Good Places to Play?

[James Pruitt]

I have a band of 5 people and we are trying to find a few places (bars, restaurants,..etc) that we can play to get our name out there. Does anyone know of any good places downtown or on the North Side that allow this?

[David Bagdade]

What genre? Do you play originals or covers? Do you care about making money? Do you have a PA?

[James Pruitt]

We play rock/classic rock. We have a few of our own songs and we play covers. Money is always nice to get, but certainly not a necessity. We have amps for all of our instruments and a drum set, which we would only use a bass drum, snare, and hi hat, and maybe a tom while traveling.

[Rick Stanger]

Is everyone in your band under 21? It doesn't mean you cannot play in clubs that serve alcohol, but there are limitations. Anyone under 18 has to leave the club during breaks, for example.

Put together a promo package with at least a picture of the band (preferably playing live), a songlist, and a demo CD with you guys playing two or three well known cover tunes. Good recordings can be cheaply made these days, so don't spend a ton of money on it.
Oh, and get a MySpace page for your band, if you can.
Once you have the promo pack and website, start contacting the organizer's of various festivals and fairs around Central Indiana and make your pitch. Many of them are delighted to have free entertainment. Sometimes they already have a stage with a PA.

And start making your contacts now, don't wait until summer.

Get creative! The Tipton Pork Festival will see over 100,000 people pass through the town of Tipton that weekend. Offer to set up on a street corner near the pork chop tent and play every evening. Ask for free pork chop dinner coupons, you'll probably get them!.

Oh, and save up your money and buy a decent PA. You'll need one.

Here are a couple of links to get you started:
Indiana State Festivals Organization
Indiana Association of Fairs, Festivals, and Events

Hope this gives you some ideas.

[James Pruitt]

thanks for your help. Everyone in the band is under 21, but over 18. We have a personal recording "studio", but we will make a myspace and get pictures like you suggested.

Thanks again for your comments and any other advice is greatly appreciated.

[David Bagdade]

Myspace is hugely important. My bands have traditional websites and myspace pages, and you wouldn't believe how much more play we get on the myspace pages. If you do a band page, you can post up to six tracks, you can sell tracks, you can post a gig calendar and display a virtually unlimited number of photos. And it doesn't cost anything.

[James Pruitt]

I just finished our myspace this weekend and its looking good. We have 4 of our songs up and over 200 listens. What is the next step I should be looking to do?

If any of you want to check out the band page its myspace.com/internalfuze

[David Bagdade]

Troll around other myspace pages, especially band ones, and make friend requests. Musical myspace-ing is really nothing more than a form of social networking. My main band, The Cousin Brothers, has had its page for two and a half years, and we have more than 3300 friends. I say that not to boast but to point out that it has supplanted our actual web page as the principal online contact point. We regularly get gig inquires into our myspace inbox, we get merch requests, and it's a great way for our fans to hit us up for info. So...my suggestion is to get accumulate lots and lots of friends.

[James Pruitt]

I have started the "adding friends" process and working on getting lots of fans. Also thank you Rick for those festival web pages. I contacted around 15 of the festivals around Indiana and already have 8 call back wanting us to play for them in the summer.

Thanks for all your help and hopefully future help.

[Rick Stanger]

That's great!
You're certainly welcome, I am glad to help any way that I can.
Let me know which festivals that you get booked and I may show up myself to hear you guys play.

[Rodney E. Curry]

I can help with the P.A. if interested I have several components of a P.A. system for sale. Mixing console, some processing equipment and an amplifier. Let me know if your interested

[Brian M. Alvey]

The Vollrath Tavern is on the very near Southside of Downtown... www.vollrathindy.com

[JULIE A. HUFFAKER]

Radio Radio, Locals Only, Birdy's, Melody Inn to name a few. My band The Last Digit formerly The Last Four Digits will be playing Radio Radio aug 14th with The infamous Vulgar Boatmen.

Friday, August 14: Last 4 Digits + Vulgar Boatmen + Large Damaging Hail

Almost like Crazy Al's days.......