Getting Gigs

D

Douhgy

New member
My band has been struggling lately to get some good gigs. It seems like the booking guys at all the clubs are just too good to even talk to us. We have a really good demo, but half the problem is we can't even get them to listen to us. What do you guys think we can do to start building a name for ourselves. I am really confident in our music, but we still need to establish a good fan base.
 
This is one of the trickiest questions to answer. There really is no great answer but there are things you can do to make yourself more appealing to a booking agent.

First, develop a good website.
Knowing a good graphic artist is a great resource in this arena. Some sites I like are:
www.bigego.com
www.tmbg.com

or, for a less artistic idea,
www.katietodd.com

Second, get some people or sites to link to your website.
I would look at:

www.Communitymusician.com
www.garageband.com

Third, have a great press kit, complete with pro photos, press clippings, and your good demo packaged well. Maybe submit that demo as an ep to www.allmusic.com. I know a lot of booking agents in Chi-town look to see if you're there before they guarantee you money.

Lastly, investigate alternative settings for music. Can you play bars in crappy parts of town? Would you solicit to a bar that normally doesn't have music if you can do an acoustic jam on a weeknight? Can you play college parties? (Look for college online papers and maybe submit an ad for a band looking to help students rock out their weekend ragers.)

Ok, that's a start. I would definitely get onboard with establishing a web presence so, when someone who hasn't heard of you types your band name into google, they have to ask themselves how you managed to escape their attention.

Oh, yeah. have good marketable music and lots of paying fans.:D

miles
 
Try hooking up with some good established bands that will recomend you as an opening act. Never underestimate the power of flattery and bribery.
 
yeah. I'm on page with Tex here. Do some favors around town and look for favors back.

for instance, I'm doing some freelance music journalism for a small run local newspaper and I chose to do a story on a local band I know with a similar audience type. That way, I get them some legitimate press then they get me on the same bill.

A real renegade way to get gigs would be to have your band's drummer work as a gig whore (my band and others I know, for example, get sit-in drummers for every show). Drummers can be hard to find so if another band in your genre has good gig connections but no drummer, share yours for a night and do a twin bill. Borrowing another band's drummer led to about six shows for us.

Miles
 
We have a website at www.glikk.com. Please check it out and let me know what you think is good, and what needs to change.
Click to expand...

Strange. You have a frameset that loads another frameset. That has got to be wrong unless you have some sort of clever reason to do so that I don't see.

Also, if I were you I would take out the embed tag that plays your audio clip. It doesn't really let anyone know much about you, and it causes the page to load very slowly. If you must use it, make it something other than Windows Media Audio so people on Macs and Linux boxes and hear it reliably. An mp3 is probably the closest to a universal format and I 'm pretty sure any media player worth its salt will play mp3s.
 
Personally, I can't stand when a webpage automatically loads a sound/song. I usually have several browser windows open at once and it's a real bitch to hunt down which is playing the song.

I like flash, but don't care for useless flash introductions. I almost always click "skip intro."

Also, don't let MP3.com catch ya deep-linking them into a frameset!

Cheers,
Christopher
 
stonepiano said:
A real renegade way to get gigs would be to have your band's drummer work as a gig whore (my band and others I know, for example, get sit-in drummers for every show). Drummers can be hard to find so if another band in your genre has good gig connections but no drummer, share yours for a night and do a twin bill. Borrowing another band's drummer led to about six shows for us.

Miles
Click to expand...

huh huh, drummers are sluts.
 
The most renegade way I know to get a gig is this. Find a bill you will fit in well with at a local club. Then just show up saying that you're the opening act. Most of the time whoever books isn't around and the other bands have no clue what is going on. If you do this, make sure you have lots of friends show up to see you. The booking agent will take credit for discovering this hot new band and immediately book another gig. It takes balls, but it worked for us once.
 
wimat said:
The most renegade way I know to get a gig is this. Find a bill you will fit in well with at a local club. Then just show up saying that you're the opening act. Most of the time whoever books isn't around and the other bands have no clue what is going on. If you do this, make sure you have lots of friends show up to see you. The booking agent will take credit for discovering this hot new band and immediately book another gig. It takes balls, but it worked for us once.
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"What are you talking about? We're the Good Ol' Boys!"
 
I've always felt that a demo of a live recording would be better than a studio recording in which each instrument/vocal is tracked separately. Even a poor recording (but not a poor performance) of a live event would make it clear to a club owner that the band can indeed do well in front of an audience. A studio demo can still leave doubt.


What is everyone's experience in this regard?
 
EddieRay said:
I've always felt that a demo of a live recording would be better than a studio recording in which each instrument/vocal is tracked separately. Even a poor recording (but not a poor performance) of a live event would make it clear to a club owner that the band can indeed do well in front of an audience. A studio demo can still leave doubt.


What is everyone's experience in this regard?
Click to expand...

I have both on my 3-song demo CD. I put the studio songs first and the live one last, making sure to prominently mark it as a LIVE recording.
 
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