Three years ago, Celine Dion was named by Pollstar as the 10th highest-grossing North American touring artist of 2011. In doing so, Ms. Dion barely moved a muscle, figuratively speaking. The $41.2 million she took in from live shows that year were virtually all attributable to the first year of a three-year residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which ended late last year, her second long-term stand there.
The second decade of the century is proving to be the era of the residential gig. Since Dion put down roots at Caesars, a slew of artists have done similar long-run stands, all in Las Vegas, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Shania Twain, Britney Spears and CeeLo Green, among others. But the title will soon go to Billy Joel, who this summer will have set a record for the most performances by any artist at Madison Square Garden, with his 65th show there scheduled on July 1, 2015 that will be part of his own residency at the New York City venue. That show will be the 19th performance of that running gig, which has included monthly concerts from the singer-songwriter throughout 2014, a series that was the first-ever music franchise at the Garden.
Joel told The New Yorker magazine he plans to do it for as long as people want to come to see the shows, or as long as he can still manage to perform them (and the 65-year-old Joel, who has had both hips replaced, didn’t seem terribly sure as to which reason would come first). But even though Dion is cashing in her poker chips, there are plenty of others who are being regarded as new tenants for the expanding trend of setting up camp in one place for a while. They include Mariah Carey, Adele, Blake Shelton, Prince and Bruce Springsteen.
Meanwhile, as you saw in the feature story in this magazine I wrote last month, Garth Brooks has come up with his own kind of hybrid version of the extended stay, booking arenas for as long as two weeks at a time and doing as many as a dozen shows there, sometimes two per night, before pulling up stakes and moving on to the next one.
At a time when live performance has become the main revenue source for the music business, is the trend towards stationary touring (which sounds like something Yogi Berra would say) a good thing? Does it move the industry arc forward?
Win-Win For Everyone
It’s definitely good for the artists, who see typical touring overhead costs slashed and who, along with their mixers and other support professionals, enjoy the ability to really get familiar and comfortable in a venue. That, in turn, is good for the fans, who get a better, more confident concert experience when the performers know the room. The promoters and venues are certainly pleased — they get confirmed bookings on a long-term basis. SR providers, along with other rental venders, enjoy the same predictability, which may let them feel secure enough to invest in additional systems to compensate for the ones sitting in an extended-show booking. That, in turn, is a boon to pro audio and other equipment manufacturers, who could see sales increase.
However, this kind of show is only viable for a relative handful of artists, those with enough star power to consistently bring a critical mass to a destination that may require consumers to lay out hundreds or thousands more dollars beyond the show ticket (which itself can cost hundreds of dollars) for travel and lodging. The entertainment industry is creating a pool of possible Gen-X and Millennial replacements for when the Boomer cohort finally ages out (or Bill Joel’s hips go out again). These include Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars. (Don’t expect to see Taylor Swift on this future list — she’ll be running Uber after its acquisitions of Google and Apple in 2028.) But now, or in the future, it’s a limited list that can sustain long-term, major-venue commitments, and the briefer, more highly pressured career spans of modern pop artists may mean fewer of them last long enough to establish the deep connection with a large fan base needed to keep repeat customers coming to expensive destination shows.
But the dozen or so major residential/destination gigs have proven that model to be economically, technically and artistically viable. In a future possibly less populated with true superstars, it could potentially be scaled downward, installing less luminous but still popular artists in smaller venues, for shorter runs, in more locations.
It could also be said that a successful version of the residential/destination phenomenon has already been in place for a long time. It’s called Branson, the Missouri town that pioneered the concept for music but which, since 1983 when Roy Clark opened the first modern music theater there, has slowly settled into an AARP bus-trip destination. But Branson, or someplace like it, may become a more vibrant theatrical destination once the current crop of country music artists enter their own middle age.
However it plays out, the residential/destination idea will likely endure and grow. It will not replace touring by any means; most music performers will still have to adhere to a model that brings them to as many ticket buyers as possible. Only the fortunate few will be able to rely on the reverse of that equation. But for them, and for the huge technical infrastructure that those kinds of shows will still need, staying “home” will be a great way to tour.
