In this bonus episode of Concert Cast we talk with Robbie Kowal, CEO of HUSHconcerts by day and DJ Motion Potion by night. What do a corporate conference and silent disco produced by HUSH have in common? Wireless headphones and a deeper sonic connection.
Speaker1: [00:00:01] Hey, I'm Kyle Lamont, and welcome to a bonus episode of Concert Cast. I'm no expert on psycho acoustics or the science of sound. Surprise, [00:00:15] surprise. But I do know that sound is a vibrational wave filled with all sorts of energy. Once inside our brains, these unseeable forces transmit information into emotion. And when you direct all the sound waves into headphones, the sensation [00:00:30] can be otherworldly. Robbie Cole is our guest on this episode, and by day, he's the CEO of Hush Concerts, and by night, he's a pioneering DJ that performs under the name of Motian Potion. Hush takes the traditional concert and even conference [00:00:45] experience from a place full of booming sound to a personal one through headphones from the outside. Looking in, it's silent, but once you're inside the experience, you're transported to a deeper sonic connection. In this episode, we're going to talk about how [00:01:00] headphones allow one to be fully immersed. The old school technology that makes a silent disco possible and what DJ Motion Potion likes to do before stepping up to the ones and twos.
Speaker2: [00:01:11] Hi, DJ Motion Potion.
Speaker3: [00:01:14] Hello, hello all [00:01:15] anyone.
Speaker1: [00:01:16] Robbie joins us via Zoom from an office complex in Ohio. He's made a pit stop to meet with hush partners while driving Cross Country from San Francisco back to his Massachusetts roots.
Speaker3: [00:01:27] There's a vibe in the Northeast that I had [00:01:30] sort of forgotten about.
Speaker1: [00:01:31] Rays of Midwest Sun are beaming through the windows behind him, accentuating the positive glow that comes from being on a road trip. But he's also riding the lasting euphoria from playing at Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco, where he made a [00:01:45] super soulful set this year.
Speaker3: [00:01:47] Performing on stage four other human beings and getting that energetic feedback from them is really special. There's nothing like that feeling. And there's a psychological and physiological [00:02:00] exchange that happens when you're playing music for people, and it's it's a great feeling.
Speaker2: [00:02:08] Do you have any rituals before performing?
Speaker3: [00:02:11] I take a lot of time and effort to prepare [00:02:15] what I'm going to play, and I try to make sure that it fits the moment or that it's something very deeply thematic that people will know coming in. So the research process and then walking through the tracks and taking time [00:02:30] to prepare them and then practice. These people spent good money to see you play and they're choosing to see you instead of doing something else. Be it Netflix or the other stage, right? So that's an honor. They're giving you their time. There's [00:02:45] nothing more precious than time, so it's beholden on you as a professional to get yourself in a frame of mind where you can show them that kind of respect that they deserve. For me, it's usually deep breathing, forcing myself to smile for a while so [00:03:00] that it relaxes me. That's a kind of a trick you can do. I do little neck exercises to loosen up my body and then trust that the music itself will help smooth out any additional nerves.
Speaker1: [00:03:14] While deejaying [00:03:15] at Bonnaroo in 2005, he was introduced to the silent disco format. He loved it so much that he merged the concept with his experiential event company at the time, and by 2015, Hush Concerts was established. They understand what the music and event [00:03:30] industries want and moreover, what they really need. Hush is an interesting solution to a growing problem in our culture. Noise and distraction.
Speaker3: [00:03:39] I was promoting concerts in San Francisco at that time, and we were having enormous difficulties with [00:03:45] some of our neighbors around North Beach Jazz Festival, which is a beautiful little jazz festival. We were doing Washington Square and we had some angry neighbors who were using noise as an opportunity to shut us down. And immediately, when I put those headphones on, I said, this [00:04:00] is going to solve a lot of problems for a lot of well-meaning people like ourselves, right? That's all we really cared about, and that was the goal of our company. I mean, it's still our goal. How do we be of service to you in your community?
Speaker1: [00:04:11] And the solution had a sweet bonus.
Speaker3: [00:04:14] What happens is once [00:04:15] you take noise out of the equation, you connect with the artist way better. And if you want to have a conversation with your friends, you just take the headphones off and connect directly with them without people shouting over you. It's wonderful.
Speaker2: [00:04:27] What is something that people don't know about your origin [00:04:30] story?
Speaker3: [00:04:30] John Miles, my former partner who left the company about a year and a half ago, and just how deep a friendship and relationship we have. We created this. We were 50 50 partners and everything. And so it created this dialectic where we had [00:04:45] to essentially proof and prove every one of our ideas with one another and balance all of our ideas one another. And it could be an immensely frustrating. But through conflict, we find the truth right through this dialectic process. You get to the truth [00:05:00] of things,
Speaker2: [00:05:01] And I love how you come to hush as a musician first. Would you say that that helped your company?
Speaker3: [00:05:08] Actually, before I was a musician, I was a I was a fan, you know, it was a jam band kit. There's so much of the music business, [00:05:15] it's more business than music and I've tried really hard. And by the way, it's not just me, it was an incredible team. This family of people that all have that same perspective never lose sight of the fact that that [00:05:30] it is about music and it is about this incredible experience that people should be having. If you lose sight of that and you're worried about the numbers, then you're probably headed for disaster because people have tons of choices now. We're [00:05:45] just music fans that happen to run a production company.
Speaker2: [00:05:48] The DJs have to perform and play a little differently in the hush setting. And if so, do you sort of show them the ropes or maybe some tricks to connect better with the audience? [00:06:00]
Speaker3: [00:06:00] It's a different way to fly. It's a different way to perform, and it rewards different skill sets as a performer. Most of the folks who've played for us before have played a silent disco before. The ones who don't. First [00:06:15] thing I show them is how to use two sets of headphones on their head so they have a monitor. The first silent disco in the U.S. When I at Bonnaroo, there were no monitors and I didn't even know how to do that, so it was extremely tricky. That's the first [00:06:30] thing I showed them how to do, and at first, typically they're like, Oh my, this is. And then they play a couple of tracks and their muscle memory and their skill sets take over and it's not hard. But from a programming standpoint, from a theme [00:06:45] and genre and set building standpoint, it does reward a different approach. So when you think about a sound system show you go to a club and go listen to deep house or minimal where the subs are [00:07:00] such a big part of the experience dubstep right trap. It's all about waiting for that big bassline to come in and and massage your chakras with waves of of bass, right? Well, you don't have that in silent disco. So how are you going to [00:07:15] give people that sort of cathartic release experience? You can do similar things with silent disco because people are actually listening. They're really listening at a hushed castle. Well, if they're really listening. What do I want to say? It allows you to play music. That's [00:07:30] a lot more evocative, conversational stuff, with a lot of sing-alongs creating spaces for people to chant or sing or shout. But that's part of what I tell them before they go on. You know, they're really [00:07:45] going to be listening to think about what you want to tell them, and don't be afraid to stretch. Don't be afraid to play that crazy track you've always wanted to play because you know they'll be listening. They're not going to be walking away.
Speaker1: [00:07:56] I've been to hundreds of concerts, but I got to be honest, I've [00:08:00] never experienced a hush one. But my friend Alex, she's a video producer who lives in New York City. She has. We met while I was working for Matador Network, where I directed commercials for brands like Subaru and Southwest Airlines. In between [00:08:15] storyboards and scheduling, we'd gush about the latest concert we just went to or the newest album we had on repeat. And one thing I know about Alex, she never leaves her apartment without
Speaker4: [00:08:26] Headphones, connect to the music and drown out [00:08:30] the commute, which can sometimes be dreary, sometimes be wonderful. But a lot of the times it's boring, and so it's a way to make it happier and a nicer experience.
Speaker1: [00:08:40] And riding the subway is when ideas for music videos
Speaker4: [00:08:42] Come to her. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let's [00:08:45] be honest, a cute guy comes on the subway and Taylor Swift's playing. All of a sudden. I'm like thinking about our whole love story now. That's one, but I used to be a dancer, so sometimes actually embarrassingly, I will be waiting for a train to come and I'll start dancing, [00:09:00] or I'll try not to. I'll try to like, just maybe like strut my walk a little bit. When you feel that good beat, you get to move your feet. Did you please tell me you just made that up? Yeah, that's
Speaker1: [00:09:13] The first time she tried [00:09:15] silent disco was with her roommate at Governor's Ball, a three day music festival in New
Speaker2: [00:09:19] York. If I was in your shoes, like walk me through the setup and bring me through the whole thing,
Speaker4: [00:09:25] Yes, we found the tent. There was like this large sign that said silent disco. But [00:09:30] of course, we would have been able to tell because you just see all these people with the same over the ear like soundproof headphones that actually are kind of cute because they have like a light up sometimes. So you see all these people dancing, but you don't hear anything. You're like, What is going [00:09:45] on? And then you see when you enter near the DJ booth, there's either racks or someone hands you a headset and explains to you how to use it. And there's like this moment of like anticipation where you just see everyone and you're like, OK, [00:10:00] what song is it? What are they listening to? And you put it on and then you're there with them. All of a sudden it makes sense. You're just. There you get it.
Speaker2: [00:10:39] What [00:10:30] does an observer hear during a silent disco?
Speaker3: [00:10:43] You hear this murmur, [00:10:45] you hear people chatting and sometimes you hear them yelling over their headphones or they take their headphones off and then sometimes because they have that false anonymity, they're saying things that shouldn't like, I wear my mushrooms, I can't find my mushrooms. So we [00:11:00] think of it as it's not a disco. It's a broadcast, right? So cast is part of the way we look at it, and it's not silent. It's hush. So. That's why we call them hush cats. And you hear the funniest stuff.
Speaker4: [00:11:14] I think it's kind [00:11:15] of great for someone who sings along to music and might not have the best voice, especially after a few drinks. That's a great aspect of it in that you can be singing along as loud as you want and not worry about someone overhearing your voice. It's kind of great because also to like if you're trying to have a conversation [00:11:30] or you really need to get someone's attention, you don't have to like, shout and like, blow your friend's eardrum off. Instead, you can just take off your headphones and be like, Oh yeah, what's up?
Speaker1: [00:11:39] In college, I took an intro course to audio engineering, where I learned mainly about terminology [00:11:45] I could never fully grasp or believe the explanation behind sound. Surely there's more wizardry at work than wavelengths vibrating in our heads, eliciting emotion. So I thought I'd asked Robbie [00:12:00] what his take was on the science of sound.
Speaker3: [00:12:03] There's a lot of different ways to look at it, but the way that seems to resonate with me the most is the idea of the physiology of immersion. We live in a world where everybody [00:12:15] is distracted, everybody's multitasking. You go out on a dance floor at the Fillmore, and maybe 20 percent of the folks at the concert are watching, actively listening and watching the band, and the other 80 percent are trying to get a drink, trying to meet a lady, [00:12:30] something else. So the idea of immersion has always been fascinating to me, including from when I was just a music fan and I used to get really self-conscious in these giant spaces of full of people and and I had [00:12:45] to train myself to just close my eyes and forget about them and just follow the music. And that helped me calm down and kind of reconnect with who I was and what I was doing the experience itself. What we are challenged with, though, is this in this age of distraction [00:13:00] from a musician's perspective, how do I maintain people's attention right from a producer's perspective? How do we make sure that people left the show and really got to hear and be at the show instead of the whole time they were distracted by [00:13:15] other people? And so we've worked really hard to find ways to build that direct connection between the artist and the people that are trying to experience and not just the artist conference speakers, folks giving lectures and whatnot, trying [00:13:30] to find a way around the age of distraction to a place of a more immersive entertainment experience. The changes in technology have given us new tools to do that. Obviously, wireless headphones being my favorite.
Speaker4: [00:13:44] You're not hearing [00:13:45] other conversations about, you know, maybe that girlfriend drama from the group next door, or even just like the obnoxious guy trying to mansplain Jack White to you. It's just the music, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker3: [00:13:58] But at the end of the day, it all comes down [00:14:00] to the listener having this place where they can just close their eyes and lose themselves in the composition. They can hear the music as it was intended. When the producer created it, some producers spent six months in a studio creating this perfect thing, and then they go to a [00:14:15] club. And what you're hearing is the sounds bouncing off walls and people are chatting and whatnot. You put those headphones on, you hear exactly what Tipper wanted you to hear, exactly what Holgate's wanted you to hear. And that is a tremendous, tremendous benefit. [00:14:30]
Speaker2: [00:14:30] When you went back to hear the music on an actual stage, were you noticing a difference like just in terms of how you just interact with music differently, like just festival versus headphones?
Speaker4: [00:14:43] It's two different experiences, [00:14:45] to be honest, like it depends on what you're looking for. I mean, I think they're both fully encapsulating, but I think in one way and it's around music. But I think with headphones, that's just music and like, you know, [00:15:00] dancing, which is like, you can do like, that's the thing. I think for me is like, I'm a Big Dancer. So being able to like move and groove and having my space to do so is a big component for me. And I think that's kind of special, and I do think that the sound quality is certainly better. There's [00:15:15] something also about seeing like a live performance. You don't go for the sound quality, I think is really what it is. It's more of like connecting with the fans and the community and the artist. We came across
Speaker2: [00:15:27] An interesting study that suggested that people [00:15:30] who listen to music on headphones move more than those listening through speakers. What are your observations in? A field or on the dance floor on that study.
Speaker3: [00:15:41] So I like to think about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. [00:15:45] Douglas Adams, there was that creature that felt that if he couldn't see you, you can see him. That's how a lot of people act when they put on the headphones. It gives you a sense of false anonymity. You have the headphones on, so you are free. You feel like, especially [00:16:00] if you close your eyes, you're free to let yourself go. You don't see that in front of the stages. In the stages, you know, maybe 10 percent of the people are fully engaged, and it's the same thing in the conference space where you don't hear people coughing [00:16:15] or shuffling out of the room, you're getting one hundred percent of what the presenter is trying to convey. And the presenters are thrilled when they come offstage because everybody's really listening.
Speaker1: [00:16:27] And Alex can agree.
Speaker4: [00:16:28] I think that there is an aspect [00:16:30] of putting on the headphones and feeling like you're back in your own room dancing, and I think it's really does go to like that feeling that comfort in a way where it's feeling isolated, but in a [00:16:45] group. So I think it's the comfort of having your own zone and your own space, but still being able to connect with those around you
Speaker2: [00:16:52] And the headphones that use it hush. What brand is that?
Speaker3: [00:16:56] So what we use is essentially what's called an OEM, [00:17:00] and then you can customize them however you need them and use them. So two things that we have that nobody else in the states have. We have a conference headphone that we partnered with Silent Disco King and Silent Conference in the UK to bring over to the states. And the beauty [00:17:15] of that one is that we can do up to 20 channels at a time
Speaker2: [00:17:18] When you have multiple channels like that. And the tech side, how are you not yet trained wrecking? How are you not interfering with other channels like what is sort of the the basics there? [00:17:30]
Speaker3: [00:17:30] So the beauty of silent disco, we get asked a lot Oh, do we need wi fi or is this Bluetooth and the beauty of silent disco? It's it's based on hundred year old technology. It's just radio. There's this thing called inner modulation. Basically, the more [00:17:45] frequencies you have, the more ripples they create in a pond and they interact just like ripples in a pond to where three ripples could create twenty four ripples. What the conference business forced us to do is to get the kind of training [00:18:00] and resources that big time conference frequency coordinators have. Sometimes our conference will be like 200 wireless mics at a festival. There might be one hundred. All those frequencies have to work together. Then you have the wi fi and then you have [00:18:15] the RFID people. And so those frequency coordinators who are essentially geniuses that use very powerful computer programs to analyze. We don't have maybe a fraction of those guys knowledge, but we have enough to pull off what we're trying to do.
Speaker2: [00:18:29] It goes [00:18:30] back to like, it's all invisible, you know, like when something goes down to like, troubleshoot, sometimes, you know, like that has to be frustrating.
Speaker3: [00:18:39] Ninety five percent of the time you turn it on at works, it's the other five percent that you earn your paycheck. One great [00:18:45] story was when we did lightning in a bottle back, and I want to say twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen when they're still in San Diego. And we built this big, beautiful stage and we had everything set up and then we turned it on and it was just like, Look, what's going [00:19:00] on? And we're, you know, looking around and they put the cell phone repeater tower right behind our stage and we went to Jesse and Deedee and the promoters with like, Hey, this isn't going to happen. And I said, Well, what do you need? And I said, we need [00:19:15] a forklift and they're like a forklift with that. What's that going to do? We went and got a forklift and we picked up our stage and we basically drove it all the way to the other side of the festival grounds, put it down and had a silent disco there, far away from the cell phone [00:19:30] cow. Sometimes the solution is science, and sometimes it's just muscle.
Speaker2: [00:19:36] So pandemic hits. I'm sure you had a lot of festivals booked for spring. Summer. Pandemic Hammer comes down [00:19:45] on all of us. How did it affect you and your team?
Speaker3: [00:19:48] Oh, it was. It was an ass kicker. You know, we're in the events industry. If there is no events, there are no industry. But for us, the big kicker was was the conferences because it pays the bills for us. A lot of ways [00:20:00] the corporate business isn't sexy, but it really was a bigger driver of us being able to pay salaries and health care and the things that our little family needed. And it all went away. Just like that. Everything shut down in March, and we're looking at [00:20:15] all of a sudden zero revenue. How are we going to do this? We looked into the abyss, you know, OK, what does bankruptcy look like? What is because there was no real thought of any public relief or anything like that? And then we decided that [00:20:30] we were going to fight. And I think this is really important. Like we made it. We just said we're. We're going down fighting, we're going to find ways to do events. We're going to find ways to survive. We're going to find ways to be of service to our community. [00:20:45] We started working with one, a small capacity with a fitness client. You probably know SoulCycle, and we ended up doing a ton of work for them at dozens of locations around the country to where they would just move their studios outside, spread out [00:21:00] the bikes, put on the headphones so they don't have to worry about sound bleed and.
Speaker3: [00:21:03] And it was tremendous. We also did some driving concerts because we know radio because we're so good at learning about frequencies and big picture broadcast. [00:21:15] Well, why can't we be of service to all these producers who are putting on driving concerts? So we got our hands on some extremely high end FM gear and some low end FM gear for little little events? And then we decided to put on some of our own in [00:21:30] Burlingame by San Francisco airport. We did a 12 show run over three weeks. We had Bert Chrysler and Diplo and Mark Rabiei and some live bands, and just this amazing one month crazy crazy [00:21:45] concert series. We built a venue from scratch and learn how to do all of it. We worked with the hotbox guys to do a lot of cool stuff and the drive in space and a lot of other spaces, and it was enormous success, enormously successful
Speaker2: [00:21:58] As the CEO, constantly [00:22:00] forward thinking visionary of the company. Where do you want to take hush in the next two, three, four years?
Speaker3: [00:22:08] The next step is going to be finding ways to expand that family and so [00:22:15] that we can capitalize on all these new opportunities. We're going to have great new tech. We have a bleeding edge advantage in terms of the headphones we have for the conference space for many years are sound and conference partnership. Now we'll do so with our concert [00:22:30] space. Is that going to matter? How do we use them? How do we help promoters and producers utilize this new tech to be really, really creative, right? We have two different projects we're working on that we hope will [00:22:45] redefine what these headphones are capable of doing and then watching as everybody tries to copy it. And hopefully some of them, some of them hire us, right? The hardware is there. It's what do you do with it? How do you create a production commensurate [00:23:00] with the new tech? Everybody's still tied to that original Bonnaroo paradigm, which was one DJ in a tent. Or at very least, you might get three. What we're trying to allow for is real creativity amongst producers so [00:23:15] they can start thinking about their spaces differently. We don't need to have this all around one stage. We could have, for instance, every single stage at the festival could be broadcast and you could walk around from place to place to place and you [00:23:30] could listen on the sound system. Or you could put your headphones on and maybe go sit over there in the eating area and listen to that stage over there or listen to that stage over there. These sort of things are possible with this new tech in a way that they haven't [00:23:45] been. But we've got some ideas for some stuff for next summer that should hopefully blow some people's minds.
Speaker1: [00:23:53] The key to creating new musical opportunities will be their brand new headphones called Hush Glow, which emanate eight different [00:24:00] colors and have up to 12 channels.
Speaker2: [00:24:02] So when those headphones come in, are you doing quality control? Like, are you the first person to
Speaker4: [00:24:08] Try him out?
Speaker3: [00:24:09] Every new headphone, we have to test it out and work with it and see how it's not just how they sound [00:24:15] and how how they work at a show. It's how they pack, how they charge, how they ship. We have to work out all of those new aspects. A lot of people can buy headphones or have headphones, but running a proper production [00:24:30] with them is a whole nother skill set that's taken us years of bad mistakes, learning from bad mistakes to get good at. And so we have a new toy to play with. But we're going to we're going to be really careful how we roll it out. The first [00:24:45] place will be at the iHeart New Year's event in San Francisco will be the first place. We're using big numbers and then we have some pretty big festival bookings for next year that we're pretty excited about.
Speaker2: [00:24:57] Do you think a hush concert is a more memorable [00:25:00] experience?
Speaker3: [00:25:01] You know, it's always about creating the perfect set for the perfect moment. I called it electric nostalgia. Look, I would never purport that what we do is better in some ways what somebody else does that is in [00:25:15] the eye. That's a subjective judgment, and it's in the eye of the beholder. This is different, and it gives you different types of cathartic experiences. You know, the beauty of it. We're just another amazing option.
Speaker1: [00:25:30] There [00:25:30] are so many people to thank for inventing modern headphones, which were first developed during World War Two for Inter Communications. Today, Hush is still using them as a way to communicate between you and the music and also between you and happy humans [00:25:45] orbiting around you all listening to the same music with you. Much like what DJ Celeste clear from season two, episode five is doing with virtual reality. Hush is showing us that the industry is progressing, and it's offering us a new way to connect with music. [00:26:00] But on a new plain is this unity through invisibility, like a soundtrack of concert culture is constantly undulating, and even though I'll be forever stumped by the science and physics of sound, it's probably best that I just shut up and [00:26:15] dance already. Hunter Kast is a production of Good Tico Studios based in Ellsworth, Maine, created and produced [00:26:30] by yours, truly. My co-writer on this episode is Heidi Stan Drew. Our editor and engineer is Peter MacGill. Special thanks to Robbie Cole, a.k.a. DJ Motion Potion, for sharing his music from cracking snack and gathering of the five DJ sets, and to Brooke Fogel [00:26:45] and Bauer's PR for setting up this cool interview. Subscribe to concert cast wherever you listen to podcasts and find us online at Concert Cast Live. And thank you to everyone for listening. I'll see you on the dance floor.