Regiment-al Blog: Life with Regiment
June 28, 2005
How to make "Pay to Play" work for you.
Hey all, this is Ryan Wenger, the guitarist for
Regiment. Just a quick bit
about me. My buddy from high school, Matt, and I started a band a long time
ago. We have stuck together through thick and thin and finally have found
the lineup that made everybody happy. A band has to be heavily involved in
teamwork. How many bands do you know that broke up because somebody thought
they “were the band”? Anyway, I am slightly hyper and love to put it
all out there on the stage. Enough about me. I thought I would address “pay
to play” in this blog segment.
“Pay to Play” is synonymous for most four-letter words I know, but those
shows can be helpful tools if you know how and when to use them.
First off, most unsigned bands I know work mediocre jobs so they can get off
for shows. Therefore, they have very little money. Most of a band’s funds
are spent on equipment, recordings, and beer or liquor! Most bands have to
“buy” so many tickets because they have a hard time selling them especially
if they are in competition with other local bands for the same show.
The venue owners do this because they need to guarantee certain funds to pay
for the show. Their real money comes from the sale of liquor and food. The
cost of a ticket usually pays for the lights, advertising, the act(s) and
what not. Now, I am speaking of venues that are medium capacity. Your Staple
Centers, GE Centers, and Verizon Centers make money off of tickets sales
because they are able to sell many more seats. Yeah, I think some venue
owners should give a bit of a break to the supporting acts, but
realistically they are out for every cent they can squeeze out of a show.
Some of the medium venues even have bands sell tickets for local shows.
Unless you are helping a good friend band out, I would steer clear of that.
Most of the people who come to see you will pay less to see you at a local
small venue (Can you say BAR) and you get to keep the money from the night.
Exposure and cd sales are primo, especially if you want to get noticed by a
label. So if a national act comes to your area and you are a compatible
genre, then try your best to get that show, especially if you know it will
be a good draw.
We opened as support for Mudvayne a few years ago. To get the show from
other bands, we promised to sell 200 tickets. Not only did we do that, but
also we could have sold more. There were people calling us as far as 100
miles away to get tickets because Ticketmaster had sold out. That is a case
of doing your homework. We found out by friends and friends of friends
(gotta love networking!) that the act was coming through Ohio. We notified a
venue owner before it became common knowledge and long story short, we got
the show.
Anyway, back to exposure and cd sales. The exposure we received by playing
in front of those bands was crucial. Our website hits went way up and we
sold a ton of cd’s. Merchandising and self-produced music is where bands
make most of their money. We made a nice sum from that show, and didn’t have
to shell out a penny.
I am not a fan of “pay to play,” but I have learned so much by observing how
nationals carry themselves on and off the stage. We all have taken notes on
what we admire and what we don’t.
You can do “pay to play” if you come up with some ingenious marketing ploys.
For out of town shows, we charter a bus (add the price of the bus to the
sale of the ticket) and fans can go to the show, drink, and not worry about
a drive home. We also give the fans that go a free demo or even have a
tailgate in a parking lot to feed them before we take off for the show.
Believe it or not, this does work. Instead of going to a show, they get a
party.
“Pay to Play” can be a useful tool if you use it right, otherwise you may
just be lining somebody’s pockets and it certainly won’t be yours!
Thanks for listening, and we invite everyone to become a member of the
Regiment Army.
Peace.
Ryan Wenger, Guitarist
Regiment
June 13, 2005
Hey y’all. Welcome to the first installment of Regiment-al Blog. The whole
band is here collaborating on this first article and in the future, you will
get to know what makes us all tick. First we will tell you a bit about
Regiment.
Regiment hails from Findlay Ohio, which is about an unmetal town as you can
get. White collar to the bone. Regiment is a no nonsense, blue collar metal
band with a social conscience with an aura of explosive energy.
The band is made up of Matt Foster (drums), Ryan Wenger (guitar, vocals),
Kevin Stock (bassist) and Corey Johnson (vocals).
We hope you get something from our babble and ramble whether it be knowledge
or just a plain good laugh.
But make no mistake about it. We are all about the music!
We all did some soul searching and came up with our first topic:
So You Want to Start a Band
Other than sounding a bit lame, it is an
important topic. We (Matt, Ryan, Kevin and Corey) will hopefully share with
you mistakes that we have made and brilliant ideas.
Our first mistake was starting the band with friends who wanted to jam, but
had different ideas of what they wanted out of the band. Each member must
share the same goal. Some wanted the band as a social tool, some thought
they would be happy just being stars in their own hometown bars and Matt as
well as Ryan wanted to take on the whole world.
The band, such as it was, was sooo much fun…..chicks, parties and did I
mention chicks?
Then one day Matt and Ryan found an opportunity to play in a city about 2
hours away……WHOA. The remaining ½ of the band was not in favor of this. So
discussions were held (yeah, discussions……right) and we found
ourselves looking for a new singer and bassist. We took the first bassist
and singer that were available. 2nd mistake.
The bassist was a kick ass musician. As a matter of fact we haven’t found
anybody of his caliber since, but he wasn’t a team player and wasn’t fond of
out of town gigs either.
Our singer was prone to bad bouts of tone deafness and had a terminal case
of LSS (Lead Singer Syndrome).
We found a new bassist after more discussions and found a guy that
was passable with the bass, but he was eager to learn and was on board with
what Matt and Ryan wanted.
Oh yeah and the singer. Mr. LSS. It took two years, but we finally got rid
of him. He alienated just about all the venue owners and fans, and even said
that a guy producing our EP could kiss his ass when this producer told him
to get a vocal coach to help develop his “ear”. He was constantly telling us
not to write new material that wouldn’t fit his voice….We got tired of
trying to find that key and by mutual discussion, with the singer, he
left/was asked to leave. The singer also did not like our manager, but more
about that in a later blog.
The real work began. We auditioned a lot of local singers (actually the
auditions were happening unbeknownst to the old singer) and didn’t find the
sound we wanted. We asked record labels if they knew of any bandless singers
and we asked our friends that were already signed if they knew of any
singers.
Well that is where Corey came in. The Heavils out of the Chicago area, and
friends of ours, knew Corey and his musical background and said he would be
perfect for us. We brought Corey out to Ohio and we auditioned for each
other and it clicked.
One big thing is that each person has to be an equal partner. Yes, the
singer is usually the frontman, but he is ¼ or so of the mix. Your frontman
needs to represent the whole.
Once any one person gets too big for their pants, its time to empty those
pants with a dose of humility.
The same is said for any band member…..we cannot tell you how many times we
have heard various musicians tell me THEY are the band, that they carry the
others.
This is the end of the first episode of the Regiment-al Blog. In the future,
we hope to address managing venue owners, other bands, getting a manger,
recording, sponsorship among other things as well as our own skewed look on
the day to day adventures of a band trying to get to the next level.
Feel free to contact us at the email address below. We are anxious to hear
your thoughts, comments and suggestions.
Thanks.
Matt, Ryan, Kevin and Corey
Regiment
regimentmusic@aol.com
You can visit our website at
www.regimentmusic.com or
www.myspace.com/regiment.
Archives:
October 2005
September
2005 |
