booking agents

Unless you can land a spot with a really good, well connected agent, or a less-established agent that loves your band and will work tirelessly for you, it's probably not worth it - it's really not all that hard in the age of the internet to book shows. One thing a good BA can do though is help make sure you don't get screwed - sometimes they can improve your pay arrangement a little (for a cut of that pay, of course)

we just fired our booking agent

she was a nightmare

so ... what happened?

Yeah she sounds alright to me.

she never sent out any flyers to the venues we were playing. kept getting complaints about that from the places. got us unbelievably shitty shows (not just for no $$$, we're used to that, but places that didn't even normally have bands and didn't understand how to do shows or anything). paid her to do press stuff, never did any. wanted too much money for what she did, which was essentially nothing. back to d.i.y. for us.

That sounds lame!

places that didn't even normally have bands and didn't understand how to do shows or anything

Ha, I have played at too many of those places. I feel like when a successful band tells that kind of story about their past people are like "Oh that sounds awesome I wish I'd been there" but when you're the only band playing at the stupid restaurant in Virginia that won't even give you free beer nobody wants to come.

lol stupid restaurant in Virginia shows are good stories and terrible experiences

TOO otm. we went to Virginia this weekend. and this booking agent is named Virginia!

hahahaha

I feel like I would leave the state if my name matched up with it.

she never sent out any flyers to the venues we were playing. kept getting complaints about that from the places. got us unbelievably shitty shows (not just for no $$$, we're used to that, but places that didn't even normally have bands and didn't understand how to do shows or anything). paid her to do press stuff, never did any. wanted too much money for what she did, which was essentially nothing. back to d.i.y. for us.

replace "she" with LOUIE HILLENMEYER and I went through this exact same thing 2002/03. Wait...add to that that LOUIE HILLENMEYER, in lieu of booking shows correctly, spent his time arranging TERRIBLE photo shoots and attempting to organize our WARDROBE for us.

Yes LOUIE HILLENMEYER - WHEN YOU GOOGLE YOURSELF AND FIND THIS - YOU WERE A TERRIBLE TERRIBLE BOOKING AGENT.

wardrobe? lol

who would want to do this job anyway? it's like the worst part of being in a band.

otm

who would want to do this job anyway? it's like the worst part of being in a band.

Agreed.

Now can we make this the thread where we name and disparage shitty music business people?

Like Irv Johnson of BGO Events Promotion (didn't show up so nobody got paid after driving 9 hours to the show) and Eric Breding of MTO Management (finally paid us half of what we were supposed to get four months after the show and acted like I was a huge asshole for bugging him about it).

have you all ever cold-solicited a booking agency? how do you do it?