datamusicata

How Do I Get A Gig?

This is certainly a pertinent question. How indeed? First of all, if you have a computer, do your homework. Check out every venue that is in your genre in a particular area, say you live in San Diego. Go on line and type in the kind of music you do and the city San Diego. See what happens. Also go to the myspace site of anyone with whom you share some musical similarities and see where they are playing. If you check enough artists, some of them will be playing where you live or near there. And they’ll have the name of the club.

Look up the club on the internet. They almost always have a site and they almost always have a set of rules that they provide for you with regard to their booking policy.

Follow their policy and don’t send them a whole bunch of stuff. If you have a following in the area, you can let them know in your cover letter, which should be brief and to the point. If you have one, let the venue know that you have a mailing list.

In the package you send them put your most successful CD and one that represents you the best. If you have a live CD that’s even better. Then the promoter can hear whether you can actually play and entertain an audience. Don’t send a bunch of stuff til you have the gig. They don’t need posters, pictures, bios, reviews etc, until they hire you. Then they need that stuff. By the way, Diskmakers (www.diskmakers.com) for instance, will make you three hundred posters for $99 when you manufacture your CD with them. All the venue needs is to hear the music and they need a review and a bio. That’s enough. Be concise, as they get so much stuff they can’t sort thru it all as it is. Don’t make it even harder for them.

If you don’t know what to charge, check the size of the room and the capacity. A hundred seat room with a ten dollar ticket s their norm is a gross of one thousand dollars. You don’t want to charge more than the room can afford and you want to make certain that the room makes money as well as you. I always shoot for a seventy thirty split on the door. This gives the room the chance to make some money if they go to the trouble of getting some of their own people into the room. Most rooms these days expect you to bring the crowd with you. That’s why you start out playing around where you live. You have to get your friends and family in there.

And I always try to get a guarantee from the room. If they have some skin in the game they are more likely to make an effort to get that money back. If you play for no guarantee, they’ve got nothing to lose. Their worse case scenario is you bring in no one and they have their normal expenses anyway and an evening of free entertainment. And recognize that if you have no name or reputation then you are probably going to have to perform with no guarantee. So make sure that folks are there.

Everytime you play anywhere, push your mailing list. And this is important. Push it only once, before the last song of your set. Nothing is more off putting than someone hammering you with their needs. Let them know about the list and ask them to sign up. I have had the most success by printing up a card with my name and address on one side and spaces for their name, address and email address on the other. I put one on every chair. That way they can either hand it to me and save the postage (which is what I suggest from the stage) or they can mail it to me. But invite them to take it with them if they won’t give it back to you.

Building a mailing list is a great way to jump start both the CD sales and the attendance. And you need to have at least twenty times as many people on the list as you can fit in a hundred seat room because nineteen out of twenty people who tell you that they will be coming, won’t come. They aren’t bastards, they just have their own agenda and when they tell you that they are coming, they mean it, but later they forget; they don’t want to get out of the chair; life or death intervenes; something gets in between them and the show you are doing. So you have to ask twenty times as many people to come as you need to fill the room. Are you still sure you want to do this? There are no days off and until you really get momentum you are all the momentum there is. You stop working and the whole thing stops working.

And finally, remember this: It isn’t their job to hire you. It’s your job to get hired. Don’t get angry with them when they lose your stuff. They get tons of stuff and being only human, they aren’t as organized as you are, they are gonna lose stuff. The reality is they don’t know you and they don’t care about you. It’s your job to get known to them and it’s your job to make them care. Don’t cop an attitude if you don’t get the respect you think you deserve. That’s what a lot of this business is, learning to deal with the fact that you aren’t getting the respect you think you deserve. Just practice and be fully prepared and do everything in the most professional way you can. Everytime. Eventually that will pay off. Flakes do what flakes do best…flake off and they are gone. Don’t be one of them. Like they say, keep your eye on the prize.