How to get Gigs where the competition is Intense

Here's an interesting approach to getting gigs if you're based in an area with a lot of other bands trying to get booked at the same venues. It's is an excerpt from an interview with someone called Corey Smith and "Maroon Weekly" are the people asking the questions. You might be interested in the info I highlighted in blue italics

Maroon Weekly: I’m interested in how you got started. From what I understand, you began by playing the Athens scene in Georgia, right?

Corey Smith: Oddly, I didn’t start in Athens. I went to school in Athens and I live twenty minutes from Athens. Athens is sort of my adopted home. But Athens, much like Austin, is a difficult music scene. There are so many musicians there that it is hard to get gigs and hard for people to take you seriously. So I actually didn’t start there. I started playing out further in the country. I played a bunch of smaller college towns and kind of built up a buzz. And oddly, when I was playing those smaller markets people thought that since I was from Athens I had a big thing going on in Athens. But I really didn’t. So it wasn’t until later when I went back to Athens after we had generated a buzz that we were able to do really well there.

So the lesson about how to get gigs here is that if you can't get them in your home town to start with - look just a little further afield.

Build up a track record and following then you'll have more leverage when it comes to booking your band closer to home..

Here's the full post the above quote was taken from