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The following is a guest post from Eric Wolford, and Indie musician from California with a great blog on the directions that West Coast music is taking.
I just recently started following Kim’s Music Before the Money blog, and myself being a blogger, albeit a beginner, I’ve got a lot to say on the topic of surviving in the industry as a indy artist. I live in the cowboy capital of the world a little hole in the wall called Oakdale California. Don’t ask how it became named as such,(i believe it has something to do with how many rodeo titles the city holds) I don’t really know. As a musician, times are hard. Especially if you don’t have regular paying shows, or are backed by a label.
The average signed musician makes about 300,000 usd a year, and out of that only 6% comes from record sales. Everything else is from playing shows, and getting people to buy your merchandise, and publicity. If your not on a major label, the odds of you pulling in that kind of income is slim to none unless you have a job that allows you to hire a good manager and lawyer. For me, money really isn’t the goal here. Us honest musicians just want to share our music with the masses, and hopefully be able to live comfortably in the process.
I suppose I should move on to what I was gonna write about. I get sidetracked a bit easily if you couldn’t tell. I play lead guitar In the band Etched In Stone. Were based out of Modesto California, and while this year has been a busy one, unfortunately we don’t have much to show for it except for the added experience, and a slightly larger fan base. Id like to talk about the many issues with playing live shows in the Central Valley of California.
I’d like to address the subject of the promoter crisis. Promoters in northern California don’t do their jobs, I have yet in all my dealings with them found one that holds true to their word. When you want to put on a show, or they ask you to play at any of the venues they promote for, if you’re prepared, and have a contract that ensures your payment, they look at you like your an alien. Not because they don’t think a contract is necessary, but because they have no intention of paying you any amount of money. When they do in fact guarantee a kind of payment, they find a way out of it. Either by disappearing mid show, or coming up with the commonly heard, and totally BS excuse, “i’ve got the money in the car, or at home.” On top of that, when they say there going to promote, what they should be doing is going out to the streets, talking to people, and using any possible methods within budget to get people to come to the show. There is no way your going to get a good crowd if you use Myspace or Twitter exclusively to do all of your promoting, and that’s an obvious truth.
I admit promoting isn’t an easy job, but i’ve seen better jobs done by bands themselves. For instance there’s a yearly underground metal showcase called Project independent that had hired one of the areas supposed top promoters Mike Vanick to find a venue and promote for the show. The concept of project Independent is to bring Metal heads together to pick their favorite up and coming band out of a montage of a good number of bands nation-wide. In order to progress past the battle of the bands show, which showcases the previous years winner as well as the local bands that sign up for the contest, you need a few important aspects which are pretty much general knowledge if your in a band. Merchandise, good music and a minimum 3 track demo, solid self promotion skills, syncopation, and a good band chemistry. The winner receives 50k in equipment, a management contract, 5,000 for merch and recording and a 90 day tour.
Getting back to the main subject, they hire Mike, a guy with a horrible reputation with bands in the area to find them a spot. To make this as quick as possible, Mike took the money he was paid and ran. He never called them, and bailed on the show completely. As you can probably guess, the owner of P.I. was irate. With only a week and one day before the show was supposed to happen he had no venue, no bands, and no tickets sold. He called my band mate trying to get an idea of where he could find Mr, Vanick so he could wring his neck, and instead found that we were hungry enough to play this show that we would do all of the legwork. I suggested this to Brian, and he talked to the owner saying “give me an hour. Ill get us a venue and ill find some bands. Were playing this show. “
A week of sleepless nights later, the project independent van shows up with last years winner, Eminent (a great band I must add) and they were shocked. We singlehandedly managed to bring about 60 people, along with 5 bands out to a little hole in the ground in ceres called the Workshop. This place oozed metal. Imagine bands playing in a place that you wouldn’t dare enter out of fear of being attacked by someone resembling the guy from Texas chainsaw massacre. Needless to say, they loved it.
The point of this is that a band was able to bring a larger crowd, and a better vibe in a week than most of he areas promoters would be able to do in three months. THREE MONTHS! Mind you that none of us are pros, and 60 people may not seem like much, but in this area your lucky to get 10 people to go to a show that has never heard of your band if you go through a promoter unless of course your also playing with a nationally touring/signed band.
I must say, the California’s Central Valley needs honest, and dedicated Promoters badly. I have thought of taking this a step further and becoming a promoter myself, but with what I’m currently doing for my band, I barely have time to sleep let alone go out and put shows together so that people and bands can say, this has been an amazing experience. And bands can walk away with the little hard earned cash that they deserve.
If you enjoyed this little snippet, I encourage you to check out my own blog at adventofdmg.blogspot.com its a chronicle of my adventures as a Death Metal Guitarist, and while i’m a bit behind in my posts, I look forward to hearing your comments on this, and my other posts.
This is Savage Eric of Etched in Stone. Thank you.