[Dixielandjazz] gigs

[Pat Ladd]

Hi,
There are often posts bemoaning the lack of music available in a particular area.

There was the annual village  Music Festival in the field next to my house yesterday From around 10 in the morning until midnight. There was a constant stream of local bands/groups.soloists performing all day. Acoustic in the afternoon. Electric in the evening. Some very talented people,some clunkers. Not a whiff of OKOM  all day.Must have been 20 or so performances.
The local weekly newspaper lists 26 gigs scheduled in the next week within a radius of 10 miles. Again no OKOM
Some of these are folk, one or two blues, too many tribute bands although some are very good.Only one disco. Most of these gigs are in pubs and play to reasonably size audiences.
I know there are one or two OKOM gigs around which are not listed in the paper because,I suspect, some snotty nosed kid makes up the reports and he has never heard of Jazz and doesn`t consider it worth reporting.
Seems there must be opportunities to get in on some of these venues.Perhaps we just don`t push hard enough. When I am in a pub I often ask the landlord if they have any jazz nights. There is  no demand for that sort of music is often the reply. That immediately opens up the response, Have you tried?. Why not give it a go?
I got my band into a pub which had no musical history at all on the promise that we would play for our beer once a week for a month and then let the landlord decide.
That resulted in a 7year gig, every Tuesday night and persisted through 3 changes of landlord.

Opportunities exist but they take chasing down

Pat