Premier Rock Forum

Tonight at a meeting for our very nascent record label, a "consultant" (read: very drunk employee of a well-to-do radio PR agency) suggested we try to find a booking agent to help us out with our band's fall tour, which will be our third tour in all.

I for one wasn't too thrilled with the idea. DIY has been my jawn for a long, long time, and if possible, I'd like to keep it that way. I think we could avoid paying another dude more $$$ for a service we could easily take care of on our own, however more haphazard it may be. Am I being a purist for purism's sake?

If you've got the connections and the energy and the time to book a tour, by all means do so. Most people take on a booking agent because they don't want the hassle or they want to get in to bigger and better venues (read: no more basement keggers). My old band flirted with the idea because we wanted to get a few higher paying gigs on the road to finance recording a new album, but in the end we also had to take into account that we were introducing a new person into our little world we had created and that would be one more person to possibly misunderstand our "vision" (yuck). This band I knew had an agent that was trying so hard to get them "the big gig" (to fatten his commission check) that they ended up paying almost no gigs at all.

But as far as a tour goes, I would think one needs all the help one can get.

I love our booking agent. He's really great.

Paying him is no big deal since he gets us better paying shows than we would get without him. And he's not a scumbag.

Charles

Seaside Lounge wrote:I love our booking agent. He's really great.

Paying him is no big deal since he gets us better paying shows than we would get without him. And he's not a scumbag.

....yet.

All cynicism aside, I think one of the most underused aspect of being in a band is multitasking. You have two/ninety members of a band...dispersing of duties is needed, especially come tour time. One band I was in was especially functional. Eliot was a social guy: booker. Todd was good at finances: accountant. I had a good back: roadie. Ok, we were all roadies.

I don't think "purism" is for it's own sake. What you are doing is carrying on a system of self-determination. And now, there are hundreds of people who have been diy-ing for years, and would be more than happy to give you all the knowledge they have.

I could care less whether or not a band chooses to use the services of a booking agent, but in my band's case, the concept of booking agent is definitely not crap. We booked months and months of our own tours over a three year period, which meant that one of us needed to spend three of four months of our time solidifying a one-month long tour. The amount of time consumed gets obnoxious after awhile. More power to people who don't mind devoting that much time to the booking effort.

Everyone in my band has full-time jobs and many other commitments to attend to when we're not touring. We're already spending three to four nights per week practicing, writing new music, etcetera, and to think that spending hours a day booking is something any of us wants to attend to, well no.

I'm sure whether or not a booking agent is worthwhile depends on the booking agent. Our's books our shows the way we want her to book them, of course she has her suggestions and ideas, but the bottom line is always the band. A meager ten percent of our guarantee is our booking agent's fee, so considering that our "guarantee" is generally $100.00 to $200.00, for the amount of time the agent spends on our tour, $10 to $20 per show is well worth it.

Before we had a booking agent, we'd often leave well attended shows with $30 or $40, and we'd inevitably wind up shelling out personal savings for gas money, expensive van repairs, and come home in debt.

NOT CRAP.