Booking Blog

Getting started


This week I have started the process of getting my band, Lore's, next tour booked. My goal for this was to make something bigger and better than anything we had done in the past. With my main goal of starting to play outside of our own state, Ohio, and expand more to the midwest area of the United States. My first step was to pick a time frame and get that confirmed with all the members of the band. We decided on aiming for the end of May - Beginning of June. This will give us enough time in advanced for contacting venues and to finish up our next album, so we can line up the marketing between the two. With these dates in mind I was able to determine what areas I wanted to go and when. I ended up aiming for two weekend legs of the tour, one going in the southwest direction and one going in the north east direction. I think this is a smart move because there is no point in driving hours to play to an empty room on a Monday night, and it gives us a break inbetween shows so we as a band can get used to playing multiple days back to back. 


Gathering Data

My next step that I have been working on is getting all the information I need together to start booking shows. I spent many hours over the last few days finding venues and bands from all over the country. I have been inputing this information into a spreadsheet to create somewhat of a living document for me to pull information from for this tour, and in the future when we expand to new areas of the country. I have also decided that I am going to aiming for Nashville, Lousiville, and Cincinatti for the first weekend of the tour, and Columbus, Cleveland, and Detroit for the second half. With that decided I am going to start sending out emails to venues and bands and seeing what sticks. giving them the timeframe that I talked about in my previous post. Another tip that I have discovered, is when contacting a new venue or a new band. I always try to find something specific about them to compliment, whether its a guitar solo in a song or a mural painted on the wall of the venue. I have found that this makes the email more personable and that I am more likley to get a response if it doesnt feeling like I am just sending out mass emails. 


Sending Out Emails

Over the last few weeks I have been hitting the emails hard sending out many emails everyday to new venues. Total I have sent out 68 emails to venues in Columbus, Cleveland, detroit, pittsburgh, nashville, louisville, lexington, indianapolis, Cinncinatti, Dayton, Bowling Green KY, Fort wayne, Knoxville, Johnson City, and Lafayette. The image above is one of my basic formates for emails to new venues, this formate has gotten me the most results, this email in particular is for the show we are playing in Lexington! My approach was to really just email everyone within reasonable distance and see what sticks where and when.  This is a tough part of the process because you can put in hours and hours of work, but at the end of the day the result is entirely in someone elses hands, and you might get a response as short as, "no." Which I guess is better than no response at all! However, it is not all for nothing, so far I have 4 confirmed dates in new cities and new states that we have not yet played.

Outside of this I am aiming for Knoxville on May 24th, to fill that one day gap. And Aiming to end the whole thing here in Columbus on June 1st. At this point I have also started sending out follow up emails to the citys that will fit in this schedule the best. So far my biggest help in this entire process has been the kindness of other bands. Yes it is helpful to have the venue confirmed first. But so many bands from those local scenes obviously know the scene better and have better connections there than we do. So I have recieved countless tips and pieces of advice from other bands. Which shows how helpful the music scene is. People often think the heavy music scene is full of mean guys but in reality the heavier or "scarier" the band is the more friendly they are, because at the end of the day they care about the music and want to see it grow. 


Lining up the dates

Since my last blog post several more things have started to line up for the tour, while others have fallen through. Fortunatly, I got two more dates booked. I have filled the gap in our schedule on May 24th and landed a gig in Knoxville TN. This fits in perfectly with that leg of the tour, meaning weekend 1 is fully booked, there are just a few more details that I have to figure out in terms of other bands playing on the bills. The bill for Nashville is complete with Lore, Deadrunes (Nashville Local) and WitchPit, a larger band that is coming up from SC to headline the show. Knoxville is lined up With Lore, Dybbuk, and a third band that the venue is picking. My question right now is I still need 1 or 2 bands for the show in Lexington.  

Another important update is that we have our Columbus date lined up for the tour as well. We fortunatly have booking Spacebar, which is a place we have played before and enjoyed playing there. This also landed on the exact day that I wanted it to, June 1st. So It will be the last spot on the tour. We have done this in the past and ending in Columbus makes that show much more sucessful and tends to be a bigger event. For this show I am thinking of asking Deadrunes, the band from Nashville, to come up and play that date with us.  A side plus to ending is Columbus, is that we can all just go home after and relax. 

However, a set back I am currently facing is that the date that I had in Pittsburgh does not seem like it is going to work out. The venue I was planning on has not responded since, so I am back to the Drawing board for May 30th. Right now I am aiming at indianapolis or Detroit. So overall I am still moving forward with this booking process. 

Another thing I am working on specifically for our Columbus date is some local partnernships to try and really bring it home with that date. I am currently talking to a local glass blower, who is interested in making a couple of custom Lore themed pieces that we will auction off at the event. I initially was thinking of just one piece, but he suggested the idea that we make a smaller and a larger piece for different prize levels. I think this will be a really cool and unique aspect to this show that will encourage people to come. I am also talking to another local artist to does analog video synthesis, and is wanting to put up some cool visuals behind us while we play, thatll be reactive to the audio. So overall this process is going pretty well and I am learning a lot of new things about the industry. 

Logistics


One of the first questions that everyone asks (including all of us) is where are we going to be sleeping during this time.  There are a couple of options that we have been considering, the most obvious being a hotel or motel of some kid, but the most obvious answer to that is, its most likley going to be too expensive. So for the first weekend,  right now we are thinking about actually finding a campsite (with a shower) of some kind. We have been wanting to do a band camping trip anyways so it could be a fun option. I think we will likley be able to camp near or next to where we park the van to minimize the risk of anything being stolen.  For the second weekend, it is likley that all of these dates will be semi close to home, with the cities so far being Columbus and Kent.  Over the winter we did an Ohio weekender, where we came home everynight after each gig and just slept in our own beds. This worked out really well for us and I would really like to try and make that happen for this tour as well. If indianapolis works out, we would easily be able to do this because the quickest way to get from indianapolis to kent is through columbus. So overall I am not super worried about where we are going to be sleeping for this tour.