Agents...who needs em?!

Hi there,

Why would you use an agent to get you gigs?

It's an agent's job to have strong relationships with venues, event bookers and even other agents. A good one will harness these contacts to get you work you might not otherwise get - and then manage the booking so that you can focus on just entertaining the masses. It's quite a luxury, well worth paying for in my book, that allows you to just be a performer and leave the business to the business people.

Now before you get the wrong idea, I'm not hear to praise all agents from the rooftops - it is an occupation up there with car sales and real estate in the trustworthy stakes, in some cases. However, one of my pet hates is entertainers constantly bitching about their agents (not suggesting I don't indulge in that sport myself occasionally). I booked a weekly singer songwriter night (PopTarts) for almost 10 years and while I wasn't strictly an 'agent', I certainly did a lot of the same work they did. And I can tell you, it's bloody hard! Dealing with publicans who measure entertainment success in terms of schooners sold and entertainers for whom the notion of promotion is a nebulous one can be frustrating and soul destroying. So before pissing on your promoter, try doing their job for yourself.

The problem is, a business hat doesn't always sit comfortably alongside an artistic hat on the same head - not everyone is cut out to balance books and belt out a ballad as well. But I do believe everyone needs to pull their head out of that creative soil just briefly to at least learn the basics.

Like many of my fellow songstresses, I've been doing this long enough that I have a pretty good idea what venues and event organisers are after. We should know how to do our own promotion and paperwork and understand the importance of being a business buff as well as polished performer. No one knows better than the act themselves, what they need, so could we just cut out that middle person - oh and save that at least 10% agent fee? Yes and No.

It's a tenuous world of work that I inhabit, where a gig can disappear on a whim. So I book about 50% of my work directly and the rest through a handful of agents I have built a rapport with - I like to share my eggs around in different people's baskets. I guess I just have to hope I get to deal more with competent cockerel types than the cocks.

See you next time!
Amanda
www.amandaeaston.com

5 Reasons you SHOULD Sing Covers

Hi there,

I know, last blog I said there were 5 Good Reasons NOT to Sing Covers...but a record does have two sides, right?!

1. Practising your Craft: Being an original artist is, ah, an art! But it is also a craft. Singers with good breath control, pitch, delivery and range can highlight their art much more effectively and regular gigs make a fertile training ground. Sure you can do regular original gigs but in the early stages of your career, there are more cover gigs around and they are likely to pay much better too. The Rolling Stones were a Blues cover bands before they gave us true satisfaction. And having to sing other people's songs, written for their style and ranges, will really stretch your technical abilities. 

2. Walking the walk: As well as the actual singing, cover gigs will perfect all the other skills that go into becoming a great live performer like stagecraft and connecting with audiences. Whether you're being a cool indie chick or channelling Madonna, the skills are part of the same showbag.

3. Making the Contacts: The music game is the music game and there are many players including agents and venue owners you will be able to cultivate while doing cover gigs.

4. Learning from the Hits: Performing other people's songs to audiences night after night gives you an insight into what songs 'work' and why. Valuable info you can feed into your own songwriting.

5. Making Money from Music: I never forget a conversation I had at a party after being introduced to a fellow independent artist. He asked me what my day job was. I told him I sang in covers bands and the look of horror on his face was unforgettable - he didn't hold back in expressing shock and contempt at my choice of income. I returned the question and he told me he was a painter. OK, so he was an all round artistic type that managed to make a living from his artistry, good for him. I wondered if it were landscapes of Picasso-esque stylistic masterpieces and so I asked him what he painted. He answered 'houses. sometimes fences, mainly walls'. Oh.

Music is a wonderful job and whether they are my masterpieces or someone else's, I can't think of a 'job' I'd rather do.

I've just joined a soul/funk/blues/motown/swing band called Red Light Orchestra. I wonder what narrow pop pathway I would still be on if I hadn't had the experience of singing covers like this. Because what you can't learn about soul from Al Green and the gang, cats, well it ain't worth knowing!

See you next time,
Cheers,
Amanda

5 Reasons NOT to Sing Covers

Hi there,

I’ve spent a lot of cyber inches defending the practice of singing ‘other people’s songs’ but today I’m going to be the Devil’s Advocate. Here's why you should not sing covers if you want to be an original music artist:

Amanda Gaga

     1. Branding Badly – The pilgrimage from disco queen territory to cool indie princess land is a long and arduous one. If you want to make a decent living from singing covers, chances are you will be singing pop and dance hits from the last three decades. Once you establish a reputation – among punters and industry – as this type of performer, it’s hard work shaking that image and establishing a new one at the other end of the spectrum of cool. 

2. Sullying your Style  – Becoming an original artist is all about finding and honing what is individual about you. On the other hand, the best cover and session singers can sing just about anything and do it convincingly. Cover singers spend so much time in Lady Gaga’s songwriting shoes that it can drag their skills and style in everybody’s direction but their own.

3. Distracting Habits – A few gigs a week, a few sets a gig adds up to lots of other people’s songs to be learnt. And if you want to stay in that game you can’t rest on your repertoire. It needs to be constantly refurbished and revised. Precious time that you could be spending writing your own masterpieces.

4. Losing the Love – sweaty, sleazy punters (show me one cover singer who’s never heard ‘Show us Yer Tits’ during a normal night’s work); a sound system from 1975 that makes it almost impossible to hear yourself sing; being on stage in front of a Spinal Tap-worshipping guitarist making it almost impossible to hear yourself sing; venues that make you sit in a broom cupboard in between sets and then ‘forget’ to pay you…you get the picture and I’m only scratching the surface of this particular image. If you were doing your own thing you might see a light through the end of the tunnel of poker machines, but sometimes singing Beyonce and Britney night after night just doesn’t make this scene worth it!

5. Showing your Bad Side – When you write for yourself, you custom the songs to suit you. You don’t have to try to sound like Ke$ha to please the punters.  Your own lyrics reflect the way only you would express yourself and you can manoeuver the melody to sit in your sweet spot. You’re presenting a brand new piece of art that is all you with no compromises and shows you at your best.

Next time: ‘Five Reasons You SHOULD Sing Covers’.

As usual, love to hear what you think,

Cheers,

Amanda

www.amandaeaston.com

Length IS important

Hi there,

It's an age old dilemma - do we choose quality or quantity, width over length?

I'm not sure when it happened in the music industry here, but one day I woke up and agents were telling me that if my band wanted to compete, we had to play longer. The standard - I'm talking covers bands, in pubs and the like - was to perform 3 sets of 40 minutes. But then some bands started offering to do 4 or even 5 sets of 45-50 minutes for the same fee and of course many agents and venues were hiring them instead. Fast forward to now - those same venues are saying: 'Live entertainment doesn't work - it doesn't bring in the punters'. 

Well I disagree - 'Rubbish entertainment doesn't work'.  And even good entertainment wears thin after about 3 hours. There is such thing as too much of a good thing. People go out to socialise and that's hard to do with almost constant live music. It gets to the point where punters have had enough, the excitement wears off and they drift off to talk to their friends in another room or tune in to the delights of the one arm bandits. Live entertainment then becomes little more than elevator music. And that's no fun for the band either - without a dedicated audience it's hard to give a great performance. And while stomping the stage is an exhilirating thing to do, it is also physically and emotionally draining (when done well) so after about 3 hours the audience is not getting the best out of a band anyway.

We all want the best value for our money but I think PT Barnum of the 'Greatest Show on Earth' (Barnum and Bailey Circus) knew a thing or two about great entertainment. He said 'Always Leave Them Wanting More'.

So, until next week...

Singer Searching for the Sweet Spot

Hi there,

I did a recording session for a Grammy Award winning producer recently. He'd heard my voice before hiring me so while I was nervous, I was reasonably confident it would go OK. 

He played me a few songs he'd written and after a while we got to work. The first one was a rocky number and I did my best to give it some. But I could see on his face and hear in my own head that it just sounded...blah. There were no notes I couldn't hit and I was doing my best to channel Joan Jett but it just wasn't happening. Beyonce was looking down at me disapprovingly from the personally signed photo on the wall. No pressure then.

Now sometimes the problem with songs written by one sex for the other is, no matter how much the writers know about music and songwriting, they just don't quite fit the voice for which they're intended. How often have you heard great singers do mediocre performances because the song just doesn't suit them? That's why song choice and key choice is make or break on TV talent shows like The Voice and when you putting that decision in someone else's hands, well, good luck!

We come to grips with the scope of our own ranges as singers but within that cluster of notes I've realised there are those that make my voice soar and others that are just a bit...blah! In other words, there is definitely a sweet spot and if the song doesn't enter into that neighbourhood then maybe that tune's not for me, not in that key at least. So when a band says: 'Well, we do this song in this key,' I think you have the right as a singer to say: 'Do you mind if we do it in my key?' After all, they don't yet make capos for voices. 

Anyway, the second song we recorded at this session went much better. I could see the producer's face relax and could swear I saw Beyonce winking at me. Bet she knows all about the sweet spot.

See you next time.

Phone Sex?

Hi there,

Well they might not be suggesting that exactly but is it only me who thinks advertising the new Samsung phone as a 'life companion' is a little sad? Now I'm a major fan of all things digital but I would prefer to lay my digits on something, somebody, with a pulse! Having said that, I heard a TV Talent Show contestant say recently that music was their 'best friend'. A bit cheesy no doubt, but this I can relate to, in fact would even step it up a notch. It's all about lust, even love!

I recently came back from about 6 weeks overseas visiting family and just being on holiday - that means 42 days without singing, except for the bathroom and car stereo concerts! I can't remember the last time I've gone that long without my fix. Coming back after a long break was like being away from a lover and having to get to know them all over again...I flirted around my falsetto, was reticent with my resonance and became introverted with my intonation. But once I realised how good it all felt and why I was in love then I simply let go and, ah, went all the way. Nice to be back. By the way...what are you wearing?
Cheers,
Amanda

...like a hole in the head!

Hi there,

In the last couple of months I've been lucky enough to fall in love with Finland, be amazed by Estonia, be brought to tears of joy and admiration by Russia and then to reignite my wondrous affairs with Thailand, France and the Channel Islands - in short, had the time of my life with the people I love best. But I missed one thing (apart from you lot of course). I really truly missed singing! I came mighty close to wrestling the microphone from the band singer at a Bangkok riverside restaurant and I more than flirted with the idea of finding the closest karaoke joint in numerous European cities. I decided in the end to delay my gratification since I knew I was going to be greeted by a lovely full gig calendar at home. 

I often wonder what I would do if I didn't sing. Not just for a job, but I find singing to be the most wonderful release. Emotions, stress - the world just feels like a much better place once I've let it all out over the microphone. 

I have a favourite acupuncture point on the top of my head. When that needle goes in, it feels like pressure is released - like letting a trickle of air out of an over-filled balloon. Singing feels a bit like that for me. 

So, I guess you could say, I missed singing...like a hole in the head!

x