Booking Agents

[FunkyE9th]

I've been playing the bars in my area for a while and there seems to be that one or two booking agents that seem to have a hold of the majority of bars in the area. So you have to go thru them to get a gig. It's funny when you mention their names to other musicians they don't react very well to the name.

Just curious...do you have the same thing in your area?

-FunkyE9th

[DavidE]

For the most part, yes.

[ac15]

Sure, but you can still gig regularly without ever using one (and make more money per gig).

[Blueshound]

Agents are the scum of the earth. Of course, IMHO.

[discountsounds]

FunkyE9th, you and I are both in the Chicago area. I remember being in high school and booking gigs with that snake-in-the-grass Joey DeMarco and I can't believe he still is at it 20 years later. I remember working with Chris Valentine at Entertainment One a few times and I thought he was OK (at least a step up from DeMarco). Nowadays, I try to book with clubs in the city or independent clubs in the burbs. Whenever I see United Talent Coordinators, I run away screaming.

[FunkyE9th]

I try to book with clubs in the city or independent clubs in the burbs.

We are trying to do the same.

-FunkyE9th

[Ethan]

The label that my band is on has a booking agent, used only for booking tours. Me and another band on the label approached him about helping us set up a small tour for spring break and he was kind of a dick. So there's my first experience with a booking agent.

[SirDouglas]

we actually have a really good agent... if he schedules another band or ours and one of us has to pull out the owners graciously take one of the other bands and pays the same rate... they dont like when we pull out and have to pay "our" rate but do because we draw a huge crowd... we must have a good agent JOY!

Randy

[shankyboy]

I had a booking agent for several years when I lived in San Antonio and she was great. She did pretty much have the corner on the market, but she always kept me busy and she got me a lot of customers for my sound & recording services as well. My day job keeps me too busy to hustle gigs on my own, so for me, a booking agent is necessary if I want to play on a regular basis.

Now that I am living in Phoenix, I have yet to find a booking agent. Imagine that, a city twice as large as the one I came from and it is more difficult to get gigs or find an agent.

[Steve Haynie]

I am familiar with agents in the comic book business... promising artists to publishers before they have a contract with that artist... getting one rate from the publisher and telling the artist it is less while keeping the difference skimmed off the top and getting a percentage of the rest...

Rather than a booking agent, I have a story about someone who did about the same thing. There is a bitch in my area who thinks of herself as having talent, so she gets gigs under her name with a band put together from available musicians. She hired a bass player I know that has played professionally for years. Not realizing that he knew everyone in the business, the cunt told the sound man at a club not to tell the band how much they were getting paid because she told the band they were getting much less. The sound man was a friend of the bass player, so he let the bass player know the band was getting screwed. There was a showdown after the show with at least the bass player leaving the band. If the woman had just said she would pay a flat rate for musicians she could have gotten away with the money. Instead she tried to tell everyone they were a band, sharing what was made. Somewhere out there is an agent who has played money games like this.

[Matt Mattson]

Somewhere out there is an agent who has played money games like this.

I'm shocked! Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!

She was just a run of the mill con. The internet is helping to even out a lot of this garbage.

[BillW]

In the last 5 years we've had 2. They are pretty much the biggest names in town (for the level/venues we play at least) You can get gigs w/out them - but it's easier (for us at least) to go with them. That being said - I find it rare to find an agent with whom you don't have to constantly remind who their client is - namely the band as well as the venue. They want more gigs more money. To some that might sound like heaven but to us it was like pulling teeth to have him just book us 3-4 per month. Now we're having the same problem with our current guy.

I guess it's a fine line. But you'd think they'd want the 2-3 hundred $ per month instead of zero $...

[Jones]

I stopped using them the weekend we played Winona, MN on Thursday, Rock Island, Illinois on Friday and Fargo, ND on Saturday.

[MCChris]

I stopped using them the weekend we played Winona, MN on Thursday, Rock Island, Illinois on Friday and Fargo, ND on Saturday.

How's this for a backbreaking stretch?

Wed: Cheyenne, WY

Thu: Salt Lake City, UT

Fri: Spokane, WA

Sat: Missoula, MT

Sun: Billings, MT

Mon: Sioux Falls, SD

Ultimately, we were the morons who agreed to it, but we were told we'd make good money. Of course we were lied to. We actually made it to every gig, even with two vehicle breakdowns.

[guitarzandstuff]

I wrote a piece on this subject a while back... here it is:

Editorial

Clear Channel! Most of us know the name and I’m sure all of us musician/songwriters know what they do. In a nutshell, they are mostly responsible for what we hear on the radio today all across the country. In each market, they own multiple radio stations and dictate what you hear everyday. This is why you hear the same stuff over and over no matter where you are or what mainstream station you are listening to. There are others such as Viacom and Infinity that do the same thing but this is neither here nor there. The point I am trying to make is that we are subjected to what these media outlets want us to here, period!

The local music scene… well let’s break it down…

Let us equate the tri-state “A” rooms with the radio stations mentioned above. This is easy to do as they are both a vehicle for hearing music, albeit one live cover material, the other pre-recorded original material. Just try and get your original tune played on mainstream radio no matter how good it is, a weeks pay says you won’t even get that far… they won’t even listen to it! If this equation fits, local clubs and local radio, and it does easily, we’d then have to start looking at management firms and local talent agencies as the Clear Channel and Viacom of the local music scenes. They have the “A” room and most of the “B” room circuit locked down just as Clear Channel has Philadelphia radio locked down. You get what they want you to hear! And just like our current state of local radio, it all sounds the same. The same songs over and over by the same bands over and over. Interchangeable members all playing interchangeable songs. Hell some management firms even go as far as actually putting these bands together just as N’Sync and Menudo were put together.

Is this what the people want of what they are being fed? A good room will always draw people as long as a good band is playing it. Why not mix it u a little? The irony here is these management firms probably have original acts on their rosters and are spewing profanities left and right at Clear Channel for doing the exact same thing they are guilty of doing to the local cover band scene. Locking it down for only a select few… Have you ever noticed when a new band forms out of members that were once signed to these agencies, these “new bands” are instantly dropped into the “A” rooms? Nice!

Ok, let me stress in stating that I’m not saying there aren’t good bands out there signed to management but just as in the original scene, there are great bands out there that are not signed and therefore do not get “played”. Do not get into these “A” and “B” rooms. Do not get the attention they sometimes deserve because if the local “Clear Channels” etc… “They don’t fit the mold”, “They play different songs than the mainstream bands”, “They don’t have the look”, “Not the flavor of the day”, the list could go on… But in truth, it’s not the people deciding this, it’s the agents! Again as in its original counterpart, given the chance, they’d blow a lot of minds as to how good and entertaining some of these “unsigned” bands truly are.

This is just my opinion and as in any editorial, is not intended to reflect the opinions of anyone but myself. Perhaps others will agree, perhaps not! Rant Mode Off!

Frank Schaffer

Musician / Songwriter

[mattb]

We have a couple of big name booking guys that handle alot of bar around here. Although, when we play a gig the bar managers or owners tend to come up after our set and ask us to call them to book us so they can go around the booking guys.

-MattB

[Blueshound]

I stopped using them the weekend we played Winona, MN on Thursday, Rock Island, Illinois on Friday and Fargo, ND on Saturday.

How's this for a backbreaking stretch?

Wed: Cheyenne, WY

Thu: Salt Lake City, UT

Fri: Spokane, WA

Sat: Missoula, MT

Sun: Billings, MT

Mon: Sioux Falls, SD

Ultimately, we were the morons who agreed to it, but we were told we'd make good money. Of course we were lied to. We actually made it to every gig, even with two vehicle breakdowns.

Now, that is what I call routing!

[HamerHokie]

Sure, but you can still gig regularly without ever using one (and make more money per gig).

You can't make that generalization. Some places, the best rooms are simply locked up by booking agents, and the only ones left are the ones too cheap to them to bother with.

Around here, you can get some rooms that aren't controlled by agents. Decent ones. Not so decent ones, too. But you hit a ceiling on price soon enough. If there's money to chase, a booking agent has already chased it.