3. Getting a gig

What most people want as soon as they form a band - some decent gigs. All well and good, but don’t rush it until you’re good and ready. While there’s something to be said for developing and learning as a band through doing plenty of gigs, you don’t want to start out so abominably bad at your early gigs that you develop a bad reputation and people steer clear of your gigs.

The good news is that Oxford’s doing pretty well for venues and for promoters, so whatever kind of music you play, you should be able to find a suitable venue or a promoter willing to give you a show. The local contacts page on this site gives you a good starting point for venues and promoters.

3.1. Finding the right promoter

First, take a look around the different promoters/venues and decide which would be best for your band. See what sort of bands different promoters have put on, and approach those suitable. For example, there’s no point approaching someone who puts on metal bands and very little else if you’re a live funk band.

What isn’t a good idea is to send exactly the same e-mail to each promoter at the same time - what’s even worse is to send it to all of the promoters CCed into the same mail. Promoters like to be approached personally and individually for the most part, and you won’t do anyone any favours by asking them all at once.

If you’ve got enough time, look on local music websites, in local fanzines if you can find them, and work out which venue/promoter would work best for you. Ideally, and this should be more than possible for local shows, go to a couple of gigs by that promoter and see what they’re like. If you’ve got friends in other bands in Oxfordshire, ask them who they’ve played with and what their experience of those nights was like.

Be patient and don’t expect a miraculous tour to appear overnight - for all the decent venues and promoters, there is still an enormous number of bands. Appreciate that it may take a few months, or you may not get any joy from a particular promoter. Some only do one show a month so it may be hard to fit your band in for a while, while others promote every week, or even more often, so are probably a better bet if you’re after something sooner rather than later. Keep at it, follow the guidelines below, make some good contacts by talking to people, and if your music is good, then good things will happen.

3.2. Sending a demo

So you’ve identified the promoter(s) you think would like your band - now to let them know about your band. Keep the initial mail brief - asking for a postal address, stating that you’re interested in getting a gig, saying when you’re available, and giving a brief description of the band is enough. Now isn’t the time to strike with an eight page document of press cuttings.

Never e-mail an MP3 to a promoter (most are too tight to get broadband and will NOT thank you for clogging up their e-mail for an hour), or send links to MP3s - promoters are too busy/lazy to go chasing after your music on the internet. After all, it’s you who wants a gig, isn’t it?

Once you’ve got a postal address, send over a demo. If at all possible, try to send it to a specific, named person, not just to the venue or to ‘the promoter’. Include a personal note along with the package, even if it’s just ‘Dear XXX, here’s our demo. Thanks for listening’ or something like that.

Only send a CD, and limit what you send to something like three or four songs, or fifteen minutes or so of music. Promoters certainly won’t need any more than this to decide if they like your music or not. Make sure, at the very least, your band name, a contact and a phone number and/or e-mail address is on the CD itself - blank CDs separated from their sleeve or covering letter end up as coasters.

If your demo is exactly that, then don’t call it an album or an EP. A demo is just a set of recordings to show off your band - if you go around billing an imperfect, unmastered and unreleased recording as an album, it’s asking for trouble.

You don’t need any flashy artwork on the sleeve - the music’s all that’s important, so track titles, the contact details again, and your website URL will be enough. It’s helpful to include a list of where you’re playing live over the next month or so, particularly if you’re after a gig in Oxford and are playing around the town soon anyway.

Include a press release and a note saying again, who you are, how to get in touch with you, and what the demo’s for - you don’t know if the promoter also writes for five different magazines in his or her spare time, so could be getting all sorts of demos for different reasons. Check your spelling and grammar - while there’s no need for impressive artwork or huge press packs, there’s also no need to come across as amateurish, and no excuse for misspelling the promoter’s name. No covering letter of any sort suggests you’re not really bothered about getting a gig, so why should the promoter bother with your CD?

• Don’t send photos of your band with a demo - this is asking for it, especially if they’re actual photographs taken by one of the members’ mums.
• Don’t send your lyrics, any kind of ‘manifesto’, or explanations of what your songs are about, if you want to be taken seriously.
• Don’t include glitter, confetti, badges, stickers, promotional pens, flyers advertising gigs you’re doing 100 miles away from the promoter’s house, or anything extraneous in the envelope. These will fester in a corner of the room/go straight into the bin/annoy the promoter so much they won’t listen to your CD.

On the plus side, all this work has purely been to get the CD from the envelope into the promoter’s CD player. If the music’s good enough, then once they’ve heard it, they’ll be in touch.

3.3. Writing a press release

You might think that, given that promoters see hundreds of press releases, you’d have to make yours stand out from the crowd by doing something a bit different. This isn’t the case, unless the ‘something different’ simply consists of putting something halfway decent together. Think of the press release as your band’s CV to some extent - it should look professional, contain all the necessary and useful information, and no more than that. Promoters often don’t have a lot of time to trawl the internet looking for press clippings etc. for your band, so anything you can do to help here will be of benefit. Try to put together your own short, well-written description of what you think you sound like - this ensures that it’s also a description of your band as you’d like to be portrayed, so you won’t have to worry about being billed as something you really don’t agree with!

• Don’t try to be funny, clever, shocking, or anything except clear and to the point.
• Don’t claim that you are going to ‘revolutionise music’ or anything similar.
• Don’t include details of previous bands people were in (unless you used to be in Fugazi or something), ages of band members or other pointless biographical info.
• Use short, clear quotes from independent sources (several different ones, if possible), which make your points for you, and credit them.
• Include your most up-to-date contact details.

Take a look at the ‘sending a demo in for review’ section for more on this.

3.4. Chasing up the demo

If you’ve not heard anything after a week, try e-mailing just to confirm that the promoter has the CD. Failing that, most promoters wouldn’t mind you trying once more after a month or so (after all, your CD could still be sitting in their big ‘to listen to’ pile, waiting to impress them), but don’t chase it up any further. Chances are, unless they’ve said anything else about being booked up until a certain time or promising you a gig at some stage, they probably don’t like it.

Persistent chasing can really annoy a promoter, and put them off your band entirely. Promoters, for the most part, also don’t like to have to say that they dislike your band, so don’t force them into it!

Don’t phone a promoter unless they’ve specifically given you their number and said it’s OK to call them. For a start, most of them have jobs and won’t appreciate you ringing them at work to ask for a detailed breakdown of your demo.