Gigging
and Touring as an Indie One big gig can get you heard above
the fray.
by Andre Calilhanna
Playing live gigs is one
of the most traditional ways for musical artists to spread the word
about themselves, entertaining fans and attracting new ones. And nothing
beats gigging as a way to build a band’s musical chops.
Playing gigs also gives you a recurring reason to contact your fan
base and promote your act, it’s a great vehicle to collect names
for your email list, and it’s the best forum to sell products
like CDs and t-shirts.
What’s important to realize is there’s a focused and unfocused
way to go about booking and playing gigs, and the difference can spell
success or failure for your act.
An unfocused approach might include booking gigs in towns you’ve
never played without doing any research into the club you’ve
booked. Or it might simply be booking yourself too frequently in the
same area. Or it could be booking too big a room, or playing dumpy
rooms for too long and establishing yourself as a second-tier live
act.
A focused approach should help you avoid such issues. At the very
least, it can help you establish goals and work toward fulfilling
them. In time, you can gauge your success by how you measure up to
your goals. Are you playing to bigger and better crowds? Are you playing
better rooms than you were six months ago? Have you increased your
regular playing radius? Broken into a new city? Are you actually making
money from playing live?
Touring, like any other element of managing your act, better serves
you if you create a focused plan of attack.
Tip number one, then, is “Plan a strategy.” If you’re
completely new to the gigging game, maybe that means you play as many
gigs as you can. Open for anyone. Play every stage in your city. Just
get as much experience as you can.
After a two or three months, it may be time to step back and recreate
your plan. Now that you’ve played all the rooms you could get
in, which one was your favorite? What songs seemed to go over best?
What were the recurring problems you experienced while playing? Regroup,
rehearse, and refocus.
Booking Gigs Out of Town
While there is by no means one way to approach gigging, there are
some generally accepted rules, and one is “Start local and build
outward.” It’s totally logical, and in most cases it’s
the most prudent approach.
The question then becomes, when do you book an out-of-town show and
where do you go?
One good way is to establish a relationship with artists from other
cities. Maybe you played a local gig with a great band from out of
town and you hit it off. Where do they play locally? Try to get a
gig opening for them.
MySpace.com is a great place to mix and mingle with out-of-town artists,
and the forum gives you both a chance to hear each other’s music
and determine if you’re compatible, musically and otherwise.
At that point, a gig swap is a likely step, giving you both the opportunity
to explore a new city and club with some degree of confidence there
will be interested ears in the room.
With MySpace and your own email list, you can also gauge if there’s
a town outside your home base that might be teeming with fans. It’s
a great opportunity in that you can tap your contacts to learn about
clubs they like, rally them to the show, and even offer discounts
on the cover price.
Once you’ve ventured out to another city, your job becomes to
sell your live act, sell some CDs, and get people on the mailing list.
Don’t just make it a gig, make it a marketing exploration.
Wherever you live, it’s likely there are many cities or towns
within reasonable driving distance that can offer you the chance to
establish a completely new “local” fan base. It sounds
easier than it is, but the concept is basic: Find a winning strategy
close to home and reproduce it over and over again in surrounding
towns. Before long, success might mean you’re selling more and
more CDs and t-shirts, getting a larger fan base together, and your
name means something father away from your home base.
Touring
Another adage for the road is, “Have something to promote.”
Obviously, if you have a gig, that’s something – but it
shouldn’t end there. If you’re new to an area, and you
have a CD, make it a record release for that town.
For a major-label artist, typically a tour is in support of a record.
The show promotes the record, and the record propels show attendance.
The model works in many of the same ways for indies.
Do what you can to build a buzz and try to establish an infrastructure
(i.e. street team, product in stores) to use in conjunction with your
gig. Who knows? A little radio promotion might spark attendance at
the show, which may result in some CDs selling, which means your circle
is growing. It’s all about building momentum, and it’s
also about having the necessary things in place to buoy that momentum.
A tour doesn’t mean you’re in a huge bus cruising the
U.S. A tour can be a 10-day stint through three adjoining states in
a passenger van. Maybe you’ve landed a conference gig 200 miles
away. Book shows along the route and turn it into a mini tour. Especially
if you’ve never done it before. Try a small tour and figure
out how it actually works. Then, expand and improve on your model.
One of the biggest challenges for an indie act to overcome is money.
It’s not easy to make money on the road, especially the first
few times out. The goal might have to be, “How do we break even?”
Between missed work, gas, tolls, food, laundry, overnight accommodations…
being on the road costs money.
Finding ways to make more money on the road, such as having an organized
system in place to sell merchandise and CDs, is one smart step. Cutting
costs is another. Find crash pads to sleep at along the way.
There are plenty of places to start: other bands you’ve befriended,
someone’s relative, folks from the street team, or fans on your
email list. It behooves you to be gracious and accommodating guests
(for the next time around). A lot depends on the length of the tour
and your willingness to deal with substandard accommodations.
Setting Up A Tour
One thing that sets independent acts apart from major-label artists
is tour support. There is none. Everything about the tour is up to
you or your manager to organize.
What’s the length of the tour? The number of shows booked? The
number of people traveling? The distance being traveled? How much
do you expect to earn? These are some of the basic questions you need
to address before determining how you’ll travel, where you’ll
stay, how much to budget for gas and meals, etc.
Common sense dictates you book the shows in a coherent order so you’re
not back-tracking or traveling too far in one day. And while you want
to remain productive, schedule down time, days off, and factor in
time to do promotion (interviews, in-stores, handing our flyers) into
your itinerary.
Have a check list of items you need to pack and make sure you’ve
got them all. And plan on space enough for at least one person to
get sleep during travel time.
Stay in touch with the clubs. Send a stage plot and input list to
every club as soon as you book the show, and make sure your contact
info is included. Call the club two weeks before the show. Make a
list of everything you need from the club, including directions, load-in
time, set time, and what backline provisions the club is providing
(if any).
Also, make sure you know exactly what you are being paid and who to
see about collecting your money. Try to work in a free meal and drinks
for the band as part of your compensation. It doesn’t cost the
club that much to provide you a little something to eat, and it can
save you a bunch of money if you can minimize food costs on the road.
One last thing to keep in mind when you play any club at any level:
be professional. Your success in the music business depends largely
on your ability to network and make fans out of club owners and people
in the industry. A good rapport with a good club can lead to better
gigs, well-placed opening slots for bigger bands, and better deals
in terms of money and perks (meals, drinks, etc.). So be on time,
don’t have an attitude, play a great show, and do everything
you can to get people in the room.
