Worcester’s Very Own Music Moguls

By Lauren K. Hoyt

October 2005 –

Dan Hartwell has come a long way from playing in cardboard
refrigerator boxes in his backyard. The local music promoter, best known
for his Locobazooka! festival that draws tens of thousands of young people
to the Worcester area every September, has always had an intense creative
energy.

Growing up, Hartwell and his brothers and sister designed carnivals for
the neighborhood kids.
“We used to go down to the refrigerator store and take the boxes,
and take them to our backyard and put them all together and put holes
in them,” he said. “We’d put our faces in the boxes
and call it a spook house. We’d put signs up all over the neighborhood,
and charge ten cents for entrance. From there we all went on to be involved
[in the entertainment industry].”

Hartwell’s Locobazooka! brainchild was born around the time that
the Lollapalooza festival was formed in 1991. “Since he was the
McDonald’s of festivals, I wanted to be the Burger King,”
Hartwell said. “[Locobazooka! was designed] on the premise of having
some local bands playing with regional and national bands, so that local
bands could get more exposure than the normally would.”

Hartwell, who spent years playing in various local bands and later played
with the likes of Billy Idol and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, appreciates that
his festival gives local bands a chance to make it to the big time. “Playing
in [my own] bands, I never got the opportunity to play in front of 10-20,000
people,” he said. “I can make that dream a reality for the
growing bands in Worcester today. Locabazooka is known as being a springboard
for local bands.”

Jim Brindisi came at the music industry from a rather
different angle. An engineer for HewlettPackard, Brindisi was always a
music lover; as a fan, he was upset that some of his favorite bands were
not getting the recognition they deserved when they came into town.

“I started Mass Exposure Group to help out [bands like Sister Hazel],
to get them more exposure when they came to Worcester, ” Brindisi
said. “I knew that [my position at HP] wasn’t going to last
forever, so I started doing something I enjoy.”

Mass Exposure Group currently does public relations work for a number
of local and national acts ~ Brindisi has worked with everyone from Craig
and Chris Reddy locally to Pat McGee and Gavin DeGraw on the national
level. Brindisi also manages the local band OSB.

Soon after starting the company, Brindisi approached executives at Fox
and crafted an arrangement where the station would allow bands to play
two months before their scheduled
local shows. That generated interest and helped grow the band’s
local fan base. Brindisi
now uses this arrangement for smaller, local bands, hoping they will also
begin to enjoy increased recognition.

While his two-job schedule was hard on his family (Brindisi is married
with four kids and a nephew of whom he has custody), Brindisi rarely regrets
working in the music industry. He finds it fulfilling to see the Worcester
music scene liven up and expand. While he has enjoyed helping local bands
get noticed on Fox, something he does free of charge, he will only feel
successful from an artistic management perspective when OSB is signed
by a major label.

Is that milestone on the horizon? “Sony is very interested in them
right now,” he said. “We went to play for them, and they said
they’d stay for a few songs. They ended up staying for a whole set
and talking to us afterwards.”

Brindisi knows that the perks of being involved in music don’t always
outnumber the long, grueling hours. Last summer while on vacation at Salisbury
Beach, he spent six hours a day in a narrow hallway on the roadside ~
the only place he had reception on his cell phone. He was trying to line
up a national act for an upcoming festival and had to finalize the deal
that week. “I sealed the deal, but the next day it rained. My family
is still mad about it,” he said.

It is obvious that Brindisi, like Hartwell, loves working in the music
industry. He has not made a cent from helping promote local band but is
happy nurturing the Mass Exposure Group while he still has a full-time
position at HP. He is also involved in a number of music charity events
like the show he is putting together on October 22 to benefit a local
toddler with leukemia, or like his work on the “Jammin’ for the
Jimmy Fund” fundraiser, scheduled for spring 2006.

Hartwell,
too, is a promoter with a social conscience. While his reign as Locabazooka
king has not been without trial, he would never want to give it up. One
very special experience in particular awakened him to the power of his
festival and to his responsibility to remain sensitive to the condition
of the world.

In 2001, Locabazooka had been scheduled for five days after the terrorist
attacks of September 11th. Most of the national acts cancelled their stop
at the festival, all airlines were grounded, and people were terrified
to go into crowds. Unsure of what to do, Hartwell and his team sent out
an e-mail to friends of Locabazooka, asking if they wanted to hold the
festival.

“The result was a resounding yes,” Hartwell said. “17,000
kids showed up to the show carrying American flags and paraded around
with them for hours. That year we coined the phrase, ‘United We
Rock.’ The kids spoke loud and clear.”

These two music promoters, different in style, history, and audience,
share a passion and vision that have, and will continue to, put Worcester
area music, music festivals, and musicians on the map.