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Question for Bluestrat.....


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Thanks for the insight on touring.

 

What are some things you do to market and promote yourself when playing out of town?

 

How much time is needed to promote yourself effectively?

 

You brought up a great point regarding radio stations. Do you pay for your own advertising for upcoming shows or do you leave that to the club owners?

 

Do you contact media and press sending out promo kits etc?

 

Thanks in advance!

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Originally posted by EcHoplex

 

What are some things you do to market and promote yourself when playing out of town?

 

I send out 11x17 4-color posters to the venues 3-4 weeks in advance. If there is a media list provided by the club, I send press releases with photo attachments via emai to the weekend newspaper magazines, etc. the week before the show. At the club, we put out table cards with my picture, website address, booking agent phone number, e-mail and an invitation to sign up for our email list. We often take some CDs to local stores to sell, maybe only four or five, because we know it's not likely we'll ever see any money out of them but they're written off as promo. Occaisionally when we pass through again, we'll stop in and they'll give us some money, but I often just comp them to the store just so I can tell folks at the show that if they want our CD, and they're a little short on cash, they can get it at Joe Blow's local music store.

 

How much time is needed to promote yourself effectively?

 

Posters, 3-4 weeks before the show, media 1-2 weeks before the show, emails from our email list two weeks and one week or less before the show.

 

You brought up a great point regarding radio stations. Do you pay for your own advertising for upcoming shows or do you leave that to the club owners?

 

I ask the clubowner (or my agent does) about radio stations friendly to the genre. I then contact the stations via email and send them CDs and a cover letter about a month or more before the show. Since I have what's called an "uptown blues band", meaning I have horns and lean a bit toward the jazz and funk side, I often get free coverage, airplay, and even interviews on college and public ststions that have blues shows. Occaisionally, if the promoter of a concert is buying air time on a commercial station, I'll go in and do a drive time interview the day of the show.

 

Do you contact media and press sending out promo kits etc?

 

Yes, as much as possible. My agent handles a lot of it, and sometimes the club does. But I like to handle it because i like to have more control over what I feed to the media. This is why it's important to have a lot of bio info for your press kit, with anecdotes and history (as opposed to a short bio for clubs, who only care about how much money you're going to make them). Print media guys (who by the way get paid by the column inch) are looking for material to write an interesting story, and the more info you can give them, the more likely they are to print something. Since they don't know you, all they have to go on is whatever you tell them.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

You're welcome. Any info I've learned the hard way that I can pass on to make it easier for someone else makes it all seem worthwhile.

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