Joe Engle
Matt Gerding and Scott Leslie in front of Majestic Theatre in 2013.
Majestic co-owners Matt Gerding, left, and Scott Leslie joined forces with Frank Productions in 2017 to form FPC Live.
In March 2007, the Schiavo family sold Madison’s historic Majestic Theatre for $1.27 million. The buyer, an accountant in Columbia, Missouri, named Bob Gerding, planned to lease the theater to his son and a business partner. Isthmus staff writer Tom Laskin noted the event with a brief item, quoting the son.
“We both view the Madison music scene as being on the cusp,” says Matt Gerding in the piece. “We think this is the missing piece.”
Six months later, as Gerding and Scott Leslie, both 28 at the time, prepared to open their nightclub with a show featuring pop star Mandy Moore, Isthmus checked back in with the new club owners, this time via music writer Rich Albertoni. Gerding revealed that the pair initially wanted to buy Luther’s Blues, a shuttered club on University Avenue in the heart of the UW-Madison campus, but the deal didn’t work out.
"Choosing Madison had a lot to do with my experience booking Midwest club venues while working for Creative Artists [Agency]," Gerding says. "We brought a good chunk of shows to Luther's, and when it went out of business I noticed a lack of venue options in this market.”
Today, Gerding and Leslie still own the Majestic, but according to an email he sent to people he has “worked with or gotten to know” Feb. 23, Gerding is stepping down as co-president of FPC Live, the company he and Leslie formed with veteran concert heavyweights Frank Productions in 2017.
“Though I’ll always be passionate about the concert business and live music in general, I’ve also decided that I need to move on to explore new career challenges and opportunities,” Gerding writes in the email. “I’m working on some things already (more on that later) but am always open to new ideas and opportunities. I'm certainly not retiring, and I'm not leaving Madison.”
Sixteen years is a pretty long run in the Madison music business, especially considering that many were skeptical anyone could be successful with the Majestic. After shutting down as an art-house movie theater and becoming “Club Majestic” in 2002, the venue developed a tough reputation when several $10 all-you-can-drink hip-hop dance nights resulted in violence inside the club and on King Street, causing Madison police to assign extra officers to the area and set up surveillance cameras.
With an eclectic schedule that might feature a touring indie band, a slate of jam bands, and a Prince vs. Michael Jackson dance party in the same week, Gerding and Leslie turned around the Majestic’s reputation to the point where the city allowed them to shut down King Street several times each summer for an outdoor concert series. One or both could often be found on the sidewalk outside the club during events, monitoring activity on the street and chatting with neighboring business owners in the burgeoning entertainment district. They bought Gerding’s dad out “years ago.”
Gerding’s work with FPC Live has grown to overshadow what goes on at the Majestic, but that’s the operation where he and Leslie introduced themselves to Madison and proved they could make it work here.
He answered these questions by email.
There are all sorts of perceptions about what a live music promoter/booker/producer does. How do you describe your job since taking over the Majestic in 2007? What does a busy week look like for you, understanding that your job has changed as you've acquired other venues and partnered up with FPC Live?
That's a giant question to answer but I'll take a stab at it. The key to running music venues successfully is finding out how to become a reflection of the community you live in. In a city like Madison, there are wide-ranging and diverse tastes, and our goal was always to try to be something to everyone. As an example, although I'm a huge fan of punk rock music, if we had decided to run the venue as a punk rock club, we would have been out of business quickly as there are only so many punk shows to go around, and we would have been going to the well with the same audience over and over. Ultimately, it makes sense from both a business and community perspective to offer diverse programming for the city you operate in.
And it requires an enormous amount of focus and dedication to fight for the shows you want for your venue and your city on the national level. Then you have to deliver with great marketing, ticket sales, an awesome experience for artists and fans. Live music is a complex and competitive industry, and the small stuff matters.
It's also been critical to build relationships with the local music community, host special events, come up with fun creative programming ideas like dance parties, etc. The mix of all of those things together is the key and on a day-to-day level, it's really about building tons of relationships and managing all of those pieces on the calendar one season at a time.
My role evolved from being somewhat of a jack of all trades when I was more immersed in the day-to-day venue operations, marketing and creative programming of the clubs to being more of a coach and a mentor for a ton of talented people that have taken the reins of our venues and made them their own. There was a time when I was booking local shows, weddings and private events, overseeing marketing, meeting bands for load-in, running operations night of show, and settling at the end of the night. There were some long days, but there aren't a lot of club operators in the world that didn't start out by needing to figure out how to do basically everything. But over time and with success, if you're fortunate like I've been, you can find great people to take over so much of the day-to-day operations.
In 2007, when you and Scott Leslie bought the Majestic, the venue was in a tough spot with a lot of people in town concerned about the after-hours scene on King Street. But in 2011, you were able to shut down the street to begin your popular outdoor music series, Live On King Street. How were you able to gain the city's (and downtown neighbors') trust over those four years?
Doing things like Live On King Street is all about building trust with the city and community. I don't blame the city or neighborhood associations at all when they were a bit skeptical of two guys in their 20s with little to no experience taking over a venue with lots of problems and a bad reputation in 2007. But over time everyone could see that we did what we said we were going to do, and we operated the Majestic as a first-class concert venue. We didn't have any visions out of the gate about doing something like Live On King Street but we did notice every summer how hard it was to convince people in Madison to come indoors. So one year we decided to experiment a bit and bring live music to where the people wanted to be, outdoors. Luckily the city trusted us enough at that point to let us throw a big party on King Street, and that's what we did with Peter, Bjorn & John in 2011 and decided to build it into a series the following year. And it was really the sponsors and the fans that helped carry it forward for us.
When you took over at the Majestic, you two were unknowns in town and despite being a city full of outsiders, there is a skepticism of people who roll in, especially when they take over local institutions. What was your perception of Madison from the outside and how has that changed over the last 16 years? Are you "one of us" now?
My perception of Madison in 2007 was that it was mostly a college town, but with a little bit of big-city ambition. Since then I think the city has really started to flip that perception and has evolved into a growing city that is exploding with new life and development all the time, that also happens to have a large university and the state capitol here. I'm absolutely a proud Madisonian, and I love all the ways the city is growing up.
Many years ago, when I first met Scott Leslie, he told me you two wanted the Majestic to be known as a place for a variety of music and not be tied to a specific genre. Are there styles of music you think always do well here and others that never do? And do you think you've helped push the market to accept something (a band, a type of show, a genre) that it previously didn't?
Ten years ago, I would have answered that question very differently than I would today. I think The Sylvee really opened up everyone's eyes as to what types of music could do really well here, and at this point I think the city is large enough that any genre can find success. And there are a lot of people traveling from hundreds of miles away to see shows in Madison as well because there are great venues and people just love visiting the city.
In the early years of the Majestic, we struggled with a lot of genres, but over time different scenes started to emerge in jam, bluegrass, EDM, alt-country, or even jazz. Now if you look at some of the venue calendars, and even some of the more local-centric clubs like the High Noon or The Bur Oak, you'll see a really eclectic mix of genres, which is awesome to see. I know the FPC Live booking team has been trying to help build the hip-hop scene in Madison and I'm hopeful that scene will get more attention throughout the city in the coming years as well.
It’s likely impossible to pick your best night in Madison, but do you have a story about one that was particularly gratifying and gave you the feeling you hoped you'd have as a promoter and venue owner?
Possibly the best night of my career is when we hosted Jim James of My Morning Jacket at the Majestic in 2013. Scott and I didn't always see eye to eye on music, but we were both always obsessed with anything that Jim did. He was one of our heroes since we were roommates in LA and would see them in small clubs like the Troubadour. The show sold out and he was as incredibly nice as you would have ever wanted him to be, and of course the show was just insanely good. It was really emotional for me and I remember crying during the show. Afterwards, he wanted to hang out, so we took him and the band to Merchant, and then did a private after-hours hang in the basement of Madison's. Jim showed up with his own iPod and a classic soul and Motown playlist, and we talked and laughed and danced and partied until 4 a.m. I'll never forget it.
You said a lot in your farewell email, but is there something you left out, maybe something that has occurred to you after hearing from people since you sent it?
I've heard a lot of love from a lot of people since announcing and the one thing that I wish I had made clearer is to give a giant hearty thank you to every band, artist, performer, DJ, booking agent, sponsor, manager, staff, and music fan that has ever set foot in one of our venues. Without all of those humans, I wouldn't have a career. I'm looking forward to the next thing — more to come soon!
