Getting Gigs and Agents - what you need to know

I already tweeted one of these articles last week but when I came across another two it became perfect sense to put them all together in one place.

The first one from Grassrootsy gives 4 tips on what a booker is looking for when booking a band - and it's really insighful.

While hashing things out in the group, I took note of how a booker decides who to book for his venue. Now the following list isn’t set in stone and will probably be different for each individual booker, but these 4 factors (in order of importance) will guide a venue into booking you.

Go here to see what those 4 tips are.

That piece itself links to an interview on the same site with a booker who goes into detail about his own experience booking bands and promoting the shows:

The more people you can bring, the more leverage you have. You gotta give something before you take it. So when emailing venues, talk about how you can team up with a local band or two and bring 30 REAL people. Don’t BS and lie to the venue. We have a 25% rule. Whenever a band says they will bring 50 people, we just assume it will be 12 or 13. Then we don’t usually want to do business with them again because they exaggerated their draw when we could have put on another like-minded band with a draw that could have made the night profitable for everyone.

It's long but well worth a read.

Lastly, there's this piece from Dave Cool - and it's a must read.

It talks about how you find a booking agent, but almost the whole piece is great advice for how to be better live and get more gigs - like this nugget:

Get your live show to the point where people are going home blown away and talking about you when they leave the venue. So rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse again, then play as many shows as you can. And be sure to build your set list in a way that makes for a great show, not just a series of songs played one after another.

Read the whole thing here.

The definitive book on this subject is Jeri Goldstein's 'How to be your on booking agent'. It's spot-on and WILL help you get more gigs. Not cheap these days though as it's in demand and currently sold out. You can get it on Amazon or for a Kindle. I recommend it.