Premier Venue, Agency Filling

A Gap In Local Music Scene

By John Voket

DANBURY — Despite Danbury’s “college town” status and a popular dining and entertainment district in the heart of its downtown, the owners and founders of Premier Music Hall — the city’s newest live music venue — are still working diligently to find the right fit of performers that will draw in sell-out crowds. Keith Mahler, a partner with PKM Presents, LLC, the company operating the new Danbury auditorium as well as Premier Concerts, an artist booking agency and promotions enterprise, discussed his long history of past successes in the entertainment business, and his high hopes for the new Premier Concert Hall earlier this week.

According to Mr Mahler’s bio, the self-described music lover first began dabbling in live music promoting way back in the early 1970s, when he started booking acts for high school dances and concerts. His big break came when he got the opportunity to begin booking more popular national acts at Waterbury’s Palace Theater.

“The first big show I booked at the Palace was Alice Cooper back in ’72,” Mr Mahler told Enjoy. “But by that time I already had big plans.”

It was during his years working at the Palace that Mr Mahler first began dealing with his current partner, Peter Kauff. Mr Kauff is no stranger to the live music scene, having nailed the rock and roll promoter’s gig of a lifetime: promoting a number of The Beatles’ first historic American appearances in his capacity as an agent at a company called GAC.

Soon after, Mr Kauff formed a new partnership and helped launch Premier Talent, where he promoted the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Who, Jethro Tull and Yes, virtually all of the English rock royalty of the day. After building on his experience with Premier, he left the booking agency business and started Cross Country Concerts with Shelly Finkel.

That company should be familiar with many local concert-going veterans who still may hold ticket stubs from the many Cross Country shows that were held in virtually every Connecticut venue through the mid-80s. Besides promoting concerts throughout Connecticut, Mr Kauff also achieved another rock and roll coup when he handled much of the promotion for the largest festival in rock music history: The Summer Jam at Watkins Glen in 1973.

Mr Kauff didn’t stop at live concert promotion, however, and subsequently moved on to create and produce The King Biscuit Flower Hour, the most successful live concert broadcast syndicated radio show in the world. This success was followed by his branching off into another broadcast medium, and forming the College Television Network (CTN).

As Mr Kauff was cutting a wide swath of influence in his own areas of the music and concert industry, Mr Mahler remained very busy in his own music endeavors. By the time this half of the future PKM team diversified into finance and investing in 1978, he had brought local concert-goers a variety of performers including Harry Chapin, Cheech & Chong, George Carlin, REO Speedwagon, The Eagles, Steely Dan, Bonnie Raitt, and Bruce Springsteen.

It is not purely coincidental that the pair reunited as Waterbury’s Palace Theater was in the final stages of its historic three-year renovation process back in 2004. And before long, the duo of Kauff and Mahler had joined forces to form Connecticut’s newest, Waterbury-based concert company, PKM Presents.

Mr Mahler said it was about this time last year that he started hearing about a large concert venue in Danbury coming on the market. That Delay Street location formerly was the home of Pure Country Café and Dance Hall (and before that short-lived enterprise, the venue was home to Colorado Brewery).

“It used to be a honkey-tonk with lots of ‘honkey’ but not enough ‘tonk,’ which is a bad thing in the highly competitive live music business,” Mr Mahler joked. “But we thought with some redesign, and a top-of-the-line sound system, we could make it a highly desirable destination for adult concert-goers.”

With much of the work completed, and new exterior signage in the works, Premier Music Hall opened in late 2005 with a combination of national musical headliners mixed with popular cover acts and a smattering of comedy and regional entertainment.

“We just came off a big month of great cover band appearances,” Mr Mahler said. “We had The Machine, which was as close to a Pink Floyd show as you can get, the female Led Zepplin cover band Lez Zepplin, and over the next few weekends coming up we’ve got the world’s best Beatles tribute band, The Fab Faux, Dark Star Orchestra doing a full three-hour Grateful Dead set, as well as Big Shot – a fantastic Billy Joel cover band from Long Island.”

When it comes to great national breakout solo acts, The Premier has Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman scheduled for March 3 (see accompanying sidebar), and Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and his band Ratdog doing a two-night stretch March 20 and 21.

Other incoming national music acts include Average White Band on March 25, classic southern rock with The Outlaws on March 12, and blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa in July. Other shows include this Saturday’s set by The Breakfast, featuring former members of the popular regional ska act Deep Bannana Blackout, and the self-described “queen of mean,” comedian Lisa Lampanelli.

By bringing in this combination of classic national and internationally-known artists, top of the line cover acts catering to virtually every taste in music, regional favorites and comedy, the partners at PKM hope to lure folks from across the state and eastern New York to the comfortable venue in Danbury.

“We’re really trying to make the venue work in Danbury,” Mr Mahler said.

Besides the Premier facility, PKM has also had a run of luck bringing acts like Bonnie Raitt, and a songwriters tour featuring John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett to Torrington’s recently renovated Warner Theater, and the company isn’t stopping there.

“We’re currently working with other venues to enhance our promotions. We aim to buy the shows that make sense and fill a gap that is currently missing in the region for good live entertainment presented in smaller, intimate venues.

Right now PKM is just keeping very busy looking for all types of opportunities in the entertainment industry,” Mr Mahler said. The company is also considering opening a financial services subsidiary to help venues underwrite shows PKM wants to bring to the region.

And what if this fickle concert promotion industry becomes unfavorable for the long-time friends?

“Well right now we’re too busy packaging tours looking for original ideas,” Mr Mahler repled. “If we’re not able to keep things going on that end, the two of us will just have to play a lot of golf.”