How the Grateful Dead Got Peppa Pig On Stage: A Conversation with Jonathan Shank

Jonathan Shank has been producing live events for two decades. Where does he think the live event space will be in the next ten years?

When you sit down in a stadium to watch your favorite artist perform, you’re probably not thinking about much beyond what songs you want to hear. But to make a show like that happen — in fact, to make a show of any size happen — you need a team of music lovers who are on top of every detail. For the last 20 years, Jonathan Shank has been one of those detail-oriented music lovers bringing live entertainment to your town.

But Shank’s interests go far beyond music. His company Terrapin Station, a subsidiary of Sony, puts on thousands of shows that fall far outside the purview of stadium rock. They’ve done children’s events built around characters like Peppa Pig and the Octonauts. They’ve done interactive events with Deal or No Deal. They’ve done everything to make your night out feel like magic. Over an hour, Shank and I spoke about how stadium events are planned, how The Grateful Dead created social media, and his new podcast The Jam.

A Conversation with Jonathan Shank

Your company Terrapin Station recently put on the Billy Joel-Stevie Nicks concert at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Can you walk me through what Terrapin is doing to make a show like that happen?

I think what most people don't realize is there's an army of people that go into any one of these shows. That goes from the club level all the way to the stadium level. Obviously, when you reach the stadium level, the group of people is much larger, but at its core, you need a really strong group of people both from the facility standpoint and also from the artist to make a great show happen.

A recent show presented by Terrapin Entertainment, Jonathan Shank’s company

The idea for this show started in 2021. Billy had previously played in Dallas at the baseball stadium and had been expressing interest in doing some larger venues. We were working with the Cowboys and had suggested that having Billy Joel at the stadium would be a great idea. The show was supposed to be in April of 2023, but someone in Billy’s touring party wasn't able to make it, so it was rescheduled to 2024.

Even if the show happened on the original date, that’s still a long time to plan something. Do all events require that much planning?

Right now, we’re looking at shows in the spring of 2025. We have the rest of this year planned. At that stadium level, you're threading the needle between the sports franchise and their schedule. So, there's a very limited window for concerts, especially if you're outdoors and in a weather-affected city. Our job is to marry up the team's schedule and the performer’s schedule.

Is your job mostly about connecting the dots? Or are you also handling the building stages and ticketing?

In the sports division, we are just presenting shows. Once the show goes on sale, our job is done.

According to your website, “Terrapin Station Entertainment produces some of the most successful non-traditional live tours and productions in the country.” There are family events like the Disney Junior Dance Party. There are innovative musical events like the Bob Marley One Love Experience. There are also completely unexpected events like Deal or No Deal Live. Can you explain to me the similarities and differences to putting on one of these events as compared to a big concert, like the Billy Joel-Stevie Nicks concert?

That's a great question. I would say that a lot of it is the same. The core skill is managing relationships, but there are some differences. The Deal or No Deal model was really built for casinos and as a way to incentivize their high rollers to return for some entertainment. The sports side is more about utilizing our relationships with agents and promoters and artists to piece together a show.

A recent Terrapin-produced casino event

The Bob Marley One Love Experience and Disney Junior Dance Party are different because we are producing those, which means we're building them from scratch. The sports side is more just connecting the dots.

Is it tricky to organize events that involve another party’s intellectual property? I assume the Bob Marley estate, for example, might be touchy about how his legacy is presented.

You've hit on something that's really at the core of what we do, namely licensing IP [intellectual property]. We go out and find brands with the best IP, and work with them to build ancillary revenue streams from that IP. I always joke that we aren’t a sock vendor. We aren’t slapping Mickey Mouse on some fabric and selling it. We are tying that IP back to some live, immersive experience, whether that be a tour or an installation. Though I joke about selling socks, if you are doing live events right then it is much easier to sell consumer products.

Do those relationships go both ways? Like sometimes are you pitching a brand and sometimes is a brand is pitching you?

Yup. We work with brands of all different sizes. Some are massive companies that have been around for 60 years. Others are YouTube channels that became popular during the pandemic. Assessing the value of a brand is very difficult. The equation you're trying to work through at any given time is how big the core audience is and if it is big enough in any given metropolitan area to create an experience on a daily, weekly, or monthly cadence.

So, you have to do some mental math to determine if an event will work. Is that mental math based on data or is mostly a gut feeling?

There is a certain amount of gut, but we use a lot of data to benchmark the size of the audience around a piece of IP.

I’ve seen you claim that The Grateful Dead is really the blueprint for all modern events. They did direct-to-consumer ticketing. They allowed tape trading among fans. They paved the way for massive festivals, like Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Do you actually believe this or are you being hyperbolic?

I really mean it. The Grateful Dead was the first band to really master that direct-to-consumer model. They were among the first to have mail order ticketing to their fans. They were among the first to have their fans trade tapes and merch. So, I don't believe it's hyperbolic. The principles that direct a tour we put on for Disney are the same principles that allowed the Dead to determine which city was the best to play on a Saturday night.

Jonathan Shank, the man behind Terrapin Entertainment

There are also so many promoters and agents and managers who emerged from jam band culture. Many of us are using the principles first popularized by Bill Graham. He was the promoter at the Fillmore and Winterland, which were where many San Francisco bands like the Dead built their audience. The Grateful Dead has a musical legacy, but they also have business legacy.

That’s an interesting insight. Most people aren’t thinking of business acumen when they think of The Grateful Dead.

If I ever had to give a TED Talk, it would be about how The Grateful Dead planted the seeds for social media. Where did social media start? Silicon Valley. Where was Jerry Garcia born? Not far from Silicon Valley. That might seem like a coincidence, but some of the first audio files shared online were Deadheads trading recordings from shows. Like I said, The Grateful Dead were also doing mail order ticketing and a true physical newsletter. This was social media. Computers just commercialized it. Furthermore, Deadheads became executives at many of these internet companies.

And I’m not going out on a limb here. There have been college courses taught about the Dead. And while social media has grown in a million different directions, these were the seeds. 100 million people on TikTok is just Deadheads at a different scale. It’s a big core audience coming together to share interests.

I also know that the Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation and was a big internet activist in the 1980s.

Yes. If you look at what Taylor Swift is doing now with VIP programs and merchandising and street teams, that was all pioneered by The Grateful Dead and the Deadhead community. Even if you go to Setlist.fm to find the most recent Beyoncé setlist, that exists because Deadheads used to share setlists.

Terrapin of course does huge productions now, but you didn’t start doing huge productions. Can you take me back to the beginning and talk about how you got started in live events and artist management?

I had a pretty traditional entrance into the industry as an assistant at a boutique booking agency. I worked my way through the ranks and started managing bands myself. I developed my skills as an artist manager, but really focused on touring and the live experience. That was the center of everything I did. As the business turned from heavily focused on the recorded side to heavily focused on the touring side, I really started to excel.

Eventually, when I was working at Frontline Management this idea started to emerge about finding valuable intellectual property and licensing it to build live experiences. Front Line was working with Dancing with the Stars and Glee at that time. That sparked this idea in me that the children’s live event space was largely untouched beyond Disney On Ice. So, that was the evolution for me: assistant to booking agent to manager to producer.

And you’re very involved in the children’s space now, right?

Yes. I try to treat Peppa Pig or some Disney character as if they’re the same as working with a world class musician. Those clients really appreciate that. They don’t always get that treatment.

A recent Terrapin-produced children’s event

I want to understand a bit more about Terrapin. It’s owned by Sony, right?

Yes. Sony has a majority stake in the company.

Was it founded independently?

We were independent for a short time, but we were looking for big partners right out of the gate to be able to do the things we wanted to do.

Is there any difference from working independently versus working as part of a large corporation?

The big thing is resources. Sony is building a really special network of companies that are focused on non-traditional entertainment. We’re still able to have a small team at Terrapin, but it’s nice to be able to tap into Sony when we need to.

Every time I talk to people in live events, I feel the need to ask two hot button questions. First, how were you able to get through COVID when live events shut down?

Terrapin was actually founded during COVID. There were no events at the time, but a lot of events were being conceived. We are just now starting to see the fruits of that labor. We survived because we found a great partner in Sony who who had a long-term vision.

The biggest post-COVID changes in live entertainment are that everything's more expensive, and many of those costs are being passed onto the consumer. Plus, everybody wants to tour. So, you have to be very strategic about setting up your tours. Because these are so expensive, there is only room for first class projects.

Does that leave any space for mid-tier artists?