How to make sure you won't get booked again

  So here we go, I'll get the rant out of the way first. In the past seven months we have done 15 concerts. In these 15 concerts we have done anything from battle of the bands to show case nights to organizing our own concerts. And as lot of you know through my experience with Sliotar and other bands I have played in over the years, I have done well over thousand concerts. So I have seen a lot and I know how hard it is to get band of the ground. Here is one thing that has been bugging me lately: when a band takes a part in any kind of show case/band night, I would expect them to stick around and listen to the other bands. And believe you me I know some of the music would not be up to every ones taste, I don't have much tolerance for out of tune guitars (get a tuner and get your guitar intonated!) and bad timing (Practice with a click), but suck it up, they are in same situation you are or were. Ok, you might have to get up the next morning early to work, but first of all you can talk with your band mates and some of you could stay, if some of you must go. Second, and do I have news here for you, if you seriously want to make it some day, I mean make your living out of music, you will need to learn to get by with very little sleep. Let's repeat that one just to make sure you got it: Being a full time musician, you need to learn to get by with very little sleep! Six hours is a good night sleep for me. Now in all fairness, about once a week I do pass out for nearly twelve hours... But You get my point. There is always some excuses and sometimes they are more valid than others. So just stop and think about it the other way around. Think what you would want the other bands to do while you play? Musician’s talk that's how the word goes around and to be honest with you, what I've seen in the past year, this is what separates the frustrated amateurs from the pros.

  Let's look at this from a different perspective. As I mentioned there above, we have organized some of our own gig nights, and helped other organizers to book bands as well. This is something I have big plans for, and will be doing more and more. From a gig organizers perspective, unless the band has a genuine reason, I mean if you have a important festival gig the next day and a long drive, that's fair enough. But if I just see the band come in, play their set and run off, because it's well past their bed time, you can be sure I won't be booking them any time soon. And if you think I am the only one who thinks this way, I've talked to few organizers and it is one of those things that register at the back of their mind. They will remember the band that stayed till the end and checked out every act. You might think here, what does that have to do with music? Everything! You expect other people to support your band if you don't support others? Anyway, enough of that ;-)

                                         Thanks to Will Bury for the photo.

  So we had a busy week :-) JPKALLIO.COM played twice in Sweeney's. Wednesday was the Music Medium Live night in the basement. As the regular readers of this blog know we've been there few times before. They are a small group of people working hard trying to do something for the music scene in Dublin and slowly but surely they are building momentum, once again proving that hard work and persistence does pay off in music business. They run a Singer songwriter night in the Sweeney's on Tuesday nights, Juke box slot showcase on Wednesday nights, FissionFriday once a month upstairs in Sweeney's and they are just starting another night in the Mezz on Sundays. So if you are looking for a gig for your band or solo act, get in touch with them, they are really nice people as well :-)

  On Saturday night we were back in the Sweeney's, upstairs this time. Weekend nights in Sweeney's are busy, so we had a hopping gig. This was number 15 in our 100 concert challenge, slowly but surely getting there ;-) Also on both gigs it was great to see so many familiar faces, we are making friends on the way.
The next concert at the moment is the Rocktober semi-final in the Fibbers on Saturday the 19th of November. The standard of this competition has been very high, so it will be a great night of music. I think we need to pull out few extra stops for this one ;-)

  In the mean time, we have decided to go and record few tracks in the Trackmix studios, so in few weeks time we'll lock our selves in there for few days and we'll see what comes out of it. We will be bringing camera with us and try to document some of the stuff while we're there. So before that we'll be rehearsing our backsides off. Oh yeah, and we need to agree on the songs we want to record...
So that's enough for this week. Hope you managed to get through the autumn with out a cold; I'm trying to shake mine. Have a good week and I'll be back for more next week.

  Oh nearly forgot to mention:-) The Halloween is on its way. I am taking few days off and going to Warsaw for the long weekend, but there are some great concerts around during the Halloween weekend that deserves a mention. Our friends the Pimps and Gimps are playing in the Harbour bar in Bray on Sunday the 30th of October, so head over there for some quality punk rock. Also the EHT promotions are running a fancy dress metal night in the Pint and our friends 9thlife will be on the bill along with loads of other great bands. Hmm... how do I get a feeling you might find Qra at the Harbour bar and Sebastian at the Pint;-)

J.P.

On a shoestring project part 44

  The rain is beating its subtle drum beat on my window while I write this. It's always a bit of a dull after show like the Whelan's. But this time I hardly had time to sit down. But that's the way I like it anyway:-) Here is a video from the Whelan's concert.


  Now we got an extra gig next week in Sweeney's. It is the Juke box slot night and it is the basement venue. Also our good friends who we used to share rehearsal room with, the Casement ghosts are playing with us:-) We are really exited about this one. For those who don't know them, Casement Ghosts are a Punk rock band . I have been helping them out recording a demo in the past few months and I must say, they have some kicking songs, be sure not to miss them. Also on the night there will be Ivan St.Leger, Tom White and WillBury, who we are looking forward to hear on the night. Come along, the show starts around 8pm and it is free in:-)

  And the week after that on the 14th we are back in the Pint, but we'll talk more about that next week:-)

  So let me talk a little bit about attitude towards modern technology in music. What I mean here is particularly in the punk rock, metal and all us distorted guitar and pounding drum loving rockers. We embraced the Myspace when it first came along, then it was a must to be there! Now it is gone... waste of time, one of the worst sounding music players out there and why did they change it in to a pop up? Anyway at the time it was powerful tool, and helped loads of bands to get around. Then came the facebook and twitter... Yeah they might not be the coolest things in the world and we love to give out about them, but for a musician they are tools. Use them! We got our first bit of negative feedback few weeks ago when I was emailing radio stations, but to be honest with you this was more entertaining to me than anything else. In the email I send to the stations I tell them bit about us, send them a link to our music and in one part I explain how we embrace the DIY ethos. I have set up automated signature in my Email (You should do this as well! Check out WiseStamp), there is links to our website, facebook, twitter, youtube and myspace. The reply I got went in the lines of this: “DIY Punk on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube! When are you gonna sell out at Wal-Mart?” Well... you can't please everyone can you? So, lets go back to the world of making cassettes with our boom box, sharing them with our friends, few posters around the town before our gigs. Rocking it out and being so anti-establishment on Friday night, but back to nine to five on Monday morning. Now don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with nine to five, or having bit of fun on Friday, but criticizing bands for trying to get the word out there? Oh yeah, and the radio station in question has facebook, twitter and youtube pages;-). For musician social media is a tool, a means to connect with your audience and build a following.

  But in general, as you might know the response from radio stations around the world has been unreal! As I said so many times before, most of these people are music fans and like to help out new bands, so one negative mail against over 30 positive? I can live with that:-)

  Here's something light from the imagination of our drummer Sebastian:-)

  Now, the rain has changed to sunny blue sky:-) Better go out and enjoy it, we don't get much of it here in Ireland:-) Back for more next week.

J.P.