After a decade long tenure helping to build The Syndicate into one of the premier music marketing and promotion companies in the business, Dave “The Rev” Ciancio broke off in 2008 to form a new management company.  Along with fellow manager and Canadian, Adam Mott, the two formed Yeah! Management with their sights set on taking their roster of hard rock and metal artists to a new level.  We recently sat down with the pair to discuss the new company and to figure out what the Rev’s fascination with burgers is…

RM 64: Let’s start with your backgrounds and how you got into the business of rock.

REV: I grew up in Detroit and like all parents, mine hated music and my friends, so I naturally gravitated towards hip-hop and metal because that’s what they hated the most. The day of my high school graduation, my best friend came over and handed me an envelope and said ‘here’s your graduation present. You gotta open it right now.’ I’m wearing a suit…my family had flown in and I’m like, ‘dude I’m not opening this… My mom wants us to have a thing where we open presents, take pictures and say thank you’s.’ He’s like no, you have to open it right now.’ I tear it open and it was 3 tickets to see Clash of The Titans tour with Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax and Alice in Chains…ALL my favorite bands. I was like YEAH!!! But then looked and realized, like in an 80’s movie moment with the close up of the ticket and the eyes pop out of the head, that the show started in an hour. Anthrax was on first and they were my favorite band and if we didn’t leave right then we were going to miss the opening of “Persistence of Time.”

But I knew my mom would freak out. Again, it was just like a movie. I was like, ‘ok, pull the car around the house.’ I run to my bedroom, put on my Anthrax “Not Man” t-shirt, my ripped up jean shorts, my unlaced high tops and I go running out of my back porch. I say, ‘thanks everyone for coming to see the graduation…I’m going to go see Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, bye.’ I’m running across the backyard I jump over the fence, Duke Boy dive into the car and head to the concert. We get there, we pull up, running down to our seats right dead center, row 23, Anthrax comes on…the “Persistence of Time” and I’m like YEAH!!!

As I’m sitting there head banging and I see these people walking around the stage with laminates on that are handling guitars, checking guest-list or bringing bottles of water, doing things like that, and I said ‘that’s what I fuckin’ want to do with my life.’ I want to be the guy who helps Anthrax rock out at the Pine Knob music theatre in Detroit. A whole bunch of shit happened after that and now I’m sitting in your living room but that was the moment.

AM: I don’t know how I can top that one. I played in a band and did that route… I’m from Toronto, Canada and I started playing guitar at 13, 14 and the next thing you know I went to school one day and I was like, ‘I’m gonna be a rock star.’ When I was I 18 went to another school called Fanshawe College, which was known for producers. Our teacher was Jack Richardson, who worked with the Guess Who, Alice Cooper and on many other records. After that my band got signed to EMI and I continued playing in bands until I was 29 years old.

The Rev (L) & partner in crime Adam Mott (R)

RM 64: What was the name of the band?

AM: Supergarage. We were big in Canada and we did okay in the UK, but we couldn’t get arrested in the states.

RM 64: What were your first industry gigs?

AM: Well I played in that band for a while and the next thing you know some guy calls and ask if I want to be a manager. I was like, ‘are you kidding me? Alright.’ So I did. I started being a manager, started a record company and then met this guy. Where did we meet?

REV: Of all the great places in America, Warped Tour in Camden, New Jersey.

AM: A friend introduced us, and the next thing you know, we start talking and he was like, ‘do you want to move to the states?’ I said yes! So I packed my bags and sold my company and moved to the states and it’s been all downhill since then (laughs).

REV: Mine is a really long story so I’m going to skip most of it… But basically I was in college and couldn’t go home for the summer so I had to stay at school and needed a summer gig. I was moving furniture and one of the guys that moved furniture worked at the college radio station and one day the program director asked if my friend would cover for the heavy metal host who couldn’t be there. My friend didn’t like heavy metal so he came in and asked me, ‘do you want to host the heavy metal show?’ So I went in one day and he was pulling records and asked, ‘You wanna pick some songs?’ I said, ‘yeah I want to pick some songs.’ Hey says ‘do you want to go on air? Yeah, I want to go on air!’ So I did the break and the emergency phone rang in the back and a voice asks ‘who is this?’ ‘My name is Dave’ I say. He asks if I liked metal, and I said, ‘I fuckin’ love metal.’ Then he asked if I wanted to be on the radio, and they end up hiring me to host the metal show the next week. I become the program director of the radio station, start talking to all the promo reps at all the promo companies and record labels and then I graduated college and got a phone call (phone rings in office) and there it is (laughter). I got the phone call, ‘hey do you want to move to New York and be in the music business?’
I was at WDBM, 89 FM at Michigan State University for a year and half. From there I moved to NJ where I worked in radio promotions with Anya Feldman

RM 64: Moving on to the beginning of The Syndicate; was it a slow steady build or did something spark and set things off quickly?

REV: It was definitely a spark. It was 1997 and I was doing college radio promo and some retail promo for AIM Strategies. Paul Yeskel, who owned the company, had started out doing promo but because his business got so big, he had to run the company and not do promo anymore. Eventually he walked in one day and said ‘I love you guys I love this company, but I miss doing promo. I don’t like running a company.’ It was October 17th and he told us December 17th was going to be the last day the place was going to exist. The five of us who were doing 80-85% of the business looked at each other and said, ‘we can do this, we just need to figure out the administration stuff’. And literally December 17th 1997 was the last day at AIM and on January 5th in 1998 we opened The Syndicate, it was almost overnight.

We got a real small personal loan from some family members, and then we were sitting in a warehouse space in Wehawken, NJ with no heat and no lights in the first week of January. All we had was little terminal stations and a phone. I remember sitting there in a wooly cap and gloves calling stations thinking ‘I can’t feel my hands.’ The Syndicate started out of the necessity of finding a job and it was one of those things where we saw a hole in the income stream and we just took it. We went 6 months and not one of us took a paycheck. I was DJ’ing at a nightclub until 2AM and pocketing the cash, but I would go back to work in the morning always excited about doing metal radio promotion.

RM 64: Who were the five original principles?

REV: Tracey Zucatti, Marc Meltzer, Bernie Mueller, Jon Landman and myself. A couple years later we expanded with The Street Syndicate and Chris Elles came to join us from CMJ.

RM 64: After the first 6 months, where did things go from there?

REV: Things were going really well. In a job like that you aren’t creating a product, but providing a service, so since the service was good people kept hiring us. But after about a year and a half of calling radio, I was bored. You’re in charge of a project for 6-8 weeks, and then Iron Maiden doesn’t care about you anymore, but I still cared about Iron Maiden. So I wanted to get into management. At the time I was trying to help a band called Shadows Fall get a deal because they were friends of mine. And when they got a record deal I was just kind of helping or consulting I guess.

It was April 1st 2000, I remember the date exactly, and I’m at a really horrible bar in Queens with the band. They were playing this awful little club on their first national album tour ever, and they look at me and ask ‘we hear you’re thinking about getting into management’ and I said ‘yep, just waiting to find the right band’ and they said ‘so what are you waiting for?’ ‘You trust me to manage your career?’ I asked. They said ‘we don’t trust anybody but we know where you live so give it a shot!’ And so I started managing Shadows Fall and that sort of took off and from there we picked up Thursday, God Forbid and literally within a year I was doing management full time. Within two years there was a three person staff doing management. And it just really became something.

RM 64: What brought about the formation of Yeah! Management?

REV: Ten years after forming The Syndicate, the management division and the marketing division were going in two different directions. I walked into my partners one day and said ‘I love you guys, this place is amazing, but I need to take this show on the road, because my goals are not matching yours and vice versa.’ Two weeks later I called Adam (Mott) on a Sunday night and asked him what he was doing. He said ‘I’m watching football in my pajamas.’ I asked him to come meet me at a bar in midtown. I told him the deal that night and that I wanted him to come with me. The next morning we told Jackie and that afternoon I told my partners. Two weeks later we were gone.

AM: It was crazy. That night we met I figured I’m either fired or we’re moving the company. I had an idea that it might be happening, and when he told me I said, ‘let’s do it.’ We had nothing to lose right then, and figured this could bring things to the next level. It’s been a year and so far so good.

REV: I was literally sitting in a meeting with Artist Arena talking about Thursday’s fan club and ticketing, and Mark Weiss who owns that company and is a good friend of mine says, ‘I really wish I had a management company in my office.’ I closed the door and told him what I was thinking and in two weeks the deal was done. It was totally un-predicated; we saw the opportunity, liked it and stepped through the door.

Now we are a part of Artist Arena, which is great because they’ve really created three great new revenue streams for artists. Bands can sell their own tickets to fans, VIP packages to fans and they’re doing fan clubs. It’s all about enhancing the fan experience that was born from Mark Weiss’ own fandom. It’s a great place to be a part of. Other than bands like KISS or Iron Maiden, stuff like this didn’t exist to most bands, and now it’s available to every band that’s touring or every band that’s putting out records. The company is growing so much especially since we’ve been there. Last year Mark Weiss came up to me and asked if we liked it there and I said ‘I love it here, we’re doing great, we’re in the city and the company’s awesome.’ He told me that the parent company was exploding and he needed some help, so in November Mark made me a VP of Business Development for Artist Arena. We then made Adam a part owner of Yeah! Management. So now he’s on the ground floor running the management business and I’m doing sales for Artist Arena as well as dealing with the management stuff. It was just a crazy year of shit happening.

RM 64: Who are the artists Yeah Mgmt currently represents?

AM: We manage Shadows Fall, Dave’s been working with them for almost 12 years and they’re incredible. We have the Cancer Bats from Toronto who have been around for about 5 years – they have a new record coming out in April. Poison the Well who we’ve worked with for about 2 or 3 years now, and they just finished a couple world tours. They just tour non-stop. We also have Mutiny Within who just signed to Roadrunner Records and has a record coming out in February. A band called Upon A Burning Body who signed to Sumarian Records and has a new record out in March. There is Solitary Sum based out of Toronto as well, one of the members was in The End who was signed to Relapse Records. And our newest signing is a comedian Big Jay Oakerson.

REV: I spent about five years chasing around standup comedians because I really wanted to get into the comedy business. It’s a really really weird business, not that music isn’t’, but literally it’s run by like three dudes with grey hair who don’t even know what MySpace is. I was on top of things way early like Dane Cook, Zach Galifianakis, Bill Burr, the list goes on, and they were all like ‘cool we love your passion, but we want to go the traditional route because it works.’ So after five years I gave up on it, and one day I got a phone call asking if I knew Big Jay Oakerson, and I said ‘oh yeah I love his stuff.’ So he was looking for new management, someone who was more of a modern manager and who does music because he’s a metal head… Jay plays a character on that show Z Rock. He’s a really funny guy and we met and decided to give it a shot. Three weeks later we confirmed him to headline the Rockstar Mayhem festival and he’s also the Jagermeister tour with KoRn. He called me up after and said ‘you’re definitely onboard!’

RM 64: So tell us a little about what’s going on with Artist Arena?

REV: Our parent company is Artist Arena. The easiest way to describe what they do is, presale ticketing, VIP / Enhanced ticketing and operate fan clubs. So if you’re a band going out on tour, you call us and we sell a certain amount of your tickets for you directly to your fans. Our fees are cheaper than Ticketmaster, so you can sell them at lower prices to your fans and you can also sell them exclusively. Rather than a public on-sale you can do it just for your fan club or just on your website, super serving your fans. We do VIP packages, so maybe 20 tickets a show those fans get a meet and greet with the band or early entry and a tee shirt; it sort of changes from band to band. The whole premise behind Artist Arena is really enhancing the fan experience, about making it better. It’s a great company, we represent everyone from Lynard Skynard to Kid Rock to Mudvayne to Killswitch Engage to Cobra Starship to Nickleback to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, and the list goes on and on. If you’re selling tickets to your fans, we can help make you more money by giving fans a better experience.

AM: I think a lot of managers are starting to figure out that it’s an actual way to make revenue for their artist while providing a better experience for your fans.

REV: It’s fun for me coming from the management side, because I understand what you can ask a band to do and what they’re not willing to do. And I’m also used to coming from the position of a manager calling another manager asking for tours, favors, etc. where now I’m calling managers and saying ‘hey, can I make you some money? Can I make your bands touring business better?’ People are excited to get those calls.

RM 64: Is there a particular kind of artist these services work better or worse for?

REV: You can do it with any artist, but it works best when the artist participates. It has to be a band that’s excited about what they do and making the experience of their fans better. ‘Yes we’ll do the meet and greet, yes we’ll do the video blogs, yes we’ll do exclusive merchandise.’ They’re giving back to the fans that helped them get there.

RM 64: We always like to ask people to give us their take on the state of music and what they think about where the business is headed. What’s yours?

REV: America is very commodity based. Make as many as you can, sell as many as you can for as cheap as possible and keep all the money. I think the country has hit the apex of that economy. I think it’s the same with the music industry. You could put out a song to radio ten years ago and just print money. It doesn’t work like that anymore, so you have to be the best at what you do or you have to have any interesting twist. It can’t just be a great guitarist and bass player and they write great songs. Okay now what. There has to be something other than I wrote this song and put it on MySpace. I think the direction the music business is going is weeding out the difference between that and those that are interesting personalities – and people like what an artist means to define their life. In the anonymity that is America, I think people are starting to actually develop personalities. I know that’s easy for us to say in Los Angeles or New York City, but when you go to the middle of the country it’s not just one big white MacDonald’s anymore. People are starting to learn that you have to be something and mean something. They’re looking for artists that reflect their personality and you have to mean something to somebody and that’s the future. Not just being an anonymous artist.

RM 64: Many people know (and now even more) that you are somewhat of a hamburger connoisseur. What are your top two favorite burger joints in L.A.?

REV: I would have to give you three. The Apple Pan is my favorite, you can’t argue with the old school. It’s outlasted all of us, which is the same reason I’d still see RATT in concert. Then there’s Father’s Office, which is like voting Republican – here is the burger we want you to have the way we want you to have it. And third is The Counter that is like the opposite, the extreme left – you can have it any way you want, however you want it. It’s like voting with both parties.

RM 64: Have you found a favorite burger in all of America?

REV: Until December of 2009 I wouldn’t have had an answer for you, and then something changed my life. Righteous Urban Barbeque (RUB) at 23rd and 7th in Manhattan has a secret burger menu that they only serve on Monday nights from 6-9pm and you have to know and ask for it. I got invited in for a tasting and they made us two of the different burgers and it is the best burger I’ve ever had, hands down. No stiff competition. Go to Burgerconquest.com you can read all about it.

RM 64: We’re definitely trying it. Thanks for chatting with us today.

REV: Anytime.