From Musician to Event and Artist Manager | An Interview with Karan Mehta from BlueTree

At this point in time in the country, the Independent Music Scene has slowly catapulted from non-existing to something really serious. At the forefront of that are the various management companies putting together festivals, gig series’ and getting down International Bands from all over the place. Enter Karan Mehta, Guitar Player for New Delhi based Progressive Metal Band Colossal Figures and a partner at Blue Tree Management. I was lucky enough to have a conversation with him about his past ventures including Up your Arts and his current work at Blue Tree and the situation of Event and Artist Management in India today, this is what he had to say: Loudest: Let's start off at the beginning. You start this band called Colossal Figures, which slowly becomes one of those bands that really showcases the best of the independent music scene in India. How do you go from there to opening a management company? I never wanted to manage bands to be honest, i just wanted to curate good shows in Delhi and try to push good talent in other cities and internationally when the time was right. Loudest: You started a venture called Up Your Arts with a couple of partners. How was that experience? What was it like getting down huge band like Karnivool amongst others? We as ‘Up Your Arts’ primarily started doing a lot of small club shows and that sort of was the idea. Karnivool came along as they were headlining a festival in Chennai but hosting them was quite an experience. We had little but no knowledge of production and as always there was no good indoor venue in delhi to host the band. The booking agency was really difficult to work with, we didn’t get the full tech rider of the band till the last week before the show and overall management was really shoddy. People enjoyed the show quite a lot and we as promoters got to learn a lot of different aspects of this industry. Loudest: From there, you moved on to BlueTree where you still work. What prompted that shift? If you were to say, what is the one big difference between having your own management company vs working at an established one? I am a partner at BlueTree. Uddipan was always good at handling bands and I wanted to do the same thing as before and look to promote them. It was an easy transition for me. Loudest: Whilst at Blue Tree, you've brought down some amazing artists including The Aristocrats, Guthrie Govan, Marco Minemman and now Twelve Foot Ninja. Why is it you think that a company like Blue Tree is able to get these bands down at a point of time where most of the general public thinks it's impossible to get acts of non-mainstream genres down to the country? We did Aristocrats and loved the response. Getting bands down is not as difficult as working with venues in India. Apart from a few good ones most of the venues do not have an idea of basic audio production and hospitality. It is really a pretty hectic job for someone to organize such tours. Loudest: What according to you are the biggest misconceptions around management in India? MONEY. People think we overcharge at gigs sometimes without realizing the number of expenses and personal trauma one has to go about trying to work on tours like these. Loudest: Not only are you a part of getting these big bands down to India, you're also a part of organizing tours with Blue Tree. What according to you are some of the essential points bands should look into even before thinking of organizing a tour? Personally having played for a band, I wouldn't worry too much about touring initially. Work on your music, releases and your social media profile. Once you have a good fan-base, venues and promoters will book you automatically. Loudest: Lastly, what advice would you give to someone looking into working for a management company like Blue Tree or any other?