My wife and I often host touring musician friends at our home when they
pass through and regularly hear this problem.
My personal thoughts are:
* Large regions of the country would benefit if we thought of
ourselves as an ecosystem that works together to make life easier
for our talent. By that I mean a consistent talent booking
mechanism. In contrast, the reality is one organization books
everything X months out while another books everything Y months out
with X and Y being months apart. The band has to risk that when they
book with the organization that books further out that the
organization they need or want to gig through that refuses to book
talent till months later will take them on when they open their
calendar up for booking. This is a fact of life for the touring band
but a miserable one.
* However you define local and touring (ideally consistent in our
ecosystem), they have different scheduling needs. The absolute top
bands in the country often book a year and a half or more out. Local
bands often think of wiring in their schedule 3 months out. When I
was booking, I started booking "local" bands some 3 or so months
out, but in no case would I book a local band 6 months out. My
experience was touring bands put their tours together at least half
a year out. By booking the touring bands first that took care of
their needs while leaving slots to fill with local talent.
A story for grins ... a popular local 100 year old pop music swing band
(who adapted their music for contra) canceled for January 2020 in early
December (they had double booked). We booked a friend of mine, Robb
Chapman, on keys who graduated from Yale with a degree in music and Rob
Zisette. At winter CDH Rob roped in Noah VanNorstrand to join hm and
Robb. A couple days before the dance I got a call from Andrew
VanNorstrand who was touring with Audrey because a city on their tour
canceled a couple days out. So, at the absolute last minute we had Noah,
Andrew, Rob, Audrey and Robb Chapman (my friend). So odd tour grade
bookings can occur out of the blue! Here's a YouTube from that night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czc3sqUKioE
:)
- Heitzso
Hi All,
BIDA has been thinking a lot about how to make our band booking
process more transparent, predictable, and fair. I wrote up a blog
post summarizing what we've come up with, and thought it might be of
interest to folks on this list:
https://blog.bidadance.org/2025/05/bida-band-booking-timing.html
Emma Azelborn
she/her
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