Life With Nick Dierl
Life With Nick Dierl
Turnstile, King Krule, Tyler, The Creator, Toro y Moi, FKA Twigs, … Are we just naming names now for our dream festival line-up? Well, yes, but what these legends also have in common other than being in heavy rotation at the office is a man named Nick Dierl. He’s the co-founder of Orienteer, a PR company, and – as you can tell – it’s going pretty well. Other than being an industry heavyweight, Nick’s also a thoroughly sweet guy and father. On a recent Monday, we called him up in Los Angeles to ask some of the biggest questions in life, like for instance: Do you booze on a business lunch? Or: How’s it like working with Tyler (yeah, we’re on first names)?
Text by Oliver Bodh Larsen, Photos by Justin Chung
Nick, it’s 8.30 am your time right now. How long have you been up for?
About three hours.
Oh! Why is that?
Well, I have a child now, so normally I wake up by 6 a.m. every morning to watch her in the morning. But I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I was up a little bit before that.
I see. How old is your daughter?
A little over six months.
Oh, really, congratulations. Were you a morning person before she arrived as well?
I’ve kind of always been a morning person, partially because I’ve never been that good at sleeping. But also, I think I’m at my best, my most energetic and sort of clearest first thing in the morning.
So you always work in the morning?
Yeah, normally. I also think it’s just the product of living in like the last major time zone in the world. No matter what time I wake up, I’m sort of behind the rest of the world in terms of communications.
Nick, you have this cool list of clients and run this cool company. I’ve read a little bit about how it all got started. But what was like the breakthrough for you getting into to this line of work?
I didn’t really know what publicity was until I was sort of pulled into my first job by a classmate at university. He, fortunately, saw that I had the skills and was paying attention to the right things to do well in publicity. At the time, I was also buying a lot of vinyl records and going to shows, so it seemed like a great way to do some of the things that I was spending a lot of my money on already.
One of your most famous clients is Tyler, the Creator and I believe I read that you’ve represented him for 13 years?
Yeah, 12, or maybe 13 at this point.
So that was sort of in the beginning of your career?
Yeah. The second PR company that I went to work for represented Odd Future and the members of the group. That’s where I first started working with Tyler and when I started my own company a few years later, he and I continued to work together and have ever since.
All right. Very cool. I guess he has become a little bit easier to work with.
Yeah, I mean, like all people as they mature, I think Tyler has shown his true self to the world more, which is a really thoughtful and curious person. And the world has really made it clear that they love that side of him and I think it’s really given him the confidence to keep leaning into that.
Definitely. Nick, who was your favorite musician growing up?
I had a few from different eras. But as a kid, one of them was definitely AFI, a band from the Bay Area. I grew up on punk and hardcore. As it turns out, we actually just worked on their most recent album which felt like a pretty big full circle moment for me.
Now to something else. The business lunch is something that’s been declared dead and then alive a couple of times. Are you big on it?
I’m big on the business lunch, definitely. I don’t know if I would necessarily call it a business lunch, but I love meeting with someone over a meal. There are just things that you can achieve having a conversation in person that you can’t over email or text or even a video call. Especially now that I have a baby, it’s very hard to sneak away at night. (Laughs). The work lunch is a great way to get face time with people.
Do you have alcohol on a work lunch?
Not typically. Maybe if I’m in Europe traveling for work, I might have a beer at lunch but normally not when I’m at home in in LA, or even in New York.
If you’re the one choosing, do you have a preferred place for lunch in LA?
We don’t have very many great diners in LA, but my go-to lunch place is a fantastic diner quite near where my new house. It’s called Clark Street Diner. It’s been in many classic films, and it existed for many decades under the name of 101 Coffee Shop. It closed during the pandemic, and it was one of the few pandemic restaurant closures that really got to me emotionally, so I was really thrilled when it was purchased and reopened by a bakery called Clark Street. They’ve also kept a lot of the staff, I think, and the menu is largely intact as well. The baked goods are phenomenal, and the produce is really good. Actually, it’s one of the few places I know of in LA where you can get a great cardamom bun. Something that I fell in love with the first time I visited Copenhagen.
Nice! What’s your go-to on the menu?
For lunch, an Asian chicken salad. They do an amazing one. Sometimes maybe a patty melt if I’m ready for something a little bit heavier.
Do you have any rituals or traditions when signing a new client?
I don’t think have any rituals, but the goal is to get to know them as well as possible and sort of understand what they’re looking for from the working relationship, which is often quite different from client to client. I think that’s the fun of the job, understanding what the goals are for someone and then building a plan based on what those are.
Sure. Nick, I love Turnstile. I’ve seen them once, and it was an amazing show. With your background with hardcore and stuff like that, you must be pretty hyped about them as well?
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever pursued anyone that I work with as long as I did with Turnstile. The first time I saw them was, if I’m not mistaken, in December 2014 in London. They were opening for a band called The Story So Far, and it just so happened that I was in London with a client. One of my friends told me to come over to the venue, specifically because Turnstile were playing. I met the band briefly. I had already fallen in love with their music, and I knew that I really, really wanted to work with them, which didn’t ultimately happen until the spring of 2021, leading into their album, Glow On.
Oh, wow. So you came in just before that? That’s cool. You’ve seen them plenty of times since, I guess.
Yeah, and I think one of the things that’s amazing about that band is that they with every passing year have become a little bit bigger without really sacrificing who they are, at all, or any sort of artistic identity. But certainly, over the last two albums they have become exponentially bigger. One of the things that to me is so beautiful is, well, for one, I think their music is just amazing, and two, I think they are opening up the world of rock and hardcore to a lot of people who might never otherwise have had an entry point to that kind of music. It’s really beautiful to see.
Definitely. They seem very, very cool. And very sweet as well. I remember seeing a photo of them playing beer pong with Post Malone and Dua Lipa when they were playing Roskilde Festival.
Yeah. (Laughs). They’re just a bunch of very likeable people.
Alright, thank you so much, Nick.
Appreciate it!
