Matthew Wettergreen dot com» bandcampus

Bandcampus: GOALS and STRATEGERY (Rescheduled for 4/18/10)

matthew — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:34:24 +0000

The music business is changing. The way you as an artist craft your message and direct your career is now at your fingertips and fully in your control. While some might see this as an incredible opportunity, most see it as overwhelming and stifling to creativity and career enhancement. Questions such as “where do we start?” or “what should we be doing to get more ___ or promote our ___?” always seem to have answers but something’s missing, the actions don’t seem to tie together and build to something bigger.

Enter Goals and Strategy
You’ve all heard this before: What’s Your Goal? Well, you’re not hearing it enough and you’re also assuming it’s rhetorical. It’s not a rhetorical question. What’s Your Goal is the most important question you can ask yourself because the answer illuminates the answers to those other questions, like “where do we start?” or “what should we do to increase our promotion of…?” More than that, setting goals also lets others know where your resources and time is being spent and how they can support you. Music writers know whether you are serious about your music or whether it’s a bedroom project. Fans know that you want to get to the next level and need their financial support or just to give it a listen and enjoy it.

At this month’s Bandcampus, we’ll help you to figure out what exactly you are striving for with your music. Whether it’s fame, financial wealth, wide-spread recognition, or simply creative output, all of these goals have measureable steps associated with them. The session will begin with an overview of the difference between tools (like social media), goals (like financial security), and strategy (like a college radio campaign). Following the naming of parts we’ll dive into examples of each and how you can adopt specific parts for your own goals and strategy. We’ll highlight the difference between long and short term goals and how both of these are important for forming a strategy. We’ll showcase a couple strategies that leverage your exisiting properties and resources to vault you towards your long term goal.

Every attendee of this month’s Bandcampus will walk away with set goals for the coming year, a long-term goal and the beginning of a strategy for their musical career.

WHAT: Bandcampus: GOALS and STRATEGERY
WHEN: April 11th, 2-4pm (Rescheduled for 4/18/10 b/c of Fiesta Movement party featuring Caroline Collective)
WHERE: Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline Houston, TX
WHY: Set measurable goals for yourself and your band

Bandcampus: SXSW PREP Recap

matthew — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:05:12 +0000

Last Sunday, Bandcampus held it’s second SXSW PREP where we collectively prepared and reviewed band’s digital and physical toolbox in an effort to prepare them for playing SXSW. Over 15 bands were in attendance with a range from seasoned SXSWers to new bands that had never played the conference.

Also at Bandcampus: SXSW PREP we announced the winners of the community voted contest to select bands to play at the second annual Houston@SXSW party. Over 1000 votes were cast over a 72 hour period. We are all very impressed with the work that bands put into contacting their community to get the vote out. If these Houston bands are working that hard in other spheres we’re going to be hearing many more about them in the near future.

The bands that were selected, the bands that will be representing Houston at the Second Annual Houston@SXSW party will be:

Here’s the remainder of the recap in mostly bullet point form for your skimming pleasure:

Tips for Bands playing SXSW (contributed by everyone in attendance)

The first agenda item of the day was to discuss what you could get out of SXSW by playing or even just attending. The overarching tip that should be considered when planning anything is to Cut Through the Noise. Too many people are at SXSW and you need to think about ways in which you can connect with these people in a substantial way. That does not include overplaying, that does not include talking to everyone you meet. It does include thinking about effective ways to communicate your message. It does include novel ways of getting the word out.

Biggest tip: Cut Through the Noise!
Don’t overplay
bring extra equipment
Make a game plan
Playing is half of the goal
Networking needs a goal

Digital and Physical Preparation for bands

No matter what level a band is at, they should have a digital and physical toolbox that they can use at a moment’s notice to get discovered, sell merchandise or showcase their craft. At the Bandcampus session we reviewed the basics of a digital and physical toolbox that bands can set up easily. The components

Digital Toolbox
- Central band email address (gmail or unique band domain recommended)
- Pictures posted online
- Videos (Live, Produced) posted online
- Unique Band Domain Name
- Music posted online in several locations
- Testimonials/Writeups from press posted visibly on online properties
- Booking information
- Short biography of the band
- A Home Base that is not Myspace, Facebook or any other online property not owned by yourself
- Digital Outposts at places like Myspace, Facebook, ReverbNation, Bandcamp.com, etc.
Physical Toolbox
- Music for sale
- Merchandise for sale
- Business Cards (Recommended by Marie Angell of The Snake Charmers)
- Elevator Pitch (Worked on at a previous Bandcampus, demonstrated by Insert Name Here)

Helpers

Several experts were on hand to give bands a review of their online presence and physical marketing materials. These people donated their time and deserve thanks and also should be considered for the future if you are looking for copy, marketing materials, or general direction for a band’s career.

Bands in Attendance

Bandcampus: SXSW PREP

matthew — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:57:26 +0000

As many in the tech, film and music communities know, SXSW is one of the biggest creative festivals held each year. It presents people working in these fields the opportunity to get discovered and add momentum to an already working machine. In recent years though, SXSW has been inundated with such large numbers of people that it is difficult to have any impact. In fact, many people in the music community of Houston choose not to attend the conference and not to bother sending in applications for music showcases for fear of rejection and a general perception that it is a waste of time and resources.

There are still many very good reasons to attend SXSW and there are even more unexplored ways to maximize your impact at the conference. The fact that the conference is so close to Houston makes it worth your while to attend even without a badge or wristband. Many industry professionals are in Austin during the week of music and the setting provides a good opportunity to contact and meet them to talk about your career. Label, booking and promotional companies also attend and fruitful research can be accomplished by sitting down with them for meetings. Additionally, with the rise of non-SXSW-sanctioned parties running virtually around the clock, the need to play a SXSW showcase is significantly less important than it was several years ago.

In personal communication with bands over the past couple years I’ve talked about how important it is to take control of your career and do game changing things to get noticed and build your audience. As a band working for itself, SXSW is the perfect staging grounds for this philosophy and the best way to accomplish this is to cut through the noise.

Don’ts:

Don’t play 9 shows in 4 days; those last shows are going to be low on energy and probably not represent your band in the way you wish to portray yourselves.
Don’t try and play the hottest party at SXSW; you probably don’t know what it is and if you did you’d already have representation working for you.
Don’t expect to be discovered at SXSW and have everything handed to you from now on

Do’s:

Look at what everyone else is doing and take a right turn from that
Do play (at least) one show that will have the desired impact to get you noticed by any potential fans, not just that talent scout: a guerrilla show in the middle of the street, on the back of a flatbed truck while driving around, play your music blasting from a boombox while walking down the street, hang shirts of your band just out of reach on telephone poles near the convention
Do your research beforehand to target the people you want to work with, write them beforehand, and get a committment to meet with them to talk
Do attend Bandcampus: SXSW PREP at Caroline Collective on February 28th from 2-4pm to make plans to attack SXSW and get your digital and physical toolbox in order

That last part is key. This Sunday at Caroline Collective we will be holding the latest installment of Bandcampus, entitled SXSW PREP. Similar to last year, this will be a workshop pairing volunteers with musical artists working to get prepared for SXSW with the following goals:

1. Prepare press materials and basic online presence items for bands interested in attending SXSW.
Any band playing in Austin during SXSW needs to be prepared to promote themselves given the chance. Playing a show is just the start of that promotion. Artists need a press kit, songs hosted online, video posted online, booking and contact information somewhere as well as physical cds to sell to interested parties or to give to record labels or booking agents. Many bands are unprepared for this situation and are lacking many of these items. By providing musicians with creative experts bands can receive focused attention to generate or upload these items to a location on the internet that raises the artists’ visibility.

2. Announce the bands that will be playing at Houston@SXSW, a Houston focused party showcasing Houston musicians, filmmakers and technologists.
This year we will be holding the second Houston@SXSW party. Last year’s party, held at Gruv, sponsored by Kirtsy, Werkadoo, Schipul, AYNBrand, and Caroline Collective , was a locally focused party showcasing Houston talent in three areas: technology, film and music. The following artists showcased: Dave Wrangler, Western Civilization, Wayside Drive, Ben Wesley, Espantapajaros, Golden Cities, Liquid Kitchen, Tha Fucking Transmissions, American Sharks, Something Fierce, and Fat Tony / B L A C K I E.

This year’s party will again focus on the contributions of Houston’s creative professionals. Startups will present, films will be shown and musical artists will showcase. This year’s party will be held at Hudson’s (301 W. 5th), Monday, March 15th from 5pm-2am. Last year’s music was curated by myself selected from the bands who attended Bandcampus: SXSW PREP. This year’s showcasing bands will be selected by the community. That means you. And your community.

Pay attention because we are going to do this very quickly. Nominations are open as of now and will close on Thursday, February 25th at noon. If you are in a band, know a band or like a band, DO THIS NOW: nominate them in the comment section below.

Starting Thursday at noon, voting will open for all bands who were nominated. Voting details, site and rules will be given on Wednesday. Voting will close on Sunday, February 28th at noon. Bands who are selected to play the party will be announced at Sunday’s Bandcampus: SXSW PREP.

Sunday’s Bandcampus: SXSW PREP is for 1) Houston musicians attending SXSW as official selections, 2) Houston musicians interested in playing at the Houston focused day party, 3) Bands looking to get their physical/online toolbox and online presence set up or checked by industry professionals, and 4) industry professionals looking to donate a couple hours to help bands generate/solidify these materials.

We need skilled graphic designers, web developers, copywriters, PR reps or any other creative professional which would be able to donate time and services for a couple hours to help bands prepare their online presence and press materials for SXSW.

WHAT: Bandcamp: SXSW PREP
WHEN: February 28th, 2-4pm
WHERE: Caroline Collective, 4820 Caroline Houston, TX
WHY: Prepare for SXSW, find out who’s playing Houston@SXSW; a free showcase of Houston creative professionals

Houston Music Press Meetup, Take 1

matthew — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:58:00 +0000

On Wednesday night, several of Houston’s music press met to have drinks. It was a casual affair, nothing with the air of seriousness or too formal. But after a short while it was clear there was a connection somewhere and the parties included seemed to appreciate each other’s presence. It seems that a second date may be in order.

I’ve been a huge fan of most of Houston’s music press for sometime now. I consider myself extremely lucky that I work in circles that allow the opportunity to share ideas and drinks with some of these people on a regular basis. There are still others who I’ve only met in passing and still more with whom interaction has only been through trading emails or blog comments. Other local writers are in this same boat and haven’t yet had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with their peer group. The importance of meeting and conversing with colleagues in a Community of Practice cannot be understated so getting together to have a drink and talk shop was a home run idea for all of us.

Two recaps of this were posted about this meeting the next day, by Brittanie Shey of Houston Press and Jeremy Hart of Space City Rock. Brittanie’s piece provides a good flow of the conversation that was had about the local music community, especially the hot topic of staying up on local bands and why so few bands send in music or make any attempt to contact the press. Jeremy’s post gives a run down of those in attendance and his kind comments about how great the event was were shared by everyone in attendance. You should check those out as a companion to this post.

The most heated point of discussion related to Houston’s music press not being contacted by local musicians enough to keep them updated on their careers. I am squarely in this camp with the press and feel that there is too much apathy and reactivity (vs. proactivity) in Houston musicians and that musicians should be in better contact with their press. This was a topic that was directly mentioned by Craig Hlavaty at the last Bandcampus, re-addressed with a series of posts on this site and echoed with comments and other statements by Brittanie Shey and Sara Cress of 29-95.com.

On this topic Joe Mathlete had the most prescient comments. Joe said two things that deserve to be repeated, keep in mind I’m paraphrasing his quotes but attempting to conserve the ideas:

1. Music writers need to be doing a better job of getting out into the community and finding out what bands are doing.

2. Some band’s goals are simply to put out good music and have fun.

I’m happy to cede the first point and to share the burden of proactively contacting bands to keep tabs on them. As for the second point, it is both true and contributing to the problem of not enough contact between musicians and press. The issue is not that bands want to have fun and put out good music because that’s something that we can all get behind. The issue is not the additionally agreeable statement from Joe that some of these bands don’t care if they get written up because that’s not part of their success metrics. The problem is goals.

There are not enough bands who have goals to be financially/artistically successful telling the public this. There are not enough bands who have goals that include making good music and having fun telling the public this. These goals are neither mutually exclusive or in opposition of each other. But they are ideas of a path and a direction and hone in on what they bands want/need to achieve them. And that’s what’s really missing: there are not enough bands in Houston with goals. This is not the first time I’ve personally mentioned musician goals. The real problem with bands not having goals is that it creates confusion for the local music press who do have stated goals: to chronicle the Houston music community and write about it’s related media products.

There are a lot of places we can go from here. We could talk about the effect of an entire community of bands operating without stated goals. That this leaves the music press questioning 1) why they’re not hearing from musicians more and 2) whether they should write about the musicians or whether the musicians want them to write about them. Or we could talk about how band’s definitions of success may not include caring whether the music press writes about them at all or if it does they want to be sought out by the music press. That this creates a vibrant cottage music community driven by parties and self released albums and fan driven interactions.

…

I’ve tried to write up my thoughts on the previous paragraph’s topics and have stalled out with something long, getting longer, and requiring considerable editing. I’m just going to take a right turn and just say I’m super fucking proud of Houston’s music press and the hard work they put in every day. At this point it’s not clear where we’re going to go from here; it’s up to the community to continue to the discussion. In one short meeting we got a discussion started in person that then flowed back to the web through a couple posts and some good comments. That’s as good a start as any.

Day of Show Career Building Activities for Your Band

matthew — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:08:55 +0000

Last week, I published the Guide to Booking Your Band in Texas ebook to lower the barriers for local musicians to start playing venues outside of their home market. Bands have already begun to write to say that they were able to book shows immediately after using the ebook. They’ve already started to ask questions about what to do next: should they worry about the venue they play at, how do they maximize their trip to a city. These are exactly the type of questions bands should be asking in considering how to maximize a live show, even in their home market. While last week the discussion on this site was how to start playing live more often, bands need to understand, it’s not just about playing live.

Every show is an opportunity to build your career. That opportunity spans the entire day, not just the 45 minutes where you’re on stage.

Assuming that you’ve been able to book yourself a one-off show in a surrounding city you have a great reason to spend the entire day in that town maximizing the impact and making it into an event. There are a number of things you can do over the course of the day that will help your show and contribute to creating/solidifying an audience in that market down the road. Below are some preliminary notes of some career building activities for day of show. Some of these ideas require very little planning, some of the ideas build off of each other. Notice not one of them mentions playing the show itself. This list is for all the other time you have, outside of the setup through the break down. I’ve separated them into four categories and I recommend you try and do one from each category each time you visit a city to play a show. Over the next several days I’ll dive into the specifics of how and why these actions can be beneficial in both the short and long term for your band’s financial solvency, audience size, and presence in any city.

Day of Show Career Building Activities for Your Band:

Increase Attendance for that day’s show

Play an impromptu live set
- Outside a Coffee Shop
- On a Street Corner
- On a College Campus/College Radio
- Outside a Thrift Shop
Promote
- Pass out flyers on a college campus/coffee shop/thrift store/record store
- Drop in a college radio station
- Drop by a college campus
- Drop in local taste maker locations (in Houston I’m talking about Coffee Groundz and Caroline Collective)

2. Grow Your Audience

DJ an afterparty
Hold a happy hour for fans
Hang out with fans after the show

3. Solidify Your Presence

Take a music writer out for a drink before the show
Get a drink with other bands in the city
Visit another venue to get booked for the future
Pick up all the local publications

4. Make Money

Drop off your music/merch at a local Record Store
Sell music/merch @ a coffee shop
Sell merch/music while busking

What are some other things that bands can do day of show to help their careers?

Free ebook on Booking Your Band in Texas

matthew — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:00:04 +0000

I’ve compiled a free ebook on booking a show for your band in cities within a four hour drive of Houston. It lists venues and their contact information as well as some contact templates and basic advice for how to get your band booked.

Many of the ideas inside of here were developed through extensive discussions with bands and individual artists as well as the monthly Bandcampus sessions. The venue listings were obtained through publicly listed information and a great thanks goes out to Katie Brown for helping to compile it all. All of the information contained within this ebook is something that I feel every band could use so I’m posting it for free.

Free eBook on Booking Your Band in Texas

If you like this ebook and find it helpful, please consider blogging a link back to this post so that peole know where to get the book. If you’d like to share copies with someone else, please point them to this post instead of the file directly so that I can make edits without concern.

Also, if this book makes you happy please leave a comment below this post. I’d love to know what you think about the work.

Thanks!

Booking Your Band in Texas (pdf format).

P.S. If you’d like just the venue listing without the helpful guidance on how to book your band, leave a comment below so I know how many people would like the venue listing in a google document format.

Bandcampus: 1/31/10 BOOKING PARTY Recap

matthew — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:21:00 +0000

Yesterday’s Bandcampus was a loud celebration of touring and music careers between over 15 bands and a mix of Houston music writers. As this was the first Bandcampus of the year people were understandably excited to share their progress with each other and it didn’t hurt that Marc Brubaker brought a keg of St. Arnold’s.

The following bands were in attendance:

The session began late as printing of the ebooks took longer than expected (85 pages each!!!). Thanks to Jeremy Osborn of Wayside Drive for helping with the cover and the printing transport. Ebook copies went fast, the ones who came late had to share it and wait for it to be made available online (later today). We reviewed the process of booking a live show, beginning with two assumptions, 1) each band had prepared a digital toolbox of press, bio, pictures, media, stage setup to send to bookers or promoters as needed. 2) if the band had contacts or relationships with other bands or booker/promoters in desired cities, that would be the first place to start when booking a live show, aside from the following process. Then, we reviewed the planning steps for booking shows; selecting desired dates and targeting venues based on genre similarities and the size of venue. Next we talked about the phone follow-up, the importance of writing out a script and remaining to-the-point and professional. For each of these steps we highlighted the specific sections of the ebook for the bands to refer to later.

During the discussion session, before getting down and contacting venues, several points were raised by Golden Cities, I-45 and Glasnost, three bands who have set up everything from their own shows to regional and national tours.

Lance and Marcus of Golden Cities say: the most difficult thing is getting venues to reply. You have to understand and get over the fact that not everyone is going to reply to your email ever.
Chuck of Glasnost recommends also having a standard contract for your band as part of your digital toolbox. Glasnost compiled theirs from several different examples available online. Here is an article from Music Biz Academy with several example contracts
All bands agreed that asking for money can be the most difficult part and that the actual rate is completely negotiable and situational. It is not recommended to play for free though.

Additionally we had several members of the media in attendance:

The most rousing portion of the entire session was the discussion that ensued when Houston Press Music Writer Craig Hlavaty stood up and let bands know that they needed to take better advantage of the musical infrastructure that exists to help them:

Music writers love to write about local bands, local bands seem to not understand this or take advantage of this opportunity
Craig spends a ridiculous amount of time looking at venue and band sites to find out who is playing and when, because venues don’t list it themselves
Local Bands need to be sending information about their upcoming shows to the music writers 1.5 weeks in advance of the show (minimum)
Bands need to send: The cost of the show, the bands on the bill, the time and venue of the show
Bands expressed a lack of knowledge on who their local music writers actually are (I have a two-part post for tomorrow and Wednesday opening this up for musicians)

With the ebook in hand bands were ready to start booking themselves live shows in and around Houston. We will be following up with each and every band to make sure that they actually work towards this and not sink into a hole of apathy. By discussing how these bands are using the ebook and leveraging community-based support every band in the Houston Music Community can begin to practice these career building steps.

More information about the next Bandcampus: SXSW PREP coming this week.

Check out some other press on this round of Bandcampus: BOOKING PARTY

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide – Day 5, Victoria/Corpus Christi Area

matthew — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:00:11 +0000

Welcome to the final day of pre-release of the ebook ‘Booking Your Band in Texas’. The compiled ebook will be available for free download on Monday, February 1st, 2010. This guide is designed to help you contact and book yourself a live show at venues around Texas. Today’s venue list covers areas near Victoria and Corpus Christi, close to the gulf and within an approximate 4 hour drive of Houston.

Booking Your Band in Texas – pt. 5, Victoria / Corpus Christi

This download includes a list of venues located in and around Victoria/Corpus Christi as well as the below graph which can help you to understand the musical landscape of a particular city. The area surrounding Victoria and Corpus Christi supports standard genres rather than offshoots. Unlike other cities, Country/Cowboy/Western are by far the most popular genre in the area. Rock/Pop are actually second, however, they still manage to make up 25% of the venue landscape. Artists in R &B/Hip Hop and Rap will have a difficult time booking themselves in this area as no venue identifies themselves as catering to this genre. Similarly, there are no venues which claim to support the genres of Dance/Electronic, Experimental, Metal, Ambient/New Age, Eclectic, or any other Latin genre save Tejano. Punk is not mentioned but Rockabilly makes up 5% of the genre representations so any punk band with enough crossover could find themselves a gig.

‘Booking Your Band in Texas’ Release Schedule
Every day of this week, a new venue listing will be released for Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi. If you come to Bandcampus:BOOKING PARTY on Sunday, January 31st you’ll receive the full ebook, similarly, if you visit this site next Monday (2/1) you’ll be able to download the document in its entirety. On Monday, February 1st, the complete list of venues will also be posted as a google document so that anyone can access it and edit it.

The Free ebook
On Monday, 2/1/10, the full version of the guide will be available as an ebook for free download. The full document includes the following:

Venue Listing for Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi
Mad-Libs style email script to assist you in making first contact with a venue to book your band a live show
Mad-Libs style phone script to assist you in making first contact with a venue or following up to book your band a live show
A recommended schedule to help you plan your bookings
A basic explanation of how to go about contacting venues and booking your band a live show

If you like what you read, please consider blogging a link back to this post so that people know where to get the document. And if you’d like to provide some ideas about the document, feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post.

Acknowledgements
This guide was compiled over 2009 with the assistance of many people: Lauren Oakes laid the early groundwork for this project in early 2009 by compiling the list for Houston. My intern Katie Brown is largely responsible for the project as it exists today, expanding the listings to cities within a four hour drive of Houston, organizing the data, and fact checking the listings. Attendees of Bandcampus: BOOKING PARTY in July got a first look at the listings and gave it a review for typos and missing information. Those bands and others that deserve thanks are: Prairie Cadets, Montgomery Walker, Stateside Stereo, Western Civilization, The Favorites, , The Liquid Kitchen,Female Demand, Glasnost,Insert Name Here, Spin Alley, Joe Muscara, The Snake Charmers, April Kyle, Ajit D’Sa, Wayside Drive, Ned Dodington, Grace Rodriguez, and last but not least the members of Caroline Collective, and Houston’s Creative and Music Community.

Licensing
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. This means:
Use this guide as much as you like to book shows for yourself and others. Share it with your friends, reproduce, download, redistribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this guide but the original work must be credited and you may not sell it. All further derivatives are licensed under identical terms.

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide by Matthew Wettergreen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide – Day 4, San Antonio

matthew — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:38 +0000

Welcome to Day 4 of the release of the ebook ‘Booking Your Band in Texas’. This guide is designed to help you contact and book yourself a live show at venues around Texas. Today’s venue list covers San Antonio, known by the public for their Riverwalk and by bands as having a large number of Metal bands.

Booking Your Band in Texas – pt. 4, San Antonio

This download includes a list of venues located in and around San Antonio as well as the below graph which can help you to understand the musical landscape of a particular city. San Antonio, like all other previously surveyed cities, has a greater percentage of venues focused on rock/pop than any other genre. Also similar to Dallas and Austin, the genres of Country/Cowboy/Western are the second most popular genre for venues to support. Several venues in San Antonio list themselves catering to the genres of “Honky Tonk” and “Southern Rock.” R&B/Rap/Hip Hop is minimized in San Antonio as compared to Houston but Latin Pop and other similar genres are the third most popular genre in San Antonio. Metal represents around 3% of the genres when lumped with Gothic and Industrial, two genres not charting at all in any other surveyed cities in Texas.

The Free ebook
On Monday, 2/1/10, the full version of the guide will be available as an ebook for free download. The full document includes the following:

Venue Listing for Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi
Mad-Libs style email script to assist you in making first contact with a venue to book your band a live show
Mad-Libs style phone script to assist you in making first contact with a venue or following up to book your band a live show
A recommended schedule to help you plan your bookings
A basic explanation of how to go about contacting venues and booking your band a live show

Acknowledgements
This guide was compiled over 2009 with the assistance of many people: Lauren Oakes laid the early groundwork for this project in early 2009 by compiling the list for Houston. My intern Katie Brown is largely responsible for the project as it exists today, expanding the listings to cities within a four hour drive of Houston, organizing the data, and fact checking the listings. Attendees of Bandcampus: BOOKING PARTY in July got a first look at the listings and gave it a review for typos and missing information. Those bands and others that deserve thanks are: Prairie Cadets, Montgomery Walker, Stateside Stereo, Western Civilization, The Favorites, , The Liquid Kitchen, Female Demand, Glasnost,Insert Name Here, Spin Alley, Joe Muscara, The Snake Charmers, April Kyle, Ajit D’Sa, Wayside Drive, Ned Dodington, Grace Rodriguez, and last but not least the members of Caroline Collective, and Houston’s Creative and Music Community.

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide by Matthew Wettergreen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide – Day 3, Houston

matthew — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 07:08:56 +0000

Welcome to Day 3 of the release of the ebook ‘Booking Your Band in Texas’. This guide is designed to help you contact and book yourself a live show at venues around Texas. Today’s venue list covers Houston, the fourth largest city in the nation but a city not known for it’s music community.

Booking Your Band in Texas – pt. 3, Houston

This download includes a list of venues located in and around Houston as well as the below graph which can help you to understand the musical landscape of a particular city. Houston, similar to Dallas and Austin is largely represented by the genres of rock/p0p and all other derivatives. Unlike any of the other cities surveyed up to this point though, Rap/Hip Hop and R&B plays a greater role in the musical economy, second after rock/pop. As we have seen with Dallas and Austin the genres of country, jazz, blues and acoustic/folk/singer/songwriter fill in the remaining top slots. One interesting note about Houston though is that there is no clear minority as the lesser represented genres all seem to be nearly equally represented in the listed venues, even including Metal and Top 40.

The Free ebook
On Monday, 2/1/10, the full version of the guide will be available as an ebook for free download. The full document includes the following:

Venue Listing for Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi
Mad-Libs style email script to assist you in making first contact with a venue to book your band a live show
Mad-Libs style phone script to assist you in making first contact with a venue or following up to book your band a live show
A recommended schedule to help you plan your bookings
A basic explanation of how to go about contacting venues and booking your band a live show

Acknowledgements
This guide was compiled over 2009 with the assistance of many people: Lauren Oakes laid the early groundwork for this project in early 2009 by compiling the list for Houston. My intern Katie Brown is largely responsible for the project as it exists today, expanding the listings to cities within a four hour drive of Houston, organizing the data, and fact checking the listings. Attendees of Bandcampus: BOOKING PARTY in July got a first look at the listings and gave it a review for typos and missing information. Those bands and others that deserve thanks are: Prairie Cadets, Montgomery Walker, Stateside Stereo, Western Civilization, The Favorites, , The Liquid Kitchen, Female Demand, Glasnost,Insert Name Here, Spin Alley, Joe Muscara, The Snake Charmers, April Kyle, Ajit D’Sa, Wayside Drive, Ned Dodington, Grace Rodriguez, and last but not least the members of Caroline Collective, and Houston’s Creative and Music Community.

Booking Your Band in Texas Guide by Matthew Wettergreen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.