Team Up with a Theater or Comedy Group
If you stick to playing bars and music venues, you can certainly do well and keep a good draw. But based on the Standing Out Lesson, if you want to get new audience, you need to get your music in front of new people. One good idea is to try teaming up with a theater or sketch comedy group to get new audiences to hear your music.
We tried this, and really enjoyed the experience, which we share below.
Second City
When our friends in the "Dolphins of Damnation" sketch comedy group asked us to team up with them in their bid to get a run of shows at Second City ETC in Chicago, we readily accepted. That was one of the best moves we have made. The Dolphins’ bid for the theater, although in heavy competition with other sketch comedy groups at the time, stood out thanks to the fact they promised SecondCity a band. Teaming up with a rock band is what made their application stand out and get noticed. It turned out that Second City ETC had never had a band perform alongside a comedy troupe before. The Dolphins’ got noticed in the sea of applications and they auditioned. Their talent secured the deal. The result was a unique and successful seven week, 6-show run at SecondCity.
As their backing band, we wrote and developed all the music with them, writing transitional music between sketches based on instrumental versions of our own original songs, as well as writing a theme song for the group. Two of the sketches contained songs written by their musical director. These songs normally would have been supported by piano only. However, having our band at their disposal, they were able to turn them into a full musical numbers, which wowed not only the audience, but also the SecondCity personnel and managers. Best of all, knowing we play quirky, tongue-in-cheek music, the Dolphin’s insisted we play one of our original songs in the middle of the show using "Saturday Night Live" as a model. This exposed us and our music to an entirely different audience – one that normally would not have heard of Beatnik Turtle much less bought our albums. The albums we sold throughout the seven week run were some of the sweetest sales we could get. It was quite an experience.
As we said, the managers at SecondCity said that they hadn't seen anyone else team up with a band before. Now the following may seem like no big deal, but it’s what makes sure your band gets to return in the future. You see, being theater people, they had their own stereotypes of what "rock bands" were like and how musicians typically (mis)behaved. However, they were impressed with the level of professionalism we put into our performance (e.g. we showed up on time and played well), as well as the speed and courtesy with which we set up and tore down our equipment. In other words, although we didn’t know it at the time, we came in representing independent music and left them with nothing but positive feelings. So much so, that we ended up working with them again in the future.
This was a huge success from many standpoints. First of all, playing at SecondCity was a great experience for us. It allowed us to not only get exposure in front of a new audience, but also taught us a few things about music in a theater environment. Writing music to support what was on stage rather than getting the audience to focus on the song and the band was quite a new experience for us and a challenge that gave us a new awareness and appreciation of music. And, there was an added advantage: In an average bar, most people are talking, yelling, and spilling beer over each other, but at SecondCity, they were all there to listen and watch the show. When we performed one of our songs in the middle of the show, it was one of the strangest experiences we had: the entire audience sat quietly and listened to our song.
But one of the best benefits of this team-up was that our band's "resume" and press kit grew. For songs on our humorous Un-Holiday album, "Santa Doesn't Like You", we were able to add "As Played at SecondCity” since we performed these songs each week. Although we've played at some great venues in Chicago that took us years to break into, few people, even good fans, really noted the achievement. But when we said that we'd played at SecondCity, that raised people's eyebrows. "That's the big time!" they would say. Well, it might be the big time for comedy, and there might be huge barriers to getting your comedy group noticed there, but it isn't for music. Again, it’s like the woman with the sailing CD. A band in a bar is a band in a bar. It’s expected. But a band at a theater is unique and different. It's hard to put anything on an indie band's press kit that gains notice. Even though we'd been playing for over six years at the time and had many other accomplishments under our belt, Second City got us a lot of exposure and added a great deal of legitimacy for our band. We even got mentioned in a post-show print interview.
The lesson here is that the Standing Out Lesson is larger than just getting written up in magazines. It’s about finding new and different avenues for your music that is unexpected and will set you apart for the audience. Think of teaming up with other groups like theater, or comedy groups, because playing in those venues is a real treat and you get to play for an entirely new audience. And because these type of team-ups are rare, they are easier to get. We highly recommend doing something similar.
Next: Idea #2: Write Music for a Business & Have Them Promote Your Music