Gig Pitching in the Sunshine

If, like most jazz musicians, ‘gigging and touring more’ is near the top of your wishlist, this article looks at one specific angle of improving your pitching success, through a summer-time analogy…

When it comes to gig pitching, are you selling umbrellas in the summer?

In Barcelona (as with many other holiday destinations) the tourist streets are packed with unlicensed vendors selling random gifts and bottles of water.

Until it starts to rain, that is…

Suddenly, the gifts disappear and out come umbrellas which are promptly bought by unprepared tourists.

It makes sense: suddenly they are offering something that people need NOW.

If, however, they tried selling those umbrellas all year round, it’s going to be a slow business.

So what’s the connection with booking festivals?

If we think about jazz festivals for a moment, they are not actively looking to book gigs for large parts of the year.

A few months before the festival, the programme is almost certainly fixed and all their attention is on promoting it. Then there are the logistics of the festival itself, and the inevitable aftermath (and possible holiday) once it’s finished.

The exact period where they are actively sending out offers for gigs may differ from promoter to promoter, but it’s almost certainly not “12 months a year”.

So, with that in mind, pitching randomly all year round is going to be a waste of your time for more than 50% of the year.

What about booking clubs and venues?

Jazz clubs may well be promoting gigs all year round, but does that mean they are actively booking 365 days a year?

• Some prepare ‘seasons’ in one period so they can focus on the promotion.
• Others have one day per week when they are actively sending offers.
• For others, that might be monthly

Once again, we just don’t know.

And, once again, if we pitch at the ‘wrong’ time we are probably going to be ignored.

So what’s the solution?

In an ideal world, we’d work like our umbrella selling friends and wait for a sign from above.

The best example of that would be those promoters who tell you:

In reality, you’ll never know for sure when every single promoter is going to be doing this work, which is why its so important to be sending follow up pitches.

Reaching out to a promoter on three different days-of-the-week across a 8-12 week period makes it 3x more likely you catch them at ‘the right time’ to consider your proposal.

Add into the mix your best guess about lead times for festivals – in my experience 4-5 months as a very rough average – and you increase your chances further still…

Round Up: Final Points

I think we can all agree that booking jazz gigs is a relentless task which most people would prefer to avoid.

I’d imagine that’s another similarity with out street-vendor friends.

But if we also agree it’s a necessity, then the more we can do to get organised and work more effectively (and not ‘more hours’) the better.

• Keep notes on any programming timelines promoters give you
• Batch your festival programming by season, working on a 4-5 month ‘deadline’ for bookings
• Follow up at least twice on every pitch that doesn’t get a reply, testing out different days across several weeks

Looking for more? You can find all our gig booking articles here.