FROM THE EDITOR
Influencers Kevin Twohig of Spokane, Wash., and Barbara Hubbard of Las Cruces, N.M., are like the kids who get paid to open toys on YouTube. They love life and they love people and they love the live events industry. It’s contagious. It sells.
Gathering stories about the life and times of these two luminaries, it so happened that several of them never made print, until now. On the subject of problem solving, Jack Lucas of TicketsWest shared a classic from the early 80s.
“When you run venues, you have to think on the spot. Stuff happens,” Lucas said. The stuff was snow and ice before a sold out college football game with Washington State University at the end of November at Albi Stadium in Spokane. An unexpected and severe snowfall hit just before game time. Shovelling snow off the seats was a no-brainer but, on the WSU sidelines, a solid sheet of ice made it impossible for players to stand there.
“We had Astroturf so you couldn’t pick-ax it,” Lucas recalled. “Kevin had an old white, nine passenger van. We drove the van on the field, sat it over the ice, and let it idle five or 10 minutes until the ice had melted enough we could peel it off. We went down the entire sideline like that.”
“That is problem solving. That’s what we constantly did.”
Hundreds of this industry’s bright lights have started out as Mother Hubbard’s “kids” in her ACTS program, which teaches this business through hands-on participation – which is also problem solving.
Michael Lorick, Harbinger Management, who currently works most of the time with the Bruce Springsteen organization, remembers his “Forest Gump moment, that moment when someone gives you an opportunity,” and attributes his good fortune to Barbara.
He had worked with New Mexico State University under Hubbard’s tutelage for a couple of years and wanted his last summer break job to be a springboard to a job in the industry post graduation.
He started bugging Wilson Howard of Cellar Door (now with Live Nation) in Columbia, S.C., for a job and Howard “caved” after about four weeks. “I went in, as most students do, and answered phones and filed paperwork, but was not given responsibility. I did a fraction of what I was used to doing with Barbara.”
While pursuing Howard, he had also been chasing Hootie and the Blowfish who, in 1995, were playing frat parties at NMSU when he left, but were about to embark on a full out tour for the first time. “I pitched them on being tour accountant. We were all young and still trying to figure it out. Two weeks into the tour, they said yes, can you leave in 48 hours. They paid $25 a day per diem. I went to Wilson and explained it to him and he said, ‘you’ve gotta go.’”
“A month into the summer they actually started paying me something, and a month after that, gave me a fulltime job and I worked for them two years before finishing my last semester,” Lorick said.
Kevin and Barbara inspire so many people – some they don’t even know are watching.
God grant you many years to be a positive influencer.