On the morning of June 8th I woke up to a surprising and disheartening email from Ted Nugent’s manager Doug Banker. It is copied here, with my response that same morning copied underneath.
At this point we had confirmed 16 dates on Nugent’s 2011 summer tour, and I had already started booking further Val Halla tour dates around the Nugent shows. Our bass player had also quit his job so he could come on tour all summer. Everything was in full swing.
To this day (June 22nd at time of post) I still have not received any official explanation about what happened, or why. Neither Doug Banker nor anyone is his office ever responded to my email asking for an explanation. I emailed Ted Nugent himself about what happened, and he wrote back “Sorry to hear this Val. I was told you never got back with him to confirm.” So it looks like I wasn’t the only one being lied to…
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show details Jun 8
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Valerie….
We’ve decided to go in a different direction for tour support this
summer. I won’t be able to offer you any Ted Nugent dates at this
point. As you know from our previous conversations/Email….we were
not prepared to kick in extra money out of own pocket to help support
your tour again this year. I understand this is a financial burden
for you to do otherwise. But since you’ve already done an extensive
number of concerts with us recently anyway….we decided it was best
to put someone new in the opening slot this year.
Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused….I have some ideas
how to make this work better for you perhaps next year.
Doug Banker
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show details Jun 8 (13 days ago)
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Doug,
as you know from our previous conversations/emails I asked you why the support amount was $250 across the board on 40 different shows. You said it wasn’t you guys or your agent’s number… that it was the promoter’s amount and you had nothing to do with it.
I asked you “So 40 different promoters across the country just all coincidentally came up with the same amount for support?”
you said “yes.”
I said “that’s not what I’ve been hearing from the promoters I kept in touch with from last year”
you said “i’m not making this up, so I don’t know what you’ve been hearing. That’s their number, not ours”
So I asked you if I could contact them and try and negotiate a better rate for us, OR negotiate house sound engineers that could do our sound so we wouldn’t have to pay $100 each night to have your engineers do it.
You said “yes, you can contact them”
So I did…. and I got SEVERAL emails back not only stating that these promoters were willing to either pay us $350 a night, but also some were willing to have their house sound guys run our sound for us free of charge. “an easy concession to make” according to one promoter.
ON TOP OF THIS every single promoter who got back to me said that it was YOUR AGENT who came to them with the $250 amount.
So who is making this up then? Are you making it up that it is the promoter’s amount, or are the promoters all in cahoots together making it up that it was your agent who came to them with that amount?
Something doesn’t add up here Doug.
I told you in a previous email that we could do the tour based on the feedback I got from the promoters, as I felt with house sound engineers being provided (eliminating a $100 fee each night to us) and with a few of them kicking up our pay to $350, we would be able to do this tour.
I asked for the promoter’s contact info, like i had been given last year, to start negotiating our contracts with them, like i had done last year.
You came back at me, now offering less than the full tour but with an email saying
“Val,
I’ve been extremely busy and flying all over the country the past
couple of weeks, NY, LA, Det, GA, back to LA, Det, then I’m leaving
the country tomorrow on a working holiday. So I’m sorry I haven’t had
a chance to return your call or deal further with this matter.
attached is an updated list of dates we can offer up support slots for.
At this point, I am willing to offer you the first half of the
tour….up and through July 23rd. That should be about 16 dates. Let
me know if you are willing and able to make this happen. In my
absence, feel free to discuss any questions/concerns with Matt and
Nathan in my office. Thank you.
Doug“
I called Matt THAT DAY and confirmed with him we were being offered those 16 dates. He even called and confirmed with you that we were being offered those 16 dates WHILE I WAS STILL ON THE PHONE WITH HIM. He confirmed these 16 dates with me after speaking to you, and i confirmed we were accepting.
I then asked him to forward me the promoter’s contact information so I could begin negotiating our contracts with them. He said he would send it along. I even called back to the office a SECOND TIME when it was nearing the end of the day because I hadn’t seen an email from him yet with the promoter info, and he said he had emailed your agent for it, and was waiting to receive it. He said that he worked weekends so even if it came in after business hours he would still pass it along over the weekend.
Now that was June 3rd, and now on June 8th you are telling me you are going with someone else? And trying to say this decision has something to do with the money aspect of it?
I handled the money aspect of it myself…. as you instructed me to do when you told me on the phone it wasn’t your agent’s job to negotiate sound engineers or an extra $100 a night for us. So I did it myself and took care of it… now you’re talking money again as the reason why you are going back on your offer?
Legally we entered into a contract Doug. You made an offer for 16 shows at $250 a night, and I accepted. I accepted verbally over the phone on June 3rd, and then followed up with an email accepting this offer June 7th. When one party makes an offer, and the other party accepts, a contract has legally been entered into.
Your decision to go with someone else YES does cause me a HUGE inconvenience. Not only had I already started booking show dates around the Nugent dates you gave me, but I had begun booking show dates for after the last show in Baltimore to get us home. I’ve already confirmed 12 of these shows, with about 50 some emails that went out yesterday as well that will probably be responded to today. I now have a whole lot of explaining to do to keep from soiling my relationships with these promoters.
IN ADDITION to that, I have a bass player who quit his job in order to be available for this tour this summer. The amount of money he is now going to be out, and the sting of this burn on him is not sitting well with me.
I don’t like that I was being told 2 different things from you vs. the promoters in regards to money. And I don’t appreciate the way this was handled that has now left me with more of a headaches than if i had just said NO in the beginning.
You say you have ideas about how it could work for next year, but you have completely left me hung out to dry THIS YEAR…. RIGHT NOW. How am I supposed to be able to trust that you wouldn’t screw us over next year when you’re doing it right now?
I loved that you guys had us on board last year, I appreciate the fact you and Ted kicked in an extra $100 to cover our sound costs last year when you guys told me I HAD to pay it, and i told you I would HAVE to walk off the tour then because we couldn’t survive on $150 a night.
I learned a lot from that tour, and for that I am grateful.
But if this is how I’m treated after putting my heart and soul into that tour last year, going into debt over $10,000 to be on that tour, tooting Ted’s horn proudly in every interview I’ve done in the last year and a half, and doing everything I possibly could to work with you on this to accommodate doing the tour again on your budget (our payment isn’t coming out of YOUR guarantee after all, like you made very clear to me), I just can’t make any sense of it.
It is “just business” like you said, but that doesn’t mean it is completely heartless. And I don’t wish to DO business with people who don’t agree with that.
So if you’d care to give me an explanation here about why you and the promoters seem to have different ideas about who came up with the $250 number, or if you’d care to explain why you offered me the tour dates only to drop me 5 days later after we’d confirmed, maybe I could find a way to make sense of all this.
Cause right now my trust is completely shot…
I have suffered a financial loss and I didn’t even do one show with you yet this year.
I am going to do my best to wait to react further to all this, and see if there are any explanations that can be given here.
Let me know,
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Val Halla
Val Halla