| well I'm not a big name artist by any stretch of the imagination.... so no, that has pretty much nothing to do with it.
I generally ask for pretty large sums of money when taking a gig overseas so venues take it upon themselves to do good amounts of radio/tv/print promotion for the show so the place is packed, and so that they don't lose money on the deal.
A large amount of a lot of gigs is certainly letting people know that you're coming to their home town too. Facebook, Talkbass, MySpace, last fm, twitter...... all the online outlets you can get your hands on. And not just blasting an email out there to people expecting them to come to your gig. There has to be some sort of connection with the people for them to actually want to come and see what your live show is all about.
Talkbass for instance has a connection because I'm on here all the time talking about music and offering advice for whatever it's worth. The podcast is another conneciont because it speaks to people and has some content that some cats actually want to check out.
I don't just randomly post some info about an upcoming tour out of the blue and then expect people to crawl over broken glass on their hands and knees to come to the show....!! no way. it would never work like that. There has to be some kind of relationship between you and your audience. An open dialogue that inspires interest on both sides. I want to play for an audience that is truly into the music, that's the interest on my side, and members of the audience want to come to the show because it carries on from what they might have heard online, talked about with me personally online, or checked out in recorded material. It's no good if it's a one way street, you have to be open with your audience and have something to offer that's worth checking out. Imagine if I talked all this crap online and then people came to a show and there was nothing they could take away with them from the experience. That would be awful. For everyone involved!
If you're selling something, which anyone who is a band leader of any sort is, then it has to be something worth buying. I hope that I'm honest enough with myself and with anyone who might end up in my audience that the music comes through emotionally enough to capture people's imagination, and give them a good feeling when they're done listening to a show.
It's a life's work trying to get that one right, and it doesn't always work either. You can't please everyone for starters, and you're certainly not going to gain the mass appeal of someone like michael jackson from playing instrumental music on the bass...... But I think persistence and hard work, and above all else honesty, will be the things that promote the music for you more than anything else.
Easy,
Janek | 
