How to Get Gigs for Your Band

Once your band has been practicing for a few months (and hopefully your other members had a certain level of playing experience before you got together) and you have worked up at least, say, 40 songs - both original and covers - you will probably want to get a gig somewhere. I mean, what good is being in a band if you don't get to play live and go berserk rolling around on stage flailing on your guitar while spewing strong beer out of your mouth to impress members of the opposite sex (only joking).

Of course you could play at parties for friends - and that is probably the best way to begin - but say you are past that stage and ready to get some professional experience and you would also like to acquire some money for your efforts (even though a hundred bucks split four ways won't even come close to covering the cost of your guitar strings for the last few months) and you would like to have a few people other than your personal friends and family hear your band.

For a few of the bands I was in, to get gigs we would simply drive around looking for bars, go in and ask the owner if they wanted to hire a band, and most would give us a gig automatically if we told them we had already performed at other bars in the general area. Other bar owners would ask to see a "promo-pack," which is usually a press kit containing a photo of the band, a one-page biography, a demo tape, a list of songs, press clippings, etc. (No band I was ever in had a promo pack.) And on other occasions I would simply look up bars in the phone book, call them up and ask if they featured live music, then tell them I was in a band and name some other bars we had played at, then ask if we could set a date for a gig. And they would agree. Simple as that. It worked many times. I got plenty of gigs this way, although we never got paid very much.

I should mention that these methods probably only work for bars that want you to play other artist's material - I was mainly in cover bands, although we would always work in a few of our original songs. In bigger cities I realize there are clubs where they want bands to play only their original music, but I was never fortunate enough to play in a club of this type. We always played four, 45-minute sets, usually from around nine PM to one AM, but occasionally until two in the morning. The most money any band I was in ever received was $365, but usually our pay would only be around $100 to $200.

So don't do it for the money at the beginning.

Do it for fun.

And for the love of the music you're creating.

Of course if you get lucky and establish yourself as an excellent band to work with and get some type of fan following, no matter how small, you may work up to getting paid a fairly decent amount for a gig, compared to the time you put in: a few thousand dollars.

If you are planning on being a cover band (which you should do for at least a while in the beginning), you will need a good mixture of songs. Blues, pop, rock, metal, (country - if you can stand it) and also try to get a couple of current songs off the radio, the most popular material possible; whether it be rock, metal or whatever your taste, you should learn the songs people are currently listening to and singing in their cars. Usually these tunes will not be too difficult to learn by ear, or the tablature for the songs will appear in the current guitar magazines.

Source:

"How to Get Gigs," How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007