Out of town gigs for a coverband?

[jw10]

How would you go about booking out of town gigs as a coverband? By out of town, I mean far enough away to where your band is entirely unknown and u can bring nobody. Is this even a possible idea to, say get two or three shows in the same area for the weekend?

[SpaceNorman]

Originally Posted by jw10

How would you go about booking out of town gigs as a coverband? By out of town, I mean far enough away to where your band is entirely unknown and u can bring nobody. Is this even a possible idea to, say get two or three shows in the same area for the weekend?

You go about it in exactly the same way you go about marketing yourself to new bars in your current market. You decide what rooms you want to target - and then do the sales dance of trying to contact the owner and convince him to take a risk on what for him is a complete unknown. Recognize that working outside of your usual market - usually means working for whatever the venue is willing to give to any new band in their room (i.e., the typical $300 a night gig).

On the bright side - if your band performs in a large metropolitan area like my projects do - "far enough away to where your band is entirely unknown and u can bring nobody" may only be a few miles down the road. In my neck of the woods - unless you're a band that is playing marquis venues - bar owners 10-15 miles down the road will likely never have heard of your band much less have any faith in claims a band might make about their ability to draw. By the same token, any band making claims about their ability to draw to a venue 15 miles miles away from their usual stomping group are likely going to be in for a surprise. I can regularly claim 30-40 folks as my contribution to my band's following when we play our local venue. That # drops to approximately zero when we work on the other side of ton (15 or so miles away).

If you're talking about travel real distance - the cost of travel (gas, lodging, time) and the low pay make it tough to justify from a financial perspective.

There's a reason you've likely never heard of the bands playing rooms an hour away from where you're at today ... and why they've likely never heard of you.

[n9ne]

Booking agents/agencies....plain and simple. The agent's job is to know all the clubs in all the towns, and to provide each club with a band that is appropriate to the venue.

With an established agent, it doesn't matter if a club owner doesn't know you and has never heard of your band. If the agent tells him you'll be a good fit for that room, that's all the owner needs to hear, because he trusts the agent's opinion, and his ability to provide reasonably good bands.

And likewise, the band trusts that the agent will book them into places where they're a good fit.

An established artist might be able to get away with self-booking, as long as they had plenty of established relationships at a bunch of different venues. But for a band that's just starting out, I can't imagine trying to book out-of-town dates without an agent.