Barrett Taylor is a native Chattanoogan who left town to gain experience, then returned home to make waves in Chattanooga’s music and business scenes. Barrett spent many years working in the marketing and developmental sector of the nonprofit world for companies such as Habitat for Humanity, green|spaces, and Siskin Children’s Institute to help them expand. Experience in each of these companies eventually brought him and Jonathan Susman together to create Gig City Productions, which focuses on creating and promoting local music and community events to bring Chattanoogans together. Their website states that if you can “create an event and grow and change to meet the needs of the community by improving the experience year after year, you will reach the economic and artistic goals.”
What’s your background in music?
Barrett: I’ve played in a lot of bands, though I’m not currently performing with anybody. I’m still close to the local band scene and play frequently for myself, mostly bluegrass and folk. It was fun for a while; I used to play with Moon Slew, which had guys from Strung Like a Horse and a bunch of people who aren’t performing much anymore but are still playing.
What does Gig City Productions do? What is your role in the company?
Barrett: My partner at the time (it’s not a partnership anymore, I’m working solo. Jonathan is working for the city) had been a part of the independent plans to help develop the music industry in the city. City officials put together a bunch of suggestions like more venues, more outdoor festivals, more music series, to draw people in. This is the Chattanooga Visitors Bureau’s focus now. Jonathan and I felt like there was a role for another company to come in and develop it further, because even now there are only three or four companies doing what we’re doing.
I think we have done a lot of really good work with that mission in mind, but it’s still hard to make money off of that. I spent a lot of money on the company getting it up and running. Like any new company, we had a few major wins and a few disasters. We learned a lot of lessons. A lot of them we had learned before, but we learned them again because that’s how it works. Now Gig City has gotten to a place where I’m starting to get more work, more calls, and more opportunities. Chattanooga is starting to do that which in turn will give me more business and use of my service. It’s still a small town; we have two venues that are 300 people or smaller that are equipped for music, not including some of the established bars or venues/concert halls on college campuses like UTC. We have a couple of venues that are 500-1000 and a 1,000+ but we don’t have an established amphitheater or stadium that’s ever had a concert until this year. And there’s a lot of places that are used as venues but aren’t equipped for that full time, which adds to the expense and budget line items which makes it difficult for a company like mine to do shows there. That’s why I do things at the Camp House or Barking Legs. Bigger venues have management booking companies and contracts. I don’t need to go in there because it’s already established. But places like the Camp House don’t have that; there are probably only a few people who book for venues at this level.
You do a little bit of everything at Gig City Productions; do you have other employees?
Barrett: I have no direct employees but when I partner with companies for events, I work closely with anywhere from 150 whiskey distillers for the whiskey festival to a show here at the Camp House where I hire a social media person, musicians, and hire designers and photographers for web assets.
What do you see Chattanooga’s music scene developing into in the next five years?
Barrett: I think we’re a very small town; we’re not on the radar of most touring bands outside of rest stop between bigger cities like Atlanta or Nashville. But there are people who are working really hard in this community to change that like Adam and Monica Kinsey with Track 29, JJ’s Bohemia, AC Entertainment at the Tivoli and Memorial Auditorium, Mike Dougher at Revelry Room, Mary Howard Ade at the Visitors Bureau. All that hard work must have a big impact because Chattanooga is a killer place for arts, music and culture.
As we grow and the community grows in different facets, the music’s gonna benefit from it. But we don’t have the infrastructure in place to grow too large. Hopefully in five years, we’ll be able to see substantial growth in hindsight. Ten years, the same. It’s continuous. But we don’t have the population to support much more. It has to all grow together. UTC is a very underutilized asset that we’ve been trying to figure out how to access. I’m just talking about live music. Music has changed over the years; I don’t know how Chattanooga is catering its music scene to the college scene anymore because I don’t know what those kids are listening to anymore that we can do at a venue. I don’t focus a lot on the dance, bar, electronic scene but I know that others are.
Are there any upcoming projects that you’re excited about?
Barrett: I have two shows coming up in November at the Camp House that I’m pretty excited about. Eric Baker on the 11th and Vandaveer on the 3rd. But the two really fun events that I’m excited about are the Adult Big Wheel Race to support the Children’s Advocacy Center during Mainx24, which is on its 4th year and it’s a ton of fun. that’s December 3rd. And the Santa Pub Crawl, which benefits the Salvation Army which is a new event that I recently took over for someone who was maxed out on work capacity. It’s an amazing event; 1,500 people participated last year and had some major sponsors which brought a lot of needed money and supplies to the Salvation Army. That’s all I have until Road to Nightfall in March, although we start marketing that event in December because we have to do all of the band recruitment. It’s an awesome event that supports local music. We have 150 local musicians participate; 30-40 bands that play over six nights over six weeks in March. Big stages, big prizes, and big gift packages. Our ultimate goal is to help emerging bands be better at being a band by becoming more professional in how they market themselves in person and online. We introduce them to established bands that we recruit to play so they have an opportunity to network and learn from them. Bands are typically not good at networking. They think competitively, and are usually young enough that they don’t understand the importance of networking. We partner with SoundCorps to educate them and give them the opportunities to grow as musicians. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work. We give them a lot of feedback during the event. We ask them/push them to come up and do their part. The bands that don’t do their job don’t get invited back the following year unless they show us that they’re actively trying to develop their career. It’s not all about people who are going on tour, but ideally the bands that win Road to Nightfall who want to go on tour will get that opportunity.