Getting Gigs

This book is the result of thirty-plus years of paying my dues as a professional musician, singer and recording artist, and a career path that continues to this day. This experience includes traveling extensively throughout the United States with acts ranging from hard rock bands to being a solo artist with an acoustic guitar, singing originals, to becoming, in my mid-forties, of all things, a professional Elvis Impersonator, based in Los Angeles.

This book approaches the subject of gigging from the grass-roots level, aimed at “no-name,” unknown local performers who are ready to go out and play locally and start making money doing what they love. It also allows for growth by showing you how you can take your act from a local level to a national one, and beyond.

I’ve picked up quite a few insights, tips and tricks along the way that I know a musician or performer of any age in any pursuit of a career in performing live music can use to great advantage. Although the kinds of music being played change, as it always has, the rules of the game remain fundamentally the same. But the playing field itself has undergone radical changes.

The live music business has changed tremendously in the last twenty years. The shift from live club music to more specialized venues has made the market for live music much more competitive.

In the seventies and well into the eighties, a musician could work six nights a week at the local Holiday Inn or Ramada Inn lounge, even book a cross country tour of the lounge circuit and gig for as many months as they desired.

Sadly, it seems, those days are over.

A vast number of lounges have closed down due to economics, drinking laws, insurance liability, and just plain bottom line cuts. This slide began back in the mid to late eighties, and I have not seen any major shift back from this market condition. But that does not mean the end.

Market conditions, the economy, shifting social trends, all play an important role in any given business. And the music business is after all, a business selling a product.

Technology has played a big role in the way people get entertainment.

People have more options on where to spend their entertainment dollars. With the advancement of home entertainment systems and computers, digital satellite television and other diversions, as well as the trend toward a healthier lifestyle (non-alcoholic), it seems the lounges have seen their heyday.

In many ways, the going is a lot tougher than it used to be for the gigging musician. National “name” acts, backed by corporate dollars and conglomerate-owned radio stations, dominate the local markets at any given time, making it even harder for a local act to attract a following.

Advertising has gotten so expensive as to be often cost prohibitive for a local act to attract people to their shows, and flyers announcing such shows have to be distributed in such large numbers as to make them only marginally cost effective.

However grim the outlook on playing local clubs, there are many opportunities where the well-informed and motivated musician can find or create work. This book explores and outlines these opportunities, and provides a roadmap to follow.