So you wanna be a show producer?

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a REVOLUTION you can dance to.

Source: BOTH_EDSF

Tour:Smart and Break the Band by Martin Atkins

Get the fuck out of bed!!

I am an entertainment junkie. I am so obsessed with it that I’ve taken a go at it professionally, but mostly as a behind the scenes guy. I could go on here about this cool record or that big show but I’ll save that for a file I can email you called “WhoGivesAFuck.pdf.” I wish I could claim that last idea as my own, but I can’t. I’ll explain in a minute. When my band, Heart of Orion, got asked to play at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco I decided to take myself to task and do this show right. This four part blog series is that story.

I’m armed with an abundance of chutzpah and the holy grail of touring - Tour:Smart and Break the Band by Martin Atkins. Not only is it highly insightful and useful, but it didn’t hurt that I either personally knew or played a show with five of the artists he talks about. I can relate to his point of view better than some business lawyer who wrote a college textbook. Oh, wait. Tour:Smart is a college text book. Dope. I’m not going to give page numbers and all that nonsense, just know that most of what I’m about to cover is all spelled out in the book and I don’t claim to have figured any of this out on my own other than how to apply it to this one show.

A couple months ago we get an email from Bottom of the Hill asking us to play. This place is a big deal, so we skip the first offer because we just weren’t ready to perform with our new line up. But when the offer came again a few weeks later, we jumped on it. Some of my favorite artists have performed here - this is great. My first order of business is to create a theme. With the help of my fiance and amazing research librarian, RhondaK, we come up with “a REVOLUTION you can dance to” and the beginnings of a press release to be hacked to death. All of us are broke musicians, so my next order of business is to find some sort of sponsorship. I sent out a myriad of proposals to strangers but I ended up turning to my friend and major festival producer, Douglas Kolberg of Green Zone Productions. Enter Earth Day San Francisco 2012. I’ve worked on several street teams for Doug and one day got an invitation to participate with his production team for EDSF. I’m now sitting in a room full of influential artist types with neat credits to their names - what a fantastic networking opportunity! I pitch the idea of using my show as a fundraiser for the festival and the team gives it a green light. I leave the meeting understanding that some scratch may come my way to help cover promotional expenses so I go straight away to making a flyer.

I assigned my bandmates tasks too. We needed contacts for as much local media as possible and someone to stay active online, so these get farmed out to them. Christmas break is happening and I hop a plane to Florida to surprise my family. I may have just finished a third bottle of champagne when I get an email from the venue asking me to fill another slot for our night. This is San Francisco - notoriously hard to get an audience to come out and see you. I’m worried that my own band is going to pull in fifty people to the show let alone another band's worth! Should I try to get a bigger band to play with us? Would that help? What’s more important? My band’s pride or the venue selling alcohol and then asking us to come back on a better night?

What would Martin do? I re-read the chapter on venues and the article about Bottom of the Hill and promoters and nothing. Nothing that related to this situation. At least, not that I could find. So I emailed him. I wasn’t sure what kind of action was called for by his “fuck yeah!!!!!” but in a post on Facebook to me he says, “get over the old school insecurity bullshit...” I ran with that. Hard. Again, I send a spread of emails to various bands who I thought could fit in. Funny enough, none of the local bands even responded. Gary Zon from the Industrial band Dismantled was my first pick and was pretty stoked when he was agreeable. I had done a remix for him a little bit back and knew about his Electro-Pop project Aerodrone that would be a great fit and we agree on a guarantee with an advance to cover gas from LA to SF. I saw him perform with Frontline Assembly at the Red Devil Lounge last year so I know he can put on a show. I was viewing it as buying into a tour but only for one night. Oh, did I mention we didn't have any money? This was going to have to be creative.

Theme - check.
Event - check.
Cool out of town band - check.
Sponsorship - check.
Invaluable research librarian - check.
Being vetted by people with neat titles - check.
Sharing a stage with a band I’d love to work with - check.

Next come press releases, social media, street teaming, flyering - the list is huge. Too much for one person. But when I came back to the west coast after Christmas everything started going weird.

Next Week: 20% Music 80% Promotion.