our national politics could learn a good lesson from the latest election cycle of the Wisconsin
area music industry organization, the peaceful transfer of power. Today, outgoing whammy president,
Jason Clagstead and incoming president Roy Elkins have passed the torch and are here to share a
beer and talk about the future of whammy. Roy, Jason, welcome to Maxine Gradio. Thank you, sir.
Thanks for having us. Oh, this is so fun. This is great. And Jason, you came out here from
Milwaukee. Yes, I did. I wouldn't have missed it. Now, you guys went out and had dinner on
on stage three before he came here. Where did you go? Michael Angelos. Michael Angelos.
Well, what did you have? I just was I was there for company. Oh, chocolate. I said,
stage three original. Did you either have you participate in a record store today? A record store
day? I did not. I did not either. Sorry. Okay. I feel guilty now. No, don't don't feel guilty. Do
you listen to a lot of vinyl at home? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, Roy, I've been to Roy's house.
I have to. He has an incredible vinyl. So I mean, how many how many records do you think you have?
Four to five thousand. Wow. About 7,000 CDs to this. Oh, man, that is quite a collection. That
would take a while to burn. Yeah. I'll tell you, Roy, you are CEO of BroadJM Music Publishing,
President of the Madison Area Music Association. And now the incoming president of WAMI,
what special quality makes you a glutton for so much punishment? I've been trying to figure that
out for about 30 years. I guess you do a lot of stuff. Well, I don't know. I think
I love the mama and what we're about and buying instruments for kids and scholarships and
you know, raising money with a great show. Mama cares. Mama cares. Yeah. And just recognizing
local talent. And then I really wasn't seeking to be involved with WAMI, but Jason asked me
a couple of years ago if I would and help them with their voting. And then when he said he was
going to step down and ask if I'd be interested in taking it on. I was, you know, look at if I
can continue the great job he's done at getting this thing going and turned around. And of course,
I would help. Of course I would. It's hard to say no to things like this. The ability to say no
is a great skill, isn't it? Yeah. I still have to learn that sometime. At some point in the
future. I'll learn that. Well, we're glad you didn't. Yeah. Jason, you are the outgoing president
of WAMI. Tell us about your success over the years and where you felt you made a difference
to the organization. Well, I have a really long career in music and Wisconsin and it's given me
so much to my life. And a couple of years ago, I became aware that WAMI was struggling. And I
sort of antied up asked to the president was met with them, said, I have some ideas. I'd like to
take everything that I learned in business and everything on my relationships and music and apply
them to a structure in WAMI that had not done over 40 years before. So I put together essentially
a three-legged stool of scholarships, sponsorships at some of us stage and then growing the voting system
by using broad jams, independent voting system. So at this point in time, I think we just finished
our finalist round of voting. We're at some place around 130,000 votes. Wow. And it's the pairing
of what my vision was starting out with what Roy's business is. And it touches the entire
state for the first time. So you've really made it inclusive as much as possible. And we're just,
we're just getting to our feet here. There's so much more. What's your secret for getting the
fans engaged to get on there and to make the votes? And obviously the promotion from the bands
makes a lot of difference here too. But on the WAMI side, what is your secret recipe for that
engagement? This is a darn good question. And the answer is musicians and Wisconsin want to be
recognized and they want validation. If there's a way for us to demonstrate that validation through
the voting system, and it really, the data shows that for the first time, all of Wisconsin is
participating. We know that all the towns and cities and burbs and everything that are participating
for the first time in WAMI voting, they want validation, they want recognition. Yeah. That's great.
And that's, I mean, you're absolutely right. People make this art. They want the people to hear
it. Sometimes that's challenging. Obviously, little easier in this day and age with social media
and streaming platforms. But an organization like WAMIs and what we do here on maxing to get the
music out to the people. It's so important. This is a great pairing. I love working with Max
Sank and Roger. This is actually sort of the triumvirate of how to talk to Wisconsin musicians.
Absolutely. Roy, what are your priorities going forward with WAMI? What do you, what do you hope
into achieve here? Well, I think that, you know, just to simplify it, what Jason did was he got
everybody in the garage playing the same song. And what I want to do is just continue that.
I mean, it was, he's really got everybody organized thinking about the growth of the organization.
How can we help musicians? How can we give more scholarships? And on and on.
And my job is just to pour a little more gasoline on that. And hopefully we can use my platform
at Broadjam. We can use, you know, civic media to do that. And my job is just maybe to orchestrate
a little more and just get us moving forward and keep just in the same direction that Jason put
us in. Well, Jason, you created the scholarship program for WAMI, which had been a part of the
plan for WAMI since its inception 42 years ago, but hasn't been realized until recently. Tell
us about getting the program started and who it benefits. It took initial seed funding.
And in order to get that seed funding, it took some, I had to put some people in that were
in the financial side of things. So for the first time, we didn't have just musicians or business
people. We had lawyers, we had wealth management. We had brought all these people together. And
because I have ability to hold relationships for long periods of time and then put them in play,
that was my business. I was the head of production for GMI Marketing and doing concerts and
stuff all over the world for Fortune 50 clients. But it taught me how to build teams that do things.
So by putting this team together, we were able to raise the money for the seed funding for the
scholarships, identify who and where across the state we wanted to benefit because the next
generation of musicians in Wisconsin is actually the most important generation of musicians for
Wisconsin. Wow, that's incredible. And you know, I wanted to ask you, you know, what are you doing
now after WAMI? Well, I play in five bands. Elephonic being one of them. I'm working the summer
fest WAMI stage again this year. Oh yeah. So actually, I'm hoping to see you down there, rocker.
You will be there. We're going to be there June 28th. It's such a fun stage to play.
Fire and plow, right? Fire and plow is great. And it's so great because you play right to the lake.
It's in front of you. It's the best sounding and it's covered. But the mornings are all kids,
music schools from across Wisconsin. The early afternoons are all veterans groups. And later
afternoons are all bands. So those doors, that never thought they could play summer fest.
Yes. And they all do. We have between 90 and 100 acts this year. Wow. It's great. And you know what,
I love about it too, is when you look at the big stages in summer fest, everybody wants to play
a big stage. But you're 75 feet from the audience where when you play the WAMI stage, they're right
there. It's up close and personal. My favorite when it rains. Everybody's there.
Hope for rain. I hope it rains during our show, Jimmy. Well, Roy, the age old problem has been
how to bridge the Madison and Milwaukee music scenes with each other. And as well as the rest of
the state of Wisconsin. And now you are in a unique place to do both. Tell us about community bridge
building. Well, there's a couple of things. And that's one of the reasons when Jason asked me if I
wouldn't follow him into this. I said, yes, because I think being the president of WAMI, we have two
great boards. And if we can get them to start working together, just think how, you know, the power
of two is going to be like the power of six. It's really, you know, if we can do that and really
start recognizing and helping some of the talent get connected with each other, learn from,
you know, WAMI can learn from what we've done with our charities. We can learn from what they've
done with theirs. And, you know, combine the two. And like you say, I think I'm kind of in a
unique position now to make sure that we go forward together. I think that what that means is
you're in a unique position to bring the WAMI awards to Madison. It could happen.
That actually should happen. Has it ever happened? No, no, that would be, uh, that'd be an
emphatic. No. Well, you know, the other thing too, guys, I think we have to not only Madison,
but we're having them in Green Bay this year on May 19th. Yes. And we, you know, we've had it in
Milwaukee a few times over the years, but I think we need to think about the Northwest as well.
Yes. I mean, there's a lot of great musicians up there. Maybe one of one of the greatest folk
musicians ever, uh, Bonnover lives up in that area. And he's done an amazing job. Just his presence
there has done an amazing job, uh, for cultivating music up in that area. So I think we ought to think
about that in the future as well. I know. Oh, Claire and LaCrosse has a strong scene up there.
Yeah. Listeners up there. There's a lot of bands that come out of there. And I think there's
a lot of interest up in the Northwest too, like in the Hayward area. Uh, people listening on the
buzz here on civic media. So Saturday, May 18th, there's a, uh, there's a show for the whammy. Tell
us about this show. What it is is we have identified it as being sort of a night before music scene.
And we're going to have three bands there. One is a horn band, uh, a local fave called, uh,
brass differential. And then a really great young artist Emilio Forge. She's won a whammy award
before. And then a really young sort of surfer punk band called Social SIG run by Parker Shultz.
And we just want to make it a night of music, uh, leading up to the next night and have people come
up so they can spend two days up there and enjoy the Lambo scene. It's everything is really close
to Lambo stadium. That's great. And now you're talking about May 19th. May 18th is the what I just
described. May 19th is the award show. And that is going to be at the Epic event center on
homegrown avenue in Green Bay. Tell us some insider secrets. Is there like a finalist party on the
April 21st? There's a finalist party tomorrow night at the steel tank brewing and a con walk.
Oh, tell us about that. What's going on? Well, we got a couple of bands. I'm not going to leak
them to you, but we've got a couple bands playing and it's going to be, uh, you know, basically it's
a home coming from musicians to all be invited and just enjoy music. Uh, we will be sharing some
of the finalists during that party. Uh, but I mean, that's what it's about. And that steel tank brewing
company in a con walk. That's correct. Oh, they have great food there. I've eaten there. Yeah. New
venue. Really great production. Awesome. Uh, Roy Elkins, Jason Clackstag. Thank you so much for coming
in and sharing your story. Thanks for doing what you do to support the Wisconsin music scene. We
really appreciate you guys too. Thanks, Jimmy. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah, man, uh,
live in the layers coming up at nine o'clock tonight. Butter brick is here right now is new music
from the mascot theory. It's Maxi Pacific Media. We are local music.
