7 Ways not to Get a Band Booking

Someone emailed today me a blog post called:

"7 Ways to destroy your music career"

Points there you can't argue with like:

1. Your musical destiny being in your own hands - not circumstances outside your own control. believing the latter is a great excuse for giving up without really trying

2. You don't need to be born with the "gift of the gab" to be able to promote your band (in fact, it's probably better if you weren't...)

3. Promote regularly not sporadically. This will mean you'll do more promotion and get more comfortable about doing it and better at it as you progress.

Anyhow, in the spirit of 7 things not to do, (and at the risk of heavy sarcasm) I thought I'd offer my

7 Ways to Ensure you Miss Gig-getting Opportunities

1. Only have a small list of target venues. This will ensure the odds are against you. Also, as you'll need to ensure a higher % of success to fill your gig diary, each contact will be more pressured than if you had a larger number. Success in any particular venue will matter far more.

2. Don't do any research on other bands who play where you'd like to. You can then have no idea what makes you different or whether you're suitable for a particular venue

3. Don't rehearse.Obviously a shambolic performance will go a long way towards making sure you don't get asked back and word gets out amongst potential fans (see link at foot of this post for more help with this)

4. No co-ordination of gig-getting. Double-booking yourselves through lack of communicating or having to cancel because various band members aren't available on the night in question are key here.

5. Don't bother with a demo. Or if you do, pick any 3 tracks, no matter how similar and burn onto a CD with no identifying markings.

6. Keep the forthcoming Gig a secret No press releases or Facebook announcements. Perfect for a badly attended performance and loss of money for the venue. In fact, why bother trying to build a fan base at all?

7. Minimise the risk of being offered further gigs on the night No onstage advertising of band name or website. No flyers or cards left on tables, no verbal mentions of who you are or where you can be reached. Refuse any private work you might be offered and certainly don't ask the venue booker for repeat dates when you come off stage.

That should do it.

Oh, and here's a link to an earlier blog of mine about how to ensure a negative performance on gig night itself...

More than 7 ways to alienate your gig crowd

Band Bookings, Your Gig Crowds and Twitter

Talking of online marketing (which I was earlier), Twitter is something else a number of bands I work with have started using as part of their promotional repertoire.

I like this guys ideas about asking for requests from fans for an upcoming show via Twitter,


Twitter for musicians


And how about instantly sharing audio and video links to your fans, maybe for example, giving them "sneak previews" so they feel closer to you. As the writer says, you could film your soundcheck with your mobile and let them share some of that experience.

Check Rocking Twitter where another writer sensibly reminds us to keep our Tweeting efforts "all about the fans"....

Easily said of course, but asking the fans questions like "should we play this one at the next gig?" are immediate and gonna get people involved and interested so they may well be worth exploring....

Finally here's a cool list of 10 Top tips for musicians on Twitter

Winning the Gig Crowd (& Battle of the Bands)

You might have seen the example of what the judges are typically looking for on Battle of the Bands competition in my E-Book about crowd-pleasing: Rouse the Crowd

The fact that B.O.T.B judges look for good Audience Interaction as well as technical ability should be useful info for any band, not just ones considering entering that kind of competition.

Here's a post from L.A this week about just this point.

The competition winners having superior interaction skills....

Winning the Gig Crowd & Battle of the Bands

Band Gig Openers - For Cover Bands

Below is a great question about what Cover Bands open their shows with.

In our case "Gimme All your lovin" works well, as does "Cigarettes & Alcohol" or "She Sells Sanctuary".

But you do need to keep in mind the audience you're playing to...

Cover Band Gig Openers

Always interesting to read other band's opinions and here's my comment on the post:

From the work I've done about gigging with most cover bands I'd say 3 key points are:

1. Showcase your band's strengths Not every song in each set will have a cool keyboard solo, lead guitar break or even backing vocals. If these aspects are something your band is good at (in relation to other band's in your area) - get them out there early on. - NB, You need to have done your prep about esablishing exactly what makes your band/act different from others in the same genre/area

2. Make it Easy to Play To keep nerves at bay and get off to a start which will help everyone's confidence, don't try to start with something too difficult to play. Keep it simple.

3. Wake 'em up Don't "ease" the crowd into your show (ie with a ballad). Grab their attention with something that makes an early/fast impact

Crowd-Pleasing E-Book

When some of the Gig Crowd Gets a little TOO Roused...

A lot of bands like to get an audience involved and maybe get one or two of them up on the stage from time to time when they play - I know we do.

As I've written about elsewhere, the audience generally love this, particularly if the "additional band member" has what you might call strong visual appeal while they shout some backing vocals or bash away on a tambourine.

The venue management are usually pretty keen on this kind of involvement, as long as it doesn’t descend into a free for all.

Sometimes if you have to coax a person up onto the stage you can tell they don’t feel comfortable while they’re up there. You’ll need to whisper reassurances to them if this is the case. Other times some customers can be only too at home up on there with you.

We’ve had some pretty close shaves with guys falling over and almost into our gear but last weekend was a first for us.

We invited a girl up so we could sing a ballad to/at her. She didn’t stay there long. She clearly found the attention hard to bear. We carried the song on for a minute or so before another guest arrived up uninvited. She danced around and tried to sing a little which was met with great approval from the (mostly male) bar audience.

At the end of the number I thanked her for her "input" and she left.

Fast forward to the end of the night when she appeared back up again (uninvited) for the first of our 3 encore numbers and stayed there right through to the bitter end.

In these circumstances generally, after one song one of us would whisper to our "guest" that they’d probably better leave the stage in case the management started to object. This normally does the trick. In this case though, we suggested she confine her vocals to singing backing with me when I came in and that she concentrate on her dancing.

Seemed to go down a treat all round. Sometimes you just have to roll with these things I suppose....

Rousing the Crowd in the unlikeliest places

Two examples over the last couple of days of the difference crowd interaction can make to any gig.

Firstly, I stumbled (almost literally), into a cheesey bar where a solo artist was crooning along to some backing tracks in front of a largely disinterested audience.

Cue the appearance at the side of the stage of someone´s daughter - a cute little toddler. She started swaying and gyrating a little to the noise the singer was making. He made a couple of comments about his "new fan".

Suddenly the room was paying attention to what was happening on and around the stage.

When the number finished he got the biggest round of applause he`d had. The only applause he´d had up to that stage actually I think.

His "fan" wandered away but did return a couple more times to dance along. The mood had turned with that one incident though. In ackowledging the little girl he´d shown he was human, his crowd had warmed to him and were on his side -paying attention.

I´ve always been enthusiastic in recommending audience participation and here was a perfect example from the most unlikely direction


The second example comes from a visit to another bar where this time a Karaoke provided the "entertainment".

We watched a string of the good, very good and shockingly bad get up and sing or shout their way through various numbers. Mostly, they stood with their backs to the audience reading the words.

If they were obviously good singers they would get enthusiastic applause at the end of their performance. One guy was given a big build up as someone who´d sung there before on a number of occasions and had a "sensatiobnal" voice. He got up to loud applause and his crystal clear, very pure voice was momentarily met by almost stunned silince as he started a ballad the name of which I´ve forgotten.

Within 60 seconds though, peoople had turned away from the back of his head and were chatting as before.

Contrast this with the last performer we watched there.

He sang "Need u tonight" and in between sentences would turn round to beam a smile at someone at the back of the room. Soon people were turning to see who he was smiling at and then singing and clapping along.

He made a mistake with some of the words and turned to the crowsd grimmacing and got a big laugh.

Then, at the end, he held onto the mic, faced the crowd and announced the song was for his wife as they had now been married for 10 years. It brought the house down.

No rocket science, just showing he was human and breaking down barriers between the crowd and himself.

A lesson or two there for all of us who are playing gigs methinks....

9 ways to Alienate your gig crowds

Sometimes the best way to explain "How" to do something is to talk about how NOT to do it. So, at the risk of sounding sarcastic, here are some ideas for when you're onstage. These will help you avoid good crowd reactions whenever you play live.

1. Don't Practise your material
This will leave you free to look anxious and worried onstage and make sure you don't spend any time focused on putting on a "show" of some sort.

2. Leave Plenty of pregnant pauses in between numbers
Great for boring an audience and killing any mood your songs may have created

3. Look bored
This one will work best when all band members do it and generally it should encourage similar reactions from the crowd

4. Don't talk to the the crowd
Make sure you don't even say thanks after any applause or even "Hello" when you start

5. Adopt a fixed frown
Be cautious not to smile. Works well with 3 above.

6. Avoid any eye contact
The danger here is you can end up looking warm and approachable if you make eye contact. Keep your eyes on your fretboard (if playing guitar) for example. You'll probably need to if you adopt suggestion 1 above anyhow.

7. If you must talk to the crowd:
Don't do any preparation about what you're going to say. Just hope it will all come out OK. Ideally keep the content focused on you not them and try to ramble for as long/often as possible. Mumble as much as possible and ideally use heavy reverb when you talk.

8. Don't use a set list
The ensuing chaos, lack of "flow" is always good for poor audience interaction. This helps achieve number 2 above as well

9. Turn your back on the audience
Should be done from time to time for extended period for maximum results I shouldn't laugh really, my band was doing most of the above when we first started!


Please feel free to add your own suggestions via the Comments tab