General Music Chat

So,

We've considered using gigmasters, actively have a free profile with Gig-salad, although we've gotten a few leads through gig salad, none have ever resulted in a paying gig. I'm unsure how to go about getting max exposure to the gig market, was wondering if you guys use any booking services and your experiences.

We used to have a booking agent to book shows in areas outside our stomping grounds but now only consider our immediate area for gigs. We try to stay where our fans live or will drive to. We do our own booking.

We used to have a booking agent to book shows in areas outside our stomping grounds but now only consider our immediate area for gigs. We try to stay where our fans live or will drive to. We do our own booking.

And that is the only way to go, unless you are ready to live out of a suitcase for the rest of your life.

We used to have a booking agent to book shows in areas outside our stomping grounds but now only consider our immediate area for gigs. We try to stay where our fans live or will drive to. We do our own booking.

And that is the only way to go, unless you are ready to live out of a suitcase for the rest of your life.

I was leaving it open ended to include booking agents, but mostly was interested in experiences with booking services, like gigmasters. They offer memberships- no touring needed, you decide what offers to accept or not. There's discussions elsewhere on these services, but I wanted to see what people here do.

Going out and doing your own bookings is fine if you can achieve the desired results, but in a lot of areas, the higher paying corporate functions, festivals, and other types of gigs are done through services. Even some of the better bar gigs around here go through an agency or independent booker.. I'm curious about these services and wondered how many people use them, and what results have come from them.

thanks guys, keep the responses coming.

I have a friend who owns a " service "
He has 3 bands in his " stable "
They are big on weddings and corporate gigs as well as the Shore scene.
All the bands are R&B or Top 40 " dance " bands.
Works for him.
The bands play all the time.
For my band I find that networking has been the best tool for us.
With other bands esp.
We dont need to play all the time and want to pick and choose.
There is a nice theater in my town
http://www.st94.com/home/
We cant sell that place out by any chance .... but we are working with some other bands to open up there ..... network network network
Good luck dude
I'll come check you guys out sometime

Back when I was doing the bookings one thing I learned Is you have to keep an open mind. John has talked about thinking outside of the box before and I believe that is the best approach. The success I had was approaching it from all angles. Booking myself and using a local booking agent. If you are in a large city and have been in the biz for awhile you should already know who the most helpful booking agents are. Some are leaches and might have the area and gigs you want to play sown up. At that point you have to just put up with them until you get to play the gigs you want. I have found even with those guys once you build a repore with them you are in like FLYNN. The best way to book IMO is to build a following and when every venue you play see's how many folks you bring in you will have no problem getting gigs. Even if your fans rent a place and pay you to play as is Johns case. Bottom line it is all about REPUTATION just like everything else in life!

Back when I was doing the bookings one thing I learned Is you have to keep an open mind. John has talked about thinking outside of the box before and I believe that is the best approach. The success I had was approaching it from all angles. Booking myself and using a local booking agent. If you are in a large city and have been in the biz for awhile you should already know who the most helpful booking agents are. Some are leaches and might have the area and gigs you want to play sown up. At that point you have to just put up with them until you get to play the gigs you want. I have found even with those guys once you build a repore with them you are in like FLYNN. The best way to book IMO is to build a following and when every venue you play see's how many folks you bring in you will have no problem getting gigs. Even if your fans rent a place and pay you to play as is Johns case. Bottom line it is all about REPUTATION just like everything else in life!

I've tried to instill that in bandmates before.
Your reputation, like your image, is almost everything.
But, they don't listen.
If everyone thinks you're an a-hole and a liability, no one will book you anymore.
Glenn Danzig had difficulties for years after some incidents, where other members of his band caused some problems.
So, he had guilt just by association with them.

Back when I was doing the bookings one thing I learned Is you have to keep an open mind. John has talked about thinking outside of the box before and I believe that is the best approach. The success I had was approaching it from all angles. Booking myself and using a local booking agent. If you are in a large city and have been in the biz for awhile you should already know who the most helpful booking agents are. Some are leaches and might have the area and gigs you want to play sown up. At that point you have to just put up with them until you get to play the gigs you want. I have found even with those guys once you build a repore with them you are in like FLYNN. The best way to book IMO is to build a following and when every venue you play see's how many folks you bring in you will have no problem getting gigs. Even if your fans rent a place and pay you to play as is Johns case. Bottom line it is all about REPUTATION just like everything else in life!

I've tried to instill that in bandmates before.
Your reputation, like your image, is almost everything.
But, they don't listen.
If everyone thinks you're an a-hole and a liability, no one will book you anymore.
Glenn Danzig had difficulties for years after some incidents, where other members of his band caused some problems.
So, he had guilt just by association with them.

Mike that is a good point. Been there done that got a teeshirt burned and buried it! I had a drummer 5 years ago show up an hour late for the gig. We were an hour late starting. One of the best gigs in this area. At the end of the night the manager was pissed! The next day she called and cancelled all the gigs I had worked so hard and put up with so much to build a repore with her. I found out that, that drummer set in with the band that replaced us for the next gig I had on the calender!
Sabotage? Anyway I waited til I found another drummer then FIRED HIS ASS! I was able to repair the reputation with that manager. Last I heard that drummer can't find anyone to play with because he is such an ass! Problem is he's a damn good drummer but that karma thingy gets you everytime!

Back when I was doing the bookings one thing I learned Is you have to keep an open mind. John has talked about thinking outside of the box before and I believe that is the best approach. The success I had was approaching it from all angles. Booking myself and using a local booking agent. If you are in a large city and have been in the biz for awhile you should already know who the most helpful booking agents are. Some are leaches and might have the area and gigs you want to play sown up. At that point you have to just put up with them until you get to play the gigs you want. I have found even with those guys once you build a repore with them you are in like FLYNN. The best way to book IMO is to build a following and when every venue you play see's how many folks you bring in you will have no problem getting gigs. Even if your fans rent a place and pay you to play as is Johns case. Bottom line it is all about REPUTATION just like everything else in life!

I've tried to instill that in bandmates before.
Your reputation, like your image, is almost everything.
But, they don't listen.
If everyone thinks you're an a-hole and a liability, no one will book you anymore.
Glenn Danzig had difficulties for years after some incidents, where other members of his band caused some problems.
So, he had guilt just by association with them.

Mike that is a good point. Been there done that got a teeshirt burned and buried it! I had a drummer 5 years ago show up an hour late for the gig. We were an hour late starting. One of the best gigs in this area. At the end of the night the manager was pissed! The next day she called and cancelled all the gigs I had worked so hard and put up with so much to build a repore with her. I found out that, that drummer set in with the band that replaced us for the next gig I had on the calender!
Sabotage? Anyway I waited til I found another drummer then FIRED HIS ASS! I was able to repair the reputation with that manager. Last I heard that drummer can't find anyone to play with because he is such an ass! Problem is he's a damn good drummer but that karma thingy gets you everytime!

I think I know this drummer.

We have worked with booking agents before and always had a good relationship with them. They still occasionally call with bar gigs. A booking agent is only human and will always go for the low hanging fruit first. If your band is already booking weddings and corp events at $1200-$1500 per night, you are very interesting to an agent and they want an exclusive contract ASAP. If you are an unknown band just starting out with no track record they are far less enthusiastic. All work for little pay for them until you can command some real $$.

I have a friend who owns a " service "
He has 3 bands in his " stable "
They are big on weddings and corporate gigs as well as the Shore scene.
All the bands are R&B or Top 40 " dance " bands.
Works for him.
The bands play all the time.
For my band I find that networking has been the best tool for us.
With other bands esp.
We dont need to play all the time and want to pick and choose.
There is a nice theater in my town
http://www.st94.com/home/
We cant sell that place out by any chance .... but we are working with some other bands to open up there ..... network network network
Good luck dude
I'll come check you guys out sometime

Oh wow I never noticed that you were in the area.. we're playing in Royersford on 2/16 (Toms), outside of that, we aren't playing anywhere right now.. we stopped booking at the end of last summer...

reasons being-
scene here is DYING, we're one of the best bands in the area and there's only a handful of bars to play, and we feel we've played them out..
Everyone tells us how awesome we are at gigs, but crowds are smaller and smaller each time we play these bars- theres just no real appreciate for the local bar band anymore..
So.. we decided to focus on learning newer material, become more 'club' friendly, and work on bigger bookings.

It came down to either that, or play fire houses.. which to us, seem like slow-death sentences. The other major local bands that we share "success" with are having the same issues with a dwindling crowd / scene, and while one decided to embrace the firehouses, the other decided to book less shows, by more than half, in order to make their shows bigger events-

All in all, the scene sucks, or we suck, or something, but we gotta change our approach, and we'd rather move up than down or lateral. The local bar scene is depressing anymore.

Krammer .. this seem to be playing out all over the place ..
Finding places to play, that pay and getting any kind of crowd no matter how good the band is
In a lot of areas it seem like live music is dying ..

Kramer I signed us up with I think it was gigmaster for a few monthes, never got a gig out of it, Im not saying it wont work, but it didnt for me.

My problem is my band doesnt want to play the material that would be needed to do coporate wedding gigs, even thou we play a lot of the goofy stuff we come across as a hard rock act. We talked about it, but noone wanted to make that adjustment.

So we book ourselves and just try to do the best we can, lately with a singer with hernia, and just getting word that our bassist is probably moving out of the area, I have no idea where I will be playing over the next few months. Ive actually got invites to go sit in with two groups I know this weekend, and I may do it just to get my name out there, its funny they are both playing in a small town about 2 miles apart, so Im hoping maybe a set with each.

As far as local booking agents, when I talked to some of those guys they would go behind my back to the venues we had already played with and wanted to take a cut off of our pay we were getting anyway. We had no contract but I had talked to the guy about getting us into some different places, we play this gig at a place I had booked and he came in and wanted his cut, Im like for what? We only made $450 a night at this place and he claimed he was owed $90 of it. I knew the club owner personally and I just looked at him and said didnt you and I book this gig, he said yea. I dont know where this guy got the idea he was going to get a cut that night.

So beware.

I will agree with Prevost the better paying gigs are going away in my area. BUt Ive kinda gotten out of the loop the last couple of years, we have casinos south of us and some of the guys are getting between 7-800 for 4 hours, but sometimes it can be wierd hours, I did one of those deals for a couple of monthes, the money was decent, but after going in there with my half stack and getting the DB Police on me, I went back to a straight preamp into the house board. But it wasnt for me, being background music, just wasnt much fun.

OOh mike, did you see the one where DANZIG gets knocked out in Manhattan?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfD7agP1yxw

The first time I saw that I was like "that dude gave him the bum's rush".

OOh mike, did you see the one where DANZIG gets knocked out in Manhattan?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfD7agP1yxw

The first time I saw that I was like "that dude gave his the bum's rush".

Dag !
http://youtu.be/N58FmEhlf7s
Not as good as yours but a little more creepy