With Val Air reopening, Sam Summers expands the breadth of musical acts visiting Des Moines
Just how likely is it that Sam Summers can succeed long term as a concert promoter?
A 2006 Des Moines Register article posed that question about an “up-and-coming” concert promoter who appeared to about break even for a show at the now-defunct East Village venue The House of Bricks.
Almost 18 years later, Summers leads the Midwest music scene as a veteran concert promoter.
While he was still in college at Iowa State, he founded First Fleet Concerts, a promotion and booking company that’s responsible for shows across the middle of the country. He co-owns the 683-capacity live entertainment venue Wooly’s in the East Village; started Hinterland Music Festival, which brought musicians Zach Bryan and Noah Kahan to Iowa last summer; and partnered with Live Nation to book the new Waukee venue Vibrant Music Hall. And he bought the Val Air Ballroom for $1.9 million, shutting it down in December 2022 to renovate it back to its 1950s heyday.
And that’s just a sampling of his work in live entertainment across the state over the years.
If success is defined by numerous high-profile pursuits and sticking it out in an industry that’s faced challenges — notably, the 2008 recession and the COVID-19 pandemic — then Summers has succeeded.
His long investment in developing Des Moines’ music scene and his upcoming opening of the historic Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines in February make Summers one of the Des Moines Register's People to Watch in 2024.
Finding stability with Wooly’s and flexing creative muscles with Hinterland
Pop-punk and punk rock music would get a teen Summers and his friends traveling to Minneapolis or Iowa City for a show, forsaking sleep to be back for school the next day.
He came up in the Des Moines DIY scene, a label applied to the culture of underground, independent musicians and artists who put together shows and built community.
In 2002, the same year he graduated from Johnston High School, Summers organized for bands from his school to perform at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. Several hundred people attended. That was his first show.
People putting on shows in the DIY scene Summers frequented weren’t doing it to make money.
“I learned the business in a very lean way,” he said. “Where the money goes to the artists, you pay your expenses and that's really it. The joy you get out of it is you did a concert, and you got to go, and you don’t have to drive.”
Summers worked jobs from Pizza Hut to dealing blackjack at a casino as he pursued booking and promoting shows.
In 2012, Summers opened the East Village's Wooly’s with Josh Ivey and Rafe Mateer. Then, he added co-owner of the neighboring arcade bar Up-Down to his resume.
Summers may not always get to exercise the kind of creative freedoms found in the scenes he was part of as a teen, nor do the performers he books always reflect his personal tastes. But with Hinterland Music Festival, Summers and his wife, Brooke, who works as the creative director for the event, get to be more imaginative.
The festival, held in St. Charles, 30 miles south of Des Moines, has welcomed artists such as Maggie Rogers, who performed in 2019, the same year the singer-songwriter nabbed a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. This year, “Hurt Somebody” singer Noah Kahan (also up for a Best New Artist Grammy next year) performed at the festival, and also collaborated with a fellow Hinterland performer, country singer Zach Bryan, on "Sarah's Place."
Pursuing fun endeavors in the future, including at Val Air Ballroom
Ask Summers about his five-year plan.
“Fun stuff. Weird stuff.”
He envisions doing more projects that allow him to be creative, presenting events that are experiential in the vein of Meow Wolf, which produces large-scale, immersive art installations, or Museum of Ice Cream kind of interactive attractions with an overload of light, color and sound.
Stuff that isn’t so reliant on the sale of alcohol.
The Val Air Ballroom, for example, started as a passion project for Summers, who said that he likes the building and the history of the Val Air — and it fits into the scope of his business endeavors.
Bonus, it’s near his home, and would be a venue solely his own.
The 84-year-old venue in West Des Moines has undergone a $14.5 million revamp that has restored its appearance to its 1950s prime. The first scheduled show brings bluegrass quintet Greensky Bluegrass on Feb. 29.
Programming at the Val Air will be “anything” and “everything” at the 2,000-plus capacity venue.
Summers would like to model the Val Air after the famed First Avenue live entertainment venue in Minneapolis, which has welcomed local and national acts — such as Prince, who included the venue in his film "Purple Rain," according to the venue. He praised the venue's programming, which includes new and indie artists.
“With Hinterland, we’ve found that there’s a market for a lot of cool artists,” Summers said of whether mimicking First Avenue's programming is possible in Des Moines. “The stuff we’re chasing is cool stuff. We want to bring Kurt Vile (of War on Drugs), stuff that maybe wouldn’t have played here before. I think it’ll work.”
Des Moines’ live entertainment scene is ‘reaping benefits' of Sam Summers’ work
Summers started booking shows in Omaha because agents would ask for them.
“To me, the opportunity there was to get something in Omaha so I could re-steer them to Des Moines, because now if I have Omaha, this market that people are looking for, I can hook them with that and then be like, ‘Here's also an offer for Des Moines,’” Summers said. “So that's how I really built out the Des Moines demand.”
Go back about two decades, and a young person would likely have criticized what the Des Moines music scene had to offer, said Amedeo Rossi of SA Presents, the company he has with Summers that’s produced events for Lauridsen Amphitheater and the Nitefall on the River concert series at the Simon Estes Riverfront Amphitheater.
Now, far more shows are happening in Des Moines, he said. He credits that change to Summers’ ability to develop relationships locally and with agencies across the country.
“Sam Summers is their person in Des Moines, the first person they're going to call when they start routing a tour,” Rossi said about musicians booking their acts across the country. “He’s been able to become something that wasn't here through his work, his intellect, delivering results.”
Rossi, former managing partner at the Des Moines venue Vaudeville Mews, which closed during the pandemic, recalled how he and Summers would load up pickup trucks with equipment for a show at the Simon Estes Amphitheater in the East Village to take it back to their rented office in Sherman Hill in the early morning.
It was as if Summers was making a statement that he could book shows and bring bands to Des Moines, Rossi recalled.
Now, Summers is the largest promoter in the area, at least according to Rossi.
“He’s scaled-up the scene, and I think that Des Moines has responded,” Rossi said. “People are going to these shows, and he’s hitting all kinds of different niches… He's a master collaborator, and I think the whole scene is reaping benefits from what he's done.”
Editor's note: Rafe Mateer's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.
Paris Barraza covers entertainment, lifestyle and arts at the Des Moines Register. Reach her at PBarraza@registermedia.com or follow her on Twitter @ParisBarraza.
Meet Sam Summers
Age: 40
Hometown: Lives in Des Moines. Raised in Urbandale.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in economics and marketing from Iowa State University.
Career: Founder of First Fleet Concerts as well as Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles. Owner of live entertainment venues Val Air Ballroom in West Des Moines and co-owner of Wooly’s in the historic East Village.
Family: Wife, Brooke Summers, and daughter, Nora.
About the Des Moines Register's 2024 People to Watch
It's a Des Moines Register tradition to close out each year and open the next by introducing readers to 15 People to Watch — individuals expected to make an impact on Iowa in the coming year.
This year's nominations from readers and our journalists totaled nearly 60 people and posed hard decisions for staff members charged with winnowing them to just 15.
The final 15 include people in business and the arts, those who train the world-class athletes of the future, chefs on the cutting edge, farmers teaching refugees how to run their own farms, and people fighting for representation through cosmetics and medicine. We hope that you are as inspired by reading about them as we were in profiling them.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Val Air Ballroom owner Sam Summers drives Des Moines' concert scene
