It is with much sadness that we have to announce the departure to Ryan Cano, our Music Director and Talent Buyer for the Pecan Street Festival the past 5 years. Ryan has lead every music initiative we’ve had over the last half decade including the growth of our audience attendance from around 80K people to nearly over 210K people now. During this growth he booked 9 festivals and over 375 artists in his tenure. He created standards of quality at the festival, always curating a different festival each time, booking over 88 different artists a calendar year and creating playlists on Soundcloud to showcase the festivals music to fans digitally. Ryan expanded music programming including introducing Hip-Hop, R&B and Latin sounds to our stages. While other festivals struggle with gender balance and genre representation in their lineups, i.e., barely reaching 20% female artists booked, the Pecan Street Festival exceeded 55%+ each lineup during Ryan’s leadership.
His organization, passion and follow-through lead to many accomplishments. Quite simply, Ryan Cano is going to be hard to replace.
Photo by Kat Alyst
“While it is too early to announce anything just yet, with some of the things happening for me professionally it felt increasingly unlikely that I would still be at the Pecan Street Festival in the next 90 days. Three months from now, the festival would be in the busiest moments of the festival’s organization. The timing just felt right for us to depart. Sometimes the story feels written and I feel more than satisfied at the work that has been achieved the last 5 years! I would like to thank the Pecan Street Festival for the opportunity to book such an esteemed fest drenched in tradition and allowing me to book my vision of what that looked like today. I am proud of so many things we accomplished in my time here. I am proud to have worked with so many exceptional and diverse Artists and being able to see them perform on the stage. I want to thank all the Artists that have performed over the last 5 years. Thank you to all the Artist Managers, Booking Agents and those who represent themselves. It has been an honor working and growing with you. I want to thank Executive Producer Luis Zapata and Producer Chris Haddad for giving me the opportunity. I want to send a big thank you to previous Music Director Jenna Wedgewood for recommending me many years ago. Without her recommendation, none of this would have kick-started. I want to especially thank Executive Director Debbie Russell for working alongside me and developing me as an Executive while I directed and booked the Music portion of the festival. Thank you to the Board of Directors for believing in me all these years. It has been my pleasure and I can’t wait to see what’s next for the Pecan Street Festival while I convert to being a fan!” – Ryan Cano
Ryan Cano has been the owner of The Loyalty Firm for the last 14 years. He currently manages and consults for music artists My Education, Built By Snow, SoundMass. He consults with visual artist Velcrowolf. He was previously a co-owner of Holy Mountain. He is a thought leader on the Music Industry and contains immeasurable institutional knowledge. Be on the lookout for what’s next professionally for Ryan Cano by connecting with him on LinkedIn.