How John Summit’s ‘Be Everywhere’ Touring Strategy Elevated Him To Stadium Shows
As the pandemic was waning, John Summit, an emerging Chicago DJ whose music had blown up online during lockdown, had a plan to translate that internet presence to real life. “Our strategy was to be everywhere,” says Summit’s manager, Holt Harmon. “Like, omnipresent.”
In 2021 and early 2022, Summit and his team canvassed North American nightclubs as they reopened, showing promoters (and themselves) that Summit’s online hype could turn into in-person fun. In May 2021, he sold out a 500-capacity venue in Tempe, Ariz., in just 12 seconds.
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The team then transitioned from clubs to 2,000-capacity rooms, investing profits into production for stage rigs. “We were smart with how we were living at the time,” Harmon says. “I did everything from a kitchen table with my business partner, and John was working from his parents’ house.”
Since then, Summit has sold out headlining sets at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium and Madison Square Garden in New York, with a three-night stint at L.A.’s Kia Forum set for mid-November. The large-venue bookings function as part of a three-pronged touring plan for Summit, which also includes his intimate Experts Only shows at clubs and festival sets as Everything Always, Summit’s duo project alongside Australian producer Dom Dolla.
The hybrid approach allows for different creative opportunities: Experts Only parties, for instance, offer no-frills production and let Summit stay close to his audience and test new music. They’re also easy to take on the road, often in destination venues like The Caverns in Pelham, Tenn. (“My goal is Experts Only Alps,” says Summit, who named the party, and his label, after his love of skiing. “That would be f–king sick.”)
Arena and stadium sets, meanwhile, satisfy massive audiences, including fans who might just be getting into electronic music through Summit’s accessible style of progressive house. And Everything Always lets two artists unite to play “bigger, more impactful things than if it was [them] separately,” Harmon says, such as the duo’s Coachella performance in April. “People ask how we keep cycling through markets year after year,” says Harmon, who is also co-founder and CEO of management firm Metatone. “It’s that we can come through as three different forms.”
The plan is to do it again internationally. With 50% of Summit’s 2025 touring happening overseas, Harmon says “the future of John Summit is a global business.” Now, Summit’s biggest sets require a crew of 180 and cost approximately $1.5 million to produce. But despite the growth, the essential goal remains the same as it was in the early days. “I’m still working from the kitchen table,” Summit says, “but it’s my own kitchen table now.”
This story appears in the Oct. 26, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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