Band Info.

When you’re a band, and you’re putting yourself out there into the public eye (instead of staying locked in the basement), everything you do can be viewed as an interaction with a possible fan. Everything. There’s the obvious – being on stage performing, selling merch, mingling after/pre-show, all really valuable opportunities to give potential fans a meaningful interaction with you, and you’re most likely going to be “on” when you’re in these situations, so you’ll already be able to make those interactions as meaningful as possible.

But what about the less obvious times? What about when you’re just out picking up beer, or gear, or working your day-job? What about when you receive an email from a fan, a facebook message, myspace comment?

Pretty much everything you do could be viewed as an interaction with a potential fan, so it might be interesting to try to think of ways to make all those situations just a little bit special. What if you gave the cashier at the beer store a download card for a free song? Went out of your way to comment back to someone online, or post something on your blog mentioning someone who recently sent you an email about the band, or what if you gave someone who’s buying a CD from you an extra copy for free, so they can give it to someone else?

There are all sorts of ways you can give someone just a bit of something more than what they would expect – all you have to do is find ways to tie those little extras back to your band, and try to genuinely incorporate that behaviour into your daily lifestyle. Suddenly everything you do could become an exercise in making fans, and if you give someone a little bit extra, something more than what they were expecting to get, you’ve increased exponentially the chance they are then going to tell someone else about you too.

YOUR BAND

Having a connected tight band may be one of the most time consuming frustrating things an artist or manager has to do, even if you have good musicians. It has mostly to day with musician's egos. Egos that allow them to believe they know how to do everything better than anyone else & they are just too good to learn.

Then you have the trouble of them taking rehearsals seriously. Rehearsals are more like ‘goof off’ time. They only want to be serious/professional when they are on stage. Many new artist find themselves on very small stages, where a 4 or 5 piece band will barely fit, much less have space to move around.

Lastly, you have band members who believe their only job is to play & not be a team player. No matter how good a musician is, if they refuse to be a team member & work just as hard as everyone else; do yourself a favor & part ways. Sooner or later you most likely will any way. The song dictates stage energy at specified times from each band member. Some songs, everyone will be high energy. But no one should outshine the lead singer, unless it’s a part of the connecting moment within the song.