LIVE, FROM MOCKSVILLE!
The increasingly complex concerts that fill America’s stadiums and arenas are big business. Gross receipts for the top 100 U.S. tours in 2024 topped $6.1 billion — a figure almost certainly eclipsed in 2025, according to the Pollstar News trade magazine.
To make the magic happen, acts and promoters frequently turn to Mocksville-based Concert Stuff Group. Yes, that Mocksville, in Davie County.
Through 15 companies under its umbrella, CSG and its 600 full employees provide set-up and staging services to concerts across America and beyond. The privately held company doesn’t release revenue figures, but it provided services for 75% of the Pollstar and Billboard top 100 tours this year.
Clients include entertainers in multiple genres: Luke Combs, Zach Bryan, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Ed Sheeran, Pink, Metallica and more. Then there’s staging for festivals including LA Pride in the Park and the Carolina Country Music Festival in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; religious gatherings for televangelists such as Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer Ministries; and a National Football League season kickoff event.
CSG is one of the larger players in the industry, says Michael Brammer, son of the company founder and the chief strategy officer. It’s the only company in the industry that can stage a complete event, he says.
“There are some companies that can provide two or three services, and a lot of single-discipline companies,” says Brammer. “We’re the only ones that are end-to-end.”
CSG has affiliates or staging facilities in 12 U.S. cities, and opened facilities last year in Australia and New Zealand. Entering the Down Under markets stems from the company’s addition of a New Zealand-based flooring and major event planning company, among seven expansions in the past two years.
Its Davie County footprint is also expanding with a $5 million warehouse and parking addition. Future plans call for a garage facility for the company’s fleet of 25 tour buses and 150 semis, a 150,000-square-foot warehouse, and a virtual recording studio/rehearsal studio that will allow acts a place to rehearse and record videos for use in shows.
“I mean, these acts, these big names, they’re going to be right here,” says Terry Bralley, president of the Davie County Economic Development Corp. “It’s putting us on the front page.”
OLD AND NEW
CSG employs about 60 people at its Mocksville facility. A few others work in Mooresville. Bralley says CSG has been a good corporate citizen, helping supply tents during COVID and staging a Charlotte concert to raise money for mountain flood relief.
“You couldn’t ask for a better company to be your neighbor,” he says.
Brammer’s forecast calls for “steady, maintained growth, with us adding strategic business partners, when that makes sense.”
The company’s 10 partner-owners are a mix of people who helped Jim Brammer, 73, get started 40 years ago, and owners of companies that have joined CSG in recent times.
All the partners still involved are working executives, says Michael Brammer.
“[Dad] is still heavily involved as CEO and chairman of the board,” he adds. “He’s certainly not slowing down. We’re doing everything to support him and to keep him around. But there are no non-working people in the company. Everyone with a piece of the pie is in their area, leading and making us better.”
CSG still views itself as “a premium boutique business” and has “never set out to be the biggest or the most competitive,” he says.
The company’s acquisitions reflect cultural fits and pre-existing relationships, a natural evolution in the chummy world of big-time entertainment, where shared struggles create long-term friends.
A NIGHTCLUB MAN
Michael Brammer is part of that. After quitting college during his first year, he went to work for the audio department in his dad’s company.
“I was a sound guy at heart,” says Brammer. “I went to concerts, then went back to the warehouse and rolled up cable, carried stuff around. I worked my way and came to know a lot of people in the industry as I did. Definitely, a school of hard knocks guy.”
That mirrors his father’s entry into the business. Fresh out of the Navy in the late 1970s, Jim Brammer returned to his native Winston-Salem and decided he didn’t want to
work at R.J. Reynolds or Hanes, or any other local manufacturing goliath.
Instead, he opened a nightclub. Then he opened another, and another, including EJ’s, and the old Forum Music Hall. Brammer brought in a steady stream of concerts. Three Dog Night and Delbert McClinton both played at the Forum.
Evenutally, the elder Brammer saw he could make a business out of supplying all the stuff — sound, lights, stages, etc. — that he had to rent for shows.
“He never really liked running a bar that much,” says Michael Brammer. “But he loved the concerts.” (Jim Brammer is partnering with auto dealership magnate Don Flow on a $25 million, 5,000-square-foot amphitheater in downtown Winston-Salem that is expected to open in 2027.)
Special Event Services opened in 1986, and added Special Event Transport 10 years later. Companies that provided barricades and temporary flooring, concert structures and “fabrineering” followed, and finally, in 2015, SES Integration was created to unite the various services.
Recent additions have added new categories, like video recording and production, and specialized structures and roofing.
“The industry today, its needs and expectations, are very complex,” says Michael Brammer. “It’s all about capturing and retaining the attention of the concert-goer, so it’s more tech-focused, more bespoke. You compare it to even just 15 years ago and it’s like night and day.”
MILLION DOLLAR BUSES
The result is significant changes in the company, including creating CSG and its umbrella of specialty companies. A full-time CFO was hired several years ago, and the company formed a lending relationship with JPMorgan Chase to keep the business rolling.
Now, CSG is made up of essentially two elements: talented specialists in niche industries and tons of specialized equipment. A single sound system for a stadium tour can cost more than $4 million, says Brammer. A video wall, which has become essential for large tours, is $3 million. The company’s custom-built tour buses start at $1 million each and trucks are around $300,000 each.
“It’s capital-intensive with a very high cost of entry,” says Brammer. “There’s a high investment in human capital, too. The talent needed to pull it off is quite intense, and it’s all driven by relationships and trust. The people in the industry, the artists, the managers, the promoters, have to know you.” ■
