Photo credit: Jason Boose

ED. – In The Trenches is a new, regular column exclusive to DTC and hosted by Dan Clark of Stromkern, Null Device and The Dark Clan focusing on music from the perspective of a recording/touring artist. Our hope is that through this and other guest blogs music fans and admirers might gain a new perspective on what it’s like from the musician’s side of the table – or stage, as the case may be.

BOOKING

There was a time when I was a lot angrier about the state of booking shows in the music world. Granted I was younger then and more apt to be angry about pretty much whatever, but the hodge-podge of bizarre, baroque, weird, mysterious, and sometimes downright aggravating behaviors exhibited by bookers, sometimes the same one at different points in time, was a frequent target of a singular and exceptional vitriol on my part. Past polemics were written from the following perspective; I, a quasi-professional musician, was trying to play by what I had been assured were “The Rules” and was getting irritation and — notably — no shows for my troubles. I assumed all bands played by “The Rules” and couldn’t understand why bookers were so difficult to work with. Since those heady days of youth I’ve learned a few things and gained some perspective. I feel I have some insight as to why booking is so difficult but I still feel it shouldn’t be that way and I’m still angry about it. I’m just not angry at the same people or in the same way. I mean, live music venues want to have bands and bands want to play at live music venues. Why is this so difficult? The short answer is: people. People are involved and people are difficult. Too many people, too many bands, too many who want too much.

Let’s set up some hypothetical characters in the tragic play that is a typical booking.

The bar manager/owner – wants to have bands because in her mind she pictures her club full of people who come to see Hip New Band and order great volumes of expensive liquor from her stylish and hip-but-approachable bar staff. The hundreds of people the band brings in make her mountains of money, get her club noticed and written up positively in local media and as she adds more bands to her live roster the money and fame just get bigger. She becomes a tastemaker, gets thanked in the CD liner notes of albums by world-famous bands who played/drank at her bar, and is beloved by all. Also, she gets laid a lot.

The musician – wants to play at the club because in his mind he pictures swaying the hundreds of club regulars with the power of his awesome music, converting them in great swaths from casual listeners to buyers and selling out run after run of his band’s CDs which provides him with enough income to quit his dead-end day job and focus solely on making music, expanding his connections and networking. Soon he’s playing bigger and bigger clubs and signing to bigger and bigger record deals until soon he’s touring the world and living the dream. Also, he gets laid a lot.

The booker – wants to have bands play at the club because in his mind he pictures the hundreds of people the band will bring mixing with the hundreds of regulars at the club and forming a grateful throng that is thrilled he had the great taste and 20-minutes-into-the-future foresight of what’s cool to book Hip New Band and put on a great show. Afterward both the club and band are happy to give him a generous percentage of the take from the door. As he books more shows and his network grows he becomes a power broker and tastemaker, booking sold-out shows for bands big and small all over the city, then the region. He is written up favorably in local media and thanked in CD liner notes by world-famous bands he helped get their start. Also, he gets laid a lot.

So granted there’s a lot of exaggeration going on here for (hopefully) comic effect, but I don’t think my three archetypes are that far off from the players in your average booking. The dreams and mistakes of each are often born out in behavior I witness at the club, to wit:

• Everyone dreams of “making it,” however they may define that term. Some want to be rich and famous, some just want to be independent, but everyone wants to have that, preferably with as little effort on their part as possible.
• Everyone assumes everyone else will bring in “a crowd.” Bands always think there will be club regulars, clubs always think bands will bring fans, and bookers think both will provide the crowd.
• Really, the getting laid part is the most realistic expectation anyone has.

Everyone’s de juro booking experience is different but I’ve been booking bands for a while now and the process tends always to go one of a few ways. Here are some real-life booking stories that I experience over and over again:

1. The club has a dedicated contact and phone number/email address for booking. You confirm with various staff at the club that the number and name of the person to contact are both current, and you begin calling. And emailing. You do this for weeks, then a couple months. One night, while watching a friend’s band play at the same club you’re trying to get booked at, you ask the staff if there’s some secret to getting a booking and they all shrug; “Did you call the number?” Yes, you did. “That’s all you can do, that and email.” You ask if the booker is on the premises, and are informed she is not. Your friends got the show when someone introduced them to the booker at a random party they both happened to be attending. Unless someone else gets you on a bill you will never play this club, and you will never know how anyone else ever plays this club.

2. The club has a dedicated contact and phone number/email address for booking and she responds in a timely manner to your queries but she also never books you. You ask for a Friday or Saturday about month out but no dice. Next time you call you ask for a Wednesday or Thursday about a month or two out but no dice. The next time you call you ask for any open day about three or four months out but are told the club isn’t booking that far ahead. Unless someone else gets you on a bill you will never play this club and you will never know how anyone else ever plays this club.

3. The club has bands, a website and print ads but you cannot locate any contact info. You show up one night to see a show and drop off a press kit. The bar manager takes your PK but says the guy who does the booking is never there for shows and you should stop by between 3 and 5 on Tuesday as that’s the only time the booking guy is in. When you dutifully return (with a fresh PK of course) on Tuesday at about 3:30 the bar is closed. You hang around until someone shows up to unlock the door at 5:30. The booking guy is of course not there and the bartender has no idea if or when he ever is. Next week you try calling during those hours and still get nothing. Unless someone else gets you on a bill you will never play this club and you will never know how anyone else ever plays this club.

4. The club has bands, a website and print ads but only a phone number for publicly available contact info. Whenever you call it all you get is an answering machine announcing upcoming shows. Guess how you get to play this one?

5. The club has bands, a website, print ads and full contact info. The booker returns your call/email in a timely manner and offers you a show on the date you requested. She is courteous and prompt. It’s so easy you go into shock and are even more baffled by all your other experiences.

For the record, all of the above stories are true and actually happened to me. The last case – of the booker who is available, friendly, and actually books you for a show – is by far the most rare of all. There are of course other experiences, but in general every time I’ve tried booking it’s come down to;
1.) You cannot get a hold of anyone. ever.
2.) You can get a hold of people, but they never book you.
3.) You can reliably book shows on a variety of nights.

The main lesson I’ve learned from dealing with this over the years is that really, in the end, I’ve always had the most success when I’ve talked to someone face to face, preferably no more than one degree of separation from the club booker. In other words, I’ve always had the best luck when meeting and speaking with the booker directly or when working with just one friend who speaks with the booker directly and gets me on the bill. Anything beyond that tends to be a crap shoot.

One time, while making idle chitchat with the booker at a club where I’d been trying to get a show for a couple months, as she was penning my band into the book for a Thursday night show she shook her head and said, “Man, you wouldn’t believe how many bands I get trying to get booked here. It’s crazy.” She then pulled a paper grocery bag out from a cabinet under the far side of the bar. The bag was overflowing with 8×12 glossies, press kits, demo CDs, etc. There must have been a couple hundred in there. I noticed my band’s press kit and demo in the pile, near the top. “Huh. That is a lot of bands,” I said sympathetically, watching as she put the bag right back where she got it from. She never noticed that she just booked one of the bands in the bag. And really, that full paper bag was my first key to a booker’s perspective on things. The vast majority of bookers I’ve ever met are not bookers (or promoters) full-time. They’re a bartender or former bartender or waitperson or random friend of the owner who either volunteered or has been drafted into service, possibly with dreams and goals not dissimilar to my goofy archetypes I went through at the beginning of this thing. Then, they get handed the Full Paper Bag and are told there are 501 voicemail messages and 45,233 emails waiting for them from bands that want to play the club. It’s overwhelming. Someone with a normal person’s schedule and obligations simply can’t wade through the massive, massive amount of bands that are asking for shows and vouch for quality so they probably end up doing one of two things; they either don’t ever answer the phone or email except randomly or sporadically and rely mostly on friends/connections to book shows or they just give anyone a show on a first-come, first-serve basis regardless of whether or not the band is any good. It’s depressing, really – especially when one considers how few people even end up going out to shows anyway – to think how hassled and frustrated and overwhelmed everyone on all sides of this equation gets over something that’s supposed to be cool and fun and creative and rewarding.

And man, let’s not even try to get in to booking shows out of town. That’s a whole ‘nother post there all by itself.

To wrap this up I’ll say this; as the shows get bigger the potential crowds and money and fame get bigger, the opportunities for skullduggery also get bigger and the likelihood that a promoter or club owner or booker is going to try to swindle someone gets greater. I’ve seen some of this myself while on tour with national acts but I’ll let a more, er, direct voice finish this article – namely Mr. Steve Albini. This is an excerpt from his final tour diary during Big Black’s last run around the globe. If you like it, you can read the whole thing here.

“[L.A. promoter] Tovar bid five grand, so we gave him one of our shows, sent him a contract and that was the last we heard from him for three weeks. The day before the deposit was due, I began a series of daily phone calls to him each one ending with his promise to call me back “tonight” with final word on which venue the show would be at. Turns out that the guy who runs the Variety Arts Center, where we were originally booked to play, thinks we’re a bunch of racists and won’t let us play there. Why he thinks this, I have no idea. Ultimately, this iron-clad guaranteed five grand gig gets turned into a $2,500 gig at some smaller dive, so I told him to eat shit. Boy is he irritating to talk to. He sounds like one of your back-of-the-bus-types from sixth grade doing a Tommy Chong impersonation.

I won’t know for certain until Monday whether or not the N.Y. promoter is a shitlicking liar, but that’s the way it looks now. It also looks like his six grand N.Y. gig has already evaporated. That’s $11,000.00 we blew this week, and it’s much too late to book any replacement dates. Not with a bang but a whimper.

Anyway, I haven’t slept in two days, my mind is snapping and I’ve still got to figure out how to cover the lost $3,000.00 of the N.Y. promoter’s missing deposit. Oh, and to fly to Germany. Oh, and work twelve hours at the straight gig. Christ I hate my job lately.”