Bawl, what's up everybody once again it's Brandon Shawn and today I got a very special guest for you guys Damien Ritter. Now if you don't know him by name Damien was one of the co-founders of funk volume, a label that was making millions in revenue including artists like Hopson, Swizz, Jaren Benton, quite a few more. I'm not going to go through their whole roster but we talk about really what it takes to build a record label and there's a lot of great insights for people who want to be managers and on the business side but if you want to build a record label if you want to build a brand this is the guy that's worth listening to so there's going to be a lot of things he talks about for now let's just go ahead and hop into it. So Damien tell everybody how you got into the music industry and what you were doing before that. Sure, so prior to 2008 I had no experience in music industry whatsoever outside of just being a fan of music. I went to UC Berkeley I was a business major when I graduated in 2002 I was an internal auditor for Wells Fargo then I got a job with Goldman Sachs in London so I was all financial services and then in 2005 I decided to go to business school press the reset button went to business school at Stanford got my MBA you know so still no music and then when I graduated from Stanford I took a job with Deloitte Consulting in Chicago so I was a management consultant for Deloitte Consulting in their strategy and operations group so I worked with them for about a year and some change and then that's when I got laid off this was around 2008 so 2008 the economy was kind of going through a rough patch got caught in the first round of layoffs I wasn't actually that mad about it because I wasn't that happy I realized that you know each job that I had I just kept finding what I wasn't that passionate about so I was going back to the drawing board and my brother hit me up he was at a college called UC Irvine here in Southern California he's an artist he said that he was kind of wanting to drop out and do music full time so it just so happened that it coincided with me being laid off I was like okay let me see how I can help him out he had a friend at the time that was equally as frustrated but in a different position he was signed to a label at the time things just weren't going that well he had the idea for funk volume which eventually became the label his name's Hobson a lot of people have kind of seen or know part of the story of the rise and crash and burn of funk volume but the three of us got together we I said you know I'll be responsible for the business and you guys be responsible for the creative and I kind of just jumped in it and we figured it out that's how I got into the music industry got it so I mean obviously there's no one way into the music industry I'm sure you know a lot of different people at this point and who have came in completely different ways what you say is pretty much safe to say there is no one way to get in the game there definitely is no one way I mean everybody comes to the table with different resources different relationships you know I had some money saved so I was able to invest some money into the label but obviously I didn't have any relationships or anybody nobody that I knew of off top I mean I eventually realized that my network was I had network for quite some time I was part of fraternity so there was different pieces I didn't never look for anybody in the music industry so I didn't know who was part of my network so there was but there was nobody that I could turn to and be like help me grow this label or help me start this label but looking at it looking at the industry just knowing that the fans were the crew the most crucial piece you know if you have fans you can tour if you have fans you can sell music fans you can get sponsorship so the more fans you have the more opportunities open up for you so that became our focus is just how do we get in front of people how do we build momentum how do we get more fans because I knew that all the opportunities will be unlocked once we had enough fans I got you make sense so when we first got to the label what were you saying all right this is you're in the mindset I started this label my brother he's here obviously you have a family on the line and you don't have a job so I'm sure it's kind of like back to the wall then you got hops in what would they like artists wise what kind of fan base that they already have at the moment you guys decided to start the label my brother didn't really have much of a fan base I mean hopson had a little bit of a fan base you know at that time my space was still popping so his my space was was was fairly decent but nothing to build a career on just yet you know what year was this again 2008 oh man yeah that's that's hella early because he wasn't that big like 2010 he wasn't really blowing it right yeah so it took us it took us about two or three years for it to even be an actual business so you know for two and three years we were just putting out content uh really we released a project called haywire that was like a joint album where half the half the songs where my brother half the songs were hopson and then there was actually a third where my brother a third were hopson and a third with them together we released that for free we started just doing anything and everything that could interact and engage with fans so obviously it's releasing music and videos but we also did like use a use stream show that we did weekly called punk volume tv the guys were doing like local um like contest performances where they would you know win money so we were just doing anything and everything that we could to get to get in front of fans heavy engagement on social media you know we made a very crucial decision early to really adopt facebook and really take advantage of the facebook community even though the artists were a little reluctant at first because it didn't look as playful it didn't look as colorful as my space you couldn't really change your page up and make it look crazy um but if that was definitely one of our smartest decision was was jumping on facebook early okay so being early to a platform being early to a platform is always like an advantage and it's so so would you say that was one of the biggest things that helped move you guys audience yeah for sure i mean because back then facebook didn't really have the restrictions on the reach that it does now so it's a lot it's a lot harder i mean i definitely think um artists should be on facebook still because there's a lot of people there and we do a lot of paid paid social media marketing on facebook but it definitely was easier to grow a fan base on facebook back then um than it is now for sure got you so you said in those three years before it was a legitimate business a lot of people that are watching this are going to be watching this are in that space right mm-hmm and i know you said you were doing a lot of things can you go a little bit deeper into details of the mentality you had and what y'all were trying to do system-wise and like what the and what the artists were kind of tasked with doing what you as the business person was tasked with doing just to give them in depth idea sure so i tried to give them the opportunities just kind of focus on music and focus on video content and um you know put out having having dope visuals is crucial um you know we're constantly competing for people's attention and there's so much video content out there now you know i'm so very good he was very good at presenting his brand you know the lane in which he was in very controversial uh you know he turned a lot ahead with his visuals so you know while he was doing that i always encourage encourage them to just heavy interaction on facebook if people reached out to you and say they love your stuff you know say thank you you know uh we basically turned our initial hardcore fans into kind of a street team and we did develop a street team um an internet street team in which we had like different um you know different different facebook groups for each city so we really mobilized our fans to to support and get involved and just be a part of the funk volume energy that we were building so we would also do like contests there was there i came up with the idea of doing a contest it was four artists but it was mutually beneficial it was called the don't fuck up our beats contest because hopson hopson and my brother they also produced beats so on our web on our website you can go to the to the site download a beat record a video of yourself rapping to the beat post it back on youtube and we would have this contest and the contest itself grew because we would do it every year so we held it probably six or seven times actually maybe eight times uh so that was a that was a dope way to get other artists involved to to to promote the brand to promote our beats to promote the projects that we had dropping around that time because we noticed that every time we ran this contest there was just a lot of traffic you know so anything that we were doing that time it was good it was it was good promotion for everybody and it was also a good platform for artists to participate because you know artists coming up they're looking for places to to showcase their talent and i noticed that every time an artist would submit um and video through the don't fuck up our beats contest i would go to their youtube page and that would be the most viewed video on their page so it was working for it was working as great exposure for them as well so it was it was just a good idea is mutually beneficial that was one of the things we did eventually i started doing like virtual conferences like fun volume virtual conference i always wanted to do things that helped us solidify us as like a reputable legit label and while the artists continue to do their thing too i felt that those those things were important from a label branding perspective oh man you roll right into that man because i'm i was definitely wondering to make fun volume even though this is all of now there's is definitely one of those labels that actually did start to create a name of its own where there's a lot of labels where they just have some artists but the label isn't known or doesn't have much credibility in itself so when you say you did conferences were you talking about like more business type conferences no we did a conference just like so using a platform similar to this so just add just imagine you know a panel type by where i would have two more people and you would be not not just asking me questions but asking well i was the moderator i would ask i would set up the panel just like a3c you know there would be a schedule there would be um you know different topics so it would be held over the course of the day it'd probably be four or five panels and people would just tune in just like this and and and listen to the panels and have an opportunity to to to ask questions so i did that a couple times um i was just constantly just coming up with ideas because a lot of artists look to us because you know we were super independent i mean we eventually signed a label services deal with warner um but we literally built it fan by fan and we were just i just wanted to show artists how we did it how much effort it took and how we were thinking about things so that they could benefit from our experience as well okay that and i'm thinking were there any hacks though would you say there was something that was a hack i know you said you built fan by fan but something that really boosted what you guys did um i don't think there's any hacks you know you just never know like what video is going to go crazy um but i think it's it's always important even if you do have a video that goes crazy because i think around the time hop drop ill mind for that was like the first video that kind of went super crazy uh that was one in which you kind of went it Tyler the creator um so i think that one really yeah that one that that one really caught a lot of people's attention but you i think it's always best to to be prepared for that moment if and when that happens so that you have a foundation to support it and you know some people have one viral video and then like people look to see what else they're doing and there's really nothing there we had we had put out a couple projects we were super active so if you if that viral video caught your attention there was already kind of like some momentum brewing they're like oh this is not just a one-off thing this is a whole kind of energy um and i think we were able to really um keep a lot of that attention when i when hop got it with some of those controversial videos yeah man you definitely had to nail on the head i'll always tell people like you have to have some sort of catalog for people once you have their attention you got to make the most of it because you're not guaranteed to get that attention again yeah yeah so it's just important to to build a solid foundation and not just you know try to bank on something going viral just be prepared for the moment if and when it does happen for sure and when you say preparation i know there's the fact that you guys dropped a lot of music right you had a catalog but in terms of preparation what other things would you say people would need to be building and getting systematized for preparation when that moment actually does come well we were just we just had a a team i mean our team was was was building over time i mean we didn't like we didn't start out with a booking agent we didn't even really start out with a lawyer but we added as we were learning the business just trying to add the proper components um to support growth right so we eventually got a booking agent we eventually hired a publicist we eventually signed more artists so we were prepared we were learning but i feel like we built a pretty solid foundation and it wasn't just kind of like an internet thing even though we didn't have a building in an office like we had we were pretty well organized but so what did that team look like because i know that you were running your team pretty lean in the beginning and kind of being super efficient what does that look like when in terms of going from just you how did you handle it when it was just you all the way to the standpoint of saying this is how i know i need to add this person and another person for sure i mean you know we weren't really making much money and it were any money it was really just all my money going out for the first two years so i always tell cats you know cat it's important to know like how to manage money and things like that but you don't need an accountant if there's no money around so when we started making money we got a business manager that handled our handled our accounting helped invoice cats helped with some of the budgeting and things like that we always had a lawyer on boards for for different things whether we are confronted with a sponsorship opportunity or our negotiations with the label but we definitely ran we ran it all we we operated very lean and we were lean on purpose because i never put any pressure on the guys to create music you know hopson or my brother like neither one of them make a lot of music and when you don't make a lot of music or when i don't know what's coming out every year it's very hard to plan it's very hard to budget so yeah so it was it was difficult to bring on people because i didn't really know what we were going to be doing that year so i didn't want the fixed overhead that was one of the reasons that we decided to sign the warner because it was a label services deal and they earned a percentage of our music sales and we were able to work and kind of cherry pick some of their services so we would not only get distribution we would get pr we would get some marketing support but that wouldn't be fixed overhead i wouldn't you know that because i didn't know when we would make music you know the percentage of sales deal just made a lot of sense because they would get paid when we got paid so from my standpoint it kept the artist happy there was never any pressure to um well the warner deal didn't make the artist happy that but for another reason um but from a business standpoint in terms of how your structure in the business it makes a lot of sense because if you go through a year where you don't really make as much money or you don't put out as many projects and now you've got a full-time marketing person now you got a full-time publicist you still got to pay those people and it would have been more painful on the business got you that makes sense so why did you um well why did the deal not make the artist happy what happened well they felt that i think it was just like different expectations right you know when you when you say you're working with warner i think you have the expectation of okay they about to really blow some things up they about to put us on tv they about to put us on the radio uh and that didn't happen right away um and we didn't really make radio music but they did uh we did go on a radio tour where we at least got the introduction to a lot of different radio state we were definitely planting seeds so i understood what warner was doing you know we we did a lot of things like they helped our relationship with serious radio we started getting regular spins on serious that was big for us and we started developing right relationships with radio um the relationship with radio sometimes it doesn't happen overnight you plant those seeds and eventually it develops when you have the music um but if you got the music and you got the relationship then you know it can it can really work um so i saw a lot of the things that they were doing it just wasn't materializing as as fast as the guys would have liked so they didn't understand that they they interpreted it as them not doing much i interpreted as them just planting seeds um and they just yeah they was just weren't happy with what warner was doing um so how do you think how important do you think that concept of plant seeds is for you and and just even an idea of building those relationships because you mentioned serious and i saw that you were just as serious with slay what like a few days ago or last week or something yeah that's another project that we did i brought nine nine cats together flew them to austin put them in a house for a week and they they were tasked with creating an album in a week we called it one week notice and we were doing the press for that last week and we stopped at sway and and they dropped some bars off so that was pretty dope but i was that that was i don't think that wasn't so so warner didn't initiate that relationship but we did we did go back to sway during the time um when we were on warner and every time you see people it just helps build on that relationship helps solidify that relationship how did you get closer to cats so um you know every every time i go to new york it's always try to make my rounds and just you know be face to face with people and um you know just drop off some genuine energy and build but that makes sense and i want to think i'm thinking about a question that somebody had and they were talking about just the artist right so this is a business person and they were thinking how do i cut a deal with an artist today that's good for the artist what is a good deal for the artist and um look like for you well it just depends every artist is different it really just depends on where the artist is and what you're contributing to the artist so i can't even say what a good deal is right because i know labels and and and you know even with the way the hops portrayed me it's like a lot of times the business side gets a really bad rap for different deals that are proposed like you know or even just in general the 360 deal gets a bad rap well some cats that make sense for them because they're they weren't anywhere before the label put you know a lot of money into what they were doing you know um so i don't bash 360 deals i got to really look at each situation in isolation and go okay what has the artist done prior to this deal and then on the other side what is the label committing to what is you know what resources do they have how much money are they committing to the situation how long is the deal for you know i probably wouldn't sign a deal of any great lengths unless it was you know a lot of you know unless we're talking about a lot of money but every situation is different so that's what i'm not trying to to cop out of the question it's just a tough it's a tough one to answer there's just too many variables you mentioned not signing for a long time why wouldn't you sign for a long time um it's just a lot of a lot of things can change um the industry is constantly changing the way we consume music is constantly changing there's different revenue streams that are opening up or that are open today that we didn't have you know we did i didn't know what patreon was you know 10 years ago you know when we first started we didn't we weren't monetizing youtube um you know there's there's a lot of weight there's and i don't know what's going to happen this year i don't know what's going to happen next year it's just it would just be tough to to sign for a lengthy period of time i know that back in the day it was normal for cats to sign for like seven eight albums um to me that would be kind of crazy yeah at this point got you that makes sense especially since things are evolving so fast when you um talk about the label being built funk volume has i mean it had a considerable level of success considering what a lot of people just aren't able to do what were y'all doing in terms of nearly revenue by the time y'all um y'all dissolved it was definitely a i don't really i don't typically like to go into but it would it was definitely a in terms of revenue and especially when you throw revenue numbers out there because there's so much cost involved like cats don't understand oh my god there was a multi it was a multimillion dollar business but you know there's a lot of cost to go into running a label and investing into the future so um you know i understand how numbers can get misconstrued at times bet that's a perfect um point right there because i know all right like you said millions of dollars but then you have all these costs what are those costs that actually what do they actually look like when you're making and running a full machine like that sure so like i said before we didn't have an actual building so we went we didn't have any any any rent or you know utilities and stuff like that you know most of the stuff that that we invested in was went back into the artists and the artist projects um or we did a documentary that you know we had to put money into the documentary um a publicist cost lawyers cost um our business manager costs what else what else to make our merchandise that costs a lot of money um insurance tour insurance when you go on tour there's a shitload of cost there's travel there's gas there's you know it's it's it's a lot you know shipping the merchandise out it's i think a lot of people underestimate all of the different moving parts when you're even if you're just one artist money like us because essentially as a as an artist you're a small business that has you know five or six different revenue streams they're kind of like five businesses in one when you think about you know the touring the merchandise the music the publishing it's it's a tough thing there's a lot of moving part even if you're just one artist so imagine running a label where you have four different artists and you have all these these things going on for for various artists it can get you know it not overwhelming i think we manage it pretty well but you just got to be organized and understand kind of you know how to run things got you and well by the time i mean you guys basically had a public spec all right things were kind of behind the scenes pop scene came out and you know made a song painted your character i'm pretty tough right yes as a there's a there's always community miscommunication a lot of times when it comes from business people to artists that's just a common thing right what do you think that you could do differently in terms of going back and maybe how you build a label to make certain things clearer and how you deal with artists or what did you just learn about your process just as a career as a whole not even that particular particular i think it's primarily it's all it always comes down to communication you know communicating more clearly um you know even when you think you're you're you're being transparent and being clear that's your perspective you know you learn that some people don't receive it the same way uh so you know for for example like one of the things that i broke down to the cats on tour that that wasn't understood until i broke it down to him after the fact is when i was doing the budgeting for a tour right we have the revenue that comes in from the show and then we do meet and greets so there's revenue that we get from meet and greet tickets as well so when i'm doing when i was doing the budgeting i didn't really um i looked at all that revenue was kind of one and i didn't separate so when i was just figuring out what we could pay some of the artists i would say okay we're going to give you 500 a night right in my mind that's for the show and the meet and greet i could i should have said you know 300 is for the show 200 is for the meet and greet it doesn't change the amount in which you're going to be given it just makes it more clear that you're being compensated for both things and you can't because because it was thrown out that somebody wasn't getting paid for the meet and greets and i had to tell them that's my bad i should have told it wouldn't have changed how much they made but i would have just made it more clear you know but it was clear as day to me because i'm in the excel spreadsheet i'm the one budgeting it's just stuff like that you learn along the way that you just have to communicate better you know you always got to communicate better and more clearly because you're not dealing with i have a different background right i come from a corporate environment um i understand excel i'm in my power point and thing most artists aren't like that so i have to learn how to kind of communicate in a way in which they understand it's a hard thing to do um so you built a label you had you end up making all this money right or well her say you know however much but you as far as successful successful business you're making all this money right that ends what does that look like just from a career wise how do you decide what's next because in my my mind now knowing more about your story you kind of went through this before right you were successful in the financial services industry and then it kind of ended and now you kind of found just so back in that exact same situation right yeah well i mean you know i've i've done enough to always i've been blessed to have done enough to always have options um you know it was a huge blow just being honest with you it was a huge blow to have something that i invested in not just financially but that was something that i i put my life and heart into for you know eight plus years so for it to go away in the most ridiculous fashion it took me a while to kind of get back to this point where i'm where i'm actually feeling good about things um because one of my initial reactions was you know i wanted to just run as fast as i can away from music like this is like just some bullshit um you know so it took me a while and i'm still got kind of going through the process but i'm doing a number of things i started the music entrepreneur club um i'm talking with a couple companies about going back because as much as i talk about structure with these artists i feel like i've lost some of mine i feel like it's always important to have structure um so i might i might take a job with with a with a music company and leverage a lot of the things that i've used a lot of the things i've learned over the past eight years in addition to my more strategic strategy stuff that i was doing before and kind of merged those experiences to help out some of these new music companies um so well i'm i'm still figuring it out but i luckily i'm i'm back to feeling good and i'm excited about 2018 so i'm looking forward to getting getting getting my hands dirty this year so we talked about mint music entrepreneurs club describe what that is how do you come up with that idea in first place well like i said before we we had done some virtual conferences so i've always had like a toe in education and i just know how important it is just being through the ridiculous situations that i continue to find myself in with artists because i just feel like if if artists come to the table with a certain level of understanding of the business it will really minimize a lot of the tension with the behind the scenes or the business people um you know even some of the things that i see get blown out of proportion online is like people don't even understand the business they their their heart is with the artists because you know the artist has the connection with the fan so whatever the artist says the fans are going to rock with it but i always look at the different situations people in are online and i'm just like you know people have no idea what that situation could have you don't know what their deal look like you don't know nothing you're just taking the artist side and run with and i get it but the music entrepreneur club is i think is important it's a place where you can come network with other artists other producers other manage i'm in the process of also merging the club with kato's beat club so kato is a producer who i've worked with a lot um in the past he has his own beat club is primarily for producers and we've recently agreed to merge the two groups and just make it a bigger community a more supportive community because there's also tension between like rappers and producers you know producers always posting these memes about not getting paid um so i we're just hoping to bring it all together and you know there is some shady stuff that happens in the music industry but i feel like more often than not it's just misunderstanding um and just a lack of knowledge so you know i want to break that all down so that if you do get in a shitty shady situation you know what you're dealing with um at the end of the day you don't got to sign nothing like nobody's forcing you to do anything so if you want to navigate the industry with utmost confidence all you got to do is equip yourself with some knowledge and you'll be straight okay no so i mean that's that virtual reality i mean the virtual conference set up people log in do they have to pay anything monthly yeah so right now it's only ten dollars a month and right now we're meeting twice a week but we're changing the structure where we're just going to do one one session a week and i'm constantly bringing in guests so it's not just me i bring in i i tap my network and i bring in i've had last last year i've had tumor from Spotify come in people from empire come in i got people from Warner coming in like these are legit established professionals and i don't think this experience is being offered anywhere else online and it's only ten dollars a month um so you can't this ain't a money grab for me but i feel like it is important to separate people even if you're paying ten that lets me know you're a little bit serious you're not gonna just come in and start fucking around so you know it's ten dollars a month um the the merge should be done we're trying to figure it out but it should be started in february where we're also going to incorporate like some some music critique sessions throughout the month uh and i think it just build build a solid community ultimately i want the the the the biggest value to be from just being part of the community so if we grow the community to a point where you're traveling in new york and you can just post in the group be like man i'm looking for a videographer in new york or producer in new york everybody could just be supportive and collaborative and just you know makes a dope music without all this shenanigans yeah okay dope man and i know you guys have been running that um just to let you guys know i've been i sat in in some sessions and they're definitely dope but the the main last session i sat in was the bitcoin session um that was an interesting perspective of how that technology the block tank technology will be affecting music so you get all different types of um views at the industry from a business side and obviously from more of that artist producer side looks like you're about to go very heavy on the producer side because you're adding the beat community and the merger so it's definitely worth it just from continuous knowledge from more people who are knowledgeable about the industry yeah i think it's i think it's real dope that you're doing that man no thank you thank you i gotta have you on at some point you gotta join in and as a guest i gotta get you on here yeah man hey i i'd be glad to you gotta make that happen eventually um before we get out of here i uh want to ask you a few questions just from subscribers make sure i get those in okay so i'll do at least three so one how can you keep a modern customer interested with you enough to build a core fan base so what's your perspective i think i heard that answer a little bit already um you know you got you gotta have a unique story a unique brand um you know i there's a lot of artists out there you gotta figure out you know how to stand out from the pack um and and i always believe that you gotta make quality music i know that there's music that comes out that that kind of comes out and then it you know then it dissolves a lot of one hit wonders still there's people that were hot last year to nowhere to be found i think it want to you have to have the unique story and i think you have to have great music but you also have to be good enough at music to understand how to continuously reinvent yourself over time um that that's a challenge that i don't think a lot of artists are prepared for because your fan base is going to mature your fan base is going to grow and it's going to be hard to keep them engaged with the same type of music um and i think that's the challenge that hobson's going to have you know a lot of his fans were were young when they first caught on to him so that's like 14 15 you know fast fast forward seven years later some of these cast are 22 23 that's a huge change um so you have to just just be able to have your unique story unique messaging and your content that supports and communicates that but also be good enough in music and have the mindset of just being able to grow as a man or a woman and continuously reinvent yourself as an artist to keep yourself interesting over time it's a super tough task and only like the the best of the best i believe we're able to do it like your conyes um you know i think obviously jay and i mean the cast that have been around for a minute i think you know have the team around and and are smart enough and talented enough to do it got you i think that was a great answer man um how would you say well what's your opinion um this is another question from a fan what's your opinion on building multi genre record labels is it easier to build one genre or start off building multiple genres um multiple genres well the way so it wasn't i i eventually wanted to get into under other genres of music but i felt it was important especially because within hip hop there's so many sub genres of hip hop um one of the things that made funk volume successful was just a cross promotion and the support of the of the all of the guys right so even if somebody had finished their album cycle maybe jaren benton just started his and but but hopson and jen and dizzy were still on his record so they still there was still a reason to share what they were doing there was just always something going on i know that that has nothing to do with like different genres but so this is a separate point in terms of building a label i feel like it's it's it's it's great when you guys are really taking advantage of the cross promotion and just doing a lot of stuff to keep the energy going um in terms of different genres i don't think it's a i think it's probably easier now because i feel like there's a like a lot of shared fan bases i think that a lot of brison tiller fans are also hip hop fans you know or scissor fans are also there's like a lot of mixture of the or like ty dolla sign is kind of in the he's kind of hip hop but he's r&b cat well as long as you're not all over the place you know i wouldn't have like a country cat and then like a you know a gangster rap cat like there that would be confusing and there's probably not as much of a benefit from the cross promotion those are probably like that's one fan base and that's another and your identity as a label is confusing as shit um you know as i was building funk volume and if we were to continue to build every time we added another artist i wanted i wanted them to be way different than who we already had so that we tapped a different demographic but still within hip hop you know but there's just so much variety and hip hop alone you know that that i think that's a that's a that's a smart strategy at the end once we had 10 artists i wanted to be able to kind of satisfy everybody's hip hop needs so that if you told me you were a hip hop fan there was somebody on the roster that you were walking with that was like the vid that was like the long-term vision if we were able to keep going and have like 10 cats on on the label like see even if you i don't know if we would ever just have like a like straight mumble rapper like that wasn't like all of our cats could spit yeah like even though they were different but we would definitely pick up somebody that would that was more melody driven natural but still able to hold their own in a cypher that would probably be like the yeah that'd probably be like the common denominator yeah because i can't see those guys respecting the mumble rapper in their particular group yeah yeah so that yeah that we we were actually gonna sign a cat name on cue white dude um if you listen and he's he's definitely drift he's still a rapper but he's definitely drifted more towards especially recently like singing and more melodic stuff and i felt like that would like he would have been a dope addition to the team because he respects hip hop he's he's definitely in the lineage of hip hop and and you know he even works with just blaze and stuff like that so it was true to being a hip hop cat but his his music is definitely more melodic and he even sings sometimes so i thought that would be kind of a good pickup for us no so i guess the the answer to summarize just multi genre labels versus you know uh just one genre it's really when you're starting off there's a lot of benefit in that ability to cross the road because you can't build if you're going in a lot of different directions so even though we're kind of melting down these ideas of certain genres because of the way these distributed these days you still want to think about maybe not necessarily the genre but still the consumers skip over the genre but think about the end consumer so the people who will be interested in it make sure there's crossover not between necessarily the genre but the people who are interested in the artist right yeah well yeah because just like the the artist has a story in a brand and a message like we still have a brand and a message as a label um you know even though it houses multiple artists you know for what funk volume represented you know it's still whatever artists we did bring is still have to be in line with what the overarching theme of of the label was and you know it was really true true artistry um being true to yourself those are the broader things because it needs to encompass all of the artists but we still have an identity as a label as well a brand as a label so you can't forget that if you're the one kind of building the label building the brand right so I'm gonna kind of inject my opinion with a question and ask a question too because that made me think of the fact that if you're building a label especially from indy on up these days the way it's guerrilla style and you really want to build those communities around it the label is going to have to be a lot more in the front um as opposed to let's just say inner scope right back in the day where I mean the artists were from Tupac to I can't even think of some of the Gwen Stefani all these different things but they're really just a corporation funding it the fans really have no investment in the label but today since you're building a community around not just the artist but also trying to capture around the label so you can use that leverage to build you know yeah more artists you need to make sure that even the label itself speaks to the fan right for sure for sure that's one of the advantages I think independent labels have over majors I mean you don't really see fans wanting a sony shirt or like but we actually have a connection with the fan we created a community um and that's definitely whereas the majors have more money than us and probably more relationships and stuff like that we actually have a connection with the fans and it's real um and that's actually one of the a powerful advantage of independence over over a major record label for sure take advantage of that so a last question from a subscriber and I'm going to get you out of here what are you looking for when you're searching for a new talent for a label um well I'm no longer I'm kind of tapped out like working with artists at the moment like I'm we're gonna be working on one-off projects and things like that but when I was running the label um obviously talent um gotta be just just great at making songs not just rapping um so you gotta be good at making songs um you gotta have a good live show touring is a big part of the business model when you're an independent or when you're any artist really um you know you want to be able to put on a good show you got to be comfortable on camera the visuals like I said before is super crucial to you know your marketing campaign um a strong work ethic um you know takes feedback well easy to get along with it took us a while to sign like when we signed jaren and dizzy it took us some time to really kind of get to know them before you you pull the trigger you know back in the day label signed a shitload of artists and they're not doing that as much these days where you're not because because they're trying to get a return on the investment but as an independent label like we can't sign cast that we don't plan on really working with and really trying to grow because you know we can't just throw money away signing people here and there you know unless we're really serious so um it takes a while to to to learn the person get an idea where their heads at you watch how they move too because if they're not moving at all by themselves then they probably won't move with us right because we're essentially doing the same thing just on a few steroids right you still gotta you still gotta move like an independent artist even if you team up with an independent um machine or an independent label that has some momentum going so I look for that too like if an artist doesn't have that mindset and they're not moving on their own then I don't I don't feel like they understand what it takes to continue growth even within volume so that's crucial and that's big all right and if you drop it on you mentioned it a little bit but uh tell them a little bit more about that not um that one week notice project I want to make sure they check that out why why we have their attention yeah the one week notice project again and I flew nine cats there was um seven artists two producers but two of the artists were also producers so we had dizzy right jaren ben audio push demrick amelio rojas reese kato dj hoppa um threw them in a house in austin we stayed in a house for a week they really did make the project in a week less than a week actually it's probably like over the course of five days they made about 20 tracks um and then this was in december and then we we got it mixed and mastered over the next couple couple weeks and we dropped it on january fifth it's a really dope project i always like i've always wanted to try this experiment because i just think it's dope when cats get together and let their creativity clash and and you know sometimes you might get some shit that's just terrible um but sometimes you get some great stuff and i feel like the music that they made um was awesome you know it doesn't sound like just it's not just like cypher songs with cats throwing verses here and there there's there's concepts it's actually a pretty cohesive project um especially being put together in such a short amount of time so check it out it's everywhere it's on spotify it's on itunes it's you know all your digital distribution platforms um and if you like cats that rap most of them are or all of them are pretty much spitters i think i'll spit i think people would appreciate the project it's dope um so i look forward to doing a similar project with other artists this year like i think that'll be a way in which i can tell you to work with artists just bring different artists together have them create something in a short amount of time and you know capture the process and try to make that bigger put that on a bigger platform every time i think that'll be a dope project to be a part of all right i hope that interview was as helpful for you as it was for me definitely check damey and now on social media at dame.still moving to ask him some questions i'm sure he'll be open to answer check out music entrepreneurship club it's a great source because hey i sat on on a few um of his sessions listening to things like bitcoin and blockchain and music and a lot of different random things that could be worth you checking out as well he's a credible source and i think you should have as many sources as possible that are actually willing to give real good information out there we'd love to know what you guys think in the description below let me know other than that if you like this video hit that like button if you like it might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe button


The German Medical Association finally just apologized for the profession's role in the Nazi atrocities, 65 years after 20 physicians stood trial in Nuremberg. During the trial, the Nazi doctors argued that their experiments were not unlike previous studies by researchers in the United States, like Dr. Strang's injection of prisoners with the plague. Nazi doctors were hung, Dr. Strang went on to chair a department at Harvard. And we were just getting started. The few examples the Nazis cited were nothing compared to what the American medical establishment started doing after Nuremberg. After all, prisoners are much cheaper than chimpanzees. Such attention has focused on our Cold War radiation experiments, which remained classified for decades. Declassification, the American Energy Commission warned, would have a very poor effect on the public, because they described experiments performed on human subjects, including the actual injection of plutonium into the body. Subjects like Mr. Cade, a 53-year-old colored male who got into a car accident, ended up in the hospital. Great! Let's inject him with plutonium! Who else is powerless besides patients? How about kids at the Fernald School for the Mentally Retarded in Waltham, Massachusetts, who are fed radioactive isotopes in their breakfast cereal? Tricks are for kids. Despite the Pentagon's insistence that these were the only feasible means of developing ways to protect people from radiation, researchers have since come up with a few ways that don't violate the Nuremberg Code, which states the only time doctors are allowed to do experiments that may kill or disable people if they themselves are willing to sign up to be experimental subjects as well. One way is to study cells in a Petri dish. The protective effect of zingerone against radiation-induced genetic damage in cell death in human white blood cells. What is zingerone? It's a phytonutrient found in cooked ginger root. You blast cells with some gamma rays and you get less DNA damage and fewer free radicals when you add ginger phytonutrients. They even compared it to the leading drug injected into people for radiation sickness and found the ginger compound to be 150 times more powerful and without the serious side effects of the drug itself. They conclude that it's an inexpensive natural product that may protect against radiation-induced damage. In fact, lots of different plant products have been found to be protective in vitro against radiation damage by a whole variety of mechanisms. After all, plants have been utilized since time and memorial for curing diseases, so they started screening plants and also found radiation-protective benefits from other plants one can find at grocery stores—garlic, turmeric, goji berries, mint leaves. But this is all just on plants and cells in a test tube. None had actually been tested on actual people until now. How are you going to find people exposed to radiation you can test stuff on? Well, aside from pilots, another group that suffers inordinate radiation exposure is the hospital workers that run the X-ray machines, who have been found to suffer chromosomal damage as a result compared to other hospital staff and higher levels of oxidative stress within their bodies. Although X-rays can damage DNA directly, much of the damage is caused by the free radicals generated by the radiation. So they asked radiation staff to drink two cups a day of lemon balm tea for a month, an herbal tea known to have high levels of antioxidants, as I showed in one of my favorite videos, antioxidants in a pinch. So what happened? The level of antioxidant enzymes in their bloodstream went up, and the level of free radical damage went down, leading to the conclusion that oral administration of lemon balm tea may be helpful for the protection of the radiology staff against radiation-induced oxidative stress and improved antioxidant defense system, especially enzymatic defense, due to its antioxidant properties. And if that's the reason, then practically any plant should fit the bill. So know that as you're sucking on some crystallized ginger to prevent travel sickness on some airplane, little did you know that you may be protecting yourself from the cosmic radiation at that altitude as well.


Now we will look at a finished example of your PowerPoint show with your last four slides which will include the I Best Content Information. So here we have our title slide. The name of my occupation is Surgical Technologist. I have my name, the date and the name of my college. So that's slide number one. Slide number two, you have the description of your job. And this internet website address shows us where we found this information, voice.org. Slide number two, description. Slide number three, Instructor Contacts. The name of the instructor and you can have either the email address or the phone number or both. Slide number four, Length of Program. And you can show it by quarters or credits. And here I added the hours and a little bit of extra information. Slide number five, Sample Jobs and Salaries. The name of the sample jobs and an average hourly or yearly salary. And your last slide, thanking your audience for attention and if they have any questions.


So we're pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted by a remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner. By emailing Steve McCarthy at McCarthyS at AmherstMA.gov. That's M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y-S at AmherstMA.gov. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by a technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the town website an audio or video recording transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And with that said, we'll call the meeting to order at 5.02 PM to take a roll call of attendance. Dylan. Here. Doug. Here. And I'm here. So we're three of us here and commissioners, De Los Reyes and Hughes are absent. Okay. So what is first up? Oh, general public comment. Is there anyone here for general public comment? And this is not anything pertaining to any of the hearings coming up. It's just general. And if you have something to say, just raise your hand by hitting the raise hand button at the bottom of the screen. And I don't see anybody raising their hand. Okay, great. So first up, we have some licenses. So what is, let me see if I can get my agenda. Is it the, sorry, I'm having trouble seeing it on my screen. Is this the live entertainments or the common bits? So we have live entertainment first, but maybe we could, I would suggest maybe doing Coronation Cafe first and we have that person in the audience and we can move on to the rest of the. Okay. So first off is the common victim relations or coronation cafe and who is here to speak on this. Steve, do you want to introduce this or is Mr. Kurtz here? Mr. Kurtz is here. Okay. Welcome, Mr. Kurtz. Thank you for coming. Yes. Hello, I'm here. My name is Joe Kurtz and I am representing Coronation Cafe at 103 North Pleasant Street. We are a new breakfast and lunch cafe that has just opened. Okay, wonderful. And did everyone have a chance, Doug and Dylan, did you have a chance to go over the license application? Yes, I did. Are there any questions from Mr. Kurtz? Yes. I actually have one for Steve and potentially one for Mr. Kurtz, but. So Steve, I was noticing in the printouts from the application that it doesn't include the address. So I don't know if that's something that can be included in the printout or not. I am surprised that didn't come out. I will make sure that does in the future but this is at 104 North Pleasant Street. This is where Barts used to be. Yeah, I did a little lookup of that, which is good. And I think for Mr. Kurtz, you're looking to do, I think it's 8 to 3 Tuesday through Saturday. Is that correct? And you're talking about breakfast in particular. You know, are there any things in particular about your business that you'd like us to know or things you're considering potentially in the future? Mr. Kurtz, are you still there? We have lost audio. Oh, does he lose his audio? Maybe, Mr. Kurtz, if you can hear us and we can't hear you, can you just raise your hand and zoom or do some of their actions? We might have that idea. Oh, he's muted, unmuted. It's not essential to get an answer. It's just curious. It sounds like we may have some technical difficulties here. That's okay. I'm sorry, but if I'm being spoken to, I haven't heard anything. Oh. I'm not sure if it's something on my computer or what. Okay, so can you hear us now? Can you hear me? No, I don't think you can hear us. Okay. Yeah. I don't actually, my question addressed, I didn't see, I don't have any issue or concern or problem with the Convictural License, so I don't get that addressed. Okay. Dylan, do you have any questions about the license application? I'm on this one, seemed pretty straight forward on that. Okay. If we don't think we need any more feedback, would someone like to make a motion to approve? I would be happy to make a motion to approve the Convictural License for Coronation Cafe at 103 North Pleasant Street, pursuant to all requirements and notifications being completed in case they aren't. That's a good point. Is everything completed on this one, Steve? Yes, it is. Okay, great. Thank you. And is there, I think you for the motion, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Dylan, for the second. So, is there any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's take a vote. Dylan. Aye. Done. Aye. And I vote aye. That is three to zero with two absent. Did I do that right? And since we have a quorum, the application is approved. So, thank you to Mr. Kurtz, if you can hear us for coming in. Steve, can you let him know? Yes, I'll shoot an email. And then that's, it doesn't sound like he's getting through it all. Yeah, I can hear him talking, but I don't know if he can hear us. All right. All right. Okay. Great. So, and then the next two, which two should we do next? We just do Gizzle's Blue Lagoon, the live entertainment and the Common Vic. And it is, is... Junior Williams. Oh, Mr. Williams. Thank you for coming in, Mr. Williams. Thank you guys for having me. Oh, sure. We just wanted to get, I think get a couple of things squared away. So, did everyone see the Common Vic and live entertainment licenses? Yes? Okay. Are there any questions? Steve, is everything kind of set up for these? Everything's kind of in place? Yes. For these, we should be all right. Okay. Great. All right. Do anyone have any questions for Dylan? I mean, I'm going to ask this one where we've got the Common Vic. It's 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. every day of the week. But I've seen on you guys' Instagram page that you're posting it's till 2 a.m. that you guys are open to what's going on with that. We're only open till 1 a.m. It must be a misprint. Anybody that can come by and see that, sometimes we even close before 1 a.m. Okay. We've never, we've never opened past 1 a.m. Okay. Thank you. Great. Any other questions about these licenses in particular or concerns? No? If there are no further questions for Mr. Williams, would we like to, is there a motion to approve? Do we want to approve at the same time or just one at a time? I'm happy to move to approve both the Common Vixler and the Live Entertainment Licenses for JPAJ Solutions Incorporated Doing Businesses A.S. Blues Gooden. Thank you, Doug, so much for that. Is there a second? No, second. All right, thank you, Dylan. Is there any further discussion about these two licenses? Nope, hearing none, let's take a vote. Doug? Aye. Dylan? Aye. And I vote aye. That is three to zero with two absent and the two licenses are approved. Thank you so much, Mr. Williams, for coming in. We did, I just didn't want to bring up very briefly. We did hear about the ABCC hearing and a couple of us were in attendance, but it does sound like everything went all right. And I know it's difficult in a university town to kind of keep track of that kind of thing. So I just wanted to say that all the things what you had said at the hearing sounded really good that you were on top of it. And that was good. Does anyone else have anything else to bring up about that? Or Steve? No? Okay. Yeah, Junior, I just wanted to ask for the record of, you said at the hearing you would be installing new electronic ID scanners, has that happened? Yes, that's been there. We have two of them now. Okay, and you installed those after the hearing? No, we had one before. We added a more expensive one now. All right, super. Okay. Okay, and did you get a chance to review the happy hour regulations I sent you? Because some of those Instagram advertisements also showed violations of that. I just wanted to make sure you're aware of those now. Confused in what you're saying. What you wrote, we took that down. I wasn't aware that we had violated. I was just going off of what other people had written on the thing. And as soon as we found out via what you told us, we've stopped that. Okay, yeah. So you do understand that any drink prices that are changed have to be remained for at least a week. It can't be any nightly drink specials or hourly drink specials or anything like that. Completely understood. Thank you. All right, are there any other questions, Mr. Williams? No, ma'am. Okay, thank you so much for coming in. And I'm glad we got those two licenses taken care of. Thank you very much. You have a blessed night now. Oh, you too. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay. And so our next one up is, what do we go up next? It's live entertainment. Live entertainment, where is it? 63 Monkey Bar. Oh yeah, Monkey Bar's live entertainment. And this Steve, you said was an oversight. Or they just forgot to file it into the application? Yeah, they just forgot to file renewal. Okay. And they have DJs and live musicians and bands. Okay. Yes. Does anyone have any questions? Oh, sorry. I just have one. You know, I know that I believe they've done an outdoor space this summer. I could be mistaken. I may be misremembering. But were they having music outside or only inside? They did. They did apply for that. It hasn't been installed yet. I believe their intention was to offer some light music outside as well. But mostly, inside activity they've had for many years. Yeah, I think just for us as a board to think about is that with the addition of outdoor spaces and the potential for more outdoor entertainment, and not necessarily good or bad, I just think it's something to consider whether we need to review those differently or renew the application for the outdoor space for the summer differently if they're going to have music outside. You know, there's been no issue today. People are playing any music. They have a reasonable volume, that kind of thing. But I just want to put it out there for us to consider that we may want to think about how we want to approach that if we were to have an entertainment license and people were being outside and either having music until one in the morning outside or at a volume that's noticeable to more than just the immediate customers, that kind of thing. I think we just want to think about that a little bit as it might come up for us in the future. So it's something to ponder. I don't think we have to take any action or do anything specific relative to that. I think that's a good point. I am going to excuse myself just for a second. My keyboard has died at a very inconvenient time, which is making it difficult to take a minute. So I'm going to go run and grab batteries near the side of the room, but I'll be right there. OK, so we won't vote on anything until he gets back. Probably best not to make a motion. I know. This is the exciting part of the video clip when somebody watches this later. Well, as long as he's doing that, I'm going to keep getting a call from a number and see if it is important. Give me just a moment. I think those batteries have been running since the Obama administration, so unfortunate timing. OK, your money's worth. So I will make a motion to approve the live entertainment license for Beast Joe 63 Monkey Bar LLC at 63 North Pleasant Street. OK, thank you, Doug, for the motion. Is there a second from you, Dylan? Second. Thank you, Dylan. Is there any further discussion? No. Let's take a vote. Dylan. Doug. I. Dylan. I vote I. And I vote I. That is 3 to 0 with two absent and the live entertainment license for the Monkey Bar is approved. Great. OK. So now we move into our discussion items. And we have adult news marijuana. Oh, yeah. Sorry, Doug. One of the things. So list on the agenda is the liquor license transaction. Oh, jeez. Sorry. Right. Sorry about that. So this is still continued. And Steve, you said you've got a call from him just before the meeting started. Yes, they are withdrawing the application. He will submit that in writing as well. OK. But yeah, I guess they've reached some kind of deal with their landlord. There will now be a pledge involved of the liquor license. And that will need to be re-advertised. And given how many changes there's been, I thought it proper that it just be reapplied for. So we don't have application fees. So do we need to do anything right now? Or just withdrawals? We don't need to close up or anything or take a vote? Or, you know? Technically, I think if we would formally close the hearing. But I think until that withdrawal is formally filed, we may want to not. So do we continue the hearing until the next meeting? Yeah, I think probably so. I think that's probably proper. Yeah, I'll move to continue the hearing. All right, thank you. Is there a second? Thank you, Dylan. All in favor? That let's take a vote. Doug? Aye. Dylan? Aye. Aye. 3 to 0, it's too absent. The continued transfer of all alcohol, premises, license, and change of location, Shilpa Enterprises to Oxbow Wine's LLC is continued until July 28, which would be our next meeting. By the way, Dylan, we're skipping the 21st and going to the 28th because Steve is not going to be here. I will be gone that week. I'm going to be camping up in Maine. Oh, no. OK, all right. But you can do a meeting without me if you have to. And Doug is going to be gone. But I believe I will have remote connection if I don't. I will let you know very soon because I will ask that question. It would be surprising if I don't, but I'm sorry, Dylan. But we might have Hallie and Gaston and me, which would be a quorum. OK, so I guess we'll see how that goes. And where did Steve go? I don't want to do anything until he comes back on. Yeah, it may have been more than his keyboard that failed now. Oh, no. Did he email? Oh, wait, here he goes. No end of technical problems today. Yeah, what's going on? It didn't work when I put the new batteries in. Oh, no. But somehow it started working, and the go to sleep button does work. So I think we should be good now. Sorry about that. OK, no, that's all right. So did you get that? We voted to continue the hearing until the 28th. Yes. Although Dylan won't be here, and Doug won't be here. But maybe Doug will be here via technological means. OK, and you won't be here, Steve, right? On the 28th, I will be, yep. Oh, you will be here? Yeah, I will be out on the 21st, but the 28th I'll be here. OK, great. So the 28th it is. OK, so those are the liquor license things we have to do. So now let's move on to discussion items. Number one, Doug adult use marijuana. I'll give a very, very brief update. Not as much work as I'd like to do on this, but nonetheless, I was looking up because there's two pieces to this. One is the regs that we have, and I'm going to give more and more read through, which hasn't happened until I need to do that. But one of the other things that is a consideration is the actual granting of creating of and granting the authority to us of the license itself. And so I did spend a little time looking at the bylaws because I knew that there was an existing bylaw that did sort of that for keg licenses. Interestingly, on the 29th of June, some amendments were made to the town bylaws by the town council. I didn't realize they were doing that, but I don't watch their activities as closely as perhaps others do. But nonetheless, they actually modified the keg licensing. And so it's even a better version of a bylaw that we could basically use as a template for the purposes of adult use licensing. So my goal is to, hopefully in the next meeting or two, kind of do one final pass through the regulations. And again, just a reminder, if you got the last version, which was from further ago, then I recall it's like March when we last had an edit to these. But if anyone has any input on that, that'd be great. But try to get a final read of that together for everyone. And then also a first draft of how the bylaw licensing would look, because I think if we bring it to the council, and I forget if it's their TSO or their free at the committee that specifically looks at like bylaw changes. But if we have it sort of preformed for them, it's very simple. The keg bylaw has really gotten short. With definitions, it's a page and a half. And so this might be a little longer for us, but I think try to bring that before everybody. Make sure we encapsulate all the sort of cases we want to try to have included in a license like that. And then that way we've got something pretty well-defined to bring to the council, both their subcommittees that review these in process and that sort of thing, and then ultimately bring for the full council for approval. So that's where that project sits at the moment. Okay, great. Thanks, Doug. Any questions for Doug? We're good. Yeah, sounds great. Okay. All right, rental registration. We don't have an update on that was guest on. He was working on that with Mandi. Okay, so skip that. Lunch cart regulations, you have a new draft. Which Steve again, thanks for your input. So Steve did a lot of work on this and I kind of incorporated what Steve did and then chopped out a lot of stuff. So I think one of the things I cut out is I had this new language in which I'd gotten from another town about there being a lottery and a first come first serve basis. And Steve pointed out that that was conflicting with some of the original lunch cart regulations that we had the extant ones from the select board. And I think that was a really good point. And so I took that out. And then there were a couple of questions. Oh, also I began to move it over to mobile, the language to mobile food establishments on the public way, which I think is good. So I don't know if I should be using that consistently throughout the regulations, but maybe, because we already have the historical language of lunch cart, but it might be, I don't know if it's easier for people just to keep lunch cart and also can call it mobile food establishment. Anyway, short term, I cut down the minimum short term and just said no more than 72 hours. I tried to separate, I took out a lot of the, on the short term license, I took out some of the language which had come from the short term license on the public way. Because Steve pointed out that if it's, they're also applying for a liquor license, a short term liquor license on the public way, they will kind of, that will be covered under that license and not under this one. And so it's redundant. So what else, Steve added something in four using liquid LPG cylinders and or solar panels as opposed to gas and diesel generators that kind of makes that section a little more precise. Let's see. And then there were a couple of good questions in section on sidewalk lunch carts. The very last part just before you get to lunch carts before the downtown area, who did, there's the duty different characteristics of each cart in each sidewalk space. All locations may not be appropriate for all carts. And Steve had the good question, who determines this and when? So that's a carryover from the select board regulations. And I don't know what criteria they used to determine that. I don't know if lunch carts come, there are several standard sizes and, but that's a good question. And then the, also the question of how does the paying applicable parking fees work? So if we say they have to have like several parking spaces to form a kind of a barrier or to have some space around them and they have to pay for those parking spaces. Who kind of, who collects the fees for that? How do they, like, do they write a check to somebody? So administratively, how does that work? Yes, Doug. So a couple of things. One on the first question you posed, which is around the lunch carts and the sizes and determination. I don't know that the select board necessarily had something in mind there, but one of the things, sort of case by case basis. But I think that what we may want to think about, and we can put it in as examples of without being exhaustive or sort of the, I think the key factors are aspects of, use of the public way and it's in a normal way.  So people can't get by in wheelchairs and is it creating an obstruction that prevents the use of the public way in its normal way? And for all, you know, citizens, and then I think the, and then other safety concerns. And so I think those are kind of broadly the categories that we would apply. And I think, you know, something to that effect would probably be a sufficient addition in that regard. Okay. And the other point I was going to make, oh, advocate for parking with these. If they're in a place that has a parking meter, they just need the meter. Okay.   And that would be incumbent upon our parking officials to swing by on a regular basis to make sure it's being paid. The alternative to that, and I think this is what we've done in the past is that you may payment in advance. So if someone wants a parking spot to move into their apartment, let's say they live in a building down town upstairs and they want to reserve for the truck, you know, to find a spot for the entire day, you can do that.  These things come before the council now and probably the manager because he probably handles those now. But essentially what you do is you just, you write a check to the town for that. It goes into the parking fund. And I think they either give you a placard or a little thing that you put over the meter. And that resolves that. But that's typically for a very fixed amount of time. I think for the short-term licenses, that could also work where they write a check because it's like, I'm gonna be there from Friday to Monday.  If it's something different than that, then, you know, probably, you know, sort of feeding the meter is the most simple thing for everyone would be my suggestion because they're not compelled to be there every day that they could be there. And so that's where like charging them in advance for it is a little tricky. But that might be, you know, operationally that may be a thing that working with the town manager's office and, you know, to work out. But I think in cases where short-term, it can be, you know, it can be part of like when they write the check for the license, you know, the thing for the parking in the spot they're located could all be one fell swoop, right? Right. To my mind and just the differentiation is on the receipt to them. So they know which part was for the license and which part was for the, for the parking. And that way the town hall can sort that out in their accounting structure. I think for the longer ones where it's like a full year license, you know, and they're gonna be in a certain location that may have a parking be or they wanna, when they're in the spot, they just pay the meter. Somebody goes to the right place at that point and I think it's fine. I think the key thing there is that for the meter attendance that check, you know, compliance that they, we wanna, you know, do two things with those folks. A, make sure that they kind of swing by regularly so that people are paying the meter. And then the second thing is to not enforce the limits. Like most of the meters have a limit, oh, a four-hour limit or a two-hour limit or whatever limit. And so those are don't apply. And so that way they can keep feeding the meter.  So that's what I would suggest there. Okay, all right, that's great. So different, so insert some criteria about how the public, how the lunch carts can, how they use the public way. They can't create an obstruction to other safety concerns and then some stuff in about how they can pay the fees with a difference between a short term and a longer term. Yeah. Yeah, okay. All right, I can put that in. Thank you. And I think there was something else. Steve, is there something else? Oh, I took out the noise, the noise, music identifications. I said, I just said, do not play music or any kind of sound amplification. I, it's a, they put in to attract customers, but I just, I'm Steve's recommendation, I just took it out. So I tried to simplify what I had. I think we had a little discussion about that last time. How would you determine if it's to attract customers or not? And they don't really have any need to be playing amplified music. Although I guess we want to think, now that just crossed my mind, now we might want to think about that with ice cream trucks and maybe not, but. So do we license ice cream trucks? They have to get mobile food establishment licenses. This may have been a blind spot of the old regs. They have to get mobile food establishment licenses. Oh, do they? And it is the public way. And maybe that is, yeah, that's just all. I haven't seen one in years. So are there any, have any currently applied for licenses? I don't, I think there was no, for at least on the food side, there's a whole rigmarole of criminal background checks they have to go through that mother mobile food establishments don't. And I know earlier this year there was, I forget what it was, but it was some local kind of farm creamery place that had a truck that wouldn't be driving around with the playing the music, but was going to more of a actual food truck style that was going to some event on Hampshire college. And we were kind of going back and forth and whether they would have to go through all of that criminal background check types of stuff for that event. So I know we have the regulatory structure for it, at least on the food side, but I don't know if there are actually any around here. So is there a, you don't have a record of like ice cream trucks that have applied for license? I can't think of any that have crossed my desk since I've been in this role. Okay. Besides that edge case, I guess. Okay, but we do, that would be fall under our view. Yeah, I mean, it is a mobile food establishment and on the public way. Yeah. All right. It's, I think that's, they should be considered a part of the same thing.  And the inspection services, I would presume we should apply the same standard to ice cream trucks or anything else. I mean, I think we set our license price in a way that it's not too burdensome, but at the same time. Okay. I was just confused because under definitions and what I took from the select board is that lunch carts are something that are not, they're defined differently from ice cream trucks under state law. But let me look it up. So I don't know if there are different laws for an ice cream truck, but let me look that up. That is an interesting question. I wouldn't think they would. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if, I guess, yeah, in the regs, they're kind of excluding ice cream trucks, but I don't know if in state law that necessarily means, maybe it's just Amherst carving that out or maybe it's state law that carves that out. Yeah, I don't know, but I will, I'll look that up. All this almost makes me wonder if they were just blanket band at some point and I don't know if any of you have lived in Amherst, Larver than I have any memory of something like that happening, but. You mean with banning ice cream trucks? Yeah, I know, my hometown banned them. Oh really?  It could be recent, we had, I remember seeing them years ago, but I haven't, when my kids were very small, but I haven't seen them in a long, long time. So where they banned, I don't know. Do you remember, Doug, where they banned? No, and I have the same recollection you do. I've seen them in town, but it's been a long, long time since I have. So I don't recall that. Yeah, but probably seven years, maybe six or seven years. I have a vague memory of seeing one in college, maybe seven or eight years ago, but. Okay, well, all right. So I will look into ice cream trucks. Let's see, anything else, Steve? Oh, the reciprocal license. I have not gotten to yet, but I will work on that part with other towns and that was for short term. And that is Rob, Mara, and Sue that I have to get in touch with. Yeah, and I think the thing, the ice cream truck is where you would see more of that. I think, I mean, the other thing with ice cream trucks is they tend to, which is different than food trucks is they tend to intentionally travel throughout the town, which is different than I'm going to sort of set up this for a short period of time, but it's more one location for the day type of thing. Right. And so because of that mobility of ice cream trucks, it's probably, that's an area where a shared license or a common database of licensees or something like that with a few other towns could be helpful. Although the cases of food trucks, it could be very interesting to do sort of food trucks that way too. I mean, the sort of more classic thing where they talk about here with meals being served, it could be considered pro-business if you had a common license that could be shared across multiple communities. So I mean, there's plus, minus there, I think the business improvement district and chambers of commerce around the area might have, they're resistant to these folks to begin with, and I think they'd be more so if you gave them an even easier way to operate multiple towns. So kind of a tough call. Well, interesting concept to explore with, just the mechanics of the license and a system with Rob Mora and Sue relatively. Right, right. Okay. Steve, do you see anything else to jump out at you? Do we cover everything that you've changed? I think so. The only, we did kind of touch upon the question of the locations and I think one of the tougher problems if we ever did kind of get this kind of thing taking off is the question of who gets what location. Yeah. Because people kind of, in the old system, you could apply for as many of them as you want and just kind of go wherever you want. And we only really have one and he's got a pretty well-established spot he likes, but there's not really anything stopping somebody new from applying for that spot as well and showing up five minutes before he does and going in the same location. Right, right. But then if you let people reserve them, then on the other hand, he might be on vacation for a week and nobody else can legally use that spot. Right, right. Yeah, so I was trying to debating with myself whether we should, I should keep what I do business as kind of a lottery process, but then they can't, if they get one spot and they don't have the ability to move around freely as they did earlier. And I think as long as we only have one lunch card, even maybe it's something that we just don't deal with until we have to. If you don't know what, I don't know. I don't think we should sweat it too much. It feels like if we really go down that route, we're just kind of over-engineering something that may never come up. And then, yeah, it might just over-engineer and then we get some lunch cards in and we realize immediately, oh, now seeing how people want to do it, it could be a lot of work for nothing. I agree with that. But I think it's worth thinking about a little bit. I don't necessarily put regulation. I think the idea of reservation system might be decent, which then you have to think about what time horizon do you want? Who's gonna manage that for, it's like they had to call Steve every week and reserve for next week. And so it gets, there's some real workload issues that come up with something like that. Right. But I think kind of continuing to sort of think through options around it are worthwhile. I agree. We don't need to put anything in at the moment and then we'll see how things play out. Okay, great. So I've got a few things to put back in the lunch cart regulations and then check out ice cream trucks and reciprocal licenses with Sue and Rob. And then I will have another draft for next time. Yeah, I will be happy to be in those conversations with Sue and Rob, Mary. Oh, super. Okay, let me email them. And I don't know, I'm actually leaving for a while next Tuesday. So maybe. I know Rob's gonna be out until at least next Tuesday. Oh, he is? Okay. Susan, I've spoken to her before. She hasn't believed, there's any reciprocal provisions. Okay. Oh, I have heard other food vendors who say there is in other towns. So we may wanna start reaching out to other towns that actually- Looking for other towns. Yeah, see what they think because, yeah, Susan's the most familiar with the food code and maybe other towns have different interpretations but our interpretation is there's, you have to get licensed in each town, so. Okay. All right, let's start with that. So maybe that conversation with them won't happen until early August, sometimes, Steve. Yeah. Okay, all right. Good. Well, if there's nothing else. I just have one question. And I'm hoping Steve has had this. I believe that the rules that allow us to meet remotely have been extended. Oh, really? I think so. And I think what it allows for is hybrid type meetings but I maybe have misread that or misunderstood the circumstance. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. But I wanna say literally the last couple of days that maybe the state came back out and extended until and I think one of the questions that came up was whether it was through December of 22 or December of 23, which would be half. But I don't know if there was, they allow for remote or they allow for hybrid and they encourage in person, I just don't know. And I didn't know if anyone knew and Steve, whether you knew because technically the other allowance for this ends like next Tuesday or Wednesday or something. Yeah. And I think it's been extended but I don't know what slight tweaks they might have made to it. Yeah, so I haven't heard anything but the town manager's office was watching this issue very closely and they were giving pretty regular updates last year and earlier this year when that was kind of on the fence. So I do have full confidence they're watching that. I mean, almost every board and committee is still online, fully online at this point. I think the town council is the only one that's not at this point in their hybrid. So I don't know what the situation is now but I do feel quite confident that the town manager's office will keep us in the loop and I don't think we will ever come up on a situation where we unexpectedly have to move in person. But I can send an email and try to check in if they've heard anything because I didn't hear there was any news on that. Yeah, I think there was and I just, whatever it was, I didn't have a chance to sort of read it closely or squirt closely but I know that one of the questions someone posed was like, wait, this is 2023, is that right? And so anyway, so I think there has been some motion or movement on that with the legislature or government office so much or which would be great because that may or may not impact our meeting later this month, I don't think it technically will. And regardless of that, just speaking of remote meetings the town does have policy on remote meetings. Not video remote meetings, but worst case, you have to have a quorum and the town regulations on remote meetings or the town policy on remote meetings was, I think a quorum had to be physically present at the meeting, but a member could participate. He had to have, it was a phone connection. I think this came up for us early on when we had, shoot, I'm forgetting the gentleman's name was a commissioner and he needed to do a couple of meetings remotely. Cause he was- Oh, Paul, Paul, yeah. So we, I mean, we've done it that way, you know, we had to, but anyway, I just bring it up as a point that may create some change for us, but I'll think so, but I do know it got extended. So I think there's availability of remote is still there. Okay. I'm just not sure if it's modified in some way that changes how we might operate. Yeah, I will, I will get touch the town manager's office and try to figure out if there's any movement on that. Okay, great. Thanks, Steve. So guidelines, regulations for liquor license decisions. Hallie is not here. So we'll move that one to the 28th. Um, topic's not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting. I think Steve sent around an email I got from Mandy Johanicki about some legislation that the town council wants to take up, but she said it wouldn't, there's some regulations they want to move the, basically I want to move, did everybody get that? They want to move the fees that are in the- I don't think that was in the packet, but I did forward it. Yeah. Oh, okay. It's not in the packet, right? So this will come up, this is not a rush because they're not going to deal with it until September. They want to take, there are some fees which are in the bylaws and they want to get rid of them and just delegate the authority to, so it'll just say fees determined by board of license commissioners or something like that. So we will put, at some point, we'll put that on the agenda and it looks like pretty straightforward legislation where they're just redlining a couple of the, yeah, $100 for this and that. So, but we can, we don't have to talk about that until later. I can just say I stumbled across those when I was looking for the other. I don't recall them off the top of my head what they are, but they're truly fees that should be not in the bylaws. Right, yeah. You got to pass a bylaw or change the bylaw to change the fee. Right. And they're just three and they're identified one, two, three. The ones I saw, I only saw three, but they may have others. Right. So, it'll be a really straightforward thing. Right, yeah. We're just cleaning them up. So, we'll talk, so that's coming at some point. What else? Is there a, are there any minutes? No minutes, unfortunately. Okay. Now, let's see. We're using my agenda for some reason. And do we have, what else is on there? Is that, we're coming to the end. That's it? That's it. Oh, do we have a time, a date and time? We have the 28th at five o'clock at which we'll have a completely different meeting because Gaston and Halle will be here and Dylan may not be. But anyway, so I hope you have good travels and we'll just adjourn. Is there anything else? Anybody else? I'll move to adjourn. Okay. Is, thank you, Doug. Is there a second? I'll second it. All right. Thanks Dylan. Let's take a vote. Dylan. Hi. Doug. Hi. And I vote aye. And that is three to zero of one absent. We are adjourned at 548 PM. All right. We'll have a good trip. Thanks so much. Thank you. We'll see you. See you when you're back. Bye bye. Thank you all. Thanks a lot, Steve. Thanks. Bye.