Talent booker juggles all sorts of acts for the Minnesota State Fair
Go Deeper.
Create an account or log in to save stories.
Like this?
Thanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories.
The Minnesota State Fair has hundreds of acts on all their stages for 12 days straight. This year, Gary Berg booked seven of them.
“I know the Fair inside and out,” Berg said.
Berg is the CEO and Founder of G.L. Berg Entertainment in Minneapolis. He’s been working with the State Fair since 1983. Since 2000, he’s had more than 200 contracts with the fair, he said. “They know I’ll deliver what I say I’m going to deliver with the performers. And our performers are all very vetted, very professional.”
Berg’s love affair with the entertainment industry began when he saw the Beatles perform on Ed Sullivan as a kid. Growing up, he did community theater and during college at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire began he began dabbling with event programming .
Turn Up Your Support
MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.
“What I really love is getting people together,” Berg said.
After graduate school, he became a college administrator. He never lost his passion for art and performance, but he said he didn’t have the talent to make money performing himself so he chose another path.
“I was really good at was identifying it in others and helping them achieve it.”
When his friends in a Wisconsin music group called The Memories hired him as their manager for a summer, he was hooked.
“The first year I sold right about $30,000 worth of gross entertainment, and this year again, will be well over $10 million,” Berg said. “I could have retired, you know, several years ago, and been fine, but I love what I do.”
Now every year, G.L. Berg Entertainment’s performers can be found on stages across the fair — and the country. And while the Grandstand may be the biggest stage, it’s the smaller stages that are Berg’s bread and butter.
“We can book those free stages better than [other companies] can,” he said. “Our acts will do their jobs, and everybody will win.”
This conversation is part of our Job Interview series, where we talk to everyday Minnesotans about the rewards and challenges of their work. This interview has been lightly edited for style and clarity. Click on the audio player for the original radio version.
Official title: CEO and Founder of G.L. Berg Entertainment
What I actually do: Getting a bunch of people together to have great times.
A great day at work: Seeing one of our acts do well is the best. We’re not onstage. Nobody knows who we are. Nobody cares. That’s fine. But there’s a real sense of accomplishment, pride, pleasure when you see something you’ve put together really work.
A strange day at work: I think the funniest, craziest thing is we had a whole promotional package sent to us from a gentleman out of the UK, and his stage name was Mr. Methane. He was a professional flatulist.
He would have music, and he would … yeah.
What I’ve learned: I really love getting people together. Having these really amazing, shared positive experiences, and getting a chance to to be around other people. That makes life really pretty special.
