HALF A YEAR (finding gigs)

First of all, if you are by any chance the owner of a venue and you like what you hear don't hesitate to contact me, I am currently looking for gigs and will gladly come play for you.

It’s not an easy task for a band to find gigs and it’s even more demanding as a solo artist. To convince the owner or promoter of a bar / venue that you are capable of playing in front of his clientele is like going out trick or treating on a Halloween night, you knock at the door and ask the owner of the house if you could instead of having the usual hand full of sweets, go inside their kitchen and start cooking a roast dinner for five. In other words you better have guts and be prepared.

For the last couple of days, wandering around London trying to get some bookings was not easy. I figured I’ll just pop into the venue at a quiet time, ask where the owner was at, tell him who I was and what I wanted and play him a song with my guitar. If he likes what he hears he will take me on board. You're probably thinking yeah good Idea. Well the first guy I went to go see thought I was buskin, the second guy was a very busy man and had the musical attention span of a chicken and the third guy was drunk and he ended up speaking to me for half an hour about the Rolling Stones only to tell me in the end to leave a copy of my album on the counter with my details and he would get back to me as soon as he sobered up. Although drunk, the third guy gave me the best advice.

I figured I was going to need some decent recorded material very soon that I could pass around with some sort of press kit attached to it. Well, that is the way I used to do it when I was booking artists for a job. I just figured I could probably do it differently.

So, I woke up this morning, gave a phone call to a very good friend living in Guildford and asked him if he could lend me his home studio for the afternoon, the answer was yes!

His equipment consists of a Soundcraft 60 channel analog 
Yamaha 01V96, Pro Tools HD3 Accel + mountains of plugins
96 i/o interface, MOTU 2408 Mk3, Alesis Studio Quad FX x 2, TC Electronic M2000, kai S3000XL sampler and a Universal Audio 1176 LN. 

I'm just joking, actually he has a computer, two microphones, two speakers, headphones, a guitar and a variety of Mexican hats. So all in all it should be a good laugh.

Let me know if you want to hear some of the songs I've recorded, feedback would be great!