Photo courtesy of Mason Communications, LLC
Shep Hyken and Steve Schankman on the set of "All Access Pass," which launches Monday, April 2.
Next Monday, in celebration of its 50th anniversary as a groundbreaking St. Louis concert promotion house, Contemporary Productions will unveil All Access Pass, a video podcast. The company’s head, Steve Schankman, will chat with host Shep Hyken in short bursts of roughly three minutes, sketching out some of the more memorable events among the 22,000 that his production company’s worked on in the past century. In total, they'll present 50 of these stories via YouTube, with the first half dozen splashing next week.
The series came about after conversations about how best to mark the company’s 50th year celebrations; 10 years ago, for the company’s 40th anniversary, Schankman worked with veteran St. Louis music writer Dick Richmond on Produced by Contemporary. This time, the idea of a video series was one settled upon after conversations that included the vlogs' producer, Joe Mason, a veteran of St. Louis FM radio.
Schankman says the program will “be Shep in there with me, talking. We’ll add some nice visuals that will relate to each story. All of it was done at Joe Mason’s studios here in St. Louis, with a three-camera set-up. It was all very professionally done.”
Schankman, his son Peter, Contemporary’s Mike Campbell and Mason sat down and kicked around a host of possible conversation starters. Some were more immediate than others. For example, a bit on the Riverport Riot featuring Guns n’ Roses was an obvious selection, as was a recap of the first show that Contemporary produced, a Fox Theatre gig from the Grateful Dead. At some point, they’ll talk about U2’s first show here, a Graham Chapel booking that “was for $750,” Schankman says. “I’ve still got the contract on my office wall.”
Another key story will involve the company itself.
“We sold in 1998,” Schankman recalls. “We’d developed Riverport here, the Sandstone Amphitheater in Kansas City. We were a large company, a $140-to-150-million operation. But we were watching other regional promoters getting gobbled up. We didn’t really have a choice.”
Not long after that, he worked on establishment of The Pageant, a role that he says still “serves the concert market well 18 years later.” He was also able to wrest back the naming of this company, getting back the Contemporary Productions name, in total. That name’s what they’ll stick with, and though he has a small office presence in Los Angeles, he says that “as long as I’m alive, I’ll have an office in St. Louis.”
Through the shuffling of concert promoters over the past 20 years have left AEG and LiveNation as the titans of the industry, there are still niches for smaller, streamlined companies, like today’s Contemporary. Schankman, whose son Peter is involved in the company, notes that the 50 year mark “kind of motivates me. We have about 20 people working here now. They’re running events, running concerts, they’re booking bands. We have some great leadership here now. We’re not doing a lot of the club stuff, but we’re keeping a lot of local bands working, playing at corporate events.”
Fifty, he insists, “is just a number. I was born in 1948. And I have five-year-old twin girls today. I still play the trumpet, almost every weekend. I’ll be playing with Frankie Avalon’s band soon, and have the Motown Revue, my own band. It really is just a number.
“We’ve had a lot of achievements,” he says. “Locally, nationally, even internationally. I’m hoping that Contemporary Productions is going to be around another 50 years. I won’t be,” he adds, with a light chuckle, “but I really hope that Contemporary Productions still is.”
All Access Pass launches April 2 via Contemporary Production's YouTube channel; for more info, go to Contemporary's Facebook page, or visit contemporaryproductions.com.
