It was a night in late 1984 when Jonathan Shank, a younger child from a suburb of Philadelphia, walked right into a stadium together with his household in tow, sat down in his assigned seat and skilled his very first stay live performance, an occasion that will dramatically affect the course of his life. On stage that night time was The Jackson 5, performing one cease on their 55-city Victory Tour.
Shank was instantly in awe.
“There was this one second throughout the present the place Michael Jackson got here and sat by the sting of the stage,” Shank says. “The gang went actually, actually loopy.”
Though he couldn’t articulate it as a child, Shank was deeply impacted by the expertise of being in the identical room with 1000’s of individuals, all having fun with stay music. The power was electrical and infectious.
That have propelled Shank, CEO of artist administration and manufacturing firm Terrapin Station Leisure, to a profession targeted on creating experiences similar to this for audiences around the globe.
Shank’s dad and mom seen their son’s curiosity, and for a few years after The Jackson 5 live performance, the household would spend summers on the Jersey Shore, taking Shank to see teams like Chicago and Corridor & Oates in close by Atlantic Metropolis. By the point he hit his teenagers, Shank was venturing out to exhibits on his personal, favoring bands of the time like Milli Vanilli, INXS and U2.
Shank attended Tulane College in New Orleans, the place he majored in sociology however at all times regarded for fascinating music lessons. (The college didn’t have business-related music lessons.) When he discovered a course referred to as “The Historical past of Jazz,” he signed up instantly and began going to the professor’s workplace hours, telling the instructor he wished to do one thing within the music enterprise. An internship for credit score was steered, and inside weeks, Shank was knocking on the doorways of the Home of Blues New Orleans.
“It was February 1994, and the Home of Blues had actually simply opened,” he remembers. “I turned up and requested for an internship, they usually didn’t even have an internship program but. I grew to become an assistant to the assistant.”
It was a formative expertise. Shank spent his time organizing artist photographs and bios and taping present flyers to phone poles everywhere in the metropolis. The expertise launched him to all kinds of business luminaries, from Bob Monroe and Bob Dylan to Dr. John and Allen Toussaint. From there, he interned for a report producer who inspired him to maneuver to Los Angeles to pursue a profession within the music enterprise.
Lower than 4 months after strolling throughout Tulane’s commencement stage, Shank was headed West.
Slicing his enamel within the Metropolis of Angels
It was the mid ’90s when Shank landed in LA. He was hungry to land a job in music, producing or aiding. He would take no matter he might get, however jobs had been onerous to return by. On the time, stay music wasn’t an enormous market. As an alternative, cash was in promoting information.
“I got here out considering I used to be going to get a job at a report label, however what I discovered was that the traces had been very, very lengthy for these jobs,” Shank remembers.
Undiscouraged, he labored odd jobs and developed friendships with anybody he might discover within the enterprise. Then, in late 1997, he landed an assistant function at a boutique music company. Shank was promoted to agent by the tip of his first yr, and his profession took off. The enterprise was serving to acts like The Marshall Tucker Band and Jefferson Starship tour across the nation. He labored with the dwelling members of The Doorways and a gaggle that performed jazz interpretations of Grateful Useless songs. And whereas many of those teams had been favored by followers older than Shank, he had grown up with such a various curiosity in music genres that he match proper in.
“I used to be a really younger one who was in a position to kind relationships with some older legacy artists, and I believe they simply received a kick out of the truth that I knew their music, knew what I used to be speaking about,” he says. “It confirmed them that possibly there was a glimmer of sunshine, that their music was going to final for a really very long time… that there could be generations of those who got here even after me that will be having fun with their music, consuming their movies, watching their exhibits.”
Actually, Shank’s perspective was revolutionary for the time as a result of, within the mid-to-late ’90s, the music business was targeted on pop acts like ’N Sync and Backstreet Boys—not legacy artists like Bob Dylan and the Grateful Useless.
“There was nothing glamorous about what I used to be doing on the time,” Shank remembers. “It was simply grinding. However I beloved it a lot as a result of I actually related with these artists. And it taught me all about touring and learn how to strategically put artists out on the street.
“It actually grew to become a theme in my profession of working in underappreciated and underserved areas. If there’s a core audience there, even when it’s an viewers that was there beforehand, you’ll be able to at all times discover a solution to reignite that viewers, to interact that viewers, to seek out them once more.”
Embracing recent concepts
Shank’s profession blossomed from there. By the early 2000s he was transferring into day-to-day administration for artists throughout genres—from LFO to Isaac Hayes to the band Battle. He was discovering himself in rooms with among the strongest folks within the enterprise, organizing excursions with megastars and lining up acts for main music festivals across the nation.
Quickly, he was working with Mickey Hart, a former drummer for the Grateful Useless. Shank helped join Hart with performers to start out a band and the relationships blossomed. The 2 are near this present day. (“He texted me this morning, truly,” Shank quips.)
Through the years, Shank expanded his attain to stars like Victoria Justice who had been showing on Nickelodeon. Round that point, there was a present on the identical community referred to as “The Recent Beat Band,” and Shank proposed the thought of manufacturing in-person occasions for the band. He got here on as an government producer, and the present—a nod to his unorthodox concepts—was an enormous success. From there, he labored to convey Peppa Pig to stay audiences—once more, an infinite win.
Shank has carried out these exhibits together with his firm Terrapin Station Leisure, which in the present day is wildly profitable. For the previous few years, he’s labored to convey the Disney Jr. franchise stay on tour, and this yr, audiences throughout the Center East, Southeast Asia and the UK are in a position to absorb a bodily present.
“Terrapin was shaped out of the necessity to create a nontraditional leisure firm that would propel all of those manufacturers and all of this content material,” he says. “What I discover is that, when you’ve got one venture that goes effectively, folks can say, ‘Properly, possibly you bought fortunate.’ However when you’ve got two, you begin to present a mannequin, and also you begin to present the way you’re constructing success on high of what you’ve beforehand carried out.”
Photograph by Em Walis. This text initially appeared within the May/June 2025 issue of SUCCESS journal.
