Stage Presence for Semi Pro Bands

Here are 3 quotes I loved from a poll and post this week about the importance of Stage Presence for bands

"People watch sh*tty punk bands because they are fun to watch. Of course the music is important to musicians, but for Joe Schmo drinking PBR, the band should be entertaining. If they sound amazing, but don't entertain....they'll be doing the bar circuit forever"

Exactly and who are you playing the gig to impress most? The punters or the odd fellow muso in the crowd?

"Mediocre music and great stage presence will do better than great music and no stage presence. People want to be entertained"

Many bands do forget their number one job is to entertain - not neccessarily play perfectly. Like I said in response to the post - to make sure the crowd can't forget your band

"A band who might not play quite as well, but can put on a show and f***ing sell it can more often than not book out more, make more money and play better bars than any collection of comatose technicians".

Which in the end, is what it's all about isn't it?

Here's the Harmony Central Post

and Gig-Getter Stage presence info below:

Developing Stage Presence

When Your New band Member Cancels First Gig

An email from an exasperated guitarist in an Indie band this week. Four months on from trying to recruit their new drummer they finally managed it. After the new guys impressive initial audition they arranged to meet up again to discuss working practises for the band.

The idea was to make sure there was more to this drummer than simply his rhythm. To try and check out they'd really got the right man..

They worked out beforehand what items they needed to talk through to make sure the new member understood and "signed up" to the band expectations.

Areas they covered were in this New Band Member Gigging post

Everything on the list was gone through and agreed with the new guy and the First Gig duly confirmed with a new venue.

Then came the first full rehearsal. Disaster. The drummer had done absolutely no work learning prior to the rehearsal and was using the full band practise to familiarise himself with the songs themselves never mind his own parts. The result was the first gig cancelled and one skin-beater exiting stage left - before shooting a single rim at a band gig.


The band felt they'd taken all the precautions to make sure they'd got the right person, so what went wrong? When I checked some of the detail, in fact the warning signs were there from the start. Besides turning up for his audition with a girlfriend he was significantly late for both the audition and the follow-up discussion. He had later postponed the first full rehearsal for "Personal Reasons".

Ultimately though, anyone new band member can say they agree to operate the way the others suggest. Action is all that counts.

The band have since decided that there needs to be a stage in between initial auditions and appointing the new person. Namely, agreeing some new unfamiliar material for the person to learn by a set date and checking he can do that for himself ahead of the rehearsal.

Until then any candidate still "being auditioned". It might take them longer but it should help them weed out more time wasters. Oh, and they've resolved to heed warning signs like habitual lateness....

Working Some Magic when You're Gigging

Some good common sense from a post site aimed at performing Magicians (yes you heard correctly) this week/.

This writer talks abut the importance of really involving an audience member or two.He highlights the difference between simply getting them to perform the odd task or two (maybe shaking a tambourine for a one number as in the case of you and I in bands) and actually interacting with them.

As far as getting them up on stage when we're playing is concerned, I always make sure we find out their name, introduce them to the audience (asking for a round of applause for them) and them ask them a couple of questions on mic to try and relax and involve them- and get a laugh).

We'll also comment on their performance on mic after they've finished and get them another round of appause.

Here's the post I was talking about.

Quite appropriate really as one of my inspirations about general stage presence and stage banter was written by another magician.

How to Get Better at Playing Gigs

If you've read Rouse the Crowd which is essentially about going down great when you play gigs in a band, you'll have seen I recommend recording your performances.

This goes for your rehearsals as well as when you're gigging.

When you do this, you can continually iron out any rough areas and make sure you're constantly improving.

It's not only the music that some bands want to improve on.

Some want to to tackle and use the gaps in between songs or at the start and end of the performance for some onstage banter.

Recording all this will let you remember exactly what "pearls of wisdom" go down well with the crowd and falls flat on it's face.

Here's a discussion about what recorder other bands are recommending to record their performances.

As you'll see from my response on page 2 my own weapon of choice is the Tascam GT-R1 and I've posted a couple of reviews which I'll repeat here:

Original Tascam Review

My Own Review of Tascam GT-R1 on Amazon

Power of a Regular Newsletter to Get Gigs

My "day job" gave me a useful reminder of the power of the newsletter in getting your band gigs at new venues this week.

I took a couple of calls from businesses which I've been targeting for several months (one for over a year) via my quarterly newsletter.

Both these people who phoned acknowledged they'd been receiving my written communications for some time but that it was only now that circumstances had changed for them and they were actively looking for something like I might be able to offer.

Because they had seen my details regularly and recently mine was the name they chose to contact first...

This same thing has happened a number of times with the newsletter I put together periodically for our band.

Here's a recent example from this blog

The band Publicity ideas here should help you come up with some newsletter content if you're stuck for how to keep your name in front of people...

Band Bookings from "Networking"

You'll often hear this method for getting gigs recommended on various forums although it's not something my own band have relied on a great deal.

2 gig offers though in the last 24 hours though have made me realise that perhaps many of us are"networking" (in it's wider sense) even when we don't know it.

Playing relatively low-paying bar gigs can be a form of networking. One of these 2 gigs we've just been offered is a private party on New year's day and comes as a result of someone seeing us play a local bar and recommending us.

The second one of these offers was from an agent who tried to sign us up a year or two back because we were taking a lot of work from him and I think he felt it might be better to keep us "inside the tent" as it were.

We declined his offer of ongoing representation but agreed on keeping in touch. Anyhow, he had a problem night come up at relatively short notice and offered us the date. Something he's done before on a number of occasions. This kind of unwritten agreement works both ways of course. We will frequently return the favour if we have work come in that we can't play.

You can do the same kind of reciprocal arrangements with other bands of course (which we also do from time to time). I suppose the best thing about gigs gained in this way is the complete lack of effort needed on your part.

There's a link below to something on networking which I blogged about on myspace quite a while back.

You'll need to scroll down the page when you get there to find the post in question...

Gig-Getter Myspace Networking Post

Band Bookings from Press Releases

If you've read the Gig-Getter manual you'll know I use and recommend Press Releases for both helping you get band bookings and swelling audience numbers when you're playing gigs.

In case you're using Press Releases for your music, or you want to start, here are two posts I came across from a music promotion blog this morning.

You can see I've added a couple of points to the first post which is a general overview of press releases. ..

Ideas on Press Releases

This second one has some neat basic pointers about the kind of content you could include in your press releases

Content ideas for your Press Releases


To give you an idea, here are some press releases I put together for Gig-Getter and Rouse the Crowd

Gig-Getter Press Releases

And finally, all these reviews below (and therefore "exposure") came about as a result of me submitting press releases.

So you can see that press releases can work in getting your name out there. Best of all of course, your releases to the printed press submitted via email will cost you nothing but your time...

Gig-Getter Results from Press Releases