BLUE KEY ARTISTS is a boutique management and artist support agency originally founded in 1996 as Out Loud Talent and Productions by Manager/Agent Al Berman. We work with only a few artists at a time to ensure each artist’s identity and art get full focus, partnering with them to create fulfilling careers. BKA has evolved through many music industry redefinitions and while our primary focus is management and representation we bring to bear a long list of skills, industry contacts and other resources gathered over decades and apply them to each artist’s unique art and career concept. Career support in addition to management can include representation, producing, live performance concept development and more depending on an artist’s individual needs. We also work with an impressive list of peripheral elite-level industry professionals including live production engineers, recording engineers, producers, publicists, attorneys, radio promoters and musicians to build the right team matched to each artist’s creative and career vision. We create an evolving palette of opportunities that nimbly responds to the progression of each career and always begin each artist relationship with an intimate understanding of both the person and their art.
Al Berman has bachelors and masters degrees in journalism / public information from the University of Kansas, toured professionally for 11 years as a bassist and has served in roles as touring musician, manager, agent, road manager, album producer, publicist, CEO of a small record label, contract talent buyer, promoter, festival promoter, co-producer of a syndicated live jazz radio performance series and consultant for venues and subscription concert series in his music industry career. He has also partnered in several venture capital projects, was chief development, promotion and public information officer at a prominent public radio station, served on the NPR Public Information Advisory Committee and the board of directors of The Development Exchange in Washington. Understanding talent, artistic identity and career potential through all these lenses is among his strongest assets as manager and career strategist.
In his various roles Al has worked with artists in an array of genres including Americana, Folk, Blues, Bluegrass, Jazz, acoustic music, singer songwriters and various Pop/Indie variations. Most prominently he has managed the decades-long career of Americana/Blues/Roots singer songwriter Kelley Hunt who has appeared on important stages worldwide, appeared 6 times on American Public Media’s award-winning “A Prairie Home Companion”, moved over 150K indie units and millions of streams, enjoyed broad critical acclaim and released several top-ten-charting Billboard Blues albums among many career highlights.