Charlie Cheney

A Day w/Julia Brown in West Michigan

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:50:58 -0700

I saw on Facebook's cool chat pop-up list that my friend Julia Brown was going to be in Michigan for her brother's wedding over the weekend (she lives in NYC). I quickly messaged her "Where in Michigan?" and she responded "Holland, I think it's miles from civilization." to which I responded "60 miles from me, can I come see you? Maybe give you a ride to the airport?"

Worked out perfectly for both of us.

So on Sunday I showed up in Holland at 1pm and discovered she had 5 hours to kill before her flight so we went to the closest beach so she could see Lake Michigan. There was a perfect westerly breeze so the kites were flying. One enormous parachute kite looked like this one:

It was really cool, they had it tied to a post. and it spun round and round like an enormous bicycle wheel.

Anyways, Julia and I walked down the beach a ways and sat down close enough so I could build a drip sand castle (my favorite beach activity) but far enough away to stay dry. Talked a long time about music and being an artist, recording and touring. Julia has a new album coming out shortly, she actually has the pressed discs in hand and is starting a promotion campaign asap with a radio promoter in Boston. I was stunned to find out that Chris Stamey from The dBs is one of the producers, as well as Anton Fier from the Golden Palominos, way to go Jules!

Julia Brown http://www.juliabrown.com

We had some cool discussions about being "social" as an artist and what it means... the whole idea of moving out of the sequestered life of writing and recording and out into the world of booking, touring, and spreading the word about the record. It was cool to hear she had almost exactly the same issues and concerns I have. It was so weird to hear her say that she thought I did it better than she did, because I think the exact opposite! :-) But I think the point is... we're both learning how to do it as we go along.

I found myself giving her a bunch of the tips I learned at Bob Baker's Indie Buzz Bootcamp like Derek Sivers concept that persistence is polite. People are so busy, only mentioning a thing once is almost impolite because it may not stick in their mind. What if they really want to learn more about that thing? Or more about you? But they get distracted by everyday life and forget. A cool way to look at marketing really... that it's polite to be persistent.

Of course we talked about booking and networking and I said I'd like to help her book a short tour through Michigan next June in conjunction with Steel Bridge SongFest so she could get involved there as well. She's such a great songwriter (as many of you may have seen for yourselves during the last two FAWMs) and she's a joy to be around, super smart, well-read, well spoken, and of course beautiful as all get out .

A wonderful wonderful day. At the end we both enjoyed fabulous burgers together at a restaurant in the GRR Airport. Yummy. Sorry I don't have any pictures, Tory has the camera at camp! Julia looked fabulous too. :-)

If you enjoyed this blog, please tell your friends and feel free to pass it along. You're always welcome to come back to http://www.charliecheney.com/node/264 to leave comments and feedback too. Thanks.

Early Summer Flower pics from this morning...

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:33:07 -0700

We've been planting and weeding all spring... here are a few of the early summer flowers from our garden out back.

We're loaded up on vegetable plants too, lots of squash, zucchini, pumpkin, tomato, onion, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, corn, parsley, basil, sage.

Transplanted a ton of day lilies, purple cone flowers, daisies... all looking great after the rains, should bloom soon, all in buds.

Other flowers from seeds will bloom later in the year... lots of marigolds, sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias.. I'll post more photos when the time comes.

Fun!

Booking and Promotion Podcast for Artists Episode #4

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:59:29 -0700

Hey, this is podcast number four of my new Booking and Promotion podcast series. This one focuses on the last 4 items in the Booking and Promotion Checklist.

MP3: CharlieCheney_Podcast4.mp3

Booking and Promotion Checklist:

1) Professional CD (in sound and appearance)
2) Action Photo in color & B/W
3) Artist Profile One-Sheet
4) Matching Business Cards & Letterhead
5) Postcards/Flyers
6) Booking Contract
7) Performance One-Sheet
8) Press Reviews
9) Website with band name as domain name
10) At least one compelling story
11) A systematic way to do research, organize, and stay on task
12) Phone, email address, internet access

Coming up in the next podcast: OK, let's figure out who we are and where to book...

Booking and Promotion Podcast for Artists Episode #3

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:56:46 -0700

Hey, this is podcast number three of my new Booking and Promotion podcast series. This one focuses on the next 5 items in the Booking and Promotion Checklist.

MP3: CharlieCheney_Podcast3.mp3

Some of the text of the podcast is here...

Hi everybody is Charlie Cheney again on the pod cast airwaves and were talking about booking and promotion and I'm starting off with a booking and promotion checklist. These are things I think we need to start off with our booking and promotion efforts. I think pretty much everyone needs this to do any kind of booking and promotion. Now we're going to talk about focusing our booking and promotion on who we are, and where we want to be, the types of venues to be in, where we want to play, in the places we want to play the places we want to perform, later. Right now I just want to start with a basic booking and promotion checklist. The things that I think we all need to get started.

The first thing I think we need of courses of professional CD. It has to look at it has to sound good. It can have any kind of material that you want on it, it just has to be professional. So by professional, I think it has to be in a jewel case, with shrink-wrap or a digi pack, and I think it has to have professional artwork with a good sounding product on the CD. I'll leave it at that will go into that into more detail on that later.

I also think we need in action color photo. The photo has to be something active, something that makes people want to see you perform. So the standard head shot, the standard band up against a brick wall. The band in an alley is not as interesting to me as see no bands jumping off of trampolines, riding at 50 mi. an hour on top of car, and of course I'm not promoting that, but I want something active, and I want the band to be active, I want something going on. We need people jumping up and down playing their guitar showing their energy. I also want an artist profile one-sheet. I need it to be a one sheet artist profile. Now an artist profile is not your biography necessarily. I don't want to know what you did when you were 12. I want to know who you are as an artist and why it's compelling to come and see you or why people should be compelled to come and see you. That can be about your message, what message you convey, it might be about what topics you talk about, it might be about your charisma, your magnetism, you know I'm not sure what's going to be for you, but I want it to be a profile of who you are as an artist. Again why an audience should be compelled to come see you, and why a venue should want to book you.

I want you have matching business cards and letterhead. I don't care if you make these by hand. You know whatever fits your artistic profile note your green artist, a totally eco-friendly artists and he make everything by hand more power to you. As long as it fits your image as an artist. I've seen some great postcards, some great business cards. As someone business card once was cut out in the shape of a surfboard and I thought it was the coolest thing. So whatever it is you need to project your image your image in the form of a business card and letterhead that we can send out professional correspondence, and we can communicate and network effectively with people when we are out talking with them at trade shows and events and shows or songwriter nights whatever it is. You should have those with you so you can hand them out. Then people can get a hold of you, they know your phone number, they know your web site address so that they can keep in contact. We need to open up that communication line and make it professional but also make it friendly.

After that I want postcards and fliers. I think everyone should have a postcard in the flyer ready to go. Again, I think the should be hard copy and digital. So just had them ready to make at the drop of the hat. You can have postcards made in really low quantity runs now. Just like CD's you can make 1000 postcards, you can make 5000 postcards. You can make 100 postcards. The pretty easy to make at low-cost now. I known the printing business 5000 postcards as the price breakpoint now thought $200 for 5000 postcards and that's for color both sides glossy. I recommend you have those I think that's a great investment in your marketing plan. Very inexpensive really, and if you give them some white space you can jot note on them or add a sticker later for specific shows. I just think postcards are required.

I want to have a booking contract. Look online for booking contracts, of course there are booking contract built into Indie Band Manager or of course, and other software. I'm sure that other software has booking contract built in as well. Indie Band Manager, of course, has some templates and you can write your own and drop them in. Look online for the booking contracts to run the use or look in Indie Band Manager to see what a template looks like booking contracts are pretty generic these days. But you want them to fit your vision of how you look at it from a quote unquote legal perspective. Booking contracts are basically know you're getting something imprint, we have a handshake deal on this. When I show up, I'm going to get the gig and you can expect me to be there. It's a handshake for both sides.

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Booking and Promotion Checklist:

1) Professional CD (in sound and appearance)
2) Action Photo in color & B/W
3) Artist Profile One-Sheet
4) Matching Business Cards & Letterhead
5) Postcards/Flyers
6) Booking Contract
7) Performance One-Sheet
8) Press Reviews
9) Website with band name as domain name
10) At least one compelling story
11) A systematic way to do research, organize, and stay on task
12) Phone, email address, internet access

Booking and Promotion Podcast for Artists Episode #2

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:06:03 -0700

Hey, this is podcast number two of my new Booking and Promotion podcast series. This one focuses on creating professional looking CDs in affordable low-quantity runs.

Stop by my Buzz profile to hear some of my music when you get a chance too, thanks! -Charlie

MP3: CharlieCheney_Podcast2.mp3

Booking and Promotion Podcast for Artists Episode #1

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:03:47 -0700

Hey, this is podcast number one of my new Booking and Promotion podcast series. I've committed to making these podcasts 7 minutes long or less to fit into the Vocalo.org format as I've posted this at http://www.vocalo.org/node/14946 as well. Please login to leave comments below to tell me what you think of this format and give me any feedback you like, thanks!

To hear the podcast, just click on the player bar just below this sentence here...

MP3: CharlieCheney_Podcast1.mp3

Some of the text of the podcast is here...
This is the Indie Band Manager Booking and Promotion Podcast with your host Charlie Cheney on Vocalo.org. This show brings you tips and tricks to help you book better shows and promote those shows more effectively so you get bigger and better audiences for your performances. Catch all the podcasts at http://www.indiebandmanager.com

Hi this is Charlie Cheney and I'm starting today with a podcast series on booking and promotion. So I really want to start off with just the concept of booking and promotion, "why are we doing it?" Of course, that's a pretty simple answer in my opinion: We want to play out live, we want to sell cds, we want to get just to get out and play. And in order to play we have to contact venues or places where we can play be it any place we want to play at. The typical place is to play at a club, a coffee shop, or some type of established place, but I think there are a lot of alternatives to playing clubs, playing house concerts, at churches, playing at other types of events, sporting events, all those types of things are really important alternatives.

In order to book a place to play, I think there's a set of things that we need right off the top, a booking and promotion checklist of required startup items so to speak. I think these things need to be in hard copy as well as digital, by the way.

I think that everything that you create to promote yourself with, to book yourself with needs to be fully digital so you can put it on your website, put it onto MySpace, put it onto FaceBook, LastFM, it seems like there's new ones popping up every day.

But all of your booking and promotion materials should be available for all of those venues. They should all be fully digital so that people can find them anywhere and see them and access them anywhere. I also want them to be in hard copy so that you can hand them out and send them out when you're actually in the process of doing active sales.

Now I think all these places like MySpace, FaceBook, Reverb Nation, the61, LastFM, and the dozens of other ones that are out there, I think these are all kind of passive, and that's great, put your information up there and let people here it and see it and decide for themselves whether they want to book you. But I think what we want to have is the hard copy version for when we start booking ourselves in a more active manner rather than passive.

I'm going to start off with that list then: The first thing I think you need is a professional cd. If we record 3 or 4 songs, that's enough for booking and promotion. It's great if you have a bunch of cds already, if you have full-length cds already recorded, but when we're booking shows, like I said, I think it really only needs to be three or four songs tops. You don't have to have a 14-song cd, you really don't, and in some ways I think it's actually counterproductive to try to use a 14-song cd for booking and promotion in some respects. It's great for your fans, it's great for building a fan base, but for actual booking and promoting yourself, I think you have to be more concise.

For example, when you send a cd to the radio station, they're going to listen to one song, maybe even only the beginning of one song. If they like the first twenty seconds of that song, they're going to listen to the next fifteen seconds. It's really that specific, and the same in a lot of ways with booking. If you contact a venue to play, they're probably not going to listen to a whole 14-song album. They're going to want something specific to listen to because they're in a hurry and they want it to jump out at them and say, yep, this person needs to be booked here.

So I want to have that professional cd. I think 4 songs is plenty and I want it to sound professional, it should have a good sonic palate. There should be no distortion, unless distortion is your thing. There should be none of that digital distortion, where it's clipping, recorded too loudly, and you tried to fix it later I want it to be mastered well so that it's as loud as other cds on the market. Now I also want it to look professional, so make some nice artwork for your cd or have someone make it. Now cd artwork is very simple to make using tools like Photoshop and other graphic arts tools. The simpler, the better, if you can just make your cd art based on one or two photographs, and then some text over the photographs, that's stylish, I think that's great, I don't see why it has to be more than that. Just make it so that your cd has a good look, an exciting look, and it has the critical information on it your name, your contact information, like your website address, your email address, your phone number, a way to get a hold of you so they can book you.

Remember, what we're trying to do here is booking and promotion.

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Booking and Promotion Checklist:
1) Professional CD (in sound and appearance)
2) Action Photo in color & B/W
3) Artist Profile One-Sheet
4) Matching Business Cards & Letterhead
5) Postcards/Flyers
6) Booking Contract
7) Performance One-Sheet
8) Press Reviews
9) Website with band name as domain name
10) At least one compelling story
11) A systematic way to do research, organize, and stay on task
12) Phone, email address, internet access

All Media Conference in Detroit June 22-24, 2008

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:58:57 -0700

I'm planning to present a session on Booking and Promotion at this conference. See you there!

New to FUZZ

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:58:49 -0700

Hi, I'm new to Fuzz today, just posted a song called Roar of the Passing Fords that I wrote and recorded during February Album Writing MOnth on FAWM.org and I'm just sort of getting the feel of Fuzz.

It's fuzzy.