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.

]]> http://matthewwettergreen.com/2010/01/27/booking-your-band-in-texas-guide-day-5-victoriacorpus-christi-area/feed/ 2 http://matthewwettergreen.com/2010/01/26/booking-your-band-in-texas-guide-day-4-san-antonio/ http://matthewwettergreen.com/2010/01/26/booking-your-band-in-texas-guide-day-4-san-antonio/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:38 +0000 matthew http://matthewwettergreen.com/?p=913

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.

‘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.

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.

‘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.

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.

• 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