MUSIC EXCLUSIVE
The Traveling Kid Secret
By A.J. Hoffman
February 1, 2009
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FEBRUARY 2009
 | YOUR BEST FRIEND
Your Best Friend will be a tough band to catch up with by the time Spring comes around. If you were to buy stock in one band locally, you would want it to be YBF. |
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 | THE TRAVELING KID SECRET
The number of Traveling Kid shows has decreased a little bit. The reason is due to a special surprise that The Tridge has an exclusive on. |
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 | MANUFACTURING MICHIGAN
2008 will certainly not be remembered as a year that was friendly to the manufacturing sector, Michigan businesses, or anyone for that matter. |
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 | WAITING TO EXHALE
The Mackinac Center's Russ Harding discusses that regulating CO2 is a good way to move the economy into depression |
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Traveling Kid Productions
is a small company run by Tony Lagalo, 21, of Birch Run. He and a handful of his friends produce
several shows a month featuring local bands and other DIY acts touring around the country looking for venues.
However, since around September, the number of Traveling Kid shows has decreased a little bit. The reason, he cites, is due to a special surprise that The Tridge has an exclusive on.
"There's going to be five stages, including
this one which we're standing on," Lagalo said. "One of the other stages is going to be a solar stage. In fact, they used that same stage at the Vans Warped Tour."
As we walk around Ojibiway Island in Saginaw, Lagalo points to different areas of the land where he plans to have food and merchandise vendors, parking, a VIP tent and of course, five stages hosting nearly
forty musical acts throughout the day.
"We're going to call it the S.Y.S. Festival.
It stands for Support Your Scene. The whole idea is to give some of these younger,
local groups a bigger spotlight," said Lagalo. "My goal is make it fun and have no complaints. I just want to produce one day of fun with music and peace."
For obvious reasons, planning the S.Y.S. Festival has taken up a lot of Lagalo's time lately and thus slowed the number of TKP shows he's usually accustomed
to producing.Traveling Kid is working diligently to get several major
label artists to headline the festival in addition to the various local artists. The S.Y.S. Festival, which is slated to take place on May 30, is being designed to be entirely ecologically friendly.
"Aside from the solar stage, we plan on selling all organic merchandise. All of the vendors will have to be green friendly," said Lagalo. "Also, we're going to hire a small group of people to pick up trash and recycle throughout the day. We just want to keep the area clean and encourage the idea of being environmentally friendly."
Promoters who tried arranging annual summer music festivals in Michigan last year, such as the Mountain Country Music
Festival in Farwell and the Rothbury Festival in Muskegon, ended up going broke over their endeavors. Those same promoters might ask who this kid thinks he is and where the money is coming from.
A good chunk of the money, Lagalo admits, is coming from a silent investor.
Other portions of the money will come from sponsors. Traveling Kid Productions, which has a following almost
as big as some of the bands they provide venues for, attracts a relatively well-mannered group of young people.
"I think it's mostly in the way those kids grew up. We attract a demographic of 13 to 25 years old. We have a crowd of young people coming out and they know if they break the rules, they're out. Also, I learned from my grandmother that if you're nice to people, they'll be nice to you," Lagalo explained. "Those kids, including the bands, they're all out there to have a good time and so there's really no reason for them to act up or be anything but friendly to each other."
Lagalo said he enjoys the business aspect
of dealing with bands and he comes from a business family. His mother is a real estate broker and his family owns the chain of Tony's restaurants throughout
the Tri-Cities. His first exposure to the local music scene was when his older sister, who worked in a tattoo parlor,
hung around a lot of guys in bands. Lagalo used to watch them make their own stickers, t-shirts and cassette tapes to promote themselves. After doing a little bit of reading and talking to a lot of friends about it, he eventually became the manager of his friends' band, Ports of Aidia. While he was their manager for two and a half years, he booked them an entire tour which took them along the entire East coast and ran smoothly.
After realizing that it was too hard to make a living off of being a band's manager,
Lagalo took a chance and started producing his own shows. Shortly after,
Traveling Kid Productions was created. So far, each show has been a success,
and TKP soon had their own merchandise to sell. They had 100 t-shirts and 25 hoodies printed off. Now, there are only about 10 t-shirts left.
Lagalo is very hyped up about the upcoming S.Y.S. Festival, which is still very much in the planning stages. His confidence and excitement about the magnitude of the event is staggering. He's planning on single-handedly getting
the word out about the festival by doing a radio tour throughout the Midwest. He's also planning on major advertising campaigns through magazines,
radio and other news networks.
"I'm dedicating my life to it [the festival],"
said Lagalo. "Producing shows is what I want to do with the rest of my life. I've been working on this since September
and we've been very careful to not interfere with anyone else's festivals, such as Dirtfest or any of the others. We're doing this early in the concert season
out of respect for other promoters."
The festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Ojibiway Island.
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