June has been the designated month to celebrate the excellence and impact of Black music, since President Jimmy Carter created Black Music Month in 1979. This June, the Indianapolis Recorder will feature four African-Americans making an impact in the Indianapolis music world.
When thinking about Indy’s music scene, it’s easy to get caught up with what happens on stage — the singers, dancers and musicians who give their best work to crowds of Circle City residents night after night. But there’s much more that goes on behind the scenes to ensure the performers hit the stage and the show goes on.
Leonard Patterson, a native of Anderson, Indiana, has played several roles in Indianapolis’ vibrant music industry, including writing and performing music, managing bands and solo artists, coordinating performers’ public relations needs and, most recently, working as a booking agent and band manager for local performers with Blonde Entertainment.
Like many people who work in the music industry, Patterson said it’s something he grew up with.
“Music has been the undercurrent pretty much my whole life. I grew up in a very musical family,” he said. “My aunts were singers, my mom was a singer at church, my dad and uncles and cousins were all jazz musicians … it was just something that was a part of me.
“In high school, I’d get together with my friends in the neighborhood, and we’d go to the basement and write songs and make beats. It was just always there.”
Patterson didn’t land directly in a music career, though. He worked for several years in various corporate jobs before circumstances pushed him back into music.
“There was a buyout of the company, and they offered me a job or I could take my severance package. I chose the severance package and paid off some debt and spent some time songwriting. That’s what my passion was at the time, writing songs and pitching songs to artists,” he said.
Then 9/11 happened. About a week after the attack, Patterson wrote a song called “Home of the Brave.” Then about a week later, his mother died.
“It went from being a song I wrote to a song that I wanted to share. That was the impetus for me to reach out to some of my musician friends.”
And that’s how the band, Living Proof, came to be. In addition to performing as the band’s lead singer, Patterson also wrote songs and played the role of band manager and booking agent.
Once Living Proof was well established, Patterson took his management talents further.
He began his work with Blonde Entertainment in 2008. For a few years, Patterson also worked as manager and public relations coordinator for local recording artist London Rose.
In his current role at Blonde Entertainment, Patterson works with multiple performers as both an agent and manager, and his responsibilities include booking gigs, negotiating contracts, monitoring social media and more.
On a typical day, “I’d say it’s emails and phone calls in the morning, doing Facebook promotion and things on social media, a big part of it is constantly being on social media, whether it’s to promote something coming up or to monitor feedback. Another big part of it is working on contracts and agreements. It’s a good mix of online, offline, detailed stuff, social stuff. It keeps you hopping.”
On the weekends, and during the week throughout the summer, Patterson spends his time on-call, ready to coordinate, troubleshoot and anything else necessary to make sure the planned shows go on. Then follows what Patterson calls “booking Monday” — an assessment of how everything went over the weekend — and the process begins anew.
Out of each of his roles, Patterson says he enjoys the manager position the most.
“As the band manager, I feel like you get a chance to not repeat mistakes you’ve made yourself, and you can offer your help, offer your experience and be a sounding board for whatever issues might come up,” he said. “You also get to see people having fun, not just within the band, but if you are aligning yourself with bands and musicians who share similar values, you also get to see the effect they have on other people.”
But he’s also found his skills learned as an agent have come in handy in other aspects of his life, specifically in his Daily Acts of Love initiative, where he uses his expertise to act as “a booking agent for volunteers” and matches a group of people eager to help with various volunteer opportunities.
On the group’s website, dailyactsoflove.com, Patterson’s message urges the community to spread love in any way they can.
“Let’s not think of kindness as something that has to be random; let’s think about it and even ACT on it on a daily basis!”
That same undercurrent of kindness is one thing Patterson says makes Indy’s music scene so unique.
“There’s competition, but it’s friendly. Everyone would love to be on stage at the 500, at the big events. But there’s always this sense of people rooting for other people, as well. I feel like no one’s making an effort to bring anybody down.
“It feels like it’s a larger community of musicians and bands that are rooting for each other and sharing in each other’s successes.”
