Band Booking by Getting to "YES"

A guitarist emailed me last week to ask what he was doing wrong trying to secure a band booking at one of his local venues.This place was important to him because it was quite a "name" venue and he reckoned that having it on the bands "resume" would help him secure more gigs elsewhere over time.


I asked him why he felt his approach to getting his band booked was wrong.


"I've dropped a demo CD in there 2 weeks ago like they asked me to and when I called them this week- they still haven't listened to it!" he complained.


I had to smile a little at this. I told him that band booking isn't always as simple as contacting a venue once and agreeing a date with them.there can be a lot of follow-up. Chasing them. the skill of course is to do this in a way where you don't come across as a pain in the backside to the venue.

You need to stay in touch when they haven't yet said "yes" to you - but without getting on their nerves. Scroll down to point 2 on this link for one highly recommended way to 
succeed with reluctant gig venues 



Here's a simple (and hopelessly drawn) sketch to illustrate. 

 When you get a "Yes" from a venue to your request to play there, here's what most other bands don't see.


When musicians see bands with full gig dairies they often think they must have "know the right people" or be the best bands. Believe me, none of this is true. It's all about keeping going trying to get that band booking long after another artists has given up their efforts.

 It's often taken a lot of "No's" or "Not yets" from the same venue before you've got that "Yes, you're booked". 

The beauty of this of course is that much of your competition (other bands vying for a gig at the same venue), will have given up trying to get on there long before they get the band booking.


Of course, all that following-up with venues, and chasing them to see if they've listened to your CD is only effort you need to do up until you get that first gig there. 

As long as you play a reasonable gig there on your first appearance you can make one follow-up band booking after another there. All with no effort apart from playing the gigs themselves. Taken to it's logical conclusion, once you have enough regular venues you won't need to try to get your band booked anywhere else.


This effort in securing the initial band booking at any venue makes it all the more important not to let the venue down once youv'e got that first gig there. 

I mean, who wants to make an effort booking their band when they don't have to?

Check out the quote on this old post about 

how to get a band booking

Band Booking and "Selling out"

If playing band bookings is your career rather than a paid part-time hobby, you'll know there's more than one kind of "Selling out".

The "positive" one is when you fill your band booking with a big crowd. The not so great one, refers to the kind of music you play live to earn your living....

 

A gig-getter newsletter subscriber contacted me last week about how to join a band - again.

I say again, because he’d been playing live with a band for a number of years until it split up. He'd been posting and answering ads on the usual sites (Party sounds, Craiglist, Gumtree etc) and was getting plenty of responses.

The problem was that none of the offers to audition were exactly the type of music he wanted to play.  It reminded me of an article I read in Bass Player Magazine.

The article was written the Weezer bassist Scott Shriner and it was called: "Just don't say no". In it, he spoke about the art of saying "yes" to offers more often. Specifically, about taking on musical projects which on the surface might not seem perfect for you at that time.

He talked about being "open to try new genres" or directions, about how this can ultimately improve a player’s creativity and technique.

He said that when he went through a period of being an unemployed musician, he had to start saying "Yes" to the kind of things musically which would normally make him "queasy".  Cover band bookings, recording with friends, even switching the instrument he played to find gigs....

Now to some people, this would be too much "selling out" to bear. To Scott, it got him busy playing band bookings, got him back networking and put his name around again. Ultimately the attitude got him the Weezer gig.

 

 

Back to my drummer friend, he tells me the one thing he misses about playing band bookings (almost as much as the social side and the high of drumming live)- is the lack of ready cash by the time the weekend comes around.

Well, perhaps taking a different view on what you'll accept from a musical project, at least for the short term, could be worth considering...

More Band Booking Tips

Band Booking is Good for Venues Too

If you listened to some people talk about band booking and gigging you'd burn your guitar and amp now because of the economy.

 

Smart, successful musicians know though that when times are tough for bars and clubs etc, live music can actually be more not less important in order to make money. 

This is because venues (whether live music ones or not), more than ever need some method of differentiating themselves. Some incentive to get cash-strapped punters up off their backsides and out into the night to spend some money - in their venue.

 

One of these ways is obviously by offering live entertainment.

I saw a great example of this in action in a provincial UK town last month. This small town  had loads of bars in the town centre but only 2 were open on the Sunday night I went there. One of those bars was a venue which was advertising live bands 6 nights a week. 

The venue owner told me that it was the bands which drew the people in and that without them he too would be closed on a Sunday. He also told me his bar was "busier than it's ever been".

Not only that, but when I went to see a gig on this particular Sunday, they'd had live bands on all day prior to the evening performance by the band I'd gone to watch.

So if you think about it, us musos are actually doing these venues a favour. keeping them in business in some instances. Makes you feel a bit more relaxed about pitching your act to your next target venue doesn't it?

 Band Booking ebook