Release Schedule
Every day of this week, beginning on Monday, a new guide will be released for Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi. If you come to Bandcampus on Sunday you’ll receive the full document, 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 for accuracy.

The Free ebook
On Monday, 2/1/10, the compiled version 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.

Similar to the band to venue sample email from a previous post, this script is arranged in a Mad Libs style. The form prompts you for information like your name, band name, genre, sounds like, previous accolades, previous gigs, where and when you are looking to play. When using this form, try and fill it out completely before making a call. Type it up and print out the finished script if it will help you.

There’s a time for shooting the breeze and there’s a time for brevity. Phone calls like this are business and should be kept short and direct, this is one way that you can demonstrate professionalism from the start. Even if you’re a seasoned phone talker, keeping the script in front of you when you make the call helps you stay on point and know your goal.

Keep in mind that being polite is always the best policy. Remember that you are just one person and the venue deals with many of you every day. Don’t get frustrated if they are curt with you, just thank them and move along.

This may not be the last time that you talk with the talent buyer. They are going to want to listen to your music and check out your online presence before they make a decision on your band. If you have to follow up multiple times, space the calls out so you are persistent but not annoying.

If you decide to use this form, please comment on how it worked.

Stay tuned for a schedule of how and when to contact venues to book gigs for your band.

Download the phone script to contact venues to book your band here.

• Prairie Cadets
• Montgomery Walker
• Stateside Stereo
• Western Civilization
• The Favorites (Nominated for a Houston Press Music award 2009)
• Wayside Drive
• The Liquid Kitchen
• Glasnost
• Insert Name Here
• Spin Alley
• Joe Stone

The goal of the day was simple: work together to book shows for bands in and around their geographical area. To begin doing this bands should already have 1. their press kit including (bio, photo, previous accolades, upcoming events, previous press) and 2. a home base (band’s own website) and/or outposts (last.fm, myspace, facebook). Without these items, initiating a conversation with a booker is more difficult.

The workflow for booking a show in and around your geographical area is as follows. The initial assumptions were that a band had zero contacts in this geographical area. If you do have contacts in a specific area, that would be the first place to start, before you go through this procedure.

1. Select Dates

If you’re booking a tour for your band with multiple dates, the rule of thumb is 3 months in advance. If you’re booking just a single show for your band in the surrounding geographical area, you should be able to work in a 1.5 month advance.

2. City and Venue

Selecting the correct venue can be the most time consuming step. Luckily, we have compiled a comprehensive venue list for major cities within a four hour drive of Houston. The venue selection process begins with a trip to their website (if they have one) where you should look at the type of music they play, paying special attention to their calendar. If the calendar shows nationally popular artists that align with your genre, great, but it may be difficult to get onto the shows as an outsider.  If the calendar shows mid-level artists in the same vein as your music, you have a better chance.

3. Initiate a conversation with the venue

Start by following the stated booking procedure listed on the website, if there is one. If not, start with an email or a myspace (*gasp*) message to the venue (a mad libs style email was handed out to attendees). Follow up with the venue by phone later that week (a mad libs style phone script was handed out to attendees). The key points are to be polite and to talk to the booking agent / talent buyer. Follow up as needed with the appropriate contact and be persistent but not annoying.

Knowing all of this allows the group to start booking. The slowest process is researching venues and writing the first mad-libs style email but after the first email it requires just a couple copy-and-paste word switches. A couple hours into writing emails bands expressed comfort in booking alongside other bands and that the booking process was simplified to something they feel is manageable.

Coming later this week:

• a comprehensive venue list for Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Victoria/Corpus Christi that your band can use to book shows
• A mad-libs style email for your band to contact a venue to get booked
• A mad-libs style phone script for your band to a contact a venue to get booked
• a to-do list for your band to contact venues and get booked