NACA. (Boston, MA)
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…