Up Close
with Glen Doers,
GM Spanish Town
By Eric Berkeley

To kick off my investigation on how to put on a concert I started by meeting with Glen Doers of Spanish Town. Glen Doers has been in the industry for 20 years, he has worked in North America with concerts drawing audiences up to 30,000 people and is now living back in Bermuda. Glen wears two hats, one is that of a promoter and the other is GM of Spanish Town. Spanish Town is an infrastructure and logistics provider for entertainment. This includes renting something as small as a pa system to having infrastructure to complement an international concert (stage, sound, lighting, etc…). He also told us that their latest purchase was a mega tent that can hold up to approximately 3,500 people.

How do you keep afloat in the industry?
"As an Infrastructure provider, one, you must have good relationships with the promoters; (two), you have to have good equipment and (three) excellent personnel to be able to work that equipment. I believe a company reputation is only as good as the last show.

“As a promoter you need to know your market. For example, how many young people are there in Bermuda, preplanning, strategy, knowing what artist people want to see, and most importantly know how to budget for a concert. For instance I’m sure you would like to see Snoop Dog in concert and I would like to promote him but not here in Bermuda. Why, well he costs $125,000 and travels with a large entourages and only flies on private jets. So for just the talent my budget is approximately $175,000 and then on top of that I have to pay everything else that goes with putting on a concert, for instance, venue, work permits, accommodation, per diem, advertising, radio, flyers, security, infrastructure and so on. I’m now at about $250,000.00 budget, so to break even at say $55.00 per ticket I would need 4,500 people to come out, but realistically how many people are there on the island that would come out to see Snoop Dog? This is what I mean by knowing your market.”

What advice do you have for the youth going in to the entertainment industry?
If a young person wants to go in to the entertainment industry, first of all let me say that it is multifaceted. For instance if you are serious about being an artist you need to be serious about it now. A lot of the artists we hear about today like Alicia Keyes did not make it at 30 or 25 or even at 21. So that means if you are serious you need to learn your craft now. If you want to become a singer but you can’t read music, you can’t play an instrument then you can’t really claim that that is what you really want to do. If you can’t hold a tune, or you can hold a tune but can’t write a tune you are not serious about becoming an artist. So I would say start now, make sacrifices and learn all the elements about becoming an artists, If you want to be a writer you must first of all learn how to write which means you need strong academics and that means sacrifice.