Curt Motley
Appearances
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
He would not have been a guy that threw in the white flag. And, you know, you got to remember, Toby was 29 years old when he was getting his record deal. And he said, if I don't have it by the time I'm 30, then I'm standing in oil fields. And he'd quit playing football. He was playing semi-pro football then. And so this 365 show thing was terrifying from my standpoint.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
What someone told me was, actually, T.K. Kimbrell said that you've got to make the artist believe that you're the key to their success, and they cannot function without you. And, hey, I don't know if I ever pulled that off, you know, but that was a really good...
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Just under 30.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And how did you become an agent? I played a basketball game to get a gig with T.K. Kimbrell. who I think was working for Vector at that time. And he was just about to go out on his own. And I worked with his wife at the famous Iroquois Apartments in Bellevue. And he came over. He's an Indiana boy. And he said he was starting a gig. And I said, hey, man, I'll play a basketball game for it.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
I mean, I, I booked Tim. I don't know if it was his first tour, but I had Tim with Sawyer Brown. Yeah, you did. And before that tour right there that you're talking about. And, and, I know we had him on, don't take the girl into that. And then right out of that. So, um, that was a long time ago.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
You know what I found out... toby did vegas toby had been sick he'd had he had chemo radiation surgery surgery and then he was like i'm ready to work and i'm like you know you just saw at that point i was like he's saying it and i'm gonna nod but he's not ready yet and then he called me one day and and he's like Hey, man, I'm ready to fucking work. And this would have been like October.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
I'm going to tie this in. And so we did three shows in Vegas. And at the last minute, we had 44 days to the first show. And... You know, they were three of the highest indoor grossing dates he'd ever had in his career. We had, you know, tickets. I don't know if I'm even proud of it, but we had, I mean, tickets that we were selling for $1,500, like lots of them. And it was crazy.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And, um, he told me we were talking going into that one night and I don't know how Tim came up. I believe maybe Tim had texted Toby or something, but I believe what he said to me was, man, you know, Tim and I met each other on like each of our first nights in town or something. And I'm like, I've never heard that. You've never said that.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
I mean, it had been fun. The 80s were awesome. Anybody that says they weren't just didn't live in the 80s. And... But, I mean, I thought I had it made, you know. I was... Work all week, drink Friday, Saturday, Sunday, go back to work on Monday, and had just enough money to make that work every week. And I thought that was living. And it was at the time. If I'm being honest, I was happy as shit.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And everybody used to hang out downtown there at that Best Western or whatever it was, you know, by the, you know, what the old Country Music Hall of Fame was. Yeah, that looked like a barn. Yeah, yeah. And so Toby said he and Tim met on like his very first night in there. I mean, any night you went in there.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
It was Paul Davis and it'd be Tracy Lawrence and John Michael Montgomery and Tim McGraw and Toby Keith. And, you know, it was incredible. Yeah.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Yeah.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
So anyway, one day, I just knew. And so I... I don't know, man. I was sort of in a funk. I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I was going to go be a hardware salesman in Knoxville. And I was talking to TK one night. I think he was just road managing Steve Warner then. And he's like, are you fucking crazy? Can I say fuck on this? He said, are you fucking crazy?
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Yeah. I want to do a festival called As Seen on TV. And we'll put all these actors, singers together. Bacon Brothers out there. And the Bacon Brothers and Quaid. Yeah. And we'll do all that together. I think it'd do really well.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Wasn't he in Billy Bob and Goliath?
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And I said, well, it's either that or I was thinking about maybe going to the Coast Guard or becoming a cop or something. He goes, what's wrong, man? And he said, why don't you get in the music business? And I'm like, do what? You know, I dropped out of college about three times and I was working probably three different jobs. And I mean, I was a maintenance man, security dude.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Thursday could be the as-seen-on-TV.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Russell Crowe's got a band. We can just keep stacking them. We can stack them. We can do it. Can we have the Thursday? We'll figure it out.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
You've got to make the artist believe that you're the key to their success.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
But you're talking about how you thought Dennis Quaid was legit. And I'll tell you, the minute that I knew he was legit is when Jamie Johnson said, who's the legitest?
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Um, he said, yeah, I'm, I'm doing my Nikki Mitchell foundation event. I got Dennis Quaid. And then I said, what? And he said, I got what? And he said, who'd you say? He said, Dennis Quaid. And I'm like, Okay. And like, I had no idea. And, uh, but I can tell you that, I mean, again, if Jamie's going to do it, it's going to be real and it's going to be good.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And we went out there and I was like, damn, you know, and, and it was, and he was awesome.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
I did heat and cooling work on the weekends, delivered pizza for Pizza Hut. I did all that stuff. And yeah. Anyway, we played a basketball game. I beat him on a court that I built. And then he started his deal, and I started with him in July of 1990. And, you know, one day I was wearing steel-toed boots and brown pants and a shirt with my name on it.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
And the next I was answering phones at a management company and couldn't understand what people were even saying when they called in. I had no idea. I had no idea. Didn't know what their names were or anything. So, yeah.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
Yeah, the great times, man. Yeah. I mean, it is soon. It feels like it just happened. And it was not expected. And, you know, I remember the day that he told me that he had cancer. It was like October the 10th or 12th. We were somewhere there in Minnesota. And he was like, just us sitting here talking. He's like, hey, everybody get off the bus except Kurt.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
I'm like, damn, I'm getting fired after all this time. I mean, what did I do, man? I mean, I can't believe it. And he's like, hey, man, I just found out I got cancer. And it didn't even floor me or anything because I'm like, I mean, you're Captain America. What can cancer do to you, man? And he was very resolved at that moment to like, I don't give a shit. I mean, this ain't nothing.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
you know we'll go get it fixed and just keep on moving down the road and he said you know i want to keep working man i mean he had you know i think what you're talking about like on sticks and all that there's some kind of this cycle that you know they say like the first cycle is about 30 years and after 30 years of you know when you sort of you know not start but when you start having success
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
You know, that's sort of the ebb and flow. And then you start, you know, really flowing again. And so that's what he was coming into as well.
On the Bus with Troy Vollhoffer
Backstage Pass with Legendary Music Agents Rod Essig, Curt Motley, and Nick Meinema
It was hard right there, you know, where we were playing because... The numbers were really good, but then you're like, well, nobody else is touring and shit, man. But I mean, we'll see how it goes. But he's like, hey, let's work. And he had this plan, Troy, which you know about. And we went to Mexico and he was serious and it was terrifying. Toby wanted to do 365 shows in 365 days.