August 2018 Exercises

Venues, Booking and Performance Exercises

SO you have a songwriting round coming up? Or maybe you want to put yourself in the position to create a round yourself? You need to do a few things to prepare to have the best round you could possibly have. You never know who could be in the audience that could help you with your career!

Here are a few exercises that might help you reach your full potential for any performance opportunity you may have:

    1.    Practice with people in the room. The more often you play for an audience, the more you will feel comfortable when you are playing for people in a venue. No matter if it’s your spouse, your roommates, a group of supportive friends or even Facebook/Instagram Live, playing in front of an audience gives you the opportunity to try new material and see how it is received. It also gives you a chance to mess up without the nerves! You can laugh it off a lot easier from your couch in front of friends than in a venue full of people.

    2.    Tell your network about your show! People show up when they have time to plan and put events on calendars. If you are booked for a show, show it off! Pun intended! Let your social media followers, phone contacts or email list know when you have a show coming up. Give them ample time to make arrangements to be there. Create free graphics on Canva to share online. Free advertisement has never been more accessible than it is right now. 

    3.    Don’t have a huge fan-base yet? Collaborate on a show with someone who does! If you are just starting out and are trying to book shows on your own, venues will likely ask you how many people you can get in seats. Booking shows is easier once you know you can promise a full house. (More money for venues mean more chances for you!) Ask someone in your network to split a show with you that has a good fan following. Whether they have 1,000 followers on social media or have 40 good friends near the venue that would for sure show up, it will be easier to gain a crowd when you have more people playing. Collaboration usually means there are far more benefits for a venue to book you!

    4.    Think outside the box. Use resources that are already available to you to increase your chance of being booked. Drop your CD and Press Kits off at radio stations around town. Give some copies to a local car dealership that they can pass out when someone test-drives a car (idea from Rick Barker and Wade Sutton’s ‘$150,000 Music Degree’ book). Throw together coffee shop meets with new fans or offer to buy a beer for the first 20 people who show up to meet you at a restaurant to promote your new music. Small gatherings for new fans are essential to any artist in their beginning stages. 

    5.    Write out your goals and get to achieving them! When you are overwhelmed with passion for your art of creating and performing, things can get chaotic and exciting really fast. A good way to stay on track with your musical aspirations is to write out exactly what you are trying to achieve each day. Even as a beginner, you know where you want your songs to go. Whether it be a personal goal of perfecting a certain chord progression on the guitar or memorizing a new song for a writer’s round coming up, writing down your goals will help you maintain the drive to achieve them. Plus, it is always super satisfying to check off tasks as you complete them.

    6.    Form a list of venues near you. Write down every place that has live music in a 100-mile radius of you. Coffee shops, farmer’s markets, birthday parties and restaurants all count as venues. These are the places you will begin gaining a fan base at. Keep this list and add to it as necessary. Add all the contact information for the venues so you will have a list to call once you are ready to perform something new. Learn this list and everything about these venues. They will be your first avenue to earning a fandom in your hometown. 

Keep your head up, keep writing and practicing your performance. The world notices hard work and talent when it sees it. The tedious days and nights may feel exhausting, but who knows who may be standing in the back at one of those small shows that could help you reach the big time. Treat every engagement you have as if you had just won a Grammy and maybe one day you will!