Personally or Professionally?

I've been told several times in the past few days to not take things personally when bands are canceling shows that I have been promoting for months. I finally decided today that I will take it personally. This is a business built on emotion. Now, can I deny bands the right to take a better offer or a better opportunity? Not really. Can I ask them to honor their committments they've made... or simply to buy a calendar and mark down the dates that they commit to?

I might be wrong, but I think that a band would take it personally if they were told that due to the lack of interest or lack of their ability to hold an audience. I think they would be offended (and I've seen them be offended) when they are booted because something "better" come along.

Here's the thing about venues (bars particularly) with built in crowds. Those people will dance to anything. They'll drink, eat and be merry, sometimes they'll even buy your CD and we all need those places to help us get to the next stop on our tour or boost our ego. The likliehood of those people following you to the next gig is very slim though. The chances of them looking up where your next show is and going out of their comforst zones or telling their friends about you is highly unlikely. Not that they may not be excited when you come back to their bar, but you are catering to them. No one is helping you at all. Again, I'm not saying don't play these shows, but recognize them for what they are. If you have trouble getting those people to find you in the future then maybe you're playing out too much or you're really not that good. Maybe you are, but really take a moment to figure out where your weaknesses are and sort that out.

Also think about how you are presenting yourself professionally. It is a waste of my time to search through 50 pages of emails (since My Space has no way of sorting a damn thing) to find where you committed to a show 3 or 4 months ago that you were unable to find a pen and piece of paper to write it down on. This is why I only really do booking through email... and I highly recommend this for everyone else. Even though I had to do this for three bands in one day, I was still able to prove that I was the one that had kept track of things and they hadn't. That was just one day. So, you want to know what I did instead of listening to your bands press kit? I spent about 2 hours searching for confirmation emails for shows that were scheduled 4 days from then or two weeks from then and then scrambling to find bands that would fill the bill on short notice.

You say, "No one was at our last show", but why is that? Is it because you're playing out too much? You didn't promote? You maybe aren't that good and your friend was doing you a favor? There is a list of things that I do to make sure that everyone knows you're playing at my venue, but you didn't even bother to write it down or put it on your calendar, so it's really been a big flipping waste of my time.

Since these things consume me and I'm passionate about trying to make things right in the music scene as much as I am capable, then it's hard for me to not take things personally when someone else can't be professional. I would expect you to take it personally if I said some of the things that bands say to buyers and promoters. Look at the emails you're writing. Think about how you would feel about it if a venue wrote that email to your band... especially if the venue is actually trying to help you out.