February 2010

Sorry for the lapse in posts, but yesterday and last night were pretty insane. I worked the booth by myself in the afternoon, and then Fred and I worked the last marketplace until midnight, then had to pack up the Reactable and all of the materials, as the convention center closed at 3am. We barely beat it – they literally locked the doors behind us as we piled our stuff out front.

I’m about to take my cousin out to lunch at Legal Seafoods at the Prudential Center, in thanks for putting us up for the week. It’s a selfish ploy, though, because I have to have Legals at least once on every trip to Boston. Baked scrod and clam chowder await me. Mmmm.

All in all, I think the weekend was a great success. Certainly the Benefit Concert went about as well as it could have, and we’ll wait a month or so to judge the value of the NACA investment, if we’re able to book a bunch of shows from the contacts we made… but it felt like it went really well. We actually did book two shows on-site, one in September at a school in Western Colorado, and one in early May at a school in Pennsylvania. We’ll work with both schools to see if we can build in a block with other universities in their areas, to make the trips as worthwhile as possible.

We had really, really good feedback from the management companies who came back by our booth to talk with us, a couple of them asking to have dinner to chat about ‘opportunities,’ etc. – we didn’t follow up on any of them, but it was nice to see the level of interest. Across the board, they all said that they couldn’t believe that we were 100% self-represented and that it was our first convention. They said that it looked like we’d been doing it for years, and/or that we had some sort of management driving the bus… so that’s nice. We definitely worked hard and really thought out how we could make a solid presentation without breaking the bank, etc. One management rep came over to me and said, “so – tell me – how is it that no one is representing you guys yet? How is it that no one has signed you yet?” I said, “well, for one, we’re relatively new – and for two, we’re doing well on our own, so we haven’t sought it out.” He was one of the ones who later wanted to have dinner.  🙂

Speaking of dinner, it’s time for some lunch. I fly out to Colorado tomorrow, stopping in Chicago en route… so I may post another update here or to my blog, if anything interesting comes up. Thanks for reading about our trip… the next one is planned for April, I think, so we’ll be back to the Road Journal then.

Hasta for now. I’ll leave you with a nice photo submitted by one of our new friends and fans at Fitchburg State in Massachusetts:

Greetings again from Boston. Another day of learning the ropes and making LOTS of connections at schools around the country. We’ve met so many cool students and advisors over the last few days, with a wide variety of musical tastes, booking goals, etc… but we seem to be getting along well with everyone, and we’re starting to attract attention from some of the management and booking agencies here. Pretty funny. We’ve had three of the bigger name agencies come over, look at the Reactable, look over our booth, ask us if we’re “really self represented?” … to which we respond, “yep – we do all of this ourselves.” At which point we consistently got a, “hmm. do you have a card and a CD?” from the agency representative… and at which point we replied with, “we’re out of CD’s – we gave them all away. but you can hear stuff on our website.” And then they give one more look over everything, maybe ask us another question, and then we have to go and talk to more of the kids who are coming by. The more I think about it, the less the idea of a management company sounds appealing at all. I can honestly say that I think we’re doing better on our own here than if we weren’t here and instead were being represented by an agency… our faces being one of the dozen photos hanging on the wall of one of these management agency’s booths. For one, we’d have no control over the outcome, and for two, we wouldn’t be meeting any of these students, some of whom have become friends of ours over this weekend, swinging back to our booth every day just to hang out and visit.

So – we’re skipping tomorrow’s block booking meeting, and probably the rest of them for the convention. We’ve gone to two of them, and we haven’t seen a single band or musician get booked… only comedians. Keep in mind that there are some “big name” artists performing every day at this event, too – there’s a big stage and auditorium where 2,000+ audience members (the students) watch “showcasing” acts perform 15 minute sets, plug what booth # they’re at, etc. We haven’t seen a single one of these acts get a block booking. I’ve asked around, and the logic makes sense… comedians are WAY easier to schedule – you can stick them at lunch in the student union, or on a Tuesday night, or whatever… whereas with a band or music act, the schools only have them on Friday/Saturday nights, or perhaps for a SpringFest or other specific event. So anyway, we’re not giving out any more forms and we’re not going to get up super early to get to the block booking meetings… we’re going to focus on meeting as many people as we can, really getting to know them and what kind of music they’re interested in, and then follow up when we’re back in Colorado to actually book the shows.

Okay… more later… and our strategy will probably change again! Anton leaves tomorrow for Colorado, so I’ll be working the booth by myself during the day tomorrow, and then Fred will join me for the evening marketplace session (where the students browse all of the booths for an hour). Should be fun…

We’re about to go grab lunch (Brian, Anton, Fred, and I), but I figured I’d post a quick update first. Maybe more info than you’re interested in, but I know some readers out there were wondering what, exactly, this convention is about.

We were up early and at the convention center at 8:30am to attend the first of our “block booking meetings”… and we learned plenty. These block booking meetings are intended for schools to get together and book an act as a collective (schools in the same geographical area), giving the act a nice routing/mini-tour of sorts, and in return, the act charges less per night per school. If an act books 3 shows in a 5 day run, or 5 shows in a 7 day run, all in one state or region, the per-event charge is lowered in return for getting a week’s worth of work without a ton of driving. Sounds great, so we got up early after a late night, and headed to the meetings. We split up, each of us heading to a different region’s meeting (Northeast, West, Central/South, etc.), and waited for our name to be called. They got to “S”… and then… no “SoundRabbit.” Hmm. After the meetings, we asked the organizers why our name wasn’t called, and evidently we were supposed to give out some “block booking forms” all day yesterday. Oops. They only call the names of acts who have forms submitted from interested schools… so, for example, if Boston College wants to book us and potentially go in on a ‘block’ with Boston University, Northeastern, and Wellesley College, they’ll fill out one of our forms and submit it to NACA, who then calls our name at the meeting the following morning, giving schools the opportunity to form a block and discuss the details amongst themselves and us. So… we could have stayed in bed this morning. Oh well. Today we’ll work on getting as many forms out as we can, and we’ll hit the next meeting in the morning and hopefully book some blocks. Okay, time to go grab some clam chowder. More later…

Happy Valentine’s Day, all! I guess for those of you west of the Mississippi, we’re a bit early – but it’s all good if there’s chocolate and caramel involved.

Today was quite the learning experience for us, but I think we came out of it in good shape. We left my cousin’s place not knowing exactly how close the Convention Center was, and the good news is that it’s SUPER close. Took us about 12 minutes to walk over, which will be super nice for the next 4 days. The Convention schedule is pretty rough – 9am checkin and midnight (or in the case of the last night, 2:30am) checkout. Those are LONG days. A short walk over and back from our beds is pretty damn nice.

Anton drove out to western MA to pick up the Reactable from his brother. We planned for it to be a key feature of our booth, but we had no idea how effective it would be. Holy crap. For those of you not familiar with the Reactable, head over to Anton’s blog page and scroll down a bit – you should see a post on it from early 2008, I think. He built it in his garage as an interactive electronic music device. Basically, users can set plastic blocks down on the table, and those blocks trigger different sounds – bass, guitar, drums, synths, etc. Actually, each side of each cube triggers a different sound… so block “A” might trigger one bass part when you set it down, and then if you turn it on to its side, it triggers a totally different bass part. The cool thing is that multiple blocks can be set down on the table at once by multiple users, and the result is a full song with all of the parts playing simultaneously. Watch a demo video of it here, that Anton recorded at his house.

Okay, so – cut to earlier this winter when we were making our plans for our NACA booth. We knew that we had to have something that would get people’s attention, because our booth is completely DIY (“do it yourself”). The other booths will be slick, with big management money behind them, etc. All we have is a bunch of photos, some accolades/reviews, and some t-shirts. And then we thought of the Reactable – what if we were to use the blocks to generate something other than sounds… what if they could generate photos, information about the band, etc.? And thusly Anton got to work tweaking the table to be an interactive listening station!

We set it up today at our booth, front and center, with a sign on the front that says, “Did you know that Anton from the band built this table? Ask us about it!” (or something like that). We have a bunch of blocks that play our songs (or samples of songs), and then some blocks that show photos from Red Rocks, RBT Sticker Gallery, etc., and then some blocks that display text info (cities we’ve played, band bio, artists we’ve played with, etc.).

It looked great, and then we put all of our posters and materials up on the wall behind us, along with our big yellow banner, and we set up a side table with more photos and materials.

Almost immediately upon firing up the table, we had other vendors from the surrounding booths come over, wondering what the heck it was. And when the students came in later on (I’ll explain how the convention process works later – it’s crazy)… they immediately flocked over to check it out. Thanks to the Reactable, we met a ton of great kids the first day, collected contact info, and got holds (penciled-in dates) on shows for this coming fall.

A great first day for sure… and I’m leaving out a lot of the details, but I’ll explain more tomorrow. Here are some pics of our booth from when we set it up (once the convention was running, none of us were sitting down – we run it a bit like the Apple store, with matching t-shirts, iPods in hand, talking with students and showing them our tunes, etc.):

More updates tomorrow from the convention if we have downtime…

Greetings from Boston! Wow, what a fantastic night we had tonight. The manager at the Sheraton came up to me after the event and said, “if you guys want to do this again next year, DEFINITELY do it here. We loved having you, the whole crowd was wonderful, tipped the bartenders really well, the music was awesome, and we couldn’t have asked for a better event to host.” I have to agree with her – everyone who came out deserves a huge kudos. The folks at the Sheraton who helped set up the room, serve the drinks, set up the stage, table linens, catering, etc. were absolutely great, too.

I learned something else tonight, too – that two Irish boys named McCann from Boston can sing soul like nobody’s business. Holy crap. We play with bands all the time, all over the country, and rarely do we have as much fun and good spirit as we did tonight with these guys. Watching their set was really, really enjoyable – and then for the last song, they brought all of us SoundRabbits up on stage to join them for a jam of “Boogie On Reggae Woman” by Stevie Wonder. Jay and Beers jumped on percussion, Anton on electric guitar, and I shared keyboard duties with Pat, the lead singer of Brothers McCann, though I’m not much of a soloist, so I left most of it to him… but man, standing next to him and hearing him sing Stevie – wow, was that impressive. It takes some serious you-know-whats for a couple of white Irish boys to cover a Stevie Wonder song (particularly the singing part), but they pulled it off, and big time. We all chatted after the show about setting up some tours together on the East Coast and in Colorado if they make it out there. Really complementary music and we all got along great. Thanks to all of them for joining us for this cause.

We raised another $300 through the raffle and silent auction, bringing our total LLS donation to $2,300. It’s pretty amazing to see all of this coming to fruition. Some of you longtime Backstage Community members may recall that the LLS was one of the very first charities that we ever helped through the Backstage – way back in December of 2007. I think we donated around $500 to them from a New Year’s Eve event or something. Now, two years later, we’re able to donate over $2,000 from a show out-of-market (outside of Colorado). Someday I hope we’re cutting a check for $10,000 to groups like them… that’s the whole idea. Thanks to all of you (REALLY – THANK YOU!) for playing a huge part in all of this.

Time to hit the rack… Anton, Fred, and I are getting up early to head over and register for the convention, set up our booth, etc. More updates from the Hynes Convention Center later!

Just a quick note here… running around setting up last minute things for the silent auction, etc. – but the room looks fantastic. Perfect size, a handful of tables for those who want to sit, plenty of open floor space for those who want to dance… cheese display, hors d’oeuvres, 2 bars with bartenders, nice chandeliers… I forgot that doing this in downtown Boston would mean a pretty posh environment. The stage is awesome, too – 24′ x 12′ and we managed to get a bunch of LED lights from a local DJ who hooked us up at the last minute. Dimmed the room lights and let the stage lights glow and it looks awesome. We already soundchecked, and now Brothers McCann is doing their soundcheck… they sound fantastic. Should be an awesome night. More later…

Ahh… the first Road Journal post of 2010. And what a place to be making it from – the historic Victorian farm where we stay whenever we tour New England. I’m (Russ) in my usual room at the front of the house, with a view looking down the long driveway lined with lanterns, colonial stone walls, and varied deciduous trees. Beautiful. Of course it’s nighttime right now, but we got a lovely view of the dirt and peastone driveway on our way in this evening, with a light dusting of snow on the ground and the lanterns lighting it all as we pulled up to the house.

I realized tonight that we’ve never stayed here at the farm in the winter, only during fall and spring, as those are our typical Northeast tour seasons. We’re here for a good reason, though, and it’s two-fold. Tomorrow night we host a benefit concert for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society at the Boston Sheraton hotel, sponsored by you, our Backstage Community members. We rented an event room, set up a couple of cash bars, hors d’ouevres, a silent auction, a raffle, and a stage for ourselves and a local Boston band, Brothers McCann, to play. We did 100% presale for the tickets, and the event sold out as of tonight, which is really exciting. Tickets were $10 apiece and we sold 200 of them (the capacity of the room), which means that we’ll be able to donate $2,000 to the LLS plus whatever we raise in silent auction and raffle proceeds tomorrow night. We’re donating every penny to the charity, which feels great.

The second reason for our trip is that the National Association for Campus Activities “(NACA”) is having their National Convention in Boston starting on Saturday, running through Tuesday night. We book college shows all the time, but it usually involves a lot of time spent searching online for who the concert chair / booking person is at the school, getting their contact info, making a cold call, sending them music, etc. – and then eventually [hopefully] leading to a show on campus. The nice thing about NACA is that it is an organization of all of those kids – the students who specifically book entertainment on campus – and the vast majority of them are attending this weekend’s convention. We became members of NACA late last year and purchased a booth for the convention, at which we’ll be meeting as many of these students as possible, introducing them to our music, and hopefully booking a bunch of shows as a result. We’re really excited about it, but also really nervous, as it’s a huge investment for us (about $5k all told – that’s the downside to NACA), and from what we hear, this event is HUGE. We’ll be really tiny fish in a giant ocean. There are 3,000 students from 500+ schools, and about a thousand vendors (bands, magicians, caterers, promotion companies, game companies that rent bouncey castles and the like, etc. – basically any service that a college event could use). We’ll be just one tiny booth among a thousand… and we’ll probably be one of the only bands there, because it’s so expensive that most bands/artists can’t do it on their own – only management companies (representing dozens of artists) generally go for it. It costs them $5k, but if they can book shows for 3-4 of their 20 acts, they’ll make their money back plus some gravy. Much less risk that way – we’re going all in, taking our own way as usual.   🙂

Anyway – lots going on this weekend for sure, and lots to be excited about. Beers, Anton, and I flew in from Colorado earlier today, hanging out in Chicago for a few hours and then arriving at Logan Airport in Beantown around dinner time. Jason, meanwhile, loaded all of our equipment through four feet of snow in Virginia and drove 10 hours up here to Massachusetts to meet us. What a trooper. All 4 of us are staying at the farm tonight, then we head in to Boston tomorrow around 4pm to load in at the Sheraton for the benefit show. After the show, Jay and Beers will head back out here to the farm, and Anton and I are staying in downtown Boston at my cousin’s place for the next 5 nights, as his place is a couple of blocks from the NACA convention, so we can just walk over every morning and walk back. Super nice. Jay will drive back down to Virginia on Saturday at some point, and Beers flies back to Colorado on Sunday. Fred (our longtime roadie / triage nurse on the road) and Brian (our college booking dude) will be meeting Anton and I to work the booth for the weekend.

Alright – time to hit the rack… more tomorrow from the show!