It was a night in late 1984 when Jonathan Shank, a younger child from a suburb of Philadelphia, walked right into a stadium along with his household in tow, sat down in his assigned seat and skilled his very first stay live performance, an occasion that may dramatically affect the course of his life. On stage that night time was The Jackson 5, performing one cease on their 55-city Victory Tour.
Shank was instantly in awe.
“There was this one second throughout the present the place Michael Jackson got here and sat by the sting of the stage,” Shank says. “The group went actually, actually loopy.”
Though he couldn’t articulate it as a child, Shank was deeply impacted by the expertise of being in the identical room with 1000’s of individuals, all having fun with stay music. The vitality was electrical and infectious.
That have propelled Shank, CEO of artist administration and manufacturing firm Terrapin Station Leisure, to a profession centered on creating experiences identical to this for audiences around the globe.
Shank’s dad and mom observed their son’s curiosity, and for a few years after The Jackson 5 live performance, the household would spend summers on the Jersey Shore, taking Shank to see teams like Chicago and Corridor & Oates in close by Atlantic Metropolis. By the point he hit his teenagers, Shank was venturing out to reveals on his personal, favoring bands of the time like Milli Vanilli, INXS and U2.
Shank attended Tulane College in New Orleans, the place he majored in sociology however all the time regarded for fascinating music courses. (The college didn’t have business-related music courses.) When he discovered a course referred to as “The Historical past of Jazz,” he signed up instantly and began going to the professor’s workplace hours, telling the trainer he needed to do one thing within the music enterprise. An internship for credit score was recommended, and inside weeks, Shank was knocking on the doorways of the Home of Blues New Orleans.
“It was February 1994, and the Home of Blues had actually simply opened,” he remembers. “I turned up and requested for an internship, they usually didn’t even have an internship program but. I turned an assistant to the assistant.”
It was a formative expertise. Shank spent his time organizing artist photographs and bios and taping present flyers to phone poles all around the metropolis. The expertise launched him to all kinds of business luminaries, from Bob Monroe and Bob Dylan to Dr. John and Allen Toussaint. From there, he interned for a file producer who inspired him to maneuver to Los Angeles to pursue a profession within the music enterprise.
Lower than 4 months after strolling throughout Tulane’s commencement stage, Shank was headed West.
Reducing his tooth within the Metropolis of Angels
It was the mid ’90s when Shank landed in LA. He was hungry to land a job in music, producing or aiding. He would take no matter he may get, however jobs had been onerous to return by. On the time, stay music wasn’t an enormous market. As an alternative, cash was in promoting information.
“I got here out pondering I used to be going to get a job at a file label, however what I discovered was that the strains had been very, very lengthy for these jobs,” Shank remembers.
Undiscouraged, he labored odd jobs and developed friendships with anybody he may discover within the enterprise. Then, in late 1997, he landed an assistant function at a boutique music company. Shank was promoted to agent by the tip of his first 12 months, and his profession took off. The enterprise was serving to acts like The Marshall Tucker Band and Jefferson Starship tour across the nation. He labored with the residing members of The Doorways and a bunch that performed jazz interpretations of Grateful Lifeless songs. And whereas many of those teams had been favored by followers older than Shank, he had grown up with such a various curiosity in music genres that he match proper in.
“I used to be a really younger one that was capable of kind relationships with some older legacy artists, and I feel they simply acquired a kick out of the truth that I knew their music, knew what I used to be speaking about,” he says. “It confirmed them that possibly there was a glimmer of sunshine, that their music was going to final for a really very long time… that there can be generations of those that got here even after me that may be having fun with their music, consuming their movies, watching their reveals.”
Actually, Shank’s perspective was revolutionary for the time as a result of, within the mid-to-late ’90s, the music business was centered on pop acts like ’N Sync and Backstreet Boys—not legacy artists like Bob Dylan and the Grateful Lifeless.
“There was nothing glamorous about what I used to be doing on the time,” Shank remembers. “It was simply grinding. However I liked it a lot as a result of I actually related with these artists. And it taught me all about touring and tips on how to strategically put artists out on the street.
“It actually turned a theme in my profession of working in underappreciated and underserved areas. If there’s a core viewers there, even when it’s an viewers that was there beforehand, you possibly can all the time discover a strategy to reignite that viewers, to interact that viewers, to seek out them once more.”
Embracing contemporary concepts
Shank’s profession blossomed from there. By the early 2000s he was shifting into day-to-day administration for artists throughout genres—from LFO to Isaac Hayes to the band Conflict. He was discovering himself in rooms with a few of the strongest folks within the enterprise, organizing excursions with megastars and lining up acts for main music festivals across the nation.
Quickly, he was working with Mickey Hart, a former drummer for the Grateful Lifeless. Shank helped join Hart with performers to start out a band and the relationships blossomed. The 2 are near today. (“He texted me this morning, truly,” Shank quips.)
Through the years, Shank expanded his attain to stars like Victoria Justice who had been showing on Nickelodeon. Round that point, there was a present on the identical community referred to as “The Recent Beat Band,” and Shank proposed the thought of manufacturing in-person occasions for the band. He got here on as an government producer, and the present—a nod to his unorthodox concepts—was a large success. From there, he labored to carry Peppa Pig to stay audiences—once more, an infinite win.
Shank has carried out these reveals along with his firm Terrapin Station Leisure, which as we speak is wildly profitable. For the previous few years, he’s labored to carry the Disney Jr. franchise stay on tour, and this 12 months, audiences throughout the Center East, Southeast Asia and the UK are ready to absorb a bodily present.
“Terrapin was shaped out of the necessity to create a nontraditional leisure firm that might propel all of those manufacturers and all of this content material,” he says. “What I discover is that, when you have got one venture that goes nicely, folks can say, ‘Effectively, possibly you bought fortunate.’ However when you have got two, you begin to present a mannequin, and also you begin to present the way you’re constructing success on high of what you’ve beforehand carried out.”
Picture by Em Walis. This text initially appeared within the Could/June 2025 problem of SUCCESS journal.
