Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Millen.
Dan, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I got my first job at Mama Kin, Aerosmith’s rock club on Lansdowne street. This was at the dawn of email and I convinced them to let me go to all the concerts and walk around with a clip board and take people’s email addresses. As far as I know we were the first concert venue to utilize email as a promotional tool! The eventually hired me as booker / talent buyer and that’s where I learned the ins and outs of booking and running concert venues, and began to establish relationships that I still carry with me today.
Later I went on to book / promote such legendary Boston clubs as Harpers Ferry, Bills Bar, Middle East, Church, and the Hard Rock Cafe. I guess you could look at my earlier career as the guy who came into flagging clubs, began booking / promoting great shows and turning around their businesses into profitability!
In 2006 I began promoting summertime concert cruises on party boats here in Boston called Rock On! Concert Cruises, and here we are 12 years later still going strong! We produce 20-25 cruises each summer, and I like to call them “The Most Fun You Can Have Legally With Your Clothes Still On!”
In 2016, I began working to renovate a rundown club in Somerville MA and in September of 2016 we opened up Thunder Road which has rapidly become a high volume touring destination in Boston’s live music scene, and beginning my first long awaited dream of becoming a venue owner!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Haha, is it ever a smooth road? In all of the venues I booked after Mama Kin I never took a paycheck, my pay was based on performance, so as an independent entrepreneur, I was always at risk of losing my clients based on the whims of concert venue owners who can be unpredictable to say the least! Also in the bulk of my business I was fueling the shows with my own money and the high volume of shows I was producing carried a varied amount of personal capital risk. A motivation to keep my winners big and my losers small of course, but there have been times in my career where I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from! Boston (and everywhere for that matter) is a highly competitive market for booking and promotion and several times in my career I either lost clients or took big losses on shows. That being said I always had faith that another situation would come along that I could help and that would be lucrative, and fortunately my faith in myself and my relationships has always been borne out!
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Thunder Road and Rock On! Concerts story. Tell us more about the business.
I’m proud of the relationships I’ve developed over the years that have allowed me to produce great events that are fun for fans, fun for artists and all around good times! I’ve gotten a chance to work with so many artists on their way up. Artists like Maroon Five, Godsmack, Incubus, Mumford and sons, the Weekend and so many more who all started out in small clubs and worked their way through the ranks to become stars.
At Rock On! Concerts and at Thunder Road we focus so much on making the experience for all a fun party, and customers don’t realize the hard work that goes into it, nor should they, but it’s a lot of hustling and behind the scenes hard work.
I’m naturally adverse to patting myself on the back, as I’m happy to stay behind the scenes, but I think what sets us apart from others is our taste in music, our focus on fun, avoiding conflict and doing the right things for the bands we work with and the fans who love them. We put a lot of creativity into what we do, especially on the concert cruises and I know we get repeat business because we produce some of the most unique events in the city!
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I believe in the old cliché that luck is the intersection of being in the right place at the right time, being skilled enough to identify and execute new opportunities, being able to spot trends, and developing quality relationships that will bring me those opportunities. That being said I think luck has a lot to do with how I’ve grown. I know this sounds hippie-dippy or “woo woo” but I believe there are opportunities floating around me at all times, waiting until I’m ready to capitalize on them. You know another cliché “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, and you just have to have faith that you can stick around and those luck based opportunities will find you!
As far as bad luck, I think that sometimes you just make bad deals or bad decisions reacting out of emotions, or being so overwhelmed by life and business commitments that you wind up dropping the ball or unable to execute properly. Life throws you a lot of curve balls and if you aren’t in the proper state of mind to deal with them, you’ll fail. Sometimes it’s really difficult to re-frame failure as an opportunity to learn when your wallet or your career is at risk, and chalk things up to bad luck, but the older I get and the deeper I get I realize that luck is simply how you react to circumstances, so I try to keep a positive mental attitude and learn from my failures and bad luck.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rockonconcerts.com / www.thunderroadclub.com
- Phone: 617-935-2250
- Email: danmillen@outlook.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/rockonconcerts
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rockonconcerts
- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/rockonconcerts
- Other: http://www.thunderroadclub.com
Image Credit:
Josiah Schlee, Dan Millen
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