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Windish, who is soft-spoken and appears far more straight-laced than the bands he represents, is also a major risk taker. 

He has never forgotten passing on Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio, and today will take on acts in the hopes they will become good — even if they’re not already. “In the old days, there would be a label, a lawyer and a manager in place before we got involved,” Windish said. “Nowadays, a booking agent and publicist are sometimes the first to get involved.”

When Windish said “old” he was referring to the mid-to-late ’90s, when he was learning his trade at Chicago’s the Billions Corporation and living above the now-defunct club Lounge Ax. He explained the thrill of booking an unknown band and then watching it grow from playing 200- to 800-capacity venues.

“It used to be nice to play the Echo, and then the Troubadour and the El Rey and then the Fonda,” said Windish, who is still an Illinois resident but now splits his time between Chicago and Los Angeles. “These days, if an artist has 15 million views of a YouTube video, where do you start? do you start at the Greek? or do you start at the El Rey when you know you’re going to turn away thousands of people?”

Local promoter Goldenvoice took a gamble this year on trying to accommodate the tens of thousands who couldn’t get into Coachella in 2011. It cloned Coachella into twin festivals, with identical lineups, spread over consecutive three-day weekends. 

On the day the dates were announced last May, Windish began calling clubs in cities such as San Francisco and Phoenix, locations that were beyond the contractual restrictions placed upon Coachella artists, and put holds on venues for the week between the two fests.

“I said I didn’t know what I’d have, but I knew I would have something,” Windish said. 

Windish’s growth runs on a parallel path as that of Coachella. The festival has relied heavily on dance and electronic culture. Windish recalled attending the first Coachella in 1999, and parking himself in one of the dance tents. He watched electronic artists such as Autechre, and resolved himself to booking them.

“I remember really wishing I had represented more electronic artists,” Windish said. “As I started to book them, my relationship with Goldenvoice got better and better.”

Focusing on electronic and dance accomplished numerous goals. One, it gave Windish a foothold into a genre that was largely being ignored by other club bookers. Two, it prepared him for the music business of today, where album sales are no longer a measure of success.

“For those original electronic shows…. they ultimately did better than I or the promoter thought, but record sales did not correlate with ticket sales. That’s something we see a lot today.”

How, then, does Windish measure how many tickets an artist will sell? Is there a “Moneyball”-like theory behind his methods?

“I don’t do anything to measure it,” he said. “I go on hunches.”

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Images: The Coachella stage set-up for electronic artist Amon Tobin. Credit: Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times; Tom Windish. Credit: Cooper Reynolds Gross 

Coachella is a marketer's deepest fantasy: a captive audience of culture-obsessed young people in the hot demographic from teens to thirtysomethings with tons of disposable income. but if you're on the other side of the stage dividers, brands not only try to draw your attention, they practically heave themselves at your feet to plead for you to take their stuff.

I've been following around the young Kentucky rock band Sleeper Agent for a story to run later this week. the band is an endearingly scrappy sextet, but Saturday it had a brief foray into Gatsby-ish decadence at — deep breath — the 98.7 FM/Spin Magazine/Lacoste/Patron tequila promotional house a few miles outside the grounds. if you're a band playing Coachella, a big part of your day involves being shuttled around to offsite parties for radio sets, interviews and general gladhanding. Sleeper Agent was there to play a few acoustic tunes for 98.7 FM, but this event tilled some new ground in lavishness.

Of course there was an open bar and hotties scampering about to ply you with tequila-infused popsicles and as many carne asada tacos as your hangover could handle. obviously, there was a crystalline pool full of hipster Adonises asleep in Warby Parker sunglasses while splayed about on inflatable rafts.

COACHELLA 2012 | full coverage

But the real upsides happened around back. a few handlers would usher guest acts into the garage, which had been rejiggered into a preppy-beach-party closet ripped right from a Bret Easton Ellis narrator's idea of what greets you at the pearly gates. Bands could walk around and take whatever striped tanks, vintage one-piece bathing suits, yacht-ready sunglasses and boat shoes they could shove in a bag. a typical "gifting" grab bag would probably run a few hundred bucks retail. the only catch? they had to pose for photos with their haul beneath a grove of grapefruit trees in the backyard.

Sleeper Agent seemed pretty amused by the whole deal. being in a working band is actually rough work — no sleep, no apartment to come home to, 15-hour drives through West Texas to play for 50 people at a random Dallas bar. but sometimes, even when you're broke and exhausted and essentially homeless, you still find yourself at the top of the Coachella food chain.

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Photo: Singer Rihanna attends David Guetta's performance Saturday at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif. Credit: Michael Buckner / Getty Images for Coachella

INDIO, Calif. – inside his mini-mart in the desert town of Indio, store manager John Stafford is busy stockpiling caffeinated drinks. Monster and Red Bulls mostly. he knows from experience that he’ll need plenty this weekend.

Tens of thousands of visitors will descend upon the desert region beginning Friday for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. “Cigarettes and energy drinks,” Stafford said. “They need to stay awake out there.”

Fans and bands may need an extra stamina boost this year. Coachella, one of the biggest events for pop fans, the music industry and the Mojave Desert, is expanding for the first time from one weekend to two and will feature 143 bands. By cloning itself into twin festivals, with identical lineups, spread over consecutive three-day weekends, it will easily rank as the highest-grossing festival in the world this year, according to Billboard magazine.

The expansion of the festival is a boon for economically challenged Indio, a city of 76,000 where the median income is just above $36,000 a year, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. it will more than double in population with the addition of 80,000 or more Coachella guests each weekend, and those two waves of visitors will bring money to spend. The influx of visitors also means sold-out hotels, packed cafes and a run on Smartwater in more affluent, surrounding areas such as the resort towns of Indian Wells and La Quinta.

The festival is a bright light for an increasingly fragmented music business still scrambling to find a solid revenue stream. Labels, band managers and concert promoters are watching the festival closely to see if this two-weekend model is a solution to at least some of the industry’s financial woes.

Last year’s one-weekend event grossed $25 million in tickets. This year that figure is expected to jump to the $50 million mark by the time the event closes on April 22. Three-day passes cost $285 sans service fees, and all 150,000 passes were gone within three hours of the lineup being announced in January.

“There were enough buyers in queue to buy online that we probably could have added another two Coachella weekends, and another Stagecoach weekend,” said Randy Phillips, president of AEG Live, which is equal partners with Coachella’s promoter Goldenvoice in that event and its country music cousin, Stagecoach, coming the weekend after Coachella ends.

Coachella also brings a payday bonanza for the acts that grace its five stages (this year that roster includes Dr. Dre, Pulp, Radiohead and Black Keys). Artists make double what they would have been paid to play a single weekend – and perform in front of twice as many people.

“It’s pretty much ’Groundhog Day,’ isn’t it?” said Pelle Almqvist, lead singer of the Hives, the Swedish rock band playing both Sundays. “It’s going to feel pretty surreal the second weekend, when it’s all the same people and the same set times. that week in between will be the highest rock star ratio in California of all time.”

The Coachella footprint is not only getting larger, it’s becoming permanent. This year AEG-owned Goldenvoice announced that it had purchased 280 acres of land that surround the Empire Polo Grounds. it signaled a commitment by the promoter not only to stay in the area but to continue to shape its surroundings.

“You’re talking 100,000-people-plus when you start adding in security, vendors and support staff. it becomes a small city,” said Indio Mayor Glenn Miller of Coachella’s effect.

The business communities in and around Indio, including neighboring cities Palm Springs and Palm Desert, will share in the hotel, restaurant and retail business from the concertgoers and non-ticketed partyers. “We have three hotels and they are at capacity for all three weekends,” said Les Johnson, planning director in La Quinta, a city of about 37,000. “We’re probably around 800 or 900 rooms, and they’re completely sold out.”

Coachella has made any space where you can sleep, eat or throw a party a premium commodity. “It’s an industry out here that’s growing faster and faster each year,” said Daniel Watson of Palm Springs’ McLean Co. Rentals. “The number of corporate parties this year has doubled over last year.”

Sylvia Schmitt of Bermuda Dunes’ Locations Unlimited said companies including Lacoste, T-Mobile and Skyy Vodka called her seeking spots to throw their parties. “You’re talking a minimum of $20,000 and as much as $50,000 for three nights,” she said.

But these days she largely avoids renting out to the Coachella party circuit. “They’ll tell you it’s only going to be five people staying there and they’ll have a couple people around the pool,” she said. “Then you get a call from the neighbors or the police and there will be 500 people in the pool.”

Robyn Celia runs Pappy & Harriet’s saloon and restaurant 53 miles away from the festival in Pioneertown. The desert denizens, she said, take a curious rather than defensive approach to Coachella revelers. “They’ve never been anything but welcoming to the out-of-towners. They get a kick out of it. I think the locals think it’s hilarious. It’s not something they’re going to see at Applebee’s.”