JesseTheGerm
Senior Member
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2013
- Messages
- 156
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- 118
Hey folks. I am looking for some advice on booking an original band in small towns. Background: I am in an Alaskan band. There is one (kind-of-but-not-that) large city here, Anchorage. There are several other clusters of population in the tens of thousands or thousands, and then some tiny villages, all separated by hundreds of miles of lonely highway or no road at all.
We don't think it would be advantageous for our band to waste the good summer weather and low gas prices playing the same venues around Anchorage. We want to get out and tour. Before we tour the rest of the world, we want to conquer our state. We need more gigs to improve our on-stage abilities and get road-hardened on some weekend runs before we commit to spending a couple weeks far from home. This means playing in some of those smaller cities, towns and villages. This means booking ourselves in places whose interpretation of live music is Everyone's Favorite Cover Band who plays an entire four-hour night. Or, booking places that have no live music at all.
Does anyone have any advice on how to sell an original band with one hour of music to a venue used to having four-hour cover bands or no live music? What can I pitch them to make it appeal to them? Where are some unique types of places to approach?
So far, I've been offering to play on off-nights, any time of day, play an acoustic set, share a bill with another band, build a bill ourselves and bring some more bands out on the road with us, etc. That way we're not interrupting their Cover Band Friday that their regulars expect, we're offering a bonus on top of that.
Another thought I've had is trying to specifically market ourselves to people in those areas online and off and contact them personally and get them pumped up that we might be playing our town...so then I can say to the venue, "we have X-amount of people who say they're stoked to come check us out as soon as you book us"
Thoughts?
We don't think it would be advantageous for our band to waste the good summer weather and low gas prices playing the same venues around Anchorage. We want to get out and tour. Before we tour the rest of the world, we want to conquer our state. We need more gigs to improve our on-stage abilities and get road-hardened on some weekend runs before we commit to spending a couple weeks far from home. This means playing in some of those smaller cities, towns and villages. This means booking ourselves in places whose interpretation of live music is Everyone's Favorite Cover Band who plays an entire four-hour night. Or, booking places that have no live music at all.
Does anyone have any advice on how to sell an original band with one hour of music to a venue used to having four-hour cover bands or no live music? What can I pitch them to make it appeal to them? Where are some unique types of places to approach?
So far, I've been offering to play on off-nights, any time of day, play an acoustic set, share a bill with another band, build a bill ourselves and bring some more bands out on the road with us, etc. That way we're not interrupting their Cover Band Friday that their regulars expect, we're offering a bonus on top of that.
Another thought I've had is trying to specifically market ourselves to people in those areas online and off and contact them personally and get them pumped up that we might be playing our town...so then I can say to the venue, "we have X-amount of people who say they're stoked to come check us out as soon as you book us"
Thoughts?