For working bands, getting festival gigs means a lot.
For a lot of bands, most of their regular performances are multi-hour gigs in pubs or bars, where the clientele may be indifferent, or largely absent, playing a room with often horrible acoustics and a club-quality PA.
A festival gig means a nice stage, and good PA, an interested and engaged audience (they paid their money to get in and they’re gonna soak up all the music they can!), and a short set.
Your band’s name will be on posters, and t-shirts and other marketing collateral. Pictures taken of your performance on the festival stage will look great – no bar decor or bathroom doors in the background, well-lit. The short set will mean you’ll feature your band’s strongest material.
It really means a lot.
Years ago, my buddy Rick Horlick was in a band called Straight Ahead, and they began getting festival gigs, and I was awestruck. It all seemed so professional and legit. And they acquitted themselves very well. They had worked hard on their repertoire and it showed. I was, frankly, jealous.
A few years after that I got into a band (The Alhambra Valley Band) that was doing festival gigs and I found it very thrilling. I felt professional and legit.
Of course, not all festivals are the same. The first one I played with AVB was a freebie, in a festival by a lake in Livermore. It was mid-April and the weather was as capricious as I would expect, having been born in mid-April. But I was still thrilled. There was a big stage, big speakers and a little tent that served as a Green Room. Wow! There was also rain, and an almost non-existent audience, barely visible as miserable shapes in the rain.
The first time we played the big stage at the Father’s Day Festival is one of my most treasured musical memories. My first grandchild was born while I was onstage at a festival.
We went on to play a lot of festivals, and now I’ve played festivals with a number of bands, over a number of musical genres. But they’re still a lot of fun and I still get thrilled.
Playing festivals can be the path to becoming a professional musician. Your music gets heard by a lot of people, often from areas distant from your normal stomping grounds. I learned that being in an “out of state” band gets people interested. They get to hear bands that they don’t normally see.
There are downsides. One is travel, which is expensive and very time-consuming. And just keeping a band together can be difficult.
I saw a cartoon recently poking fun at a guy whose band played one festival years ago, and he was still clinging to that memory – that moment of glory. But I didn’t begrudge that guy one bit. Keep that poster, buddy, and display it proudly. As far as I’m concerned you did hit the big time
