Thanks to former 104.1 Extreme Radio DJ Kane, you can add "live music" to your list of reasons to get to Cardinals and Blues games early. Although Kane now produces for The Dana Show on KFTK 97.1 FM, Kane is staying involved in the St. Louis music scene by booking bands, usually local, to play in concourses at Busch Stadium and Scottrade Center before games.
Kane, whose real name is Harley Lightle, says that the promotion started when he was approached by Cardinal account executives at a battle of the bands thrown by 105.7 The Point at Busch Stadium. "They heard that I had been doing some work with some local bands and they were interested in showcasing some good local talent," he says. The showcase impressed the executives enough that they asked him book openers for Cardinals games at Busch, and eventually executives from the Blues asked him to do the same at Scottrade.
Kane is looking for a particular brand of legwork out of the bands he books. "Do they just have a big family or do they actually get out there and do some work on marketing themselves," he says. "Not just on the internet, but we're talking grassroots, feet on the ground. You gotta flyer cars, you gotta stand outside of other shows and hand out your flyers and information."
Some of the bands that have played so far are Earthworms, The Grea Tones, Grey Market (from Florida), Our First Summer and Sunday But Summer.
Each band is given an allotment of tickets for the game it will be playing. Kane gets a discounted price by buying the tickets in bulk, which allows bands to sell them at face value and pocket the profit (unsold tickets are returned and re-entered into the system so long as they're returned three weeks before the game). Kane takes no money as part of this promotion. "I would rather have them get the exposure," he says.
