Live From Detroit!

Despite the sluggish economy, the Motor City’s unique concert and theater venues are still finding a way to thrive

By Dale Buss

(page 1 of 4)

Warped Tour at Comerica Park, Detroit, July 2007

Photo Courtesy of Olympia Entertainment

Whether this summer finds you rocking out to John Mellencamp at DTE Energy Music Theatre, reminiscing about young love with the ballads of Boz Scaggs at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, fulfilling your quotient of culture with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at Meadow Brook Music Festival, or helping rekindle the career of the Stone Temple Pilots at the Fillmore Detroit, you may be surrounded by different crowds — but you’re part of the same big phenomenon.

Southeast Michigan is one of the best markets in America for concerts and other live shows, and even the feeble local economy of 2008 isn’t going to change that. The exact historical reasons metro Detroiters have demonstrated an abiding appreciation of live entertainment — which is even defying the area’s financial challenges this year — are somewhat elusive. But there’s no doubting the results. For the 18th year in a row, the DTE Energy Music Theatre in Clarkston is expected to rank as the most-visited outdoor concert amphitheater in the United States, by a large measure. And according to Pollstar, the Fox Theatre in Detroit, which offers a mix of plays and concerts, came in seventh nationally in first-quarter paid attendance.

What’s more, many family-oriented shows do double the business here that they do in similar Midwestern cities. And a wide variety of venues, such as the Macomb Center for the Performing Arts in Clinton Township and Hill Auditorium on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, unabashedly anticipate strong seasons this year.
“Above and beyond other cities in the Midwest and elsewhere, there’s an electricity in Detroit, from the opening announcements to the last note of the show — they become events here rather than just another show,” says Dave Clark, vice president of marketing for LiveNation, the world’s largest concert promoter. “Detroit fans have always been there for the music.”

Players in the local live-entertainment industry say that Michiganians behave in line with economists’ general theory about how recreation spending shifts during a downturn. “People travel less and spend more of their money closer to home,” says Sara Billman, director of marketing for the University Musical Society, a not-for-profit venture that manages live performances at several venues on U-M’s sprawling campus. “That certainly seems to be the case with us this year. We’ve had fabulous houses and some sellouts.”

Of course, local concert-goers are getting more help this year from the executives running the showplaces, who are making it easier for consumers to squeeze out a budget for summer entertainment amid fast-rising prices for fuel, food, and other necessities. For example, “four-packs” of tickets for the cheapest seats are more available than ever. Some arena managers have consciously refrained from booking artists who are available — but who would prove too expensive for their constituents’ pocketbooks. Even the acts themselves, aware of today’s economic pressures on their fans, are getting into the act.

But to make 2008 another banner year and to stay in the upper crust of the industry nationally, the live-performance business in southeast Michigan remains much more reliant on a fundamental vitality that has flourished over the last half-century, having sprung from roots as deep as the salt mines under Detroit and as sturdy as the steely self-identity of this long-beleaguered region. Again and again, the 5.4 million people who live in the nine-county area of southeast Michigan, as compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, have demonstrated that, especially when summer comes, they want their music — and they want it live.