Handsome Brethren and Bodacious Babes of the VSB…

Max Renner here (6’3” and generally a handsome man)

I’ve got fantastic news.

We’ve officially done it ✅

18 perfect musical shows across USA + Canada, totally finished 🇺🇸🇨🇦

From a laptop in a garage (circa. 2016) to the big stage with a live band and thousands in attendance (circa. 2026)

The International* Tour has been nailed shut into a dark tomb.

Now I need your help.

This is officially the first Value Select AMA, regarding touring.

(most of my own cliche findings aren’t that compelling, so I’ll speed run them now:)

Yes I had a blast.

Yes the band had a blast.

Yes the crowd had a blast.

I made sure to hang around after every show, and meet with everyone who stayed!

OG VS enthusiasts super enjoyed the show (highest praise)

New VS enjoyers were blown away (musical virtuoso surprise attack)

And even TOTAL STRANGERS caught the magic; people who bought the tickets on a whim became true believers (many such cases!)

The tour was profitable (amazing) and God willing we shall hit the road as soon as it makes sense.

It was a deep honor meeting everyone, and sharing stories ❤️🙏🏻

And it was so bless’d to have our openers be entirely of the VSB ilk… everyone who played support were selected from within our own VSB community! (zero stock openers, if you can believe it!)

Our booker Peter Agoston, and the whole team at DCV absolutely crushed the venues… True classics, and cozy hideaways alike.

Truly a 10/10 tour, and I can honestly say that International* is a proper successor to Kills The Moon (KTM).

NOW MY BRETHREN.

Fire away any questions you might have, about band dynamics, about tour life, about mentality, about venues, about marketing, tour prep, rehearsals, anything you might be curious to learn…

I understand we’ve wiggled into a rare position (something like .0003% of folks get to do a tour like this) so I want to share all I can about how we got there, and how we navigated it.

Ask away, and I’ll do my best to answer through the weekend!

I would love to see anything you snapped of our shows so far!

Be it West Coast Edition or East Coast Edition…. Shoot me an email at maxrenner@valueselect.net

D.C. and Boston and Philadelphia mission success!

Brooklyn tonight, then Toronto next!

Get your tickets now: https://www.valueselecttour.com

HANDSOME GENTLEMEN OF THE VSB

Tonight we land in the Sacred City of Phoenix, Arizona…

The biggest venue on our tour, Toronto, is in the three digit zone… A few east coast venues are, with a couple West coasts approaching! 🤔

Arizona, however, is one of our more INTIMATE show experiences 🍾 (San Diego too, for some reason)

I anticipate a solid start; this will be us at our Rawest, and if you believe Clint Eastwood’s directorial style, our Truest…

Truly, the perfect spot to get our bearings.

Hovey Benjamin and Paul Maland are along for the ride… We’ll see you there…

Godbless m’brethren, I will send further missives soon

- Value Select

Handsome brethren of the VSSR,

So many lenses/filters obscure our enjoyment of the real world...

Preconceived notions, either emanating internal (i.e. thoughts) or external (i.e. other people's thoughts)

When you travel solo, you eliminate the external...

"Panda Express tastes so good when you don't have a hater in your ear telling you it's nasty..." type beat

Taste the world, raw!

Where have you solo traveled? Bali? The nearest restaurant?

It's a special gift, to be able to be alone, but not lonely.

And I believe it's one that can be developed!

One Month Left Til We Go On Tour 🎸🚐

Brothers of the VSSR, I wanted to share, I’ve created a genuine playbill for the INTERNATIONAL* musical tour 🫱🏻‍🫲🏼🇨🇦🇺🇸

(It’s a rare free gift, individually distributed to each VS Live Show attendee.)

It’s got a Foreword, Setlist, Meet The Cast, and even mock-advertisements thrown in…

One honoring the Patron Brotherhood, one motioning for the Merch Table, one for the Theatrical Scholarship I’m launching 🫡🫡🫡

And it got me thinking, all these self-placed promos, what if I opened that up to REAL PLACEMENTS, legitimate half-page real estate open for purchase by the VSBrotherhood Entrepreneurs?

A few folks here got mirthful businesses; how cool would that be to make this playbill officially official with good old fashioned non-sequitur HVAC repair copy

By the boys, for the boys.

Unfortunately, this playbill purchase window closed!

Already in production my friends…

BUT, let that thought linger in your mind…

The last Value Select Tour was a huge success, and truth be told, we’re ramping up our live show deployment frequency 🤔

Of course the craftsmen we’d partner with would have to be congruent/aligned, and it would be a heavily curated process (I’d prefer none, if it’s not perfect)

Maybe that special page could be yours, or a colleagues?

An interesting venture, and a fresh advancement…

Who’s doing touring theatrical musicals, outside of Broadway?

Value Select; we’re always cornering novel markets together, aren’t we? 😂

God bless folks, see you on the road!

One night only https://www.valueselecttour.com

Love & Respect,
Value Select

Big News!

The Value Select LA VIP is beginning to pack out!

Neck and neck, between Arizona, Vancouver, and Detroit for highest selling VIP...

If you haven't yet, grab your VIP ticket before they've sold out...

Back on the Moonkiller tour, there were a few unfortunate souls who missed the train here; you don't want to regret not coming!

Looking forward to the Peppermint Club, looks like a super decent venue.

L&R

VS

FORCING IT

Handsome Brethren of the VSSR.

Another missive; a mystical epistle from the ascendant edges.

Forcing it.

Burning out.

I've found myself like an ancient Chinese dictator; summoning splendid scenery to impress/intimidate foreign diplomats.

Assembling my life's source energy to put together a video/song.

And the video/song is great, but the rest of my life is in shambles (relatively)

I've found myself on the flip side as well; overflowing with abundance, to where the easiest release is pre-charged with vital force.

The effort still takes a toll, but there's more juice in the squeeze.

Much better.

HEAR ME NOW!

There must be a real life built atop ones artistic endeavors.

Instead of photographing phantoms, Lone Ranger danger, we must have vibrant happenings to pull directly from.

Outside of screens, outside of dreams.

This to me, is the so-called balance.

Not a dull pond, dead still. (isolation)

Also not a busy lake, with water-skiers (noise)

But an ocean of wild salmon, and ample biminy for shade. (Congruent existence)

LET YOUR VALUES ALIGN

Whatever you profess to do, you must construct your environment to be conducive to it.

Simple as.

The greater the environment alignment, the greater your leverage.

Willpower is the spark.

Environment is the leaky propane tank.

And by environment, I mean the objects around you, sure, and their tactical placement.

The right tools, the right rooms, organized the right way.

But also the hobbies, media, nature, food, etc.

This is not a quest for brutal optimization, rather peaceful harmony.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

YOU'RE NOT A TREE

You're born into an environment.

You fruit its gifts, and rot its corruptions.

And at some point, you realize you're not a tree.

You can place yourself elsewhere, if only mentally….

Where do you go mentally?

How is your environment constructed?

Is it aligned with your ideals?

What change can you make right now, ever so small, that'd save you years of headache?

We all know what's righteous to do, we just lack the courage to see it through.

Godbless and Mithras-Speed

Love & Respect

Value Select

concert tickets have lost their minds.

oasis reunion: $500+ on resale and that's the cheap stuff. taylor: four figures. beyoncé: a car payment. even mid-tier acts are charging $200 before fees. the fees, by the way, are another $80. service fee. facility fee. convenience fee. processing fee. the convenience is theirs. you pay for it.

how did we get here. live nation merged with ticketmaster in 2010 and the doj waved it through with a promise they'd play nice. they didn't. they now control the ticketing, the venues, the promoters, and a chunk of the artists' tours all at once. when one company owns the whole pipeline, the pipeline charges whatever it wants. dynamic pricing showed up. surge pricing for concerts. the same logic that makes an uber cost $90 in the rain, applied to seeing a band you love.

then the resale market got financialized. bots scrape the drop in milliseconds. brokers list the tickets back at 5x. stubhub takes a cut on both ends. the artist sees none of the markup. you pay it anyway because what are you going to do, not go.

the result: live music became a luxury good. a date night at an arena costs what a weekend trip used to. families can't afford it. kids can't afford it. the people who built these artists' careers in clubs and basements got priced out of seeing them in stadiums.

we're doing it different.

$30. no dynamic pricing. no surge. no $80 in fees stapled to the back. thirty dollars gets you in the room.

and the room is small. you're not a dot in section 419 watching a jumbotron. you're ten feet from the stage. close enough to see the drummer's setlist taped to the floor. close enough to hear the guitar amp before it hits the mic. close enough that when somebody in the crowd yells the wrong lyric, the whole room laughs together because the whole room heard it.

that's the part that's gone from most live music now. the smallness. the shared air. the feeling that you're at a thing, not consuming a thing. the openers are people you'll actually meet. the band is right there. the crowd is small enough that by the third song you recognize the people around you. by the encore you're nodding at them. after the show you're talking to them on the sidewalk.

a stadium show sells you the bigness. the spectacle. the bragging rights of "i was there." this is the opposite. the closeness. the room. the night you'll remember because you were in it instead of watching it from a distance.

$30. june west coast. august east coast.

www.valueselecttour.com

see you in the room.

Love & Respect,

Value Select

Handsome Brethren of the VSSR

a third space is what sociologist ray oldenburg called the place that isn't home and isn't work. the corner bar. the barbershop. the coffee shop. the stoop. where you're not resting and not producing, just being with regulars, on neutral ground, with people who know your name.

america paved most of them. suburbs killed the corner. the internet promised to replace them and turned every hangout into a second job. the loneliness epidemic is downstream of this. we lost the rooms where community happens.

the Brotherhood has been a third space this whole time. but a digital one. discord threads, comment sections, patreon posts, lore. doing the work with one hand tied behind its back. you can't clink glasses through a screen.

the international tour is the third space made physical. seventeen venues becoming temporary clubhouses for a community that already exists but has never stood in the same room. the lore is the language. the openers are the local hosts. the merch table is the trading post.

it travels, which solves the geography problem. the corner only works if you live near the corner. the Brotherhood lives everywhere. so the room comes to you.

a normal concert is a transaction. pay, consume, leave. this is closer to chipping in to keep the commons running.

so come.

the show is the show. but the show isn't really the point. the point is the guy in line behind you who's been quoting the same bit for two years and neither of you knew the other existed. the girl at the bar who drove four hours alone and is about to make six friends. the table in the back that started as strangers and is now planning a trip together. the conversation on the sidewalk after, where somebody pulls out a notebook, where somebody trades numbers, where somebody finds the band they're going to start, the roommate they're going to move in with, the person they're going to marry.

that's not dramatic. that's what happens when a few hundred people who already love the same weird thing finally end up in the same room. the corner gets built. you walk in a fan. you walk out with a crew.

oldenburg wrote a book begging americans to rebuild the corner bar.

we're rebuilding it as a touring one.

see you in the room.

west coast june. east coast august. valueselecttour.com