John Harig always knew he wanted to be in the music business, but he didn’t know there were so many career options outside the artist’s entourage. He did know it’s a relationship business.
He started out managing a showcase club, Bogart’s in Cincinnati, way back in 1981. “I hadn’t really settled,” he remembers. “I quickly moved on from there. I couldn’t keep steady employment that I liked.”
Next, he went on the road as a road manager. Then he realized “you spend half your life in a bus trying to get people out of bed that didn’t go to bed near on time. I didn’t want to do this.”
He returned home to Cincinnati and worked part-time in a record store. He didn’t know what to do with himself, but when they started building Riverbend Amphitheater, which opened in 1984, a light went on.
“It was coming out of the ground in 1983, right in my backyard. Nederlander managed it. I have to work there.”
His friend Cal Levy had already found a job at Riverbend, so Harig gave him a call.
“Cal, I need to get a job there, I need to be there, it would be great to be there. What can I do?”
“What are you looking for?”
“I’m a production manager.”
“That’s my job.”
“Well you need an assistant.”
“I do, but they’re not going to hire one. How about tickets? Why don’t you do tickets?”
“Cal, I don’t know anything about tickets.”
“Yeah you do; you know how to read those R9 reports and pull tickets off the Ticketron machine. You know how to settle shows. You can do it. Interview for it.”
So John Harig went through three interviews. He vividly recalls that during the last one, Wayne Nederlander stood behind him. “There were three people in front of me, but the person asking the questions was behind me. I was a wreck.”
And he didn’t get the job. Mark Fisher, who was at the Star Theatre and was working the Broadway Series at the Taft Theater, who knew ticketing and knew subscription sales, which was big with the Nederlanders, got the job.
“They then gave him my name, because he was looking for an assistant.” So Harig became an assistant after all, just not in production. He counts his lucky stars for the two years working with Fisher, who really taught him ticketing. Then Fisher left and Harig got the job. “I was box office manager, in charge of all the ticketing and, at that point, I was ready for it. That’s how I got my start.”
That’s not a wrap though. He spent some time with the Nederlanders in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, but then he got out of ticketing. “Once again, I was underemployed – taking a seasonal job at Fraze Pavilion in Kettering, Ohio, opening that building up.”
Out of the blue, he heard from Dennis Scanlon. It’s that relationship thing. Scanlon told Harig there was new management at Cincinnati Music Hall and they were looking for someone to take care of ticketing. He applied and got the job, working for the Cincinnati Orchestra Association. “They sent me to INTIX.”
Based on Truth heard John’s story at INTIX 2020 in New York. He is still with the Cincinnati Arts Association as vice president, ticketing services. He’s risen in the ranks at INTIX as well, but through his first iteration of a ticketing career he never wanted to go to INTIX. It was another cohort, Terry Cohan, who worked at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, who told him he had to go to BOMI (Box Office Managers International), which is now INTIX. “It’s a conference in San Diego and the hotel is on the beach,” Cohan told Harig.
“I never considered myself a ticketing professional until that day I got that job. Okay, I have been doing ticketing for years, I thought. That’s where I went professional and wanted to go forward with it.”
Though he had been in ticketing, he’d never done a lot of things he was now expected to do, including his own budgeting. “I needed to learn really quick. BOMI had a session on budgeting with a guy named Dave Lowenstein [UCLA]. I went up to thank him after the session and tell him my situation and he says, ‘Get in touch with me.’ In real short order, he put me in a place where I could become an expert on budgeting without going back to business school. That hooked me. These people are all right and I belong here.”
Is ticketing a profession?
“Ticketing is growing in importance – it’s marketing, operations, community, data and technology. If I were doing the same thing I was doing when I started, I’d say oh no. But I’m not. It’s growing.”
The connection with marketing is fundraising. Which reminds Harig of another philosophy that has kept him going and growing.
“I tell myself – if you don’t want to work for somebody, you better work with them. That’s what happened with marketing. I thought, you’d better make a concentrated effort to work with marketing, John, or you are going to end up working for them.”
Ticketing’s marriage to marketing is really important to all of us.
“We’re in the center of the industry now. It used to be the record company, not because they made records but because they sold records. It’s the sale of the product, the revenue and how it builds people’s careers. That’s why records were the centerpiece; now ticketing is the centerpiece.” — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
Photo: John Harig, Cincinnati Arts Association, and Amy Kline, Patron Technology, at INTIX 2020 in New York.
I am truly honored to call John my friend. What John did not share here was how much he has dedicated himself to those who he works with as well as the patrons he serves. Literally tens of thousands of people have benefited immeasurably in memorable life experiences because of John. He would never tell anyone that.
In May of 1986, I met John at Riverbend Music Center. I recall the first two shows that spring in May were Ted Nugent / Aerosmith (one show) followed by Tony Bennett. I must have had a look of “deer in the headlights” because when I walked back into the bock office and John saw my shocked gaze, he came over and talked to me and within a few minutes taught me what the rock and roll life was like. I was so thankful for him taking time to just talk to me and help me through the madness.
One last thought, just last week John and I were at a small conference together. I can honestly say that I sat in awe as he presented to the audience about the evolution of technology in the ticketing space. I invite anyone who reads this to introduce yourself to John and ask him about his wife and daughter – watch him light up! What a wonderful; kind; giving person. We’re all lucky he is in our space.