Flyer for Fighting Cocks gig
I played at the Fighting Cocks in Kingston last night, crazy name, crazy venue.
Before I describe the gig I just thought I’d mention some of the things I did to promote the gig. If you follow my blogs and what I do, you will know that I always try to get SOMETHING positive from a gig. As I mainly play my own material I generally play for nothing but more about that at a later date.
The boring things I will just list:
Facebook Event, List gig at Eventful, List gig at Myspace, List gig at Live Unsigned, List gig at Reverbnation.
Then the clever stuff:
I joined the Fighting Cocks Twitter feed then followed around 100 of the people that follow The Fighting Cock. Around 20 followed me back.
I tweeted about the gig mentioning that I would give a free badge to whoever shouted out my Twitter name (Nick_Tann) and other fun/unusual things.
I mentioned the gig on my Facebook feed at least twice a day.
On the day I dropped cds and flyers at a record shop and a cafe a few doors down from the venue plus at the venue itself.
I also busked in the main pedestrian area in Kingston with a big sign saying “Playing at The Fighting Cocks Tonight” *
As a result I had the grand total of two friend come to see me play.
Now, I could be downhearted about about this but as I said I always like to take from a gig, something positive.
So what did I learn?
Firstly that, on the whole, Facebook events don’t work or to be more fair, they don’t necessarily give you a true representation of the people you might expect to come to your gig. The people that did come, didn’t say they would come on the FB event. In the past I’ve had friends from America say would be attending an event in Winchester. It’s an easy thing to click, some do it as a sign of support. Thanks, but no thanks.
Friends sometimes let you down. It’s nothing personal, they truly want to come but sometimes life gets in the way and it’s you they want to see not necessarily your music. They’ll see you another time, perhaps over a cold drink or a meal.
Busking on the day is a great idea BUT you have to have someone with you to hand out flyers and “work the crowd”. You can’t talk to people about the gig or your music if you’re playing it. People WILL try and talk to you while you are playing, best to have someone who can do that for you.
Cafe’s are a great place to leave flyers but try and get there a few days before and chat to the people that work there, give them a cd but try and engage them and get them to play the cd whilst you are in the shop. Also do this early not at during a busy lunchtime session.
Other than some lessons learned I did have some other pluses.
I had a great sound engineer Sammi. I suggested that she might want to do some creative stuff with the reverb on some of my quieter tunes and she did wonders and it sounded fantastic. I gave her a badge and a cd and said that to bear me in mind if she ever had a spot that would suit me in the future. She was also a really nice person, friendly, funny and easy to work with.
Kirsty, who was one of the organisers of the night, really liked what I did and even bought a cd, bonus!
One of the other acts that played “What is Life for” also like what I did and want to book me to support them at an event they are planning.
I did get to catch up with the two friends that came to see me AND * I made enough money from busking to pay for my parking!
So not a bad day all in all.
Thanks to Ben Dlugokecki from Jurasic Mark for booking me in the first place, the mighty Matt Stevens for giving me some great marketing tips and also my manager Paul Lane who continues to come up with the goods!
