On a given night in Albuquerque, you might be able to catch Joan Baez singing at the KiMo Theater, Frank Morgan playing sax at the Outpost Performance Space, and Saliva pounding out alt-rock at the Sunshine.

Same week, you might see Lousy Robot at the Launchpad, Chirgilchin at the Lobo Theater and Branford Marsalis at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

It's like that most every night. The Unemploid, Eddie Palmieri, Lucinda Williams, the Mindy Set, Greg Brown, Cindy Blackman. Music all over town, for all tastes, at pretty much every place with a stage.

Backstage, making sure amps are plugged in, tickets are taken and water bottles are filled, are the concert promoters. The city has many, from the national names like Live Nation (formerly Clear Channel) to the mom-and-pops who do a show or two a year.

But a big chunk - the day-in, day-out concerts - are the work of three local guys who couldn't be more different but have one thing in common: They work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring live music to Albuquerque.

There's Tom Guralnick, 56, a sax player who started Outpost Productions 19 years ago and has brought in countless jazz, experimental, folk, roots and world players. There's Joe Anderson, 37, a Manzano High grad whose love of punk rock took him from the University of New Mexico's Popular Entertainment Committee to Downtown's Launchpad and Sunshine Theater. There's Neal Copperman, 41, who gave up a career in computers to found AMP Concerts and bring a steady lineup of acoustic-driven singer/songwriters, and the world-music fest Globalquerque, to the city's music scene.

Together they present hundreds of performers a year.

All three got into concert promotion for the same reason: to offer more of their kind of music to Albuquerque.

"Most presenters get into it to help bring in stuff they're interested in, and help enrich the community," Guralnick says.

Says Copperman: "You gravitate to what you like and feel isn't really being represented. I knew all these acoustic-style musicians, and there were places for them to play, but I wanted more."

Here's a look at the three.

Tom Guralnick

Guralnick moved to Albuquerque in the late 1970s from Boston, where he played saxophone in a number of bands, including the seminal Year of the Ear.

"I was into avant-garde, improvised music," he says. "I wanted to bring that music out here."

In 1978 he took over the New Mexico Jazz Workshop, then a collective of musicians, and reshaped it into a presenting organization.

"They had $1,000 in the bank and didn't know what to do with it," Guralnick says. "I said, `Let's produce a concert.' "

He put together a jazz festival in Madrid that became a popular yearly event, and he started bringing in performers such as Dexter Gordon.

"That's how I got into it," he says.

Guralnick moved back to Boston in the early Õ80s to focus on his own music, studying privately and touring. He got a master's degree in world music from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

He decided to return to Albuquerque temporarily to write his master's dissertation, but when he drove across the state line, "I felt I was home," he says. "I felt I had roots."

He stayed, and started the nonprofit Outpost Productions in 1988.

"I had a more eclectic view of what I wanted to do: jazz, world music, folk music," he says. "One of the things I wanted in an organization that I ran was its own small performance space where audiences would feel good. That was the original idea of the Outpost."

His first place was on Morningside Drive in east Nob Hill, which could pack in 90 at the most.

"There was an epiphanous night when I invited all these people to an opening concert," he says. "We did Bach cello suites, banged on things, had rock bands, jazz - like five hours of music. I said, `This is what this place should be.' "

The Outpost Performance Space moved in 2000 to its current location, seating 175 on Yale Boulevard Southeast.

The Outpost's annual budget grew from $10,000 to $500,000. About 15,000 people attend Outpost's 100 plus yearly shows.

"We want the Outpost to be known as the jazz capital of the Southwest," Guralnick says.

Joe Anderson

Anderson got into punk rock in high school in the late 1980s, when Guralnick was setting up the Outpost.

"I was into the whole punk scene," Anderson says.

He volunteered while still at Manzano at UNM's Popular Entertainment Committee, which was putting on big concerts by national touring groups.

"I hung out over there," he says. "They were doing cool stuff. I pushed cases. I was a lower volunteer guy."

He graduated in Õ88, enrolled in business classes at UNM and eventually became director of the PEC.

"I met a lot of people really into music. I was excited about the scene and all that," Anderson says. "But I noticed there were a lot of cool bands, the smaller bands I was more into, that were always trying to get gigs but there was nowhere to book them."

And, he said, it got tough to book bands at UNM because the concert venues, the SUB Station and the ballroom, were often being used by campus groups.

"Bands would call and want to play, but some kind of orchestra rehearsal or meeting scheduled for some reason couldn't move out," he says. "There would be nine people at a meeting and they couldn't move it to some other room so we could do Bad Religion or Green Day.

"The bureaucracy was too much for me to deal with."

Anderson left UNM in 1991 and headed Downtown with his list of phone numbers.

He started booking shows at the club Beyond Ordinary, then moved to Puccini's Golden West Saloon.

"I started at my house, in my kitchen, calling agents," he says. "I started booking cool stuff: Super Tough, Poster Children, Afghan Whigs - bands that I had all their records.

"The first show I did at Golden West was Super Tough. They said, `We've never heard of that band.' I booked the show and got the word out. It was a Tuesday night and it was just packed, 300 people.

"The guy running the place said, `Before you leave, I need to talk to you in my office.' I thought I was in trouble. I went in and he said, `Any date you want, you can have.' That's where it all started."

Anderson booked shows at Golden West and tended bar at El Rey, and he quit his day job fixing copy machines.

"I made a bunch of mistakes and learned great things," he says. "I met my idols at the time."

He booked acts for a while at the Dingo Bar then signed on at the Launchpad, which was opened in 1997 by a New York couple who had worked at the legendary punk club CBGB in New York City.

"It had better sound, better lights. It was a much better facility," Anderson says. "They made me an offer, and I started there, booking and bartending, a year after they opened."

Anderson now owns both the Launchpad and the Sunshine Theater, where he books bigger acts.

Anderson has 20 employees and books hundreds of shows a year at his two venues. There are shows almost nightly at the Launchpad, often with multiple bands.

"It's kind of insane," he says.

Neal Copperman

Copperman is the new kid on the block, arriving in Albuquerque in 2000 from Maryland for a job in computer security.

The University of Utah math grad says he has always been a music fan.

In Salt Lake City and, later, Baltimore and California, places his computer job took him, he went to concerts several nights a week.

"I got exposed to a lot of interesting music," he says. "In Utah it was Men at Work, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, U2, R.E.M., Oingo Boingo, New Order, all the bands coming up in the Õ80s. Four bands came to town a month, and I'd go to all of them.

"In California there was a great local folk and coffeehouse scene, and the Baltimore/Washington, D.C., region was packed with anything you could possibly want to see. I was totally wrapped up in music."

In Albuquerque, he gravitated to the Outpost, where he volunteered doing mailing lists, running the box office, whatever was needed. ("He was an excellent volunteer, I might add," says Guralnick.)

A few months after he arrived, a friend of a friend, singer/songwriter Stephanie Hewett, called to say she was traveling through town and wanted to do a house concert. Copperman had been to house concerts in California, shows done in a home in a party atmosphere for donations.

"I said, `Yeah, I've always wanted to do one,' " Copperman says.

He hosted the show at his University Area rental with his roommate Jeff Hanson. Sixteen people turned out.

"It was fun," he says. "No one here had been to one before."

That was the beginning of what became the Bosque House Series, once-a-month house shows that are at No. 98 in June and No. 99 in July, now being held at Hanson's home near Old Town.

The house concerts didn't make money, except for the performer, so Copperman kept his day job and continued to volunteer at the Outpost, and for Fan Man Productions and the Thirsty Ear Festival in Santa Fe.

Thirsty Ear asked Copperman to co-produce a show.

"I asked what that meant, and they said, basically, you put up half the money," Copperman laughs. I said, `Uh . . . OK.' "

It was Taj Mahal and the Hula Blues Band at El Rey. The show didn't make money, but it didn't lose any.

"I took that knowledge and slowly started building," Copperman says.

He's booked acts as varied as Ralph Stanley, Fred Eaglesmith and Perla Batalla at such venues as the Lobo Theater, the South Broadway Cultural Center, the KiMo, Winning Coffee Co., the Golden West and El Rey.

He collaborates with Fan Man, Thirsty Ear and Outpost on shows, and has brought close to 200 acts to Albuquerque, counting the house concerts.

Copperman eventually started making money, and in 2003 he formed AMP Concerts, which stands for either Another Man's Poison or Albuquerque Music Presenters, whichever you prefer, Copperman says.

He quit his computer job in 2005 when the company asked him to move back to Baltimore.

"I felt I was building something interesting that I was proud of and didn't want to give up," he says. "It was an easy decision, not a lot of soul-searching."

Putting on a show

Guralnick, Anderson and Copperman have become well known in their musical spheres and rarely have to reach out for artists.

"For the most part, I know the bands," Anderson says. "I get 100 e-mails a day. So many people want to come through now.

"We're lucky geographically. We're a tertiary market, but a lot of bands drive through on their way from Texas to Arizona and California, and don't mind earning a couple hundred dollars for gas."

Guralnick also rarely picks up the phone, unless it's to set up a specific lineup for a special event such as the New Mexico Jazz Festival.

"I don't solicit for the Outpost," he says. "So many people want to play here.

"But we all try to sculpt a diverse season. Joe has a certain style, Neal a certain style and me a certain style. It's not a question of quality. I can't do four avant-garde jazz bands in a row. We have a mission in terms of what we want to present."

Fees for the acts range widely. Some are door deals that depend on attendance; others are negotiated in advance depending on the act's draw.

"We want to get as much money as possible for the musicians we love and respect, and still stay in business and pay our employees," Guralnick says. "We all have different ways we do that. Clubs need to sell drinks; as a nonprofit, I need to raise money."

The promoters work together. If a show isn't right for Anderson, he'll send the act to smaller clubs like Burt's Tiki Lounge or the Atomic Cantina.

"It's amazing. We really do pass people back and forth," Copperman says. "People call Tom. He'll say, `I can't do something like that; you need to talk to Neal.' I've sent people to Tom. People come to me with punk shows, and I'll tell them to check the Launchpad.

"We work together in recognizing where a band fits best."

Building an audience

The three agree that Albuquerque is not the most robust music market, but it is growing.

"It's very rare that you hear somebody say Albuquerque was their best show in the tour," Anderson says.

Guralnick says audiences are harder to get with all the choices for entertainment, from casinos to movies to video games.

They're using new methods to get audiences. Copperman's AMP Concerts has an e-mail list of thousands that gets alerted to new shows and can buy tickets. A Lucinda Williams concert at the KiMo earlier this year sold out from the e-mail list alone.

"We decided right off the bat not to do mailings and have postage costs," Copperman says. "The focus of AMP has been electronic."

Anderson uses e-mail and text messaging to get the word out about shows.

"I send out text blasts the day before or morning of each show to remind people. I have 5,000 on that list," he says. "The kids love it. I'll text `Don't forget Social Distortion tonight at the Sunshine, only a few tickets left,' and pull up Ticketmaster and watch the last tickets sell in real time."

The promoters' lives are hardly stress-free. They deal with no-shows, cancellations and late arrivals caused by broken-down vehicles and bad weather. And, of course, there are eccentricities.

"Very rarely does it go smoothly," Anderson says. "I work with punk kids, and showing up late and breaking stuff is part of the essence of what they're doing. It happens on a daily basis."

But the promoters love what they do.

"It's exciting," says Copperman. "There are lots of rewards. You make a real impact on the community."

He says the music scene will flourish as more people sample what's out there.

"We all believe there is something special about experiencing live music," he says. "I feel like a good show is going to move and affect you so much more than a video game. I want to try to convince people: `Hey, come on out. This is going to be a great night.'

"If you only see singer/songwriters, one night go to a punk or jazz show; you'll find so much energy. Or if you are into punk, try a singer/songwriter to experience a personal connection.

"Each kind of music offers something different. When you step out of your comfort zone, that's where you'll have the biggest musical revelations."

Copperman says new promoters are waiting in the wings.

"There's somebody out there going, `I can't believe that nobody brings in the noise-rock bands and the wackiness that I really like,' " he says. "And they're throwing underground house parties, using downstairs at the Cell, the new spaces opening up, like the Box.

"They're constantly out there, bubbling up, the next generation of people feeling their stuff isn't being fully represented, and they make it happen."

Anderson says it drives him nuts when people say nothing happens in Albuquerque.

"My goal from the beginning was to stop people from saying that," he says. "I still hear it today. But even 10 years ago, things were starting to happen here. Now you pick up the paper and there are so many choices."