By September 2001, Degy was a tiny, music company closing in on its fifth birthday. We were originally billed as Degy Management, our artist management firm. But Degy Booking, the agency side of the business that most people know today, was brand new. We opened its doors on September 1, 2001, and by the second Monday of the new agency’s existence, Chad Denney, Jason Rossman, and I weren’t going home that night. We were going to sleep on the office floor; cause that's what you did with little money, trying to put more hours into each workday. Ball in the House, one of our first management clients, had a new record dropping that Tuesday, and CMJ was right behind it. Our plan for that week was simple and more than a little scrappy: crash at the office, wake up early, and start working the phones. Call the record stores, (yes, those were still a thing back then) to thank them for stocking BITH’s album and ask them to give it some love up front. Then call the college radio stations we had shipped promo copies to and see if we could turn some airplay. That was the entire plan for Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
It didn’t go that way. If I remember right, I woke up to a staticky call from my friend Adam Grayer, who was checking on me. I remember telling him there was no way a plane had hit one of the towers. Adam was watching it live on television and said otherwise. Chad walked into my office, we turned on the radio (he remembers it being Howard Stern), and a few minutes later the second plane hit while we were both listening. "That ain’t no accident," Chad said. I asked him what we should do. "We go to the beach," he told me. "They won’t be flying planes into that." So, my two new booking agents (Chad and Jason) packed up, and we sped out of Union, New Jersey, and down the Garden State Parkway because we had convinced ourselves that they’d shut down the highways coming out of Newark Airport.
I still remember looking left towards New York as we drove south on the GSP, and watching the smoke rise over my shoulder. We ended up at my mom’s house in Toms River, sitting in her TV room downstairs, watching the towers fall together. She had finally gotten through on the phone by then, and she told me my sister was stuck in the basement of her apartment building, blocks from where it was all happening. Twenty-five years later, that’s still the kind of detail that puts a lump in your throat.
Music did show up to assist in the recovery of September 11th. About six weeks after the attacks, Paul McCartney organized The Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden, a benefit built specifically for firefighters, police officers, and the families who lost people that day. It raised well over thirty-five million dollars and set a template the industry has leaned on ever since: when something breaks a community, you put a stage in front of it and let people grieve together, out loud. A year later, Bruce Springsteen released The Rising, which is still the record most people reach for when they want something that captures what that fall felt like, grief and defiance sitting in the same verse.
Still, music was tangled up in those September weeks following the attacks in ways big and small. Radio stations across the dial dropped their regular rotations and either went silent or just talked, because nobody wanted a song playing over what people were watching happen. Shows that were booked that week didn't happen. Album releases, ours included, stopped mattering for a little while, the way everything did. Air traffic stayed grounded long enough that Chad and Jason, my two brand new booking agents, ended up stuck in New Jersey days longer than planned before they could fly home to Colorado. It was the worst of times, and somehow, at the very same time, it was the best of American unity I have ever witnessed. I cried a lot yesterday watching the news coverage, remembering exactly what that week felt like. My heart is still so heavy for everyone who lost someone that day, and in the days that followed.
The NFL played its first-ever regular season game in Australia this week. They turned halftime over to the Jonas Brothers in front of a reported 100,021 fans in Melbourne. The band ran through a tight five-song medley and closed with a cover of John Farnham’s "You’re the Voice," which by most accounts is what won the stadium over. I saw the typical social media buzz from Australian fans who wanted a homegrown headliner for their first taste of the NFL. Last I checked, the sport remains an American one directed largely to an American broadcast audience. But I guess I can see it both ways. Funny enough, Jonas Brothers started out as a scrappy New Jersey band playing high schools to get in front of young fans, not unlike the grassroots circuit Ball in the House and I were working back in 2001. They even played a stop at my wife Stacy's high school in Freehold, New Jersey.
Soundgarden also reunited for the NFL’s Kickoff halftime show in Seattle with The Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen out front and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready sitting in on guitar, the band’s first performance since their Rock Hall induction last fall. NBC didn’t air it, which irritated more people than the final score did.
And a legend added a new chapter to his own catalog. Stevie Wonder announced an 18-date 50th anniversary tour behind "Songs in the Key of Life," performing the 1976 album front to back, starting in Birmingham, England before a US run that closes in December. It’s Stevie’s first full tour since 2024, and if you’ve never watched an artist perform an entire album that has become something closer to a museum piece, put one of his tour stops on your calendar.
Closer to Degy’s own history, this week marked 19 years of concerts at Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus, one of the longest relationships on our college calendar. The first show, back in 2007, was Reel Big Fish and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. FAU remains one of Degy’s first real middle-artist college bookings. This week, FAU’s Bonfire concert brought Spider-Man hitmaker Swae Lee along with Neon Trees to that same campus. While chatting with them that day, I realized more than a few students on this year’s program board weren’t even born when that first show was held on campus. Nineteen years and dozens of artists later, it’s still the same idea: put the right act in front of the right crowd, execute at a high level, and the relationship takes care of itself.
Two names worth knowing if you book for festivals, colleges, or fairs looking for real momentum. bodie’s "whisper and the wind" has become a Christian radio and streaming story, Top 10 on Billboard’s Christian Airplay and Mediabase charts, more than 38 million streams, and a win at the International Songwriting Competition judged by names like Tom Waits. Follow-up singles "GOOD OLD DAYS" and "SAY SO" suggest he’s not a one-song artist. And Molly Grace, out of Nashville, is coming off a 40-date headline run, a sold-out London show, and a main-stage slot at All Things Go, with a new single, "Bow Wow," that’s sharp and funny. Both feel like the kind of booking that looks like a steal twelve months from now.
Here are five artists that I wanted to put in front of buyers this month, all of them fresh to this blog and all of them realistic bookings for fairs, colleges, and festival stages.
Katelyn Tarver has always written like she’s overheard someone’s diary, and her newest single, "The Price," is one of the more precise heartbreak songs out right now. Maybe known best (thus far) for her acting on Nick’s Big Time Rush, she has a quiet, devoted following that turns into something big. Watch out for this gal.
Mon Rovîa’s story alone is worth the booking fee. He was born in war-torn Liberia, raised by an American missionary family, and now writing what he calls "Afro-Appalachian" folk, layering rich vocals over ukulele and guitar. He’s an act that turns a fair or festival side stage into the one people talk about on the drive home.
Karri built a following the hard way, with a 2023 sleeper hit, "3am in Oakland," and a moody, lo-fi sound he calls "Lo N Slo." A deal with Drake’s imprint has sharpened his output since. While I’m still dipping into his catalog, ‘Risky’ is a deep track which you can see a video for on his site. College programmers will dig the vibe.
Sawyer Hill brings a full drawl and a real 1990s rock influence to his songs. He faced a lot of touring woes early on, but continued to grow his touring footprint out of Arkansas. He’s built for county fairs and outdoor stages looking for real roots with a young audience. I dig Johnny Cash, and I’m told his live version of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is one that stops the crowd in its tracks.
Malcolm Todd is a 22-year-old singer-songwriter who keeps popping up on multiple wishlists from my college buyers. His 2024 mixtape Sweet Boy tripled his monthly audience, and the title track just picked up a second wind, hitting the Billboard Hot 100 in 2026 off a wave of new TikTok streams. He’s starting to price at a point that might make it tough for some, but he’s got tons of value.
Wrap it Up, Ari! Time to Give Up the Microphone
I wasn’t sure whether to write this, and if I did, how to make it sound anything but honest. For many of the years after 2001, September 11th got a little easier to sit with. Not easy, never that, but closer to a normal day that happens to land on that specific numbered date. This year wasn’t like that at all. I don’t fully know why twenty-five carries more weight than twenty-four or twenty-three did, but it did. I spent Friday morning largely in tears in front of the televisions in my office the way I used to in the years right after the attacks. I sat listening to the names being read, the way it always gets me. Somewhere in there my phone buzzed, and it was Chad Denney, the same Chad who slept in the office next to me on that Monday night, September 10, and helped me build Degy Booking.
We don’t talk often these days, maybe once or twice a year, always around this date, because that week bonded us in a way that doesn’t need daily maintenance to stay real. This year, for the first time in a while, I needed him to fill in some blanks. I’d forgotten whether we were all three at the office that night, or whether it was just me. Chad remembered all of it, down to the moment he heard me telling Adam there was no way a plane had hit the tower, and the moment right after, when he said out loud what we were both already thinking; it’s time to leave where we were being so close to Newark Airport and NYC.
Twenty-five years later, never forget still means what it has always meant to me. It means the more than three thousand people we lost that day, and the families still living with that hole. It means the first responders who ran in instead of out, and ordinary heroes like Welles Crowther, the man so many came to know only as 'The Man in the Red Bandana.' It also means healing, the way sports and music both delivered it that fall. Fifty-five thousand people at Yankee Stadium, chanting as one. That same Madison Square Garden stage, packed for a night with the very firefighters and police officers who had spent weeks pulling friends from the wreckage, caught on camera weeping and throwing their hats in the air as the music played. Music did that, in a way nothing else could. Twenty-five years later, I still believe it's one of the only things capable of healing a wound that deep. It was my generation's Pearl Harbor, or our JFK. I will never, ever forget it.
#NeverForget #NeverForgotten
See you next weekend!
Degy Entertainment has spent 30 years building relationships across the live entertainment industry, executing nearly 3,000 events a year in more than 30 countries. From college campuses and state and county fairs to corporate events, festivals, and military installations, Degy’s talent buying and middle-artist booking teams work to put the right artist in front of the right audience, week after week.
Got a show to book, or just want to talk shop about the entertainment space? Reach out to Ari Nisman anytime, or find out more at Degy Entertainment.