What’s in a Venue?

Happy spring break to everyone! I hope you all had an enjoyable vacation. What, not all of you went on spring break last week? Sorry about that, your’s will come in due time, but for now it’s back to business.

Venues. Breaking into the music scene can be as simple as scoring the right gig at the right venue at the right time. Which, turns out, is not so simple at all. Getting a gig at a prominent venue can be pretty hard.

I asked Brian Landrum, an employee at The Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC, how many booking requests they get on average each month. He said, “Too many. Honestly somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-120 requests per month from agents, performers, and independent promoters. Maybe 20-24 of those will end up being shows.”

“It’s a saturated market to say the least.”

The Grey Eagle is a smaller and more intimate club, but similar venues that are larger such as Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill and The Orange Peel in Asheville, get more requests than that. I attempted to contact several other venues, but my guess is that their e-mail and voice mail boxes are filled with booking requests. Thus my attempts were jumbled in with everything else.

Just via looking at websites of listening room type venues, it seems that the number one concern of all venues is that a band has a local fan base. Not many venues offer what is called a “built in crowd” or a crowd that will just show up no matter who is playing. Those are usually only offered by bars that double as a music venue. For a new artist those are the types of venues to seek out.

The Grey Eagle website specifically states: “The Grey Eagle is a destination location: an artist must already have some ‘marquee value’ in the Asheville area in order to perform here.” In other words to play at this venue, you gotta be able to fill the space with your fans in order to gain a gig.

Getting a gig is hard. A band just starting out has to start off small, for example in bars and at festivals where there will be a built in crowd. Even then a band has to prove that their music is something that people would want to hear.

From personal experience (however unsuccessful it was), local bars are a good place to start out. The crowds can be rough at times, but if you mix in enough of your own group of rowdy friends you wont be able to tell the difference. Festivals are fun too, but you can’t guarantee that people are going to be listening. The festival goes may be too involved with their cotton candy or a glass blowing demonstration.

Two main points: Start Local and Start Small. Building up a large fan base is key to scoring that gig at a major local venue.

I’m still asking around about tips and tricks in venues so another post on this subject will be coming soon. If you have any hints or tips at getting a gig or dealing with venues, bars or festivals leave them in the comment section.
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