Veteran And Contemporary Agents Launch Reliant Talent Agency [Exclusive]
Steve Lassiter, Matt McGuire, Heath Baumhor
Talent agents Steve Lassiter, Matt McGuire, and Heath Baumhor have announced the launch of the full-service entertainment company Reliant Talent Agency.
Headquartered in Nashville, Reliant Talent is comprised of a growing team of veteran and contemporary agents with decades of experience spanning major talent agencies. Lassiter, who got his start in the music business at age 19, most recently served as Co-Head of Worldwide Music at APA Nashville. Baumhor worked in a few different areas of the music industry before landing at APA, where he spent the last 15 years and was part of their contemporary music department. McGuire spent time at Buddy Lee Attractions before joining APA in 2013 to help form their club and small theatre department and rose to line agent just a few years after joining the company.
“Unfortunately COVID took out a lot of companies, and a lot of companies just had to make do with what they had. Fortunately for us, it created an opportunity for some of us to regroup and start our own thing,” Lassiter tells MusicRow. “We wanted to start an independent boutique operation instead of a corporate operation. We all spent many years at APA, and still have a lot of respect for those people as they were always really good to us through the years, but we just saw this opportunity and felt it was the right thing to do.”
Since its inception, Reliant has brought on other agents and expanded its artist roster to include talent representing Americana, comedy, country, rock, jazz, and more. Reliant’s roster currently includes Travis Tritt, Kenny Loggins, Everclear, Rodney Carrington, Phil Vassar, Yacht Rock Revue, Take 6, Average White Band, Sister Hazel, and more. Additional artists continue to be added to the roster, and more will be announced in the coming weeks.
Reliant artist Travis Tritt says, “Steve Lassiter has been in my corner for many years as a loyal agent and friend. I look forward to what’s on the horizon for Steve and the entire team at Reliant Talent Agency.”
In addition to its fundamental base of booking and live event services, Reliant continues to expand into a full-service agency, offering representation in TV/Film, commercials, voiceovers, and endorsements. They have formed strategic alliances with other global branding agencies to maximize opportunities and deals for the clients they represent.
Lassiter says, “The staff is about one quarter of the staff that we had. With a smaller staff, it creates more of an opportunity to focus more on the clients and not have to deal with a lot of the corporate agency minutia. It frees up a lot of time to act independently and be a smaller shop where the result is more focused on the clients, better routing for the clients, being able to work on each deal a little bit more and maybe squeeze in a little bit more money out of it.”
Additional agents that make up the Reliant Talent team include Chris Burke, Chris Gaulke, Fred Hansen, Jeff Howard, Chris Looney, and Frank Wing.
“Through the pandemic, there’s been quite a few independent boutique agencies to spring up that consists of agents from Paradigm, WME or CAA. For the last many years, they’ve all been competitors and now they found themselves working together. They’re starting from scratch. Whereas in this situation, all of us have already been working together for 10 to 20 years. So we were able to hit the ground running and really just blast out of the gate.”
Reliant continues to add partners, agents, and staff, who will be announced in the coming months.
