[ad_1]
When you are just starting out, promoting your own music and competing with other bands may seem like a monumental task. Especially when creating music and improving the way each individual of your band plays and how they play together as a team is still of prime importance. Promotion may feel like just another hassle and one that is too hard to start or to manage. But it may be easier than you think.
If you are not making much money yet, hiring a manager to book you into venues may not be an option. Convincing a booking agent you are worth his time may also be hard.
The Indie Bible is your answer.
If someone in your group of friends is a real fan and has some spare time despite their occupation, perhaps they will help you out. It could be a brother, sister or parent, an aunt or uncle or friend, just someone who is organised and willing to give you a few hours a week, keep track of information and is willing to get on the phone. With a copy of the Indie Bible, you or they can be your own independent booking agent.
It doesn’t matter what style of music you play. It can be rock or folk, hip hop or country, classical or techno, or any other style – all across the US and Canada there are venues looking to book in new indie talent to their venue.
The venue listings in the Indie Bible are arranged by location. This makes it it easy for you to map out a route for a small tour and group the venues by date so you can cut the travel down a bit. The Indie Bible has many obvious venues such as clubs or pubs but it also includes a full range of unexpected venues such as theatres, coffee shops, restaurants, churches, halls and even book stores who are actively seeking new indie entertainers. Thousands of unusual venues in small towns are ignored by some of the mainstream venue directories but you’ll find them all listed in the Indie Bible , conveniently tagged with the style of music they prefer to book.
This makes planning a tour very easy! Something you can do in conjunction with your volunteer helper, or something you can schedule each band member to spend a little time each week on.
You will need to plan ahead.
Organizing a tour, (even a small one over a weekend) is part of being a professional muso. Start small, find some venues close to home, choose the next month you may be able to fit a small tour into and set up a blank schedule of any commitments each band member has so you don’t book somewhere and be obliged to turn up short of a valuable player.
Make a list of venues and map them out on a local map so you know what area you may have to cover . Circle groups of these so if you do need to stay over in areas, the next gig is in a reachable distance. Once you have a possible schedule and a map, you can start ringing venues and trying to book your band ( or self ) into the venues within the available dates on your list.
As many venues are booked far in advance, your schedule may have to be adapted for a time further in the future than you first anticipate. So make sure that your band is committed to this course of action before you confirm the bookings. Be sure to let venues know immediately if you cannot make it on a certain date. You will start to build your reputation at this point. You don’t want it to show that you are unreliable.
When the time comes to tour, make all other preparations, such as a bus and overnight accommodation in advance as well. Pack and check and double check that you have all equipment you need. The Indie Bible has more advice on this, as well as other topics.
About the Indie Bible
There are two Indie Bible publications. The one I have described above is the Venue Bible. Also available is a publication on how to promote recordings of your Indie music through websites.
The Indie Venue Bible is constantly being updated. It is in electronic (.pdf) format and lists 32,000 venues and 3,500 booking agents in the US and Canada. After it’s purchase you will have access to the newest version for one full year. That’s a fair amount of time to get started on finding venues to play in.
The more live shows you do the better you will get at all this entails. No musician starts out knowing how to do this. Everyone has to learn from experience. Hopefully you won’t feel too shy to ask for gigs. If you are simply ask yourself what is the worst that can happen. Usually it’s a bit of a red face when you stutter through what you want. You’re on the phone – it doesn’t matter!
Imagine how you’ll feel if they say yes. You have a 50:50 chance they will say yes. But if you don’t get on the phone and ask, that’s a 100% failure rate. So get on the phone and double your chances. You can no longer use the excuse that you don’t know who to call.
Use the industry resource called the Indie Bible and make it happen. Good luck!
[ad_2]
Source by Julie Francis