A Conversation with Dane Butcher – HuffPost 7.12.13

Mike Ragogna: Dane, your latest Smooth Jazz Cruise, the 2013 West Coast Edition, is coming up in October, and it’s going to be significantly different from your other cruises. Can you go over a few of the changes?

Dane Butcher: Yeah, sure. It’s going to be fantastic! We’ve got more exciting things happening this year than ever before. There are more musicians and more performances than ever — over sixty shows in seven days. We also have a new program called Opening Act, which is a talent show, and the final round is judged by the artists on the ship; Brian Culbertson, Candy Dulfer and Boney James will judge that round. The winner will actually perform on stage with the artists and open our shows at the very end of the week, so that’s a new program that we’re doing. We’re giving private lessons with the artists this year where, if you want, you and up to six people can sit in on a clinic and have a private lesson with the artists. In other words, Jonathan Butler will give you some vocal tips and work with you for an hour on your vocal abilities, Brian Culbertson will work with you on playing the keyboard, or Marcus Miller will teach you to play the bass. And a brand new thing we’re doing this year is a new show called Backstage Pass that I’ll be hosting. It’s a live television program that will be recorded in front of an audience and once it’s recorded, it will go on Dish Network sometime in the near future after the cruise. But we’re going to be doing interviews and getting real up-close and personal with the artists. It’s going to be a great cruise.

MR: You said you’re going to hosting it. What is your background in entertainment?

DB: I grew up in Australia and did a few shows down there, then I was entertainment manager for an island in the Great Barrier Reef. I was working on cruise ships as the cruise director, and I’ve been in cruise production now since 2005 hosting and producing cruises.

MR: So then you know not only talent, but what makes a successful cruise.

DB: The one thing that we really strive for is to cater to the guests. I get on the ship a week before the cruise even begins and I work with the cruise line. We change the menus, we change the drinks, we put together a radio station on board so people can tune-in and listen to radio stations of that genre while they’re getting dressed or getting ready for the day when they wake up in the morning. We change the movies, we pick out itineraries, we make sure we walk through every single minute of the day to get the experience and make sure that what we’re doing caters to them.

MR: Very guest-focused?

DB: Absolutely. I did regular cruises for years and a lot of cruises catered to the masses, and it’s difficult to detail a cruise for a specific group when two thousand people are there for different reasons. On our cruises, everybody’s there for the same reason. Everyone’s there for the music, the jazz, and it allows us to really tailor those twenty-four hours on those seven days to what the guest is going to experience. I’ve got Jonathan Butler doing renewal of vows if you’re a couple on board. As the sun’s setting upstairs, there’s champagne, and he’s singing and performing and renewing the vows, it’s an amazing experience.

MR: Can you go over the history of Entertainment Cruise Productions, like how did it come about and how did it hook up with the cruise ship line that it’s associated with?

DB: What happened was fourteen or fifteen years ago, Norweigan Cruise Line was going to stop doing their jazz cruise, which was a straight-ahead music cruise. Anita E. Berry, who was the founder of the jazz cruise, decided that she, at the age of seventeen years old, would take her list of people and start up her own cruise ship with Holland America Line. She did that, it sold out in thirty days, and the rest is history. We did smooth jazz, and Michael Lazaroff — who is the Executive Director of Entertainment Cruise Productions — is amazing. He and his mom created the company and they’ve been doing The Jazz Cruise now for fourteen or fifteen years, Smooth Jazz Cruise since 2004, and along with that, we’ve been able to branch out because Michael’s had the foresight of being able to see different programs. We’ve produced the Playboy Jazz Cruise, we’ve produced the Soul Train Cruise, Malt Shop Memories Cruise, the Elvis Cruise years ago, and we’re doing the Country Cruise in January. It’s because of the success of what Anita and Michael created and our eye for detail that make these cruises so unique and so special.

MR: Since you cover a lot of different genres, is there one particular genre of music cruise guest that is more of a repeat customer than others, maybe smooth jazz?

DB: It’s kind of funny because our jazz cruise has now been going for fifteen years as a full-ship charter and some of those guests have been on all fifteen. Some of the smooth jazz guests have also been on our Malt Shop Memories Cruise, which is a fifties and sixties cruise they all come on. Even my parents from Australia come on and they love it. Once you get on the ship with people of the same group and the same taste, the experience is unforgettable. You can spend X amount of dollars on a concert, but you’ll never get the same experience as on a cruise. If you go upstairs and have breakfast and suddenly you’re sitting next to George Benson, it’s like, “Wow.” It’s that kind of experience, up close and personal with an eye for detail where for seven days, you’re just in absolute heaven with people that are like-minded. It’s tough to beat.

MR: Do close friendships develop as a result of the cruise?

DB: Oh, absolutely! It’s the same now for every cruise, and we joke about it. it’s like band camp for adults…they come back every year. We’ve had weddings on board, we’ve had renewals of vows on board, there are a lot of people who come back and see the same familiar faces. I know when I step on the ship and the guests are starting to come on, I know at least fifty percent of them, and they’re there, they’re coming up, and I’m like, “Welcome back, what have you been doing for the last year?” It’s great to see these familiar faces coming back time and time again. It’s so fantastic.

MR: You’ve expanded from forty to sixty performances for this new voyage. Will it expand even further? Are there other plans to take the experience even further than what will be experienced on the October cruise?

DB: You know, it’s kind of funny, this year we’ve got an extra day at sea which gives me another twenty-four hours to do activities. That being said, I just left St. Louis on Wednesday after we’ve had meetings there, and we’re planning stuff for January and for November next year with brand new shows because we simply don’t have enough time this year to do them. We always have full creative control and we’ve literally got new programs, new activities, and new events for next year already.

MR: So the plan is to keep the Smooth Jazz Cruise expanding in various ways?

DB: Yeah. We also listen to the guests as well. If the guests come up with a suggestion or a thought of something they’d like to see happen or even an artist they would like to see onboard, we do our utmost to accommodate that if it’s the right move. To me, I’ve got the best job in the world because I’ve got full creative control of what we’re going to do on board. It’s great when you know these things and you can see it evolving and happening and the guests just love it. And it’s the simple things that you never would have a chance to go to. Brian Culbertson and Boney James are two hosts of this upcoming Smooth Jazz Cruise. They’re doing a ping-pong tournament because they both play ping-pong. Now where else do you actually get a chance to play ping-pong with the artists you actually came to see?

MR: With all these experiences and success you’ve had, and now becoming the host of this talent tshow, when will you be hosting the Smooth Jazz spinoff of American Idol?

DB: [laughs] Look, I would love to, it would be amazing. If you’ve got contacts, then I’ll do it!

MR: I’m on it. Got any other news?

DB: Yeah. Each night on our cruises, we always have a theme night. It ranges from “Pajama Party” to “Costume Party” to “Formal Night” to “Hawaiian Night.” This month, we thought that October, being national cancer awareness month, we’re going to do a night called “Pinktober” where every single guest will get a pink Entertainment Cruise Productions lapel pin, and on the bottom of the tab it’s attached to, there will be a perforated section they can tear off and put their name and cabin number down on and hand it in to the front desk. Five dollars from their onboard account will then go to a designated charity for cancer awareness, which is to be announced. For every five dollars a guest donates, Entertainment Cruise Productions will match that. We’re hoping that if everybody does it, we’re going to raise about twenty-thousand dollars to cancer awareness.

MR: Beautiful. Have you done this before? Are there other fundraisers that you see yourself getting connected with in the future?

DB: Actually, we’ve done various charities and we’ve done various donations, and Michael Lazaroff was just in New York at The Blue Note. In honor of his mother, there’s an Anita E. Barry scholarship fund that we set up a couple of years ago. But this is the first time that we’ve done a whole night based on a charity and a theme, and everybody on board will wear pink whether it’s a tie or a shirt or a dress or something. We’re going to dress the stage up and I think it’ll be a really special and unique event.

MR: All right, that sound awesome. All the best with this and future cruises, Dane.

DB: Thank you so much…bye!

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne