Musicians hustle to land gigs, but tracking when and where they are supposed to play through multiple emails can quickly become unmanageable. Nani O’Keefe and Mike Morrison, married “dot-com refugees” turned concert promoters, have developed a tool to help. Or as O’Keefe and Morrison put it online, “Multiple calendars and humans are a major pain in the ass. We’ve got the hemorrhoid creme for you. Better communication tools help you know what’s coming up and who’s involved.”
After spending 10 years in the Silicon Valley scene, the couple moved to NH and became consultants. While acting as unofficial roadies for their son, who aspires to be a professional drummer, they founded Wicked Cool Music, a music talent and concert management firm in Barrington.
“There is an entrepreneurial spirit in both of us,” O’Keefe says. “We looked at what are the ways you can live sustainably as a musician.” The couple began hosting concerts, using their home as a “research facility,” she says.
Those concerts allowed the couple to meet musicians and uncover their pain points, many of whom rely on family or friends to take messages or scroll through email to track gigs and things that need to be done to promote a show. “It’s a mess,” says O’Keefe, a business analyst and product designer. So she and Morrison, a senior software architect, decided to develop a tool to help independent musicians manage their careers more effectively. The result is Underground Overdrive, an SAAS (Software as a Service) tool that tracks bookings and “gig tasks” such as creating a Facebook event or event poster, or getting the tour van inspected. The tool also lets artists track ticket sales and merchandise revenue.
“It does what a booking agent, manager or label would do,” Morrison says. It also comes with an AI assistant. Wicked Cool Music is one of 13 startups accepted into NH Tech Alliance’s Accelerate NH 2019 program, which coaches entrepreneurs.