nought said:

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Those you saying that being 90 miles from Houston and Austin is what is hurting us in terms of getting bigger names here are wrong. When promoters brought bigger names here in the past, plenty of people drove here from Houston and Austin (and Waco and even Dallas) to go to those concerts. Fans of a particular band or singer will often hop to nearby cities to see them more than once.

Being 90 miles from Houston and Austin means there is a bigger potential audience for any act here.

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You are misinformed. Every artist that has a booking agent has a contract. That contract can vary from one to the next, but it always has a Radius Clause. This prevents an artist from being booked within the same geographical area within a certain number of days. If we didn't have the Radius Clause then bands could play in Bryan one night, CS the next night, Navasota the next and so on. This is no good for the band OR the venues OR the promoters.

Every Radius Clause I have ever seen is at least 100 miles and 60 Days. So these bands can not play within 100 (as the crow flies) miles of a venue within 60 days of the show date at that venue. Bigger bands have bigger miles/days amounts on their contracts. Bands in the Texas Country scene are all 100 miles/60 Days.

So these bands can book a show in Houston or Austin and be knocked out of playing in College Station for 2 months because of this. Be happy though, because TX country guys know their audience is in College Towns, so most of them play here INSTEAD of Houston. That will not be the case for bigger acts that draw from a wider audience. Muse will never play here, sorry.



Combine the Radius Clause with the lack of a decent venue and that makes BCS very unattractive to any large band. They can't sell as many seats here (anywhere) as they can in Houston, but if they DO play here, it knocks them out of being able to play in houston for at least 2 months. Terrible for routing if you want to play 3-4 dates in Texas. Where do you play? Austin, Houston, DFW, and the Panhandle and that's about it. Maybe you play San Antonio instead of Austin, if you are a latin-flavored band.





So the thing about the venue's in town is that there's no market. If you built a 20k seat venue there would be nobody to play in it because they would still rather go to Houston so they could also play Austin on the same trip. It costs a lot of money to drive those busses around (about a grand per day) so a multi-bus-and-truck tour wants to minimize driving between stops. It makes no sense to play Austin then Boise and then back to Houston. They'll knock out as many venues as close as possible that they can.


Wolf Pen Creek is a good venue for the fan that wants to sit on the hill and sip a beverage while watching a band (and I wish we had more of these shows) but it is a TERRIBLE venue for most other forms of music. It is awful from the production and band point of view because there is no GOOD loading area. A truck has to back down a curved hill, be unloaded on a slope that is trying to dump all the gear on top of you, and then pull out before the next truck can back down the curved hill. TERRIBLE! Also, there's no real private backstage area or storage. Multiple band shows need space to stage their stuff while they wait to get on deck. WPC has very little space for this and 2 double doors to go in/out.

Also WPC is not cool if you like to get an up close and personal look at the artists. Hope you know how to swim, and have had all your shots. I've also heard many artists complain about being separated from the fans. So they don't like it either. This stage would be awesome for a folk festival.

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Good info, but isn't the Radius Clause negotiable most of the time? I have seen it done for an act that played here one night and in Tomball the next night.

Everything is negotiable, but BCS doesn't have a lot to negotiate with. We are a much smaller market than our 2 big competitors, and we don't have a good venue to entice bands with. Reed (athletics dept) is not interested in owning a music venue. Harry's is too small and weird shaped. Wolf Pen is outdoors and has terrible logistics.


I'm sure it will happen from time to time, but the A level acts won't bother. Also, you have to get the act, both venues, both promoters, and artist management to sign off on breaking the clause.

MSC Town Hall used to get some decent shows back in the 90s...Cake, Tori Amos...not sure if Belly and Digital Underground were Town Hall, but they were on campus at least. Those shows seemed to have died.

I did go see DJ Spooky's Hiroshima film thing last year I think on campus...it wasn't good