I just got an email from keyboardist & guitar player, and my long-time friend, Tom Kennard, about
GigMasters.com. Tom & I had been discussing bands & getting better gigs, and like many musician’s, Tom is in multiple bands. In one of the bands, he plays keys for a country singer who may be on the verge of stardom (someday…) and Tom plays “boom-chinka, boom-chinka” piano parts, which is what the original songs call for, but leaves Tom less than inspired.
However, Tom was contacting me because of his 2nd band, called Round Trip. Like Tom, all of these guys are accomplished musicians and they have been rehearsing together for almost a year getting a repertoire of cover songs together. Tom said that they felt like they were ready to go in Feb/ March and put up a web site and a profile on GigMasters.com. In three weeks they had three gigs via GigMasters totaling about $12,000. And the gigs continue to come in.
From my perspective, it looks like the thing that is driving their success is that:
1. they can be an instrumental band or add vocals;
2. they can play funky enough to dance to – or jazzy enough to listen to;
3. and they did some cool live videos to show the customer what they can expect, that way there are no surprises for the customer about what they are booking.
I’m going to show you Tom’s email to me with the caveat that with his enthusiasm Tom sounds like he is getting paid by GigMasters.com. I can assure you that this is NOT the case. “Yo Woody: Hope you had a good gig. My band played last night in West Lake Village for a High Brow Fund Raiser/ Auction. Tom Selleck, Tiger Woods, and Alex Trebeck were there along with many people from the movie and music industry. They paid us a week in advance. I like that plan! That site I told you about is really paying off; Gigmasters.com. We’re getting big buck gigs left and right.”
So I asked Tom to give me a little more info on GigMasters.com and this is his response, “Our band is called Round Trip. Go to www.Gigmasters.com, type in California and then type in R & B and we should come up somewhere on the first page or so. Click on Round Trip and our video starts. There’s only three videos on this site as opposed to four on our www.Roundtripband.com site. You pay for different packages. We will play 500 miles radius. We nailed a $5000. gig this last week in Long Beach and a couple of weddings for $3000. and $2500. We pay Gigmasters 5%. There was a band we checked out that booked 46 gigs last year with Gigmasters. They’re for real and national.”
So there you have it. GigMaster seems to have a category for just about every genre of music, so I will forward Tom’s advice on to you to “check it out.” If you have used GigMaster.com and would like to share your experiences, or if you have another idea to share, we’d love to hear from you.
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