Gig Gab, episode 534 for Monday, May 18th, National Visit Your Relatives Day, 2026.
Greetings, folks, and welcome to GigGab, the show by four and about working
musicians. As usual, I'm here in Durham, New Hampshire.
And here in Napomo, California, Paul Kent.
There you go.
Yeah, just like old times.
It's just like old times. And for those of you who don't know about old times,
Paul and I, GigGab was Paul's idea.
And you and I did the show together for about nine years, nine years straight.
Yeah.
A lot of words. What's that?
A lot of words.
A lot of words were said.
It's great to have you back on the show, man.
Thanks for inviting me, Dave. Well, to visit your relatives,
so I thought I would visit Brother Dave.
Oh, visiting Brother Paul. I like it. It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How you're still gigging regularly and doing all your things, right?
Yeah. So, you know, just to give everybody an idea who I am.
So Dave and I know each other from our work life, and that turned into our music life.
We played in a little work-based band together that got together once or twice a year to play a gig.
And the conversations we would have from that kind of led to the idea to doing
Gig Gab, which turned into phone conversations across the country.
How's your band doing? How's your band doing?
Let me vent about what my band's doing.
Yes, yeah. I lived in California, Dave, in New Hampshire. And so,
you know, we learned a little bit about the differences between the scenes in two different areas.
Dave actually came out and played a week. Well, a couple of times he flew out
to California, played a birthday gig for me. Right.
A one-off. And then he came out and he played a weekend of gigs when our regular guy wasn't available.
But I have a band that actually now this year starting its 27th year.
Big band, 10-piece band, Five Horns that has done pretty well in the San Francisco Bay Area.
And in addition to that I play solo gigs and in addition to that I have like
a smaller combo and then five years ago I moved from the Bay Area but I keep
those musical activities I go up there, I live about three hours away now
and so i go up to the bay area like one weekend a month in the winters two
weekends a month in the summer and play like a thursday friday
saturday sometimes sunday but then i also have musical
activities down this area i live in on the central coast of
california as well so yeah i've got a very rich musical life the
house rockers has been kind of the most fruitful conversations for
gig gab because there's always been so many lessons about
running a 10-piece band and booking a 10 piece band and you know band leading
a 10-piece band so i think that's always been i learned a lot still from gig
gab but i've learned a lot by just kind of emoting you know some of the pain
you go through keeping a band going through all these years so gig gab has just been great therapy
Therapy for for sure therapy.
Yeah and uh and just like just a great source of knowledge i mean the guests
that you've been having you know over the last couple years have still been
fantastic you get a little geeky for me sometimes but that's you
That was just gonna say like i i i i understand that and I understand that geekiness
is not for everyone, but it is for me.
And so like, you know, I've learned with all the podcasts that I do,
we as podcasters attract like-minded audiences, right?
Because no one's forcing anyone. You don't accidentally listen to a podcast,
right? Like it's a pain in the neck to listen to a podcast.
So people that choose to listen are generally going to be people aligned with the host.
I mean, I guess there's some shows where people listen and they like, you know,
as rage bait for themselves but i hopefully no one's doing that here i don't
like i don't want anybody upset like this like why would you do that go listen
somewhere else like it's okay yeah yeah but um but i am like i so yeah i have
the nerdy like i have to feed the nerd in me and you you.
Said something yesterday i i was listening to the last week's podcast
Yeah with steve um with mike.
With Mike Schulte.
Yeah. Mike Schulte.
And you said something about about the love and hate you get on the Internet.
And someone called you an old man.
Is that I got I got something. Yeah, that was real.
It was recent to somebody like I, you know, we share a lot of advice on the
socials and and it's all bite sized because that's what the socials are all about these days.
So, you know, it's like little snippets of this is the long form here.
And then we do little snippets on the socials. I don't know.
It was some piece of advice. Like, I don't I don't come up with the stuff that I say there.
Some of it I come up with. Some of it Sadie comes up with. But I agree with
all of it. I'm not going to put something out I don't agree with.
Right. But so I don't know what one this was, whether it was me or it was Sadie.
But I mean, I've worked together with Sadie for a very long time.
Like we know each other very well. And I.
But it was just some piece of advice, like here's the top five things to do
or or maybe, you know, something about stage volume might have been it or I don't know.
And somebody is like, this guy's an old man. He doesn't know like how the world
works today and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, OK, like, it's fine. Thanks.
Thanks for commenting and feeding the algorithm.
But have you have you carved out a little, you know, patron saint of the cover band nerd sector?
I mean, is it like you cover that deep stuff? I don't think anybody else really
goes that deep. So do you have like a little subculture?
Yes. Big gab listeners that are like who want to go hard.
Yeah, for sure. And it's, you know, Mike, I think Mike did a good job in last week's episode.
And I'm going to wind up screwing up and saying yesterday because I recorded with him yesterday.
Uh but i describing kind
of that that the person that listens
is the person like like me and him and you
that are the people in our bands that are either
the leaders of the band or the ones who care about
the craft of being in a band but also like
the sound of your band and and for me sound has
been something i mean this is no great surprise anyway but you
know sound is something i care deeply about and and I've
and I'm a student of I like I I
have some expertise but I would never
call myself an expert in sound I but I'm a perpetual student of it and that's
where the nerdiness comes from right like that kind that side of it is I want
to learn as much as I can and the things that I have it turns out that my quest
for that knowledge especially about sound.
Gives me an interesting and valuable to many of us angle when talking to people
that are doing sound for gigs that most of us would never would never do.
Right. You know, talking to folks like like your buddy Brad Maddox or Robert
Scoville or Paul Clemson or any of these people that happily,
you know, give us their time here on the show.
They're not thinking about little clubs all the time. And I don't I don't mean
to be dismissive, though, like those guys actually are thinking about a lot
of things all the time because they are masters and students of their craft, too.
But, you know, like, I mean, my my favorite example, and I know I've shared
it before, is the first time Scoville, Robert Scoville was on.
We're talking about Tom Petty and he was talking about how he was setting up
in amphitheaters, you know, like, like, you know, the sheds around the country
that that they would play.
And he's like well i would set up two sound systems one
you know for the 19,500 people
and then another one for the 500 people in the first eight
rows and i was and he started talking about the
bigger system i'm like stop i want to
know about the one for the first eight rows because that's what
i care about and our audience cares about and we learned
some like some things that fundamentally change
the way so many of us do sound at our own gigs just from that conversation and
he didn't like he was happy he understood why i was asking but he wasn't going
to take us down that path right so yeah like my curiosity it turns out it winds
up being valuable not just for me i guess is the right way to say it.
No it makes sense again you cover that stuff in depth and with passion that
i don't get anywhere else so it's still fun to listen to you you know do your
thing i don't understand it all
Right but that's okay me neither paul that's the city.
But anyway you're doing a great job and i think you're still providing an incredible
service and it's fascinating to me i get i had a chuckle when you said you get
some of the bad but but actually that dawns on me because when i see these little videos you do
I know you for 30 years. Sure. You know, I know who you are and I know you're
genuinely trying to help people.
And I also know you're genuinely trying to figure out what is the,
what is the formula of things you do on social media to make it effective? Right. Yes.
It's all of that. Yes.
Yeah. But, but coming out as an expert on something and saying, do this is a risk, right?
Always. Because you got, you got a gazillion people out there saying,
who are you to tell me to do this? I like my way to do it.
Correct.
So your conversation about social media and with Mike yesterday was interesting to me.
They have 35,000 followers for their band.
And all of the discussion around that was super fascinating.
Like, you know, well, it's impressive to show somebody who's thinking about
hiring our band at 35, right?
And I took a quick look at, you know, the bands in the San Francisco Bay area.
And there's one real good corporate band that has 20 or 25,000.
So this is, and again, everyone's still learning, right?
There's not a formulaic approach to this. So Mike's, you know.
Well, and if there is, it's going to change tomorrow. so yes yes.
Yes yeah by design that that's how
they get you right so yeah so you
know 35 000 is rare air for
certainly a a cover band that's a business like i even took a look at there's
a one of the first tribute bands and one probably one of the most famous ones
they tour the world now is a band called super diamond fantastic neil diamond
cover band okay i think they had 20 000 Facebook followers I
Really I mean we have 32,000 Facebook followers for gig gab now it but at the
beginning of 2026 it may maybe we had a thousand or I don't even think it was
2000 on Facebook like it really wasn't that big.
You can do this, too, with your band. And I've had this conversation with casual
gravity because I'm like, we need to do this. And I know what to do.
And it's exactly what we talked about last week, like relentless persistence. That's it.
I mean, there's a little more to it than that. But that really is it.
It's just teach the machine, literally, that you are going to show up and continue
feeding the machine content.
And then the machine will promote you. So if you're consistent with the stuff
that you put out from your band, and it doesn't matter what it is,
just pick what it's going to be, and then there will be people.
There's a market for everybody.
We're talking about 35,000. Let's say we're talking about 100,000 people.
There are billions of people on the planet. There are definitely a hundred thousand
people that are into your brand of silly, stupid, informative,
entertaining education, whatever you're going to do.
There's a hundred thousand people on the planet, at least at a bare minimum
that are going to go gaga over it.
And that's a lesson I've learned from, you know, starting Mac observer,
like whatever it was 30 years ago.
Right. Like, because that's the riches are in the niches. So just go be you
out there, whatever you or your band is, and feel free to experiment and find
the things that resonate and then lean in on those.
And as long as you stay consistent with it and put out content often and routinely.
I think you can easily get 10,000 followers for your band really quickly.
It you got to give it that that 60 days though don't give up because the algorithm
isn't going to start taking you seriously until you've shown it at least a month's
worth of consistent content i.
Think that that what you post has to be important like you
Know yes but or funny like it it can be stupid or silly like i.
No no i'm not i'm not making a distinction of that i'm talking about the usefulness
of it so so humor could be a usefulness thing of it sure i i post
To our audience. And, and, you know, here are our upcoming gigs.
Here's a little backstage, you know, chatter, you'd like to have a thing.
We haven't grown that much. So, you know, I haven't cracked that code.
I know. Okay. I can, I can, this part, I'm definitely not an expert that like,
I am way out over my skis right now, but I can tell you one thing I've learned.
It has to be reels. The short form video, it text posts, image, image posts.
Those were good 10 years ago 15 years ago it has to be the reels that's where
all of the attention is right now and that's so walk i'm glad you i'm glad you
i'm glad you asked that because i i made this assumption that everybody knew
we were talking about reels so yes this is good so.
Walk me through um that principle about the value of 35 000 versus a very famous
dave hamilton quote that you don't need a hundred thousand followers you need
a thousand good good fans
Yes yeah are.
Those are those diametrically opposed concepts
I am no no i don't think so i
think they serve two different purposes you're i mean
if you could have a hundred thousand true fans that'd be amazing but um
but that's very difficult to to
do and and and that is rare but social
media follows are not um are
not true fans some of them are like
for sure but the way you get your
thousand true fans is by casting a wider net and and so you go and you you attract
the the the 10 000 people the the you know the 30 000 people the 100 000 people
whatever it is just feed the machine and let it grow like it's just gonna grow
right yesterday gig gab was at 31 000 when i was with Mike. Today it's at 32.
It's just going to keep growing up to some point and I don't know when that tops out.
So, I'll let you know. But...
Then from now that you've got this exposure funnel happening to these,
you know, tens of thousands of people, now you can start offering things.
I mean, if you're a band, the easy thing to offer is gigs, right?
Like come to our show and some small percentage of those people will come to
your show. Like we gig gab. We have the green room.
Some small percentage of people want to engage more, want to dig in on this stuff.
And they're willing to pay five bucks a month to be part of the gig gab green room.
But a small percentage of a very large number can be that a very large number and all of that's OK.
Like to expect that all thirty two thousand like, you know, we'll launch the
green room and thirty two thousand people sign up and pay five bucks a month.
We that was this is the first time that was ever uttered because we knew that to be false.
Right. Right. You know, but that's the way it works or really the trick.
And you got to offer something right so you
know we put together a couple of different pdfs for
gig gab uh guides for like getting your
band to sound good getting your your organizing your gig
thing and these you know we took some time and care and put these guides together
and we give them away and all we ask for in return initially we were asking
for follows to our social media accounts because that was what we were working
on growing at the time and so it was value for value You give us a follow, we give you this guide.
Now we're asking for people to sign up for the email list. Not because we want to spam you.
No, we weren't. And not because we're going to sell our email list.
No, because we want to be able to get in touch with you when the algorithm decides
to stop feeding us. Right.
So that's actually a bit of my point, is that this moving target and developed
expertise of band marketing through socials, I mean…
My biggest reflection on your conversation with Mike last night,
again, Mike is in rarefied air.
You know, Mike is, you know, number of types of gigs he's playing,
you know, selling auditoriums and, you know, four wallings, you know, events like that.
That's a different business than I would gather 95% of your listeners are in.
Would you agree with that?
Oh, 100%. I think many of us could be in that business if we were willing to do the grunt work.
And and and i but i think that's true of any business
like people you know i mean i'm sure you get the
same thing you started several successful businesses like
you you know all those things you you every
now and then somebody shows up and they're like i have my idea paul would
you uh would you like to go into business with me
and and really what they're asking you is would you
sprinkle your magic fairy dust on my business but as you know there's no magic
fairy dust it's just okay i'm gonna now put 80 hours a week into this thing
and i'm gonna do that for 10 years and maybe 20 and then on the other side somebody's
gonna say look at the overnight success he has it's like so.
I i have a
I know you know.
Reflection on that yeah i i agree with that um it is that weird place we live
in as as musicians and band people about um
about our willingness to treat it as a business and do all that stuff because
it takes a lot of freaking time and a lot of and a lot of other things have
to be aligned for you to be successful like the people on your team the people
in your band you know a lot of stuff has to be aligned
and you know great for the pork tornadoes they
seem to have aligned all those types of things and clearly you
know they're being they're being very successful what they're doing i think that's great i was
reflecting on that one comment that mike made
about how hopefully we'll talk about scarcity a
little bit later but yeah but um he made his comment about you know that one
guy who says you know i need to play five times because that's my income and
then his band was going to come in and take his business from him i i really
flinched at that one you know i was like some people want to play five times
a month and some people want to do their art that way and some Some people, you know,
love being a bar band musician and those types of things.
And I, and there's nothing wrong with all of that.
No, that's my point is there's nothing wrong with all of that.
And the, uh, you know, you and I have had many conversations about once a dollar
is exchanged, you're in business and you have to accept that you're in business. Right. However,
Even in business, there are some people who take jobs and only want to work
six months of the year because they want to go surf for the next other day.
Like what business and work and money mean to people is a very different thing.
And all of them are good and all of them are acceptable, right?
Yes.
Except for cargo shorts. Those are still not acceptable, but we'll leave that alone.
I don't know. I mean, we lost Jimmy Buffett.
So the patron saint of cargo shorts on stage is no longer with us.
But Sammy Hagar is still around. Yeah, that's true.
All right. If you're as good as Sammy or Jimmy, you can wear cargo shorts.
But I digress. Anyway, that was a bad joke.
But yeah, I was thinking about, you know, certainly my band in its 27th year.
It's been harder the last couple of years. And the thing you said in the last
episode that really turned the light bulb on for me is we're not competing with other bands.
We're competing with the couch. And that was like, yes, that it has gotten so
hard, progressively harder since COVID.
There was this euphoria coming out of the pandemic where people needed to go and do stuff.
And 2021, 2022, depending on where you were, like, those were like the resurgence
of the golden years because everybody was like, oh, my God, I'm so happy. Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
But I think I sent you a note the other day about my reflections lately about
the types of people that are coming for music and what they're looking for and
all these types of things.
I want to have that conversation, but I want to, before we shift to that topic,
it doesn't have to be now, there's a couple of things that you talked about
that I want to kind of shine a light on.
The first is you mentioned getting alignment with your band and the Pork Tornadoes have that.
When you are running a band and exchanging money, so you are in business playing
music, you either have business partners, a.k.a.
Bandmates, or you have employees slash contractors that work for you,
right? It's one or the other.
And I know you can blend these things and there's like there's no it's not by
it's not actually binary, but it's it's something in that realm.
And if you don't have alignment with your team in in if you start a startup
and one business partner, you know, let's say you and I go into business on
doing a podcast. Hey, of all the things, right?
You know, and one of us wants to focus on a podcast doing, you know,
about sneakers and tennis shoes.
And the other one wants to focus on a podcast about drumsticks. Well, yeah.
This is going to be a bad partnership from the start. If one of right,
if one of us is going into a business and saying, OK, I don't need to take money out of this.
I just want to keep all the money in the business to grow the business up.
And then maybe someday we can sell the business.
That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that approach, except if your partner
and there's also nothing wrong with this approach, except they don't fit.
They don't fit together. Your partner says, I need to start this business because
I need a job. I need income.
There's, again, nothing wrong with that. But if you're not aligned and one partner
needs income and the other one doesn't and wants to put the money in the business,
I mean, if the other one doesn't need income, it takes it anyway.
Okay, well, now you're aligned. Like, you're good to go.
And I've had ventures like this, but I've seen ventures fall apart.
Even when everybody's aligned on the product and all that, the money side,
if it's not there, it doesn't work.
And the same is true with the work ethic, right? I think the reason Pork Tornadoes
works as well as it does is those guys treat it like a business partnership.
They and Mike's talked about he didn't talk about it last week,
but he talked about it, you know, on other episodes where they divvied up the labor.
They said, OK, here's all the things that need to be done.
Here's like here's the things each of us are good at slash enjoy.
And they, you know, assign jobs based on that. And then whatever was left,
it was like, all right, well, whose plate's not so full?
You know, you got to pick up the short straw, buddy. and do the thing that you,
maybe you didn't want to do, but you know, we're all doing it. And they all bought in.
And you have to have a certain amount of alchemy from that, right?
Like, yes. Oh, it's gotta be the right fit.
There are different, there are different skill sets. And like,
I, I am bad at that, right?
Like I, if I can do something better than somebody else, I would have a real
hard time. You're like that too, right?
And so, yeah.
So, so, you know, this is, this is why some people lead bands or start businesses
and that type of thing, because they just know they can do all those jobs.
But you can't do all the jobs. That's the thing.
Well, but then do you have a bunch of people who buy into your leadership and
your vision and will give you the... No, no, but what I'm saying is...
That's the alchemy you know i think about the two things you know
the the eagles quote about every band is always you know
a second away from breaking up yeah and then i think about
the story from the beatles you know where are we going johnny to the top to
the tippy top you know like they were aligned in mission passion style of music
you know they the alchemy i guess is the best word and you know that's i think
why some bands can achieve things musically and business wise as well.
Yeah.
But you know, I, I would, I would hasten to say most weekend warrior bands,
semi-professional bands, you have guys who have how far they'll travel away
from their family for a weekend gig and how much money it's worth to them.
And do they really want to go on a tour for a week, you know,
and, and, uh, and try and open up new markets or, you know, all these other types of things.
And so, and to your point, like the guys who want to play five days a week,
or i want to play six nights a month and i don't
care what i make i don't care how many people are there i
don't care you know i care about i
want to play the music that i want to play and i want it
to be within 30 minutes of my house and i want to play x
number of gigs a month and like if those are
if that's your definition of
success right and maybe that's the the thing we're
talking about here is every band
needs a shared definition of success and if
you don't have that it ain't gonna work but be oh
be eyes wide open about what that is and what
the cost of that definition is right like we're we're definitely going through
some of that in casual gravity because we simultaneously want to level up but
we know that in order to do that we knew it before mike said it last week and
certainly he helped drive the point home but we we've talked we've recently been talking about how.
What the part that sucks about leveling up is we will be playing less gigs or
at least less gigs near our homes and then opening up other markets.
It's the only way to do that with the model that we have.
And so maybe we adapt our model to be able to do different things at different times.
I don't know. Do we do like an 80s night here and an emo night there?
And like, can, can you squeeze more gigs out of the same, the same man squeeze
more gigs out of the same market by changing something?
Probably, you know, there's, there's no rules, but you got to have eyes wide open going into it.
Yeah. So let me talk about scarcity. Cause I, I sent you a note after you,
you first put that out there and, and, and,
um, again, I think pork tornadoes are in,
are in rarefied air and they're also trying to sell tickets to gigs and so that's
driving that's that's driving some strategy um i would say a pretty common currency
for success among cover bands is quantity of gigs it
Is and it's such a weird currency i understand it it's not weird well.
But i understand it from a really specific angle is that you know i have six
people in my band that are full-time working musicians and if i'd
things and so part of the strategy wait
Say that again you cut out for half a second you said um they value the you
there you have six guys in your band who are full-time working musicians.
All of their income comes from from music yep they teach during the day they gig at night
and and um the combination
of money and quantity are the things that keep them focused
on my project my project went down to six
to eight gigs a year i would be constantly looking for
subs and that would dilute the dilute the you know the quality of the show i
want to put on and so there are many moving targets to these things that's what
when you were saying these things about that stuff i was thinking it is not
as easy as saying do less gigs and more people will come it is not nearly that
you know go in door a and come out door b that
No that no.
Oversimplification i
Mean that and that like i said that's what we're going through in casual it's
like okay like we know this objectively to be true. It doesn't mean that it
will be true for us, but like there is the whole value of scarcity.
Like it's an obvious thing. Right. And so,
If we can properly leverage scarcity, it's possible for us to have success with
it. There's no guarantees in this world. Right.
But scarcity is one approach to to a certain type of success.
I would counter that by saying, I wish it was still the 70s and my band could
be a house band somewhere and people would get used to coming to see me every
Friday night or Saturday or Wednesday night.
Yes. And then I would get my thousand true fans by quantity, not by scarcity. No.
And I mean, look, that's what like, I mean, Dave Matthews Band is a great example.
And I know that they did this 30 years ago. So, you know, it's good luck.
But they, you know, they played every Tuesday and Wednesday night in the same
town, Charlottesville, Virginia, where they were playing at two different bars
that their manager owned.
And they just would play Tuesday at one, Wednesday at the other,
every single week, and those bars drew the fraternity crowd.
And those people were always looking for a party, and it turned out that the
Dave Matthews Band was the band at the party that was being thrown,
and they conflated that with the Dave Matthews Band throws a great party, right?
Like, all of that kind of came together.
Grateful Dead's another example, right? All those, you know,
LSD-fueled parties, people conflated the band and the LSD.
Not that the band was bad, but, like, there's another factor here, you know.
And it all became a thing that helped those bands succeed.
And those house gigs were a great way to do that.
I don't know that that exists today. I would love to hear from somebody.
Feedback at giggabpodcast.com if it does. Yeah. Yeah.
I don't know any house band situation that exists today, but I will say...
In tourist areas, they do, but that's different. You're not going to get your
thousand-tree bands because they're not coming back over and over again. Right.
Yeah. Exactly. Our band, you know, was played...
Peaks of about 75 gigs in a 75 square mile, you know, radius.
And, you know, constancy has been our, has been, again, the whole issue about
keeping my band busy and focused on, you know, on a project.
On each other.
One aspect of it. Yeah. And on each other, yeah. But, you know,
one of my goals was to be kind of like the first call
big event band when something was going to happen in this area and the tact
to that was to build a reputation and play a lot and meet a lot of fans and
win a lot of hearts and those types of things I will say that last year
Going back to our conversation you know everything was great coming out of the
pandemic but last year we and we've had some changes in personnel and in those
changes of personnel just to keep the
bus moving forward we've been playing largely the same set so rather than turning
the whole show over we need to get people integrated into what we were doing
so that kind of you know and i noticed it last year that some of the regulars
who would come and see us eight ten times a summer were coming to see us two
or three times this summer.
So we spent this winter basically turning over our show really diligently,
you know, and we just played our first big show last weekend.
And I think we have 14 new songs for the year and we got 12 of them on stage for the first time.
And, you know, so the tactics to success, going back to my comment about it's
risky to be the guy in a reel who points at you and says, do this and you'll be successful.
There are many paths to success. They're just, there are many tactics.
And again, people doing, people doing, playing music to express their art and
to make other people happy with music.
They all have different, in the same way, some guys work for six months and serve for six months.
Some guys, you know, will only take a job that's nine to five because they insist
that family balance is going to have to be important to them.
So I think that scarcity has a mathematical value. It is not the only strategy
to success. Not even the only strategy to financial success.
No, no. It is one of them.
It's, yeah. I think it's probably, I don't want to say it's easy. Nothing's easy.
I do, your comment about, you know, mixing up your set list or not,
that's been a really interesting thing to see evolve over the last like 10 years. Yeah.
Because it used to be that most touring acts were playing the exact same show every night, right?
I mean, you had the known outliers to that.
Well, you had the known outliers, like the Grateful Dead, Phish,
like the jam band scene, their stock and trade was you've got a different show
every night. Like it still is. Right.
But now you're seeing those kind of tried and true bands mixing things up.
You know, Metallica and Metallica, like they're a weird example because they're not a jam band.
But there's a whole part of their kind of foundation and culture that is very similar to jam bands.
They don't do the jamming thing, but they had people taping their shows early on.
There was something unique about each of their shows, and they were one of the
first sort of major touring acts that said, we're going to go play a city and
play two nights or whatever and no repeats for any of those shows.
And, of course, all the Fish fans are like, cool.
Fish did that for 13 nights at Madison Square Garden. It's like,
okay, but it's okay. Both bands can exist. It's all good.
And this summer, Rush is back out on the road, which makes me extremely happy.
And if I haven't mentioned it before, and and they're they've announced that they're doing five.
They have five different.
Uh shows that they've put together and there's some commonality
between you know from each of them but what that means is even
if you go see rush all the dates that they're playing in any given
city they're only playing four dates at max
in any city so you you aren't gonna see all five like
you're gonna miss something and i think that's really smart and
if you're you know i said one of the ideas that kind of
rolled out with casual was do we do an 80s night
here and an emo night there and a whatever you know classic rock
night there and now it's like okay now we
can sell to the same market maybe not the same people that but but maybe some
of those people that are into the band a thousand true fans right they'll come
to all the gigs so they can see and compare and contrast but you'll get the
people that are into 80s music that come out for that one and the emo people
for that one and the you know the classic but then you.
Need you need a band that's aligned to learn that much material absolutely you
know well and has the depth and not everybody has that right like you're you're
talking about a hundred songs that's right five different shows
And you're putting on now when you say you're going to
do an 80s show for example you have to deliver that yes better than you would
an 80s song in the middle of a generic cover band night absolutely right because
now you're putting yourself out there as an expert you know it so to speak on this, you know, so.
But the, the, the benefits we're getting about turning the show over as we have
is band is excited about the new material.
It feels really exciting. And that, that's a huge difference.
It is a huge thing, but also, you know, just go back to business.
Marketing one-on-one, you have to have something to say, right?
So, so, you know, come see us again. You've loved us in the past is not the
strongest argument that you can make.
So to say, Hey, you know, we have a new show we're doing, you know,
we're doing something special. We're doing something different.
We have a guest star sitting in with us. You have to have something to say,
Hopefully something unique to say.
Unique, unique to your business.
And then you got to deliver. Oh, what? No, no, no. You just have to say it,
Paul. That's it. It doesn't matter.
Yeah. right right uh it's true though like this is yeah there's a lot of different
ways but it none of it is going to happen without intention and attention have a plan.
Yeah you got to have a plan you got to be able to read your market too so yeah
And change and adapt and not just yeah trust your gut on the things that you
know are right but also be willing to to learn that you were wrong yeah.
I'll tell you you know here in the in the bay area um
classic rock classic funk bands as
wedding bands is pretty rare thing i don't i don't know
too many of my peer bands that are getting wedding gigs right yeah
and i don't know too many of my peer bands
that are getting corporate gigs so you know in the tech world that's in silicon
valley the workforce is in their 20s and 30s largely right and so the you know
these that types of party music is not there so the corporate gigs have been
super difficult it not not completely dried up but largely dried up.
Interesting.
Makes sense. Yeah, it does make sense. But, you know, the Super Bowl was in town.
I don't know any of my peer bands that got a gig during Super Bowl week in the
Bay Area. Is that amazing?
Huh.
There were a few very small ones, and there was one public venue that knew a
lot of tourists were coming to town, and so they kind of loaded up on music.
Yeah. But, you know, corporate events around Super Bowl week that employed,
you know, cover bands from this area, not from the South Bay.
I mean, it might've been a couple out of San Francisco that came down,
the Superbowl is in Santa Clara, which is about 40 miles south of San Francisco.
But yeah, so learning to read the tea leaves and understanding the marketplace,
you know, we are stock and trade is still, we, we play festivals and largely
we play the civic concert series, which are still very popular.
So those 20 and 30-year-old young families still like to bring their families
out, sit on the lawn and dance with their children.
That vibe still exists. And maybe what you can connect the dots to is that...
You know me being from the trade show and
event world this this concept called experiential marketing has been a big thing
and i think you guys kind of said it like the experience of sitting home with
a big screen tv and your food in your bathroom is a very comfortable experience
for people what is the experience when people go out is it you know bar scenes at least in in
northern california are are much rarer now yeah you know there's some that still
do it well but You know, it's not like, you know,
Seven nights a week of live music in bars that are full all the time.
Yeah, right. And so, you know, where are the gigs and what do you do?
If that's the foundation, those are good gigs. You're playing for a couple thousand
people. It's really rewarding.
Sure. You know, and in general, the House Rockers have gotten to a point where
we get paid pretty well for those types of things. So it's a decent, you know, payday.
We do our ticketed events in the off seasons. I think Mike mentioned that as
well, or you mentioned that as well.
In the wintertime, that's when we'll do. and we'll only play once a month in
the wintertime so i guess that's kind of when scarcity is imposed upon
Us yeah yeah yeah right yeah yeah or.
If we get or forget the privates or corporate gigs you know we don't publicize
that we're doing sure we publicize it as a private gig but we don't say you know yeah
No and that's like but that's part of
your marketing right is like we're playing these things we're
busy we're we're active you can't
come except in two weeks
we're doing this one rare event right and
you know i i want to i want to say you've had the mailing list thing down with
your band for a long time uh you know you've always had a mailing list you've
always i don't know how many people you have on it i don't know how you grow
it but you definitely leverage your mailing list better than most bands do,
Uh, because you just use it. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, you,
you put care into how you put it together, but you're also using it.
It's not spammy at all, but it definitely makes me when I read it and like,
Oh man, I'm sorry to have to miss that one. No. I mean, I'm 3000 miles away.
Like, you know, it's kind of, I know, I know going in that I'm not going to
make it to any of these gigs most likely, you know,
but still I read it and it's like, Oh, you know, I get that little
taste of FOMO and it's like okay so go sign up
for the the house rockers mailing list folks and like see what they're doing
thanks and yeah and learn from it go sign up for everything that pork tornadoes
does too like I mean this is you you can learn we can all learn from each other
it's it we are not competing with each other we're all competing with couches it's not yeah yeah it has.
Really become that and
It's it's really.
Dismaying like I said that was a big light bulb moment for you.
So we just held a ticketed event.
Okay.
And it was our first big event. We've been doing this event pretty much since,
well, we did the year before COVID and then we've done it every year.
We do two at this very large event center.
Okay.
And we do a spring event and we do a Halloween event. And ticket sales were
a lot harder to come by this year.
I mean, we really had to market more and, you know, put a lot more resources into it.
It is getting harder. And also, you know the style of music you look at
Cover band central it seems like everybody's playing 200 gigs a year and getting
paid 500 bucks a night so like that's the that's the gold standard for everybody
who's it was it was an online musician right yeah um it is harder to you know
to get paid it is harder and also our audiences
in largely those bands that i see the videos of are largely classic rock classic
you know funk soul type things the audiences for them are aging up every time
and so you know the ability to adapt,
you know, younger music.
We've been fortunate. I got a guy in my band who can sing Bruno Mars stuff.
And so we've had quite a bit of Bruno Mars stuff and, and, uh,
and you know, that it, it's stuff that even older people hear as they go through
the radio stations and, you know, that type of thing.
And that helps with the attractiveness of our show.
And it has some relevance, hat tips to Motown, hat tips to classic eighties rock.
And that's kind of our vibe. That's what we do yeah but i am cleanly aware when
i walked around seeing who bought tickets for show you know what the demographic
of this resonated with and that's the thing you learn right who is your audience
how do you talk to your audience i told you this once that uh i have i ever
mentioned that i'm a huge springsteen fan who's
This guy i think he's playing like he's playing on the east coast this week i think so.
Yeah it's madison square garden yeah anyway he said that his approach to his
career has been a lifetime conversation with his audience through music,
but also through everything else he does.
Everything else, yes.
Yes, our job as band leaders and the choice, band participants and the choices
we make all are part of that conversation.
That the way you talk to them in emails, the what you put onto your social media,
what do you say in between songs and shows?
If you, I think that that personal connection and understanding that you're
talking to human beings and you're trying to give them an experience to kind
of go back to that thought,
It will shape all the ways that you point your message to people and your music to people.
This is interesting.
This is something that I wish I could say I've always known this, but I didn't.
When we started Mac Observer, which is still a website for Apple users,
tips, tricks, reviews, news, that kind of thing.
When we started it in 1998, we thought we need to keep our personalities out
of this, right? We are going to be like the New York Times.
We're going to be this – the business is the voice. The business is the brand.
And, yes, we will have our names on the bylines, but these articles aren't about us.
They're to be informative and all of that stuff. And what we learned was that
was a terrible mistake. But it's fine. We, you know, we went with our gut.
We rolled it out and took us a couple of years. It was like,
hey, or maybe we should engage our audience as the humans that we are and let
our personalities be part of the brand.
Now, we had different people that worked for us at different times.
We did really well in terms of retaining staff long term.
For some reason, people like to work for me. I'll figure it out someday.
And when I do, I'll write a book. But today is not that day.
But, you know, we had a culture that evolved, but it was us.
And I've taken that, and thankfully we learned that before we started doing
podcasts, and I've kind of had
that at the core since I've been doing podcasting. And when I'm doing...
A show i am thinking of
a specific person that i
am talking to while i'm
doing the show especially like those solo episodes that i that i i know i i
owe another one because there's a bunch of mail to get through i'm gonna do
it it's always a little scary doing the solo episodes um but i'll do it but
i like i pick a person and even even with like the episodes that you and i would
do or the episodes I do in Mac Geek, there is an avatar.
And I think of that person. And with these shows, it is a specific human that I know is a listener.
But it becomes a persona, right?
And think about that with your band. Just pick one of your fans.
Like, you know, and market everything to that person. Don't say their name.
Don't, like, actually call them out. But just think, don't worry about,
I'm going to appeal to the masses.
Think about i'm going to appeal to that person
i'm going to i'm going to do my level best to make that person
happy sure that i think will help you in your and we do that with the gig socials
too and i i think it helps it's like okay i am talking to a person now i know
it's it's going to be more than one person we all hope we're playing for more
than one person but yeah well.
The pendulum has swung all the way at one point in time you built a business
by making all the parts interchangeable like it was a franchise like like you
know and you assumed i don't know what people are going to be with me but if
i build a system i can replicate that system and be but but
A, we are in the business of art here, but B, the pendulum is all the way to
the side, and kind of bring us back to our earlier conversation,
the whole point of social media marketing is all of us are influencers.
All, everyone on that stage is an influencer. It is about the person and the personality.
That is what's gonna make people connect to you. That's gonna make people buy
what you have, your tickets, your entrance to a bar gig, whatever it's gonna be.
You're you're tacked to communicating
with your audiences embracing that fact that whether you're
collectively doing it as a band the band leader himself or whatever
it might be yeah you are you are you are persona marketing you are you are an
influencer influencer marketing is is the way of the world right now because
everything's been disintermediated you have you actually have the channels to
go right out and talk to the people who might buy something from you or might
be interested in what you have to offer but
Don't one piece of advice i can give i agree with you One piece of advice I
can give is don't think of your audience as just this group of this mass of people.
Think of your audience as a collection of individual audience members.
And anytime you're talking, especially when you're on social media,
your audience is not on stages different.
Although there's there's an argument that doing things and having this mentality also works there.
But certainly when you're doing your social media, your email,
all of it, it's one person reading it or seeing it or watching it at a time.
It's not your collective audience sitting together, hovered over one person's
phone, watching your little reel. It's one person at a time.
So you are connecting to your audience human to human, not human to humans.
And I think it's important to remember that, that you are, it's a one-to-one
thing that can also make it way less scary when you go and you record those
reels where you're saying, giving advice that, you know, somebody is going to be mad at.
It's going to be. Okay, boomer.
That's right. Yeah, exactly. Except if one of us here is closer to being a boomer than the other.
Huh? Who would that be?
Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting. It sounds like your phone's blown up. Is it,
uh, it seems like maybe it's that time.
I thought I'd put it on, but funny enough, it's Matt Gould All-Star.
The band that Paul and I played in together has been, our group text is,
in fact, I see it now that I've looked.
I had, I have, I did, I successfully made it. So sorry. Do not disturb. No, it's funny.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Paul and I, even though I know I tell, so this is a great example, right?
You know, I tell people all the time. no paul and i like there was
no big fu or anything it was just a miss you know a mismatch of schedules is
what developed and we stay in touch all the time and i think people don't always
believe me but now that you know it's like yep here we are in the same group
text yeah yeah yeah it's like yep it all sometimes every day sometimes every day.
So yeah yeah well it's good visiting with you again dave and i think
and just has so much value to it.
So I love the variety of things that you've been talking about,
and I love the way that you're reaching new audiences and stuff like that.
I hope people found this conversation, you know, for what my expertise is limited
to my very limited market, you know, and approach and still learning, right?
Every day, you're learning something about how to find whatever your level of
success or your goals for success are. So, but again, I would call this another
good therapy session with Brother Dave.
Oh, absolutely. Like, as you were saying, I hope somebody got value out of it.
It's like, well, I'm right here.
I got value out of it. This was worth it. You know, it absolutely.
It, it, that, that idea of, you know, that I think one of the takeaways here,
if we kind of look at the thread of, of what we just had for this discussion,
which it turns out i have to do because i need to put
a title on this um is you know that
shared definition of success in your band because
clearly we just talked about a dozen
different definitions and we didn't hit them all right so your
band's definition of success might be different than mine and it's definitely
going to be different than you know one person out there versus another it so
figure it out and whatever it is is right there's no wrong version so long as
your band is aligned on your version, like your band's version of success?
I think over the years, that's the one thing that we've come back to is that
that foundational conversation about the goals, commitment, the expectations
still is so many people go to Craigslist, put an ad up,
And you end up taking the best of who, maybe even not the person you would really
want, but it's the best that we got, right?
Because I want to have a band and I want to get out and start gigging,
you know, or whatever it is.
So a lot of people, you know, are pooling people who come from different backgrounds
or different perspectives.
And do you have that conversation?
Did you, that from you, the band checklist, was that the thing?
Yeah, that was one of the things that we put out there.
Oh, awesome. Fantastic.
That was like the first thing that we that you think
the doing the reels is not scary because
any one of them i could just take it down you know
what i mean like if it's like oh and we haven't i don't i to this day
i don't think we've taken well that's not true there was
one reel that we took down because in the context of the episode that it was
some of the reels come from extracted from episodes uh some we create separately
yeah there was a reel that was extracted from an episode i'm not going to say
what episode or who it was but i as soon as the reel went up i got a text,
and they were like i don't think it's going to be good that this particular
slice of this episode without the context is going to be good out there and
explain why and it was like oh my gosh i'm sorry yeah you know and we.
Took it down
And and i agreed with it was like oh yeah in the context of the show totally
made sense you slice it out the wrong way and i wasn't seeing it that way you
know I was seeing it because we saw it from the context of the show.
So otherwise we have, we've never taken one down, but we can,
you know, and there's lots of them.
But when we put that checklist together, it was like, man, if we miss one thing,
it's going to be like immortalized and I'm going to be the embarrassment of the world.
And, and then like the ones about doing sound, I'm like, Oh,
Sadie, we're getting way out over our skis here.
Like, I don't know, but they, they've landed really well.
So I'm so glad. Thank you. I'm glad. So glad that checklist,
I'm a checklist person. Like I know I have a checklist before I leave the house for every gig.
So, but that, you know, kind of an agenda for a, a band setting, setting,
Shared priorities you know that's that's
what i would take from that checklist yeah right you know
whether all those things can be talked about in one meeting with
you it doesn't matter it's all the stuff that eventually is going
to have to get talked about right yeah and um you know that i i hope most bands
have and i want to i would imagine all bands have some form of that sometimes
they have it as an emergency when they realize they're getting off course for
those types of things. They're like, we got to pull this thing back together.
But I mean, you'll save yourself so much time, so much heartache.
If you can just ask a couple of questions up front after they answer your Craigslist ad.
My smaller group down in San Luis Obispo, I put an ad out looking,
I have a four-piece band.
Great guys, great players, really fun. But I was thinking I might like to add another guitar player.
So I put an ad out for guitar and I said basic things, give
them our website and you know said and everyone comes
back and says um send me
your song list before i send
you anything about me right so so the
people who turn into a task for me i'm making a
judgment about how this is going to go right you know this is a little amount
of information i have but um but um i tried to say you know here's how we do
things here's what i do but the number of questions that I get back it's only
about what songs do you play and if I like them maybe I'll give you my time and that
Is so fast and I like there's nothing wrong with that approach that approach
serves those people I wouldn't that would not be,
Like I would only ask for a song list if we were to the point where we were
setting up an audition because I wouldn't be prepared. Right. Yeah.
But prior to that, I've learned I don't care as much about what kind of music I'm playing in a band.
I want to know how is the band organized?
Who's running things? How successful have you been with stuff? What do you do?
Like, I want to know the business, the infrastructure that you have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Way
Before i care about like okay i mean if are we playing.
What am i signing up for here yeah
What am i what am i getting myself into i mean because i can go find bands that
play all the music i like and i don't want to be in any of them because they
like they're not organized well right yeah oh yeah that's that's really interesting
that that's like one of the first questions you would get.
Yeah yeah yeah
Well here's yeah.
Here's two show ideas for you all right one is
dave reed's mean tweets i think would be hysterical
so i want to i want to hear about the people who are calling you names okay
i just i think that'd be really fun and because you know i watch some of these
conversations largely on facebook and yeah they devolve really quickly real
fast oh yeah very in namely they you know like you know uh it's
Fine it's fine i mean you're right they they lose it it quickly becomes about
something very different than the the original post in many cases yeah yeah yeah.
Uh and then it would be useful to um uh do a show where you're reading band
ads you know you don't have to show who they're from it's like that i just gotta
you know talk about uh the approaches that people use for uh for finding more band members i mean the
In the Bay Area, where I know a lot more people, there's a network.
And, you know, you ask and, you know, you find some. And that's how we found
the people who we've had to sub. You know, we've turned over a couple people.
But down here, I don't know near as many people. So, you know,
went to Craigslist, threw a net out there just to see what would happen. Of course.
It's been basically very predictable about the types of, you know,
the reason you don't go to Craigslist is exactly the types of responses I've been getting.
Yeah, I'm trying to think. I guess I found Casual Gravity through Craigslist.
It would have had to have been.
Do you have a musician's Facebook page for your area?
We do. We have a couple of them, and I'm part of those, but I'm pretty sure
it was Craigslist where I found Casual, and most of the bands that I auditioned with.
When I had realized that Fling and Uptown had, I mean, the bands didn't,
well, Uptown's certainly dormant right now.
Now, Fling is not quite dormant, but we don't play as nearly as often as we
did, like, you know, when you and I were doing the show before 2020 COVID kind
of derailed both of those bands, uh, in a sense.
And, uh, and when I realized that I, I turned, I have a saved search on Craigslist
for, you know, people looking for drummers or whatever I'd crafted it years ago.
And so I, but I, you know, I'd had it off for a while, so I just turned it back on.
I also texted like, I don't know, 15, 20 people that I knew and was like,
hey, I know I haven't really been on the market for a while because I've been
involved in other projects. I am now on the market again and started kind of all of that up.
And it's interesting how the, you know, when things come in,
I thought from those 15 or 20 people that there would be somebody out there
that needed somebody right away.
And it was, there was not, but like a year later, somebody was like,
Hey, you still looking for a band? Because I really need it. I'm like, sorry.
You know, like I, I don't have the time to commit to that.
So, yeah, I mean, that's how it goes.
Like you said, with Craigslist, you get who is available at that time.
That's it you're not getting who's you're you getting who's looking at that
time that's even different than who's available that that uses craigslist that
uses right a subset of a subset of a subset yeah that's right yep yeah huh fun
stuff man thank you i'm glad we did this it's been too.
Long yeah me too
Yeah yeah yeah fun.
Very fun thanks for having
Me yeah man um i don't we've getting a lot of advice uh is there anything like
i don't know do you have is there any lasting advice maybe maybe something that
you could distill down into three words maybe three.
Words i would say uh oh
Shit always be performing like that it's a good i think i'm gonna use that,
Thanks, everybody. Feedback at GigGabPodcast.com. Oh, Paul, where can people
follow you online? The one thing I almost forgot to ask.
Well, I got a long way to go to catch Sheltie, but www.svhouserockers.com or
facebook.com slash house rockers.
If you want to follow us tomorrow, you know, maybe we'll have 4,803 people instead of 802 people.
Dude, that 4,000 people following your band online is a lot that's outstanding yeah.
I was feeling i was feeling bad about myself
Oh no no no no no no dude look at i mean all you have to do is go look at like
all the other bands and it doesn't matter like you've got those 4 000 you can
build from there that's i mean that's what we do so all right man all right
thanks folks always be performing and uh we'll see you next week.
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