Out talent agent Linda Lewis, founder and CEO of Left of Center Productions, is very busy this summer.
Lewis put together the roster of entertainment for this year’s Philly Pride, as well as other Pride festivities around the country. We caught her at her office after she got back from Provincetown to accompany some of her clients to performances.
“We had Betty Who at an event,” she explained. “It’s the first time she’s ever performed there. It was during the July Fourth weekend. They had so much going on that weekend but she sold out at the Uptown Hall. I keep saying to Franny [Price, Philly Pride Presents executive director] that she should have Betty Who at [Philly Pride] but she never bites.”
Whether Lewis is on the road or in her office, she is always on — as her job, doing public relations and bookings for artists and premier LGBT events, requires more than your standard office hours.
“I’m usually in the office and work very, very long hours seven days a week, just me and my assistant,” she said. “I am currently looking for outside sales people to grow this staff because I’m doing over 200 events yearly. I go to maybe 20 events annually, sometimes more.
But normally I try not to if I don’t have to. If it’s a client for the first time and I have maybe three of my artists there, they want me to be there to make sure it runs smoothly. I usually travel with Billy Gilman and I travel with Alex Newell. In P-Town they flew me in and paid for my transportation and put me up at the hotel because they want me to make sure things go smoothly.”
Lewis started out working for other agencies before coming to the realization that there is a niche in the market for someone with her connections to LGBT artists and events.
“I’ve always been interested in working with independent artists,” she said. “I was working with an agency that hired me specifically because they wanted to bring me in for independent artists. They had a troupe called Lesbians of Laughter. Since they knew I was a lesbian they thought I was perfect to promote the LGBT clients. That was a niche.”
Her work with Philly Pride Presents also played a significant role in steering her into her current direction.
“The only Pride event I had done before was Philly and New York City, so I didn’t know anything about it. Franny said that there were 200-300 of those events in the United States and that would be a great start. She was the one who had me thinking outside the box. I had all the time in the world and I was being paid a salary so I had time to build up an LGBT department. What happened is, they were bought out by another company and my position was let go. I was working as a subcontractor with my own company, naming it Left of Center Productions, which fit perfectly. That name always moved me. Obviously doing something outside of the box in the entertainment industry, it was 99.9-percent LGBT but now it’s maybe 97 percent because I’m doing casinos and other venues that aren’t necessarily LGBT but they are LGBT-friendly.”
Lewis added that Left of Center stands out among agencies specializing in LGBT talent because she shows a greater interest in the need of the events for which she’s finding artists.
“There’s about 11 or 12 of us established as agents in the LGBT community and most of them are men,” she said. “When I started I worked and played nicely in the sandbox. If somebody in an agency had a roster of seven people, maybe it would be Taylor Dayne and Frenchie Davis. And they would have like seven of them and maybe two of them were their exclusive clients. But even though they weren’t exclusive and I could go directly to them, I would respect that they were working with them and I would go through that agency. What happened was a lot of these Pride events I was contacting, I found out, were very disenchanted because they said ‘Agent A’ only has seven people and they used most of them, and in the Pride events they don’t use them [again] until three to five years later. They’re looking for something else and these agents are pitching the same acts over and over again. I said, ‘Are they calling you and asking you what your needs are?’ ‘Oh, no. They just have their roster and they pitch them and from that roster we select.’ So I thought, Why don’t I find out more about your particular event? For instance, Grand Rapids, Mich., I found out, has more of a lesbian base that comes out [to Pride events]. It’s 80/20, only 20-percent men. And they’re looking to concentrate on getting more men there. Therefore, you’re you going to try and get a Steve Grand or somebody else. So I try to customize to their needs, not what I have on my roster. That’s what made me successful and that’s what made a lot of these Pride events leave these agents and come to me.”
Lewis’ sphere of influence is expanding as of late, as Left of Center is attracting artists from outside the community who are looking to make a splash at Pride festivals.
“I just picked up Keri Hilson, Macy Gray and Nancy & Beth,” she said. “So I’m doing all their LGBT bookings. And no other agency in the LGBT community did that before. I just put Macy Gray in at Gay Days in Orlando at the Parliament House. And she killed it. They hadn’t had somebody like Macy Gray; they only had people performing to tracks. She brought her whole band and they were very afraid of it, but they trusted me. And they killed it. But we still have to keep our LGBT artists working.”
For more information about Left of Center Productions, visit www.leftofcenterproductions.com.