I’m seeing discussions in facebook lately of musicians complaining about how this music scene is lacking. It’s getting tougher for bands & acoustic solo artists to book everywhere, nowadays. I’m seeing that a lot of musicians around here are admitting that they’ve been getting rejected by a lot of venues. A lot of musicians just get gigs around here from other musicians, just word of mouth, when a band needs an opener, musicians will ask to get on those gigs. They would either ask other bands to get on gigs, or the bands will ask them. Either way. Venues don’t reach out to bands to ask them to play on a gig. Don’t usually work that way anymore.

The only time when a venue wants to book a band and flat out ask them, is when a band has a large following. Those are the bands that seem to be getting all the gigs, these days. Even the popular and more successful bands struggle to get gigs too.

Even if I try to get myself back out there, if I want to gig again, I’m probably going to have a tough time getting on a gig too.

Several years ago, when I was gigging out like crazy, I had no problem getting gigs from venues. I’ve asked plenty of venues for a gig and they actually accepted me. Venues such as Cafe Lena’s for Wednesday night “Emerging the Artist Breakout Series”, King’s Tavern, Backstreet Billiards, the Coffee Planet, Slow Jed’s, etc. As far as Valentine’s goes, I didn’t ask the venue to do their evening “Happy Hours”, there was a musician already doing those shows who I befriended with and I asked him to help him out booking the shows, so I can play there myself.

There are so many bands and artists in the Capital District trying to get gigs, but none of them get much around here anymore.

If you’re struggling, there are still ways to get gigs. Like I said before, try asking to be the opener of their show. Tell the venue that you’re willing to play for free, or if you want, you can even set up a home gig and have a small audience at home, that always works too. There’s always ways to play out. You can even do a live internet streaming show, which I plan on doing when I think of a plan.

Musicians struggling to get gigs around here, it’s just further proof that there is no music scene here. Everyone’s always accusing me of not doing much in music. This could be part of why I don’t do much ’cause there’s no place to play out anymore. So what’s the point of going back out, anyway, ya know? I’ll be lucky enough to even get a 1 gig or two in 2013, even if I tried hard to get a lot.

I understand musicians want to play live a lot ’cause that’s what we do this for. Perform in front of an audience, and believe me, I love performing too. It’s just sad that musicians get forced to get stuck doing nothing ’cause a lot of places don’t have live music anymore. Venues are closing down, bars/cafe’s stopped having live music, venues are getting even more strict with their booking policies, etc. Soon, everything will be “pay to play” gigs, because of the economics.

I may not like the bar & club scene, but I do play them anyway ’cause I just want to perform in front of people.

Performing live is awesome. I too wish we could have a better scene. It’s just proves that bars, clubs, cafes, etc. don’t care about you or your music, they just want a large draw. If you don’t have a large draw, no show. It’s pathetic the way these so called, “venues”, handle the booking but it is what it is. All they care about is the money. It would be nice if this scene was more music appreciative and positive, which is far from it.

Kev