So yesterday someone e-mailed me and asked me for some advice on booking shows.  In so many words, they said it’s not hard to tell that I book a lotta shows. Aint that the truth. I average between 250 – 300 shows a year. I’ve been a full time, no day job, tax paying musician since 2003. When I thought about it, I realized I do have a little insight into the game of Booking Shows. So I emailed him back. It was a personal email but after I finished, I realized 1)The info I provided was very valuable and 2) my lil email I typed on my iPhone at the dinner table was long enough to be a blog. So…here’s todays’s blog…

Hey Saul(Paul), you’ve done a lot of shows. I was wondering if you knew any people I could contact in the ******* area to get some shows. I don’t have a booking agent so I wouldn’t know who to contact.

If you know that you can draw some folks out to a show, one company to work with is Afton. There are pros and cons to them. Google them.

Other than that, starting out, perform as frequent and often as possible. If you or your artists “got the goods”, when you do shows, other opportunities for future shows will present themselves.

Initially,  you can’t be scared to give away what you will later sell. I mean do shows (for) free. People play themselves feeling like because they are talented and good at what they do, they should get paid from day (one). (Football Player) Vince Young was always good but he played a bunch of free games. (From Pee Wee )All through college! And eventhough people were paying to see him play, (College tickets cost good money)  he still wasn’t getting paid. But when he did play, he stood out and eventually that payday came. (He now gets paid to play every Sunday in the NFL) The music biz is the same.

Something people do that I don’t co-sign is pay to play. There’s a logic to that as well but (for me) it’s the principle. I can dig me playing for free or getting paid to play, but paying to play? Nawh. But nonetheless (people paying to play) is rampant. More often than not, that’s what’s happening when you see a local act on the same ticket as a regional or national act. They paid somebody to open up. You could look at it as marketing. But as with everything I’ve mentioned…there are pros and cons to that. I believe the cons outweigh the pros.

But that’s a basic primer on booking shows. 

In summation, if you got the goods, perform whenever you get the chance and your performance will create new opportunities often. In addition, once you grow your artists’ awareness, people will book you because they believe booking you will draw and attract more people. The more people you draw, the more people will book you and pay you. The twist to the game is that people pay you based off of how many people will pay to see you. (It’s) not based on how talented or skilled you are. That’s why wack rappers make it on the radio. They hustled and built a following while the talented artist was busy practing his art.  But we are discussing the MUSIC BUSINESS though. That’s what most artist forget. 

Holla at Ya Boy.

*****

So what do y’all think? Anybody got anything to add to that?