From Absolutely Kosher to the Chapel to El Rio, Tyla Jones has been an integral force in Bay Area music. In 2024, she created Total Accord Agency to fill a gap in local artist repping, and the agency now counts many of our favorite artists among their roster, including Al Harper, Aluminum, Anna Hillburg, AroMa, Asha Wells, The Breathing Room, Casey Cope, DJ Juanny, Family Not a Group, Grooblen, Marika Christine, Mild Universe, Outer Sunset, Peña, Yea-Ming, and more!
To commemorate its first year and raise money for a new office, Total Accord Agency has partnered with White Crate to put on an epic celebration of Bay Area music, showcasing amazing local talent at six awesome shows across four of our favorite venues. Get tickets here!
Ahead of the Total Accord concert series kicking off Thursday, May 22, we heard from Tyla about her path to founding the creative agency, her thoughts on Bay Area music, the agency’s relationship with Anniversary Group, and more.
Tell us about your path to working in music in the Bay Area.
I am from the Bay Area and my father is a musician, so I grew up going to shows and being a part of the music scene here in the city. So a lot of my roots are based here and going to concert venues since I was an infant. I’m also a musician, which very few people know, so my love of music goes deep.
I moved to San Francisco when I was 19, quickly got into the music scene, and interned at a couple of labels here in the East Bay, including Absolutely Kosher Records. That was my first real taste of the music industry. It was so long ago, but that is where it all began for me in networking, learning how to go to shows, and representing a label and artist.
My background is actually in social justice work, so through that I started throwing some fundraising shows here in the Bay off and on for probably 10 years. I learned how to book bands and get connected to venues. It’s kind of always been on the sidelines for me, but also very important to me. Long story short, during the pandemic, a lot of people got laid off from my journalism job and I got an opportunity through a good friend. Nora at Folk Yeah Presents worked at the Chapel doing house management, and they had an opportunity for an assistant booker there in 2021. So that opened all the doors and connected me even deeper on a different level, working in that more established music industry space, which I was foreign to, and got a crash course in how to be a talent buyer.
What led you to start Total Accord Agency?
Once I left the Chapel, I was like, how do I give back to my community? To me, local music is what’s most important. As much as I love touring artists from other places, the Bay is my love and my heart and there’s so many of my friends that do cool music out here. Friends kept asking me for help, like, “Hey, I need help booking a show. Do you have a contact?” It was a gap that we needed to fill.
Seablite, the first band I signed, they’re really good friends of mine. They’re like family at this point, and I’m just a genuine fan of their music and their sound. They really set the tone for a certain sound that’s coming out of the Bay Area, “fog pop.” They inspired me. They were saying, would you help us, would you represent us? And I thought, well, maybe I should brand it, start small, and see where it goes.
Word spread pretty quickly that I was helping them. More people started reaching out, and then I made it more public and was like, “Hey, I’m trying this thing. We’ll see what happens. Here’s an intake sheet to see what kind of artists we’re looking for.” And I got an overwhelming amount of submissions, which solidified that what I was doing was needed. There are definitely other people doing similar things, but there isn’t too much of a proper creative agency with agents and managers based in San Francisco doing that. So I was like, well, this is a good launching pad. It’s something that is unique. So I went with it.
I’ve made up a roster of some of my favorites and then realized that it was becoming bigger than life. So I brought on some other agents and managers who are creating their own artist rosters now. So it went from being just me to a team of almost 10 of us now in one year.
So it just sort of all fell into place and here I am now a year later with Total Accord Agency. It’s been a journey and I’m proud of myself. We are still a baby agency. I’m not trying to get ahead of myself here. We are still so new. We’re still learning, we’re still growing. But yeah, I’m very excited for how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time, which is a testament to our mission – and thank you to White Crate for supporting us! I hope everyone can find a piece of themselves in what we’re doing. That’s the point. We really want to be accessible to all people, so keep a lookout for more to come.
What does a creative agency do for an artist?
Basically, an agency is made up of booking agents, and their job is to book a show for an artist, a route, a tour. It’s a support system to make sure that the financials and the day-to-day admin get done between the venue and the agent so that the artist doesn’t have to put in that time. There are a lot of artists, especially in the Bay Area, who do their own thing and don’t really need an agent. They do well with their own agency as an artist.
But there are a lot of artists that frankly just don’t have the time to run that themselves. So it’s nice to be able to be that support. As a creative agency, we definitely work case by case per artist because we don’t believe there’s one model for all people. What you want as a band is going to be different than a solo artist. So I don’t treat everyone the same.
How is Total Accord (or any agency) different from a label?
A label is going to be about releasing music as opposed to an agency, which is strictly about booking shows. We also do offer artist management, which entails submitting an artist to labels to be signed. If they don’t want to be represented on Total Accord on a booking level, we have managers that can connect them to larger agencies to maybe be signed by a different agent. A label is a totally different ball game, since an agency is really about connecting an artist to a festival or venue. Also, we’re soundboards as agents, but the manager part of it is also really important. So we wanted to offer that service as well.
How does Total Accord help artists level up?
Through our networks, we have the contacts to get artists into spaces that they wouldn’t ordinarily get into. Unfortunately, the music industry is very much about gatekeeping, and larger, more established venues, are ultimately booked through promoters, so people always email “info@ this venue” and that won’t honestly do much for you. It’s an illusion.
So it’s nice to be able to have that intro to those spaces that are for some reason in the shadows for the everyday artist. What we’re trying to do is show promoters and venues (that normally wouldn’t be searching for independent artists) that there are artists out here worth booking. It’s hard for an artist to advocate for themselves to a promoter. Promoters like to have it by the book with an agent, have a contract. We get to have that forward-facing relationship with a booker and that helps get artists into those spaces they normally wouldn’t.
It’s breaking down the walls because, for some reason, it’s legitimate because I’m an agent, so they’ll respond to me. Especially now that I work with Anniversary Group, it kind of elevated us. That’s like a buzzword. “Let’s respond.” When a promoter across the country is getting hit up by a local artist from San Francisco with no representation, you will likely not get a response. So it is just helping pave the way for them and also to help us teach them how to do it themselves too. If something were to happen, I want them to always know how the process works. It’s important for us to educate people too.
Tell us more about your relationship with Anniversary Group.
They’re another boutique music agency, based in Brooklyn. Some of their agents are homies of mine through booking their bands at the Chapel. They reached out to me only 4-5 months after I started Total Accord, pitching for us to be a part of Anniversary group and to merge my roster into their agency as a way to get more resources. I was not expecting that. The whole trajectory of how fast everything moved is pretty remarkable.
I felt so excited because I’m a huge fan of Anniversary Group. Of all the boutique agencies that I worked with at the Chapel, they always stood out to me. They were always really personable. Those bigger agencies that take over the whole industry and make it problematic are very hard to work with at times. Anniversary was never like that. They were just down-to-earth humans. So when they reached out and were like, we love what you’re doing, we want to help put the Bay Area on the map nationally and get you connected to these big festivals, opportunities for your artists to open bigger tours for more established artists, etc, it was very appealing and I’m very grateful that we have them on our side.
Are you seeing a sea change in Bay Area music?
Everyone wants to be a part of the Bay. The narrative’s changing. The Bay Area has always been on the map in some way, but there are more conversations about the movements that we have here, which is really cool to see.
Case in point, one of our new agents at Total Accord, Kayla, is in an amazing all-girl band called GrrlBand from Eugene. But Kayla is now living here in the Bay. She’s repping Bowl Peace and also GrrlBand is going to be on Total Accord as well. But Bowl Peace is playing the concert series as a way to bring their community here out to El Rio and kick off their welcome to the Bay Area. So I’m really excited that they’re dope joining the show.
Any other shoutouts?
Shout out James Wavey aka Michael Bridgemon, who designed all of our promo for the music series.
And then Galine from Seablite designed our Total Accord logo, which is now incorporated into the flyer. Beautiful design work.
We’ll be selling Total Accord merch at the Great American Music Hall Show, which I know many people are excited about. Shout out Galine who designed our merch! But yeah, give it up for the designers that make all of the promotion and marketing happen in this industry. What would we do without them?
To commemorate its first year, Total Accord Agency is partnering with White Crate to put on an epic celebration of Bay Area music, showcasing amazing local talent at six awesome shows across four of our favorite venues. Get tickets here!
Thu May 22 at El Rio (happy hour show)
Anna Hillburg, Al Harper, Josiah Flores (DJ)
Thu May 22 at El Rio (late show)
SWISS., Bowl Peace, Davia Schendel, Rip Florence
Fri May 23 at Kilowatt
Spaceface, The Breathing Room, Mayya, Outer Sunset, DJ N0Be
Sat May 24 at Great American Music Hall (day show)
Mild Universe, Seablite, Hugo de la Lune, Grooblen, Luke Sweeney, Isabeau Waia’u Walker, System Exclusive, ronny ronny ronny
Sat May 24 at Great American Music Hall (night show)
Family Not a Group, AroMa, Deon Brown, Casey Cope, Miss Hits, DJ Juanny
Sun May 25 at Rickshaw Stop
Peña, Mint, UFO Baby, Gloomy June
