We just set up our first (or I guess second) little gig, but before then we were all kind of scattered on how to set them up. I know (or I've heard anyway) lots of places you basically just basically have to prove that you're a real band and you might get a shot to play there, but is there some kind of system or anything?
Booking agency Talk to touring bands about opening and locals about sharing the bill Sucking dicks Those are your options
Well the middle one has been how we got this gig, and maybe another lined up in the near future. The third option somehow fascinates me, though...
Honestly you don't need a promoter or booking agent until you're trying to get really high quality shit, a really unified set of bands, or a constant stream of good shows without having to spend a lot of time talking to venues. Most venues around here you just need to email them with a brief email w/ links to your bandcamp/facebook/reverb - whatev. They'll check it out, and probably just shoot you a day they have an opening. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll end up on a bill with really similar or good bands, but it'll be a show. Trust me, you guys are good - it won't be a problem. You'd be surprised the kind of bands venues will allow to play on a bill.... Anyway, there's all kinds of crap in Seattle like...The Showbox, Studio 7, El Corazon, Chop Suey. Those are bigger ones. It's hard to get booked at the Showbox unless you can really guarantee a big draw. This fuckin' guys band had their first show their and sold the son of a bitch out though: https://www.facebook.com/numbersmusic. The other two...not so hard, but they're big so it can be kind of a weird show if a lot of people don't show up - but the sound is great. The LAB @ Seattle drum school can be a cool show for a smaller band. It's really tight, but it's a dedicated venue (not a bar - hard to find a smaller venue thats not a bar), and they won't pay you, but they record everything and can bounce you a live CD of your performance off the board which can be cool. There're dives like The Comet, The Bluemoon, High Dive, Skylark, The Tractor. There's all kinds of shit up north in everett too - just try to find events that metal/rock bands are doing locally. Just be prepared to be anally fucked in most cases. Dives are typically more reasonable, and will split door money between bands and give you free beer and shit, but their sound systems are usually pretty bad and vocals get drowned + bad monitoring. The biggers places will want you to sell presale tickets (usually 50+) and have you maybe open for a bigger headlining band...and maybe pay you out 33% of the ticket sales you did. The most important thing... Try to book out as far in advance as possible. Right now for my band I'm booking into March...April...If you start asking last minute you'll probably get nothing, or end up with a really shitty day of the week. On top of that, venues hate giving bands without a guaranteed draw a fri/sat slot.
Also, as soon as possible start trying to network with similar sounding bands that are local. That's the biggest thing I'm focused on right now. Venues love if you can do everything for them, so if you can get 2-5 bands that you know you work well with and set up shows together all at once, you can have a better overall show...a better overall draw, and maybe even have more fun.
Cheers, actually really helpful. I remember in that promotion thread you mentioned how close the metal scene here was, and that's turning out to be really, really fucking true and we haven't even met with anyone here yet, just internet stuff but a few good bands with a lot of fans have offered us (tentatively but still) opening slots and will plug us when we release songs, etc. It's really cool, musicians can be nice.
Ya metalheads fucking love sucking each others dicks. Way more unified scene than anything else around here. I think 2bit saloon has metal mondays or something. Check that out. You might want to talk to that Blaeden Mortis guy. He went to Kamiak...anyway, he's in a Black metal band, which you probably wouldn't want to play with (lol), but he probably could you more specific advice to the scene.
Born to Asian yuppie parents? I guess with my band, since we play acoustic, we can basically book gigs anywhere we want because we don't have to worry about the PA, unless we want micing. It's totally awesome, dude.
Except at a rock show people are actually there to listen to the band. lol. And it's funny you'd say that, yet it's ever present in almost every style of music - especially the mainstream.
Some serious terrible opinion/faggotry up above hurr. It doesn't make sense that "background noise" would be the most popular non-classical western instrument and be featured in almost every style of music of music to some extent - even be the integral component of many. I understand where your guitar-hate bullshit stems from, since you can't play it well - nor anything for that matter - so you just stick your head into potentially productive threads to be an annoying prick every so often. I'm sympathetic to that, it reminds me of myself when I was 15.
Anyways, I'm actually pretty nervous. I dunno why, we practice really diligently and have all our material down, but there's gonna be a decent crowd because the other two bands and we're not known at all really, only a little virally. I'm excitedly nervous I guess. Also, none of us look metal, really, and the other bands are like "RAHGH LOOK AT US WE'RE METAL" and we dress and act normally, don't really wear band shirts or anything. I have a Dream Theater shirt I guess. Plus this is our first experience and we're not really sure how sound check works or anything...etc. I dunno.
For soundcheck just make sure you get everything you need in the monitors. Even if the sound out front isn't the greatest (some venues/engineers just suck), it's important to aim for a decent balance on stage if you want to give the most confident and relaxed performance that you can.
A little piece of advice for your monitor mix : only ask for what you really need. My basic rule is to try not to ask for more than 3 things in my monitor, most of the time I only ask for my vocals and some lead vocals. For the times when I'm playing with a keyboardist and horn I ask for that too, but for my guitar-hearing needs I just turn my amp towards me and that usually does the job. The more shit you ask for, the blurrier the sound in your monitor is going to be. The worst thing you can do is ask for "a little bit of everything".
Born for Dying's post is good advice. In a metal band it's usually good to have some kickdrum in the monitors. Maybe snare too, but you'll usually hear that anyway. Don't bother with vocals unless you're singing yourself (in which case have loads), and make sure you can hear your geetard either through the amp at a small venue or in the monitor at a larger one.
