Tour Diary: Day 1 Booking Obstacles

So... here's the thing.  Third time around. Making and taking music seriously.  It's a tough thing... many considerations to, well, consider.  I just finished watching the Austin to Boston documentary... which the only reason I wanted to watch in the first place was to see what other musicians are doing, what they're playing. 

One should keep an eye out for disingenuous non-fiction narrative which purports authenticity.

Hearing Gill Landry's deep, dry voice... equal parts cool and Steven Wright, drawl out the premise of the film and the tour it documented, felt a bit overly slick... the video tour diary of four hard working artists traveling from SXSW to Boston in three VW micro buses... cue the hijinks and comradery that must be what happens on every tour. 

Maybe I'm bitter with my own experiences and the limited success or talent is what burns the broth. 

Maybe.

But I just don't buy it. The performances are good... they sound great and I really liked the musical parts... that's not the point.  The point is that there is the narrative equivalent of fourteen pounds of Vaseline slathered on the lens of truth here.  It's cool that these folks played the shows and bonded... but who the hell booked it?  The production company must have been expensive too... and the venues looked really packed... which again, is great... but not really representative of touring?  Or maybe it is and I've been doing something really wrong. 

That got me to thinking about the whole tour diary thing... I'm pretty bad at it, but I'd like to try something new... guiding you, or whoever will actually read these posts, through the process of booking a tour.  So, this tour diary will include the booking of the tour...

Booking shows/gigs is one of the most challenging and  humiliating experiences I tend to repeat time and time again... because, I want to play my songs to people... I want to meet them, I want to travel, I want see my country and the people who live here.  Also... I need to make a little money.  Let me emphasize "little."  Break even... fingers crossed.

First things first.  You may say to yourself, "Why don't you just get a booking agent?"  The harsh reality is that we're nobody and no booking agent would ever come close to working with us... we do not command an audience... we haven't sold many records... and we're not very photogenic... so... we're really kind of the underdog just to start with... So get it out of your heads that this is going to be easy at all... some bookings are easier than others...

In March 2016 June Star will be releasing a 7" single, "You're Still Here," on Future Oak Records, a small record company out of Pittsburgh.  Fredrick, who owns and runs the deal, has a wonderful manner about him... thoughtful and quick... he will be hand cranking some sort of vinyl lathe machine to produce the records... pretty neat.  His girlfriend?  Katie will develop the artwork... snazzy.   

So this stuff will hit the streets in March, Andy Bopp and I will be going out from 3/21-3/26 to support this record... but we are also booking a much longer tour 6/20-6/29 heading farther out to places I have yet to book... trying to expand our reach.  Andy is also releasing his new solo record in late April... I think...

So... here's the preliminary itinerary:
6/20  Columbus, OH
6/21  St. Louis, MO
6/22  Denver, CO
6/23  Fort Collins, CO
6/24  TBD Lincoln, NE
6/25  House Concert, Chicago IL
6/26  TBD, Detroit/Ann Arbor MI
6/27  TBD, Cleveland OH
6/28  Purple Fiddle, Thomas WV (Confirmed)
6/29  Home?

So, you notice that the Purple Fiddle has already been confirmed... which is great... because it's a cool venue, June Star has played there a bunch over the years and John, the owner and booker is pretty great... musicians love to play there and the sound is always great... so that was kind of an easy show to nab... Columbus will probably not be a huge problem either... we have made some good friends there and people seem to like us!

St. Louis has always been weird.

Andy Bopp is responsible for the Colorado shows... so we'll see how that goes, he has some good contacts and that should fall into place... and the house concert in Chicago is with a June Star super fan... seriously... she knows songs I've stopped playing in 2000.  That's all good... but the areas I will direct your attention to are Lincoln and Ann Arbor... Detroit I can get, but we want to expand outside the Motor City limits...

When I book a show I usually do an initial search at Indie on the Move... they have a great database that you can search by state, by city, by capacity... anything over 100-150 I get a bit nervous... need I remind you that we're really nobody... and playing a venue with a fifty person capacity looks good when only 15 people wander in... but what are you going to do?  So, when searching Lincoln two places looked interesting--meaning viable-- Duffy's (250 capacity) and Crescent Moon Coffee (50 capacity).  We can see where this is going... so I reached out to the coffee place...

Meanwhile, with the search for a venue in Ann Arbor... there used to be the Blind Pig... but I think that is way way gone... I played there with Timmy Bracken and Dave Hadley in 2011... it was about -1,000,000 degrees... I didn't have to comfort of crying for my tears froze in my eyes before they met my cheek.  However, there was an all night diner that had a hell of cheese steak sub after the show... but I digress... So I found a venue called the Yellow Barn... intimate acoustic music... sounds pretty good.  I sent my usual affable, humble booking email... side note:

I know bookers and venues get all sorts of stupid emails from people whom must be delusional about their death metal klezmer band,  Jewdicial Steel, playing for an small crowd of folks in a Midwestern Folksy venue... but let be known... that I research carefully before I suggest that June Star should be booked at a venue... I don't want to waste their time nor mine. 

That being said, Karl got back to me pretty quickly and said that venue was booked for a theater partnership and that there is no music there from May through June.  Fair enough... but you know... working as an English teacher for twenty years... you pick up on some subtleties... and something kind of said, "we're not interested..." and of course... I'd rather someone just say, "No... we don't think you're very good... or just not a good fit for us..." I countered in my email saying... well... we'd like to keep our options open for the fall... if that is something we can work out... I haven't heard back just yet... which brings me to another side note:

Wait time.  Oh... that's a tough one, isn't it?  Instant gratification be damned... I usually wait forty-eight hours before I start to feel that slight edge... you know... you've imagined that they get their email on their phones... or in their back manager office/closet...  so why haven't they gotten back to you already?  I try not to let it bug me too much...

But there... there it is... that's the impetus behind this post and effort to talk about these things... my insecurity... the completely contrived and self constructed conversation/scenarios I create in my mind that says, "You're just not good enough..."  debilitating and just the worst type of self torture I can administer to my heart.  Inside, twisting and untwisting, a nervous knot convulses at the imagined judgment... and my unfailingly puritanical self-judgment confirms what probably isn't true... I'm a hack... or worse... the English teacher cliché... can't make it on talent so that he teaches during the day then leads a sad farce on stage at night, thinking he is more than what he is... maybe so.

I'm looking at that paragraph... and man, I have some issues...

But that's just part of the process... the reality is this... writing is the fundamental expression of being a human... the finer points what ever spiritual or cosmic presence that forms our souls or our auras or our energy or our love or our shame... the writing is human evidence.  To that, I feel my most human when I'm writing and when I'm performing for another human being... there I dig deep... so deep that I'm afraid that if I make eye contact I will melt and slip between the floorboards that barely hold me up to begin with.  Whether or not it's good... it is not clichéd or romanticized... it's real.

Then again, a close friend of mine once said, "Bad music is like bad sex... sure it's bad but it's real to the people doing it."

I'll let you know what's happening with the booking junk... Lincoln and Ann Arbor... those are my goals...

Grimm