Tickets to ride: Boulder agency books the traveling bands.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Attitude at Altitude - Madison House Travel

ROCK 'N' ROLLERS ARE GENERALLY KNOWN MORE FOR TRASHING HOTEL rooms than booking them. But the String Cheese Incident isn't your typical rock band.

The Boulder-based jam band has its fingers in all sorts of businesses: a record label and in-house companies that handle merchandise, management and publicity for it and other bands. Also under the corporate umbrella: Madison House Travel, a full-service travel agency with a unique focus on the rock 'n' roll market.

Lisa Pomerantz, Madison House Travel's managing partner, launched the agency three years ago. After six years as a travel agent, she had embarked on a headhunting career, but she hated recruiting.

That's when she heard her calling: "I realized what I really wanted to do was listen to music and travel,' she said. Good work if you can find it--and Pomerantz did.

In early 1999, she came up with the concept of a music-oriented travel agency and pitched the plan to the manager of the Dave Matthews Band, who didn't bite. But Madison House Inc., SCI's in-house management company, loved the idea.

"We had a meeting on May 9, I quit my job on May 10, and May 11 I went to work at Madison House," said Pomerantz.

She says the concept works because String Cheese Incident has "a really ardent, loyal following, much like the Grateful Dead. They like to offer all sorts of extras for their fans. Travel was such an obvious one, and nobody had done it."

While it will serve any customer, Madison House focuses on the specific niches of touring bands--including SCI, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Ben Harper--and their fans.

Touring bands are markedly different from your typical Disney-bound family. "It's a more finicky clientele," Pomerantz said. "A normal travel agent probably wouldn't be prepared to handle the little idiosyncrasies that each band member might...