Here’s what happened to me in January: I had a gig down in Lakeville on January 9, where I played to a full room and got five names on my mailing list. On January 12, I was the feature at the Front Street Coffeehouse in Salem, got five names on the mailing list, sold five CDs, and got a song request, via email, before the gig from someone who isn’t even on my mailing list. On January 23, I split a night with Rob Mattson at a new venue in Upton, with another full room of people chatting, snacking, and enjoying the music.
Big deal, you say. How many people was it altogether, sixty? Conquering the world sixty people at a time is going to take a while, you say. And you’d be right. But I’m not trying to conquer the world.
A month or so ago, there was a really interesting conversation on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to, about the economics of booking local acts. Turns out – surprise, surprise – that club owners who have to watch their bottom line are kind of reluctant to book local acts for big-ticket headline gigs because, well, people can see them as a local open mike feature for peanuts. And it’s not just locally – a friend of mine told me this past week that when she does an upcoming gig in the Midwest, she has an exclusivity clause in the gig contract that prevents her from playing nearby.
In other words, there are two very different paths through this business. There’s the high-profile, get a manager, live in your car because you can’t play locally, keep moving because you can’t play a big gig too near your other big gig, path; and there’s the other one – the one that most of us are on, whether we want to admit it or not.
I am never, ever going to headline at Club Passim on a weekend. Not gonna happen. Even if I had a big-shot album with tons of airplay – also not gonna happen – I wouldn’t get that gig because I play too often, and want to play too often, for too little money, in my own neighborhood. Sure, I could get a vanity gig there – I know for a fact that the club at least used to be available for rental, on any night, for enough money – but I’m never going to get a legitimate booking.
In any case, the “conventional wisdom” path to a gig like that is mostly a fiction. It’s a rare performer that builds an audience and reputation from open mike appearance, to open mike feature, to opening slot for a noted artist, to one’s own headline slot. The path almost always stops somewhere along the way, for all sorts of reasons, mostly related to the difficulty of building an audience. My friends at the open mikes are my friends at the open mikes, but musicians, by and large, barely have enough time to play out themselves, let alone go to hear other musicians much. And as for building an audience through opening acts? Well, turns out that many headliners – surprise, surprise – don’t want people opening for them who are going to overshadow them, and if you’re not noticeably better than the opening act, no one’s going to remember you, assuming they were listening in the first place and not simply watching the clock politely to see when your twenty minutes would be up. And that’s assuming you can get the opening slots.
But there are other ways to be a musician. They’re harder, and lonelier, and more frustrating, most of the time. But there are rooms like Somethin’s Brewin’ in Lakeville, where people just come to hear the music, and listen, and come back after the break and listen some more. You can make it easier by playing regularly with someone, as I do with my percussionist, or split a night with someone who’s a friend, a good musician, and a natural publicity hound, like my pal Rob Mattson. But there’s legwork involved, and lots of rejection, and cold calls, and gentle prodding, and all sorts of nitty-gritty business skills which have little to do with your performance and everything to do with ensuring that (a) the venue owner trusts you, and (b) that trust is justified. And if you find the right rooms, and you have the opportunity to entertain ears that you’re not responsible for bringing, and you’re good enough to keep those ears listening, well, if your primary goal is to have ears, you’re on top of the world.
Over the last year, I’ve focused – pretty hard, for me – on finding these other gigs. Some of them have been wonderful, like the gig at Somethin’s Brewin’. Some of them have been pointlessly wonderful, like the gig at Licorice & Sloe in Newburyport, where the owner loved me but closed down a month later. Some of them have gone less well than I thought, like the gig at the Java Room in Chelmsford where the owner pretty much told me not to bother calling again. And then there were the comical disasters, like the gig at the Harvest Cafe where, literally, no one came. But here’s the remarkable thing: now I can do it. I can pace a two-hour show and feel like I own the room (even an empty one), every minute. And I couldn’t do that a year ago.
This is why my January was so rewarding. I presented three really great shows – high energy, great songwriting, charming and funny stories – in three venues I hardly ever play at. I got more new names on my mailing list in one month than I’d gotten in the previous six – and I have to think that it’s in large part due to all the work I’ve done, learning how to be a memorable act. It’s not gonna get me a Friday headliner at Passim – but if someone dropped me into that room from Mars on any given Friday night, the people there would get a hell of a show.