FROM modest offices in the Lace Market, George Akins has helped change the face of music in Nottingham. The 39-year-old son of well-known Nottingham businessman George Akins senior, he is proof that the entrepreneurial flair is in the Akins genes is somehow irrepressible.
At the end of Plumtre Place in Nottingham's Lace Market are a set of metal gates. Straight ahead is St Mary's School House where his father went to school. Legend has it senior left, aged 12, just couldn't wait to begin making a bob or two for himself. In that, he succeeded.
On the north side of the courtyard are some modest offices owned by the Akins family interests which are home to DHP Family.
The operation is spread over two floors, organising gigs and events – they take a lot of planning – and selling tickets.
George has helped put Nottingham on the music scene making it one of the leading venues and places for emerging musicians such as chart-topper Jake Bugg. His venues in the city include Rock City, the Rescue Rooms, the Bodega and Stealth all of which have contributed to the vibrancy of the local scene by giving singers and bands somewhere to play.
The business, DHP Family turns over £16.5 million a year delivering profits of about £1.7 million.
The website tells us: "Over the past 30 years, DHP Family has grown to become a leading name in the live music industry with a deserved reputation for our innovative and creative approach to music production and promotion.
"DHP Family has become one of the UK's most exciting and creative entertainment companies."
It has expanded from its Nottingham base to become a national business promoting events in places such as Brixton, Hammersmith, the Roundhouse, Manchester Apollo as well as other big regional shows and tours.
In January, it added Oslo to its clutch of venues based in a former railway station in buzzing Hackney in London. Drawing on a Nordic aesthetic, Oslo marks a significant new arrival in the dynamic and burgeoning area of the capital.
There are five significant national promoters – SJM, Live Nation, Kilimanjaro, Metropolis and now DHP Family.
"Kilimanjaro and DHP seem to be the leaders in what we do," says George. "We effectively broke in around about 2008, the first significant tour where we were taken seriously as promoters outside our venues in Nottingham and Bristol.
"Our first tour was the Dropkick Murphys (an American Celtic punk band formed in Massachusetts) where we taken seriously as promoters outside our Nottingham and Bristol venues.
"Since then, we have just grown and grown, putting on shows at a high profile level. In the early days, we might get one or two thousand capacity shows but we are now doing arenas in Manchester, London, Royal Albert Hall in London and Hammersmith.
"We are looking after artists of the stature of James Blunt, American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey, the English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran and Flaming Lips, the American rock band."
The business has grown out of Rock City on Talbot Street, a venue opened by George senior more than 30 years ago. Twenty years ago, rusticated from Rugby, his public school, for smoking and drinking, young George set off round the world. After about six months, he was summoned back from the Far East. His father thought it was time for him to knuckle down in the family firm.
Young George returned to run Rock City, aged 19, quickly adding The Rig the following year as he saw the opportunity for expansion into nightclubs.
"I did some promoting but it was very much in-house, putting on shows in our venues, more of a necessity to fill the diary.
"As I became more experienced, I did more and began doing festivals at Wollaton Park such as the Corrs in 1998, names such as American punk rock band Green Day, singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, English-Canadian girl group All Saints and Ronan Keating.
"Although they weren't unsuccessful, they weren't particularly successful events. It is hard to make a one day production work. They were not profitable overall and that was why we stopped doing them.
"It wasn't until we got into a partnership with Nottingham City Council that we were able to stage the Splendour Festival in Wollaton Park as a sustainable event.
"That has been a success since it started and long may it continue. Now we do more inner city/metropolitan festivals than any other promoter in the country.
"We do Hit the Deck Festival across different venues in Nottingham and Bristol, Dot to Dot in Nottingham, Bristol and Manchester, again across different venues. These are city-wide, in-venue festivals, this year headlining Peace, an upcoming guitar band, along with The Midnight Beast, an internet sensation who have had more than 64 million YouTube views.
"The festivals are well respected for breaking new artists and new talent. It gave us a great grounding in dealing with new artists and trying to develop relationships with new artists. It was an area we were able to exploit and become a national promoter for some of these artists.
"It is significant concert growth – we did 1,200 shows across the country last year. That is a considerable number of concerts. The type of show and the level of show increased a great deal.
"This year, although diaries haven't been filled, we expect to step up another level. We already have nine arena shows around the country – London, Nottingham and Manchester.
"The artists we started working with in the Bodega or Rock City take time to grow to those sort of levels and artists have grown to that level.
"As a consequence, the basis we now have is very secure and stable and able to grow on that."
How does DHP Family spot the up and coming artists?
"It is relationships and knowledge of music," says George. "We have nine promoters specialising in different fields and some of them will cross over.
"We will go to events such as Great Escape, a music festival in Brighton, staged in 35 venues and attracting more than 400 emerging bands.
"We look at blogs, listen to radio. When you live music, you know about it. You have a network of relationships built up over the years working with agents and managers.
"We have a very good local knowledge of Nottingham and that allows us to have a lot of close relationships, such as Dog Is Dead and Indiana."
The Nottingham music scene is very vibrant today, says George adding: "We stood nowhere so far as producing acts until three or four years ago. It's not all down to me. I have had some influence in being able to put a spotlight on the city, getting acts outside the city so they get recognised and noticed. The work we did with Dog Is Dead is the first time really that an act has broken out of Nottingham, a top 50 album, selling out Rock City, travelling Europe. It has done very well. Then Jake Bugg came through in their wake and we ended up doing a Splendour in Nottingham last year."
Some weeks ago, DHP Family had Gypsy Kings performing at the Royal Albert Hall in London and Clifton's Jake Bugg was a sell out at the Capital FM Arena in Nottingham.
"We can have five or six shows on the go in London on a night," he adds. "I might have three shows in London so I run from one to the other."
George and organiser and former DJ Mark Del, have taken a close interest in giving local talent a leg up.
George adds: "Local talent in the past would not see the opportunity – 'I can be good but no one is going to notice me, no one is going to do anything'. Bands just didn't happen here and that is probably because no one was paying any attention. No record companies were coming here. A&Rs (Artists & Repertoire) weren't looking. "
It was a chance meeting between Mark Del and George which led to their collaboration.
"He questioned people like me in the industry telling me 'it's your fault that there's nothing happening because you are not doing anything for these people'.
"I am like, you're right about that. We had been on the look-out for local talent for a while at that point and nothing was coming through. We were exposing local bands on tours, helping artists here and there.
"But Dog Is Dead played a show and someone rang me up. I ran down to the gig and saw the last three or four songs at the end. I watched them two or three more times before deciding to get them out there, get them signed to a major label."
George says part of what he does is instinctive, part he has learned as he has gone along. "It's experience, it's relationships.
"When we started managing Dog Is Dead it was 'help, how a we going to do this'. The idea I put together worked."
George developed his interest in music at school listening to Radio One specialist shows.
"But growing up at boarding school, you are not really exposed to popular culture, current culture, so the stuff I listened to as a teenager was the stuff my older brother, Sean, might have listened to or I might have read about in Q. I was into the Eagles and Led Zeppelin. I got into The Cure, REM and bands like that.
"It wasn't until I began working at Rock City that I became very knowledgeable about new music coming through in different scenes. You are exposed to it by putting the bands on, the support acts that people think are the next thing.
"The change in the live music industry since 1994 is colossal. I used to know every single agent, about 50 in 1994. Now the are 400. The are so many more shows, so many more people involved. There is so much more money in it. The internet has opened up the world to more and more music."
The competition is intense. "If you are not staying in touch with your audience, you are leaving it too long to come back, someone else will be stealing your slot."
Today, the spotlight is very much on Nottingham as a music scene.
"There is this excitement because we are producing so many artists that are coming through. We've had Dog Is Dead and Jake Bugg come through and they have championed Nottingham. Saint Raymond and Indiana are coming through in the next wave. A lot of industry people are checking out what is going on and the talent coming out of this city.
"And there is a very diverse musical style. Indiana is coming through with different elements of music to it. Harleighblu has a bit of jazz and soul.
"There is some hip hop coming through, all sorts of different schemes from dance elements to bands, indie to rock. Everyone is talking about it. It is a small industry and if there is a enough talk, it builds."
Many in the industry have no taste or interest, according to George.
"They jump on what the taste makers are saying. They jump on it and at the moment we are growing that taste making sure it happens in Nottingham and people are interested in what we are doing."
George has come a long way since being thrown in at the deep end. He is a quiet, unassuming man with a dry sense of humour and smile. His eyes light up with mischief. There is a neat line in self-deprecation.
"You just learn quick. I started doing some of the bookings, probably made a hash of it, learning from my mistakes."
For more business stories, click here![Rock City: Why Nottingham is making a big noise in music]( "Rock City: Why Nottingham is making a big noise in music")
