with Gary Jacob

Gary Jacob is president of GMJ Events, and has produced events and festivals in the Cleveland area from the National Rib Cook-Off to the National Fireworks Championship and nationwide events, such as 23 simultaneous Millennium events for Kodak. Four years ago, he created Abbey Road on the River, one of the world's largest Beatles conventions and concert festivals, right here on the Cuyahoga River at Nautica Stage, now Scene Pavilion. After three years in Cleveland, Jacob moved Abbey Road on the River to Louisville, Kentucky and another river, the Ohio River, next week, 5/27-29. See AbbeyRoadOnTheRiver.com, which has already generated sales of almost 2000 hotel rooms in Louisville. This Cleveland native and Shaker Heights resident talks about why Cleveland couldn't keep his Beatles fest, his history of producing events in this town, and how Cleveland could better address its own problems.

How many hours do you think you work?
I work everyday and that’s not to say I have a workaholic kind of mentality or anything. But I use the weekends to do bookkeeping and paperwork, and the things that you only do when the phone is not ringing or when you’re not trying to take care of all the other operational problems.

So I have a unique day. I start very early. I start at – I’m at my desk by about 6:30 or seven for an hour or so of bookkeeping. Because I am basically a one-man freelance, independent, event production company. I hire people as I need them for what I am doing.

So you don’t really have a staff?
I do, for this festival, but...

But you hire staff?
Right. But it’s me alone and I bring people on as I need them. I have been doing it that way now ever since the digital age. I couldn’t have done it prior to the digital age.

How did you get started with GMJ Events?
I started in the event business in 1979. I did my first food festival at La Place Shopping Center.

That was a food festival?
Food festival. At the time I owned and operated the Ground Floor restaurant and together with the other restaurants on Chagrin Boulevard, which was then known as “Restaurant Row.”

Did you own the restaurant, or you ran it?
I owned it. Together with other restaurants on Chagrin Boulevard, we were trying to promote business in the area. We started a one-day event called “The Paper Plate Festival” up at La Place Shopping Center on Cedar across from what is now Legacy. I was somehow picked by the group to organize it, and I guess you could say that for me it was a tipping point.

What were some of your other early projects?
Well then I founded the National Rib Cook-Off. That was my real start into big time event production. That started at 1982 and consecutively through 1991, at which time I lost it - that’s a whole other story.

What do you mean you lost it?
At the time we had just moved it back downtown to the North Coat Harbor and we were doing several festivals at North Coast Harbor. I created and began an event called the National Fireworks Championship. We brought the Cleveland Orchestra to the Harbor for three concerts a year, called Sunset Concerts. I built the floating stage in the middle of the harbor. The floating stage was the quarter of a million dollars: a 120’ x 80’ floating barge with a permanent roof. I started a million dollar hole-in-one on a floating green in the harbor. A Reggae Festival, a Blues Festival and an Art Festival.

I saw Koko Taylor there, I think.
Well, we had a Blues Night one night with BB King, the Four Tops and the Temps all on the same bill; it was quite a night. The act that opened that floating stage was Smokey Robinson. So what kind of an event was that? You know that was a happening, the night he opened it.

I’ll tell you a sidebar anecdote to that is Sammy Davis Jr. He had started a BBQ sauce company. His BBQ sauce company entered our national Rib Cook-Off, which was a hell of a thing for a food festival to have Sammy Davis Jr. participating in it. He got sick about two weeks before the event and we had a conference call with him. He said he couldn’t come.

Which event was it?
The National Rib Cook-Off. To distinguish it from the current Downtown Rib Festival - we truly were a national event. This was restaurants coming from China, Australia, Ireland, France, England and all of the states. And I don’t just mean people in Cleveland, who had ancestors who lived in places. We had eight female French chefs come over here and cook grape vine ribs. At its peak we had 53 rib teams annually in the festival, compared to events now that have ten. So, we were really becoming an internationally renowned food festival that was creating economic stimulus to this community.

But anyways I digress, I just want to finish the Sammy Davis Jr. story; it’s an interesting anecdote. I had no idea I’d be even thinking of that today. We were on this conference call Jim Price at the time when I believe the company might have been like Rice Noodles and they were actually packaging the sauce locally through Seaway Foods or something. It was a long time ago, so I’m a little hazy on all of the players, but the bottom line is we were on a conference call with Sammy Davis Jr., and you could hear in his throat something was not good. He sounded terrible. He said “I won’t be able to make it.” He died the day the festival opened.

Smokey Robinson came out to play opening and debuting the stage that night. This floating stage we had just built and called the Alan “Moondog” Freed Stage. Smokey came out in a white suit with a black arm band and dedicated his performance to Sammy Davis Jr. And I’ll never forget I was sitting there with my daughter, who at the time was nine years-old and I said to her “never, never forget this moment,” because there’s Smokey Robinson dedicating his performance to Sammy Davis Jr., who was supposed to be in our event, who died today. It was one of those great moments. I’ve had a lot of those great moments in the entertainment business and the event business, and that’s what keeps me going. When I produced Easter at the White House for eight years for the Clinton administration, and that I was able to bring entertainers like Robert De Niro, Julie Andrews, 'N Sync, Jane Seymour, Jamie Lee Curtis, Art Garfunkle, and a variety of political people to that festival called Easter at the White House. It’s the oldest continually run, family festival in the country. It dates back to 1876. It takes place on the White House Lawn. I mean it was just amazing. I mean, Robert De Niro read children stories on the White House Lawn.

That’s scary.
I can tell you an hour of Robert De Niro stories but I won’t just because of time, but, having spent a lot of time with Bill Clinton and a decent amount of time with Robert De Niro, I think Robert De Niro is the most unforgettable person I have ever met. To be in his presence...you know you are in rarefied air. I was with Art Garfunkle the same weekend, but Robert De Niro, he is Don Corleone.

So, have you always run events on your own or do you usually produce them for other people?
Mostly I’ve operated in an executive producer category in which I have either owned and operated or I was hired to be the executive producer of an event for a client. For instance, Easter at the White House; I was hired by the White House to produce that. I was hired by Kodak to produce twenty-three simultaneous millennium events December 31, 1999 in twenty-three markets across America. We were in the middle of twenty-three downtown celebrations with Kodak Photo Kiosks - twenty-three simultaneous millennium celebrations, showcasing digital photography. We were in eight or nine major markets, including Cleveland. People could email their photographs home and if you think about that on December 31, 1999, that was still new, right?

How about Abbey Road on the River, where did the idea for that come about? Are you just a huge Beatles fan?

I am a Beatles fan. When I’m evaluating, not just me on this, but I think when sponsors and community leaders evaluate the festival and whether or not its viable, I think there’s like six points that you have to look at in terms of being able to sell it in and then make it work across the board.

Number one, I think it has to be an annual event. I think when you buy into events as a city, you take crap shots as it were on events like Gravity Games, or the Children’s Games which are designed to be one-offs. You make a big investment, and it takes longer to get it off the ground. But I think being an annual event, and again, the criteria I use is how I am going to decide to do something, too. Certainly if Kodak comes along and says that they're going to do a millennium one-off and going to pay you X amount of money to produce this millennium one-off, you’ve got to make your money all in the one event. But it makes sense, because they’re going to put up a fee. But when you use the reverse for an event, such as the Gravity Games or the Children’s Games, some big client can step in and say, "We’re going to underwrite this." Basically the city and the same corporate partners being called on by all the annual events to participate are also being asked to lay up a lot of money for one tenth of that.

The event has to reflect the spirit of the community. You know, if you look at the Kentucky Derby, the Indianapolis 500, the Tri-Becca Film Festival, or what Abbey Road on the River should have been in Cleveland, you know it needs to reflect the spirit of the community. It needs to be an economic stimulator. Because if you can’t fill hotel rooms, you really cannot get regional people outside the 75 miles to come, then you’re not... something is missing. You’re not doing your job as a producer and the city and the sponsors aren’t doing their job in evaluating its benefits in the community. Case in point would be that where Abbey Road on the River is filling 2,000 hotel rooms. Twins Day [in Twinsburg, Ohio each year] is probably filling thousands of hotel rooms because it’s drawing people from all over. I can make a point that other Downtown festivals that are highly supported by sponsors in this community, nobody comes in from outside the region to see it. It’s got to be age appropriate. An event has to be age appropriate. It has to appeal to all members of the family. In my opinion, it’s got to work across all levels. Like a beer fest has a limited audience and again, and I’ll use the Tri-Becca Film Festival, which is now in it’s third year in New York as an example of something that fires on all cylinders and hits everything exactly the way it’s supposed to hit to become institutionalized very quickly in the community. It’s got to be news worthy, an event that creates news outside of the area as well and gets written about in travel pages around the country, that means something special, that people should go to. Then again, you know it’s missing its mark and I think that’s five.

The sixth is the most important; it’s where a lot of people miss the mark. It’s got to be easy to understand and it’s got to be fun. If it’s complicated to sell it in and explain what it is, again I’ll use the International Children’s Games and Festival. I was the producer of the festival that was the basis of the Games. So nobody knows more about that process than me. We could never create a high concept to tell people what it was so they would come to it and as a result, nobody came.

You could never sell the concept.
To the public. We couldn’t sell it in four or five words. I always tell my daughter that the ultimate high concept is when you can explain something you’re doing in four or five words. I always use the movie Hook as the example. When they were selling the movie Hook, somebody sat down across from somebody with a checkbook and said: "Peter Pan grows up." I get it, man. I love it. You get an ultimate children’s tale, crystallize it forward.

So you’re saying the Children’s Games missed the mark on that because it was too amorphous?
It was all across the board. Were the games at the festival? What was at the festival? The media was selling the games and somebody else was trying to sell the festival and it was hard to bring it all together.

Now, had that been an annual event that this community invested several million dollars in and it was coming back, we’re there. Now year two - people get it, ah-ha. So why make an investment in a Gravity Games for two or three seasons to lose it? You’re just getting going. This town doesn’t need one-offs. This town needs events that it can weave into its fabric. You know, it's like what you guys are trying to do [with the Ingenuity Festival], which we’ll talk about; but I use University Circle as the best example. University Circle is far and away the greatest asset we have, and only a few people really know that and are willing to say it everyday. Everyday the Plain Dealer should have on the front page what’s going on today at University Circle. And it should have been that way during our whole lifetime - like how the Indians are doing, and we know what’s going on at University Circle, so we go there. You know, we’re never asking ourselves the right questions. Parade the Circle is incredible and it’s one example of what can be done, but we should be building on the success of Parade the Circle. If this works so well, how do we make it work all the time so that there’s never a money crunch at University Circle.

I was at the Indians game Friday night and my band played afterwards. There were only like 16,000 people at the game. There are probably more people on any given night at Blossom to see the Orchestra or running through Playhouse Square or University Circle. Why are we obsessed with this idea of sports in this town?
We think that’s how we identify ourselves. First and foremost it’s like [the film] Super Size Me which made the point that the networks are never going to get rid of fast food advertising because it’s the lifeline for their revenues. It’s the lifeline to the media stream in this town, and this town is unwilling to change.

The lifeline to what?

To revenue for the media. It’s a relationship between the media and the sports teams that make it happen. They feed off of each other. We the public are basically conditioned that we must do this, instead of that. It’s the same relationship that the networks have with the fast food companies which was pointed out in the documentary Super Size Me. Fast food is not good for people. And I don’t think major league sports is necessarily that good for people.

When we lost the Browns, this town lost a huge opportunity. Say good riddance and take that money and call me idealistic, but I believe it, take that money and build the finest school system in the world and say to the rest of the country, we’re Cleveland; we do it a little bit different. They wanted eight days a year in a sports palace and that may never work out. It brings some joy, it probably brings more angst and unhappiness to people when they lose than it does happiness when they win. But is LeBron James a change agent? Yes. We got real lucky with that one, and I hope we can keep him because he's a change agent. I think Mark Shapiro is a change agent; I think he can make baseball good again in this town. I love baseball and I think it should be good. I think Jacobs’s Field was a great investment for this city, but I don’t think the Browns were.

So you’re saying we could have taken that money and invested it in schools?
It could have been an incubator for entrepreneurs; I could go on with a hundred things they could have done with it. Instead of losing all of our kids, we could have created a system to bring them in. In the Jewish community in Cleveland, I just read an amazing statistic that ten years ago, 26 percent of the Jewish population was between the ages of 20 and 30. What do you think that statistic is today, ten years later?

Between ages 20 and 30? It’s probably down to 10 percent.
Four percent. Think about that. And based on circumstance a lot of these are kids who have gone to graduate schools and have private school educations; they are difference-makers or could be. And they’re not here. That’s happening in every single other demographic on some level or every other culture and creed in the city on some level, and that’s across the board. But that’s an example of where it’s happening to the point of, you know, I don’t want to use the word, because it’s not appropriate, but it’s a metaphor for what happened 60 years ago. We’re losing our best kids.

So talk about Abbey Road on the River, what about its history here in Cleveland, where did it start?
It started at Nautica. It was developed at Nautica, because Nautica was looking for an event, an annual event that could kick off the opening of their new downtown pavilion, which is now known as the Scene Pavilion. They asked me if I had any ideas and going back to what I told you what I think are the six key points in developing a festival, and using my own experience of seeing Beatle tribute bands draw a huge crowd, even when they were competing with national headliners. I had one year at my National Rib Cook-Off, where I had Gloria Estefan, Willie Nelson and the Temptations and I also had a Beatle tribute band called Rain. Willie Nelson cost $75,000. The Beatle tribute band called Rain cost $5,000 and they drew as many people. I also never forgot the concept of 50 rib teams, all being in the same place and how much the public enjoyed being able to select BBQ from 50 rib teams. I thought what if somebody took 50 Beatle bands and put them in the same place - will that same equation hold true? And it’s not completely original. #1, I was taking advantage of the cultural phenomenon of our time, and it was John, Paul, George and Ringo; you know probably four of the most recognized faces that have ever lived. And this had been done successfully in a slightly different format in Liverpool for 20 years. So I had some history to go on.

So what kind of support did you get?
The first year we got what I would consider better than average support. It’s hard to raise money. The Plain Dealer came through as the presenting sponsor and really did the job making sure that people knew about it, and I felt good when the doors opened. I felt as if we had done the best we could do to get the word out for a first year festival. Nonetheless, there’s always mistakes and there’s always things you can do better, and you have to wait a year to do it again. You’re only in business for three days and then you’ve got to wait a year to fix what your mistakes were. It's always been that way. I used to say about the Rib Cook-Off that I was in business a total of 45 days. Of the nine years, I did it consecutively at five days a year. You know, what business can possibly figure out all the things that they are doing wrong in 45 days?

Five days a year. So, you’re planning the rest of the time?
You’re planning the rest of the time and you try and see what works. You know like when a landscape architect builds a building, he’ll leave a path to see where people walk and then he’ll pour the concrete. Or rather that’s a proverbial way of doing it.

What happened in years two and three?
Second year, basically we got thrown a curve ball, which was our partner in the project which is Jacobs Entertainment passed off basic general managementship of their facility to the House of Blues.

That's Jeff Jacobs, right. Jacob’s Investments, is that what it’s called?
Jacobs Entertainment or Investments, they go by both, I believe. They sold the rights to their own building [Nautica Pavilion] to the House of Blues.

They sold the booking rights for Nautica Pavilion to The House of Blues?
Yes. So we knew that that second year when this happened it would probably be our last year at that site.

That’s booking rights to what is now Scene Pavilion, right?
No, it became to Scene Pavilion about two months before the second event, which also cost us, losing our presenting sponsor. The Plain Dealer pulled when it became the Scene Pavilion.

So they sold the booking rights to Nautica to the House of Blues, so you figured you would only have one more year?
No, and then, without us knowing, House of Blues sold the naming rights to the Scene Pavilion, to Scene [magazine], which was for their part a great deal. I don’t blame them a bit for making that deal. However the Plain Dealer didn’t want to be involved any longer promoting an event that was at a competitor’s venue. So we lost our title sponsor two months before the event; three months before the event. Now to the Plain Dealer’s credit, they stayed on in a limited basis. They didn’t just abandon us. They didn’t want their name above the title. It’s not often I’ll use the expression, "to the Plain Dealer’s credit."

So the Plain Dealer still promoted it?
Yes.

But they didn’t want their name to be above the title?
Right. Then it became obvious to me that we would have to find a new venue.

So what about Year three, which was 2004?
So year three, though, ah-ha, 40th Anniversary of the Beatles being at Public Auditorium, which was and is a wonderful, wonderful, building. Crumbling as it may be. Sitting there waiting for somebody to do something great in it and as I had done events, my best events were always on lawn C and B. This was like an incredible opportunity to return to that spot. Since I was hired to produce the Children’s Games at the same location a week before, it made the synergy in sharing of operations almost seamless. It was a tremendous opportunity for me, operationally.

So you separately had been hired by the Sports Commission to produce the Childrens' Games.
I hadn’t been hired at the time. The Sports Commission hired me, I think, in December and I had made the decision to move the event to Public Hall probably in October. At the time we were thinking of using Public Square. David Gilbert recognized the combination of sharing resources with Abbey Road on the River, that was one of the reasons why the event did get moved to the mall. Security was the main reason for one of them. So the city was incredibly cooperative, and I have nothing but praise for how operational and how helpful the city was this year on both events. That was never the problem; they do what they can do and then some. Good people.

The city?
Yes.

But they don’t fund it?
No. The funding is not proportional in this town. I was an employee of the Children’s Games, so it’s not necessarily in my nature to criticize them and I’m not. But they were the beneficiary of what happens when a community all at once agrees that this is important, where all the decision makers are going, and how they're goint to get their checkbooks and make it happen. That’s where it’s not proportional because we were negotiating with a major Cleveland medical facility.

For Abbey Road On The River?
To be title sponsor of the festival. We couldn’t find a number that would make sense. So I finally said $10,000. You can be title sponsor of this event. We want your name on the door. We think it will be that good for the customers. They passed on that to give a six figure sponsorship to the Children’s Games to sponsor a one-night disco party. So it wasn’t proportional. In other words, somebody said, "It’s better that you write a check for this." and then of course they ran out of money and had none left for us. What I mean by it not being proportional is, if decision making would evaluate events based on the criteria I told you earlier, which is, was it an annual event? Does it reflect the spirit of the community? Does it create economic benefit? Is it appropriate for the entire family and is it newsworthy and fun? Then I would think that we’d all have a better chance of possibly tapping into underwriting.

Now, the decisions are arbitrary based on things like: do I know you, do I like you, do we golf together - here’s a check. That has always been the poison inside Capitalism. Capitalism is designed to operate on the former way I laid it out. On merit. It can’t be based on an Aristocracy; it has to be based on Meritocracy. We don’t get judged all the time on this product that we were selling here in Cleveland at Abbey Road on the River. I would never want to tell you that this was better than the Tri-C JazzFest or the [Cleveland International] Film Festival, but it was falling into my myth as some of the better events that our town was nurturing along the way. It had the potential to be here for 20 years, and it should have been nurtured that way. But we couldn’t get the attention of these decision-makers because somebody told them to write a big check to the Gravity Games. Somebody told them to write a big check to the Children’s Games. Somebody told them to write a big check for Tall Ships. And when it’s all said and done there’s nothing left. As the guy who is producing Ingenuity, I have a hunch you know a little about what I mean.

However I would never say that you’re entitled to somebody to write you a quarter of a million dollar check for Ingenuity just because you and James Levin say please do that. But if you could – you’ve got to find somebody in this town. When you knock on enough doors and you lay it out, you know in a linear fashion logically, somebody should say “You know what, it is good idea.”

What was the budget for Abbey Road? I mean average for those years – first couple of years?
About $350,000, annually. Now, compared to the Rib Cook-Offs, that used to cost us $1.3 million and we were able to provide as much entertainment with smaller budgets. Again, I think one of the reasons is the digital age. I give it a little bit of credit for the ability of event producers to do things a little bit more efficient these days.

How’s that? Is it easier to communicate with people?

For one thing, I think you can easily save yourself a minimum of 10-15 percent off your budget literally by taking things off of pencil and paper and into computers. You don’t get lazy when you’re on a computer because you have the ability to modify and change all day long. You can move things around. If you have pencil and paper, and you write down $30,000 for advertising, sometimes the ink dries and we’re stuck with $30,000 for advertising. Instead, you could be looking for a way to get it down to $22,500 and move that $7,500 somewhere else.

But everybody, including suppliers, are also able to do things for less money now, too. Production companies, the sound companies. I used to spend $80,000 on the stage and sound at Rib and I’m to do similar production now for closer to $30,000. I use to spend $30,000 on the signs and banners for the Rib Cookoff, and I’m able to do similar signs and banners now for $7,500 because of what the sign companies can digitally do now. So, it’s across the board. I’m not saying that if that 1.3 becomes 350, I am saying that you can produce smarter and for less money today than you could 20 years ago. That’s a huge benefit. You know, that’s all the more reason that events should be flourishing, growing and not being stifled because you can basically bring it to the public for almost the same price. Inflation really hasn’t hit yet, like a concert ticket that costs $80 today. That hasn’t happened to festivals, because you can still go to a festival and pretty much afford to get in and buy a beer for a regular price.

So why did you decide to move it to Louisville?
Well, I think that there are few too many dollars chasing far too many entertainment opportunities in Cleveland. With these statistics, the kids we're losing between age 20 and thirty that I referred to earlier. And again, not just in the Jewish community. I only used that example because I’m aware of that particular statistic. There’s evidence that you’re losing your core constituency. There’s not enough new money.

And the core constituency being...
Twenty to thirty-five [years old]. There’s no growth in the economy. We’ve lost BP, we lost TRW, we lost the steel companies. You know, I could go on and on and on. But we’ve lost them all. We’ve lost the manufacturing base. And the consolidation of all the banks, I mean, there was a time when this town, when Cleveland Trust/AmeriTrust was one of the great benefactors of City Festival. I produced America’s Harbor Expo. I can tell you that when Bruce Akers, Mayor of Pepper Pike was in charge of [community relations for] AmeriTrust there was an open door to getting some things done in this town for new and exciting events. I don’t know who's in charge of the banks anymore. I can tell you that I sat with one of the major banks in this town two years ago for Abbey Road on the River and asked them for $5000. They pretty much laughed me out of the room and gave a quarter of a million dollars to Tall Ships instead. I’m not mad at Tall Ships - I think it’s great for Tall Ships that they were able to do it. But why wasn’t this bank looking ahead and saying, wait a minute, this guy, the vet, meets the criteria?

What did Louisville offer you to move Abbey Road on the River from Cleveland to Louisville for 2005?
When I sat down with the [Louisville] Convention Bureau, the very first meeting, they got on the phone and called one of the big banks and said, "This is a great event, you've got to support it," and Fifth Third became our title sponsor. And the Convention Bureau is helping promote it. They made it very easy.

How many hotel rooms have you sold so far in Louisville for Abbey Road this year?
We have just under 2000 hotel rooms sold from all 50 states, Japan, Australia and Europe.

Abbey Road on the River takes place May 27-29, 2005 on six stages at The Kentucky Center and Belvedere Festival Park overlooking the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky. The 3-day Beatle celebration includes performances by The Smithereens, over 40 international Beatles bands, never-before seen archival film footage, screenings of A Hard Day's Night and Imagine, collectibles, art and speakers. http://www.AbbeyRoadOnTheRiver.com

Interview and photos by Thomas Mulready (:divend:)