Student Special Events booked White for a one-night concert in Popejoy Hall, a 2,000-capacity venue, only five days after the artist played a sold-out performance in New York’s Madison Square Garden, an 18,200-seat auditorium.
“It brings Popejoy a whole new audience, it’s not a Broadway show at all,” said Emily Garrity, marketing director for Student Special Events.
Tickets went on sale for students the week of fall 2014 finals at $35, and to the public the following week for $58 each, Garrity said. All tickets were sold out on Jan.21.
Websites like StubHub.com are offering Orchestra Section tickets from $200 to $400, according to the company’s website.
On Craigslist, sellers and buyers alike call for prices exceeding $250. Postings with titles like “Two tickets for the Jack White show Feb 3” and “Jack White – 2 tickets wanted pretty please!” litter the website’s seller’s section.
Los Angeles psych-rock band Chicano Batman will open for the artist on Tuesday night.
“Ethnomusicologists in their own right, they are students of rhythm, globe trotting on a quest to reclaim and represent the musical roots of their past generations,” their website bio reads.
Although the collaborative effort of Student Special Events made the show happen, Garrity said it really began with one person — and was no easy show to schedule.
Simon Kessler is promotions director for Student Special Events and the man who brought the possibility of Jack White to the table.
“It’s an awesome opportunity: Nobody’s really going to get the chance to see Jack White in such a small theater,” Kessler said. “This is him in a tiny, intimate 2,000 capacity venue, so we think it’s really something special ... I would say it fell into my lap, this show, but it also was networking with the right agents and just putting yourself on the map.”
In November Kessler got a call from a friend who works as a music agent with William Morris Endeavor. The agent informed Kessler that White, a WME client, was on a tour that would take him close to Albuquerque, inviting Kessler to make an offer.
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Kessler said he spoke with Krista Marrs, executive director at SSE, and Ryan Lindquist, associate director at Student Activities. Both were extremely supportive of the idea of hosting Jack White and acted fast to get the ball rolling.
“We saw this opportunity and said, ‘we need to jump on it; it’s not like we’ll get to it tomorrow. We need to get it today,’” Kessler said. “That was probably some of the longest days I’ve had here. We probably were here 13 hours for 30 days in a row, just trying to push it through as quickly as possible.”
Once an undisclosed offer was agreed upon between SSE and Jack White, Kessler and his coworkers sought out an appropriate venue, he said. The initial location they considered was WisePies Arena aka The Pit, but due to basketball scheduling it wasn’t available at the time.
When Popejoy Hall became an option, White and his people were hesitant because the venue is a seating theater, Kessler said, whereas the artist is more accustomed to rock show audiences and venues that support those audiences with standing room.
That didn’t stop the people at Student Special Events, who opted to build a small pit area in front of the stage at Popejoy, where up to 100 people can fit, he said.
“It was kind of the turning point,” Kessler said. “We said, ‘We’ll do our best to make some kind of a pit; we can’t really start ripping seats out of the concrete, but we can make a hundred-person standing space.’ So we added that in the offer.”
Tickets for the pit were understandably the most sought-after and the first to go, exclusively available to students who purchased tickets at the bookstore.
After a month of back-and-forth negotiations along with an updated seat count to accommodate pit space, Kessler got the phone call: the show was on.
“That was just an awesome moment, everybody was pumped,” Kessler said. “But we still kept it kind of quiet. Everybody in the office knew, along with a few people from ASUNM, but we hadn’t released yet.”
Student Special Events worked on a release to begin the Wednesday before finals with student tickets going on sale the Thursday of finals week, he said. The next Monday, tickets were offered to the general public.
Student discount tickets were offered at the Bookstore to only those who could provide a valid UNM student I.D.
“It’s nice to work here at SSE because we have a little bit more wiggle room. If it’s a show that students are really going to like, we can subsidize tickets like we did with this Jack White show and charge students half the price that we are charging to the public,” Kessler said. “We don’t necessarily have to make all of our money back. As long as we’re making students happy and bringing acts that they’re interested in seeing, we’re doing our job.”
Once the news got out, Garrity made promotional posters and fliers and sent a marketing proposal to 104.1 The Edge radio station, she said. The station was also given tickets to use for promotional giveaways.
During this time, promotional posters and fliers were distributed by the “street team,” — and the rest is about to be history.
“You’re always going to want to pursue the bigger, the better,” Garrity said. “We’re setting the bar kind of high for next year, but that’s a good thing. ‘Let’s push our limits, lets make it happen’ kind of thing. For UNM as a whole, it shows everybody else that we’re capable of getting more than just a local band to come play for the students.”
Matthew Reisen is a staff reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
