Tips For Booking Your Accordion Band
Irish accordion bands are often underrated and misunderstood for their capacity to perform. The true accordionists can play any kind of music on the accordion. As an accordionist, a lot of the musicians suffer since it’s not that well recognized as the guitar or the piano. Hence, we have enlisted a few tips and tricks to ensure that you grab the attention of the right people at the right time and gain yourself some brand value. To get more gigs and more bookings for your Irish accordion bands you will have to ensure you are recognized and have a brand name for yourself. Getting out there with your accordion can let people know that you have great skills as an accordionist and can play a variety of music on it. Hence, use the tips and tricks mentioned below to gain the audience by reaching them in unique places, which will help in amplifying your brand.
Have an EPK
You must be wondering what an EPK is, an EPK is an Electronic Press Kit. Since we live in a world of social media and technology why not make good use of it. Instead of having a folder or a file to show to every manager, you can simply have an EPK that you can show to any manager at any given time on your phone. Make sure to include all your gigs in your EPK and add as much music as you can. Link to all the places you have played and performed. Photos of the events that you have covered, also add videos in there to showcase. Furthermore, add your music videos to the EPK to inform the manager about the variety of music you are capable of playing.
Hire a freelancer
If you are unsure how to build a detailed EPK try to hire someone to do it for you. Since there are too many young people in the market who know how to do this kind of stuff and can offer you their one-time freelance services to set up a great-looking EPK. You won’t have to worry about doing it yourself. All you have to do is inform the assistant on what needs to go on the EPK and provide them with all the material that you desire to showcase on the EPK. Once they have everything they need, they will get to work on it and provide you with an outclass EPK. Furthermore, you can ask them to guide you on how to adapt the EPK to include new gigs and information and once you learn how to make adjustments to the EPK you are all good to go. After that initial development of the EPK, you can keep adding more stuff to it to make it more exciting for the managers and clients to look at.
Professional and prompt communication
Communication is the key to building long-term relationships with managers and clients when growing your Irish accordion bands. You want to ensure that all your communications are drafted professionally. Since you don’t want to miss out on a gig you will have prompted to take quick action to reply to all your messages while maintaining a crisp and professional tone with your clients. Managers and clients value those bands who reply quickly and promptly. Hence, when on the search to get gigs to try to be as prompt and as professional as you can be. Since leaving a client or manager hanging can make you lose the gig. And as a startup, you don’t want to miss out on any opportunity to play.
Hire an assistant
You can even hire someone who can manage your accounts for you so that you don’t have to worry about responding to every email yourself. Hiring an assistant will provide you with more headway in getting gigs and ensuring a professional response to all the communication that has to go out of your office. Make sure you discuss all the details of the gigs in the first couple of communications. Such as compensation, setup details and any other relevant details that you might need for the event. These days there are even offshore assistants available who can work for you from anywhere. Make use of such services to strengthen your bond with various clients and keep in touch with the existing ones and ensure a smooth and professional flow of communication.
Make use of your network
The larger the number of people who come to your gig for your Irish accordion bands the more successful it will be and there is a good chance you may end up reaching a new audience from the gig. For that, a lot of promotion has to be done. Most of the venues that play music do their own promotions and most well-known bands rely on their promotions alone. However, if you really want to get a lot of people to show up to your gig you should promote the gigs yourself as well. You can utilize social media and engage a lot of people to participate in the event. The assistant you hired can help you, in this case, a lot. They can make promotional posters and social media posts that can pique the interest of your network and have them participate in the event.
Diversify your audience
Don’t limit yourself to just playing at large venues. You can gain a lot of audiences by playing at other venues such as a daycare, college showcase, or even an awards show. Many Irish accordion bands limit themselves to playing at senior care homes, local parks, and a Catholic school. But branching into different areas of life, such as golf fitness events, can be really beneficial for your band. Senior Living homes may be great venues for your style band, and local funeral homes too, but that doesn’t mean you won’t fall in love with a different type of venue. No venue is unimportant or useless, every place you play and can be heard is a venue for an artist and the audience are a new set of ears that can listen to your content and can bring in new gigs for you. Playing at such diversified venues increases your reputation as well as touches the hearts of people. And sometimes you can play in the big venues with the largest audience, but you can’t touch the soul of those people.
However, reaching out to such small, intimate settings of venues and performing for these people will help you gain the respect of a lot of people and warm their hearts towards you. This helps you gain a genuine audience and an opportunity for different recruiting services to find you, who love your music and want to hear from you. Cafes can be a fun place to perform as you can enjoy some light banter with the listeners and encourage the regulars to listen to you or even ask for recommendations and perform the song they want to hear. Dedicate or serenade and create fun moments that go viral on social media. These kinds of gestures and social media virility gets you to a fresh audience.
Diversify promotion
Make use of online software like Canva to create stunning posters to dispense around town when you are performing, such as at local fitness centers. Make sure you make use of social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to gain the attention of the most diversified audience for your
Make use of online software like Canva to create stunning posters to dispense around town when you are performing, such as at local fitness centers. Make sure you make use of social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to gain the attention of the most diversified audience for your Irish accordion bands. People love to attend events and gatherings wherever they can and to provide them with the opportunity to be entertained with some of the best accordion music makes it a lot more fun for the audience. You can also make use of the opportunities provided by other musicians since you can end up getting supported by other fellow musicians if you support their work. Furthermore, reach out to groups of people who are your target audience and those who you want to reach. Do not underestimate any kind of audience or any kind of venue as you can gain a lot of attention from the variation of audiences.
People love to attend events and gatherings wherever they can and to provide them with the opportunity to be entertained with some of the best accordion music makes it a lot more fun for the audience. You can also make use of the opportunities provided by other musicians since you can end up getting supported by other fellow musicians if you support their work. Furthermore, reach out to groups of people who are your target audience and those who you want to reach. Do not underestimate any kind of audience or any kind of venue as you can gain a lot of attention from the variation of audiences.
Promotion
Use flyers and newspaper inserts to target your local audience. You can gain the attention of the locals by placing flyers in the markets and distributing promotional material door to door to gain the attention of the listeners. When designing promotional material it’s like it’s the most intimate and heartwarming, soul-touching event that they will ever experience. Invite everyone you know and make full use of social media to interact with your target audience and inform them about the latest gig. You can do Facebook and Instagram live to interact with the audience live and talk to them to ask them about what kind of music they would like to hear, and you can even bring out your accordion for a small performance on the live sessions.
Practice matters
No matter how good you are at your craft, practicing is the one thing you must not ignore for your Irish accordion bands. After all, practice makes perfect and that’s what you need. When it comes to gigs and artists, quality matters. Hence, make sure you always take out time to practice no matter what. Practicing will help you hone your skill, and you can attempt to learn how to play renditions of some of the latest new contemporary music on your accordion.
As people love to listen to the latest tunes played with different types of instruments you will be able to gain a lot of respect and love from the people who you play for. Practice especially before going on a gig, since you don’t want to arrive at a gig without any practice or any idea what kind of sets you are going to be playing. Preplan your sets before each gig, so you know exactly what to play and how to play it. Making sure you perform your best and give every performance all you have is what makes the most difference. Hence, do not take practice out of your routine and practice as much as you can.
Set up at the Venue
Think about all the gear you will need to perform and pack the bags. You don’t want to end up relying on the venue to provide you everything you need. Some venues offer mixers and personnel to help you set up. However, if they do not offer that support you don’t want to end up being in a sticky situation where you do not have the required equipment to complete the set. Ask the venue if they will provide a mixer and a person to help your Irish accordion bands with the volumeizer and based on their answer make arrangements. If they do not offer any of those things you may have to make your own arrangements hence having these conversations with the venue manager is very important. Make sure you do not miss out on any detail.
Time Management
Time management is key to the success of your performance. More often than not the concerts start late to allow people to come in. However, that doesn’t mean that you should arrive late at the venue. You should have your own schedule and arrive at the venue at the designated time to ensure that you give your best. This bodes well for you in the future as well as people tend to remember someone who was able to start the set on time especially managers and clients value this trait a lot. So from the perspective of gaining future gigs, always plan to go ahead of time and make all the necessary arrangements you need to make for your set.
Make money
Making money is obviously one of the biggest parts of playing to a large crowd. Hence, while you are in the process of booking a gig with a client, have it in writing how much you will be paid. You want to make sure that you and the client are on the same page when it comes to the payment and the payment mechanics. Some clients like to pay upfront after the gig is over, while others like to make the payment a couple of days later. Also, while you are discussing all these things with the client, ask them about putting up a tip jar so that the listeners who are enjoying your music can tip you on the spot. Since Irish accordion bands make a lot of money by tips, keep reminding the audience that there is a tip jar where they can tip you.
Lawyer up
Life is very unpredictable hence always making sure you incorporate your instruments into your insurance plans. A Bankruptcy lawyer is also very important, make sure you get in touch with one to ensure that you are covered and so are your instruments.
Have fun
Always remember to have fun at your gig for your Irish accordion bands. Interact with people, laugh and enjoy your music. There is nothing better than being on stage and having people listen to you, just remember that when you get on the stage. Leave all the things aside and just go with the flow and let yourself become one with the music you are playing.
