I heard a line on a podcast called “Help My Business Sucks” (www.helpmybusiness.com) and the host said “Everything is marketing and marketing is everything.” This is a great phrase. Recently, sadly Ronnie James Dio died of stomach cancer. Musicians far and wide have come out to pay their respects. Story and story from fans talking about how Ronnie would stay out all hours until everyone got an autograph. Musicians who played with him said he was always a “gentlemen.” That he was the “nicest guy on the planet.” Apparently, people like Kanye West and Axl Rose did not graduate from the Ronnie Jame Dio school of tact.
It’s not just being nice when things go good, in fact its more important to keep your cool when things go bad. I remember playing a wedding once where the band basically didn’t get to eat. My singer through a tantrum, and really embarrassed the band. He forgets that there are other people there who will be getting married, or paying for weddings, and no matter good we played that night I doubt his tantrum was erased from the minds of the audience.
I leave the show with the song “Straight From the Heart” a classic Dio song from the Holy Diver album
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Yep, weddings are an excellent place to realize that our behavior alone has the power to market ourselves like wildfire. If we shine at a wedding, the bride and all her family members will quickly become fans, hire us for future weddings and parties, and tell all their friends about us. And for bad behavior, they will tell everyone how terrible we performed. And this isn’t just about pleasing guests–The banquet manager and all the other service personnel have the power to suggest us for future gigs or tell everyone we stank.
The most important thing to consider is that there are a lot of bride blogs out there, and brides do use the Internet to recommend us or tell people to steer against hiring us. As musicians, behaving like we are at someone’s wedding and not at a bar gig will go a long way to get those good recommendations.
By the way, if you are interested in gigging at weddings, there are hundreds of helpful tips in my book “The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings” published by Hal Leonard (and available on my website, at amazon.com, and all over the internet).
Great podcast, Dave!