Dan Berkowitz and Peter Shapiro share a moment at Lockn’ 2013- Photo by Jay Blakesberg

Dan Berkowitz is the founder and CEO of CID Entertainment, which provides event experiences for fans, including VIP ticketing and travel packages. The company has worked with a variety of festivals (Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lockn’) and tours (Phish, Kenny Chesney, Yo Gabba Gabba! Live!), and in January they expanded into event production with Luke Bryan’s Crash My Playa in Riviera Maya, Mexico.

What was the live music scene like where you grew up?

I grew up right outside Philadelphia, where there was a vibrant music scene. So I saw shows at the TLA, Electric Factory and, when I was old enough to realize that the world was a little bigger, I started going to Wetlands. Wetlands was a huge part of my life from 1997 until it closed in 2001.

What were you most interested in at the venue? Was there a job you were curious about?

It was Pete [Shapiro] at Wetlands. In high school, I never thought that I’d be in the music business. I would just go to shows for a good time. Later, I’d be at Wetlands and I’d see Pete and I’d be like, “Wow, I wonder how he figured that all out?” He was the guy who was responsible for so many great shows. I didn’t really understand what the difference was between a producer, promoter, agent or manager, but I knew whatever he did was amazing. He got to throw these awesome shows that made people happy.

What was your first job in the music business and what led you to that job?

I threw two shows back in 2002—a Disco Biscuits side-project show in August and then, on Oct. 27, 2002, Bisco Loco, which was an intimate event with the band at a great small room in Philadelphia [The Locust Club]. It was a cool night and that’s when I realized that there was really something special there. I loved helping people experience live music, especially live music that they’re passionate about.

From there, my first real job in the music business was as the tour manager for the Disco Biscuits. I somehow convinced Jon [Gutwillig] and Marc [Brownstein] that I could help them get back on their feet when Sammy [Altman] had decided he was leaving the band. They were pretty uncertain about their future, and I somehow convinced Marc and Jon to let me help them. That was in 2004 and 2005. I worked with them intermittently on the drummer search—and on the shows that they were doing—and in 2006, I went back out on tour with them with Allen [Aucoin] as their drummer.

I worked with them until Bonnaroo 2006. As much as I loved the job, and as much as I loved the band, I realized that the tour manager lifestyle wasn’t for me. It’s for a lot of people; it just wasn’t for me.

During that time did you start to think about what you could do in the VIP experience world?

I started offering packages to Disco Biscuits fans while tour managing them. I offered bus packages, shuttle transportation when we would play Starland Ballroom [in Sayreville, N.J.] and long distance shuttles when the Biscuits would play in Baltimore. Eventually, they turned into travel packages.

It all started organically—it was a service that people wanted and having the band’s support and having the eyeballs of fans on the band’s website really gave me a huge advantage. Unless I had the support and the trust of the band and the fan base, I don’t know if it would have worked; so it all happened very much hand in hand.

After you started doing the Biscuits packages, how did it grow from there?

At first, it was more bands. Luckily, we had Camp Bisco as well. Now I had a band and a festival that I could start testing these products out on. I had our friends Umphrey’s McGee, STS9 and Gov’t Mule. They gave it a shot too, and I’m proud to say that we still work with all three of them. So back in 2007, we started offering packages, whether they were travel packages or VIP experiences, to fans of those guys as well. It all kind of started at the same time.

What was an early lesson you learned?

We offered our first RV resort at Langerado in 2008. We had never done anything like that before, but Ethan Schwartz, being such a good friend, was willing to let me try this model out. We put 15 RVs on sale for the first day, and it sold out instantly. They asked me if I wanted to add more, and we ended up with 54 RVs for our first-ever on-site RV rental program.

There were some bumps in the road, and we worked hard to make sure that our guests had a great time, but it was a hard weekend. I wasn’t ready to really know how to build a team and to delegate responsibilities to them.

I remember the water truck couldn’t get to 10 of the RVs that were parked in the back, so we foolishly tried to fill up some of the water tanks with plastic bottles of water—we’d go through two cases of water and the water tank would only be like 1/16th full. Eventually, we got water trucks to those people, but we didn’t understand a lot of the intricacies of what an on-site RV rental program would entail. There were a lot of lessons learned that weekend, the big one being that risks are OK to take, but they should always be calculated risks.

How has your current job changed from when you first started out?

When it started, I did everything—the services phone rang to my cell phone. I was the project manager for everything, I was the event manager for everything and I went to everything. I was the finance department and to even call it anything resembling a finance department is a joke because I’m terrible at that. And now I’ve built a team that does all of those functions.

I’m a CEO of a 60-person company. I started this because I was good at designing and executing VIP and travel packages. I did not start this because I was good at running a company that did that. So my job is completely different.

Where are you when the show is going on?

If I’m at a show and I have an active role, it’s making sure that everyone that’s supposed to be in our viewing areas can get into our viewing areas. If I’m at a show and I don’t have an active role, I’ll be hanging with a partner, or hanging with our staff, watching the show and making sure that everything is on the up and up. But otherwise, I’m watching the show. I got into this business because I love music and I still do.

When does your day end?

[Long Pause.] Never.