The “My Music Row Story” weekly column features notable members of the Nashville music industry selected by the MusicRow editorial team. These individuals serve in key roles that help advance and promote the success of our industry. This column spotlights the invaluable people that keep the wheels rolling and the music playing.

Entertainment industry veteran, attorney and entrepreneur R.J. Romeo has spent over 25 years in the music and live events industries. He began his journey as a lighting/roofing technician, which allowed him to develop a foundational understanding of concert production. Graduating law school and leading the entertainment law division at a premiere Omaha firm provided R.J. with a unique skillset that prepared him for his current role as President & CEO of Romeo Entertainment Group (REG).

R.J. secures talent for, consults and services a variety of major events, including Ashley For The Arts, Boots In The Park, Cheyenne Frontier Days, Coastal Country Jam, Country Jam USA, Fremont Street Experience, Greeley Independence Stampede, Mississippi Valley Fair, Pendleton Whisky Music Festival and more. He also oversees the operations of BERO Entertainment Group, Grayscale Event Marketing and Colossal Events Group in addition to REG’s Operations & Logistics, Marketing and Brand Partnerships divisions, respectively. As President & CEO, R.J. guides the strategic vision, planning and operations for the company. He also continues to provide REG’s clients with support in talent buying, consulting, event problem solving, artist contract and rider negotiations, production issues, security planning, venue layout, emergency management planning and dispute resolution matters.

R.J. is also Co-Owner of Rome Phrey Publishing, a boutique publishing company that helps guide the songwriting career of Elvie Shane. R.J. was named the International Entertainment Buyers Association (IEBA)’s 2014 Fair Buyer of the Year, and received both the ACM Don Romeo Talent Buyer of the Year and IEBA Fair Buyer of the Year award in 2018.

MusicRow: Where did you grow up?

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, which is where the company was founded in 1954 by my grandfather Don Romeo. I grew up in Missouri Valley, Iowa. When my father, Bob Romeo, was growing the business, he liked to farm in his spare time, so we actually had a working farm out in Iowa. That’s where I learned what hard work was. In high school, I moved back to Omaha and then went to Creighton Prep for high school, Creighton University for undergrad and then Creighton Law School.

You come from a long line of music business executives, with your grandfather and father passing the torch to you. What was it like to grow up with them in the business?

I had multiple people in this business around me. My grandfather ran the business up until he retired in ’89 and then my father started running it. I got bit by the bug early on and fell in love with the music business. I knew in some way, shape or form that I was going to be doing something in the business.

How did you get started yourself?

I got the opportunity to work for a production company during my sophomore year of high school. For three summers, I went out on the road and I worked harder than I had ever worked in any job. I was setting up roofs, doing lighting and learning production from the ground up. It was very difficult work, but it gave me a framework and a base of knowledge that I still use to this day.

In undergrad, I went to work for our company, but it was called TBA Entertainment at the time because there was a short stint where we were owned by them. I became a junior agent and the Rock Music Consultant. My dad, my aunt Fran Romeo, Gil Cunningham and several other people in the Omaha office all had deep country connections, but not deep rock connections. Because I was listening to bands like Evanescence, Nickelback and Three Doors Down, we as fair/festival buyers were able to get in on the ground floor with a lot of those artists. We had dates on Nickelback’s “Silver Side Up Tour.” We were the only fair/festival producers to get dates on Evanescence’s first tour, and we also worked with Three Doors Down when “Kryptonite” came out.

Then you went to law school.

When I was working at TBA, I saw some lawsuits that we weren’t directly involved in, but they came across my desk. As I was reading the contracts, I thought, “I don’t know what a lot of this means. And if I don’t know, I’m going to be beholden to somebody else to tell me about these things for the rest of my life. Let’s see if I can go get the knowledge.” Having that knowledge combined with the production skills I had acquired through college, I developed a very unique perspective.

My first year of law school, I went out to California during the summer and clerked at William Morris in their Business Affairs division, which allowed me to see what we do from a different perspective. Then I ended up getting the opportunity to run entertainment law practice while doing real estate litigation in Omaha.

In 2008, I left the law firm I was with and came back to REG as In-House Counsel and Talent Buyer. We had an animal rights group interfere with one of our contracts at Cheyenne Frontier Days, and we ended up having to sue the animal rights group for tortious interference. I knew it was going to cost the family company a fortune, so I decided to come back and quarterback the lawsuit. We got the lawsuit resolved, and I just picked up where I had left off. My dad had left to become the Executive Director of the Academy of Country Music in 2003, so my aunt Fran was REG’s President then.

What brought you to Nashville?

If you practice law for five or six years in certain jurisdictions, you can waive into another jurisdiction. Once I could waive into Tennessee, I did and moved here in 2012.

When we first landed in Nashville, we didn’t have an official office. Our main office was still in Omaha, so we worked out of our homes. We opened our first official Nashville office in 2016. I then became President of the company in 2019 and my sister, Michelle Romeo, became Vice President.

Then COVID happened. How did that affect your new role?

I had all these big plans. [Laughs] We were starting to ramp up and then the bottom dropped out. Even though it was like Groundhog Day with all the canceling and rebooking shows, we were able to manage over 100 clients between the skeleton crew that we were able to keep during COVID. We got through it mainly due to our clients’ loyalty and the support they gave us.

In June 2021, we had one of the first big shows with our client Activated Events’ Boots In The Park festival in Norco, California. It was the first outdoor festival in California that month. That event went gangbusters. Chris Young was the headliner for 15,000 people. It was a great moment, and it signaled that the industry was back in a big way. Once I saw that, it felt like we were going to be all right. We survived it, and it was time to get back on track with the plans I had for growing and expanding the company.

Tell me about those plans.

Strategically, we’ve gone into other areas that can add value for our clients. We have about 170 events that we work with right now, with most of them being multi-day events. Some of the big ones are the State Fair of Texas and the San Diego County Fair as well as a lot of festivals. We started working with Activated Events in 2017 on a single one-day event and this year, we did 14 festivals with them. Another one, Social House Entertainment, will do 12 or 13 this year. That’s been a huge growth driver.

Each client has a different level of need. We pride ourselves on trying to point out [everything that clients need to know] and guide them through the entire process. A lot of talent buyers just book the talent, maybe correct the contract and and say “Good luck!” We book the talent, negotiate the deals, help with the marketing, participate in helping with the production advance and oversee the onsite execution of the show.

We bought a digital marketing company, Grayscale Marketing, because every single one of our clients could benefit from digital marketing. Having that expertise in-house allows me to be able to control the quality and provide value and savings to the client. We also have a joint venture deal with Beckon Entertainment for production logistics, and we’ve created a brand partnership division called Colossal Events Group. Anything we can do to add value for our clients and keep that money in our ecosystem, that’s the plan.

That’s very impressive. REG is celebrating 70 years in business this year, with its entire history being family-operated. How have you guys been able to do that?

Working with family is the most rewarding and most difficult thing. So many good things come from having a family mindset. I think that’s why we’ve got great retention with our employees because we do things way different than a lot of our competitors.

But in order to scale, you’ve got to have policies and procedures, so you have to find that balance. How do you maintain that family culture but grow? I have found that the answer is to really know what your culture is and hire with culture at the forefront. Our main values are Growth, Resilience, Initiative and Tenacity (GRIT). We also value teamwork because we’re all in it together. That’s a motto you’ll hear from our team repeatedly.

My grandfather had a saying that’s on the wall in our conference room—”You’re only as good as your last show.” To me what that says is we don’t phone it in. We don’t take any slots for granted. We take our jobs representing our clients and being their partner very seriously.

What’s your favorite part of your job?

I have fun curating creative and unique lineups. Before country was cool [in pop culture], I was working to try to put pop and rock acts with country because my philosophy was the Spotify generation was listening to all types of genres. Why wouldn’t people want to consume the live experience the same way? The industry wasn’t really buying into that at the time, but I managed to put Blake Shelton and Pitbull together on a show in Pendleton, Oregon. It was the first time those guys had ever played together and we sold 19,000 tickets. The following year, we ended up doing Eric Church and Macklemore. That was fun. Now it seems like everyone’s doing that.

Who have been some of your mentors?

My legal mentor was a guy named Jerry Slutzky, who still practices back in Omaha. My production mentor when was a guy named Mark Huber. He owns a company called Theatrical Media Services and we still work with them to this day. In the talent buying space, I had two. My best friend at the company when I was coming up was our VP at the time, a guy named Steve “Bogey” Bogdanovich. Bogey taught me how to service dates and how to be a great service rep. My father is the one that I probably listened to the most and taught me how to deal with agents.

What advice would you give professionals who look up to you?

Given any opportunity, take advantage to the fullest. Ask questions. Ask how you can add value. Try to maximize the opportunities that you get. Another piece of advice is to fail forward. We’re all going to fail, but that’s how we learn and grow. As long as you adopt lessons from those hard failures, you’re only going to get better and improve.