← Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
221: Music as Economic Development with Matt Mandrella
00:34:37
Matt Mandrella, Huntsville’s Music Officer, explains how the city treats music as economic development infrastructure, using venues, programming, artist support, tourism, and quality of life to grow both its music ecosystem and broader economy.
Loading summary
Transcript44 lines
- [00:00]
Sitehunt Announcer
Attention economic developers. The unspoken secret of our industry is that responding to RFIs is time consuming and often feels like a waste. You need sitehunt. Dane has harnessed AI to do the heavy lifting for you. Sitehunt builds detailed building and sites databases and generates instant RFI responses, transforming tedious tasks into winning opportunities. Stop wasting time and start winning more projects. Visit sitehunt IO today. Sitehunt where AI meets economic development.
- [00:31]
Dane Carlson
Welcome to the Econ Dev show. We explore the strategies, ideas and insights that are driving economic development forward into the future. You'll hear new insights from passionate EDs about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from attraction and retention experts about how to apply actionable strategies inside your edo. We'll help take your organization, your community and your career to the next level. Here's your host, Dane Carlson.
- [01:04]
Welcome back to the econ Dev show. Today we're here with Matt Mandrella. He is the music officer for the city of Huntsville, Alabama. Matt, welcome to the show.
- [01:13]
Matt Mandrella
Hey, thanks for having me.
- [01:15]
Dane Carlson
Absolutely. I have to ask, first off, what is a music officer? What do you actually do?
- [01:21]
Matt Mandrella
Well, it's a lot. I think in other cities, maybe a director would be maybe a good word. What's kind of nice and in Huntsville is we get to say we're the first. We're the. I'm actually the first municipal music officer, which is awesome. There's a few more now throughout the country. We do a lot. It's everything from, you know, kind of our big pillars are, you know, how can we use music to drive economic development, how can we boost up our local music scene and ecosystem, how can we bring in music tourism? How can we attract talent both on stage and off stage? It all kind of started back when the city decided to get serious about music and conducted the music audit back in 2018 that gave a picture that there was opportunity to focus on a music scene here in Huntsville. And so we dove in and, yeah, we're starting to see the advantages of that good work and how rising tide can lift all boats. And what's unique about Huntsville is we're kind of treating music the same way as other cities treat parks and rec and things like that, where it's, you know, music is a part of our quality of life, the same way as greenways, playgrounds and. Or use sports teams and stuff like that.
- [02:24]
Dane Carlson
Okay, that. That's very helpful because I was just about to ask, you know, how does music play into economic development? But I guess I can kind of see that in the same way that those Things improve the quality of life, but maybe bring in outsiders. Is that a big part of it?
- [02:38]
Matt Mandrella
One of the problems Huntsville had, that my role was brought in to help alleviate was that we're one of the cities in the country that had one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country. But we also had about 10,000 really, really, really high paying jobs available in our employment sector. And they're the kind of jobs that are in that kind of aerospace, advanced engineering around that our economy is built off and our workforce is built off. And you know, people that are smart enough to work for NASA are usually smart enough to negotiate with their employers. Like the different campuses around the country they want to work in. People need things to do after 5 o', clock, after they get off work to make a community attractive to them. And so to kind of bring in that non related music workforce, you know, having great music offerings, great quality of life helps to, helps to attract that workforce and make more people want to put in roots here in our community.
- [03:27]
Dane Carlson
So you came to this, I'm going to assume you probably weren't in a government role and this is. You work for the city of Huntsville, right? Absolutely, yeah, Talk me through that because that obviously has to be different.
- [03:40]
Matt Mandrella
I grew up in southern Alabama and like the, the Gulf coast area and then Al after college, like kind of bounced around. Lived in Charlotte for a while, lived in Austin, Texas for about 12 years and was in Memphis for about three years before saw this job come up and you know, saw some things Huntsville was doing. I hadn't been to Huntsville in like 20 years, like since I was a kid and always had this reputation as a city that was like, wow, great place to raise a family, great job, you're kind of close to Birmingham, Atlanta and Nashville. Saw Huntsville start to pop up on all these kind of like, you know, top list of places to live. Saw some interesting things about like how they were doing, like the music audit. It was. I saw somebody share on social media the role about the music officer and I remember looking at it being like, wow, this is. Seems like it's kind of like an amazing fit and like a custom made job for my resume. And it was like a different way of a city approaching music. And kind of the only drawback was like, well it's in Huntsville and didn't really take it seriously.
- [04:36]
Dane Carlson
Right.
- [04:37]
Matt Mandrella
I basically couldn't get away from the recruitment ad to get my resume and as a music officer and I had just had a kid during the pandemic and so threw in my name of the ring Just to give it a shot. Just kind of like Carver was driving me that way after the first interview was kind of sold. And we were even having conversations about, you know, even if you don't get this job, really, really want to take a look at Huntsville and was just like, mind blown of how much the city's changed, like over the past 20 years and, you know, just can't really imagine too many other places in the country comparable to the situation I was in, like raising a family and stuff like that. And so, yeah, the job kind of like found me and, you know, it's been great. Have a lot, a lot of support from the administration. And having an administration that's kind of all in on a music strategy and having that.gov address, like, really, really helps move the needle and get things done quickly and impactfully about that.
- [05:27]
Dane Carlson
Because that seems like it definitely has its positives being able to send out that email from the.gov or direct people to a.gov address. When you're dealing with others in the music industry, what do they think?
- [05:40]
Matt Mandrella
You know, luckily I have a pretty robust list of contacts from, you know, a couple. Couple almost two decades in. In the kind of private sector of like the other music game. And so, like, like to think I established a pretty nice reputation for myself. But, you know, for the most part, it's. It's a great conversation starter and, you know, now we can kind of point to links about the, you know, the, like, fast company naming us like the top of like the economic development list and everything in 2024. And so kind of have some up behind it. With some people, it takes a little bit to get a little trust and for them to kind of wrap their head around what we're doing. But once they do, it seems like they're really excited about it and see opportunities for ways to collaborate and to integrate what they're doing, whether they're artists or managers or just somebody that maybe wants to build stages. It's the kind of kind of taking out that perception of, you know, it's an industry where, you know, a lot of people in it, like, don't think they're. That government can or wants to work, like with them or for them. But, you know, it kind of shows that, like, when, you know, government is serious and doing something intentional and impactful and doing it the right way, it can and absolutely wants to work for an industry. And great things can happen when those collaborations exist.
- [06:49]
Dane Carlson
So what does that really mean? That they want to build out their music sector? Does that mean they Just want to book shows. Does that mean you mentioned building stages? What does that really look like?
- [07:01]
Matt Mandrella
It is top to bottom, everything from like elementary education programs to like, you know, developing platforms where like the best talent in the world like has an opportunity to play. And so, you know, for example, one of the biggest investments the city's ever made was our Orion Amphitheater. And the initial concept of that was to be about a 15 or 20 million dollars build. Citi got some great advice from a guy named Ben Lovett and his team who's the keyboard player for Mumford and Sons. And here's somebody who has played on every major stage throughout the world and you know him to kind of help with the design concept of that venue as something that would make an artist and fan experience really, really, really world class. But with that, the budget of it tripled. And so it was absolutely a probably a risky investment for, for our mayor and like our city council to like move forward with just because the, the budget got like bigger. But the budget got bigger with the intention of like, you know, with our geographic proximity for Huntsville to really put us on the map, like we have to have a really, really standout destination venue. It can't just be a typical here's a stage, here's a shed, here's some seats, here's a green space kind of amphitheater. The design of it's absolutely incredible. We're getting nominated in Polestar and I think we're nominated for like the CMA outdoor venue of the year and things like that. And honestly still get a little emotional when I go see shows there. And it's like, wow, this is really happening in Huntsville. And so that was a huge catalyst. And you know, from the economic development side of it, we put that thing up where previously we were kind of number one on a lot of these like dead malls and America lists. And so the city worked with the developers of that mall and kind of like all the tenants to where they got to bulldoze that mall and put up a really, really ambitious entertainment district where, you know, similar to how sports teams in cities kind of like build a stadium and build restaurants and hotels and things around it. That's kind of what our mid city district is with our amphitheater. And you know, we've seen close to a over a billion dollars in investment in private sector stuff go around that amphitheater and that district's only about 30% done. And with other civic owned music venues downtown, we've seen over half of a billion dollars of private Sector investment with, like, mixed use and condos and apartments and stuff, just because, like, being around a cool music space kind of elevates a whole. A whole district if you really, really plan it. Right. And so that, you know, where now we see that investment as well, like one of the best investments the city's ever made because we see how much of an economic growth engine it's been around it.
- [09:28]
Dane Carlson
Oh, okay. Now I think this is all starting to come together, at least in my mind. Do you think, you know, and you may be not the right person to ask this, but is it just that you built the right thing and the city was behind it and this amphitheater was the right thing at the right place at the right time, and obviously the city is really supporting it, and because of that, all of this private investment followed? Or do you think that it was something special because it was music? Or what do you think about that?
- [10:00]
Matt Mandrella
I think that a big part of our amphitheater and mid and mid city success especially is, you know, like, that amphitheater where a lot of them, you know, are. They're dark outside of, like, having big concerts that you'll get your 20 to 30 big shows. And then we designed. We actually recruited the guy who was running the amphitheater down in St. Augustine because they had such a kind of like, dynamic vision of what they were doing down there to where, you know, in addition to our, like, 20 to 30 major concerts, like, we program about 150 community events that are either free or low cost on that campus. Whether it's like yoga classes on the stage, fitness classes in the big artist meadow, kind of like, which is normally like the green room. We've had 30,000 people come through our police department's Halloween haunted house event. And so it's kind of. We have the flexibility to operate that different than the private sector to where like that is. You know, if you live in Huntsville, that is your amphitheater, like that is owned by our taxpayers, by our community. And so we're very intentional about making sure there is something for everybody and multiple things for people to attend there, whether it's a major concert or a community event. And when you have a lot of people kind of flocking to that campus already, you know, them going to get things to eat, them maybe traveling in from out of town, needing like a hotel or something to, like, stay around there, you know, when you're. You have kind of a developer in line with the city too, to like, really grow it around music, you know, the kind of like Whole theme of mid city kind of takes the identity of the Orion and, And vice versa. But it's not just the Orion. You know, we do a lot of. We're really proud of. You know, we're the first city government to actually execute a tour program, a tour grant program. It's called our music ambassador program, where if you're a local touring musician based here in the Huntsville area, and you have at least four concerts that are 100 miles or more outside of Huntsville, you qualify for a 750 to $1,500 tour grant every time you go out on tour to help alleviate those expenses. And so we're trying to kind of build that local ecosystem of professional musicians as well and, you know, work with a lot of nonprofits to do great work in the schools. And yeah, it's hard to kind of narrow down like the work we're doing into just an elevator pitch because everything we're doing is very intentional with a purpose, whether it's music, tourism, talent attraction and economic growth, or an artist development kind of initiative and a lot of things like in between and sorry, I'm kind of rambling on, but.
- [12:19]
Dane Carlson
No, I can tell that you're really excited about this. Let's talk about this ecosystem idea. You know, you recruit, let's say you were doing traditional economic development and you recruited an automobile manufacturer to your. To the city. Well, you would expect that you could grow this ecosystem around that with, you know, ancillary suppliers and suppliers to suppliers and all of that. Do you see that kind of thing taking place around the music industry in Huntsville?
- [12:48]
Matt Mandrella
Absolutely. You know, with each, you know, with both public sector and private sector investment, you need that support system that's putting on those shows and raising awareness and education to people that a lot of people don't understand that when you're going to a concert and you're seeing, you know, whether it's a local band playing, like your favorite, like bar slash music venue or like a big concert or a big music festival, the three, four people on stage performing are one piece of it. But there are sometimes hundreds of people involved with the lead up and the breakdown to getting people on that stage, everything from, you know, ticketing platforms to, you know, marketing teams to the production team, sound and lights, security. I mean, you know, you've got to have like medics in EMS and fire, like at festivals and major concerts and things like that. And so kind of like showing that workforce that, like, hey, like say you're somebody with a passion for like driving big rig trucks. Well, you know, driving a truck for Kenny Chesney or driving a truck for like a music production company might be a better, might be a better situation than you know, say getting a job for like a traditional like trucking company or for like a, you know, a Walmart or a Target or you know, if you're somebody who likes working outside with your hands and into construction, maybe, you know, it might be more fun instead of like building houses to, you know, build stages or like set up like cool festivals and all the infrastructure around that. And so constantly trying to like with each new place that comes, like, you know, we, to kind of keep up with that. And so if like, you know, if you're bartending at like the Orion, you can bartend maybe like at Mars, Visa, call and pick up ships and things like that. But yeah, that workforce development aspect and working with local colleges and even high schools and trade schools on, you know, getting that workforce ready to where, when they, when they graduate, hopefully could find a place to, to get part or full time employment in our market.
- [14:41]
Dane Carlson
Yeah, all of these sort of career pathways, right. And many of them are not going to be directly impacted by automation and AI and all of that. And these are, you know, experience, economy sort of jobs.
- [14:57]
Matt Mandrella
And I'm kind of proof like you can, you can find a path through music without being, without being very talented at performing or playing music. You know, I mean, you know, like most people are listening to music on streaming now and that's all like coding and stuff like that. We have a really awesome. There's a manufacturer music company here in town called Hear Technologies that develops one of the. It's a product a lot of major artists use. It's a little box that like when you see Madonna like on stage, a little box on her belt that controls her in her monitor volumes and things like that. And we have argued there's like about. There's two companies kind of like that are the go tos for the artists with budgets enough to be able to incorporate that on their tour. And one of those manufacturers is here at Huntsville. And you know, you don't have to know how to play an instrument to build a speaker.
- [15:41]
Dane Carlson
Right, Exactly. I guess I didn't ask you, do you know how to play an instrument? Are you a musician?
- [15:46]
Matt Mandrella
I kind of wanted to be the next Dave Matthews after college. And that's why I went to Charlotte to start different bands and stuff like that. And man thought I was good enough to go to Nashville or Halston. And so I decided to go to Austin and my first open mic, I went up there. It was just blown away by the talent. There was a guy named Gary Clark Jr. Who was actually playing that open mic, open jam. And I was like, wow. Like, and at the time, Gary Clark Jr. Was kind of like a playing around, like happy hours at Austin kind of guy.
- [16:13]
Dane Carlson
Sure.
- [16:14]
Matt Mandrella
It was just a very healthy dose of reality of how good you have to be to really make it as a. As. As an artist outside of like, you know, maybe playing like a cover of Wagged Wheel to like, your friends at like a fraternity house. But, but. But I knew I was in Austin. I knew I wanted to do something in music. And I got really lucky and signed up for a softball league that it just happened that like a bunch of. Of kind of the higher ups and influencers at south by Southwest at the time were on my team and just through random kind of lucky conversations, kind of expressed like what I was looking to do to get kind of into the behind the scenes of the industry. And those guys took me under their wing and gave me a really solid seasonal position working directly under them because I was a little older than kind of a typical, you know, somebody in their early 20s. I was in my kind of like late 20s at this time and kind of just went all in and like gave everything I could to them. And that was kind of the catalyst to my behind the scenes music career.
- [17:08]
Dane Carlson
So let's talk a little bit about some of the programming that you've got there in Huntsville. I read about the. The Huntsville Women in Music program. Yeah.
- [17:17]
Matt Mandrella
And I mean, women are running our scene. You know, that was something that started our downtown business development association. And a guy named Chad Emerson, who was doing it at the time, not a music industry guy, but a really big music fan, basically started that as a downtown Huntsville initiative to where, you know, it was. It was called Women in Music Weekend, where it was basically just like a weekend focus to have all the local female bass acts kind of do different showcases like around the downtown area. And then once the music office started, we kind of teamed up and he was like, you know, we'd love to make this a partnership. Lean on your expertise and really grow this thing. And found a couple community partners that were, that were already doing like, awesome women in music both on stage and behind the scenes, and really empowered them to, To. To. To grow it into a more dynamic schedule. And now it's about a. It's a Women in Music week that's about 10 days. Everything from like Latin inspired festivals that get about 8 to 10,000 people at it to like local singer songwriter showcases. But it's a, I mean, it's kind of a out like description to describe things as like, oh, it's kind of the south by Southwest. But you know, there's not really a better description of it in terms of like a, you know, it's just a concentrated like 10 days of music program specifically focused around, you know, both female promoters and presenters and like female artists. And. And now it's kind of grown to where we're getting national interest. Like, I know we had like Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls do a show during Women in Music. So where it was 100% local, now it's, I'd say probably like 95% local, 5% regional, and then even some national attention. And so just, you know, organically growing that with, with our partners behind the scenes. And you know, we, we've seen some different women like start their own LLCs and production companies and staging companies and, and booking companies kind of like result through that initiative. And that's, that's honestly probably the most fun about this job coming from, you know, the private sector of this industry that's very cutthroat and competitive and, you know, kind of have to show your teeth sometimes to where, you know, being in a city position where it's, I mean, there's no other city of Huntsville to really compete with in terms of developing a music scene and with it being civic focused, we really shouldn't have any enemies or rivals. Like, we're trying to rise up everybody who's interested in doing something in the kind of commercial music sphere. And so like working with our local community and empowering them to take chances in starting businesses and maybe going on tour for the first time, like that is the really fun part about this job and seeing too like some of these artists we're working with, say like women in music, like one kind of shining example. Two shining examples, actually. It's one awesome young lady named Adia Andrews and another one named Jas McKenzie. I remember a couple years ago they were doing a women in music showcase in front of about 100 people in a small venue. Now Adiya is arguably the hottest up and coming star in the Christian R and B space. She was nominated for. She won Best New Artist at the Stellar Awards and was nominated for Song of the year and a couple more things at the Grammys this year in the Christian RB category. And she keeps losing to CC Winans, which if you're going to lose to somebody, like, you know, lose to CC Winans and Jas McKenzie, who was in that showcase with her, was a finalist on this past season of the Voice. And, you know, she's one. She's, I think, the only person in show history to bring tears to Snoop Dogg's eyes. To just. Just say you had at least a little part in. In. In helping them get from a small stage to a big stage. Of course, it's 99% them, but, like, to think maybe we have like. Like our showpiece, maybe, like, gave them at least 1% of the confidence that's gotten. Gotten them to get to such success. And we have quite a few success stories about artists like that. Just from my short time here that we've seen really, really elevated. What's. What's really nice about our tour grant program is it helped us kind of keep our ear to the ground on the scene, because if you're a band that's touring, you know, you probably have some pretty good momentum or already established. And so it kind of helps us work closely with. With. With those artists, and you can't help but kind of root for them to. With their next application comes in like, oh, wow, they're playing bigger venues this time, or, wow, they're opening up for the Alabama Shakes this tour and stuff like that.
- [21:28]
Dane Carlson
Sure. And you're right. It's 99% the artist, but you have to be proud of that 1% that you contributed as a city by making all of these resources more accessible and having these venues and these events and all of that.
- [21:45]
Matt Mandrella
And another program we're really, really proud of is we're the first city government that actually has a civic program with Universal Music Group. And arguably their most dynamic campus in Nashville is East Iris Studios. And, you know, you have, like, a lot of big names coming through that campus all the time. But. But mixed with that, the. The kind of powers that be there are really, really passionate about, like, developing, like, they're young artists. And, you know, we. We met with them up there, and they said their challenge was that, yeah, finding our young artists to find stages to play outside of Nashville as a challenge. And then we were like, well, you know, finding, you know, music industry infrastructure like you'd like. Finding a universal music group in a hustle is a challenge. And so we entered into this really simple program, and it's also with the team that's behind that mid city campus. They're called the Apollo foundation, the nonprofit that's the kind of, like, growth arm from there, and it's a quarterly exchange program to where they'll take four bands from Nashville, put them on a charter bus, bring them to Huntsville. We give them a tour of Mid City, educate them about, like, the music scene, give them a great lunch, and then tour them around the Orion, the different parts of the city. And then it all kind of culminates in a free showcase at a venue here. And then they load up and go back home. And then the next quarter, we work with them to where they select four artists from the Huntsville area. We pick them up in Mid City, take them to East Iris, do a big tour of, like, their studio facilities and like, their kind of, like, area and what Universal Music Group is doing. And then that culminates into way they do these things called live nights every month where they kind of invite. They have a private guest list of their Nashville, kind of like who's who and the artists that are involved in that campus to kind of showcase their young talent. And we do a Huntsville invasion when we go up there. You know, it's a quarterly program, so that's about eight artists a year. To be able to say that, like, you're putting eight artists directly in front of some of, you know, the most leveraged creative executives, not only in Nashville, but, you know, these are people involved with this program that are VPs over the entire Universal Music Group studio system and things. And they're not the business development executives. They're the. They're the engineers and the recording studio guys. They're those creative executives. And so it's. It's kind of like one of these really, really awesome programs that money can't buy. And, you know, we've had a couple of those artists actually get invited back up by Universal to start doing work and things like that. And so that's just been really special to watch. And then some of those national bands that have come down here. I'm 45 years old, I'm by far the oldest one in that room whenever these bands come and play. But, like, you know, like, we're seeing some of those bands, like, attraction, like, and so it's just. It's just a really, really cool thing. And, you know, a really, really simple program like that where, you know, it has us excited, our artist community excited. It has, like, higher ups at Universal Music Group excited. I mean, that's a really, really cool thing that a city's doing.
- [24:41]
Dane Carlson
That's amazing. So a lot of our listeners are in probably smaller communities in Huntsville. What. What parts of Huntsville's approach could they copy?
- [24:51]
Matt Mandrella
I recommend enough to work with the sound diplomacy team that's the team of economists that Shane Shapiro was behind that. That's a London based group that they've been doing it in Europe for a while. And we were their first US Client and they were really, really good to where our music on. It had kind of a step by step approach of recommendations, and it's not something you take exactly 100%. Like they had a recommendation for a Huntsville Music Week, so we did a Huntsville Music Month, you know, and things like that. And. But they were great about really diving in and kind of showing the opportunities of what it can do. And, you know, it's the. I mean, any city of any size could really benefit from a music office. You know, we even have a big kind of like national alliance we just launched. Now. We have kind of enough people on the team in different states and cities to launch one. But, you know, there are programs where even a small civic government to incentivize local musicians to like, play on their town square at Fridays or if there's a program just. I know there's programs out there to where small towns are just, you know, they. They give a handful. It's like these towns that have maybe three or four restaurants, but, you know, they give the restaurants a little money to program live music like one night a week in those restaurants. And, you know, they see more people coming to like, the restaurants those nights and stuff like that. Like, that's. If you have a dynamic busking program in like a downtown square, it can be a great economic engine to like, spurt retail growth and stuff like that, you know, putting music in, like all our farmers markets and things like that. And so it's all kind of tailoring something. I think it's important to tailor a music program that fits the. Fits your community. You know, like, we're like, we're very vocal in Huntsville to where, you know, a lot of people who aren't really too educated on like, what we're doing, you know, maybe assume we're trying to just be like Nashville or try be like Austin or try to get like a Bourbon street culture like New Orleans. And that's just absolutely not the case. We're strategically developing a music identity that fits within our community, that our community would want, that represents our community, but we want to be more in the same conversation with those cities, not that we're trying to be Nashville, but 10 years from now when people are just like, in passing talking about like, the awesome music scenes of North America, I would love for Huntsville to come up in that conversation. And you Know, similar to how, like, people, like, associate red rocks with Colorado live music. You know, Orion is in a lot of these, like, awards categories with, like, red rocks and stuff like that now, so words definitely getting out. And that's just a really, really cool thing to see. And, you know, it's a, you know, we're, we're trying to go as fast as we can, but also, you know, we're, we're more thinking about anything we do has a strategy to where it's like, hey, is this going to make sense five years from now? Instead of a, you know, how many zeros is this going to put on our boss's checkbook?
- [27:29]
Dane Carlson
And that's the difference between being in the civic space, the economic development space, and being in the, in the private sector. For you personally, what's the most fun part of this job?
- [27:38]
Matt Mandrella
Ooh, I think that it's a, I mean, I think because it fits in line with, like, why the private sector stuff was a fun part of a job. Like, every day is different, you know, that the challenge of kind of, like, coming up with, like, the programs like that we're coming up with and attracting, like, the businesses, like, just putting your head around it every day. I mean, gosh, it's like coming to work every day, like, and, you know, being able to come to work every day and, you know, just focus on, like, what you can do, big or small things to help amplify, like, your local music scene. Some days have stress and deadlines and stuff. But I think just every day where it's always something different, there's always something to do. You're never going to get everything you want to get done done. Probably my favorite thing, if I had to point to something, is just you get to work with really, really, really talented people, especially, like, the artist, you know, and you kind of, you get to kind of like, root for them and everything and, you know, just. Gosh. Yeah, sorry. It's like, really hard to kind of pin down what my favorite thing is, because just really enjoy the work from top to bottom.
- [28:38]
Dane Carlson
Sure. So your, your co workers at city hall, do they understand what you're doing? You know, are you the, or at least at the beginning, were you kind of the odd man or how does that work?
- [28:47]
Matt Mandrella
I, I. And the kind of the, the one thing I didn't expect was how much the community would kind of like, was excited and very aware of the position and how much they kind of, like, were embracing it with open arms to where. I mean, it was when I started this, I was kind of anticipating, ah, you know, just kind of like put my head down and you know, try figure this thing out for a while and like, lay low. But it was these act ups, like, like having to go on local news and stuff and you know, doing these interview segments and it's like your third day on the job and like, you don't even know what you're really doing yet. But trying to. But the, the community enthusiasm around it has always been like, top notch and just so supportive and things. And I know in other communities, like, I, like I've said it on Austin, you know, music commission meetings and stuff like that, that kind of, you know, in other cities, like, might get a little. Might get a little heated and things like that. It seems like that if you're doing it right, like, and you're kind of like, you know, with like civic and community in mind, then everybody should be rallying for it because I mean, even if you're not a music fan, you know, somebody in your family is a music fan and to be able to say like there's. There's stuff for them to go out and do is. Is. Is awesome, you know, and yeah, but they, they definitely, they. They definitely get it now. I mean, but like the, we're lucky that the music office has gotten so much attention. And you know, it's. It's really great too to where we have monitors all around city hall, like every floor you get off of with like directional signage and you know, we actually host a, A, A community music calendar similar to like the do stuff sites and things like that, to where it's a kind of like, who's playing tonight in Huntsville? And a link to hustlemusic.com and so there's a lot of like our music office programming and flyers and stuff that are in rotation at the city. And so if you're just a guest in city hall and you're like looking at our monitors, like you're seeing that the city's definitely like showcasing its music efforts and that's just awesome.
- [30:32]
Dane Carlson
You mentioned what was it? Huntsville music dot com. Is that the best place for anybody to find out more?
- [30:37]
Matt Mandrella
We got a dot com, and that's our Huntsville Music. That's our music office's main site and that's where you can find our music calendar if you're planning to ever come and visit Huntsville, like, dive into that and plan out your adventures. And you know, that's another thing that the music office established like through the kind of an example of the music audit was something it Found was that there wasn't really one solid source that was like a music calendar focused thing. There were a bunch of different community calendars, kind of like what's going on in Huntsville that were a mix of like family friendly stuff, you know, maybe art events, maybe music events, comedy and stuff like that. And so you had to kind of go to like five or six different sites to really get a whole picture of what was happening in Huntsville today or this weekend or next month. We contract out with her and her team to where she can bring on more people to 100% focus on that music calendar so people can add their own events. Or we have a staff that's constantly trying to make that the most robust calendar ever to showcase our music scene and get people to check that out whenever they want to come visit. Wow.
- [31:38]
Dane Carlson
How big is the music office there at Huntsville?
- [31:40]
Matt Mandrella
We brought on another full time person a couple years ago who is absolutely amazing and keeps me sane and keeps the ship sailing. She's our programs coordinator. Her name's Jackie Rogerson. Technically, in the music office we're only two people, but it's so much bigger because when you're working for like a city, like our parks direct department owns a stage line stage. So we're constantly working with parks and recruitment, constantly working with the administration. We have a multicultural affairs office. And so the music office employs two people. But you know, we're a city department. So I mean, there's thousands of people that work for our city, the non profits and like the community we support. And so it's kind of, it's a little deceiving to only say that like only two people work in the music office because, you know, like, we have a liaison in our communications department that just focuses on our, our music department and things like that. And so a lot of music office staff, but not necessarily in their email description it says our department, I might say community development, communications, economic development, planning, something like that. But really, really kind of work throughout the city. And we'll, we'll say that's another refreshing thing. I was going into government, I, I, I somewhat anticipated like it would kind of be like the show Parks and rec, but I think Huntsville really works and our community is like so fast on the rise is that, I mean, the people of the city actually really, really care about the work they're doing. They're really passionate about it. And it's just like, I don't feel like I work for a city government. I feel like we have a mayor who is more of like a kind of like business leader than a politician, if that makes sense. And I think that's really why we are kind of striking a lot of chords across not only music, but I mean, it's hard to go into any kind of quality of life or booming city list and not see Huntsville in that top five right now. It's amazing.
- [33:27]
Dane Carlson
Matt, this has been fantastic. If anybody wants to reach out to you and, you know, maybe pick your brain or, you know, find out more, what's the best way for them to
- [33:35]
Matt Mandrella
do that, check out huntsvillemusic.com all my contact info is on there, but you can always get me@Matt Mandrellauntsvilleal.gov or just musicuncevilleal.gov links to my email as well. And if we love when somebody from outside of Huntsville reaches out and wants to talk about this stuff. And with our efforts with this National Music association we started called Ammo, which really encourage everybody to check out musicoffices.org we are very passionate about wanting to help other communities start music offices and we have directly helped with that effort and some other places too. And so really proud that we can lead the way on that.
- [34:13]
Dane Carlson
Fantastic. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [34:17]
You've been listening to the Econ Dev show with Dane Carlson. If you're an economic developer who never stops learning, for more expert strategies, fresh insights and new ideas to take your career organization and your community to the next level, visit us on the web@econdevshow.com.