Don Strasburg’s Z2 Entertainment virtual gatekeeper for national-level concerts. In the spring of last year, Scott Rednor, owner of the Shakedown Bar in Vail, was preparing to open a new music venue in downtown Boulder.
He was ready to sign a lease for a building on Walnut Street, but he said the deal fell apart at the last minute.
Not long afterward, Rednor learned why: Don Strasburg, co-owner of Boulder live-music powerhouse Z2 Entertainment, and his associates suddenly were the property’s new owners.
“As soon as Don Strasburg got word of it, he put together the funds and bought the building to shut us down,” Rednor said.
It’s not the first time Strasburg has been accused of using aggressive means to advance his interests, and the concert promoter has come to exert a profound influence on the live-music experience in Boulder and across the Front Range, according to industry professionals in the region.
Z2 Entertainment operates the city’s two main music venues, the Boulder and Fox theaters. And, in October, the company announced it had become the exclusive promoter of summer concerts at Chautauqua Auditorium.
That makes Z2 a virtual gatekeeper for national-level concerts in Boulder.
“One person is running the show” at the theater level in Boulder, said Jay Bianchi, owner of Owsley’s Golden Road, a bar that hosts live music on University Hill.
And while Z2 is an independent company, artists treat it as if it’s tied to AEG Live Rocky Mountains — the regional live entertainment office of Los Angeles-based Anschutz Entertainment Group — because Strasburg also serves as vice president and senior talent buyer at the regional office.
The extent of AEG’s reach and the depth of its resources make it the overwhelmingly dominant player in Denver-area music. Even critics acknowledge that by presenting high-quality concerts, the company has helped raise Denver’s live-music stature.
Today it’s difficult to flourish as a performing musician in Denver without going through AEG, and it’s even harder in Boulder without dealing with Z2.
But the companies’ methods, including the sweeping use of “radius clauses” to prevent bands from playing competing venues, rankle many music industry professionals. And some in the business say Z2’s reign constricts Boulder’s music scene.
Asked about Z2’s powerful position, Strasburg said music promoters work in “a very competitive landscape” and that his staff’s success benefits Boulder.
“They kill to do anything they can for the Boulder music community … they’re fighting to get the best music for them,” Strasburg said. “I believe they should be applauded.”
He also stressed that Z2 and AEG Live Rocky Mountains are “completely separate businesses,” and that Z2 CEO Cheryl Liguori and her talent buyers, David Weingarden and Chris Peck, do “a phenomenal job, and they don’t really need my help.”
‘Don doesn’t want any competition’
Rednor, the Vail venue owner, is also a musician who has toured with Blues Traveler and Dave Matthews, and he’s a member of the Dean Ween Group.
The Boulder building he was going to lease, at 1109 Walnut St., is the former site of The Foundry and Absinthe House and, since September, has been occupied by Boulder House.
While he prepared last April to take over the space, Rednor said he sent to Strasburg — out of respect for his role in local music — an email outlining plans for the new venue.
“I got no response,” Rednor said.
But he said he heard through an associate that Strasburg was angry. Then he realized that Strasburg and his partners had bought the building from previous owner Frank Schultz.
Rednor had planned to partner with Scott Morrill, co-owner of Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom in Denver, to buy talent for the new music venue, and he speculates Strasburg was opposed to Cervantes moving into Z2’s territory.
“Don doesn’t want any competition anywhere in Denver or Boulder,” Rednor said. Morrill declined to comment for this story.
Schultz said he recalls a prospective lessee who intended to open a music venue in the building, but he said he was “nowhere near” ready to sign a deal.
However, Schultz, who owns Tavern Hospitality Group in Denver, initially didn’t want to sell, and was thinking about putting one of his company’s own restaurant brands in the building. But Strasburg and his associates offered to buy the property at a price so high he couldn’t turn it down, Schultz said.
“I was a little bummed, but it was nice to make the profit,” he said. “Anything’s for sale for the right price.”
Strasburg said his purchase of the building was a “personal business decision that doesn’t have anything to do with music.”
If others saw it as a move to thwart competition, “that’s their perspective, I guess,” Strasburg added. “I have nothing to say on it.”
Public records indicate that Strasburg and his partners, through a limited liability company registered less than a month earlier, bought the building in April for $4.1 million. Schultz paid $2.3 million for the property in 2012.
Boulder House, the new tenant, often features DJs on a sizable stage in the building’s main room. Owner Reid Pellegrin, who identified Z2 as his landlord, said he’d like to offer live music, but he has to be “careful.”
“I have to get it approved” by Z2, Pellegrin said.
Asked if this was Z2’s way of ensuring Boulder House doesn’t compete with its landlord for bands, Pellegrin said, “You can take it how you want.”
He declined to comment further.
By Quentin Young, Staff Writer | quentin@dailycamera.com, twitter.com/qpyoungnews
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