MBW’s World’s Greatest Managers series profiles the best artist managers in the global business. Here we meet Luke Conway, manager of one of the biggest breakthrough artists of the last two years, Teddy Swims. World’s Greatest Managers is supported by Centtrip, a specialist in intelligent treasury, payments and foreign exchange – created with the music industry and its needs in mind.
Luke Conway’s first big break (the one before his biggest break) came when he took over as manager of a band called Vault 51 from Larry Mazer.
Mazer, of course, had been manager of Kiss and also had experience working with Cheap Trick, Pat Benatar and Peter Frampton.
Conway’s experience consisted mostly of filming his friends skateboarding – largely because he was rubbish at skateboarding but still wanted to hang out.
He had employed a similar stick-in-there tactic when the same peer group began playing in bands. “I quickly found out that not only were they better skaters than me, they were better musicians as well. So I went back to the camera.”
That eventually led to him filming a couple of videos for the most successful band within the friendship group, Vault 51.
“They got dropped the day after I shot them. Their management left them at the same time, so I had to try and help them figure out where to go from there, how to release music and market it. That meant just sort of assuming the role of manager – even though at the time I didn’t know what that meant.”
By this time, he had moved from San Diego to Atlanta (to carry on working with Vault 51) and it was in this new expanded scene that he met the artist who would change his life, Teddy Swims.
“Everybody kind of knew him, he was in like eight bands. He was doing the post-hardcore thing, but he was also doing gospel, funk, country, alternative, everything.
“When we started the Teddy Swims project, it was maybe the seventh or eighth project that he was in. It was the SoundCloud hip-hop project.
“It was also the first time that he was just being him. He wasn’t conforming to being the metal guy or the country guy, he was just being his authentic self.”
Eventually it was decided that this should be the focus, and that a backing band made from members of the other bands in the ecosystem would support the newly-christened and nominally ‘solo’ artist.
“The truth is, everybody in that scene knew Teddy was the one.”
It wasn’t, as Conway recalls, a tough call: “The truth is, everybody in that scene knew Teddy was the one.
“The origin story of Teddy Swims is that when that decision was made, everyone involved quit their jobs, moved into a house and worked together for six months. And it wasn’t like I or Teddy had to convince everybody. We didn’t have to get them all to buy into this idea that if we all committed we could make this thing work. Everybody already knew for years that he was special; the talent spoke for itself.
“He radiated personality and love and just brought people together, it was obvious. It’s why I would never claim to be the guy who discovered Teddy, or even the guy who realized how gifted he was. Like, anybody who got hung out with him for five minutes knew that. I’m just very lucky to have been in that place and become part of the journey.”
Conway’s ‘part’ was actually a starring role – manager of an artist who blew up through a series of covers on YouTube and then became one of the breakthrough stars of the last two years via a No.1 single, Lose Control, and a Top 20 album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part One).
As with Vault 51, however, he picked up the role not quite by accident, not quite by design – and mainly through friendship, with a hint of rom-com in the staging.
“It was literally, a conversation outside of a show that he played where he stole the night. Nobody knew who he was. He was a support act on a club tour, and by the end of the evening, everybody was in love with him.
“We both realized, it was a moment. He was like, ‘Dude, this is the thing we’re going to do together, this is it’. I asked if he meant that he wanted me to manage him. He said, ‘Of course!’ – and that was it: let’s go for it.
“He started writing original music, really trying to incorporate all these different influences that he was already exploring through all these different bands. And then we eventually decided to start doing covers, and that’s where everything shifted.”
It was a risky strategy, mainly because it was one that, as Conway acknowledges, even it if succeeded, might have been a disaster. In the end, it very much did and it absolutely wasn’t. Instead, it was the start of Conway’s global success as a manager in his own right, and of a very steep learning curve…
What were the most important lessons you first learned when Teddy’s career started to take off?
I quickly needed to understand what the music business was, what everybody did, how it all connected – and I had a very short period of time to figure that out. I think the most important thing I learned first was that everybody has their own agenda.
Teddy had covers that took off remarkably fast. It was a six-month covers-on-YouTube strategy that led to him having over a million subscribers.
At that point, every A&R analyst in the world was calling us. So it was a battle to figure out where we’re going to go. But what we very quickly learned, was that we needed to track our own instincts
We knew what we wanted to do from the beginning, we just needed to stay strong. Our goal was to incorporate all the different influences that Teddy had, from R&B and soul and hip-hop.
“We were like, this is it, this is your superpower, bringing people together.”
The light bulb moment, where we realized the ethos of this project, was when we put on some shows, before he had original music out, and he had people drive 12-15 hours to a small bar and grill in the middle of nowhere.
The people who showed up were all different. It was an eight to 80 audience. We had multi-generational families, men, women, black, white, gay, straight; everything that supposedly divides us as humans was represented in that room. That’s a room of people who would never have been together if it wasn’t for Teddy. We were like, this is it, this is your superpower, bringing people together.
It took many years to get there, but Lose Control was a record born of that power and that strategy – and of sticking with our gut feelings. We might not have been aware of the complexities of the music industry at the time, but that didn’t matter. What matters is that our gut instinct was right and we went with it.
How did you come to the YouTube covers strategy?
The first cover that Teddy did was Rock With You by Michael Jackson. At that point, the plan wasn’t to do covers, this was just a one-off. The strategy revealed itself after the success of the first one.
There was so much magic in that very first cover. Because, you know, most people looking at the thumbnail, with Teddy looking about as hillbilly as you can get, would have thought it would be a parody. But then when they played it, they were blown away.
We knew that we needed to start doing them regularly. We knew it was going to become a thing.
So we released them every week, every single Tuesday at 10:30am Eastern – and the fans started calling them Teddy Tuesdays. We did that until the end of 2019 when he signed to Warner Records.
Did you have any concerns about becoming a viral sensation rather than a career artist because of that strategy?
One million percent. That was the biggest fear and the thing that we’ve been fighting, really up until last year.
We all knew that he has his own story to tell, and his own identity in his music. That’s what he cared about, that’s what I cared about: making his own music, not doing covers.
But very quickly we realized, for instance, Shania Twain is one of the greatest artists of all time, and she has two or three songs out of her catalog of 100s that are clearly her best, or at least her most successful, one of which is You’re Still The One.
And Teddy created by far the most seen and heard cover version of that song. It’s also recognized as the best cover [Shania herself said so tbf]. So his music was being compared to those artists – which was a good thing!
And all the time he’s writing and working on original music, whether we were releasing it or not. In fact the biggest challenge that we had in the early years was he would go do shows – and these are his words – where people would basically say, ‘Shut up fat boy and play Shania Twain!’ [laughs].
It wasn’t like that, of course, that’s Teddy’s self-deprecating humour, but that was the fight we had, that’s the mountain we had to get over.
And then on Christmas Eve 2019, we stopped doing them. We ultimately did release more covers and there will be more in the future, because Teddy has fun with them. But that marked the end of that strategy.
How did the Warner signing come about, and how big a part did the numbers you were racking up on YouTube play a part in their interest and enthusiasm?
It certainly helped in terms of discovering him. Everybody has the tools to be able to see what a video is doing, everybody has access to that data. And, like I say, ultimately that puts his name at the top of every A&R analyst’s desk.
So they all started calling at around the same time. There was interest from every major and we met with them all.
Aaron [Bay-Schuck] and Tom [Corson] had just taken over at Warner. They were very ambitious and they had a lot to prove.
We told everyone our plan, and that was to incorporate all Teddy’s influences and ultimately build a sonic that defines him. He wasn’t going to be ‘another’ anyone, we were going to forge his own path.
Remember, the only major label experience I’d had as a manager at this point was helping my previous client extricate themselves from their deal after they had been shelved.
“We wanted to align ourselves with people who we truly believed in as much as they believed in us.”
We had an insane fear of being shelved ourselves, so we wanted to sign with someone who couldn’t risk that. In retrospect, Aaron and Tom always believed in Teddy and had already seen who he is at his core. So I don’t think that that would have ever happened.
We wanted to align ourselves with people who we truly believed in as much as they believed in us. And what’s happened since is that Aaron and Tom and the whole Warner team have really proved themselves. And, for them, Teddy, Benson Boone, Zach Bryan and a handful of others are the faces of this new era of Warner Records.
I think that goes back to our instinct at the very beginning, that we wanted to be aligned with Aaron and Tom and their mission for their company. We wanted to be a key part of that.
To Aaron and Tom’s credit, and Max Lousada (pictured) as well, plus Nate Albert, who was Teddy’s A&R at the time, and Sean Stevens, they all gave him the permission to develop.
There are many executives who expect a return very quickly. But it took many years of grinding it out, writing, going through all the hoops.
And also, to Teddy’s credit, doing everything he needed to do. He did two sessions a day for three years straight. We had 8-900 original songs before he wrote Lose Control, he did the work.
Also, credit to Paul Samuels from Atlantic UK. The story goes that he was listening to one of Teddy’s covers in the office, Max Lousada walked behind him and said, ‘Who’s that?’ Paul tells him it’s this guy from Georgia and Max says, ‘Get on a plane and go there tomorrow’.
That meant a lot to us. We brought him into this house that we were all living in together, we talked, we played him the music and that’s why he’s on Atlantic in the UK.
What sort of difference did Lose Control make?
From the very beginning, when the song was written, we knew it was the one.
Teddy has written a lot of music. And over the years, he’s worked with everybody. He’s done the speed dating thing that artists do. Much to Aaron, Nate and Sean’s credit, they rolled out the red carpet for him.
When Lose Control was written, we all sensed the chemistry and we started building out the plan to really do this.
At this point, Teddy had already released three original songs and was selling out tours. He’d built a real fanbase and we had done all of the work to establish a wide and significant foundation. We had a platform to release this song.
Fortunately, with Aaron’s guidance and previous success, particularly with Bruno Mars – and likewise the success Nate Albert has had with The Weeknd – we had the best mentors in the world to work a record for the long run.
And our bullishness, backing the song for such a long time, is why it worked; we never gave up. We released the song on June 23, 2023 and it hit No. 1 on March 30, 2024.
It was the fifth-longest climb to No.1 in Hot 100 history. We did everything. We got on the plane. We did every single 6am radio show there was. He did every interview and played every show. It’s not that Teddy is anti-TikTok, but he’s also not the guy who creates a viral dance or makes a meme video. We broke this song the traditional way.
We just kept our heads down, kept going and then when we looked up we’re like, holy shit, there are people covering this song to launch their career, which is a really full circle moment.
How happy were you with the performance and impact of I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part One)?
It’s been great, but we’re still in the middle of it. A two-part record gives you a very elongated release timeline, which meant we would be everywhere.
Also, going back to our intense fear of being dropped, we did the two-part thing in some ways as an insurance policy. Like, if there wasn’t a hit on Part One, ‘Wait! You haven’t heard Part Two yet!’
We’ve been on the I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy tour for 11 months already, and we’ll be going until the end of December of next year.
So, yes, we’re happy with the success. But what that success and the first part of the debut album does not show is what is still to come. Our eyes are very much set on the music that’s on the way. We’re at the very last stages of finalizing a sequence for Part Two and we’ll be announcing soon when that’s going to be released [most likely very early 2025].
What do you think is the key to translating this initial success into a career measured in decades?
I think that question is best answered by how we’ve approached our touring strategy. Teddy has a top 10 song. He could be selling arenas in the United States today.
But there is no skipping steps. He’s going into arenas in Europe, but before that, he did it all. He played every single club and every single mid-size and then large-size theater.
“that’s the goal, that’s the dream – to build a stadium act. And no stadium act has ever got there by skipping steps.”
I think his ability and willingness to gain that experience of performance will, in many ways, define his career, in the same way that Ed Sheeran built his touring business.
We saw Bruce Springsteen play Croke Park in Dublin five or six months ago. To see what he’s built long-term, that’s the goal, that’s the dream – to build a stadium act. And no stadium act has ever got there by skipping steps.
What do you think are the key skills and assets to being a good manager?
That’s an interesting question, because you see I’ve been reading this interview series from the beginning as part of me trying to figure out what makes a good manager
So when you asked me I was hesitant, because the people who are interviewed have usually already had prolific careers. I worried that it might be inappropriate for me to offer advice at such an early stage.
All I can go on is my instincts. And the main one is just be a good person. Half of this job is just being good hang, having people wanting to work for you.
And don’t just work hard, work harder than anybody you know. If your label is working harder than you, you’re doing a bad job. If your agents are working harder than you, you’re doing a bad job. There are always things to be done and there’s always room to grow.
And the other side is just being honest, not lying to ourselves or anyone else about where we’re at. Going back to the original place that Teddy was in, with the covers, we never wanted to pretend like that wasn’t a problem. But we worked it out and we worked hard. We didn’t pretend it wasn’t a difficult place to be and a difficult place to get away from for a while there.
I’m very fortunate in that I didn’t think I was smarter than I was. I trusted the people who were around me, like Aaron Bay-Schuck, Nate Albert, and people like Lucy Dickens and Kirk Sommer, people have built huge touring businesses. I’d never done that before. Just like I’d never had a Bruno Mars or a Weeknd.
There are a lot of people who are maybe uncomfortable with being insecure, they want to say that they have all the answers. Ultimately, we didn’t. We had to listen to the people around us who believed in our mission.
Kind of veering from your question, I think the core of the success of the relationship between Teddy and I has been that we both started at the same place.
He knew from day one that I wasn’t a manager that had all the answers, but I had illustrated to him that I was willing to work and willing to figure it out.
Our relationship has never been defined by me being the guy who knows best so just listen to me. No, we’re gonna figure this out together and walk this path together.
When he signed his first record deal, that was the first time I’d negotiated a record deal. When he first played an arena, that was the first time I’d built an arena tour.
If you want a shorter version: be honest and work hard [laughs].
Was there ever any part of you that was worried you’d get left behind by the success you’d helped build? That someone, somewhere would say, maybe we need someone more experienced now that this thing’s taking off?
Of course! Every single big manager has been in our corner. I’m fortunate now to be able to call some of these people and get advice. But at the very beginning, I was getting the calls from everybody trying to convince me to go and work with their company.
And I know the plot, they do it all the time, they ultimately kick them to the corner and get somebody else. We avoided that. We knew what our path was, and we didn’t want to align to them. I’m so grateful for Teddy for the many years of trust he’s shown me.
But that fear hasn’t gone away. The imposter syndrome and the insecurity of this potentially being something temporary is the fuel in my tank that makes me get up and work as hard as I possibly can. Teddy’s the same, he has the same fear. He knows how short careers can be. So he puts the work in because he knows it’s important to build things the right way, build it to last.
The upside is, we have found so much common ground in all the insecurities that we share [laughs].
You’ve touched on it a bit there, but let me finish by asking how you would define your relationship with Teddy?
He’s my best friend, and he’s one of the most heartwarming guys in the world. I feel so safe around him, being who I am around him. But the truth is, that’s not a unique feeling for me; that’s everybody who’s in his world. He’s a one-of-a-kind human being.
Listen, like all managers you get in the odd fight. You know, in the early days, when he’s being defined as ‘the covers guy’, convincing him to do just one more, that wasn’t easy, especially as I understood why he was resistant.
Ultimately there’s a sense of mutual pride that we have got here, and that we have proven to each other that we can fucking do this. But, we also recognize that building a 30-year career means 30 years of work. We’re on year five and we’ve got a long way to go.
