Bud Simmons

Bud Simmons, thanks for spending some time with me today.

Thank you, Chip. Thanks for inviting me.

Absolutely. Now, Bud, before we get started, I only have two main questions, as you probably know, but just for anybody who doesn't know Bud Simmons, what do you do for a living? I know you're kind of the PAC guy, but what is your official title there?

So I'm the director of the FMU Performing Arts Center that opened in 2011. I've been there since 2017, so I'm just finished like 5 years. I work for Francis Marion, obviously, and so that's the main thing that I do here in Florence.

Gotcha. So when you think about kind of Bud Simmons, so my first question is always, who is Bud Simmons?

You don't know?

I know what I think I know, and that's part of the reason that I've done this is because a lot of times you see people around town and you know them, and you and my wife obviously work together. Sure. Most people have a little bit bigger story than what we kind of get to see in passing. And so I'm curious, when you think about Bud, who is Bud?

Wow, Bud's a guy who's been doing things in the performing arts and concerts and managing entertainment for a long, long time. I started out in Henderson, North Carolina, grew up there, was an Eagle Scout, very proud of that, performed in the high school band and started in the drama club and the local community theater, which is kind of where things got started for me in terms of wanting to work in this business. And then I went to North Carolina State. I kind of always had been an NC State fan. I know you're a Clemson fan.

Forgive me.

Can't hold that against you. But so I went to North Carolina State and kind of couldn't decide what I wanted to do in terms of a major at that point. And so I Ended up working in the student theaters, uh, in the performing arts, and realized some point along the line that that's really what I wanted to do, because that was what I gravitated to. Um, and so I did that through college. I enjoyed college a lot, stayed there, uh, a little bit longer than maybe I should have, but I'm not the only one to do that.

No judgment.

And then, uh, ended up getting a job, uh, well, worked with some bands, some rock and roll bands in that area. For a while. And then I got a job at the High Point Theatre in High Point, North Carolina as the technical director, which was, uh, I was probably about 26 when I did that, and that was a big leap for me to actually get a real job with a real paycheck and a real salary. And did that for about 11 years. It turned into more of a management role at the end. And then in the early '90s, moved to Charlotte to work at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

Oh wow.

And I was there for a few years before going over to work for the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, which is where I spent the 22 years at the Charlotte Symphony as director of orchestra operations.

Oh wow.

Uh, which encompasses managing logistics, uh, working with schedules, uh, making sure production aspects are in place, sound and lighting, staging, that sort of thing. Um, did a, uh, worked with a very successful outdoor, um, venue that we had there. We did that every year for, uh, for every year I was there. And so then around 2017, I'd been there for 22 years, and I said, uh, well, you know, there's got to be something else to do too. So I started kind of looking around, and when I came across Francis Marion University's Performing Arts Center— never heard of it and never been here, probably had driven through or by Florence at some point on the way to Myrtle Beach but never really paid any attention to it. So I put in an application for it, and a few days later they gave me a call and I came down to look at it. And when I came down here, I wasn't really expecting much, and I frankly probably wasn't expecting to take a job here. But I came down and talked to some of the folks at FMU, and when I went into the building for the first time, I was just blown away. And I think people, most people in Florence, when they finally go into the Performing Arts Center, they are shocked at such a grand, majestic place that's here in Florence. And so I felt the same way, and I said, this is an amazing venue. And so from that point forward, we talked about what I could contribute and what I could bring to the table down here, and that's where we've ended up. And so I've been here for 5 successful years working for a fine university, Francis Marion University, and that's kind of where I am today.

That's interesting. So before I forget, what instrument did you play in the band?

I played trombone.

Okay.

But I gave it up after high school.

Understood. So, but when you went to NC State and got involved, was it more in the musical theater or was it in kind of acting and some of those kind of production stuff?

I mainly worked in a venue that had about 800 seats in it, similar to ours, as a student called Stewart Theater on the campus. And it was a touring house, a roadhouse. So the bands would come through or plays would come through and I would be one of the student stagehands, for want of a better term. And, uh, realized it was a passion of mine to do that sort of thing. And so that's kind of— it's always been on the production side. I did a little acting, I dabbled in a little acting way back in community theater, but I haven't done anything for quite some time. Um, so that, that was mainly the, the behind the scenes stuff. Sure.

So when you talk about— and again, I'm just— I'm fascinated, uh, by the idea of what all goes on behind the scenes in, in any of these places. But when you talk about being the kind of the, again, I'm gonna use the wrong term probably, but the director of operations or over operations for the Charlotte Symphony. What all goes into that? 'Cause I think that for a lot of us, you know, we're just out there listening to the, you know, the violinist or watching that production. But I think it's probably pretty easy, particularly in a venue even like the PAC, to get caught up in the musicians and not pay attention to what all has to go into the environment for all that. What's all that like?

Well, there's an awful lot. So obviously the main intent is to support the musicians and the conductors and the artistic product. There is— it starts way back in securing the venues or securing the spaces, the movement of the orchestra. If you're on a little run-out tour of some sort, you've gotta plan all the logistics of buses and. And once you get there, is the stage big enough? Do they have the equipment that you need? That sort of thing. Schedules— there's a multitude of schedules with an orchestra like the Charlotte Symphony. It's basically a mid-tier orchestra, so there's a lot of work that has to be done. A lot of different venues, so you have to go into different venues and make sure they're set for you. Then there's relationships with musicians, and in that case, in many cases, it's a American Federation of Musicians organization, so you have to follow rule books, basically the labor agreements. You have to be a part of negotiating those when the time comes. So there's just a lot of behind-the-scenes scheduling and booking of artists. I also booked the pop series when I was there, which means about 7 or 8 times a year I would bring in an artist that would play with the play with the orchestra on stage.

Cool. Yeah. Well, um, you know, that's a— so it's a natural question, and maybe, you know, I'm sure the facility probably is the easy answer, but why Florence? So when, you know, again, you've been doing the same thing at the same place for a long time. Again, you don't see a lot of people moving from Charlotte to Florence. Most of them who do, it usually is for family or for work. But I'm curious, number one, why? And number two, I'm assuming that you're happy. Why is that? What keeps you here?

Well, the why, I guess, was just wanting to do it, have another challenge. You know, I felt like I'd been in Charlotte at the symphony for 22 years. There was nothing else I could do there that was gonna shock the world. And not that I've shocked the world down here, but it was just wanting to have another, another place to go and try to prove some new things to myself, not anybody else. And so, and I never had been the director of a performing arts center or the head guy, the one that everybody looked to for guidance completely. And so it was an opportunity to do that and build a team. And I knew that there was some fertile ground here to work with in terms of what we could possibly book here and bring here to Florence. Of course, COVID derailed most of that for most any entertainment venue around. So those are the main reasons I wanted to come here, and I do like Florence. I like— I've met a lot of great people here in Florence. You know, I'm getting closer to the end of my career than I am the beginning at this point, and so it seemed like a nice place to kind of settle down for a while and see how we like it.

Sure. Yeah. Um, what's the biggest difference between— because again, in listening, the, the, the job in Charlotte, again, as I'm processing what you said, was not a fixed venue, which I didn't realize when I asked you that. Um, what's the biggest difference between, uh, a job like that, you know, in that field, and one like you have now where you're all the acts, or I guess the way I see it, the other one was the same or a similar act perhaps performing in different places. This is the opposite of that. It's a similar place with, in a lot of cases, different acts kind of coming in and out.

What's the biggest difference? That's actually a pretty good description. I never had thought of it in those terms. We did perform mainly in the same venues in Charlotte. The Blumenthal was the venue and the Knight Theater, but there were some also, Ovens Auditorium many years ago. There were some different venues that we would perform in. And then we would also have to be in the community a little bit more than just that. So we would end up having series that we would do in breweries, for example. We had a brewery series, and then we would do churches, and we'd do Mozart small ensembles in churches and places like that, outdoor concerts and around the community. So We were pretty mobile, but the main venues were like the Belk Theatre and the Blumenthal and the Knight Theatre of the Blumenthal and the Ovens Auditorium. But you're right, it's here, the only venues, well, there's 3 venues at the Performing Arts Center. There's the main stage theatre, there's the black box, and then there's the amphitheatre. And so my home turf is one place. And like you say, we have very different things coming in all the time. We book our own series. Events. We have, of course, Francis Marion performances. We have local groups. We have meetings. We have all sorts of things. And so it is a, it is a different animal from what I, what I did, but it relates in the same sense that it's all performance-based for the most part.

Sure. Well, it's, again, it's interesting because I think, and hopefully other people will learn or be prompted as well is that you're right, I've been to plenty of events that weren't necessarily specifically performances at the Performing Arts Center. So it's not just, again, when I think about it, I think about, and I'll tell you my favorite production that I've been to there, but yeah, I think about the shows, if you will, but there've been plenty of things that I've been to. It's really as much anymore a venue as it is again, kind of that specific set of 5 or 6 or 10 performances.

Right, right. It's kind of, in some ways it can be and should be like the living room of the community in a way. That there are lots of different things that go on, receptions, certainly large-scale meetings there as well as the performances. So it's a multipurpose venue in a lot of ways. And that's what it should be. And I think, you know, our job is trying to get more people through the doors at whatever event that we might have there. Sure.

What's been the hardest part of that?

You know, this is a pretty widespread community. There's not a tremendous population here, obviously. So it's not as easy to draw in large audiences for performers, for example, that aren't maybe at the top of the name recognition level. Sure. And so if somebody that we want to bring in that we know is a really good performer, has great track record in other venues, we just don't have the population here to necessarily attract enough people that have never heard of them. Sure. And that's, that's, that's the challenge.

What is the— how do you guys do that? I mean, when you talk about promoting Again, so full transparency, my favorite show has been the Black Violins.

Yeah, they're coming back in December.

I know that, and I'm jacked up about that because I really, really, really enjoyed that performance. We in fact went out that night or the next morning and downloaded all their stuff off iTunes and still listen to it. So I think they're fantastic, but they are Again, they're one who, if you didn't know who they were and you had never seen or heard the show, it might be the kind of thing that you don't really understand. So it would've been easy at the time. I think Trish was still working out at the university. So she had heard it and it was easy for her to convince me to come. But again, I imagine some of the acts that you have are like that where, like you say, folks, they aren't Travis Tritt or Josh Turner.

That's right. That's a great example, Black Violin. That's an example of where what I just described as being one of the challenges worked well in that we were, about 2 weeks prior to Black Violin's performance, I was worried. I was looking at the ticket sales and we'd only sold a couple hundred tickets and I'm thinking, well, this is surprising 'cause it had done really well in other places and I knew the quality was there. And so, but in the last minute, last few weeks, it started to really take momentum. And part of that was social media pushes by the band in the region. You know, they have a great following and people all of a sudden started to find out that they were coming to Florence and it sold out, which was a wonderful thing to have. That's what we're going for, that's our goal. But you know, that whole process starts A couple years, sometimes a couple years, at least a year in advance of when the actual performance starts. You know, you have to, you know, we have to, we build relationships with booking managers and booking agents from across the country, and they learn about, we have to teach them about our venue here because we're not, we're on the 95 and 20, that's a good thing for travel between, from artists going from say Charleston to Raleigh or something, very easy stopover. But we have to kind of sell ourselves a little bit to some of these artists, and it takes a little time. So you have to build these relationships with booking agents, and then you have to say, this is kind of where we're considering our price point is for certain things. Keep me in mind when there's something that you think might appeal to our audiences here, and we'll see if we can get together with a date and schedule it all out. And then once you have a black violin, you have to know, of course, what it's going to cost, cost us to bring them here. Uh, you have to price out the, the all the different things, the production side, how much money you're going to need to spend to market the show. You come up with a number and it becomes, um, okay, we've got to make that much money selling tickets. And so then you say, how much can I sell tickets for? What's the top price I can get for a show like this? And maybe it's $49 because a lot of people don't know it. If it was Travis Tritt or Josh Turner, maybe it could be $69. So you do the math, it's all math, and you say, okay, well, it's going to cost me X, but it looks like I can maybe if I sell 75% of the house make Y. Okay, we're close enough to being able to take a chance on that. And so every time we present someone, there's that equation that kind of goes on, and it takes a while to build it up. Josh Turner, you mentioned that. Josh Turner's coming September 29th. If you don't have your tickets already, too bad, because we're just about sold out to Oh wow. Yeah, and that's because he's a Pee Dee native. But that's a concert I started working on 2 or 3 years ago when I started— when I realized who Josh Turner was. Sure. And found out he was from this region, and I started asking questions. When can I get Josh Turner to come back to Florence? And finally, out of the blue, about a— about, I don't know, a year ago, 6 months ago maybe, they called me up and said, we think we've got a date for you. It's going to be on a Thursday night in September. He's gonna be in Marietta, Georgia, and then the next night after your date, he would be in Richmond, Virginia, or wherever it was. Can we work it out? And that's when I started putting pencil to the paper. Sure. And saying, uh, yes, we can do that after, you know, adding it all up. And it's one of those, we needed to sell every ticket because Josh is a big name in country music. Um, so, uh, that's again another success story for sure.

Yeah. Well, listen, I'm from Pamplaco. Josh and I played baseball together. He's a couple years younger than me. And, um, You know, it's one of those things where for a long, long time, Josh played everything around here. Yeah, because I remember, in fact, Lauren Stanton and I had this conversation, I think, kind of off air when I was spending time with her, that Josh was in every talent show from, you know, here to the beach and Columbia and everywhere as a young person. But then eventually, you know, for the last handful of years, I'm not surprised it's selling out because you know, other than, you know, a couple of shows at the beach maybe, you know, he hasn't been back for a large-scale performance. I've seen him kind of around town a couple of times incognito because famous people have to travel like that, but, um, but he hadn't been back for a show in, in quite some time. And so I think there are a lot of people who, you know, who, who will enjoy seeing him. I'm glad to know— I was glad to see that y'all were able to get him back because And again, I think that's, it's good for Josh and good for the Pack, but it's also good for the community to have a local guy who's done so well.

Exactly.

You know, and of course he's one of those guys who truly, literally has lived the dream. I mean, I think there are many, many people who have gone off to Nashville, you know, or to Belmont, that's where I think he went to school. Right.

I think he spent one semester at Francis Marion, didn't he?

I think he did. Yeah. I think you're exactly right. You know, kind of going to go out and realize the dream. And there are thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Nashville trying to do the same, right? And, and, but he's one of those who, again, a small town guy who actually did it. So that's, that's exciting. You mentioned having to deal with booking agents, and one of the things that I've heard is that sometimes acts can have— and I won't ask you who— but can have special and maybe kind of weird requests as part of coming to a venue. Have you ever had any of those? And if so, yeah, who— what's the weirdest thing you've had somebody want to put into a contract?

Well, so what you're talking about is what it's called, the rider, and that's the additional information on a contract. A contract with an artist or performance or, or a group, um, first couple of pages are all the legal part, how much money you're going to pay them and what's when you gonna— what time— what day is the deposit due and where you gonna send it and all that stuff, how many hotel rooms you have to book for them or not. And then you get into the rider, which is all the specific information that they need to make their concert or their event a success. And then part of that is the production side, audio and lighting that they need. Oftentimes we have to provide what is called backline, which is— backline is a trade word for amplifiers, guitars, drums, keyboards that a musician might not travel with, but he has to have that when he gets here. So we have to provide that locally. So those kind of things. And then there's catering. There's always catering. And it's my goal to always make sure that the catering is done really well and that when an artist is here, he's treated like a king. He or she's treated like a king with the food as much as possible, because, you know, happy stomach is a happy artist, which is a great great show. And so we go bend over backwards to do that. We work with our university caterer, Aramark, and they do a great job. But as far as the weirdest thing, I don't know. There's been a lot of weird things. You've always heard the story of one of the bands, one of the big rock bands, Metallica or someone, saying they wanted M&M's but no green ones.

You know, that's, that's right.

There was an artist that wanted spinach water but not the spinach. He wanted spinach water. I remember that. That was a gentleman named Al Jarreau. And that had something to do with making his voice silky right before he went on stage. That one comes to mind. An artist that wanted not one but two baked potatoes. And that was all she wanted. Right. You know, things like that. There's a whole list of them. And actually, there's a website you can go to and see some of this. It's called The Smoking Gun. And you can pull up the Beatles rider from their first tour in 1964. And just to tell you how things have changed, their requirements for transportation was a limousine with air conditioning if possible. Wow. If possible. And then their equipment needs were 4 microphones. And nowadays it would be, you know, 2 or 3 different pages of specific information that you need to provide.

I didn't know, I didn't know you guys had to— and again, it makes sense, right? But I didn't know that you guys had times where you had to provide musical instruments. And, you know, you just kind of assume, again, as a layperson sitting out in the crowd, that, you know, folks roll in with all their stuff.

Well, and a lot of them do, and it kind of depends on the artist. Josh Turner, for example, is traveling with all of his gear. So we don't have to provide that. And from his side, maybe it costs more in the long run to do that, but he knows exactly what he's going to get every night. He doesn't have to come in and find out that the keyboard player's got an instrument that's not suitable or doesn't have the right settings or something like that. So that's all part of the negotiation, whether or not you have to provide that or not. One of the downfalls in Florence is we don't have a lot of companies here readily available sitting here with— Sure. Equipment to rent us. So we have to go to Charlotte or Columbia or Charleston sometimes to get that.

So, well, and I was wondering that, and that certainly makes sense because again, they're not using stuff you can get from your buddy's— Correct. —you know, basement. No, both the recording stuff, but also even the instruments. I mean, they're professionals. They're using the best stuff. They certainly are. So I'm curious, kind of as we begin to wrap up, what is— so you're a performance guy, you've— and it can be at the pack, maybe it's two. What's been your favorite performance so far, either in Florence that you've seen or both? Because you're a professional, so you've seen a lot of these things.

I've seen an awful lot, and I guess in Florence, the— my favorite might be, um, Graham Nash. Okay. You know, Crosby, Stills, Nash. Just because when I was growing up, I was such a Crosby, Stills, and Nash fan, and, and to get the chance to eventually work with them on a concert, that was, that was wonderful. One of our most successful concerts, and, and certainly, um, um, the audience loved it, was the Temptations. Oh yeah. And, but, and that was the week before COVID So that was the last concert we did, and that was a sellout. But that was, uh, when COVID hit and we kind of stopped having to— being able to do things. Um, Black Violin, you said, was great. I worked with— in Charlotte, I worked with a lot of really top-notch classical artists too. Yo-Yo Ma. Oh wow. Itzhak Perlman, people like that. I would be on the logistics side of it, not the engagement side of it, but, uh, great people. And then, uh, I don't know, James Taylor. A long, long time ago. We were lucky to work with him. Tony Bennett. What a classy guy Tony Bennett was. Still is. I mean, he's at the end of his career certainly now. And one that just passed away recently, Olivia Newton-John. I did a show with her one time. Oh, cool. And all, you know, 9 times out of 10 or even 9.5 times out of 10, they're all just kind of great normal people. You know, when you're around them and as long as you're polite to them, they're going to be polite to you and it's So it's really rewarding. And then the most rewarding thing is to see how an audience reacts to one of those artists. Sure. You know, you don't get rich in this business, at least only a few select few get rich in this business. But in my level of managing and creating, uh, opportunities for people to see concert, that's where you kind of get the, the best, uh, feeling is when you see an audience really enjoy something. And sure, and that's, uh, you know, you can't, you can't buy that really.

You've got to Well, that's absolutely true, and particularly in live performances. And I think that's the, you know, you say you don't get rich, but it all depends on how you define it. And I'm one of those who's a big believer that, you know, experience and relationships are a big part of kind of living a rich life. And there aren't a lot of people who can say they were backstage and worked with James Taylor. Or Olivia Newton-John. I mean, that's a, again, that's the kind of thing. I remember when my boys and I went to the, the second technically, so the 2016 National Championship game for Clemson. We're big Clemson fans and we were on the way home and one of my boys, we had stopped at a gas station and one of his friends had messaged him that he already had the National Championship t-shirt. And my son's like, I want one of those t-shirts. I mean, he was, I don't know, 9 or so at the time. I want one of those t-shirts. My friend has that. I said, "Son, unless he has a time machine, your friend can't ever have what we just had." And of course I bought him the t-shirt. I mean, that's— but it struck me in that moment that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, as far as I know, they don't have a time machine. And so a live event's one of the few things that once it has happened, you can't do that over. And you can watch it on TV, but it's not the same. You can't do that over.

And so, Um, you know, again, it's moments, really. Absolutely. It's moments. And, and I think if you told me when I was 16 years old and I was just starting out in community theater at the local level that I would be able to sustain a career doing what I've been doing, uh, for 40-plus years, I guess now— I don't want to do the math on that, I understand— but, uh, I would say, where do I sign? Sign me up. And so I feel very fortunate to have worked in the, in the industry that I have worked in and have met so many great people. And, and not just, not just big performers, but I've worked with so many great stagehands or other managers throughout the course of my career, booking agents, all those folks. It's been just a delight to be in this industry and being a part of it for so long.

Well, it just goes to show you that if you follow your passion, you really can end up— there are so many people And I talk to a lot of them in my day-to-day who don't love work and who can't figure out, um, yeah, they're just not happy. And so it's, it's awesome for me to get to talk to people who have kind of followed that passion and figured it out. As I mean, I, I'm sure it hadn't always been easy, but you kind of figure it out as you go along. And, um, yeah, and you do it long enough and it's It's a great career. Yep. Um, so I have to ask, Bud, kind of the final question, um, because I think it says a lot about a person. Um, if you had to pick a fictional character, it could be a superhero, uh, somebody from a book or a movie that you feel like best kind of represents Bud Simmons, who do you feel like it would be and why?

So I've given this a lot of thought on occasion, uh, specifically since I kind of knew this question was coming and, um, One thing comes back to me when I start thinking about who I am and what I've been doing, and it's going to sound funny, but it's The Wizard of Oz. And it's not the big wizard that's up on the screen that's making things flash and scaring everybody. Right. But you remember the scene at the end of The Wizard of Oz when Toto goes over to the side and pulls back the curtain, and they all look and see this man back there moving levers and knobs and stuff and talking into a microphone. And he says, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." And that's kind of what I am, the man behind the curtain. And I just assume you're not paying much attention to me.

Understood. Well, there's a reason why folks take on roles like that. It's to be able to be— Again, it strikes me as you say that. You get to make— So even the wizard makes such a big difference. Right. But at the end of the day, As inspirational and as helpful as he is, he's just a regular guy behind the curtain trying to make a difference. That's right. And so I think that's an awesome— If I've done that, that's what I've accomplished my goal. Amen. Amen. Well, Bud, thank you.

I've enjoyed it. Thank you.

And thanks for having me, Chip. Absolutely. All right.