Great Gigs Around Home - by Jeri Goldstein
Here’s an interesting way to get some great gigs around home.
There are artists who love hitting the road and touring far and wide. And then there are artists who want to sleep at home every night. There are gigs a plenty no matter which type of touring artist you are—you simply have to know where to look.
If you live in a one venue town or even a multi-venue town, reality is, that you can’t fill your calendar with gigs in that venue every night. You’ve got to get creative and you’ve got to do some exploring to find other performance opportunities for some great gigs around home.
I thought I’d mention a possibility you may not have thought of yet.
Does your town have any hotels, conference centers, catering halls or convention centers? Even if you have just one, it could be a virtual gold mine of performance opportunities.
If your town, like mine in Charlottesville, VA, when I lived there or where I am currently in Southern FL, is a destination town, it features tourist attractions and colleges. There are multiple hotels and meeting/gathering options.
When a hotel also serves as a meeting/conference facility that hosts small to large conferences on a regular basis, you will find new groups reserving space months, if not years in advance of their conference. This gives you lots of lead time to research and connect with new potential clients who might just be searching for an entertainment program to include within their conference schedule.
Contact the hotel’s conference liaison or event planner to introduce yourself and present a proposal to work with them. It would be wonderful if they could recommend you. But, mostly you want to connect directly with incoming organizations and businesses who have booked space in their facility. These hotels have events almost every day, multiple times a day. There should be no shortage of organizations with whom you might become involved.
This one booking strategy could get you great gigs at home for as many days each year as you care to work, getting paid well and sleeping at home. I know musicians in New Orleans who have a very lucrative career just working gigs at the convention center.
The other benefit to this idea, is that you actually reach people from all sorts of organizations and companies from outside of your home town market. This gives you additional opportunities to work with these folks in their region for events they may be having for other members or employees of their organization or company, should you choose to do some touring away from home.
Research your community to discover the local hotel/conference center(s). Meet the conference liaison or event planner and present them your materials and programs. Ask to become one of their recommended performers and see if they will give you access to their list of incoming conference organizations. Then connect with the individual organization’s conference planner and make your proposal. This process will keep you booked way into the future with lucrative gigs, access to new audiences, potential CD sales outlets and a stable home life. Give it a whirl to get yourself booked with some great gigs around home.
Have you ever worked with conference centers or a hotel liaison before? What has your experience been in the past? Do you live in a town with hotels or conference centers? If not do you live near a town that might have some hotel/conference centers?
Leave me a comment below or on the Performingbiz Success Strategies Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/PerformingbizSuccessStrategies.
I can’t wait to hear about your success.
Now, Thanks to the Band Curfew from the UK for providing the Biz Booster Theme Music, Future Dance. Check them out at www.curfew.co.uk
And for more career boosting tips, articles, books, resources, tele-seminars and online courses, visit me at Performingbiz.com
