Agent finds talent for private affairs

Public Record, The, Aug 31, 2004 by Kleinschmidt, Janice

The cornerstone of Ray Gosselin's company is "They will always remember the entertainment."

Gosselin, who owns a talent booking agency in Palm Desert called Epic Entertainment, sometimes uses this philosophy to coach clients when they bud,get an event. Whether it's for impressing clients, rewarding sales teams or raising money for a worthy cause, the quality of the entertainment can make or break an event.

Gosselin recently returned from a meeting with the University of Pittsburgh, which is holding a fundraiser for its Hillman Cancer Center and spending several hundred thousand dollars for name entertainment. The university, Gosselin says, recognizes a relationship between the amount it spends for the event and the amount guests will donate.

Epic also works on a much smaller scale, providing everything from piano players to show bands and specialty acts. Seventy percent of its business revolves around local events, whether for a local group or company or for a corporate group coming to the desert for a meeting or convention. The other 30 percent involves booking name talent on a national and international basis. All its bookings are for private affairs.

"Our first event was in March 1997 on a cruise ship with Paul Anka in the south of France," Gosselin says. "That began the ball rolling on the name entertainment." Since then, he has booked Al Jarreau in a castle in Ireland, Nando Parrado (survivor of a plane crash in the Andes) in the Dominican Republic, and Kenny Loggins in Rome for cruise ship passengers.

"I have always been involved in music," Gosselin says of his career path. "I come from an Italian background; the accordion was the instrument of choice."

Gosselin, who grew up in Connecticut and Maine, became a radio disc jockey in 1976. After moving to San Diego, he started a small mobile DJ company and worked numerous weddings, averaging 180 to 200 events a year. He also hosted a local cable show called This Week at the Beach and came to the Coachella Valley to work as a disc jockey at corporate events.

After moving to the desert, Gosselin went to work for Sun Presentations in Palm Springs. Epic Entertainment was born in the winter of 1996 when that company folded and Gosselin saw an opportunity "to match talent with corporate clients." He and a partner, working out of a garage, obtained a license from the state of California to act as a booking agent. The license, he explains, protects clients from liability risk.

Gosselin (now sole owner of Epic Entertainment) employs four individuals, three who focus on local events and one who helps him with national and international bookings. He participates in industry trade shows across the United States, but Epic's business was built largely on reputation and relationships. The company works hand-in-hand with the Palm Springs Desert Resorts Convention and Visitors Authority, meeting planners, destination management companies, hotels, country clubs and corporations.

Epic's impressive client list includes communications companies such as AT&T, MCI and Sprint; entertainment companies such as A&E Network, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Brothers; pharmaceutical companies such as Searle, Parke Davis and BristolMyers; financial institutions such as Citicorp, American Express and Mellon Bank; and industry giants such as IBM, Oracle, and Nestle and Oracle.

On a weekly basis, Epic receives 10 to 20 submissions a week from local and regional artists hoping to get their names in the agency's database and on its Web site (www.epic1.com).

If clients request a specific performer not already in the database, Epic uses its relationships with its artists to track them down. Many musicians play in more than one band, Gosselin explains, creating a network that serves as a valuable resource. As for name talent, relationships with agents is crucial.

"If they feel confident in your ability to produce a class-act show for their talent, then they are going to work with you," Gosselin says, His company not only finds performers, but also negotiates the price and riders. "Name acts all come with riders," he says. Technical riders deal with sound, lighting and other equipment. Personal riders deal primarily with accommodations and food.

"You hear the stories of the green Hams,'' Gosselin says, referring to reportedly outrageous demands by celebrities. "A lot of that is over-exaggerated. Most want a nice place to stay and to eat like you or I would on the road for a month."

Riders, however, can be a couple hundred pages or more in length, "To the novice, that looks intimidating and they will look at that and try to do everything on there that it says. In reality, a lot of those things are put together for a concert tour," Gosselin says, as opposed to "one-off" events. "A lot of that stuff is necessary, but a portion is just icing on the cake. We actually save clients more money than they ever imagined because we cut back on what's unnecessary."

Gosselin doesn't consider his work difficult. "First and foremost, what we do is entertain, which is always fun. The way we operate is on a very level-headed situation. We work with people who are very professional in what they do." He includes in that description not only the talent and their agents, but also stage, sound and lighting crews. "By working with those individuals, they allow you to produce an incredibly flawless event," Gosselin says.