Jurassic 5 performs at Metro City, Perth, Australia, March 28. (Photo by Matsu Photography)
The first time hip-hop collective Jurassic 5 mounted their Word Of Mouth tour in 2000, there was no Twitter, no Instagram, no Facebook and a lot fewer ways to reach out to fans to get them excited about a tour.
But after taking nearly seven years off to pursue solo projects, the group – Akil, Zaakir, Marc 7, DJ Nu-Mark, Chali 2na, and Cut Chemist – are back together and hoping to leverage the power of social media to get their old and new fans excited for a 20-date summer reboot of the Mouth brand featuring all the same acts (Dilated Peoples, Beat Junkies and MC Supernatural).
The month-long tour will have the acts playing a mix of clubs and ballrooms and their biggest headlining gig to date at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, on July 11, as well as shows at Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nev.; Showbox in Seattle; Santa Barbara (Calif.) Bowl and Best Buy Theater in New York. It’s the follow-up to J5’s reunion show at 2013’s Coachella Festival, Indio, Calif., which member DJ Nu-Mark said helped revive interest in their notoriously high-energy live show.
“We didn’t have much control over when was the correct time,” said Nu-Mark. “The universe and music leads the way in this industry and since we split up we kept getting offers and they kept getting higher and higher, but we were not in any state of mind to get back to touring again.” After 14 years of nearly nonstop touring, J5’s members took time off, but the six-figure payday (the most they’d ever been offered) for Coachella was one they couldn’t refuse.
That said, Nu-Mark (born Mark Potsic) said the upcoming tour is more of a gift to fans, since J5 are aware that the real money for heritage acts such as theirs is in playing festivals. “We’re getting less than we would for festivals,” he said, noting that they could have overplayed instead of underplaying.
Nu-Mark’s agent, CAA’s Jenna Adler, said each gig on the tour is being locally promoted, and one of those locals, Don Strasburg, vice president of AEG Live Rocky Mountain, said he is eager to work with the group he’s booked since their inception more than two decades ago.
“We did a date with them [J5] in January at Red Rocks, where they headlined our Winter on the Rock event with Ghostland Observatory and it was sold out,” Strasburg said of the 9,000-capacity gig. Given the group’s long relationship with Colorado fans and the pent-up demand for their live show, Strasburg said he knew the July 21 date at the 1,600-capacity Ogden Theater in Denver was a slam-dunk.
“They never played gigantic rooms here, but they were on their way when they broke up to being a major ticket draw,” he said. “With them being gone and coming back we felt that the market was ripe for them to play Red Rocks and we were happy the routing brought them back through Denver. We decided to play a different tack and do an underplay at the Ogden on the heels of the other show to give something for the hardcore fans.”
Strasburg said the tickets for the show went on sale last week and were nearly sold out at press time. Even with the long layoff since their Coachella date – during which the group played shows in lucrative European, Japanese and Australian markets – Strasburg said he knew the band’s excellent live reputation would help sell the Ogden show.
“I felt in my heart that there was enough knowledge in Colorado of the band’s catalog from the younger generation that hadn’t seen them that they would look at it as an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often,” he said. “And the older demo that had seen them would realize how long it’s been.”
He’s employing the standard marketing avenues he does for all of his shows: Facebook, as well as print, radio and street, with a strong emphasis on Twitter fan outreach. The ticket is priced at $40 for the Ogden show, which Strasburg admitted was on the higher end for a club date but, judging by the response so far, not a barrier to a sold-out gig.
Nu-Mark would not talk about what the band’s nightly guarantee is, but he said despite the underplay (and the dozen-plus musicians and support-team members on the road) everyone involved is planning to make money off the venture.
So, what’s different now than the last time J5 mounted this tour? For one, most musicians don’t make as much, if any, money from music royalties and, with the rise of YouTube and other video-sharing services, it’s more important than ever to put on a visually stimulating show that fans will want to pass around.
“You have to have a visual component with everything,” he said. “If you’re branding a tour you have to say, ‘What up? We’re gonna be in Chicago, come see us at the Aragon.’ You have to have teaser spots for every city and that visual component that gives the audience instant gratification.” For the band’s Coachella show, Nu-Mark said he designed a giant turntable effect that could be seen from the cheap seats. And, these days, rather than their manager chasing fans down and telling them to stop filming gigs, he’s asking them to shoot everything with their phones and share the footage.
With each band member running their own multiple social media sites as well as the group’s social media accounts, Nu-Mark said keeping fans apprised of their shows is not a problem. Asked if the club and theater gigs were a prelude to a bigger tour and potentially bigger payday (like the one being enjoyed by hip-hop duo OutKast on their 40-date festival reunion tour), Nu-Mark said that remains to be seen.
“We’ll make some money, but we all have so much going on in our own careers that whatever move we make has to be strategic,” he said.
Interviewed for this story: Don Strasburg, (720) 931-8700; DJ Nu-Mark