Back in October, we reported about a comedy booker from Sioux Falls, SD. His name is Brian Eugene Abrahamson and, according to industry sources, he had ripped off a handful of comedians– promising them a flat rate to perform and then ended up paying each comic less than that rate or not at all. At the time, comedian Kyle Kinane posted an in-depth warning to comedians on his Facebook page.
Kinane claimed, in part: “Abrahamson has deactivated his Facebook and Twitter accounts, as he’s done in the past when comics have rallied against him for the same reason. He will terminate any means of communication until the trouble blows over, then resurface to book more comics not aware of his scam. It is my intention to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Abrahamson soon vanished from the social media site and stopped booking comics. And we thought that was the end of it. Until he recently resurfaced with a different name: Michael Ethan Jacob. He was “outed” again this past week by comedians and stopped posting on his page, but not before leaving a few messages on his wall:
And then, Abrahamson popped up again on Facebook, leaving the following message, under his new alias:
As of this writing, it appears that neither Brian Eugene Abrahamson nor “Michael Ethan Jacob” have active Facebook accounts. But Abrahamson gave Laughspin his side of the story. “Yes, I failed as a comedy promoter,” he admits. “I booked Kyle Kinane, and the turn out wasn’t that great. I did everything I could to promote the show– TV ads, flyers, email blasts, Facebook; that’s what promoters do. I think Kyle pretty much explained it from there in his previous article. I admit that I was a dead beat promoter. I wasn’t able to pay Kyle. I admit that. What people need to realize, is that I was willing to try to get Kyle the money, until he went out and bashed my name.”
He goes on to explain that he changed the name he books under because of the negatives associated with his real name. However, he was just trying to start anew, he says. “I went out and tried to get hard-working comedians gigs that they probably wouldn’t have known about, because it was a newer venue that was trying to get a weekend show going,” Abrahamson tells Laughspin. “I helped them try to get names together to do shows in the future.”
It sounds as if Abrahamson just wants to move on now. “I never meant to hurt anyone with anything I did,” he says. “I tried to do it legitimately, and I tried to do it using another name. It didn’t work. I’m done with it, and I don’t need it anymore.”
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