As one of the hardest working, names in the music biz Ryan Soroka has worked his entire life making a name for himself. Growing up in the same scene, I used to watch a 15-year-old Ryan run around like a maniac at his shows, one of which he was in a Ninja Turtle costume which I’m pretty sure was made for an 8-year-old, but I digress. He was always dedicated to his craft and most importantly dedicated to the music he loved so much. I got to catch up with Ryan the other day to see how he went from booking local shows to booking tours for some of the most popular pop, rock and indie bands.
What is your name and what do you do?
My name is Ryan Soroka and I am a booking agent mostly with rock and pop bands. We have a company called The Soroka Agency, where it’s me and my partner and another agent so a team of 3 agents and one assistant and we have around 60 artists right now on our roster. We span artists who are playing 500 to 2000+ capacity venues and I’ve been working with that specific company for about 5 years now.
How did you get your start?
It all started back when I was in 6th grade, I was in a bunch of really shitty bands growing up and we wanted to start playing shows, but no one wanted to put us on because we were so young and inexperienced and also we were not really that great haha so me and my friends started running our own shows in our hometown. We would rent out a little studio space called Future Sounds in Fairfield, NJ and this fire hall in North Caldwell and we would just put on shows. When you’re in 7th grade there’s not much you can do on the weekends except play like Call of Duty so we kind of had a cool option to go out and do something that’s a little more unique. My band would play, (my brother) Jason’s band would play, all of our friends would come and play, kids came out and I remember after the first show we made $400 and we were like, “Yo we are rich! Hagan Dazs for everybody! This is going to be so sick!” and it was awesome.
How was the music scene where you were from?
West Essex had a pretty sweet music scene developing at the time like artists such as The Consequence later to be known as Cash Cash, The Exotic Aquatic as well as Crack On The Head and it was really sweet, we ended up getting more and more bands coming in from out of the area because they heard that we had a pretty good scene so we were getting bands like All Time Low and paid them $75, we would do shows with Suburban Legends and Patent Pending so it was cool to get a good music scene going. After awhile I didn’t want to really run shows because I hated the idea of risking money so I wanted to figure out how I could work with artists in ways that I could still do what I’m doing at the age that I’m at and not really put myself into financial peril. I basically figured out A) nobody would want someone who is 15 to manage them B) I didn’t have money to start a label so it just seemed easiest to help bands find shows.
And this is where you started the booking agent aspect, rather than running the promoter side?
Yeah, exactly, Hollywood Avenue was the first band that I started helping put together tours and just finding all my contacts through myspace.com haha and then just eventually offered to help out more and more bands. Some bands got signed to smaller indie labels and that’s things started picking up a little bit more so just kind of kept at it since I was 15 to understand the craft and figure out how to do everything and acquire the right contacts.
How exactly did The Soroka Agency start?
When I was 18 I formally started the agency. I got some help from a record label I worked with called Equal Vision Records that put out some of our favorite albums like Coheed and Cambria’s “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth 3”, a bunch of other bands like early Chiodos albums, a bunch of Saves the Day albums and one band I was working with called This Time Next Year. I was booking them and Brad from the band wanted to book tours on the side so he and I started collaborating and then we formed what eventually became The Soroka Agency. From there, Equal Vision gave us their support because they wanted to help us out on the business development side of things. That was back in 2011 and that’s when we started The Soroka Agency and we’ve been doing it ever since.
What are some of the bands on your roster?
We have a few bands we’re really pumped on like Against the Current who just sold out The Marlin Room at Webster hall two nights ago, The Story So Far who is obviously one of the biggest bands we’ve worked with, State Champs is another band Brad handles that is doing really well and also a band called Set It Off. We got Taylor Caniff who is this massive Vine star, dude basically he will be like, “Yo I want to play Dallas in two weeks and just do meet and greets and just make a ton of money.” Then Eric (Taylors agent) loses his mind for a few hours, puts it all together and then they’ll do $30 tickets on two weeks notice and like 500 people will show up, the kid walks away with a dumb amount of money and then they work on the next project it’s pretty insane. Another actual large artist that’s outside the music-sphere on our roster is David Garibaldi who is a performance painter. He finished 4th in Americas Got Talent, I booked him at the last two NBA finals, he did Future’s album release party, he does a bunch of corporate events, commercials for Snapple and Chik Fil A and we just had him speak at The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia a few days ago so he’s awesome but it’s definitely like next level live performance, he’s unique on his own
.
Like different audiences and having different ways to fit him into events where he’s not performing for a fan base like your other bands?
Exactly, he’s done a lot of charity work where we’ve auctioned off his pieces and he’s raised over a million and a half dollars.
Very cool, so where do you live in Jersey City?
I live in Journal Square.
What do you like about living over here how long have you been here?
I’ve been here for a little over a year. I like it because its super affordable I have a lot of family in New Jersey already in Essex County so it’s very easy to get back and forth but its just convenient. The housing is great, especially for the price like the actual types of apartments you get here are much better than what you would get in New York, at least as far as space goes. It’s also convenient being that my office is based out of Williamsburg.
What are some of your favorite spots to hang out at?
Low-key best fast food is Deli Plus in Journal Square.
Is that the place in the actual station?
Yeah, they have a 99-cent egg on a roll, which is the greatest deal in the morning haha. I like Barcade, and when I asked my girlfriend to be my girlfriend we went to Iron Monkey.
Did you say “Hey do you want to be my girlfriend?”
Yes, and then I gave her truffle mac cheese and she was like YES. She was on the fence until the mac came out.
Haha, word well thanks for taking the time to do the interview good luck with everything.
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