Guide to Getting Gigs: Part Two

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: getting gigs is tough.  If you’re still sitting at home scratching your head over where to start, make sure you check out Part One of our guide on getting booked to play your own shows.

If you’re already wise to the steps we’ve laid out and taken care to follow them, chances are at least one or two venues are ready to book you for a set. Don’t worry if they’re small. Like we said in Part One, you should be thinking local and any gig will help you with getting that needed experience.

But even for experienced guitarists who are just getting into live performances, there are still a few precautions you should take to make it count and make sure you’re phone will still be ringing for more shows. Read on for more Guitar Planet tips on commanding the stage as a great guitarist.

There’s a lot to be said for clarity. Showing up to a gig without the specifics of what exactly is expected of you can land you in a potentially embarrassing and costly situation.

First, you always want to know and confirm your time slot. You might show up to a gig thinking you’ll just play the one-hour set you prepared and then the venue manager tells you you’ve got to fill two. On the flip side, you might get cut short and not play the songs you wanted most or shred the solo you’d been practicing. Know your time slot and know exactly what it’s going to take from you to fill it. And, of course, it never hurts to have a few songs prepared for an encore (just in case the crowd can’t get enough).

Similarly, know whether you’re the only performer. You might have been promised an hour set but show up to find out you’re third in a lineup of five performers and things are running late. Suddenly that hour you’d been promised becomes a hurried 40 minutes with a panicked venue manager trying to rush everyone along. If you’re playing covers, crosscheck your set list with the rest of the lineup so there’s no overlap. These types of surprises can throw you off your game and affect your performance, so always know what to expect.

Like we said in Part One, your first few gigs are very likely to be unpaid. But it’s common for venue managers to demand payment from you just to book their venue; money that you’ll have to make back through ticket sales, or possibly income from served-drinks if you’re playing at a bar.

We’re not saying that you should avoid these situations in every case, but you need to know what you’re getting into. At this point, you don’t want to walk away from gigs having paid significant sums of money out of pocket. So if you find yourself confronted with a pay-to-play situation at a venue that you don’t want to pass up, beware of what needs to be done on your part to cover expenses. Sometimes it’s better to hold out for opportunities that aren’t financial gambles, and if you’re offering to play for free, you shouldn’t have trouble finding alternatives.