Brian Bergeron

I’ve been very busy this week with the studio and booking and such and I haven’t had a chance to post. I made time today, however, to break out of the monotony that college booking sometimes is to write about…college booking.

I get asked often enough how to successfully book college shows, and how I’m able to make a living playing those types of shows 8 months out of the year (with the other 4 reserved for street performing, though there’s some overlap).

People close to me ask how my normal work day is constructed and I tell them that many days, I’m not out of my pajamas until past noon even though I’ve been up since 8 sending emails. It’s definitely not a glamorous way to live, but I’ve been able to carve out a nice niche in this market.

In fact, there was consistent growth for me for a couple years and I felt that I could teach my methods to others (the interns that I worked with for about a year) and later I worked with a small-time agent, but neither of those scenarios worked well. I don’t regret it because I learned a lot, and hopefully my interns learned a lot, but I don’t want to think about the money that I missed out on trusting the reins of my career to other people. Apparently, I’m my own best cheerleader so at the beginning of October I took back control of my own college booking and all ready have a handful of gigs paying in the range of $350-$700 so what I do must be working. My goal for next semester is 20 gigs at an average of $500, which should help pay off the rest of the record.

I also have to say that I’m by no means the most refined at this game. I have merely found my niche where I can exist with little notoriety but make a living playing music, which is my goal.

Here we go! Please let me know if you have questions and I’ll address them in future entries

Tips for College Booking

1. Respect Your Price: When I first started booking, I was asking $50-$150 for a gig. I was getting them and thinking that I was on the way to getting rich $150 at a time! After becoming a little more sophisticated in my research, I found that relatively unknown college acts were getting paid $500+ for a one-off college show and it blew my mind. How could Joe Nobody be worth that kind of money? It was the first big hurdle I had to face to justify getting paid the type of money that was out there for my art. I wanted to feel like I was earning the money. After realizing that most colleges had enormous student activities budgets, it helped soften the blow. Then I factored in the amount of time that I spent on booking vs. the amount of gigs that I got, and the amount of prep time for gigs and the amount of driving and all of the work that goes into a single gig happening, and I was able to justify that type of money. Sure, the colleges aren’t paying you for the contacting of other schools and all of work you do outside of their actual event, but but this was a way for me quantify the work I did with the pay that I received (because I don’t get paid by the hour). It helped me make sense of the situation.

With all that being said, know and respect what you’re worth. With a good coffeehouse act and demo and some experience under your belt, $400-$500 is a good start. Seriously. I can get upwards of $700 for solo and I’ve gotten as much as $1100 for the band but you have to be prepared to bargain and get a sense of what they have available so you don’t scare away the talent buyer. Be prepared to go for less but if you get the sense that you can go on the higher end of your guarantee, go nuts! I also ALWAYS try and get a hotel room included in gigs that are more than two hours away from home (it’s one less expense to take out of your guarantee) and factoring in travel costs into your guarantee is wise as well. Lastly, always try and get a meal out of them because you miss college good so much, right?

2. Maintain Your Contacts- I meet a lot of of people (and have a couple in mind when I write this) who have a great act and get opportunities but don’t follow through, follow-up, or maintain their contacts. We’re in a business where constant growth is key and having a good foundation is the best way to do that. That’s why finding repeat customers is great. That way, you can rely on a number of gigs per year and your guarantee can grow. You can also expand your client base by maintaining a number of clients each year while adding on a couple new each semester. Hopefully you’re able to build and maintain a fan base at the colleges that you perform at that you can augment over time.

This goal might be tough. Especially at a college, turnover can be high on campus activities boards. People graduate, after all, but you, as the resourceful independent artist, are on top of finding out ways to maintain your contacts and updating them as people quit, change position, or graduate.

3. Have Realistic Expectations- My last comment for this entry is you have to know what you want to get out of playing colleges. It’s a good way to make some bank but I don’t think it’s any way to grow outside of regional and niche success. I’ve talked to artists who regret having become pigeon-holed in the college market and aren’t able to draw in any of the club markets. A balance needs to be achieved. I’m still learning about this balance, so I’ll let you know how it goes…

Anyways, at the risk of making this entry longer, I’m going to stop. I’ll post part 2 in the next few days, but I really should get back to work.