Over Zoom from his office in L.A., Keller is affable and quick-witted, with a thick brown beard and tattoo sleeves that include the Milk & Honey logo. Behind him, a pair of red and white Milk & Honey boxing gloves dangle from a bookshelf. After he gets into particularly contentious business negotiations, he shares, he likes to mail the counterparty a pair. It’s a way of saying, “Sorry, the gloves came off,” he explains. “I won’t tell you how many offices in L.A. have Milk & Honey boxing gloves in them.”
Keller’s life has centered around figuring out what inspires people to make good art and how to draw that out of them. His love of music began back when he was a kid in Waukesha, Wisconsin, playing guitar in a post-hardcore band. Early on, he realized that he didn’t have patience for all the laborious diplomacy involved with being in a band. “I’m really pragmatic about decisions. If you’re attached to people that make bad decisions, you start thinking, Maybe I should just do this on my own,” he says. “I learned that my skill was helping other people. I had better taste in other artists than in my own music.”
In college, he began working as a concert promoter and band manager. That led to a stint working for Kid Rock’s manager in Chicago before he “willed” his way to Los Angeles. From the beginning, Keller recalls, “everything was DIY, blue collar, and I’ve brought that spirit through 20 years doing this.”
He spent five years working for a management firm in L.A. that handled major artists including Linkin Park, Kanye West, Peter Gabriel, and Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots. But, increasingly, he found that he was more interested in the musicians whose names appeared on the inside of the album sleeve than those posing on the cover. For one, it didn’t require him to stand in as a therapist so often for high-strung rock stars. “Hit songs don’t talk back, and they don’t call your cellphone in the middle of the night,” he jokes.