Conversation with Mitch Okmin

Interview by: Ellen

Occupation: Agent
Company: Own's his own company called The MOB Agency
His clientele: Peter Himmelman, No Doubt, Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, Red House Painters, Tahiti 80, Dread Zeppelin, Berlin, The Creatures, The Church
Favorite song: So many, how 'bout Waning Moon, tied with, 11th Confession, Name, Shilo, Closer, This Too Will Pass, and 7 Circles
Favorite Album: All of them, maybe From Strength to Strength has a slight edge.
Favorite Live moment: Has to be when Peter played 7 Circles at my wedding

EB:
How long have you known Peter?
MO:
I've known Peter since 1989 I think - So 12 years.

EB:
Where does that fall in terms of the records that he was doing at the time?
MO:
I started working with him on Synesthesia. When I first met him, I got demos to Synesthesia. I thought it was great! And I wanted to work with the guy.

I met him and saw him live. When I first saw him live, I didn't think I had ever seen anybody as good live as Peter is. Still, I've seen the guy, you know, 500-1000 times probably, and every show is just as exciting. You don't get bored. It's not like seeing… like you go see Sting, and it's the same show over and over again. It gets kind of boring. With Peter, you never know what's going to happen. I'm always excited to go. Every time Pete plays, I want to go! It's not work. It's pleasure. I always enjoy it. There are not many artists that can do that. You know - you never know what's going to happen at his show.

EB:
Describe yourself to me in terms of your business. What do you do?
MO:
I'm an agent. Agents just deal with the personal appearances - just live appearances and concerts. Pete doesn't have a manager who handles a lot of other things, so for Pete, I do a little bit more than be an agent. I do some of his management chores - nothing major - I just help him coordinate air and hotel reservations - kind of the details that I don't usually deal with. Normally an agent books a show, tells him where to go and how much he's getting paid. That's it. And the manager kind of makes it all happen, gets him there, and gets the hotel. But for Peter, he doesn't have a manager right now, so I handle all that kind of stuff for him.

EB:
Were you an agent even back in '89?
MO:
I was an assistant to an agent in a big agency called Triad Artists in '89 when I met him. At the time, Triad was not that interested in representing Pete, but they were okay with my working with him. So Pete was the first client I developed all on my own. By the time I left there and went to FBI (Frontier Booking Int.), Triad actually wanted to keep him, but I took Pete with me. I eventually left FBI and went to Intertalent. After Intertalent, I think I actually went back to FBI, and then started the MOB Agency in '95. Pete's been with me every move. He's been with me the longest of everybody from Triad till now. 12 years - It's a long time.

EB:
That is a long time. Put that into perspective for me - again back to the albums. So you met him around Synesthesia...
MO:
Yes, Synesthesia was just finished. It was like an advanced copy. He was with Island Records at the time. Things were going good. We actually put him on tour with Innocence Mission.
EB:
Oh yeah, I remember them. Karen Perris, right?
MO:
Right. What year was that? Was that '89?
EB:
I'm not sure…
MO:
Did you catch that tour?
EB:
Actually I never got to see him live until the Flown This Acid World tour although I've been a fan since Gematria.
MO:
Strength to Strength was in between there. Strength to Strength seemed to be… The most was happening for Pete on that record. He was on Letterman… Things were going. That was his first record on Epic, where he went from Island to Epic. [He was] touring with a band and everything, and then as things were going and the labels were spending more money on him, tour support started shrinking. That's when we figured out that he can do the solo acoustic thing.

Basically a lot of people are wondering why he plays solo. That started out mainly [because] we couldn't afford to have the band on the road, so we tried to do it solo. And the shows, you know, came out great! He winds up making more money because he doesn't have to pay off a band. So he started this whole thing of him just doing a lot of solo gigs, but every once in a while, we'll go out with the band and have fun and stuff. But it's usually when there's tour support.

EB:
The last time I saw Peter tour with a band was the Love Thinketh No Evil Tour. That was a great tour -- seeing him with a band again. I actually managed to see him twice on the Skin tour, which was the last time I got to see him with the old band.
MO:
Skin tour was a great tour.

MO:
Was the Skin tour the first time you ever saw him?
EB:
No - the first time I ever saw him was the Flown This Acid World tour, which I really enjoyed. I saw him at The Bottom Line. I was actually supposed to see him long before that at the Stone Pony, in Asbury Park, but the show got cancelled due to a major Nor'easter storm, which barrelled through the Jersey shore and up the coast. After the storm, I kept calling the Stone Pony to see if the show was going to get rescheduled. In the meantime, I kept my eye on the newspaper and happened to see that Peter was going to be playing at The Bottom Line, so that's when I finally got to go see him - for Flown This Acid World. That was a great day!

EB: The Skin tour, which was next, was really great. Kristen Mooney and all those people being together was really terrific.

The new band for Love Thinketh No Evil was really good. I was very pleased to hear how great they sounded when they were at The Bottom Line. That made me feel good because you know, everybody in the fan community sorta missed the old band, and we still do…
MO:
I did not know how that was all going to work out [with the new band]. Andy and Al, the drummer and bass player, were a big part of the old band. The chemistry between all of them was what kind of made that band so special. But Greg was there [on the Love Thinketh No Evil tour]. Greg adds a lot, and the new drummer and bass player on that tour ended up being fine….

Times are changing. People are getting jobs, you know, so we had to do something. Andy's been on Ally McBeal. He's the drummer for that, so he wasn't able to do it. Al has a job running a studio that's doing commercial jingles. He's doing a bunch of Superbowl commercials, doing music for major commercials, so he couldn't leave the job.

It worked out much better than I anticipated. Peter, Andy and Al, those guys grew up together. They went to kindergarten together. Even with Peter's spontaneity -- they all know where he's going, and I didn't know if the other guys would be able to pick it up. They did a great job, I thought. It worked out.
EB:
The keyboard player was outstanding…
MO:
Oh yeah, Jimmy Englund was the drummer. John Button was the bass player, and the keyboard player was a last minute addition, his name was Jeff…. Babko.
EB:
He was really energetic and added a lot to the live shows because he was just having a great time, and you could see that. That really added to the show.

MO:
Jeff Victor, still. You can't replace Jeff Victor…
EB:
No you can't. I have not heard much about Jeff though.
MO:
Jeff is in Minneapolis. He plays the organ for the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Twins, and will be doing some music for the Wild - Minnesota's new NHL team. He also does some commercial jingles and has done a variety of instrumental and kids' CD's for Target. More recently, Jeff Victor has been playing keyboards with a band called The Honeydogs, and will be touring with that band in September.

He was… The whole old band was amazing.

EB:
Do they ever play together anymore?
MO:
Not very often, but when they are all in town at the same time, they do still play together. For instance, Kristin and Jeff accompanied Peter at the Chicago and Hopkins shows back in June.

In general, their playing together tends to be pretty spontaneous. It's hard with Jeff living out in Minnesota. We have shows out here. Again, you gotta pay to fly him in and get him equipment. It just winds up not working out. Another reason to do solo shows….
EB:
I guess you can't bring everybody together so much anymore….

EB:
Getting back to Kristin a moment… I heard that Kristin has moved on to do some of her own solo work…
MO:
Yes, Kristin has her own solo record out, which is great. You can probably find it in the stores. She lives out here [in L.A.], and she's actually singing on a lot of the commercials that Al's doing. There's a Sam Goody one, where she's singing on the commercial. And she was on some daytime soap opera being a XMAS caroler last December [1999]. She's living out here getting her own thing going. When Pete plays out here, she'll come sit in on a couple songs with him…

EB:
I really loved her voice. I just thought it added so much with her vocals on his music. It was just really tremendous. I think people always think of her, at least when I think of Kristin, I think of Shilo.
MO:
Jeff too though…
EB:
Definitely, he adds to that also. In terms of her, though, that's the one song I always think about when I think Kristin Mooney, I think: Shilo.
MO:
Shilo, and The Most Precious Things are Always in Disguise. They did that one on The Tonight Show.
EB:
I remember that performance. That was really good.
MO:
Yes it was.

EB:
So, Mitch, what is success in this business? Obviously we get to see the Grammy's and things like that, and these people who have sold a "gazillion" albums or whatever. That's very obvious success. But there are a lot of talented people out there who are not going to be necessarily immediately the people that everybody knows. How do you personally measure success in this industry?
MO:
I think success is- There's the dollar figure that most people put on success, but if you have a great family, and you have money to pay for the house, and you're working, and you're being true to your own art, and making the music you want to make, and not being pressured by big record company execs to do what they want and not what you want, I think that's just as equally a definition of success as like selling 15 million records and having a billion dollars. To Pete, success is probably having a great family. I think each individual artist has his own definition of success. And yeah, money plays a part of it. The more money you have, the better life you can live. I think though that there's a balance between happiness and money. I think that if you're in a situation where you love the work you're doing, where you can make the music you want to make, and can raise a family in a comfortable situation… I think that's what life's about. That's success. I think that's what Peter would say too.
EB:
You know, yesterday I was out on Venice Beach and saw a guy singing for his supper. To me that was a huge measuring stick from where a person can start in this business and where they can go. Peter is very niched. He's got all this TV work, and he's done movie work, and he has been with different record companies and has had significant backing and done the touring… He gets to do his music full-time, and people who aren't successful just don't get to do that!
MO:
And he does the music he wants to do. And I think one of the more unhappy years of his life was when he had to deal with Epic records and the stress of them trying to put him on tour to make him play on Friday nights [on his Sabbath], and didn't respect any of his beliefs. That was a lot of stress. Even though on the outside, everything looked good: appearance on the Tonight Show and his being on a big record company label, I don't think that …
EB:
You don't think that he was happy?
MO:
No, he was not as happy as he is now.
EB:
I can really relate to that. I fight to maintain a certain quality of life in my own life. It's hard to do, the higher up you go.
MO:
If you can get that balance, and know what you need to live a happy life, that's what it's all about. I know Pete, you call him up to do a show, and if it's one of the kids' birthdays, he'll say: " I'm not goin'." That's what's important. You can go out there and make money or be with your kids on their birthday. When you're in a position to choose being there for your kid, that's success to me.

EB:
What do you think from a commercial sense, was Peter's best selling album?
MO:
I think for sure it was From Strength to Strength. Women With The Strength Of 10,000 Men got the most airplay, sold the most records, got him the most media attention, but again, those weren't the most happy years for him. I think he is in a way better place right now doing what he wants to do, not at the mercy of the big record company. He's doing great. Throughout all that, he's built this live career, where he keeps going in and out to these certain cities doing really good business.
EB:
Well he has a strong reputation of doing great live shows. I'm sure that the venues that book him want him again and again and again.
MO:
Right - it's not really dependent upon whether he has a record out. A lot of people won't take an artist unless he has a new record out. With Peter, they know that everybody who's a fan will go because they don't know what songs he's going to do, and they don't know what kind of spontaneous schtick will happen. That's why I'm excited to see him all the time. "Oh Pete's playing? I'm gonna go!" It's not even like: "Oh no, I gotta see this guy again. It's the same thing over and over." With Peter - you never know what's going to happen. : )

EB:
How do people characterize Peter's music now? Sometimes I think that people don't know what it is, or where it should be played?
MO:
I think that technically a record company person would characterize him as AAA, which is Album Adult Alternative. There are AAA radio stations.
EB:
Do you think he's alternative?
MO:
Well, his music is not alternative in the sense of Kid Rock or Korn. The AAA format is more like Bruce Cockburn. It was like Pete. When the AAA radio in LA came on the on the air, Pete was their poster child. Pete was the first guest on the radio. They sponsored his concerts. He DJ'd on there. He played on there. Other cities that have strong AAA radio are: Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, Seattle… There are stations out there. If you like Peter Himmelman, that's your format, AAA.

I also think that because of the way we have been touring, solo acoustic, I think people are pegging him as folk-y because he's been solo acoustic, but really, he's a rock guy.

EB:
Exactly, and he's not been getting that mainstream play. I don't know enough about the business, but I think there's room for Peter there too.
MO:
I agree. He hasn't really gotten a break. I thought he was getting there with From Strength to Strength. That was the closest we got to breaking through if there were some barrier to break through. The biggest push he ever had was on that record, and because it didn't get that final breakthrough, I think that's when the label just started getting lax and started losing energy for working it. We just haven't had somebody passionate enough to break through. And to get him to break through and to get airplay like that costs a lot of money. Radio stations - it costs a lot of money to get a song on there. It's not like direct payola, but you gotta pay these certain people that can get it on there. You hire radio promotion guys. It costs a lot of money to get bands on the radio. The AAA format is one of the rare formats where they play what they want to play. They play artists like Pete. Sometimes those radio stations come and go. AAA left L.A. for a year, and came back. It wasn't making any money. You can be true to your art, and have no money, but if you can be true to your art and still make money, that's the way to be.

He's definitely a AAA radio guy. In Chicago, there is a station WXRT, which has always been a huge supporter of his, which is why in Chicago is his biggest market live. We do a couple thousand people there. XRT always plays him and always supports him. We need more XRT's in the world.

EB:
I've heard Peter on the radio a few times out in my area. I heard two different interviews he did on Vin Scelsa's Idiot's Delight program, which were excellent. I also had the pleasure of hearing a song from Love Thinketh No Evil being played throughout a shopping mall on a radio down in Washington D.C.. That was so exciting to be walking through life and just spontaneously hearing his music! I want more of that!
MO:
When you're driving in your car, and all of a sudden, a Peter song comes on the radio, it's exciting. It's always been exciting for me.

I wish I had something to do with that. I know that there have been lots of people whose job was to get Peter's songs on the radio. They did what they could do. Radio is very fickle out there. They play what people want to hear, and right now it's Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears. And in a world like that -- I believe that if Bob Dylan were starting today, he wouldn't be Bob Dylan. He wouldn't get a chance. It's a different time. If Pete were happening in the 60's and 70's, I think the moment, the whole atmosphere of music, would have been right. Right now, it's really hard to break a singer songwriter guy.

EB:
Well, Mitch, those are all the questions I have for now. I want to thank you very much for spending time with me.
MO:
No, thank YOU!
EB:
It was good to talk to you about Peter since you've been supportive of him for a really long time.
MO:
It's been a long time -- 12 years.