Today we’d like to introduce you to Dave Calzaretta.
Dave, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in Northbrook, IL. My Dad was a singer in the 1950’s in a group called the Highlights. They had a record deal with Bally Records and had a song called “City of Angels” that was #18 on the Billboard Charts and #3 in Chicago while Elvis Presley had the #1 and #2 songs. My Dad’s group broke up shortly thereafter and he went on to a successful career in Human Resources in a Fortune 500 company. I followed the opposite path in that I graduated from Indiana University with my degree in accounting, passed the CPA Exam, worked for General Mills as a financial analyst and then was an intellectual property financial consultant. I always played music on the side and was an entrepreneur in waiting. I started Maggie Speaks in 1998 and we worked our way through the bar circuit in Chicago. I lost a coin flip and my phone number went on the bottom of our demo CD and I became “The Booking Guy” from that moment forward. Wearing that hat proudly I worked hard to push Maggie Speaks forward playing festivals, corporate events, weddings, and galas. Maggie Speaks started doing about 200 shows a year. We drew well at the nightclubs because we did a good job of marketing and had a lot of friends that would come out. Clubs started asking me how to get more bands like ours, in which I said innocently enough, “I could book your club for you,” I started booking several nightclub calendars and then a festival called and asked if I knew how to book National Acts. I told them yes, then hung up the phone and said, “I have to figure out how to book national acts now!”
I started then booking several festivals throughout Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Maggie Speaks continued to penetrate the corporate market as well and I got to observe first hand how different event producers and companies handled and structured their events. We started to fly around the country performing for Fortune 500 sales incentive trips. It was through these experiences that I was able to meet a lot of great producers, but also see some very obvious things that could make these events function better. This inspired me and I officially started Magnificent Events in 2000, where I would book talent for different events and venues as well as produce events for different clients.
Maggie Speaks was performing over 200 shows a year and getting about 20 calls per Saturday to do weddings and corporate events so in 2006 I decided that it was time to scale. We created a second band called Spoken Four and handpicked the members with the goal of replicating the Maggie Speaks product. Within a year, they were up to about 130 shows. Eric Ferguson’s wife (from Eric and Cathy at the 101.9 FM the Mix) called and asked if we would play Eric’s surprise 40th birthday party. I immediately thought of what a great marketing opportunity it would be, but when I looked at the calendar I saw that both our bands were booked. I told Eric’s wife that our newest band Final Say was available and that we would love to do the event. She agreed, and I hung up the phone and said, “Now I have to start a third band called Final Say!” That was in 2007, and within a year, that band was up and running to about 130 shows a year. In 2013, I started our fourth band Shout Out and then in 2015 our fifth band called Enough Said. Then in 2015, we introduced Talk of the Town Big Band which allowed any of our five bands (which were 5 pieces) to scale up to 15 pieces. Collectively the bands in the Maggie Speaks musical family does between 400 – 500 shows a year. We have performed in 13 different countries and 33 different states. Some highlights include corporate events in Shanghai, Sydney, Rome, Venice, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Istanbul, Hawaii and at the Super Bowl in Indianapolis.
On the Magnificent Events side, I have grown the company quite a bit to where we create a lot of custom entertainment for clients. I have some of the top performers working with me in the city and I love the creative process. I constantly tell my clients that, “if what you want does not exist, we will create it.” In this process, we have gained the trust of our clients. When absolutely nothing can go wrong, they know they can count on us to deliver. We have had the pleasure of booking everything from solo piano players all the way up to incredible national artists like Lionel Richie, Bret Michaels, Kansas, .38 Special, the Temptations, the Spinners, Julianne Hough, Phil Vassar, Jake Owen, the list goes on.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The businesses have grown successfully over the past 20 years, but like any business, there are and have been challenges. Keeping up with the changing marketplace is the biggest challenge. This industry started off as a “Little Black Book” industry in that there were a finite number of people that had the knowledge and connections to know how to book talent. The internet changed everything, and it moved to a more open sourced coding type environment. To me, that means that a lot of people feel they are a Google search away from finding whatever they want. That means as event planners we have to really preach and stand for quality. It is easy for people or clients to oversimplify things and say booking talent or producing an event is simple. I just call this person and that person and it all comes together. If only it were that easy. There is so much more to it than people give it credit for. Hiring and working with true experts can really save time and money in the long run and lead to truly extraordinary, or might I say magnificent events.
The other challenge now is that it seems like people are not always valuing quality. There is a wave of people that shop for their events like they are on Amazon Prime. Cheaper is not always better. A band is not a band is not a band and a photographer is not a photographer, etc. There are varying levels of expertise and quality and it is a mistake to try and force people to reduce themselves to the lowest common denominator.
Additionally, you have a generation of people that are addicted to their smart devices and instead of being fully present at events and living in the moment, they are so concentrated about taking pictures of themselves and broadcasting through social media to the world that they are “at an event” that they are never fully present at an event. This is a challenge in that as a planner, you must look for ways to make this part of the overall experience and try to embrace that as part of an ever-changing culture.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Maggie Speaks and Magnificent Events – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
The Maggie Speaks band family provides high quality, customizable entertainment for events and organizations. Our bands perform cover hits ranging in theme and style to meet any audience, any venue, and any client preference. With both Magnificent Events and the Maggie Speaks bands, we stand for quality and creativity. I am a stickler for both. I don’t like to take shortcuts and I don’t like to settle. If you are going to have an event, it should be as good as it possibly can be. A lot of my clients trust me to the point where they come to me with an idea and ask me to create it from scratch. They know that I have the resources in terms of personnel and creativity to do so and they have the trust in me to know that I will embrace their theme or vision and make it come to life. Magnificent Events specializes in Celebrity Talent bookings, live entertainment, and production, as well as full-scale event production. Magnificent Events helps bridge the gap between your entertainers and your event management or planning team. Our goal is to help make your events more successful, more seamless, and stress-free for our clients.
What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
While I have many, the one that sticks out the most is watching a Temptations and Four Tops special with my Dad on HBO when I was about 14 years old. I really gravitated toward the music. My Dad saw this and offered to take me to see the Temptations live at the Arie Crown Theatre. They had a part in their show where they would grab audience members to sing a verse of “My Girl” with them. I wound up jumping on stage with them and performing in front of several thousand people that night. After that, I went to all of their shows in Chicago and sang with them for the next 5 or so years until college. After college, I started my event company and continued to work with Richard Street from the group, who became one of my best friends and mentors. I helped book his group for Temptations and when he was in town, he would sit in with Maggie Speaks as a celebrity guest performer. He sang at my wedding and I sang at his. We had an amazing friendship until he passed 5 years ago, actually on my birthday. It is crazy for me to think that I wandered into the room and saw someone on TV that became such a vital part of my life. Strange how the world works.
Contact Info:
- Address: Maggie Speaks
3908 Royal Portrush Dr
Naperville, Illinois - Website: http://www.chicago-bands.com
- Phone: (815) 230-3770
- Email: dave@magevents.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiespeaksband/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maggie.speaks/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/maggiespeaks
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/maggie-speaks-chicago-2
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/MaggieSpeaks
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