Haley McCollister

President, MTG Nashville // Messina Touring Group

Haley McCollister has had a busy spring: Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, two of the flagship artists promoted by AEG Presents affiliate Messina Touring Group, launched stadium tours just seven weeks apart. McCollister, president of Messina’s Nashville office, joined Swift on the road for the opening weeks of her blockbuster The Eras Tour, which began March 17 — as she also readied the May 6 kickoff of the North American leg of Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour.

“The past few weeks have been… wild,” says McCollister, 35, exhaling deeply as she anticipates hopscotching between the two runs. Yet she also points out that because she’s been through this exact daunting scenario before — when Sheeran and Swift had concurrent stadium treks in summer 2018 and finished at Nos. 1 and 2 on that year’s Top 25 Tours tally, respectively, with a combined gross of over $740 million, according to Billboard Boxscore — she feels more prepared for the mega-selling madness. “Every tour is different, every artist is different,” she says, “but knowing how much time management and advanced preparation is needed? That’s really where the experience has played in for me.”

For McCollister, who was promoted to her current role last August, professional longevity has eased the process of setting up the biggest stages in live music. After graduating from Clemson University in 2010, McCollister moved to Texas as a new Messina hire — helping to handle ticket requests for Swift’s 2011 arena tour — and spent five years in Houston before moving to Nashville in 2015 to build up the company’s Music City office. McCollister has only ever worked for founder and CEO Louis Messina and his company, and admits that growing from a college grad to a president role at the same place over the course of 12 years is an industry rarity. “With Louis, he would always say, ‘You’re in charge of your own destiny. What is it you want? I’ll give you the resources to go after it,’ ” McCollister recalls. “And instead of just saying that, he really did it.”

_{From left: McCollister, Sheeran, Messina and MTG’s Keena Cheatham.}

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As McCollister kept asking for more responsibilities and taking on more tours, she embraced the quality-over-quantity deal structures of Messina Touring Group, whose heavyweight touring roster also includes George Strait, The Lumineers, Kenny Chesney and Eric Church. By not spreading itself too thin, Messina Touring Group has long promoted VIP artists with long-term goals — and since her promotion, McCollister has been tasked with more overarching growth initiatives for that clientele. “We only work with so many artists, we keep the teams we have on these tours relatively consistent, and when we have conversations, we’re never talking about the next tour — we’re talking about the next 10 years,” McCollister says.

The past three years have been particularly tricky for promoters to navigate due to the pandemic. The sector experienced something of a soft relaunch in late 2021 and 2022 as COVID-19 hesitancies lingered, but now touring has fully roared back; this year, Beyoncé, Metallica, Morgan Wallen and more will pass through the same venues as Swift and Sheeran. “I cannot believe how many stadium tours there are,” McCollister says. “It’s insane to me that we’re in a time where this many artists are headlining 50,000-plus [capacity] venues.” While the stadium circuit might be less crowded in 2024 and beyond, McCollister predicts a trickle-down effect to the festival market, which she believes has been affected by the myriad of headliners routing their own tours this year. “Once everybody gets their own stadium headlining shows done, that’s when I think we’ll see new festivals pop up.”

_Swift

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While McCollister is looking forward to a busy summer full of stadium singalongs and strategy sessions, she’s also steeling herself for more external conversations about the live industry’s hot-button issue: ticketing. The mid-November timing of Ticketmaster’s Eras Tour presale fiasco — where the platform’s online infrastructure couldn’t handle the enormous ticket demand and bots, an experience which Swift described as “excruciating” in a letter to fans — resulted in McCollister fielding questions about concert tickets from family members at Thanksgiving.

Ultimately, McCollister believes the current attention on ticketing issues will help push the live industry forward — and she’s excited about the possibility of real progress soon. “It’s a headache now, because it’s what’s loud in terms of the feedback that artists are getting, but it’s something that their fans have been dealing with for [a while],” she says. “So I feel like, while the willingness to pay attention and see what we can do about this is not completely new, there’s more sincerity behind making an effort.” —JASON LIPSHUTZ

Mari Davies

Vp of talent and booking // Live Nation Urban

In junior high school, Mari Davies would use her father’s department store credit card to buy concert tickets from the store’s Ticketmaster kiosk — and then sell them to friends for a minimal markup.

“It was just a couple of bucks,” Davies, 36, says with a laugh. “And my dad was aware. In hindsight, I’m like, ‘Oh, shit. I was making money off of concerts since I was a kid.’ ”

Now, the Los Angeles native and graduate of St. John’s University in Queens (where J. Cole was a classmate) has come full circle, joining Live Nation Urban last year as vp of talent and booking. Playing an integral role in the company’s festival curation, Davies helms a slate that includes LNU’s partnership with the Washington, D.C.-based Broccoli City Music Festival (Brent Faiyaz, Jazmine Sullivan and Lil Uzi Vert will headline 2023’s 10th anniversary); Philadelphia’s Roots Picnic (topped this year by Ms. Lauryn Hill and Diddy & The Roots); Park Jams, a Central Park concert of hip-hop legends celebrating Juneteenth; and Atlanta’s ONE Musicfest.

Upon joining LNU, Davies formally established its new touring department “to build our hard-ticket business,” putting on emerging African artist Rema’s club run in 2022; LNU’s 2023 tours include Ari Lennox, Jill Scott, dvsn, Davido and LL COOL J’s first arena trek in 30 years. She’s also especially proud of curating and marketing Mary J. Blige and Pepsi’s inaugural Strength of a Woman Festival and Summit on Mother’s Day weekend in 2022 featuring Chaka Khan, City Girls and Blige herself; the fest returned to Atlanta May 11-14, planned again by the all-female team Davies calls a “special sisterhood.”

Prior to LNU, Davies spent 10 years as an ICM agent, representing R&B/hip-hop clients such as Kelly Rowland, Kodak Black, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Davido and Teyana Taylor. At the agency, she was also a founding member of Diversify ICM and was part of the initial class of mentors for Next Gem Femme, the mentorship program affiliated with Live Nation joint venture Femme It Forward.

When Davies transitioned to LNU, she says she was “seeing the shift in trends. A lot of artists were doing tour deals direct, whether with Live Nation or AEG.” Today, drawing on relationships forged at ICM, she approaches her job “almost like a hybrid agent,” she explains. “Managers still call me and, of course, I loop in the agents. I’m able to connect with all of them because I came from a management and agency background.”

Her vision moving forward “is all about scale.” That means strategically building out LNU’s touring and festival divisions while identifying new partnerships and properties. Davies, whose late mother was from Cameroon, also wants to expand further into gospel/inspirational and African music. And the LNU executive continues to seek ways to increase diversity in the live sector.

“For me, it’s important to hire, work with and represent all people of color,” says Davies. “Especially women, because I haven’t seen enough change, enough new faces or enough women being retained in positions within the live touring and agency space.” —GAIL MITCHELL

Justin “Meezy” Williams

Founder/manager // Meezy Entertainment

Before Justin “Meezy” Williams became 21 Savage’s manager in 2015, he was a well-known party promoter in Atlanta. “Everybody in Atlanta knew me,” he recalls. “I knew Future before he blew up. I knew Migos before they blew up. I knew 2 Chainz as Tity Boi, and I threw all the parties.” But despite his impressive Rolodex, his future wasn’t clear until he professionally connected with Savage.

“I’ve known him since he was 12. We grew up on the same side [of town],” says the 34-year-old owner of Meezy Entertainment and president of Savage’s imprint, Slaughter Gang. “When I was in high school, he used to be on the street when I walked home from school. I just had a good reputation as a party promoter, and that’s what linked us doing this together. It made sense. He had the real shit, and I had the club shit.”

Since Williams partnered with Savage, now 30, the formidable rapper has notched 14 Hot 100 top 10 singles, including two No. 1s, and three Billboard 200 chart-toppers, including last November’s Her Loss, a collaborative project with Drake. But while Williams had heard rumblings that the duo, whose previous collaborations included the 2022 Hot 100 No. 1 song “Jimmy Cooks,” were working on more music together, he didn’t press the “very private” Savage for details.

“I heard pieces, like the skeleton of ‘Rich Flex,’ ” he recalls. “I knew where it was going, but I never heard the whole album until it came out. We let them do what they needed to do.” Williams worked with Drake’s longtime manager, Future the Prince, on a rollout that included spoof appearances on NPR’s Tiny Desk and The Howard Stern Show.

Williams looks forward to seeing Savage and Drake together this summer when their It’s All a Blur Tour plays arenas in major U.S. markets, including seven New York shows in July. Noting that they’re “still building out creative about how [the stage setup is] going to look,” Williams is confident that now is the perfect time for Drake and Savage to tour together. “In anybody’s imagination, they would’ve wanted this tour,” he says. “Sometimes, give the people what they want.”

But he’s clear-eyed about the competition Savage faces in this year’s crowded concert market and beyond. “You have to give them an experience,” Williams adds. “You have to be a showman at this point or have some personality that people gravitate to. You can’t just lean on these shows. Your business has to be right.”

Through Meezy Entertainment and Slaughter Gang, Williams — who describes himself as part of “this new generation of managers; we do everything” — is applying lessons learned from Savage’s success to other clients. “[We’re] just really building up the artists that we have,” he says, referencing 21 Lil Harold, SG Tip and producer Kid Hazel. “Really establishing the company outside of you knowing the name because of 21 Savage and really getting hands-on feeling like we are creating something.” —CARL LAMARRE

Christian Coffey

Tour director // Coffey Black

Every year, Killer Mike is one of the first people who calls Christian Coffey to wish him a happy birthday.

“We all have a text chat that’s, you know, talking shit to each other like brothers,” says Coffey, 37, of Mike and his Run the Jewels partner, El-P. “I was at El-P’s wedding, and I know all Mike’s kids.”

For the last eight years, anyone who has been to a Run the Jewels show has witnessed Coffey’s work in action — and the reason why he has built such a trusting relationship with the hip-hop duo, among other high-profile clients. Coffey runs Coffey Black, a five-person company that provides comprehensive touring services to help artists execute their visions on the road. This spring, he was tasked with bringing Frank Ocean’s elaborate vision to life as set producer for the star’s headlining Coachella performance, which included extensive, last-minute production modifications (such as eliminating an onstage ice rink) after the artist sustained an ankle injury in the days leading up to the show. (Ocean canceled his second-weekend Coachella set.) While Coffey has performed the traditional tour manager role (ensuring logistics for band and crew run smoothly) for acts such as Run the Jewels, OK Go and Miike Snow previously, his current work as a tour director is much broader.

“A Monotone [Inc.] or a Red Light [Management] has people overseeing a touring department,” he explains. “With a lot of independent managers or mid-level managers — companies that may not have it — I effectively started working to make myself and my company their touring department.”

Early in tour planning, artists and their teams enlist Coffey Black to assist in virtually every aspect of hitting the road. Budgeting, routing, logistical planning, crew hiring, vendor contracting, business management and account reconciliation are among the components Coffey collaborates on with managers, agents, lawyers and other members of artists’ teams, and recent clients include A$AP Rocky, Childish Gambino, Clairo and Dermot Kennedy. When touring resumed in 2021, Coffey began working with pgLang’s roster, including Kendrick Lamar, whom he helped navigate lingering COVID-19 protocols and labor shortages for a successful 2022 world tour, along with running point for the rapper’s major televised appearances on Saturday Night Live and the Super Bowl halftime show.

“One of the things that I tell every client whenever I meet with them is, ultimately, my job is to work to bring your creative vision to life so that you just have to worry about the actual creative,” Coffey says. “The how-it-gets-done is what we handle.” —ERIC RENNER BROWN