20 People to Watch - Damon Hare: The promoter

The Earl’s longtime second-in-command takes the reins

When Patrick Hill quietly resigned his post as the Earl’s chief booking agent last October, he handed the reins over to his longtime cohort Damon Hare. “I was sort of like an ‘Assistant Talent Buyer,’” Hare says. “I did a lot of media work for him, and I still do a lot of that — that won’t change. And I was the door guy, too. But I’m retiring from that now.”

Hare has worked at the Earl for a decade, and has booked shows at the club and elsewhere around town under the guise of Triple D’s Productions, best known for putting on the annual Atlanta Mess-Around punk and garage rock festival.

As the Earl’s chief booker, Hare has stepped up his role to fill the calendar with the same consistently high-quality shows that have earned the club a reputation as Atlanta’s premier indie rock music venue. But over the last two years, the competition has become fierce. His former boss, Hill, now promotes shows with the much larger Bowery Presents: South, and is potentially competing to book the same acts elsewhere around the city. It’s a dilemma that’s of little concern to Hare.

“A lot of different promoters bring a lot of different things to the table,” Hare says. “I don’t think there will be too much of a problem with crossover. And besides, Patrick is still booking most of the shows that should go to the Earl at the Earl.”

Hill left behind a nearly 14-year legacy of not only booking the Earl, but also establishing the club’s name and helping to create an anchor for East Atlanta nightlife. Under Hill’s tutelage, Hare learned most of what he knows about the business of putting on shows. Since the transition, nothing has changed regarding the club’s booking policies or its calendar, which is typically filled with touring and local underground rock shows. And that’s the way it was supposed to go down. “I’m not going to rock the boat too much for now,” he says.

Hare’s tenure at the Earl began in 2004 when he started working the door after moving to Atlanta from Valdosta to attend Georgia State University. In Valdosta, he developed a taste for promoting shows as a 17-year-old kid when he started booking bands to play at a local venue called Vito’s. It was there that he developed a relationship with groups passing through town looking for shows. Local bands such as the Close, Paper Lions, and Mastodon were among the Atlanta connections he made. Moving to the city when he turned 21 only seemed natural.

“I knew all of these bands that lived in the West End Warehouses and saw the potential to start booking bands that other people wouldn’t touch,” Hare says. “I knew there was something there and I carved a niche for myself.”

That niche is rooted in Atlanta’s punk, garage, and rock scenes, which have persevered through changing times and trends. “I’ve had moments where I thought, ‘People don’t like this stuff anymore,’ then 200 people come out for the show,” Hare says. “Sometimes with Mess-Around I’ll think, ‘This is going to be the one when no one cares about it anymore.’ But this past year was the most insane one yet. People were taking beer showers! Not just throwing beer on each other but buying beers just to pour on their heads.”

As for his future plans for booking the club, Hare hesitates to say too much. “It looks like we have a couple of really great shows lining up for next year, but you’ll have to wait and see.”

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