Sam Olmsted
I’ll just say thanks for joining us. Okay.

Sam Olmsted
Ready? Thanks for joining us, Rich. How are you?

Rich Collins
I am just fine. Thank you for, thank you.

Sam Olmsted
Awesome. Well, I know that you’ve got a lot going on. You do a lot of different things, music, journalism, live shows, everything like that. So I guess my first question is, what is the first thing that you tell people about yourself when you introduce yourself?

Rich Collins
Well, if you’re talking professionally, I just always kind of joke that I’ve got a portfolio of things to do for my own professional satisfaction and also to keep the lights on. But it is kind of a diverse portfolio of things.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, in the intro, we talked about your background and kind of your long history of music and production and everything that you’ve done. Can you tell us a little bit about Imagination Movers and what inspired you to pursue that idea and kind of the background of that?

Rich Collins
Absolutely. So about 22 years ago, let’s see, this is 2023, yeah, 21 years ago, three friends and I, around 30 years old, let’s say, most of us had little tiny kids, we’re at a birthday party for one of those little kids and we’re drinking a couple of beers and talking about all the content that you see when you become a parent.

And that conversation led us to say, boy, wouldn’t it be cool if somebody made, like an old school TV show, like we grew up on back in the day, was like, not animated, but like real people, but it kind of had that Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street vibe combined with the red hot chili peppers. That was the conversation. So, that was it. That was the first…

Sam Olmsted
I love it.

Rich Collins
little kernel of an idea. So what’s pretty amazing is that these three friends of mine, Scott, and Dave, we’ve been pals for a decade. I met them all when I came here. I married in New Orleans.

I’ve been here about a decade at that point. So these were just my buddies that I just had fallen in with and watched Saints together and all that kind of stuff. Well, we really quickly followed up that conversation. I think it was that same week. I don’t know how or why, but we all got back together like on a Tuesday night. I have a music background, so I had my acoustic guitar with us and we started just sketching out ideas on a napkin. And literally, I’m not lying, within like 10 days of that conversation, we had…

typed up, sketched out. I still got some original little doodles. The entire concept for this TV show about imagination and the idea of a warehouse representing imagination and infinite rooms in each room could be, you know, could open up a whole other, you know, adventure. We had the concept written down, we had characters sketched out, and we had written like the theme song and two or three other songs. Like it just was this burst of just fun. We had a…

We had a lot of fun doing that just right off the bat. And so that was the beginning of it all. It was 2002. I was working in media. My buddies had one guy who was an architect. Dave was an architect. Scott was a teacher. The other Scott was a firefighter, New World’s firefighter. But we just, that became our fun thing to do. We built that idea. We ended up, I’m condensing.

But I bought a bunch of gear and put a studio in the back of my house. And I learned how to use Pro Tools and all this stuff. And we just would get together after dinner, after the kids were in bed, and we would just crank out these songs, write these songs, record these songs. That was it. So we had the idea for a TV show. We had written a bunch of songs. I’d kind of sketched out 10 of them. They were ready to go. And somehow another New Orleans being New Orleans.

Rich Collins
People here are so fun about local stuff, local ideas. I think the first gig we did was at the crew of Muses. It was like a float viewing party. I think Scott’s friend was one of the Muses people. Somehow or another, we took our, took my little studio speakers and I don’t know what else. We went over there to the West Bank, Mardi Gras world, did a gig, you know? And I do remember that. It was like, that was 2003. I remember getting on the phone.

driving out of the gravel parking lot, I was calling Scott, he was with his family, his car, and I was like, you know, this could work, this could work, that was a lot of fun. Anyway, so that was the initial idea. We went, worked like crazy. I skipped the part about Scott. Scott is, Scott Durbin is a very funny, kind of a Jim Carrey type performer, and he had a…

kind of a history with WIES, the local PBS affiliate. He would do a lot of their promo commercials for like the beer fest and these things. He had friends over there and they knew he was funny. So he was like an on-air talent. So that was kind of the foot in the door to the whole idea of doing the visual element. Anyway, so that’s the origin. Couple years working really hard, playing a lot. Like we played a bunch of birthday parties. It became a thing. All these…

We did a bunch of shows at one of the private schools here, and then all the parents would hire us. You know, just shows, local festivals, French Quarter Fest, kind of like an indie band. We’re like hitting up anyone we could think of to promote the idea. We did this big junket up to New York City one week and bought a booth at Toy Fair, which is this kid’s family entertainment marketplace. We played on this stage up there. You know, just got things moving any way we could.

radical oversimplification. That all led to a gig at Jazz Fest in 2005.

Rich Collins
of a friend of a friend in the industry sent two Disney execs to see us in 2005 at Jazz Fest. And we had this great show, a great connection with these two executives. It was the woman that ran all of the kids programming and then a music guy. We went out to GW Finns that night and schmooze like crazy and just kind of got that relationship moving. We had a few others that were going too. It was like multiple, like we kind of had buzz, you know, like

You know you’re getting buzzed when I got like a cold call from like a Hollywood management company, like one afternoon, we had a office at this point, I was working at a, I’ve skipped a lot of stuff, we had a whole warehouse full of merchandise, where we had a mid city office full of stuff that we would sell at the gigs and your mail order, we kind of were a going concern at this point. But yeah, I got, you know, that’s how you, we can always gauge when things were kind of moving for us because people just like literally show up out of the work.

Sam Olmsted
Thank you.

Eliza Fillo
Yeah.

Rich Collins
So that was that kind of feeling. Obviously, if you know your calendar, that was the Disney beginning of that relationship was May of 2005, August 2005, 20, no, 18 years ago. When was that, 18 years ago? No. We got wiped out. We all lived right by City Park, except for the one guy in the West Bank who did not get flooded, but the rest of us lost our houses, our business went under, like literally went underwater.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Rich Collins
all the merchandise was ruined, all the instruments were ruined, the studio was ruined. Gone. But it was very interesting. We had a, I apologize, I could literally, you could just, I could just go for it. But uh.

Sam Olmsted
No, this is super interesting and obviously timely for what was just a recent anniversary too.

Eliza Fillo
Yeah.

Rich Collins
Right, so here we are, 18 years ago. And so I remember this very clearly. We had cell phones, I think mine was a flip phone, but I’d never texted, I didn’t know what that was. It was still when you had like, you had to hit like the A three times, or no, you had to hit the one three times to get the letter C or whatever. And I, right, so I’d gone up with my family. I was ended up in Jackson. I was near Millsaps.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, it wasn’t even T9.

Rich Collins
and just like this little hotel where they were feeding us, like they were so nice, giving us free hot dogs and stuff, all these refugees. And I saw on the TV, I saw my neighbor who was underwater, you know, you can see, oh, let me kill this. But I saw the goalposts from the football stadium by my house was underneath the water. I said, okay, I get the picture. But we had a gig that next Saturday in Dallas, Texas at a little festival. I don’t remember what it was called, but I learned to text.

And I basically sent some message along the lines of, hey, I know everyone’s scattered, but if we got to live somewhere, we got two free hotel rooms for Friday and Saturday night in Dallas. Let’s just go meet in Dallas. And there was a little bit of confusion and chaos, but everyone was like, yeah, why not? So that’s it. I remember we borrowed instruments. We bought or borrowed some kind of like fake version of our wardrobe. And…

just played a gig in Dallas that stayed at a really excellent hotel. It was booked by the venue. It had a little safe harbor there. But really, that moment, it was kind of symbolic. Because really what happened was after Katrina, everybody’s jobs were disrupted, everyone’s homes were gone. We all had like two or three kids around that point. But we just kind of, as we rebuilt, we rebuilt with the project at the center of our professional life.

And so it’s this crazy blessing, silver lining, kind of a situation where all the other distractions, distractions were gone and we could just rebuild it all with this goal of getting it done. So jump ahead. We ended up getting a pilot. We shot a pilot, pilot got picked up and that’s how we ended up shooting. We shot three seasons of a TV show. That TV show is broadcast in.

50 something countries translated into 20 plus languages. And 75 episodes, it’s went on the air in 2008. It remains visible to everybody on all the streaming, Disney plus streaming. And we basically, essentially that show was kind of a passport for us. We’ve been traveling the world for the last 15 years, just playing shows as much as we can, you know.

Rich Collins
There’s the condensed version.

Eliza Fillo
I feel like that’s so impressive, not only because you made it through that, but I feel like creatives in general have oftentimes struggle with bringing concept and this great idea to reality and to fruition. I feel like you did that through one, Katrina, and two, very long period of time. So you mentioned Katrina, but can you tell us about some other struggles that you had maybe on the business side, how you actually got it to be? Yeah.

Rich Collins
Sure. Sure, well, I will say, I mean, there’s a lot of ways I can answer that question. And, you know, well, one is when we began filming the first season, it was important to us to be home and be with our families. The way we shot the show, there was a strong likelihood it was gonna end up being in LA. It worked out where it was that we shot it here at a sound stage out there in Elmwood. So we got to go to bed in our own beds, be with our families.

We just get up and work these hilarious 12, 13 hour days. It was super intense, super fun. But what was one bit of adversity and also parallel with right now is about, I don’t know, eight episodes into our first season was the last writer’s strike. So we were up and running, we’re rolling, got the pilot, the pilot got approved, got the show, got the first season, here we go. And then it all stopped. It stopped for, I can’t.

I don’t remember, it was like, I feel like we were shut down for six or eight months. And so that was again, like we didn’t know, is that it? Is that the rug? Has it been pulled out? But no, we got back to it. So that there was one bit of adversity that we survived. You know, we had some, you know, if I shouldn’t just because it’s tacky, I shouldn’t go too much into it. But we had, you know, we had the full.

you know, Hollywood experience. So we’ve had, we had problems with management, things like that. We ended up having a lawsuit that with one former manager that, you know, was settled in a, you know, LA courtroom 15 years ago, whatever. So we’ve seen all the stuff, you know? But, you know, honestly, really once the project was,

four of us got together and kind of launched this thing. It’s really been pretty magical. And the funny thing is, you know, obviously that period, 2008 through 12 when the show was being made and being broadcast, you know, we won an Emmy award. We got nominated for another one. We were going all over the place. We felt like absolute rock stars, you know, but that was a big moment, but it perseveres. And so right now,

Rich Collins
crazily enough, in 2023, there’s a song of ours, a very, very silly song called Watermelon Meow Meow. It was the hidden track on the first album we made post Disney record deal, right? It was 2012. We made what we consider our magnum opus. We love this record, it’s called Rock-O-Matic. And what’s interesting is that

Eliza Fillo
I’m going to go to bed.

Sam Olmsted
Nice.

Rich Collins
We’ve got 200-ish songs. We’re actually making an 11.

Rich Collins
that album, Rock-o-Matic, which came out post-Disney 2012. If you look at our Spotify streams, that’s it’s chock full of tracks from that release. So I think we had a lot of energy, a lot of ideas still just cranking through us. And so we, anyway, but the point is this song, Watermelon Meow Meow, song I guess it’s in quotes, cause it’s like a 32nd novelty thing. Somehow or another in the last,

six, eight months, it kind of, it went, I sound like the oldest man in the world. It went viral. What that means for us is that right now, just on Spotify alone, this one track has 13 million streams in the last few months. It just keeps going. We get like tens of thousands a day of this one song. And yeah, well, we have a new awesome distributor that’s been helping us try and.

Sam Olmsted
Oh wow.

Sam Olmsted
Do you know why?

Rich Collins
do all the data to figure it out. I can’t tell you exactly. There is some TikTok stuff, but a lot of the activity is on Spotify. So I don’t know if it’s kids saying, hey Alexa play Watermelon Meow Meow. We don’t know. But so that’s a good example of just, okay, we’ve got so much intellectual property out there, so many different things that you never know what’s gonna happen. And that’s really fun. So, the watermelon.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, people can pull from the bank and the library and they just see everything that you’ve made and people can connect with it at different times. But what you just said kind of brings me to another side thought is, you know, you, you built this all up before really any social media came to be. And then you’ve, you’ve continued to build it as tons of different platforms have gained popularity, lost popularity and.

you know, from MySpace to TikTok, essentially, were there any social media platforms that you really gravitated toward that you put your music out there on or your videos or anything like that you felt like connected with people the best?

Rich Collins
Okay, there’s a disclaimer. Although I’m a professional, a media professional and a journalist within the category of promoting movers, I am the third best at this. We have two guys that are very, very savvy and they, you know, active all day long on platforms. But so there’s my blanket disclaimer, but I will say,

Sam Olmsted
Okay.

Rich Collins
that our generation, our age, you know, a lot of our activity, let’s say 10 years ago, was on Facebook. Like when we do shows, we would go, let’s say we were promoting like 10 dates up in the Northeast ourselves. That was the era when you could still like boost a post and you pay like $87 and you get that thing thrown out to every, you know.

person who’s already liked movers or someone who matches the profile that likes movers or whatever, you pick your parameters. It worked really well. There was a couple of times probably in the early mid teens where we promoted the heck out of shows and sold a lot of tickets just using really Facebook as a vehicle. Obviously over time, Facebook is like, it’s a way to reach say our older fans. The fans have been with us for a long time.

Rich Collins
the guys that internally manage our social media, absolutely use Facebook, they also use Twitter, and we’re doing our best, doing our best to use Insta and TikTok. There’s more we can do, and our new distributor is encouraging us to do more.

Sam Olmsted
Of course, yeah.

Rich Collins
I’ll say that. You know, I did a video just, I just shot something real quick at my house of the day for one of my partners to post this week just to do something. It was me being silly with the Alexa in my house, you know, but so that went up on, I think that was on multiple platforms.

Eliza Fillo
Right. I kinda wanna switch gears a little bit because I’m just curious about how you managed to do all this stuff. At the top of the podcast, we kind of ran through all of your roles. So how do you find harmony between being a producer, a costar, a musician, not to mention a journalist, which is how I know you. Yeah, how do you manage to find harmony between all that and still have time to have a personal life, be a family man and stuff like that?

Rich Collins
Well, yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that. I mean, one thing important to mention is that I have five kids too. So like that really in the hierarchy of things, that’s kind of where I spent a lot of my time and energy. And it’s interesting because my guys are getting, I’ve got two graduated from college and one in and two in high school. There’s still lots to do, you know, there’s lots of just stuff to help them with and work on. So, you know, that’s a big part of what we do.

But, no, you know…

I, it’s interesting. I, I really, really enjoy all the music and creative stuff. And to me, none of that feels like work. It never has. And, you know, sorry to all my media colleagues, but if I could be literally on a stage 200 nights a year and home with my kids and my dog the rest of the time, that would be my dream, you know? And I got to do that for a number of years, but.

But by that same token, I really do love doing what we’re doing right now. You know, as you know, I host a podcast for my job and I’m curious enough that I like to meet people and learn about the world around me. And I’ve also lived in New Orleans now for 30 something years. And so, you know, the, the fate of the city and all of the people making decisions that affected are important to me. So, you know, there’s a lot to really enjoy and care about when, on a day to day basis, doing that work.

As far as the balance, I mean, just from a very practical standpoint, a lot of the music life really now is centered around weekends. Because if we’re going to go, I just played a, I don’t know, I did a show, I did a private in Pennsylvania, a theater in Texas, and I’ve got Ohio coming up, and that’s all weekends. But I will say this, here’s a good example of the balance between the media life and the music life.

Rich Collins
We are very, very fortunate and we love this so much for about a decade now, we get to go. We’ve been hooked up with a, it’s like a USO style tour playing for families on military bases worldwide. And we’ve done it, we’ve done like the Asia side about three times and we’ve done Europe about three times. And those are extended trips. So they could be 12 days or they could be, as in the case of this last April, I was gone for.

basically the month of April. And, not that one. That one is like, because of the nature of it, it’s like, well, I had one child who was in grad school in Spain this past spring. So we did get to meet and spend a day. We got to do like, we had a day off and so we had like a really fun like tourist day together. But no, the way that works you can’t. But what I could bring was my laptop

Sam Olmsted
Can you bring any family members when you do that? Can you bring your kids about? No.

Sam Olmsted
Oh, you’re like, come on. Yeah.

Eliza Fillo
I’m going to go to bed.

Rich Collins
I literally worked every day, because the actual responsibility for my job might be a travel day or literally an off day. And then the gig day, it’s like three hours. There’s plenty of time. So I mean, I 100% just worked. I was like typing away a story about an acquisition or a new hire in New Orleans. And I was on a tour bus driving through the Alps from Italy into Italy. I mean,

Sam Olmsted
Oh, wow.

Rich Collins
Yeah, like, that’s a good example of how it all blends.

Eliza Fillo
your business.

Sam Olmsted
Dad doesn’t get much better than that. Well, I’m curious, you’ve got tons of stories in the bag. So what are your favorite gigs? Tell us about one of the trips, gigs, things that you’ve performed at that you love the most, most meaningful.

Eliza Fillo
I’m gonna go.

Rich Collins
No, that was actually really nice.

Rich Collins
Yeah, okay. I will say that, um, a good one, and by the way, I apologize to anyone who’s allergic to humblebrags because probably everything I’m doing in this whole thing is just that. So if anyone’s, if anyone’s feeling nauseated, I apologize, but I am really, I am super proud of this and I, and I, and I love it. And I love what my friends and I created. And I also just want to give a shout out to all, all three of those guys and all.

Sam Olmsted
That’s the whole point. We should have named the podcast Humble Brack.

Rich Collins
Scott, Smitty, and Dave, their immense talents and creativity. What an unbelievable stroke of luck that we got to be friends and do this. And then also our other buddies, we have Kyle, our other, we have like a fifth member that goes on the road with us a lot. Love to him. And, you know, there’s a long list of people. There’s a guy named Jason Ryan that helped make a lot of the music when we were doing the TV show. Anyway, just, you know, a lot of appreciation. But here’s a fun, this is just like,

Three weeks ago, it was like the first weekend of August, we played Lollapalooza. And this has been on our list for a long time. One of my bandmates has been harassing our management for a long time to make this happen. So it happened. And, but what was so much fun, I think it was good that it was this year because it was pouring down rain the whole weekend, Saturday, Sunday, it was terrible weather.

It wasn’t hot, that was just nice. So the whole thing is just soaked and soggy, and they have this special area for performers like us. And I would say it was essentially empty for the entire weekend that we were there, except about 20 minutes before we played and about half hour after we played, because all the kids that were six years old in 2008 are all in college right now.

and they all came. So we have, if you look on TikTok, it’s very funny. There’s all these shots from the crowd. We did our absolute, just our standard set, which is pretty high energy. And there was not one, well, there was basically no little kids in the audience. It was all 20 year olds and they had a blast and we had a blast. So that immediately, we did a Saturday and Sunday show, big crowds of crazy.

20 year old kids having this great nostalgic moment. We all decided, like we already put together like the marketing materials, every festival in the country, like you should get us there, let us play at three o’clock on a medium sized stage and all these kids that remember us are gonna have a blast. Cause it’s a, you know, our show is special. It’s not, it doesn’t seem like a typical kid show. It’s more punk rock to just put it bluntly. Essentially it’s kind of like a punk rock.

Sam Olmsted
Mm-hmm.

Rich Collins
show, but for kids.

Eliza Fillo
Did you play watermelon yum yum?

Rich Collins
You know what, it’s funny, we, I’m sure I said one, but we are, like, I don’t know, like six months ago, way back when, when this first started happening, we’re like, we need to learn to play this song. When you hear it, you’ll understand, it’s not really a song, it’s like a skit. But we actually figured out a way to play it and rehearsed it and then I, no, we never played it. We probably forgot how to, whatever we did that night. I have to go find the old iPhone voice memo to find out what we did, but it was, no, it’s.

Eliza Fillo
I’m going to go ahead and close the video.

Thank you.

Eliza Fillo
Thank you.

Rich Collins
We have, that’s one that you asked about a favorite thing. So the show that we do is like just absolutely condensed for just pure, complete entertainment, right? We’ve done this for 22 years. So it’s like all the boring songs are all the fails. All that stuff has been worked out. Sorry, my phone’s going up. But.

So we’ve got like this just power packed guaranteed to please set that works really well at a big festival, outdoor, in a theater. It’s just so much fun to do. So really the answer to your question is all my shows are my favorite. But I would say the ones when we do like a theater type show where it’s an indoor controlled setting we have all these fun visual gags and things that we can add to it that make it extra fun. Like we’ve got

Rich Collins
We have these leaf blowers with toilet paper on the end that we shoot this, we roll the crowd basically, which literally if you’re two years old or a 82 year old grandmother, it’s gonna be equally hilarious, they all love it. So we do that every, anytime we can, we do that bit. We’ve got these smoke cannons that we use with the stage fog, all this fun stuff. So like a big theater show with good lighting, good PA and all of our gimmicks. Like it’s just gonna be a blast, we know it.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Rich Collins
Like we have no doubt. So that’s a lot of fun. But yeah, I mean, over the years, jeesh, the biggest, the most tickets we ever sold in a day, like at a, you know, not a festival show, but a hard ticket, like you pay, you buy a ticket to see us. I think we sold, we played to 7,000 people in Chicago at a theater outside of Chicago. That was our best moment there. That was probably 2011 when we…

ended up on the cover of Polestar magazine, which is the big touring industry, uh, trade publication. Cause we were like, uh, I think we were. Number 70 something biggest tour of the year or something. Awesome. Anyway, it was just so many. We played Dubai one time we got flown over to play this massive theater in like a huge, like, um, like a multi-purpose, like, you know, it’s probably, there’s probably actually there’s probably that, that there was thousands and thousands of people there.

Sam Olmsted
That’s wild.

Eliza Fillo
Oh.

Rich Collins
And that was interesting because it was the only time we ever did a show like, at that point, it was the only time we played in the Middle East. And we drew people from all over the place. There’s people from South Africa, there’s people from Iraq, there was people from like, well, like all over Europe too. It was a crazy show. It was like this crazy gathering of people that, you know, wanted to see us do our thing.

Sam Olmsted
I love that you could play to the people that are in their early 20s now. They’re tapping into the nostalgia of when they were kids. I mean, I think that is so impactful when I see artists and you just remind yourself of a certain time that you heard them. I don’t remember anyone when I was six or seven, but when I was 11 or 12 or anything like that, absolutely. And those are the most fun. First concert that I saw was

Rich Collins
the first costume.

Sam Olmsted
The Red Hot Chili Peppers actually. Yeah, yeah. It was, I would say maybe like 2006-ish. Yeah, yeah. And it was at a festival, I forgot what, but no, it was in Washington, D.C. where I grew up.

Rich Collins
No way! What year, what roundabout?

Rich Collins
Okay, so like prime comeback years.

Rich Collins
It wasn’t here, it wasn’t at Voodoo in New Orleans.

Rich Collins
Yeah, that’s right. We have the same hometown. I forgot that.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah. But yeah, it’s just so fun. And then you just like reconnect with it and everyone around you is sort of in the same similar nostalgia vibe. And I think that that’s an awesome way to kind of keep that alive too.

Rich Collins
crack up when I see like young kids be nostalgic like a second grader like they say something nostalgic yeah I distinctly remember when I was when I was like in grade school like young I remember being like gosh those days before I turned six when you just could do whatever you wanted all day long those were the days yeah I do

Sam Olmsted
Yeah. Oh, back in pre-K. Oh, man.

Sam Olmsted
I remember when, you know, every age you are, you’re the oldest you’ve ever been. So, you know, you’re so mature. And I was, I remember being in fifth grade being like, I can’t believe I was in third grade. Like, like those guys, like no way. And then, yeah, exactly. And then thinking the same thing.

Rich Collins
little scrappy here, Grader. I have to ask, what was your first concert?

Eliza Fillo
Thank you.

Eliza Fillo
Mine was, and this kind of ties into this, mine was somewhat embarrassingly One Direction. Well, because you know, it’s One Direction and compared to the music that I listen to now, it is a far cry. However, if you play One Direction now, still love it. I would love to go to a One Direction show again. It would bring back all the memories. So kind of the same thing. Yeah.

Rich Collins
Why are you so embarrassed?

Rich Collins
You gotta think that, I know there’s, I’m sure all the drama that you would expect, but boy would it be smart in the next 10 years for those guys to do a tour, because they could literally make, they could probably do a Taylor Swift like billion dollar tour, because.

Eliza Fillo
Yeah, it would be insane and I would be there three nights in a row. I would be.

Sam Olmsted
Hehehe

Rich Collins
I have to say, the thing about One Direction is, compared to some of the boy bands from my era and around that time, some of their songs are awesome. And some of those singers are awesome. There’s some super fun One Direction tracks.

Eliza Fillo
Yeah, like talking about like, I mean, they weren’t aimed towards children per se, but they have some like rock and roll harder tracks in there which.

Rich Collins
I think in the parlance of the young people, I say they have some bangers.

Eliza Fillo
Yeah, they do.

Sam Olmsted
I’m just going to chime in here and say that our producer who’s behind the scenes just let us know that hers was the Jonas Brothers. So now, now everyone knows that was her first concert.

Rich Collins
Oh nice!

Eliza Fillo
Thank you.

Rich Collins
So, wait, we’ve got Red Hot Chili Peppers, One Direction, Jonas Brothers. And so this is, I say, we’re gonna date, boy, am I dating myself. So you know where Meriwether Post Pavilion is, right? In the DC area, remember? So when I was a kid, I had three older siblings. So I would go out a lot with my older siblings to see like, you pay like $8, right? That’s when concerts for eight bucks and you sit on the lawn at Meriwether. So I can’t say for sure, I’m gonna skip over to that.

Sam Olmsted
Mm-hmm.

What was yours?

Sam Olmsted
Yes.

Rich Collins
that are just too embarrassing to say. But the one that I really remember is at May Rather Post Pavilion, and it was Journey with Steve Perry. Like the original, like before he had all his voice problems and all, it was probably like 1982 or something. And, you know, like the peak Journey era with him singing Don’t Stop Believing, all that stuff, it was good. Like we had…

Sam Olmsted
That’s awesome. That’s really cool.

Eliza Fillo
It was just like a legendary concert to see.

Rich Collins
It was good. I mean, I just remember thinking like, this is just overwhelmingly cool, super cool. So yeah, but I mean, I saw so many shows out there in my teenage years. It was so funny how magical.

Sam Olmsted
What do you think when you see like Taylor Swift doing this unbelievable tour and what like what do you think about from a musician and production and logistics standpoint when you see something like that? Obviously it’s like the peak of all of those things combined, but what is it like to be a musician and to know, you know, what that takes to some degree and then see that happen?

Rich Collins
What do I think when I think about anything related to Taylor Swift? What I think is, what I feel is extreme, extreme jealousy.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah

Eliza Fillo
Thank you.

Sam Olmsted
get that for sure.

Rich Collins
I mean, holy crap, what a genius. She’s, I mean, she’s like, she’s gotta be literally a genius in every category. I mean, just, you know, the, I mean, I, all the, I mean, the songs from the very beginning, from the country era, from, you know, our song, and Tim O’Graw, all those cute, cute songs.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
And she writes her own songs too. I mean.

Rich Collins
was it picture to burn? The whole first album was just absolutely delightful. I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s, I was thinking about this the other day. Oh, you know, here’s a little anecdote. I remember we movers played, going back into plugging movers, but we played family gra, which is like this, you know, the family Mardi Gras festival out in Jefferson Parish out by

Rich Collins
I think the very first time was in 2008. But the same weekend we played Family Gra, Taylor Swift was playing Family Gra. It was the first album was out. I think the only hit, I think it was, I don’t know if our song was a hit. Yeah, I think our song was already a hit. But she was the best act at Family Gra, but it was still like, can you believe she, but she, and I just read something, I had to write something in the day about her Superdome shows.

Eliza Fillo
I’m gonna do the first one, yeah.

Rich Collins
and I was doing a little Googling. And if my info is correct, she drove to that show with her mom and dad from Nashville. Like that’s the level that was in 2008. Like she was still like just getting started. Anyway, unfortunately it got rained out, her show. She was playing Friday night, it was pouring down rain. She just signed a few autographs and that was it. But I guess I think about that from here she was in 2008, she’s playing family gra.

Sam Olmsted
run.

Rich Collins
And there’s all these, think of all the other acts and artists that were trying to build their careers at that point. And just the amount of times she’s lapped everybody at this point is just unreal. Especially this most recent tour, because you could see it all, you could see like her after that big tour back in what? 2018, 2019, I could see maybe like, that’s enough. I don’t need to do it again. Then to come back and just absolutely conquer the industry.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah.

Sam Olmsted
Unbelievable. And then all the merchandising and the business and the logistics behind it.

Rich Collins
That’s me there because the creative side the music side but then just obviously the marketing instincts and the business savvy You know, and maybe obviously she’s built an incredible team around her. I also love what she did with you know the screwing over the industry Palookas that took her, you know It’s so good, it’s just all so good but anyway, so yeah, that’s what I think I think holy crap she’s a genius

Sam Olmsted
I screwed her over. Yes.

Eliza Fillo
The cooler version.

Eliza Fillo
I’m wondering, and this is kind of a optimistic, if you will, way to kind of wrap things up, but if you were to be approached by someone who has a passion, has this idea that they really want to pursue but they’re not really sure how to do it, what’s your advice to them as someone who’s successfully done it?

Rich Collins
Well, I guess combining my personal experience as an entrepreneur and having that successful project and then combining that with just my job at Biz New Orleans and covering business and entrepreneurship and all of it now, I would say obviously you have to have a really good idea and you have to be good at your good idea. I mean, so you could have the greatest idea in the world, but if you’re not able to execute it, then there’s no point.

or, you know, so, you know, if you have it, if you got the thing and you wanna grow the thing, I would say absolutely take advantage of all of the entrepreneurial resources that exist in our city, whether it’s, you know, any of the accelerators or incubators, all the folks in town, the nonprofit ones that are here to support ideas. You know, there’s a growing amount of infrastructure

people of all backgrounds build up our ideas and try and build the city up. So absolutely take advantage of those things. And, you know, it really just comes down to, you know, having an idea that you love, that lights a fire in you, but also having that idea happen to be also necessary and relevant in the marketplace and solve a problem, right? And I think we, you know, we-

We, I learned from our experience, you know, there was this window, it’s too boring to go into right now, but there was, when we did our thing, the industry wanted that thing, right? And actually they don’t want that thing right now. Like our thing is, it was like we had that one moment and by the grace of God, we were there. There’s not really any live action content on for families anymore. Well, at least on like the streamers and everything. There’s not much.

There’s some of these like YouTube guys that have insane numbers, but you know, and even like the concert industry for families is kind of in a, it’s at a different moment than it was. There was that moment for whatever reason, 15 years ago, people were just like ready to go out and do this and do the show, buy the merch, all that stuff. So anyway, so you need to have the good idea, the idea has to light a fire in here and the idea has to be meaningful and relevant to the marketplace. But you know.

Rich Collins
There is, there are, you know, whether it’s Crater Norwans Inc. or Idea Village or Propeller or, you know, Camelback Ventures. There’s so many organizations right now that are ready to help here in town that, you know, don’t be afraid to visit businessworlds.com and look up, you know, follow us every day and you’ll learn more and more about those, those opportunities.

Sam Olmsted
Perfect. Well, actually on that note, I think we’re kind of about ready to wrap it up. So before we do, is there anything that you want to put out there, promote, push, or lead anyone to?

Rich Collins
Well, I’m not sure the exact date this will reach the public’s ears, but Imagination Movers are playing at the Abita Fall Fest on October 21st of 2023. So if you’re hearing this before that date, come and support the guys. It should be a beautiful, last year we got, that event was completely rained out. We went up there and sat in a tent for four hours. And then they, the people, usually when we play, people travel, you know, and so like there was.

Anyone who did that, we brought them into the tent and just hung out. It was just essentially a soggy tent hangout. But hopefully this year it will be redemption and beautiful. But other than that, oh, please, please follow Imagination Movers on Spotify. Please follow Rich Collins Music on Spotify. I’m terrible at promoting myself, but I have a bunch of good songs that I love that are up there. And if people would add them to their playlist, that would be helpful.

Other than that, just thanks for listening and I appreciate you guys. Appreciate your time.

Sam Olmsted
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us. And it was super fun to kind of dive into some of your stories and just see this whirlwind that you’ve been on. So thank you.

Rich Collins
I’m laughing because there’s a few people I’ve interviewed on the podcast that I do and like there’s some that like you ask one question and they don’t shut up. I was like, man, I’m totally doing it right now. I’m that guy. I’m that guy.

Sam Olmsted
Hahaha

You’re like, I’m the guy. It’s fun to be on the other side.

Eliza Fillo
It’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun, it’s fun,

Rich Collins
There’s some, there’s like super trained executives, like people that names, the obvious names you would think of, the guys that have been leading their organizations for decades here. And they, not only do they just never stop, they just, they’ll ask their own question. So like they’ll answer your question for 10 minutes and then they’ll be like, and you might wonder, blah, blah. And then they answer that one for another 10 minutes. So like, you just get. Yeah, a lot of people might ask, you know, and then see you’re like, this is great, I can go get a cup of coffee.

Sam Olmsted
A lot of people ask me.

Eliza Fillo
I was like, I don’t even need to hear.

Eliza Fillo
I’m going to go to bed.

Sam Olmsted
All right, well, perfect. Thanks again, Rich. Really appreciate it.