How to Be a Headlining Rock Band

Video Transcript

Hi, this is David Jackel on behalf of Expert Village and I'm here to talk to you about building your own bill when you're booking a show. Now, why do you want to build your own bill? It's a lot of work and there's a lot of stress involved. Well the reason you want to build your own bill, rather than getting it to someone else is, that then, you have control and you can put together the ideal bill to suit your band. For example, let's say you want to play in town and you have a pretty good draw, but you want to play in front of a larger audience. Then, what you do is get in touch with a band that's larger than you and offer them a spot on a bill that you're putting together, offer them the head-lining slot and you open for them and then you pick the other bands that are there as well. So, you have an ideal spot and you get to mooch off of someone else's popularity. But putting together a bill is a big pain because you have to contact all the other bands. You have to contact the venue. You have to negotiate time and pick something that works for everybody. And no band wants the opening slot, and if it's a really late gig, no band actually wants the head-lining slot, because at that point, everyone else is gone home. So, it involves communicating with everybody and a lot of back and forth and a lot of multi-tasking and a lot of negotiation. So, if you're good at multi-tasking and you're well organized, then this is a good thing to do. You have to get on the phone. You're going to get out your calendar. You're going to go online and you're going to spend a lot of time going back and forth, keeping track of what's going on and you're going to want to keep your calendar with you at all times, because you're going to be getting calls and you're going to want to be able to give someone an answer in the next couple of minutes. Building your own bill isn't ideal for every show, because it's a lot of work and it isn't really necessary if there are other bills out there that you want to be on. It's good to build your own bill if you're doing something special. If you're having a CD release party or you're doing some other kind of important performance where you really do need to have control. So, if having control is important to you, then it's worth taking on that extra responsibility.

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