LBW History Chapter 5
LBW History Chapter 5
The photo is from 6-8 years ago, taken at the Ironworks bar in Green Mountain. In chapter 3, I mentioned that we played here back in 2005 at an open mic night for free, it was our first gig that we did that was open to the public. Well, back to the history, in 2005-2006, we were lucky if we had a gig every couple of months, little by little, we kept getting better and we were starting to bond as a band. Trying to get gigs at bars was not an easy task, and we didn’t have an impressive resume, since we were relatively new. Most bar owners and managers wanted to hear a CD of your music (this is before everything was on the internet) and of course we didn’t have a CD. I would have to cold call bars 2-3 times, hoping to get an opportunity to book a date. I would have to really use my salesmanship to convince them to give us a shot. I would always leave a business card and sometimes I would get a call weeks later when a band would have to cancel and the bar needed a replacement band at the last minute. This was my chance to get my foot in the door and I would scramble to try and get my band mates to say yes with only 24-48 hours notice. Fortunately, some bars didn’t have a long list of bands that they could call to fill open slots. If I happened to call on them when they had an opening in the next couple of weeks, very often this was the window of opportunity I needed to book a date. Back in 2005-2006, we tried to have a minimum of $300 per gig, we wanted to play in front of people so badly, we would do freebies for churches and drop our rates to $200, just to get a gig. Fortunately we are way past that now, but what we get now isn’t that much more than it was back then. Being a cover band that mainly plays in bars, does it because we love playing music, not because we think we will make a lot of money. I will try and have chapter 6 written in the next week. Stay tuned.#livemusicrocks#danceband#classicrock#lookbothways#bandhistoryLookbothwaysband.com. Book us 720-333-4262. John Purvis