It’s not what you know…

The music industry at grass roots level is all about contacts and relationships. Maintaining these relationships should be a primary focus for any band or musician. It takes time and it doesn’t always pay off straight away, but that doesn’t mean it won’t eventually.

A prime example of this happened to us last week. For around 3 years we have been trying to get a gig at Hull’s premier original band night The Sesh. As the night is primarily to promote the music of Hull, the chances of a band from “across the water” getting a gig are greatly reduced. It does happen occasionally but we hadn’t managed it… until last week. Completely out of the blue we got a call at rehearsal from a sound engineer we worked with a few years back. Mike from ITSL Sound & Light is a top bloke and we kept in touch. It turns out that he does the sound for The Sesh and they were looking for a band to fill a spot so he recommended us. Had we never bothered to get to know Mike, or keep in contact we would probably have never got the gig.

The gig, as it was turned out to be awesome. I now know why the night has such a high reputation. Of course, we found the time to talk to the promoter and sent an email thanking him for inviting us down. We will try to stay in touch and hopefully we’ll be back soon.

It’s important to keep on top of these relationships, and whilst you don’t want to pester people to the point of irritation, you don’t want them to forget about you either. I try to keep a simple spreadsheet with contact details for promoters, venues etc. and note down the last time I made contact. That way I can occasionally go through the list and get in touch. It doesn’t have to be much, a text message or a wall post on Facebook or a tweet. You just need to let these people you are still around. Who knows, one day it might just pay off.