Sample Tours: Massively Speed Up Your Gig Bookings

Regardless of what stage you're at in your career, if you're not asking for enough gigs, it's unlikely you'll be getting the number of bookings you want.

Most jazz club and festival promoters are receiving a huge amount of incoming offers so it's unrealistic to expect them to find you.

You know that...

I know that...

And yet with all the millions of other jobs you need to do as an independent jazz musician, spending hours searching the internet for possible gigs sometimes gets missed...

Asking For 'Enough' Gigs

I've seen first hand as an agent the direct correlation between the number of gigs you ask for and the number of gigs you get.

Of course, there will always be a big amount of pitching emails that get ignored, but as long as you're asking enough questions, you should start to see results...

Want to get 25 gigs for your project in 2022?

You might need to 'pitch' for 250...

That might sound depressing at first, but isn't knowing that the main barrier between you and more gigs is simply a bit of research and a bunch of emails a good thing?

Seems totally doable, no?

Better Gig Bookings: Step One

However you approach it, part one of getting consistent gigs is usually this:

1. Find out which promoters out there book the exact type(s) of jazz that you play
2. Find their direct email address
3. Contact them in a personal yet professional way
4. Make them excited about your music
5. Follow up with them regularly (and at the right times)

That doesn't mean pitching to any event with 'jazz' in the name when you have 30 minutes free, but focusing in on the ones that have proven - by their past booking choices - that they are into the style of music you make.

This offer here is designed to give you a massive headstart with item #1 on that list above...

Sample Tours Are The Answer

One of the most effective ways of doing this (and one that I've been doing for every artist I've ever worked for in the last 14 years) is to pick artists who are playing in a similar style and then search for all the places that they've played at.

Simple to understand, effective when done, but massively time consuming to do!

It's the modern equivalent of cutting out tour schedules from jazz magazines around the world.

So if you would like to sit down for your next gig booking session with a big headstart, this is our solution:

We've pulled together publicly-available tour histories from around the internet for a selection of well-known modern jazz musicians and compiled them into downloadable spreadsheets.

So far, we have sample tours for:

• Kurt Elling (vocals) - 272 gigs
• Cécile Mclorin Salvant (vocals) - 205 gigs
• Stacey Kent (vocals) - 223 gigs
• Aaron Parks (piano) - 175 gigs
• Shai Maestro (piano) - 355 gigs
• Julian Lage (guitar) - 384 gigs
• Kenny Garrett (sax) - 98 gigs
• Kamasi Washington (sax) - 276 gigs

You simply need to identify the ones that have some common crossover with your own project and you've got a ready-made list of target clubs and festivals for your project.

Each artist spreadsheet has between 100 and 500 lines and includes:

• Month
• Year
• Venue/Festival
• City
• Country
• Website
• [IMPORTANT: NO EMAIL, SEE BELOW FOR WHY...]

LET'S TALK ABOUT EMAIL ADDRESSES...

These spreadsheets are designed to help you find your way to the specific clubs & festivals that are right for you, and to be able to connect with them in a meaningful way.

They are the 21st Century equivalent of cutting out tour schedules from jazz magazines to get a better understanding of where similar artists to you are playing.

For a couple of specific reasons, these spreadsheets do not include email addresses.

ONE: An email is a very personal form of connection in the 21st Century and putting together lists of addresses that can be easily imported into a platform like Mailchimp and mass-mailed does not seem very cool.

And, aside from that, these types of emails don't get read much and so aren't effective for bookings.

Whilst we know that you (yes, you, reading this now) are probably diligent enough to not do that, we wouldn't feel right about putting that content out there into the world.

TWO: Sample tours are just step one in the process.

They are going to get you much closer to the right clubs and festivals, but you still need to research individual promoters to be able to reach them in the most persuasive way.

Checking out their website and finding their email address (which, honestly, is a 1-minute job in most cases...) is an important step (in our opinion) in being able to pitch in the most persuasive way.