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Anyone else feel like your gigs are suddenly drying up?

#21
Covid nearly wiped out gigging for about a year. Gigs have been on the upswing, at least for me this last year(partly happening because I'm in 3 bands and sub for a 4th).
And it's best if you can vet any vids taken by well meaning fans, before they're posted. Being a little off can hurt booking prospects....
 
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#22
dbsfgyd1 said:
For me, the drop off started 20 years ago…LOL!! About a year ago I responded to an add looking for a bassist for a Blues Brother Tribute band. Now I’ve been covering Muscle Shoals music for the last 50 years, I even have a black suit white shirt and can play wearing sun glasses… the reply? “Good Luck.”
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That’s part of the equation…the audience that would respond to that sort of thing is aging out.
 
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#23
We have 5 booked so far for '24, with a 6th pending contract (our first!). I can count on at least that many more, from just repeat venues who we have an established relationship with. We typically book around 20 gigs per calendar year.

If the iron is hot, strike it.
 
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#26
I’ve got four gigs this month, including right now: A Mexican place where there’s barely space to change your mind. All part of what is apparently my Farewell Tour:D. No NYE gig this year, which suits me fine. 12 in a row is plenty. Band’s got 31 gigs on the 2024 caledar already. We’re having personnel issues (like me leaving) but the work seems to keep coming.
 
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#28
We went full bore until the middle of September. Then it's just like someone turned a switch "off"! I've been back to past venues to see if I can figure this out. I've found no real reason. I hav 3 or 4 bookings already for 24 but, this year end is slowly becoming disappointing.
 
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#30
Lance Bunyon said:
I'm guessing it's the final impact of the COVID shutdowns.
Many of our pubs are mom and pop businesses and really have been the walking dead for around 4 years now.
So that $300 they pay is no longer viable since the only people showing up on Friday or Saturday nights are the same 12 barflies that always show up whether it's a band or the digital jukebox.
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well, at least in the area where most of my gigs are, there was some of what you describe ... smaller places being hammered by covid challenges. But, what also seemed to happen here is that there were venues that started having music that never had before ... mostly restaurant/bar type places that added outdoor spaces during covid, and then decided to include live music outdoors. This works pretty well in my area (SF Bay Area) because the weather is generally very mild and there is a pretty solid outdoor live music scene nearly 9-10 months each year. The net results of all that here, is that while a few places shut down, there were more places that added live music, so there was a net gain for live music venues.

So for me anyway, its not lack of venues. If I really dig into this, I would say that the biggest challenge is a meaningful percentage of the live music venues have moved to mostly solo/duo type stuff and away from full bands ... and there does seem to be way more bands competing for what remains of the the gigs too. Band quality is all over the map, but I don't think the venues really care about quality if the band draws paying customers to their food/drinks .... but that's entirely other story.
 
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#31
My band gigs as much as we want to, 30+ a year. We take time off for personal travel and such. We get offered more than we take. Generally it’s a trading up thing now where we accept less borderline gigs and go after better paying ones, outdoor gigs, etc. I don’t do the bookings but I know it’s hard work. Sounds like your bandleader isn’t hungry enough. Anyone else in the band willing to take up the slack?
 
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#33
Covid really changed things around here for the styles of music I play. I guess living in a state that still has some dry countries I shouldn’t have been surprised that during the pandemic people were allowed to have Covid parties at the mall or Walmart, but bars and clubs were forced to stay closed for so long most venues who were renting went out of business. When most of the venues I regularly played disappeared I decided to take a better paying job that often prevents me from gigging.

There’s basically two cover bands that play the area, and they both are spin offs from the one cover band that used to get all that business. So it’s hard to get any new cover bands going.

In the local original scene most of the good bands are focusing a lot more on recording and making music videos and spreading their music online world wide then playing local gigs now. I honestly can’t blame them. As someone who was in original bands for many years towards the end all I wanted to do was write, record, and make videos. It was much more satisfying to get tens of thousands of views online over playing 4+ band blowouts in smaller bars.
 
#34
The festival part of our portfolio is winding down but we have our usual pub gigs that are monthly.

We're going to add some new material but there are Scots-Irish holidays to be celebrated and we're in the hopper for some of those.

It's been a leaner year but, since I've finally figured out DAW - Reaper and am building out a home studio, I don't mind having a few extra hours to practice my guitar and songwriting skills. I also have to labor thru learning how to build drum tracks digitally. I'm hard-wired on my drum machine but there's some really nice sounding live drum plug-ins that I should really learn to use.

A smidge of spare time is needed for that.
 
#35
Been busy over here, at least on the jazz scene. Played a gig last night and two tomorrow. Generally a gig or two a week is pretty easy to attain, but i honestly limit how many gigs i accept since i work a day job and need time with family and rest.
 
#39
One_Dude said:
We are still recovering from the Covid shut down of local live music. Prior to Covid we played 43 dates in 2019 while taking January, February, and September off. Dates started picking up this Spring, but now are dropping off again. Several of the venues we played at on a regular rotation just quit having live music.

Thump on,

One_Dude
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That's generally been my experience. 3 of the 4 venues we played regularly pre-Covid closed shortly after the PPP money ran out. We still play a little but haven't done much the past two years.
 
#40
Sounds like you have a unique niche, which may explain the unique gigs.

We do a mix of clubs and outdoor festivals (during summer) and have had a great first year with this project (50+ gigs) with good callbacks. We’re well into booking for next year which will exceed this year, already 30+ on the books with active booking for 2024. I think this depends allot on the music genre/venue too.

We have a great booking agent that gets things done too, which has been been key for us.
 

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