Bargain Music

If you discovered your new favorite band at the Galaxy Concert Theatre or the Coach House, there's a good chance Adam Spriggs booked them.

What's your title?

Talent buyer.

What does a talent buyer do?

I'm in charge of all the local bands at the Galaxy and the Coach House. We usually do two or three local bands per show. So it's about going through all the demos and then trying to find the best Orange County bands that mean the most to the market, that fit the best on the show, and we add them to the shows. And I also do about 50 percent of the national booking—the national acts we book here.

How do you find local bands?

I honestly have about 200 demos sitting on my desk right now. But I tell every band that MySpace has really revolutionized the way a booker can reach out to bands. You open up a demo and there's all this fancy artwork and there's probably a poorly produced demo, and pictures of the band, and it's all there, but it's very hard to keep filed and keep in order. I can hop on MySpace and immediately their best song pops up, there's a picture of the band, I can see where they've played and read a quick bio in a matter of one minute. I tell bands all the time when they ask, “Can I send you a demo?” “Send me your MySpace link.” If I've got a show and no locals pop into my head, I can type influences and 100 bands pop up in the area. You can reach out to anyone.

Get any crazy demands via bands' tour riders?

On the club level it's not as high-maintenance as the arena level. I used to work at Clear Channel. Those bands are completely different than the bands here. Here you can cross off half the rider. It's a club. We take care of them pretty well. A lot of people love to ask for tube socks and clean underwear. Usually we cross that out. If it's a sold-out show maybe we'll send someone out to do that, but for the most part we're not going to. And we've never had one where we've had to pick out the green M&M's or anything.

Who are your current favorite locals?

I love Dusty Rhodes and the River Band. I booked them for the first time two or two and a half years ago. They were pretty much a decent alt.-country band, but they've completely reworked their sound, and I saw them about a month ago and I was blown away. I can't speak highly enough of those guys.

Do you get difficult bands on the local level?

It's amazing how much drama certain bands can cause. You can kind of feel it from the beginning. You put them on a show, and they start to make demands. There are definitely bands we don't work with anymore. But if we see a band and they keep playing successful shows and they keep bringing in a good amount of people, then we're going to keep inviting them back. We're going to help them grow. Matt Costa used to play here. He's now headlining House of Blues and selling it out.

Are there national shows or genres that you have trouble booking local bands for?

Yeah. I've tried to bring indie rock to the Galaxy as much as possible, and we've gotten the Killers, and we've gotten the Bravery. We got the big bands to come, and it's easy to sell those shows out. But to try doing it on the local level—we tried doing a Wednesday-night residency here, and it didn't work. Doing it at a grassroots standpoint and trying to find the good local bands and build them up, it's been tough. Orange County kids, they love driving to LA for shows.

SEE THE FRUITS OF ADAM'S LABORS AT WWW.GALAXYTHEATRE.COM AND WWW.THECOACHHOUSE.COM.