Dave Shapiro, a groundbreaking music govt within the heavy steel and exhausting rock scene, has died in a San Diego aircraft crash. He was 42.
Shapiro had a pilot’s license and was listed because the proprietor of the aircraft that crashed, in line with the Federal Aviation Administration. The music company Sound Expertise Group confirmed Shapiro died within the Thursday morning crash together with two workers.
“We’re devastated by the lack of our co-founder, colleagues and mates,” the company stated in a press release.
Shapiro cofounded Sound Expertise Group in 2018 with Tim Borror and Matt Andersen. The company’s roster focuses on various bands throughout pop-punk, metalcore, post-hardcore and different well-liked exhausting rock subgenres. Purchasers have included Hanson, Pierce The Veil, Parkway Drive, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton.
Shapiro was a powerful advocate for impartial musicians and a co-founder of the Nationwide Impartial Expertise Group. He was included in Billboard’s 2012 “30 Under 30” record recognizing rising stars in leisure. Trade veterans say Shapiro paved the best way for the formation of different impartial companies and helped many different bands discover audiences within the mainstream.
“Finding something you love to do is only going to make you do a better job because you actually care. You’re not just showing up for the paycheck, it’s not a 9-to-5,” he stated in a music trade podcast in 2021. “This is part of living your life if you really love it.”
Shapiro grew up in upstate New York within the “straightedge hard-core” scene, a subculture that promotes not utilizing medicine and alcohol in response to mainstream punk.
In highschool, he began a band along with his mates and bought signed with Victory Information proper once they graduated. They toured for a number of years, throughout which he made connections within the music trade that might assist his foray into the enterprise aspect.
Shapiro stated he grew to become immediately hooked on aviation after taking his first intro flight at age 22. He appeared to like music and flying with equal ardour, at one level opening an workplace of his expertise company at a hangar in San Diego.
Flying “helps me focus and helps me not be distracted by all the nonsense in the world, and whatever’s going on outside the plane kind of doesn’t matter in those moments,” Shapiro stated in a 2020 podcast interview.
Shapiro owned a flight college known as Velocity Aviation and a document label, Velocity Information.
He provided flights in each San Diego and Homer, Alaska, the place he and his spouse, Julia Pawlik Shapiro, owned a house, in line with his on-line posts.
Shapiro married his spouse in 2016 within the small city of Talkeetna, Alaska. They picked up their marriage ceremony licenses, bought on a aircraft and flew to a glacier inside Denali Nationwide Park, touchdown with skis strapped to the aircraft’s wheels.
“When I met Dave, we became instantly bonded over the unconventional lifestyles we lead and our constant need for adventure,” she wrote in a weblog publish.
In 2019, he posted on Instagram that he had obtained his airline transport pilot score, the very best stage of certification issued by the U.S.
“Though I’ve a profession and don’t plan to alter that I all the time wish to be taught extra and be a greater pilot,’ he wrote. He was additionally an adrenaline junkie who loved base-jumping.
Tributes poured in Thursday from musicians and others within the trade who known as him heat, real and somebody who helped little-known bands put their names on the map.
“He would listen to any band you put in front of him to give them a chance,” stated Dayna Ghiraldi-Travers, founding father of public relations company Huge Image Media, who labored with Shapiro for over 15 years.
Nate Blasdell, former lead guitarist for the band I Set My Mates on Fireplace, stated he was “completely heartbroken.”
“Dave was the first booking agent I ever worked with and he was a major part of my music career in my late teen years,” he stated in a publish on the social platform X. “He was truly the best in the game and one of the most respected people in the industry.”
Sum 41 singer Deryck Whibley credit Shapiro to serving to construct the rock band again up throughout a “low point” of their profession.
“His opinion mattered so much to me,” Whibley stated. “He was that guy I would go to for advice on things.”
Throughout their final dialog, Shapiro had flown out in his new aircraft to see Sum 41’s induction into the Canadian Music Corridor of Fame in March. He promised Whibley to be again.
“Me and my wife, we’re going to fly to you,” Whibley said Shapiro said to him. “We’re going to pick you up and we’re going to go somewhere crazy for lunch.”
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Related Press author Maria Sherman contributed to this report.
