33
Q
What’s your best band
story for Rock ’n’ Roll?
We booked Snoop Dogg for the Vegas
event and a few weeks before—it was
a daytime show—he realized he had
other obligations, so we had to scram-
ble to get a big act to come in. Vegas
is our Super Bowl. We were able to
get Macklemore to play the show. He
came in and played a great show and
Snoop came back last year. That’s the
hard thing with the music business.
They have other obligations and things
change. That’s probably the best
G-rated story I can tell.Q
How challenging is it to
balance 780 bands each year?
It’s one thing to close down roads at
six in the morning. It’s another thing
to put a band outside of somebody’s
house. The biggest challenge we
have—especially as cities become
more and more dense—is putting
something appropriate out there.
Some cities say you have to be acoustic
until 8:30 in the morning. Ironically, a
marching band is acoustic.
There is a balancing act of putting
appropriate music on the course and
also an act that’s going to inspire the
runners. We do a lot of outreach with
the community. We want to be able to
come back next year and not change
too much, so we'll spend a lot of time
coordinating with the neighbors and
community leaders. We’ll go a quarter-
mile out from the band stage to let
them know.INSIDE THE ROCK ’N’ ROLL MARATHON SERIES:
A Q&A WITH THE BAND BOOKER
By Kevin GemmellAlex Bennett wants to tell you a story. And if you listen, mile by mile, you’ll hear
it. As the vice president of operations, Bennett is charged with booking all of the
headline acts for the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon Series. Do the math ... 30 events each
year times 26 bands per event (one per mile) equals 780 musical acts each year. As
a musician (he's third from left with his band Creature Feature back in the 90s)
and a runner, he has combined these loves and has been intimately tied to the
industry for more than two decades.Q
How do you go about
selecting headliners?
I’m very much aware of trying to make
sure we’re putting on an act that makes
sense for that market and the size of
the event. In Las Vegas, we’ll try to
fi nd a top-tier act, but we don’t always
have the budget to do that on some of
the smaller races. But we can still tell a
good musical story.
One year in Seattle we had Sir Mix-a-
Lot and The Presidents of the United
States of America play as a dual head-
liner. They are both from Seattle. They
both have a great Seattle story. We
wanted to be able to entertain people
and tell the people traveling in—or
even the locals—hey, we’re highlight-
ing some of Seattle’s musical past.
We did the same in Brooklyn last year.
We picked some up-and-coming bands
from the Brooklyn scene, which is very
strong right now. We wanted to high-
light what you might not hear on the
radio, but this is very Brooklyn. You try
to highlight the region you are in.Q
How do you go about getting the
right band for each city?
I think it’s fun. It gives us some creative
fl exibility to say how can we really have
fun with this and tell a good story. The
hard part is the scheduling. You try to
put the pieces together and still have a
great event that is true to that city. We’ve
had a lot of great up-and-coming bands
that have gone on to bigger things. We’ve
had some great course bands that are
a lot bigger now. Macklemore playedon course. Lady Antebellum played on
course in Nashville. We’ve been lucky
enough to have some bands that were
just local bands at the time go on. I think
that shows we’re really doing our home-
work. Part of the fun for us is helping
runners discover these bands.Q
How do you integrate
your musical background
into what you do now?
The reason why this is such a great fi t
is I went to Berklee College of Music in
Boston and I sat at the marathon fi nish
line for years and was inspired by peo-
ple throwing up on themselves. Which
I did without having to run. Knowing I
could be healthy and do the same thing
I was doing, I’d put my Chuck Taylors
on and run around the Charles River
and it stuck. After college I ended up
working in the music industry. My fi rst
marathon was the L.A. Marathon in- Then I moved to Seattle to open
Experience Music Project, an interac-
tive museum there. As I continued to
work on the music side of things, I kept
running so it makes sense that I ended
up working for Rock ’n’ Roll.
Q
Do you listen to music
when you run?
I do. I do a lot of analysis of beats per
minute, especially when I’m training
for something and fi nd something in
my cadence as a runner. I sometimes
run without music, because I think
that’s also healthy. I mix it up. But
there is always music in my head.CM0817_FEAT_MUSIC.indd 33 7/11/17 8:03 PM