A few years back I used my monthly column space to talk about the difficulties I was having trying to book the two bands I was in. I was going to use the herding cats analogy but decided it was too cliché so my Mountain View based research company (I believe in supporting local businesses) found the old Irish saying of “minding mice at a crossroads” and I ran with that.
The issue wasn’t the lack of gigs but rather the inability to wrestle the whole bands availability for the dates. One band had seven members and trying to “mind” them was a task greater than I could deal with. The other band was only four players but it was almost as difficult to “mind”. I suppose if the gigs were better i.e. main stage at FDF or the banjo stage at HSB, I wouldn’t have had that problem but the ‘huge’ gig opportunities we had were mostly beer joints and farmer’s markets that led some of my groups to be maybe less flexible.
As you should know, bands come and go all the time and the two bands that I was minding went and I told myself that I don’t want to be the minder going forward in any new endeavors. I still like playing out for audiences as much as ever and I get some calls to go play and I like just showing up with my own kit and playing. So it goes, (I say borrowing from a truly great piece of American literature). I wish.
Well I’m back in the minding business these days as the performance contact coordinator for SCVFA. All requests for performances from SCVFA come to me. How did I get this job I keep asking myself? Attrition is a powerful thing. I was next in line when the smart people who had done it for too long moved on.
This minding job is much more difficult than booking bands. With bands, you know who to call for the gigs. That would be the members of the band….usually. Funny thing about SCVFA is that there is no band. There are just hundreds of (mostly) musician members and that makes for more rigorous minding.
The process for these gigs begins with determining what type of event the requestor is asking to have music for. So far in my tenure these haven’t been main stage opportunities at festivals and no bars or pizza joints. Mostly they are a mix of retirement homes, community events and schools. Typically these are during the day so that cuts the musician pool by a bunch. If I’m lucky maybe the date is on a weekend.
Next in my new minding process is determining what type of old time music the buyers would like. I am hoping the sarcasm of the last sentence is evident. It is not that we feature lots of flavors at SCVFA but it seems that the volunteer pool is mostly old time musicians. Occasionally a few bluegrassers volunteer but then I have to round up a banjo player with finger picks. Actually, SCVFA can boast that it has very talented musicians in many styles and I certainly like to try and include all of them in the SCVFA performances but the practical matter is that the time and type of gigs often doesn’t fit their schedules. So it goes
.
Once I figure out what the buyers want, the minding begins. I send a mass email to the musicians in the group checking their willingness and availability. The next step and the next three or four steps after that are follow up emails and phone calls in order to get a quorum for each event. Also I need to “mind” the requestor during this process, assuring them we have the music they want for their event, even though I haven’t successfully rounded up enough players by this point. The good news is that I haven’t missed yet in providing musicians for the events we contracted.
These community performances are part of the SCVFA charter of promoting acoustic music in our greater area. The fees we get for doing them help support our youth outreach programs. So while I “mitch and boan” about it, it is really not too bad of a gig for me and I get to play a bunch of them as well.
Speaking of SCVFA, this Sunday is the monthly jam at Hoover Middle School in San Jose and also speaking of youth outreach, the jam has a Kid Fiddle Workshop taught by Dinah Stroe. Get the details at Fiddlers.org.
As for me, I’m prepping for the celebration of the date in 1862 when the Mexicans defeated the French at Puebla. My preparations involve securing tequila and Negro Modelo. So it goes!
