Band Managers

i don't have one. but my band, label and record were all miserable fucking failures, so maybe you should, yo.

My friends band have just started a tour manager on trial, so they can get on with the music and not have to worry about the stuff they don't like. But they are Indie As Fuck, and the chances of them falling into the clutches of a Sinister Svengali are about nil. There's about ten of them for a start, so he'd have his hands full getting his sveng on at all of them all the time.

Kate - Do you have a manager?

For those in bands without managers who decided against it - why?

we have a manager and she's lovely. although before her, we had 2 other managers who were utterly out to rip us off/use us to promote their other interests, so be careful before you make any decisions. in fact, one of the managers stopped us getting signed to a REALLY GOOD LABEL so feh.

the thing is, that managers will TELL YOU WHAT TO DO and basically arrange your life for you ("you're in Leeds next week, soundcheck at 5!"), so if you can take that and are prepared to follow itineraries or whatever, it's all good. if you can't/wont follow orders to a certain extent then forget it. if they are a good manager however, they will be aware of your constraints/other nonband obligations and be reasonable - our manager asks us when we have to work, when we're going on holiday/doing other stuff and works around that as much as possible.

also, they will try and tell you how to write songs/which song shd be the Next Single. ignore them on this point.

i guess the upshot is: managers are GREBT if you get the right one, hellish if not.

ooh um to answer your question about pay/what they actually do: they usually take a percentage i think... but as we always say, ten percent of fuck all is STILL FUCK ALL! ;) they can be v useful for actually co-ordinating stuff booking gigs and transport and hotels, having lots of contacts at venues or in the press. depending on who they know they can get you into other gigs yay! it's just good to have someone who gets it all DONE so that the members of the band don't all fight about whose responsibility it was to book the train tickets ect.

The only time I met katie's manager, she peed on my barbeque.

it depends on your ambition, but if you want to transcend the ultra-indie status, usually the best option is to have a manager, unless you're ready to do all the hard admin. work and never being acknowledged for it (don't even think about getting more money than the rest of the band).

They do all sorts of annoying things that no one else wants to do. Like deal with press, do follow up on press, hound press in absence of press agents, book tours, order you around to follow your tour schedule, decide arguements about wether to stop at roadside attractions such as the Big Apple on the side of the 401 or not which can otherwise lead to bad vibes for the next 5 hours or so, they deal with managers, act as door, soundman, cheerleader, van driver, crowd schmoozer, guitar restringer and occaisionaly sober individual keeping track of which band members are sleeping with which locals that night.
All in all depends on the size of your band, what your paying them to do, what their strengthes are, whats your schedule like and whats your relationship to the manager. Somebands need a manager, specially when travelling abroad, somebands just need their label to book a tour and pick up their mail and can do the rest. Some bands need to be babysat and kept on a tight leash with no pocket cash. Other bands just need a mommmy.
If I were an indie band I would look for someonewho is NOT a friend but an aquietence and has been in a band thats crashedand burned on the road before. Anyone band who comes back from a tour smelling like deoderant didnt tour hard or long enough.

Yeah, the drummer is suggesting a friend of ours to take over. I really like this friend, but I'm kind of concerned about paying him to manage us.

I should mention that we're not very big. All three of us do little bits to promote ourselves but we're not very organized. The idea is that this guy would have time to do the things we can't with our 40-hour office jobs.

We do not have a manager. This is a VERY. Big. Problem. To the point where I can honestly say, if we don't resolve this issue, we will probably break up by the end of the year.

Most managers are shit. I've seen more bands screwed up by incompetant management than creative differences and girlfriends put together. To that end, we decided to manage ourselves (being that one of us was married to a Record Company Bloke) and up until a few months ago, we'd been doing that just fine:
-we had a VERY GOOD PR
-our record compan(ies) were small enough that it was owner to band discussions that didn't need a middleman
-our gigging/touring requirements were minimal
-we have a soundman who is perfectly willing to on the road with us and drive/lift gear and fulfill other tour managing duties

If you have a good PR, a good A&R person, a good booking agent and/or at least one member of the band who is competant in things like figures and being able to sort out van hire and rehearsal and the like, then you don't need a middleman like a manager.

We have very clear division of labour in this band:
Kate - writes songs & arrangements, does artwork for records & promotional materials, maintains website, does 9/10's of gruntwork mixing, does interviews and talks to press, talks to record company about artistic decisions
Jane - deals with rehearsal studio & books recording sessions, books gigs and tours/deals with promoters, talks to record company about financial decisions, sorts out lisencing, handles money
Matthew - plays drums

However, at the present time, we've outgrown our ability to manage ourselves. Our bassist, who had been functionally managing us, is in the unenviable position where she has a full-time job, and now managing the band is a full time job. We don't earn enough to pay ourselves, let alone take on a person who would take 10 to 20% of our earnings, so right now we're in a terrible state. We're not quite big enough to go to having a professional manager (there is supposedly a quite big management company who manages one of our friend's) but we've got past the point where we're able to have a "mate" handle it.

No matter what the money involved, managing a band is a 20 to 40 hour a week JOB, and you should approach it the same way that you'd hire any other employee, i.e. if they are responsible, suitable, compatible, etc.

I don't know if any of that helps you or not. Unless it helps to know that right now, someone else is in the same boat, and we don't even have a "friend" that we can turn to.

mates or friends shouldn't become band managers, unless you don't really bother if they stop being mates or friends anymore.
of course this doesn't apply every time, but i've seen it happen too often.
stay independent until you find a professional manager you can trust.
let friends help you with the small things.

Steve d00d, well how ELSE do yer put out a bbq?!

But there was still FUDE on it!