Smoothing the Way for Santa Barbara Musicians

“Imagine this,” says musician Brett Hunter. “Imagine you’re a musician playing your heart out at bars night after night. And you only make $200 for three hours of work. And you do that time and time and time again. And then imagine that you….”

“PTSD,” chimes in Neil Erickson, a Santa Barbara musician. 

“Yeah, I know,” laughs Hunter. “And then imagine that you get paid $1,500 to walk into a room of 150 people. The sound is done for you. The client communication is done. You didn’t need to get the people there. You didn’t need to get the sound there…. And you got Neil handing you a beer as you walk on.”

Erickson hands me a phantom beer. I’m not a musician, but this all sounds pretty great. So, how does it work?

Riviera Culture Club — which describes itself as a “sound and talent collective” in Santa Barbara — aims to make the music industry more “sustainable” for artists in town. While the team can’t promise that every musician in the collective will make $1,500 for a gig, they try their best to leverage artists’ pay and provide them with ideal performance experiences. 

They function as an agency for musicians by booking them for weddings, restaurants, bars, and just about anywhere else live music can be set up in town. They deal with client communications and sound while receiving a commission (variable rate) of the artist’s fees. This way, they say, musicians can ditch the familiar anxieties about getting to a venue early to set up or sell tickets. “We try to treat everybody in our collective like celebrities,” says Hunter. 

Having walked the path themselves, Hunter, alongside fellow musician Joe Farey and newest addition Erickson, combined their skills to create Riviera Culture Club. Their goal — they are still in the early stages of the collective — is to create a supportive space to help fellow artists navigate the industry’s challenges and build flourishing careers. “A lot of musicians don’t understand that they can make a lot of money,” says Erickson. 

Hunter, who was on The Voice in 2018, says he was inspired by the abundance of musicians in Santa Barbara who he felt were underappreciated, overworked, and underpaid. He doesn’t think musicians should have to compete with each other for gigs in what he describes as “a race to the bottom.” Instead, he wants to inspire a “race to the top.”

For our interview on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon, I walked up to an unassuming gray door. The transition from the street to the studio — which Hunter and Farey opened two years ago — elicited a feeling akin to standing outside a stadium before emerging inside. There’s a wardrobe closet, an impeccable sound system, various instruments, and cameras patrolling every angle. 

Before I absorbed the downstairs space, which is small but somehow still fits just about every instrument you can think of, I was walking upstairs to a loft area where a gigantic curved monitor consumes a desk, and another monitor displays each camera live in the studio.

Fueled by a vision for a collaborative music community, Hunter and his team kicked off their collective a few months back by inviting musicians from Santa Barbara to record a song of their choice, free of charge. They provided a wardrobe, instruments, and a state-of-the-art sound system. After this, they uploaded the recordings to Riviera Culture Club’s musician board. This board allows clients looking to book a musician or band to watch a sneak peek of the artist play and decide if they are a good fit. It ensures the venue or event aligns with the artist’s wants. They describe the process as “match-making” an artist to a venue. 

To view Riviera Culture Club’s website, you’ll first go through Book Santa Barbara, an umbrella connecting all the services Hunter and his team provide: venue bookings, equipment rentals, and a photo booth, to name a few.

Because the team has the proper sound equipment, they are always looking for new places to host pop-up concerts around town and turn unconventional spaces into live music venues. Three years ago, Hunter started performing live shows outside of Satellite S.B. on State Street every Thursday. He’s since invited Riviera Culture Club musicians to play. The team even created a sign at the Satellite shows that displays QR codes for each artist so people can easily tip them and learn more about the musician using the corresponding code. 

“A lot of the people that are in the collective, have other jobs, other things that they do,” says Hunter. “So … when they come and perform in events, we want that to be a really positive experience.” 

For more information about Riviera Culture Club, see booksantabarbara.com.