MBJ Enterprises LLC

After the original Rocklahoma in 1980 with Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, and The Doobie Brothers, the University of Oklahoma didn’t host another stadium concert until 1997. That’s a long gap. And according to the conversation, they left a lot of money on the table. Pink Floyd. The Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour. Major stadium acts that could have brought huge crowds, big production, and serious reve...

Max quitting Red Bull was not a small thing. For years, it was part of the routine. Before recording, before work, before getting on the road, somebody was usually making a 7-Eleven or OnCue run for sugar-free Red Bulls. Then one day, the heart doctor asked what he drank, Max said Red Bull, and the answer came back simple: “No good for you. Cut it out.” So he did. No big announcement. No long spee...

September 27th at the Bricktown Event Center. Alice Cooper on the Brutal Planet tour. That was one of those shows where everybody made it through the day, even if not everybody loved being there. Jeff may not have been thrilled, but the night itself turned into a real one. Backstage was tight. One way in, one way out. Kitchen area. Side access. Everybody packed into the same working space, trying...

ZZ Top with Jackyl on the bill — the Antenna era. That mid-90s stretch when ZZ Top was still rolling hard, still evolving the sound, and still drawing real crowds. But the part that sticks isn’t just the show. It’s the meet. A signed Antenna lithograph from the record company. Meet-and-greet passes. Winning the kind of poster you keep for life. “Cry Love” opening the Tulsa date, and then meeting t...

 It doesn’t matter where Max is in life — hospital bed, lowest low, highest high — the Stones have carried him through it. That’s not a slogan. That’s survival. And by 2024, the story has stretched far beyond Oklahoma: seeing them in Paris, seeing them in the desert alongside names like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, The Who, and Roger Waters. Then comes the backstage moment you can’t scri...

It starts with a simple problem. “There’s a band coming this summer that I have no connections for.” And everybody immediately knows who we’re talking about. “Do they roll along stoned?” Yeah. They do. That’s how show business works. The biggest moments don’t show up on a calendar first — they show up in random conversations where you realize your ass is on the line again. And somehow, it turns in...

You had two sides of the room that did not mix. Skinheads on one side. SHARPs on the other. Real tension. Real politics. The kind of night where you’re not just running a show—you’re playing judge, jury, and peacekeeper just to keep it from turning into a riot. At points it looked like Moses parting the sea. The floor literally split down the middle like an early wall of death, except it wasn’t a...

June 11, 2000. Motörhead. Nashville Pussy. Supersuckers. A lineup that should’ve been a stampede. And only 372 people showed up. That number still hurts. Less than 400 bodies for a bill that loud, legendary, and unapologetic. Tickets were around $20–$22 and it still didn’t move like it should have. But the people who were there remember it. Lemmy. Up close. Real as it gets. One of the most vivid m...

Some bands aren’t just bands. They’re the reason you end up in the music business. ZZ Top is that band. Over the years, we did a lot of business with their world. You meet crew guys. You watch the touring machine evolve. You see faces change. But some things stay consistent—there aren’t many people cooler than Billy Gibbons. And it still hits different seeing him in Ardmore, Oklahoma, sitting at 2...

Max says it plain. If you stay in the problem, you never find the solution. That lesson came from the woman sitting to his left, his sister Deana. When they first started spending more time together again, she saw him at his worst. Leg straightened out. Pain loud. Mood even louder. And she didn’t baby him. She held it up and hit him with the truth. “What are you gonna do now, big boy?” Even joked...

July 30, 2000. Brady Village in Tulsa. 2,571 people . Deftones and Glassjaw on the same bill. And the crazy part? You lived in Tulsa at the time. Glassjaw is one of those bands people don’t “kinda like.” You’re either all the way in or you don’t get it. Daryl Palumbo is that dude, and seeing Glassjaw in that era, in that room, with that crowd size, is the kind of night you talk about for the rest...

Ticket drops used to feel like the land run. People camped. Lines formed overnight. Rules said you had to be in line, but they didn’t always say it had to be you standing there every minute. So you’d see people try creative workarounds, helping others out while trying to hold a spot and stay in the game. Then the real circus started. When it came time to move the line, it turned into a sprint acro...

The day Max was released from the hospital with a new knee.  Rehab starting. Exercises underway. And even with the fresh pain of surgery, Max says it still doesn’t compare to what he was living with before. That’s the part people don’t understand until it’s them. Chronic pain doesn’t just hurt, it starts messing with your mind. It gets to the point where getting in a chair, getting in the truck, d...

Pimpadelic was that kind of band. Even as a spectator, you could feel the room going sideways. They were shock-rock meets rap-rock chaos, and it was so wild it made other rowdy crowds look tame. Ralph was in disbelief, and that takes a lot. Then there’s Easy Jesus. Easy Jesus is David Allan Coe’s nephew, and that connection mattered when it came to getting attention for bookings. Texas roots, easy...

Volume 15. By that point, Metal Bash wasn’t an experiment. It was a machine. This one was special because it was the first time bringing Metal Bash to Cain's Ballroom. Bigger room. Bigger stakes. And somehow, we crammed the whole lineup into a 60-second commercial. No music from every local band either, just names, because the national package took priority. But the local scene still mattered...

Before Edgefest chaos, Tulsa and OKC were already stacked that week. August 15th and 16th — Brady Village and the Zoo Amphitheatre. Paul Rodgers and Kansas on the bill. That classic-rock lane where the crowd knows every chorus, and the shows run like clockwork. Kansas doing one of those late-era victory laps, still pulling real fans. Then the conversation clears something up. The downtown outdoor...

If you’ve worked the Zoo Amphitheatre, you know the struggle isn’t the show. It’s the load-in. Rolling cases through gravel. Fighting the layout. Dragging gear where it was never designed to go. Years of stagehands have earned their stripes out there, and the new crews don’t even realize how lucky they are compared to what it used to be. The Zoo has served its purpose for a long time. It’s hosted...

Two nights. Two completely different scenes. Same weekend. September 13, 2003 — Curly’s. Dropkick Murphys with Last Target and The Unseen. DCF and AEG. One of those Curly’s nights that proved you didn’t need a polished venue to have a legendary show. Curly’s was raw back then. Vacant-lot energy. Dirt and torn-down buildings nearby. But the shows hit. Then the next night, September 14, 2003 — Diamo...

Two nights. Two stages. Full local scene energy. The dates matter here. Not July 24th. It was July 29th and 30th. One of those nights was at Cain's Ballroom and it was a Mad Max style build. Two stages, constant changeovers, and a lineup that felt like a roster sheet of that era. Udora headlining the mix with Midnight to 12, Wither, Makeshift, Rook, Cynical Theory, All Too Familiar, Vent, Wai...

June 9, 2003 — Bricktown Event Center. The Flaming Lips. Liz Phair. Starlight Mints. That night wasn’t just a great bill. It was work. Assistant promoter rep. Managing runners. Checking in merch. Counting money. Keeping the machine moving while the crowd kept coming. And it was a big merch night. Because the Flaming Lips don’t do average merch. They’re known for those killer tour posters. Unique d...

Big Monday. August 15, 2005. That’s the kind of date that tells you everything about momentum. Not long before, The Killers were playing Bricktown Live, a 400-cap room on a weekend. Tight stage. Close crowd. The kind of show where you can feel the whole room breathe together. Fast forward. Now it’s a Monday night, and The Killers are sold out at the Coca-Cola Bricktown Event Center. Bigger venue....

June 2003 didn’t slow down. It stacked. June 20th, River Parks in Tulsa — Third Eye Blind. Great setting, perfect summer venue energy, one of those nights that feels easy and fun. Then June 24th, 2003 — Queensrÿche and Dream Theater at the Brady Theater. If you’re a prog-metal nerd, that’s the dream bill. Both bands played full headlining sets. Not a “co-headline” in name only. Real sets. Real tim...

If you grew up going to shows in Oklahoma, you already know how much a venue can change a whole city’s music scene. Tulsa is talking about a new amphitheater on the river, with River Parks being one of the locations in the mix. Oklahoma City is also planning a brand-new amphitheater, and the same development group is tied to both projects. That’s a big deal. Early renderings have people talking fo...

Weird Al at the Diamond Ballroom. And if you’ve never worked a Weird Al merch table, you haven’t seen true efficiency. This was the Poodle Hat Tour era. Goofy poodles everywhere. Wild graphics. Deep catalog items. UHF DVDs. Tour books. Shirts numbered like a menu. But here’s what made it different. Weird Al fans are the nicest fans in the business. No exaggeration. They walk up like they’re orderi...

When people talk about big shows, they usually talk ticket sales. They don’t talk merch. Here’s a number for you. ZZ Top — two casinos — two days — almost $200,000 in merch. One merch table. Let that sink in. That wasn’t arena-level production. That was casino routing. Durant and Miami. Markets that had never seen ZZ Top up close like that. And when those towns see their name on the shirt? They bu...