Venue Booking / Talent Buying
Phil Simon
2002-06-28
Ever since I began a music career in booking, I have felt that it was important to try my hand at buying talent for a whole venue. The vast majority of my experience in booking is in band representation, and the idea of booking a whole venue appeals to me. This way, I can experience what dozens of bands expect in terms of their booking process, as opposed to what I expect and develop with my own clients. I can be exposed to the different styles and priorities of different agents. But, perhaps most importantly of all, I can increase my network and contacts to include virtually any band or musician under the pretext of booking them at this venue, or just gaining information about them for booking and talent buying in general. As a venue talent buyer you are in the exact opposite position than you are as an agent for a band. You are holding the cards on the available dates on a calendar, which are the goals of a band’s agent, to acquire space within those dates. As the talent buyer, I am representing the club, attempting to protect their interests and to treat their money as preciously as I treat my own. It has always struck me that being a talent buyer for a venue, you are either gift giving or begging. If a band is developing and still isn’t bringing in big business for the room, you are bestowing upon them the gift of a chance to develop. If a band is successful and bigger in your market, you are in the position of begging them to consider playing your room if they may have outgrown it. This may be an extreme view of the situation, and not exactly accurate. My experiences booking venues have been brief and varied, and continue to this day. When I was just out of college, I booked a small bar in Eugene, OR for about 8 weeks. The place was called Max’s, and at the time it was the oldest continuous music venue in the state, or so we claimed. It was a dive, though. When I got in an argument with the unpredictable owner when I wouldn’t give her the calendar I had booked until she paid me the $100 for my first month, she threw me out of the bar and fired me. I wasn’t exactly surprised, as she was known to be erratic. Thus ended my talent buying experience for about 5 years. Later in the 90’s, I had revived my booking agency, again in Oregon, and had talked my way into booking a room in Bend, OR called Roshambo’s. The address had several venue changes over the years, and its reputation was varied, and this was another less than perfect venue. Bend is a ski town that is also a popular summer stop, so I felt that the room had potential. I filled the first month with bands that were regulars at the venue, and tried to get a grip on how this was done. But by the second month, I was feeling like I had my stuff together, and lined up a pretty decent run of bands that were considered the most popular in the region. The schedule looked really strong, and I booked my first national act, the Samples. That show went really well, selling out and helping to pay my salary for the first two months I worked there. The rest of the month, however, did not fair as well, and the failure of the shows night after night was helping me to realize that the venue’s reputation was not something that I could necessarily repair with one sold out show. Roshambo’s squeaked out another month and a half or so, and folded under the pressure of mounting business debts. Again, I had a multi-year delay before I ended up landing another venue. There is a network of venue bookers across the country, bound by the feeling that they are helping to prop up the music scene in their communities. As much as any other job within this scene, the efforts can be daunting and the monetary rewards can be limited. Clubs are like developing bands, and they have lives of their own, and a learning curve that needs to be quick and efficient to keep these large businesses afloat. A nightclub is really two businesses. A bar and / or restaurant, and a concert promoter rolled into one. In order for a nightclub to exist, it has to be very successful in both of these businesses. The talent buyer is acting as the entertainment director for the music promotion part of the business and their role is very important to the total success of the nightclub. The successful candidate will have: a working knowledge of the technical aspects of venue’s production capabilities, the ability to act as a publicist for the venue and have an extensive network within the local media, as well as a knowledge of concert promotion and an extensive network with both the regional and national talent available to the club. Depending on the club, the talent buyer / booking agent may also do a variety of other tasks including the following: operate the door by collecting cover and checking id, running the sound and or lights including set up and take down, acting as bar or restaurant manager by placing liquor and food orders, and scheduling of all nightclub staff. None of these tasks are actually talent buying or concert promoting, but people who are talent buyers also find themselves filling those jobs, as well. Starting about a year ago, I felt that I really needed to get into venue booking again to help to expand my network and reputation in the Northeast. I started putting the word out to the venues that I was working with regularly, and awaited some signs. I flirted with a number of places, and put additional pressure on places that I thought were looking more likely to have an open position. About five or six months into this process, which I considered a soft sell occasionally to people on the phone, and sometimes a well placed letter or email to someone, I interviewed at a club called the Muddy River Smokehouse in Portsmouth, NH. http://www.muddyriver.com I had been calling that place on and off for a year or two, talking with the manager instead of the agent who was working there. I had always considered the booking that they had there at that time to be sub-standard and unprofessional, and I told them so. I let them know that I had a lot of great acts that I could book through the room, but that I felt that I couldn’t trust their agent, and wanted to work with their ownership and management directly. I indicated that I was interested in working for them in a greater capacity, and they called me in for an interview. I came equipped with my resume of experiences in the independent music scene, and a clearly outlined plan for how I thought that things could work. We talked for a while, and it was a decent first meeting. I followed up every two weeks for the coming months, but didn’t hear anything. I was finally called in for another interview, more of a negotiation really, three months later. We struck a deal and agreed that my shows would start about ten or twelve weeks later. I waited a week or two to exchange paperwork with them, and made sure that they let their current agent know what was happening, and I set to work. Because my experiences in the past were so fleeting and, frankly, failures-, I wanted to really examine what I was doing, and set out to do the best that I could. Here is how I view the job: The booking agent position for them had several main responsibilities: Contract a regular music schedule of entertainment monthly. Act as their representative to new bands and agents as well as maintain relationships that the club had garnered over the years. To publicize the calendar and help to create excitement about the club to local and regional media. And to create actual printed materials in the form of calendars and descriptions So far we are in the midst of the third month of shows that I arranged, and I am getting used to the job, somewhat. Next month we will examine the specifics of doing the job, and how these tasks break down.
Phil Simon is the talent buyer for the Muddy River Smokehouse in Portsmouth, NH and the owner of Simon Says Booking, and handles clients like ulu, Uncle Sammy, Psychedelic Breakfast, Soulwork, Guest, Max Creek, and others. You can email him at info@simonsaysbooking.com
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