Good question.

Foremost, I truly believe the success of this group is because they (or we all in the team) are family, and especially the band have known and played with each other in Snarky and in other projects since their teens.

There is story to be told, there is a incredible high level of musicianship, they engage with their fans and their music is very accessible and easy to digest – their melodies stick to your mind!

Concerning what we did behind the scenes, it was a matter of setting out a proper live strategy for the band in The Netherlands at first, synergizing marketing, and mobilizing potential stakeholders; having their music taught or integrated into the educational material at the various Conservatories and mobilizing the music students to spread the word.

Timing was pivotal, as the market was screaming for a group like Snarky; kind of a contemporary “Weather Report” with very accessible music, drawing larger and younger crowds, but also complicated enough to satisfy the music heads.

The first tour, we got the buzz going (with one unexpected fully sold out show), on the second run, couple of months afterwards, that show sold out completely too, ‘cause everyone wanted to see this band and lots of people were talking about it.

Looking at the online stats, we saw that we had a serious increase of views and interactions from NL, but also throughout Europe. Our ideas started to work.

On the first tour we got the right press in, but the second run (just 1 show, sold out) especially (major press) to kind of “confirm” that the buzz was real (I remember a newspaper headline on page 3 (half pager) “My God, these Americans are phenomenal” – so we got the right articles, radio time, interviews etc and invested time to set out a solid live path to have them explode within a year.

Within that year they performed at North Sea Jazz Festival – with a television feature – and we made sure all the press about North Sea mentioned Snarky: the band was THE hype of the festival.

If this happens in The Netherlands, it’s 90% a good sign for other markets. That same year we produced the recording sessions of We Like It Here in the Netherlands and co-produced the Grammy winning Metropole album Sylva.

This all happened within 1.5-2 years.

The growth, music, all elements falling into place was incredible.

To be part of that is still something we and I personally am very proud of. And of course, this put our agency, Good Music Company, on the international map. In some way we became a part of music history, the story of Snarky Puppy. Behind the scenes of course, but still.