Advice From The Road: Sometimes It Is About Who You Know

by Mary Shaw | July 9, 2009 | Add Comment

Here’s another guest post from Michael S. Armentrout – music fan, lover of King’s X and future concert promoter.

This is the final installment in the series about things that typically go wrong and how to best respond. Again, the audience is newer, less experienced artists. The goal is to share experiences so that others would benefit. At the end of the day the focus is on the songs and the performance of those songs. The catchiest hook ever created means nothing if it cannot be shared with others. We have covered sound issues and how others have responded. Were you able to add something to your repertoire? We covered knowing your environment and responding to the unforeseen. Were you able to glean useful information from that? The final piece speaks to the skill of creating genuine rapport with others. You never know when the success of the gig boils down to who you know…

Collette McLafferty – collette@thewinkwinks.com
Lead Singer – edibleRed
http://ediblered.tv/
http://www.myspace.com/ediblered

After touring for years in cafeterias, prisons (Ok only one…Riker’s Island), parties, dive bars etc., we finally got a shot at opening up for our first national act…a LEGENDARY 80’s band…

The show was last minute… there were many details to coordinate and it literally became a full time job setting up the show. I even got the band good openers in other markets and on our own show.

About 36 hours before the show, I got an email from the venue saying that there would be no time to have edibleRed play the show. Earlier in my career, I would have cried and not played the show. But I decided that come hell or high-water, edibleRed was playing!

First, I emailed the venue and explained that we would not have time to “unpromote” the show and that we had so many fans who were expecting us to play. I also gave suggested that the other opener condenses their show so we could play a short set.

Then I wrote to my contact at the national act and nicely explained that after all the work I had put in that not doing the show just wasn’t an option. They agreed! The national act then told the venue that if we were not playing, neither were they!

I never actually told the rest of the band that we were getting bumped until the show was over…I was confident we would play no matter what. And we were going to show up ready to play despite the circumstances.

And the gig was awesome! I ended up bonding with the lead singer from the band and made some great friends that night! If there is anything I can pass on to other bands… learn how to stick up for yourself and do it nicely!

Eric Whittington – ewhittington@piercom.com
Band – Exit 314

In February of this year, we were set to play a corporate function at the House of Blues in Houston, Texas. A couple of days before the show, our bass player had a heart attack and was, of course, totally out of commission. Then, the day before the show, the drummer’s wife became ill and had to be hospitalized, so we lost our drummer less than 24 hours before hitting the road to Houston from San Antonio. Amazingly, we scrambled and lined up a substitute bass player and drummer. Fortunately, the drummer had played with some of us before so he at least had a sense of our style. And the bassist turned out to be extremely talented and versatile, so the show was fine. We found the bassist as a referral from another bassist who had filled in for us several months earlier. So the lesson here is to maintain a network of musicians and phone numbers so you can quickly find someone to fill in. I’m still amazed that we were able to find TWO substitutes for a road trip on such short notice! Keeping all those phone numbers handy really paid off!

Can you relate?

Did you see yourself in any of these situations? Were you able to improvise, adapt and overcome like the artists in this article? Or did you handle the situation differently? If so, share your wealth of experience and knowledge so others may benefit. All artists experience challenges like these, it is how one responds that dictates growth as an artist as well as a human being.

Thanks for being part of the conversation at Serve The Song. We have a simple comment policy (with thanks to Tim Ferriss) - critical is fine, but if you’re rude we'll delete your stuff. ’Nuff said.

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