Working my last show tonight for this December tour in Wausau, WI..incredibly bummed that I won’t be going to the west coast with the band to finish out the tour! This has been a priceless experience and I am so thankful I was able to come for the ride! Who’s ready for December 2014? This girl!
SoundCheck
Sound check from December 9 in Evans, GA.
Morrow, GA
We spent two nights in Atlanta, GA for a matinee show at Clayton State University at the beautiful Spivey Hall on Sunday afternoon. A really great surprise for me to see the magnificent hall. Check out my shots during soundcheck:
Set up and soundcheck went much quicker this time around – the band is jelling and getting more comfortable with the sound they want to create so the process is smoother. We got some delicious Vietnamese food for dinner (first time I had it!). My first lesson was to try and get the restaurant to bag them individually and label them with either their name or order number. This is just to make it easier on the band. They don’t need to be searching for their order in a big sea of orders!
I was able to hang backstage this time as the hall had to control selling merchandise, so it was nice to relax and chat with the band as well as stay on top of them for show time and 5 minute calls.
It was a sold out show and the audience was really warm. The fiddle player in the band said there was a “wow-er” in the audience – after every song, this woman would say, “wow!”. Things like that I found give the band a confidence boost and a little spark of joy, making the concert that much more enjoyable for them!
During intermission, I walked to the box office to make sure merch was doing well and took some shots of the lobby:
I stuck around after the show and sat by the CD signing table. It was so great and rewarding to hear folks talk to the band and tell them stories of how inspiring they are, when they last saw each other, kids being starstruck…it was really nice to see that at the end of the night.
Off to Evans, GA as I type for a show tonight! More stories are still to come, I’m sure. 🙂
Franklin, NC
Our second stop was Franklin, NC. We spent our first night on the bus and I surprisingly slept really well! Each of our bunks have a DVD player and a really comfy pillow and blanket.
I headed to bed fairly early since I had to be up to get the driver a room in the morning – he is only allowed to drive 10 hours before he has to stop and rest. He made a few stops in the night, making him about 1 hour behind schedule – but we definitely had the time.
I woke up a few hours before we were due to arrive and rolled up the windows to view the gorgeous misty mountains from Virginia to North Carolina.
Calling the hotel, they didn’t have the room ready and didn’t think they would. But persistence is key. I called an hour before arrival and called when we got there – boom, a room is open. Telling them that the driver just traveled 10 hours might have helped. 🙂
Getting everyone else checked in was a process and didn’t go smoothly, and i didn’t get the last person in before it was time to load in. Fortunately, the venue had a shower so he was able to clean up, but lesson learned, CALL HOTELS AHEAD OF TIME. Once I was able to check in, I sat down and called everyone to tell them we’re arriving early or we’re arriving late, just to give them a heads up.
After loading in, soundcheck started and took a bit more time, so it was good that we arrived early. Being the beginning of the tour, the band has more patience, the sound is still being figured out and these things take more time.
While they were dealing with that, I started to set up merchandise with the presenter. Our shirts were shipped directly to the venue, so I was worried that they might not be just right..but they look great!!
I was worried because when I got to the first venue, we ordered mugs and the logo on the mug came in the completely wrong color…it was blue on blue, making it impossible to see! A huge bummer, but in the big picture, worse things could have happened.
The evening went really well – the band killed the show, the audience loved it. One woman came up to me after the show to buy a CD and told me that she’s been to the venue 5-6 times, and this was her favorite and in her opinion, the best show she’s seen there. What a compliment!!
Right now, I’m eating waffles and stealing some bagels for lunch from our complimentary breakfast…off to write some more and spend our day off traveling to Atlanta!
Thanks for reading,
Fiona
Day 2 – 3 – 4…wow.
It’s going by so fast!
Things are moving along quickly with lots of catching up, rehearsals, final plans, meetings – it’s been difficult to keep up with this blog. So first, my apologies. I know now why tour managers tend to take a few days to answer back. Because waking up at 8AM and working till 12:30AM, and having a hotel neighbor talk all night until 4AM, you tend to pick sleep during your free time. 🙂
On Tuesday, the band set up for a 12-hour rehearsal in a room at the venue. Our opening night is held at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA – have you been there? It’s absolutely breathtaking. I definitely want to plan a weekend here in the near future. It’s about 2 hours away from Manhattan. Pictures of the place below!
Soundcheck^
Our first ‘bump in the road’ was an issue with the instrument! Our bassist rented a fold up bass, making it easy to transport on the train and plane, but being the first time this bassist is using it, you have to expect something to go wrong.
So, the bass neck comes completely off, strings come off, bridge comes off…it’s quite a spectacle! You can imagine that tuning and set up time is doubled for our bassist, but that wasn’t the only issue coming up.
About 20 seconds into the first song, the bridge comes flying off of the bass! Immediately we all sank and eyes got wide. Is it defective? Is it broken? Are we going to have to get a regular bass? Are we going to have to ship this back?
We all are wondering! But, the bassist calmly picked everything up and said, “No, this should be fine.” He took a second stab at setting it up, had both me and the sound engineer make sure the bridge was straight, and stuck it out! And so did the bass – no more bumps in the road on that one! Whew!
Lessons learned:
1. If you are using a new instrument (or form of instrument), if you can, try it out before the big day. In this case, we had a rehearsal, but imagine if the first set up was on stage and that happened! Be prepared!
Kennett Square, PA
Day 1:
Half of us took the train from New York Penn on Amtrak, while the other half flew in from Chicago, Nashville and Austin! Already loving how touring brings folks together.
Taking the Amtrak is always, well…thrilling. For a Monday afternoon, it was fairly crowded at New York Penn station. Thanksgiving travel, I assumed. One tip I did learn after boarding that plane is when making reservations, is make them separate so you get separate tickets. When they announce the gate number, a herd of people with luggage just crams into the escalator door, making it hard for the 4 of us to go through together. I had to stand back and wait for everyone to get through and tell the impatient ticket man that these 3 guys are with me as they walked through.
I am with musicians who travel and tour for a living, so they knew to go right to the end of our coach class cart so we could find seats and luggage space easily. Done!
The ride was very easy and once we arrived at the train station, the driver was there to greet us. With one SUV for our 6 bags of LARGE luggage, it reminded ME to remind presenters that we are traveling with a lot of luggage and they need to prepare for that.
Once we all checked into the hotel, I planned a little welcome dinner for everyone to meet and catch up, and it was really fun for me to hear their conversations of past gigs, past collaborations, current state of the industry, current opinions of the industry…all of it. Something about being immersed around people who are really ‘doing it’ feels great to be a part of.
First day had some bumps, but nothing that can’t be handled. What I learned from the day:
1. Print out tickets for each person on the trip – take into consideration folks being late and getting lost in lines.
2. Don’t go for the first door on the train, walk down to the end to find a decent seat with luggage space.
3. Tell presenters you will need a large vehicle for transport – with musicians on the road for 3 weeks, that’s a lot of luggage.
4. If there’s time, plan a little meet/greet/catch up event, whether it’s a quick bite at a bar or a relaxed dinner. You are going to be on the road for weeks with these guys, make the effort to get to know each other! And also, hear some juicy stories.
Here I go!
Here I go, off for 17 days on the road!
Thanksgiving and Tour Annoucement
I was lucky enough to have 2 Thanksgiving celebrations with friends (my nephew responded with a “no FAIR!” over the phone) and it was days of red cabbage (my favorite side dish), pumpkin pie and of course a few games of Apples to Apples (get this game now if you don’t have it!)
While most might be relaxing and winding down the year, I, on the other hand, am planning a nationwide, 12-city tour for 6 musicians that starts December 2! Whew! Sounds easy, right?
I’m not only planning and coordinating the appearances, I’m also coming along for the ride. For the month of December, I’ll be on a large sleeper tour bus with 6 musicians and a sound engineer to tackle the “road life”. I’m going to learn first hand what it’s like to be a traveling musician and I certainly can’t wait to handle the inevitable hurdles and things that WILL go wrong.
So, to honor this new journey, I’ll be ‘live-blogging’ throughout the weeks with photos and stories! You are going to hear about the good AND the bad (no shame here), because it’s a learning experience. We all deserve to know what really happens on the road!
Let’s get this party started.
You don’t need social media. (How a Twitter chatroom changed my mind.)
Hey there,
I hope you are having a great day and gearing up for some serious turkey eating this week! I’ll be heading out to New Jersey for a Friendsgiving since home sweet home (Tyler, Texas) is just too far away.
Before the holiday, I wanted to share with you a recent personal discovery of mine that will really boost your Twitter presence and also might shift your mentality on social media, as it definitely did for me.
I recently became a BIG fan of joining in chat rooms, more specifically, Twitter chatrooms. To be honest, I always felt as if I don’t need to be THAT involved in social media; that somehow followers would come to me just because I was posting articles or sharing my tips.
Last week, I participated in my first Twitter chat room, hosted by GoGirlsMusic‘s Madelyn Sklar. And it proved me wrong.
How did it work?
For this particular chat, it lasted one hour on Thursday night, starting at 9PM EST, and you simply tweet with the hashtag #ggchat. If you follow this hashtag, others will be joining in the conversation and BAM, there’s instantly people to connect with!
There is typically a moderator who welcomes everyone (and you can welcome others who ‘join’ the chat) and brings up topics to start conversation – such as common questions or recent trending articles pertaining to the chat rooms purpose. In my case, #ggchat brings musicians and music industry pros together to discuss the latest topics and issues in the industry! This past Thursday we discussed which is better, releasing singles one by one or just waiting to drop the album.
Why Participate?
It’s exciting because you have access to a group of people you might not have been able to connected to otherwise. It’s a friendly environment to say “Hello” and an open invitation to network! The pressure is off!
From just doing a chatroom twice, I’ve already connected with a referral partner, setting up a call with a potential client AND grew my mailing list by 10%! Also, now I’m more established on Twitter, more people know about me, and I’m gaining more trust with my followers, which is so crucial!
Think what it could do for you! You could meet a person looking for your type of music to perform at their venue. You could ask advice on how you should promote your next single. And always, at least most of the time, the chatroom will allow you to share your latest projects (shameless plug) giving you the opportunity to target what you want to boost – whether it be Twitter followers, Facebook likes, newsletter sign ups or song listens!
Pro Tip before you join a Twitter Chatroom
Twitter chatrooms can be intense. Without the right tools, it will feel overwhelming and impossible to keep up with all these tweets coming in every less than a second. What I use for participating in chatrooms is Hootsuite. It’s free and you can create streams of both people tweeting with a certain hashtag, so you can follow a conversation, and also create streams of tweets at you, so you can answer anyone reaching out to you. It’s super helpful and highly recommended.
So, I hope you will take action and participate in a chatroom this week! Join us this next Thursday if you’re around for #ggchat chatroom! Who knows where it will take you!
Double your Performance Opportunities!
As a musician you want to put yourself out there as much as you can – and one part of this means being proactive in finding your gigs (Read Bob Baker’s Get Your Ask Out). This means applying to be on a conference performance slots responding to a venue requesting submissions on Reverbnation, or with the rise of the idea of ‘concerts in your living room’, seeking out opportunities on Gigit or Concertsinyourhome.
You may start applications, and then fail to follow through and complete them because you began a different project, only to come back to it a few days later and realizing you missed your deadline. Or, you aren’t prepared for what they request in your profile or submission, for example, a high quality photo of the band or some attention grabbing press quotes. Not having these things ready causes the process to take way longer than it should!
Get organized by getting together in one folder:
- 1-2 Hi-Res photos of you and/or your band, color and b&w
- Band member full names/all instruments
- 3-5 MP3s (most used format for submissions) of your top songs
- 2-3 Videos on Youtube of your top plays or favorites
- 3-5 killer press quotes from the top publications
- Short (50 words) AND long current bio
You are also going to want to have that handy-dandy calendar I mentioned last week to be sure when you are available for the concert, event or conference.
Now, this is the hard part…sit down, start and finish that application!
The worst thing you could do is start the application, get distracted by something else, and then when you remember to return to the application days or even weeks later, discover you missed the deadline. Nothing is more frustrating than making such an easy error!
Once you get more comfortable with submitting to conferences, you can start a database with names of festivals you want to be a part of with deadlines/requirements and then you can clearly see that November is the time to submit to NAMM Conference in January.
Being that organized will make you efficient and quicker to get your applications in and on time, meaning more chances for you to perform!
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