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Touring
Executive of the Week: How Steven Himmelfarb is Booking Angine de Poitrine, Canada's Hottest Band
The vice president of The Feldman Agency is the booking agent for the polka-dotted duo of Quebec math-rock aliens, who have become one of the hottest tickets in the music industry. Here's how he's building the strategy.
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The hottest band in rock right now has rarely played outside of Quebec.
Since releasing a KEXP performance video just two months ago, Angine de Poitrine has taken over the music world with rare speed.
Since the internet got hold of their black and white polka dotted costumes and virtuosic microtonal instrumental rock, things have exploded quickly for a band that was previously near-unknown outside of their home province. Their performance videos have racked up millions of views, rock stars as big as Dave Grohl have rhapsodized about them, and major newspapers like the New York Times have tried to get to the bottom of the phenomenon.
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But it’s not just an internet phenomenon. Vinyl plants have increased production of their just-released Vol. II record to meet the demand, concerts have sold out immediately with resale tickets going for upwards of $500, and their live schedule is now packed with shows across Canada, the United States and Europe.
So how do you strategize around a band that’s blowing up? That’s the enviable job of Steven Himmelfarb, the Vice President of The Feldman Agency, one of Canada’s biggest booking agents. Himmelfarb started working with Angine de Poitrine just recently, and he’s fielding major offers from festivals all over the world and gigantic artists asking for them to come open for them.
“It all happened very quick,” Himmelfarb says, speaking on the phone after a weekend spent in Montreal for their headlining release show at Club Soda and earlier hot-ticket secret show at the much-smaller Quai des Brumes. “I don't think anyone was anticipating it to get so crazy so soon.”
But though it’s happening in hyper speed, Himmelfarb is used to this. As the agent who steered Orville Peck from Toronto’s tiny Monarch Tavern to the Kardashians’ inner circle in six months, and the strategist behind the record-breaking Canadian runs of Shania Twain, Himmelfarb has carved out a niche as the architect for "outside the box" artists who turn mainstream on the strength of a singular vision.
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His artist roster is diverse, including bands like PUP, BadBadNotGood, Good Kid, Lord Huron, Mt. Joy, Swedish psych experimenters Goat and legacy indie icons like Our Lady Peace and Feist (who’s had a big bump from a recent sync in Heated Rivalry), but his work speaks across all of them. No matter how niche or weird-seeming a band might be, he has a plan to break them across stages.
In this week’s Executive of the Week, Himmelfarb breaks down the plans for Angine de Poitrine, why "vision" is the most important trait an artist can possess, why online view or listen counts can sometimes lie, and why “the entire ticketing operation” of the music industry needs to change.
Angine de Poitrine have had such a rapid breakthrough over the last few months. When did you officially start working with them?
I’ve worked with a band called Goat for 15 years. I was booking a cross-Canada tour for this band [who wear masks] and was thinking of support ideas. The Montreal International Jazz Festival promoters hit me up, “Hey, I've got this band I think is really cool, but they also wear masks.” I said “That’s lame, I don't wanna do that.” He was like, “They’re a perfect fit. Please ask.” I flipped it to the band. They got back to me in like five days and they were in.
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I went back to the promoters at Montreal Jazz Fest and they replied, “Too late. They just put up their own show and it's sold out in a couple hours. They've politely rescinded the offer, they're just going to start headlining.” I was like, “Holy smokes.” So I just reached out to them and then signed them immediately.
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What made you realize that the band’s success was truly taking off and that the demand was there to do big things?
It really just came from the KEXP video. It was the perfect storm of really fun, really creative and it just connected with everyone.
It was passing around to everyone, fans of all different genres, and everyone was like “this is awesome.” Jazz festivals, folk festivals, punk rock festivals — everyone was in on this.
Immediately upon signing them, there was interest. I had festivals out of the gate saying, “Oh I’ll book this for sure.”
We booked a couple of those for very little money because they were taking risks, just trying to curate interesting things. Then literally in a couple of weeks it became an internet phenomenon, which is rare.
How did that success translate into tangible results like ticket and record sales?
With the internet and numbers, you never really know if it correlates to tickets. You can have a band that has millions of followers and it doesn’t sell out the Drake. There’s no correlation to true fan base. I wasn't feeling that with this, and I insisted on going out real quick with the Mod Club. I needed to see if this was real.
In coordinating with all the other agents and teams and countries, I said if this blows out as fast as I think, it'll be a litmus test for the rest of the world. You might want to move up from 200 cap rooms to 500 cap rooms.
The Mod Club blew out immediately and then everywhere it just — game on. Now it's about keeping up with demand.
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What does the next year for Angine de Poitrine look like? How do you strategize and plan ahead amid such a rapid rise?
This one's a little bit of a wait and see. They have a year ahead of them that is gonna be ridiculously tiring and hopefully rewarding, and we need to see some of this play out before moving on to next steps, which is currently a blank slate.
A lot of heavy hitting artists have reached out to have them join their tours and play shows.
They’re at a point where they don't even know how many shows in a row they can do because they've never really been put to the test. They're juggling a lot in terms of building the show and levelling up, all the while deciding where they wanna go. It’s wide open right now.
The band’s success has grown immensely, seemingly overnight. Have you experienced similar success before with other artists on your roster?
Yes, but not this fast and crazy.
It was hyperspeed with Orville Peck. We were just at the Horseshoe hanging out, and now I'm hanging out with the Kardashians 6 months later. That was a crazy ride, but this is a little quicker than Orville in terms of ticket sales.
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Orville Peck was hitting different demographics. It was this punk rock, indie rock thing, but then it was also a country thing. I can look back at PUP. They’re playing Warped Tour, and also credible on Pitchfork. When you can hit these different fan bases, it can really gain this momentum.
With Angine, it's hitting in the jam bands world, the punk rock scene and the musicianship fanbase. It’s hitting from all these different angles, and that creates this tornado effect.
The Feldman Agency is one of the biggest booking agencies in Canada. A common thread has been working with indie acts and helping them blow up in a big way. Do you feel this fits into your philosophy as a booking agent?
I'm definitely pigeonholed as like indie rock guy and I definitely don’t think that’s true, but that's the music I grew up on.
I’m known to have a flair for some outside the box artists who can turn mainstream based on just good music. I definitely don’t have a reputation for signing major label acts that I think will get big and make money without actually liking it. I love my job because I love all the artists I work with. I know it sounds like hyperbole bulls–, but I do. I actually work with my favourite bands.
[Angine de Poitrine] definitely got me more comments from people being like, “I wasn’t surprised to see you were on this,” which I think is a huge compliment. People are rallying around this band in a very unique way.
With more bands making more of their money from live shows rather than royalties from their music, the role of a booking agent has become more important over the years and taken on some of the tasks that might be done by labels or other aspects of the industry. How important is A&R to what you do?
A&R is always the huge element of all agents' jobs, maybe slightly more for me as it's the niche I've carved myself.
All the statistics are so public-facing now that it's hard to be like, “This band's hot,” and then you look at the stats and it's like, “Are they hot?”
I think Angine broke that rule because the stats weren't huge. Instagram blew up really quickly, but even before that happened, it was ‘oh, this is cool, and I do buy in on this.” From the get-go, it's “Do I like this? Where do I see it playing and where can I envision this going?”
What helps you envision an artist’s success when you’re coming on board at that ground level? What gives you that instinct that they can make it?
Do the artists have a vision themselves? Can they walk me through it? I can credit PUP, Orville Peck, Good Kid, Angine. They all have a vision for where they want to go, and it helps me be a cog in the wheel of their careers. You could tell that they already thought this through and they have some momentum.
Sometimes it's meeting them. I credit Orville Peck with that a lot. Those were some really eye-opening conversations early on. He’d only played a couple of shows ever, and he had this vision. He envisioned Beyoncé would be doing cowboy fashion. He knew it was coming. He knew country music was gonna hit an urban territory that it hadn't yet, and he wanted to be on that.
Canada’s live music scene has been expanding its secondary market, with new venues in cities like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and History in Ottawa making pushes for big touring acts. Does having plays in these markets create more opportunity?
I think it's very artist specific in terms of the secondary and tertiary marketplace.
Some artists either don't have the time or don't want to, while others really want to develop those markets.
I can cite Future Islands as a band being like, “All we wanna do is play new and interesting places.” We played Red Deer and the joke every time I see them is about how amazing that show was.
Lord Huron flew to St. John’s, and that was a highlight of their career. Shania did Moose Jaw. That was probably the smallest market she's ever played in terms of population, but it was a mandate to hit those places. We’re in a constant battle with the geography of Canada. How do you get creative in such a big vast land?
What are the biggest challenges you face while booking artists in Canada?
For something like Angine, the challenge is like a game of Risk where we're fighting for territory and the priority is world domination, not Canadian domination.
For something less hot, how do you get creative with an artist on their fifth and sixth record when it's harder than ever to go viral? How do we get creative and sustain those careers until they have their next viral moment?
Artists are sometimes viewed like restaurants. There's always a hot new restaurant to check out, but what about the good old staple? Those become the exciting things and the other people sometimes get left behind.
How do you change up the menu and spice things up to keep it engaging?
What's something in the industry that you'd like to see change?
The entire ticketing operation. Angine has been eye opening, I don't have the answers. I also don't blame the same people that everyone blames. The robots are a problem. The robots are buying tickets and there has to be a better way to figure out access for people.
I long for the days of going to [Toronto record store] Rotate This! to buy a physical ticket. That's not happening, though we did talk about that for Angine. The problem is it's a lot of work. There's a reason people don't do it anymore.
The entire ticketing, service charge, resale, needs a complete revamp. I don't have the answers for it, but I'm hoping that there's some full sail changes there.
How have you been combating it with Angine de Poitrine? Some resale tickets for the Mod Club show are listed upwards of $500.
I haven't yet because the first round of shows is where this all kind of happened a few weeks ago. As we're looking into the next round of shows, we're trying to come up with ideas on how to do it.
Even then, it's hard. You can limit the tickets, verify purchases. This is such a unique situation because I don't think they're fully set up on their end to do something groundbreaking yet. Maybe they will, and I wouldn't doubt them, but it's a lot of work.
Don't be surprised if we pull a physical ticket idea at a record store if it’s viable.
Amid a lineup of diverse indie talent, Shania Twain stands out as the household name in your roster. What has the strategy been working with her and how does it differ from other artists?
She's the top dog here. “Queen stays Queen” is how we used to joke about it in terms of the touring business. She's fun to work with.
We tried to make big, impactful moments for her in Canada. We had all kinds of different big looks for her. That was our goal. We broke a record in Newfoundland for the number of tickets sold for a show. We sold the most tickets for a cross-Canada tour.
The Queen is in a different sphere than everyone else, but I tie it back to that vision as with other artists. She fully knows what she wants. She’s a genius.
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