Me and Charles are still reeling from what was supposed to be our biggest month ever, which slowly deteriorated into a month of being broke, sick and cold. Vegas has never really been my thing. It’s great to go to a couple times when you’re in your 20′s and can handle the huge amounts of alcohol that you’ll consume, but after a while it’s not that interesting. I think it’s the fakeness of everything, they have fake New York, fake Paris, fake Venice, fake Roman palaces, a fake pyramid, fake pirate ships, and thousands upon thousands of tourists being some fake version of themselves because they think that’s what you do in Vegas. Truly Vegas exists for one purpose, to fill people up with alcohol so you can extract their money from them.

What we went there to do

We went there to spend the bulk of the month of October getting people drunk and extracting money from them. In times past I had been there and seen friends of mine make insane money in their tip jars and many piano players make their way to Vegas at some point because of it. There are tons of gigs in Vegas and between me and Charles we know quite a few players in the area so we decided to see what the Vegas scene was like.

Asking for the Gig

If you want to get hired to play piano in Vegas an agent is a necessary. Almost all of the gigs are in huge corporate hotels so it’s actually good to have the agent to be your liaison between you and the hotel top brass who can be a real pain to deal with. Through our friends we got an audition with the guy in Vegas who books about 90% of the piano shifts in Vegas and  fortunately it went really well. We auditioned at the end of August and there was talk of putting us to work starting in October. Charles was heading to Washington DC and Europe for September so working Vegas in October seemed like perfect timing.

Perfect timing because we wanted to replenish a dwindling bank account, Charles had been on vacation and my last couple gigs had been pretty low paying, and I still hadn’t been paid from those gigs yet. Charles gets to Vegas and talks to the agent who says “we’ll probably put you at this place…..” “you’d be a good fit over that place…..” “you’d work well with…..” but never actually gives  up a solid gig. Keeps promising to call back but rarely does. Things are getting scary. Charles finally gets one gig after about 9 days of waiting, and it’s promising. Tips are about triple what you normally see.

The agent tells me and Charles he’s got us a Thursday – Saturday. Whew! At this point Charles is in Vegas, I’m in Seattle. I hop in my car and get about an hour into the 20 hour trek to Vegas when Charles calls me. No gig afterall.  OK back to Seattle. Meanwhile Charles is in Vegas getting really sick, and not just from drinking.

Seattle was like it normally is. Cold and wet. This was the first time since moving into the RV that we were faced with being inside the RV most of the time because the weather outside was miserable. Couple that with the fact that cash reserves were low because of the gig situation and you had a recipe for stress. I know I was stressing people out. So thank God when the call came that there was a Tuesday night gig in Vegas at Harrah’s, one of the top rooms in Vegas for dueling pianos.

I got in the car and headed for Vegas just hoping I wasn’t going to get another call saying this gig was off. Pulled over and slept in the van outside of Twin Falls, Idaho. Glad I brought extra sleeping bags, it was cold. Got an early start and got the Vegas late in the day. Who knew the the desert NE of Vegas was so cool? Really amazing rock formations and lush desert. Wish I woulda took pictures but I was on a mission.

A Welcome Face, Drinking and Smoking

Pulled into Vegas and promptly hooked up with Charles who I hadn’t seem in about 6 weeks and got to the important tasks of the night, getting drunk and smoking. Charles friend DJ Dan and his friends helped us out on both counts and we promptly headed to NYNY to see my buddy Eric who plays there and who I was crashing with. The place was packed and it was a Monday night, people were partying their asses off. Sweet.

Our next night at Harrah’s was awesome too. Tuesday and there was a full house of people lined up to throw money in the jar, thank God we were finally working again. More gigs were promised for the rest of the week but I had to head to Riverside, CA, about 3 1/2 hours away, to meet up with the family who were driving the RV down from Seattle. Thankfully their trip went off without a hitch and we got parked in beautiful Rancho Jurupa park in Riverside.

Driving back to Vegas

A couple more gigs came through in Vegas which was nice, we needed it, but I think I’m done barking up that tree. Vegas is cool for that weekend getaway but it starts to wear me down being there longer term. Riverside with it’s lakes, hiking and bike riding right outside our door was much more suitable to the living space I had in mind when we first took off.

Our Vegas trek didn’t turn out at all like we had hoped but things are looking great from here on out. Steady gigs in Reno, San Francisco, Phoenix and our very first gig on the Sunset strip in LA are all on the horizon, plus we’ll be parked in the LA area where the forecast is for sun, sun and more sun. Can’t wait.

Home is wherever I’m with you

This is the view just outside our RV tonight which is parked in Morro Bay CA. They say that when a song gets stuck in your head it’s a reflection of what’s on your mind at that time. There a song out by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros that’s everywhere right now, especially in my head. The headline above comes from that song and I’ve been singing a lot in the last month or so. Moving from our house in Seattle to a permanent ‘on the road’ status is a huge change for a family but I’m more surprised at how many things are pretty much the same.

Same stuff, smaller space

In Seattle we had a 4 bedroom house with a dining room, living room, big enclosed porch, huge kitchen, jet tub, steam room, a TV room and a recording studio. Now we’re down to 2 bedrooms and a kitchen/living room/dining room/TV room. I miss the steam room the most, man I loved that steam room, and I miss the recording studio although it hasn’t stopped us from recording. Other than that we do a lot of the same stuff day to day, and we’re spending a lot more time together as a family, which has been great. I feel like we’ve had more quality family time in the last month than we have in a long time.

Is the road a place for a teenage girl?

I know the transition has been hardest on Madi my 15 year old daughter. She had a great group of friends in Seattle. Smart, motivated, funny, trouble-free kids that any parent would want their kid hang out with. All in all she has taken the change quite well but I know there’s plenty of times she’d rather be hanging out with friends than her family. She still has a phone and access to the internet (sometimes) so it’s not as though she’s completely cut off, but sometimes I’m sure it’s worse knowing what she’s missing. I just hope the cool things like seeing ‘Love” (the Beatles/Cirque du Soleil show in Vegas), giant sequoias in California and spending time with cousins in Boise are a decent trade. Not to mention not having to go back to school, what teenager wouldn’t love that?

My other girls

My wife and younger daughter seem to be having a great time. My wife doesn’t have a soul-sucking commute to work anymore, and we get to hang out more, although not as much as you would think. We both manage to stay pretty busy. Getting to visit a bunch of great places while sleeping in your own bed every night is pretty cool too. Our RV has electricity, hot and cold running water, and cable TV in every room (all 3 of them) so it’s not like we’re roughing it. I know our youngest daughter wants to be with friends sometimes, but she’s at an age where she can be pretty happy doing whatever mom and dad are doing. We’ve had the time to do a lot more things with her so it’s good to keep her busy and distracted.

A place to go

I have to conclude that for us, we haven’t yet hit the point of having too much togetherness and even though our space is small we have enough space to make it work. Everyone has a place to go when they need some alone time, and of the few frustrations I’ve had with this experience (wanna buy a house in Seattle?….. anyone?) none of them have revolved around not having enough space from everyone else. For me, it’s been great spending this much time together, and I’m pretty sure that as time wears on Madi is going to be glad she had the experiences we’ve had and will continue to have, despite the trade off of not seeing her friends as much.

See you in San Francisco

So we’re about 2 weeks or so into our little adventure. I’m currently in Vegas enjoying the first real solid internet connection we’ve had in our RV and it’s HOT here, 105. Charles and his brother got a room at Mandalay Bay (same spot where I’m playing tonight) so we’ll be enjoying the pool before too long but I wanted to hit some highlights if the last few weeks. We’ve been across 9 states, played a bunch of shows and in general are figuring out how to settle into life on the road. I’m probably most surprised at how many things are the same, once we have our running water, electricity, cable TV and internet hooked up, we pretty much do what we’ve been doing all along, just in a smaller space. If you’d like to see more pics from the tour click on our Flickr feed that’s in the sidebar.

Boise, Idaho

Boise is my hometown so I was really looking forward to this gig. It was at the Visual Arts Collective a cool newer venue run by my friends Annaliesa and Sam, plus my old business partner Steve Fulton, has the studio we used to run together, Audio Lab, in a new space attached to the VAC. It’s absolutely gorgeous and we did some recording there in late August. Here’s some pics from that.

Couer d’Alene, Idaho

This gig was interesting because they had a very unusual booking policy. In this case RR got a Saturday night here but it was up to us to find 2 – 3 other bands to play with us. I proved to be really difficult to do that but a couple of bands came through and we had a pretty good gig, except that no one was there. Not surprising considering our drawing power in Couer d’Alene. We asked the guy why he booked that way and he said that it was important to get the bands talking to each other and that’s how you make a scene is when everyone is pulling together to make successful shows. I see the merits to his idea but it seems like business suicide, leaving it all up to the bands, as evidenced by the lack of turnout for the gig. we still played a good show and got a really good live recording of ourselves. Not too many pics but this extremely drunk girl drew our attention with her pole antics.

Ashland, Oregon

We had a great show in Ashland. This Oregon town is breathtaking and downtown Ashland hosts one of the largest Shakespeare festivals in the world so it’s crawling with people. We played at the Caldera Tap House in downtown and fortunately we had some girls (Chelsea, Kelsey, and Brittany) who had seen us in Seattle so they rallied some friends and there was a decent crowd to start with and we killed it. We started the set with some dueling pianos, went into out original set and closed out the night taking requests. The show and the crowd were a blast, can’t wait to go back.

Roaming Royalty wants to come to your town

I’m totally serious. Serious like, we sold nearly everything we own so we could live on the road kind of serious. My family has committed to living in an RV for at least a year for many reasons but one them is coming to your town to hang out with you and play music for you. Coming to your town to play music involves booking a tour, a process which involves patience, persistence and a thick skin.

Finding places to play

Thanks to a couple of insomnia-induced all-nighters in front of the computer I surfed every booking tool on the web and found that indieonthemove.com is the absolute best resource for where we are at as a band, and that’s a band on our first album playing small clubs in cities we haven’t been too yet. It’s a truly free tool that provides up to date info about venues in every state. The venue database has 2 important pieces of info we need right now, the name of the person who does the booking and how they like to handle submissions. I’m finding that MySpace is staying relevant as a booking tool because most bookers will ask to see your MySpace page. Don’t forget to check out the comments on the venue page, bands who have been at that venue recently can give you good information in the comment section.

Something that definitely didn’t work

Sonicbids and Reverbnation and probably some others provide slick looking EPK’s (Electronic Press Kit)’s to e-mail out and they gather your info in a very nice way and your potential booker gets to see you in very professional looking package just by opening the e-mail. The big problem with these is that they produced zero results. A lot of times these heavily encoded e-mails go straight to the bookers junk mail box, or firewall protection will prevent parts of your e-mail from coming through, so the person you’re contacting rarely sees the slick package you want them too, if they see anything at all. I tested this by sending out EPK’s to the half dozen e-mail addresses I have myself and got mixed results with regard to e-mails getting through intact. I sent them out to bookers anyway. Nothing.

Something that worked better

This article over at indieonthemove.com had a little chunk of gold in the comments. A booker posted his perfect e-mail and it looks like this:

Subject: BAND NAME – (list the dates needed here) – BOOKING REQUEST
Body of email:
Booking agent/venue name here:
We’re (BAND NAME) and we’re in need of a show on (put the dates here). Our previous (city) show was at (insert venue name here) and we drew about (insert draw number) people, but we’d like to give your venue a shot this time and we’re open to adding some friends who are in local bands to the bill if necessary.

Here’s a few links to check out our band:
BAND NAME – GENRE
Link to band’s EPK
Link to band’s myspace
Link to band’s website

Please let me know if you have any availability.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Thanks,
(Person’s name from the band so we know who we’re talking to)
BAND NAME – (what that person does in the band)
Possibly a phone number

This e-mail got responses right away, granted some of those were “no’s” but I’d rather get a quick “no” than a drawn out game of tag with a booker. The short “no” allows me to cross that venue off my list and move on. Some of them were “yes’s” though and now a tour is starting to come together. Most bookers will tell you that in can be up to a month before they respond to you so be patient, that being said a reminder e-mail or 2 in that months time shows persistence without being a bother.

Getting Creative with bacon

We have a number of obstacles to hurdle with a potential venue, the largest being the fact that it’s our first time in town and we have no draw. I have to convince a potential booker that we are going to work hard to try to get some people in the club. One venue reluctantly put us in a sweet spot on a Saturday night but I got the feeling that they would cancel on us first e-mail they got from a better drawing band so I called on the power of bacon to cement our slot. My dad lives in the town where this venue is and he is a retired butcher so he has the hookup on a lot of bacon. Our album is called Audio Bacon so we proposed to the club that we do Baconfest where would maybe play an early acoustic set during which we would give away a whole bunch of bacon. Now this may be a totally stupid idea that may never happen, but my relationship with this booker changed due to the fact that I showed some appreciation for why she’s having music in the club in the first place, to bring people through the door. A little creativity solidfied our spot. I also added a booking info page on the website and the first headline says in red We Want to Help you Sell More Beer. I’m hoping that says to a booker that we understand why we’re there.