Re: Getting Gigs

[Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>]

Doug,

Feel free to pass on the info to anyone who might find it useful.

I used to play Borders a lot, five or six years ago.  Their booking policy 
used to be determined by the individual stores, and the money varied 
between $50 to $150 if you weren't a "name" act.  Sometimes it was cash, 
sometimes store credit, but they always had a PA (they'd done some 
national deal with Carvin) and the people were friendly.  Then something 
changed, and suddenly there was a whole lot of paperwork that needed to be 
signed, a lot of warnings regarding volume, objectionable lyrics, and so 
on, and a lot of the places (in my area at least) stopped having music 
except for touring artists and such.  But for a while it was sweet--once 
you'd played one, you were pretty much an automatic "in" at any of the 
others (I managed to book shows in the UK from the States, although my 
travel arrangements fell through, but the stores were good to go).

On the other hand, there always seemed to be a high turnover in the 
booking person ("Community Affairs" I believe they called it), so if you 
tried to book a return gig you were talking to a new person whose first 
action on the job had been to roundfile the old calendar and all the demos.

The good Borders gigs were the ones where they set you up in the music 
department, where it was quiet.  The sketchier ones were the ones in the 
cafe area, where you had a decent chance of encountering the "Hey--I guess 
I'm totally invisible to these people..." phenomena.


-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>
Sent: Apr 8, 2004 9:26 AM
To: Travis Hartnett <tiktok@sprintmail.com>, 
Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: Getting Gigs

Travis-
    An excellent description of the gig-booking process. I'm copying it and
passing it along to some of my students (but only with your blessings!) . I
would add that it helps to actually visit the places you intend to play
whenever possible and meet with the owners/managers/steady help. Find out
what they want and what they're looking for, and be flexible in your
approach until/unless your vision commands significant crowds of moneyed
listeners regardless of venue. BTW, a good friend booked a "Borders tour" 
in
the metro NY area by simply hooking up with one, then calling the others,
using the first as a reference. Somewhat disappointing is that the dollar
figures are probably not much different than I would have encountered 
twenty
years ago.
dB