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How To Book a Tour: Tips for the Independent Musician

The Littlest Birds perform at the Trillium Cafe in Hood River, Oregon

Last year my girlfriend – singer/songwriter/banjo player Sharon Martinson and I (singer/songwriter/cellist) formed a duo called The Littlest Birds and hit the road for two months. Performing some 35 shows across 10 states around the West. It was no small step, but more of a big leap into the world of the touring musician. Endless hours on the computer and the telephone booking gigs, even as the tour started, filling gaps in our schedule, planning who to stay with, and hoping for a lot of generosity along the way in the numerous towns where we knew no one.

People most often asked us how exactly we managed to pull it off. To start with you must have a good quality album. Your music is what you’re selling to venues and the public and if you don’t have a good representation of your sound you will struggle to book gigs. We holed up in my parents cabin in the mountains with great acoustics and no distractions for a week and recorded the best album we could. It was recorded in a “live” style, with no overdubs (except for one harmony vocal track), as that was the simplest way we could assemble an album’s worth of material while also capturing a certain “feel” that you get with that sort of recording. Next we designed a clean, simple website with every last bit of information a venue could want all located on the very front page. No need for anything fancy here, you do not want lots of menus or pages. No one knows you, no one cares. They just want to arrive, click on your music, glance at a photo, a bio, have images they can grab easily for their venue website, and be done with it. Think efficiency when designing a site. Think straight forward and professional.

One service that does provide clean integration, and simplifies the process of designing a good website is ReverbNation. Once you sign up for a page with them you can embed your music player and show schedule in a variety of ways that are certain to match whatever design you come up with for your site. This allows you to change schedule stuff in one place rather than having to update a bunch of different pages individually. ReverbNation also integrates flawlessly with Facebook, allowing a sort of all-in-one approach to social networking.

We chose to have our album professionally replicated through an online company (Oasis) that also offers promotional tools including a free membership to CD Baby so that once completed, our album would be available for both download and hard copy sale throughout the web and iTunes. Also, order enough copies to be able to provide hard copies to CD Baby for this service, as it’s important – we consistently sell hard copies online and gain more money from those sales, and a service like Pandora requires that your album be available for hard copy sale through Amazon in order to be considered for submission to their service. Not to mention, you’ll want extras to hand out to venues and friends along the way on your tour. You’ll want to be able to send them out to magazines and radio stations for further promotion of your tour. We started with 300 copies of our CD, and in less than a year close to half are already sold or given away.

Additionally, the promotional tools offered by Oasis allow you the opportunity to release a single on a compilation disc that gets sent out to radio stations and industry insiders around the country. We’ve already received two requests for our album from radio stations, one of which we’ll likely be able to visit and perform a live interview/in studio performance during our upcoming tour.

Once you’ve got decent recordings, a CD in progress, and a website up and running, then begins the task of finding and contacting venues. One easy trick to finding compatible venues is to look up similar artists and find where they’re performing. There are also a variety of directory style pages profiling good venues for particular styles of music. These are hit and miss though, as the info is often outdated. Beyond that you’re left with the power of search engine keywords. Craft different combos, look up Pubs, Bars, Breweries, and contact as many friends as you have in those areas for suggestions.

In terms of working with venues, what we learned from our first tour was to be polite but persistent. Give them time to respond but not too much. If you’re already committed to the tour, then be prepared to take gigs that do not pay any guarantee and count on some CD sales and tips to get you to the next paying gig. Venues generally have no problem feeding you and giving up a couple of beers a piece for the night, but guarantees can be hard to come by without a solid, predictable draw.

If you want to adequately promote your tour you must do it all yourself. Expect nothing from the venue. Design a blank flyer with space for any date, time, location to be added. Print them (there are a variety of online services that’ll do this professionally, best of course to find a local printer), and mail them to any friends you have in the towns you’ll be playing. Get them to put them up around town before the show. Send them to the venues too of course, and hope for the best. We’ve walked in to a venue to find a stack of our flyers sitting on the counter, with only one up where you could see it.

Next you’ll want to research local media outlets – newspapers, blogs, community websites with entertainment listings, and it’s easiest to prepare a form type paragraph, where you only have to change a certain date, time, or location element to facilitate submitting your gig info to as many different outlets as possible. It sucks, but you have to promote yourself. The world is so clogged with good music and independent musicians trying to do the same thing that you have to raise your voice a bit, and not be afraid to market your music.

And as far as marketing goes the social networks are a great place to start. Consider a Facebook Ad for your band, or your tour. Signup for Twitter too. I’m not a big fan of myspace as the interface is clunky and difficult to use, so I’m no longer on it, but many artists still are.

Be prepared to start working on setting up your tour six months in advance. This will be a bit far out for many venues, but not far enough out for others, and allows for a couple months of booking work to establish the majority of your shows, and then another couple months to do additional promotional work and listing with newspapers, radio stations, and websites; to design a flyer and get it printed and mailed off to every place you’re headed. Giving yourself lots of time keeps things more relaxed. Our first tour was very last minute and it took tons of time and effort to make it happen, and didn’t give us enough lead time to do much promotion or radio spots or flyers. This year we already have most of our tour lined up with fives months to go.

Once on the road we kept a tight ship. Try to control your drinking to not much past what is given to you for free from the venues. Bring a camp stove and cook meals yourself on the road. The grocery store is cheaper than the restaurant or coffee shop any day. Remember it’s not just about having fun, it’s also a business and you want to turn at least a marginal profit.

Touring is fun when the gigs are good, and not so fun when they aren’t. Rest days are great so that you actually get a chance to see the countryside that you’re driving through and shake off whatever exhaustion has accumulated from the previous days gigging. Consider the emotional strengths and weaknesses of everyone involved in the tour, know that there will be some ups and downs along the way. You won’t make it big with your first shows outside of your home town. Chances are people still won’t know who you are on your second, third, and fourth big trip out of town. Minimize expectations. Just try to break even financially and emotionally. Focus on the music. Do some busking, find time to practice and learn new tunes as you’ll quickly tire of the same old set list. Know that you’ll need up to a 4 hour catalog of music at your fingertips to satisfy many places.

And that’s about it for now. I’ll let you know how this next tour goes, and what additional lessons are learned.

You can follow our music on Twitter (@cellobanjobirds), Facebook, or on our website http://www.littlestbirds.net

May 18, 2011 | Categories: Music Related | Leave A Comment »

Eastside Skiing: 1

view of skiing lone pine peak from the owens valley

(hover mouse over images for captions)

Suffice to say, the Eastern Sierra of California (my backyard) easily contains the highest density of easily accessed, big vertical ski descents in the lower 48, and perhaps even North America. It’s that big. From Bridgeport to Lone Pine, a distance of 148 miles, the range towers over scenic highway 395, causing many a skier to swerve as they try to drive and eyeball lines at the same time.

Immediately surrounding my town of Mammoth Lakes, the backcountry is so enticing it’s hard to break away and head north or south any considerable distance without feeling an intense desire to stop the car and ski something. But recently we rallied the motivation and kept driving, all the way to Lone Pine, before turning towards the mountains, finding a dirt road, and ending up at the foot of a granite fortress known as Lone Pine Peak.

Despite having the biggest winter in 25 years, there’s so much granite slab on Lone Pine Peak that it still looks low tide, but closer inspection revealed plenty of snow packed into the east/northeast gully of Inyo Creek. The idea began organically enough, with a recent driveby en route to the airport in Las Vegas, eyeing it up and thinking it’d be fun to ski one of the canyons pouring off the front of the mountain. Further internet research revealed a line apparently running all the way to the summit.

My roommate David Scott, and I were joined around the campfire that night by a good friend, John Dittli, who’d apparently been wanting to ski Lone Pine Peak for years. That’d been his stipulation for coming along with us this far south in the range. We talked and shared stories over beers around the fire for awhile but called it an early night, with alarms set for 5 a.m. We had 6500+ feet to go to the top.

The bottom of the canyon presented the challenge of a thin rotten snowpack, and we found ourselves collapsing thigh deep and struggling. Eventually we got our skis on and they kept us up on the fragile pack after that, but it wasn’t long before we were ditching them again to just boot straight up the gully.

We climbed and climbed and climbed. No flat rest spots, no lounging in the sun on warm granite. Just cold steady booting up steep firm snow in the shady gully. Not until the last 1500 feet or so did we finally reach the sun, and then of course we immediately started sweating profusely.

At no point along the way can you see the summit chute, we only knew it existed from a trip report, and I think Dittli had probably eyed it up before. Eventually it comes into view, tucked deep into a granite face, fully stuffed with snow. At the top, you come out of the chute within spitting distance of the summit. Our first nice flat spot the whole day. Spreading out on granite and sand, we relax with boots off and contemplate napping. There isn’t quite time for it though. If we want to catch this thing in its prime, we’ll have to roll in pretty soon.

The boots go back on, the skins come off our skis, clothing is adjusted, packs tightened, and off we go – one at a time dipping into a fantastic ski line, with turn after turn after turn, for about 5000 feet of good skiing. Steep and sustained, the skiing is awesome, the snow perfect — for the surfer in me it feels like we’re tucked into a hollow sand bottom low tide barrel, one that’s reeling so close to shore that the only way to make it is to stay in the tube. You look out at the Owens Valley, and it’s all dry desert out there.

At the bottom, we descend on the opposite side of the creek to avoid a repeat of the post-holing suffer-fest from the morning, but it would not make a good ascent route as it’s loaded with steep loose decomposing granite sand and ball-bearing riddled slabs. Ok to descend but that’s it.

Yet before long we’re back in our camp chairs, cracking open “hop sodas” and celebrating a very fine day along the Eastside. Celebrating too, that the fun is not over, there is now the task of deciding what to ski tomorrow.

We decide to go down to Lone Pine, grab pizza at the Pizza Factory, and head north up the road to Independence where we’ll scout out a line for the following day. Like zombies we stumble around the Pizza Factory, make our orders, eat in silence, stare off into space. But the food brings us back enough to drive, and soon the widening of eyes and choosing of lines gets us energetic again.

* * *

“It Goes!” Dittli says eagerly, binoculars in hand as we pull alongside his van. He’s eyeing the East Bowl of Kearsarge Peak. Beginning with a few sweeping gullies, it all funnels into a tight twisting narrows near the bottom before spitting out to the Onion Valley Road. Based on what we can see from here, it looks like it mostly goes through the narrows with one dry spot barren of snow. We setup camp next to creek, under some locust trees, the wind whips around as the day creeps towards sunset, but calms as sunset creeps into dusk. One question is regarding the weather for the following day. David Scott calls a friend, Harrison, who’s going to be joining us, and asks him to

look at the weather one more time. Based on that report, we figure we’ll be alright, but it’s really anyone’s guess as to wind and temperatures.

The following morning, Harrison rolls up as we’re getting ready, and we all caravan up to the base of Kearsarge. Summit to car skiing this time. The ascent is uneventful minus an early round of post-holing. We climb up what appears to be perfect corn yet to soften, remarking many times on how good the skiing is going to be. The view from the summit is stellar. The Great Western Divide dominates the western horizon, with a big sweeping line coming off Mt. Brewer. The tips of Deerhorn Mountain, Standford, Table, Thunder, Junction, University and many others are in view as well. Lots of snow back there.

From the first turn, it’s corn perfection, the harvest is on—we are reeping. Whether tele-turning, or alpine, it’s awesome. A beautiful, rounded gully line, with plenty of room for arcing long and fast on skis. My leather boots and waxless skis track and glide even better than the previous day, and I can relax a bit more, getting longer stretches of turns before stopping to rest my burning, quaking quads. Even Dittli, who makes mostly alpine turns on his tele gear, bends his knee for a few nice ones – see photo – proof that Dittli does in fact telemark ski

Looking down from the top of the final section, the scene appears surreal. Tracks and skiers, now walking to cars parked close in the warm sun with big views of the valley below.

I also know that I have beers waiting cold under the snow that’ll go quite nicely with flip-flops and a beach chair….

…a slideshow of all the included images…

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April 11, 2011 | Categories: Outdoor Adventure | Tags: Backcountry Skiing Eastern Sierra Lone Pine Peak Kearsarge Peak Onion Valley Whitney Portal ski descents | Leave A Comment »

April…

powder skiing and corn skiing in the high eastern sierra

AS I WRITE, snow falls heavily outside. Off and on all day the flakes have alternated between thick flurrying clouds, and wispy blowing dustiness, with bits and pieces of sunshine. We’re experiencing what the local weather guru refers to as a “wrap-around low” – with moisture spinning backwards off the desert, little wind, and temperatures remaining well below freezing. Easily ten feet of snow still stands outside, with a foot of fresh, and more falling, one could easily confuse today with a mid-winter storm day, but in fact, it’s April. April 8th.

Sharon boarding "Lucille", an '84 Landcruiser, in Mammoth, en route to Baja.

Having “missed” much of the winter, both traveling on the road and surfing down in Baja, Mexico. I was hoping to catch plenty of spring sunshine, a deep snowpack, and long days in the mountains when I returned home. So far, though, it’s been a waiting game. Not long after getting home it snowed several feet over the course of just a few days, blocking all light and view from the bedroom window. And this bedroom window is ten feet off the ground. That was followed by a stretch of hot, literally summer-like weather, with highs reaching into the 60s, and lows not dropping below freezing for a few days. And now, after a short spell of good spring weather, I’m watching the snowpack climb higher again—windless feathery snowflakes tumbling down to lean against the glass.

When will we see bare ground in this town?

Perhaps I should describe where I live for those that don’t know first hand the wild rigors of Eastern California. Mammoth Lakes is at nearly 8,000 feet in elevation, surrounded by peaks ten to thirteen thousand feet tall, but beginning just a few miles away is the Great Basin. Already devoid of its brief mid-winter snowpack, it is an ocean of sagebrush, piñon, juniper, and mountain mahogany, until yet another massively tall mountain range lurks up along the eastern skyline. The White Mountains, which reach over 14, 000 feet, and stay above 11,000 feet for most of their length, still have snow along their singular crest, and there is yet another basin beyond them. And so it goes—basin and range country. We have the deepest valley in North America (Owens Valley), the highest peak in the Contiguous 48 states (Mt. Whitney), and the lowest point in all of the U.S. (Death Valley). We have mountain passes with 70 inches of water sitting on the ground (in the form of snow), within just a few short miles of a desert that barely feels a single kiss of rain. It’s a wild place. A land of extremes.

David Scott enjoys a whole new round of fresh, Mammoth b.c.

So it should come as no surprise—this weather. Every year is different, and April always has the potential to pack a last minute punch. During my first spring in the area it snowed a little every day for a few weeks, and we skied some of the best powder of the season, and a few years later it dumped nearly 100 inches helping to salvage a dry winter. Truly this is normal, this April snow storm. To be skiing corn snow one day, and powder the next might be the best definition of April here along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada. Google yields a definition, among others, that claims April is Aphrodite’s month – goddess of beauty and love. Perhaps a better writer than I could stretch that into the background for this snowstorm, but better even than that is the definition that claims April means “to open”, which of course harmonizes well with buds opening into spring flowers and “April showers bring May flowers” – and so forth. April appears to be a popular name among women, and a very popular surname among all genders.

Here it is certainly popular among skiers.

I go to bed late, waking to the sounds of my roommate rekindling the coals of last nights fire. Pure blue shines through the sliver of view that still remains of my window. It’s going to be a cold, “bluebird” powder day. Mammoth Mountain is reporting 18-32 inches of new snow in two days, with 624 inches for the season—52 feet. Previous records reached 575 or so. Water for coffee boils, then steams as it drips through the filter into my waiting mug. Potatoes and an egg with salsa, and I’m ready to head out the door for a sweet run of powder in the backyard.

Yup. Welcome to the Eastside. Welcome to the Sierra Nevada. Welcome to April.

April 9, 2011 | Categories: Outdoor Adventure | Leave A Comment »

Late Spring / Summer

It took a long time for summer to arrive. But good things come to those who wait, and it’s definitely good now that it’s here. A garden of vegetables is flourishing in the yard, even here at 8,000 feet. The mornings are warm enough to enjoy coffee and breakfast outside. Windows are left open all night.

Plenty of things have happened since April. All of them good I’d say. A few more prints have sold, been playing lots of music, performing a few times a month, with a variety of bands…from Old Coyote Moon to the Ragged Spurs, to just me and sharon, otherwise calling ourselves The Littlest Birds….there’s talk of a fall tour even, with sharon, around the west…i’ll keep you posted.

Old Coyote Moon will be playing at Millpond Music Festival outside of Bishop, CA, Sept 17-19. We’re on at 11 am, Sunday the 19th. so BE THERE OR BE SQUARE.

There was a trip to Pt. Reyes a while back that finished up in kirkwood with a recording and hang out session with friends, which we now call The Ragged Spurs. An old time group without bass or guitar. There was a 12 day ski tour into the middle of the High Sierra with a few friends….we got great snow and skied some awesome stuff….hopefully an article will come out of that trip and those pictures…There was a quick trip to Ojai for my brother’s performance at the festival and an afternoon of wine tasting at their wine festival. There’s been the usual landscaping work outside in the hot ‘n dry high altitude sunshine….and there’s been lots of dreaming.
Got some good one’s cookin’ for the coming years I think.

Basically life is as good as it gets these days. My toes are about to be in the sun, the coffee is not yet done, and another day is unfolding. unraveling perhaps. Where will it lead? so many good things, different things, all coming together….i’m about to make another payment on a beautiful piece of land in baja mexico…working towards that dream still….gardening and dreaming about farming and playing music, and who knows where that will go…just throw the instruments in the car babe and lets hit the road….see where we end up…

it’s all very exciting. Check out the photography section for new prints now available, and I hope to continue to keep adding them as well as take on a website remodel, and add additional products for purchase….it’s all a matter of time.
And fortunately, time is something I’ve got.

that’s it for now….

July 20, 2010 | Categories: Daily Life | Leave A Comment »

Desert Life

Well, the skiing has been great this spring, but I personally always have to give it up for a bit to slip away to the desert before things heat up too much. Spring is a great time (tho the winds can blow), with flowers and greenery in abundance. Here are some images from last week’s six day adventure through northern Death Valley National Park….

I was traveling with my friend Sharon, who’s never seen these particular parts of the desert before, never rambled in the shadows of the Inyo Mountains, or the washes of the Saline Range, and so it was extra special to be sharing a place that I hold so dear with someone seeing it for the first time….

Something about the open road, warmth, and empty spaces of the desert just draw me in, hold me down, and peel back the layers of bullshit piled on by even the most blissed “regular life” … the moment gains its proper priority …