Dave Shapiro, an innovative musical executive at the Heavy Metal and Hard Rock scene, has He died in a San Diego air accident. He was 42 years old.
Shapiro had a pilot license and appeared as owner of the plane that crashed, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The group of sound talents of the music agency confirmed that Shapiro died in the accident on Thursday morning along with two employees.
“We are devastated by the loss of our co -founder, colleagues and friends,” said the agency in a statement.
Shapiro co -founded Sound Talent Group in 2018 with Tim Rorror and Matt Andersen. The agency’s list focuses on alternative bands between Pop-Punk, Metalcore, Post-Hardcore and other Hard Rock popular subgenres. Customers have included Hanson, Pierce The Veil, Parkway Drive, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton.
Shapiro was a firm defender of independent and co -founder musicians of the National Independent Talent Organization. It was included in the “30 under 30” list of Billboard in 2012 that recognizes the ascending stars in entertainment. Industry veterans say Shapiro raided the way for the formation of other independent agencies and helped many alternative bands to find audiences in the main current.
“Finding something you like to do only will make you do a better job because you really care. You are not just introducing yourself to the payment check, it is not 9 to 5,” he said in a podcast of the music industry in 2021. “This is part of living your life if you really love it.”
Shapiro grew up in the north of the state of New York in the “Hard-N-Core” scene, a subculture that promotes not using drugs and alcohol in reaction to conventional punk.
In high school, a band began with his friends and signed with Victory Records just when they graduated. They toured for a few years, during which made connections in the music industry that would help their foray on the commercial side.
Shapiro said that aviation was instantly hooked after taking his first introduction flight at 22 years. He seemed to love music and fly with the same passion, at one time opening an office of his talent agency in a hangar in San Diego.
Flying “helps me to concentrate and helps me not distract me with all the nonsense in the world, and whatever is happening outside the plane does not matter at that time,” Shapiro said in a Podcast 2020 interview.
Shapiro owned a flight school called Velocity Aviation and a record label, Velocity Records.
He offered flights in San Diego and Homer, Alaska, where he and his wife, Julia Pawlik Shapiro, owned a house, according to their online publications.
Shapiro married his wife in 2016 in the small city of Talkeetna, Alaska. They collected their wedding licenses, went up to a plane and flew to a glacier inside the Denali National Park, landing with skis tied to the wheels of the plane.
“When I met Dave, we instantly joined ourselves about the unconventional lifestyles we carry and our constant need for adventure,” he wrote in a blog post.
In 2019, he published on Instagram that he had obtained the qualification of his air transport pilot, the highest certification level issued by the United States
“Although I have a race and I don’t plan to change that I always want to learn more and be a better pilot,” he wrote. He was also a adrenaline addict that enjoyed the base.
The taxes were seen on Thursday of musicians and others in the industry that called him warm, genuine and someone who helped the little known bands to put their names on the map.
“I listened to any band that you put in front of him to give them a chance,” said Dayna Ghiraldi-Travers, founder of the Public Relations Agency Big Picture Media, who worked with Shapiro for more than 15 years.
Nate Blasdell, former main guitarist of the band, set fire to my friends, said I was “absolutely disconsolate.”
“Dave was the first reserve agent with whom I worked and was an important part of my musical career in my last years of adolescence,” he said on a publication on the social platform X. “It was really the best in the game and one of the most respected people in the industry.”
Sum 41 Singer Deryck Whibley accredits Shapiro to help build the rock band again for a “low point” in her career.
“His opinion mattered a lot,” Whibley said. “It was that guy who would go on advice on things.”
During his last conversation, Shapiro had flown on his new plane to see the induction of Sum 41 in the Canadian music hall in March. He promised Whibley to return.
“I and my wife, let’s fly to you,” said Whibley, Shapiro told him. “We are going to pick you up and we will go to a crazy place for lunch.”
___
The Associated Press writer, Maria Sherman, contributed to this report.
