Showcase DIY

Considering starting your own showcase?

It's tough to promote a show every week, week after week.

You *DO* have an easier time saying "Every Tuesday" or whatever, though.

Still, I'd have to advise going for monthly unless you've run other showcases before. The work-load is just too high. Think how much effort you put into preparing for a single gig of your own, and multiply that by 2 or 3. You still need to promote just as much as you would your own gig. You need to deal with booking/confirming not only the venue, but all the artists -- some of whom won't get back to you as quickly as you'd like.

The things I find most artists who go into setting up their own showcases doing wrong are:

Booking great interesting mix of artists, none of whom have any draw.
Not promoting enough.

A good way to not do 1) is to:

set your first showcase far enough out in advance
get the venue to commit to a six-month trial period
announce that you're accepting demos and scheduling the first 6 months
also announce that final selections won't be made until date X

That gives you the luxury of "sitting on" some demos for awhile so you can mix&match the draw and the artistic goals you desire, balancing this no-draw act of incredible talent off with that high-draw act of incredible talent.
[Don't even bother booking the no-talent acts. :-)]

"Cheat" a little on your first show (or first several) and book an extra artist or book all artists who you KNOW will collectively fill the place. Your first gig is a "first impression" on not only the venue owner/talent-buyer, but also on the staff and audience who will be creating the buzz (or not) about your showcase. Fill the room on day 1, and you have much better odds of repeat business.

After you've had a full house a couple/few times, you can slide in a great new artist with no draw and "risk" a little more having a not-full house.

Be very honest about exactly how many people you see going to each artist's shows, no matter how much you like them. Even start a spreadsheet to make your estimates and track them when they play your showcase.

Also be aware of "overlapped" audience. IE, if you count Lee's audience as 20, and Jojo's as 20 and Erin's as 20, it might only add up to 30! If they've all been around awhile, and they've all done shows with each other, their fan-bases are the same.

As far as 2) goes, be sure artists are aware that THEY need to promote the hell out of this show and not book other shows too close to it. Too many times, an artists will "slack off" on promoting a gig that's part of a "Showcase" on the assumption that the "Showcase" itself will somehow magically create promotion.

And, of course, take the time up-front to produce some decent re-usable promotional materials. Posters and hand-cards where you can cut&paste the artists in for each event, template emails announcing the show, a fax template to send to press, etc. Everything you do for promotion has to be repeatable easily and quickly or you'll be swamped.