[Dixielandjazz] Gigs - Advertising

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

This weekend I booked three gigs.  One was for my big Dixie Band and it paid decently.  This gig was at one of my regular Senior homes.  I was pretty surprised that they popped for the big band and extra bucks so I guess my advertising worked there too.  The Saturday gigs were almost back to back.  The early gig was a new client who had gotten one of my flyers that I sent out a couple of months ago.  They really liked the band and so I'm pretty sure I now have a new customer.

The later Saturday gig was referred to me by another band leader who I used on the gig.  He wasn't able to put a band together.   It was at a winery about 20 miles from town and kind of out of the way.

When we got there another band was playing.  The Bass guy was good as was the drummer but they had a sax player who couldn't seem to string two notes together in a row that made any sense.  The winery paid these guys $100 for the band while they paid me $600 for my front line.   Cornet, Soprano and Trombone backed by my computer.  We also got some advertising out of it.

There's something wrong with this picture.  Even though I thought the other band sucked they were certainly worth more than $33 each.  The audience seemed to like them.  The only thing that I can attribute it to is simply stating a price to do a gig.  Apparently those guys hadn't a clue.  I guess they think that it's all about music.

The people that owned the venue wanted a Dixie band but it was pretty obvious that the crowd wasn't into that very much so I switched off and did everything, 50's rock, big band, bluegrass, country, smooth jazz and a few in between.  It turned out pretty well and I think I will be able to do it again for them.

I try very hard to give people what they want and correctly reading a crowd is really important.  It boils down to advertising, good working relationships with other leaders and developing repeat business.  

By the way I have been squeezing more out of the clients with the gas price crunch.  They understand it's costing us more and I have been getting more from them than it's costing us.  All you have to do is ask.

I tell them that I'm having trouble getting guys to play because of the increased gas prices and that it's costing me more to hire good people.  I also tell them I really don't want to downsize the group but if they really can't afford it I will give them a smaller group for the same price.  So far no one has opted for the smaller group and are kicking in another $10-$25 per man.  I may not be able to always pull it off but you have to give it try.

Larry
StL