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Ey babies, so I've been kind of disenchanted with the local music scene around here for a bit, and recently someone well-meaning and experienced gave me some advice to the effect "if the scene doesn't exist where you are you have to try someplace else." While I'm not going to stop playing shows in Milwaukee, I do want to try to get into a city with a more active live music scene.

Since up and moving to Austin isn't exactly feasible right now, I'll settle for attempting to play some shows in the nearest (and much larger) major city, Chicago.

Here's the thing, I've hardly booked shows at venues I've been to; getting shows in a different city seems a little daunting (but also exciting and a healthy challenge ). Soooo, what are some tips, primarily tips for identifying good venues in a different city who are willing to take a chance on a relatively unknown band?

I'm sure there are plenty of networking resources online and I've started identifying/joining some facebook groups. For what it's worth, we have studio-quality recordings (as in done in a studio and professionally mixed/mastered) of a couple songs (one was featured in a Classic Rock Magazine sampler CD) and are in the very slow process of getting a full 8 or 9 song album together (which is already sounding even better than our first EP).

Sooooo, advice, experiences, any specific leads on Chi-City?

I don't know what kind of music you play and it seems different types of scenes could have different protocols, but my experience has been that often the best "in" for a new town where you don't have contacts is to get in touch with bands in that town that you like who are on a similar level as your band and would be playing similar sized venues, whether it be small clubs or house shows or whatever. I've had good luck reaching out to total strangers that way. Just writing an email saying something like "hey, I think your band rules. Here's a recording of my band. We want to play your town and it would be awesome if we could play with you. Even if you can't play, it'd be much appreciated if you could at least point us in the direction of who to get in touch with who sets up shows in your town." Usually active bands know who to talk to in their own town and are usually down to help out. It's the best when they're like "hey thanks. You rule and we'll totally set something up." But even if that doesn't happen, often you'll get contact info for some good promoters.

misterstomach has pretty much been the same as what I've done. also at that time we didn't care if we got paid so sometimes we got well taken care of other times we at least got a place to crash without having to worry about shit getting stolen.

also don't over sell/hype your band. just be really lax about it. when bands have contacted me and it was like a splash blurb saying how they are going to lay waste to the entire state and blah blah blah about their awesome tight sets I usually tell them that there are no venues and send them along to maybe someone a few hours north of me that might get them some people to come out, or ignore totally.

misterstomach wrote:I don't know what kind of music you play and it seems different types of scenes could have different protocols, but my experience has been that often the best "in" for a new town where you don't have contacts is to get in touch with bands in that town that you like who are on a similar level as your band and would be playing similar sized venues, whether it be small clubs or house shows or whatever. I've had good luck reaching out to total strangers that way. Just writing an email saying something like "hey, I think your band rules. Here's a recording of my band. We want to play your town and it would be awesome if we could play with you. Even if you can't play, it'd be much appreciated if you could at least point us in the direction of who to get in touch with who sets up shows in your town." Usually active bands know who to talk to in their own town and are usually down to help out. It's the best when they're like "hey thanks. You rule and we'll totally set something up." But even if that doesn't happen, often you'll get contact info for some good promoters.

10/10.