So I’d just like to get this out of the way: I’m in a rock band. I’m not picking cotton. I get it.

I mention this fact more than occasionally in these blogs because I want you to understand that I understand that the trials and tribulations of a rock band pale to the everyday hardships of Jack Paycheck. I also mention this with fair regularity because every so often someone new stumbles on this blog and it’s important to restate this fact, even for those of you who have been here for a while.

When I wasn’t in a band, I was curious about Schooner and Jett Rink and The Rosebuds and The Sames. How do you book shows? How does that work? What were your first shows like? What was it like in other towns? Rock bands don’t have any duty to tell anyone anything, naturally. But I think that if the information is presented, I don’t know, maybe people would quit having to reinvent the wheel every time they say to a couple of their friends “Hey dude, wanna start a rock band?” This is why those Secondhand Freespace Forums can be so important. It’s why I consider this area to be a supportive scene: if you ask around, people that have been there help (if they can). It’s at least part of the reason that I write these things: before I was in a band I was curious about them and someone else might be curious about mine. I mean, if people want to be an electrician, there’s information out there. If people want to be a turd farmer, there’s information out there. Ya know?

Then again, maybe I’m doing a disservice because figuring out how to do all this on your own is part of the ‘thrilling experience’.
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Ross Grady runs an excellent music calendar at trianglerock.com. It’s a one-stop shop for seeing what rock shows are coming up in the particular week. Ross has a database of most (all?) of the bands that have ever called Raleigh, Durham, or Chapel Hill home. It is a great, great site. I, and most of the people I know, check this helpful site out regularly. In the calendar section, he sometimes has sporadic descriptions of some of the bands that are playing that week. Ross’s descriptions are brutally honest and (at least concerning Red Collar) have offered me up some terrific brain food with just a few words. Here’s what he said about Hammer No More the Fingers the other week:

“Hammer No More the Fingers probably played your prom, your cousin’s wedding, your office party, and the punk rock house show down the street last week, so I’m assuming you’ve seen them by now”

-Ross Grady at Trianglerock.com

This is a perfect quote for some things that I’ve been thinking about with Red Collar and some of the challenges we will no doubt be facing in the next few months. I want everyone to know that the reason that I bring it up here is not to gang up on Ross or defend HNMTF but to merely explain why bands do things the way they do: why they play the prom, the wedding and the office party and then the punk rock house show all in one week.
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The Blind Book

Booking is a rewarding but excruciatingly difficult part of being in a band. It’s rewarding because when you send out ten emails to ten venues in Philadelphia over the course of a month and finally (FINALLY!!) someone responds with “Yes, we’d love to have you” well… the cup runneth over with joy. I think it’s what my Dad feels when he has a successful putt but hopefully with a more successful proportion than I enjoy (remember: low and slow, Dad…low and slow). Over the course of two months leading up to the show, I’ll correspond with Philadelphia about line-ups and directions and start times and end times and flyers.

In the beginning of my booking experience, what wasn’t immediately obvious is this venue in Philadelphia has this same conversation with me AND the other three bands on the bill. AND THEN they have this same conversation with all the other bands that are coming to their venue that month AND every month after that. Some of them do this for years. From RDU…Jen, Justin, Kym, Mouse, Glenn, Frank, Derek, Mark, Chris M., Chris T….bless all of you. Part of my job in Red Collar is to find the Little Rock and Denton versions of all of you. After months of dialog with these bookers and venue owners from hundreds of miles away, I genuinely get a kick out of meeting these people face to face. Hopefully we have a good show at their venue and they are interested in having us back and thus it ceases to be a ‘Blind Book’.

Finding the venue is one thing but finding a local band to play with you is a whole other issue. Some venues will ask around for you. However, most of the time the touring band has to find the local band. See, you try and find the best matched band for you but if the band is the size of say Hammer No More the Fingers, well it’s not easy to get them to play on a Tuesday. But at least Hammer responds to query emails. Most bands don’t. If you are in a band, do the rock community a favor: quit being an asshole and respond…even if it’s with a simple “I’m sorry, we can’t play”. Admittedly, a lot of the bands that write to you and to us are (more often than not) terrible. This is the nature of myspace. Yet one day it will be you that is doing the asking and through careful analysis and years of scientific formulations and studies, I can say with all certainty:

Karma’s a bitch.

I know, I know. Your band is deluged with myspace message after myspace message. There’s simply not enough time in the day for you to get back to all the adoring fans AND all the bands desperate to bask in the shine of your Rockdom. Well, if you have the time to read these blogs, you have time to respond with five words to a soon-to-be-cynical bassoon player who has the unenviable role of being ‘The Booking Guy’ for his shitty band from Tuscaloosa. RC tries very hard to respond to everyone. If we haven’t, I’m sorry. You slipped through the cracks…

…or you suck really, really badly. (Beth note: no one sucks that bad, dear. everyone deserves a response.)

Booking is an instance where I’m sure being on a label is an absolute advantage. Being on a Name Label means someone has already sorted through a bunch of crap and found you as opposed to bands that aren’t on a Name Label. Without the Name Label, you may be a diamond in the rough but you’re still in the rough and lots and lots of bands out there are in the rough too (and by ‘in the rough’ I mean ‘in a huge stinky pile of dog shit’). Bands of any size (Red Collar included) are more than willing to play on a Monday if the band on the Name Label needs local support because “Hey maybe they’ll pass along our album to so and so”. In my opinion, perfectly reasonable thing to do…if that is one’s goal.

With successful booking, there is an immense sense of accomplishment. Successful booking is no doubt rewarding. Key word in those two sentences: ‘successful’. You put a lot of work into getting that one show and then if you should happen to have a great show, it’s wonderful when people ask you back. Unsuccessful booking however? Urgghh. Essentially the whole process is difficult because of two things.

Reason Number One: Hearing “No.”

Well, not really hearing “No”. Not exactly. Ideally, I’d love to hear “No”. In a perfect world, I’d cuddle up next to a “No” fireplace wearing a Snuggie with “No” written all over it, sipping hot cocoa from a mug with “No” on it and think to myself: “Life is good”. I’d bathe in a bathtub full of sweet sudsy “No” every day compared to what actually happens for us.

See, we don’t hear “No”.

We hear:

Nothing

The reason we hear nothing at all is because in the case of venues, we are the tenth band that has emailed the venue that day about that particular date and just isn’t time enough for those people to write everyone back. Understandable. Red Collar is booking totally blind. They don’t know us from any other no-draw numbskull band that wants to play at their venue. We don’t have any connections or any friends in the towns we are booking. From the conversations that I’ve had with other touring bands, we are not uncommon.

Here’s what I do: I go on myspace and find the zip code of a city that we are going to play. I plug that zip code into the myspace search engine and peruse the bands and venues that are listed. I try and find bands that we sound like and then I see what venues they are playing. I will then write to those venues. I tell these venues what we sound like and who we have played with. I mention that we are touring to support our new album* Pilgrim. Booking an eighteen-day tour is a pain in the ass because you have to play Baton Rouge on Wednesday because you have to be in Houston on Thursday. If Baton Rouge doesn’t work out, maybe…just maybe…New Orleans will. But playing New Orleans is going to make the ride on Thursday just a little bit longer and a little more tiring.

14 out of 15 times, no one responds with anything, let alone a “No”. It is irritating but again, understandable. Glenn at the Local 506 used to send out a stock email that said something like “The 506 is a 250 person venue. Try and build up a following in the town before playing here. You should play The Nightlight or the Cave or Jack Sprat” and it listed out their contacts as well as the contacts of publications in the area to promote the show. This is above and beyond what we ever get from other venues. Not sure if he still does this.

Blind booking challenges one’s patience and endurance. It is, in my mind, a test in a way. Do I believe in this enough to keep on doing this humiliating and aggravating process? It’s scary how many times the answer to that isn’t always what you want it to be. But after a good night’s sleep, a decent band practice, and hopefully one or two helpful promoters/bookers/venue owners, you find a way.

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The Friendly Book

One approach to avoiding The Blind Book and the inevitable rejections is by making connections with other bands by inviting them to Raleigh, Durham or Chapel Hill to play first. That way, when you have to book, you don’t have to go through the frustrating experience of being ignored. People are already friendly with one another. All of us in Red Collar are fairly new to playing in bands on a serious level so we don’t quite have the connections that maybe people assume.

Swapping shows with other bands is an absolute fantastic way of doing business. If I had to do it all over again, this is exactly what I would’ve done from the very beginning. This method has only one drawback:

You play locally… a lot.
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I had mentioned before that there are two reasons the process of booking is difficult. The first reason is Hearing No.

Reason Number Two: Saying No

Referring back to the trianglerock.com quote in the beginning of this blog:

Here’s why Hammer No More the Fingers probably played the prom, the cousin’s wedding, the office party, and the punk rock house show down the street last week. My guess is the prom was with a band from Asheville that might be able to get Hammer a show on a very lucrative Saturday nonetheless. The cousin’s wedding was probably for the drummer of a band from Pittsburgh that let Hammer crash on their floor. The office party was more than likely a benefit show that a long-time fan wanted them to play.

And the punk rock house show?

Well hell, they didn’t get any door money at the prom, the cousin’s wedding and of course the office party. Because the guys in Hammer are stand up fellas, they gave up that money to traveling bands and a charity. They played the punk rock house show because every so often it’s nice to put a twenty or two towards the loan for the production costs of the album you recorded a year ago.
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My guess is that this is why you see Hammer No More the Fingers and others playing locally so much. People helped them out in the past. Hammer could set up a show for the out of town band with some friends of theirs but then Hammer ends up ‘owing’ the local band anyways.

People ask them and it’s hard to say no. It’s really, really hard to say no when people have told you no or implied no over and over and over again for months or years.

You know what’s easy?

Telling bands “You should say no more often”.

It’s very, very hard to say no to someone who helped you out by playing a Monday in Kentucky and now they need a favor and you have to help them out on a Tuesday. I’ve heard (but don’t know if this is true) that the band Stephanie’s Id from Asheville started a festival to pay back all the bands that gave them favors and this grew into a larger festival. It’s a great idea.

I’m not sure what the solution could be for us. Should we post it on our myspace? Post it on trianglerock.com somewhere? Post it on alt.music.chapel-hill? I don’t know. We’ve done a shit ton of touring the past couple of months and met a lot of great bands. Some of these bands we’ll owe and others are simply great and they are bands that I will want to help.

I’m not sure what to do. I think I might do some solo shows or something or acoustic or whatever but I’m not sure if that’s fair.

Suggestions?

*If you’re reading this, Pilgrim’s more than likely not new to you but my guess is that if the promotion of a ‘Known Album’ by a ‘Known Band’ is about one year then the promotion of an ‘Unknown Album’ for an ‘Unknown Band’ is probably two years. Two years. Yes. Two Years. That sound you just heard is a groan from my band mates and our local fans.

Jason