How to Sell Out Your First Show - Pt. 3

You’ve made it! People have bought tickets, the stage is set. Now here are all of the insider hacks for having your first official show as an artist go off with flying colors.

We had a lot of nerves going into the show–will we make it worth people’s time?

Thankfully, there is a framework you can prepare in that will support you as you get ready for the night.

These tips focus on your performance and the experience that your show-goers will have.

In this article we will cover:

Stellar Arrangement - Orchestrating a Killer Set and Show
Make It Count - Tips to Make Your First Night a Springboard
Make It Profitable - Pointers for Recouping Some of the Investment
Night Of - Show Up Well, Enjoy Your Show

Final stretch – here we go!

Stellar Arrangement - Orchestrating a Killer Set and Show

Now you are killing the marketing game, your venue is blown away by how driven you are, and the hype-meter is topping out . . . let’s make sure we give them what they came for!

A successful show can be a lot of things. If you are like us, we had a big mental hurdle to get over after going to concerts with full-band production, lights, pyrotechnics, and the works.

Thankfully, we got the opportunity to go to a concert in Boston at Brighton Music Hall. Penny and Sparrow played, with Annika Bennett as the opener. Both sets were super stripped down - vocalist plus guitar. But the performances were amazing!

These were full-fledged musicians playing a range of genres, and they carried it by their performance ability and thoughtfully laid out setlist.

At our first show, one of the most common compliments was, “That was a really great set - you guys kept a dynamic energy level, switched between different song-moods, and introduced fun elements to keep us engaged.”

We labored over our setlist for a while, and changed it A LOT.

Here was our pathway:

MAKE THE SETLIST EARLY - don’t procrastinate on this! Begin imagining the flow from the outset.
PRACTICE OFTEN - beyond honing your songs, practice through the order. Do you have two vocally challenging songs back-to-back? Maybe space them out.
THINK IN CHAPTERS - we split our show into four sections. For each section we made sure we had a high energy song, an accessible song, a more contemplative song, etc. If we had a complex song that was less accessible, we made sure that was “set up” by more hooky songs.
CHART OUT LOGISTICS - write out when you change tunings, where you switch instruments, etc. If you can arrange your songs for easy logistical flow, it will make you look more professional, and cut down on awkward time between songs.
START STRONG - we were nervous the night of. Do yourself a favor - make your first handful of songs the ones you love playing the most, the ones that fill you with confidence. Plan your set so you can get a win by knocking your first 3-4 out of the park!
END WELL - we found that having the last 3-4 songs be ones that were a mix between engaging (either upbeat, or heart-wrenching) and energetic helped the show end on a high note. Arrange your songs so people are leaving wanting more! And always plan for an encore.
PLAN YOUR TALKING - shows are best when they feel organic to the audience. You don’t need to have a script! But it is helpful to think through where you are going to flow from song-to-song without a pause, versus where you want to share a song story, or thank the venue, etc.

Deeper dive into setlist creation: mood-coding

If you want to go deeper into this, we wrote out all of our songs on a whiteboard, and found 5-6 summarizing adjectives for our music.

They were: anthemic, jazzy, upbeat, contemplative, and complex. We assigned a colored dot to each adjective. Then we went through our songs and put colored dots next to each song, depending on which adjectives fit.

We call this mood-coding. It is a visual way to make sure you don’t let the concert stagnate, while also not being all over the place.

The best concert is like a sine-wave. The energy level fluctuates - but it usually fluctuates gradually. Sometimes there are sharp shifts, but in general, you don’t want to lose the audience. Audiences get lost in boredom and in randomness. Your setlist is the guide that helps them follow the story you are writing.

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Make It Count - Tips to Make Your First Night a Springboard

Maybe part of your “why” for having this show is to gain experience and exposure. If that is the case, you probably want to have more shows after this!

A show is more than stepping up to the mic and singing some songs. It is a chance to leave a lasting impression on the friends, family, and fans who come.

As time, bandwidth, and resources allow, your first show can be a unique opportunity to really “wow” the folks who come.

Here are some simple, but impactful things that can make your first show A-level.

Do these, and people will come away impressed, and you’ll come away with tools and takeaways to catapult you into more shows.

1. ENLIST A PHOTOGRAPHER

Whether you have a friend who loves snapping pics, or know of a local photographer who won’t bankrupt you, take this chance to get high-quality shots of you performing.

Other venues will want to have a visual of what you look like live . . . to get that, you need to play live . . . which, you haven’t done much . . . so don’t miss this chance!

We suggest encouraging the photographer to have free reign. Let them get the shot that they want.

Make sure you are getting high-resolution, high-quality photos (not just iPhone pictures, though those are good too). This will make sure your photos scale well when you want them blown up on your website.

If possible, ask them to do a pre-show shoot as well. This will help them get a feel for your mood and aesthetic.

Also, having a photographer the night-of may be another subliminal signal to your audience of “this is a legit show!”

2. BRING ON AN OPENER

This may feel counterintuitive. “I thought the focus of the night is to get me up and playing, full-on, in front of a crowd excited to hear me.”

Yes . . . but, two things:

Choosing to live in a “blessing culture” means that this show is about looking for opportunities to give to others. Give another artist–in a similar spot as you–a chance to stretch their wings a bit.
“Real shows” almost always have an opener. This is another thing you can do to cue your audience that this is the real-deal.

Find someone who you are confident will perform well, and will gel with the audience.

Think about cohesion - they don’t need to play the same type of music as you, but be thoughtful to make sure it isn’t jarring. If you’re a hip-hop artist, having a folk mandolin player will be out of place. If you are a rock band, having an upbeat acoustic soloist may still fit.

Another benefit to having an opener is it naturally builds suspense, while warming up the crowd. We found that a lot of our nerves were taken away by listening to the opener. It usually takes a crowd a few songs to “learn” how to react in the venue. The opener often actually does more of the heavy lifting in this regard!

3. FILM THE WHOLE THING

Similar to getting a photographer, having live footage is invaluable for two reasons.

On one hand, you then will have living proof that you do indeed play music in front of others! While photos can set an aesthetic, video is the real example of what you look like and sound like live.

On the other hand, it can be difficult to gauge how the show “actually” went! You might feel super self-conscious about minute mistakes no one else noticed. Your parents might say you should have been given a Grammy.

Having footage will help you learn - it will be a mirror back to you. Just make sure you watch and listen with grace . . . recordings never sound as good as the room!

For us, we found that you don’t need a videographer or a fancy camera. Our eyes have gotten so used to smartphone footage, that you can get a great video with your iPhone.

We borrowed 3-4 iPhones, spent about $50 on tripod stands and battery packs, set up the phones at different angles, and had someone set the phones to start recording a minute before we walked on.

We played 90 minutes, and came away with 360 minutes of footage that we patched together into a video we were really proud of.

Multiple phones give you two things:

This allows you to switch camera angles for your video playback, which adds interest, excitement, and makes the video feel vastly more professional than a single shot.
This also gives you multiple audio sources. Phone recorded audio of a live performance is notoriously rough.

But if you take multiple sources, throw the audio in your favorite DAW, add a little reverb and EQ-ing, and you can get a balanced, friendlier playback of your performance!

Disclaimer - when we listened back to our show, we were initially pretty discouraged. But when we blended the audio together, we realized we were getting the effect of harsh recording, not discovering that our show was actually a bomb.

4. VENUE SELECTION

This doubles back to what we discussed above, but pick a venue that will make you shine. For us, this was an intimate room with cool lighting, and low ceilings. It helped our music connect with people, and we were able to make lots of direct eye contact.

Also, pick a venue that is fun to come to. If you have an older audience, make sure there is seating. If you have an of-age audience, it can be fun if there is a bar at the venue. We also had a surprising number of people ask us if the venue served food, so this is a plus as well.

5. SELL MERCH

Cannot overemphasize this. We will go into the “how” in other articles, but you are going to end the night with a room full of people who are PUMPED about what you are doing.

We love to be a part of something new. We love evidence and artifacts of what we’ve witnessed, and what we are about.

Merch is not just a ploy or plug for more of your friends’ money. It is a chance to give them a memento.

This can be as simple as having stickers for folks to put on their water bottles, to as complex as a whole array of items.

We found that people gravitate towards T-shirts, ballcaps, and mugs. There also is a growing trend with making tote bags.

It is nice to have a no-brainer, expected item (like a T-shirt or a sticker) and then perhaps a more creative item (like a tote bag, or a candle, or socks) that could bring the remembrance of the evening into an unexpected corner of their life.

6. SAY THANK YOU

This may feel a bit too wedding-y for your style, but we wanted to have thank you cards at the door.

Especially if you are asking people to begin following your journey, or even to consider supporting you in a future Kickstarter project, starting from a place of gratitude will help you stay grounded.

We hand-wrote a single message on our iPad, and then printed out a PDF copy of that - makes it personal, but saves your wrist from writing a boat-load of cards. You can easily do the same thing with hand-writing on a white piece of paper, scanning the note to your computer, and printing.

We also included a “giveaway” in the card - Abby (who is a stellar graphic designer) made a relatively simple lyric card of our single, “Timeless”. This was a fun envelope stuffer.

Make It Profitable - Pointers for Recouping Some Cost

We’ll only touch on this briefly because, let’s face it, you are going to probably put in WAY more time than you will be able to quantify for this show.

But when we have our “this is an investment” cap on, it can help us take a deep breath.

Think about it, after the night you will have:

A full set that you have polished, ready to pull out in the future (your “product”)
Media from the evening to pass on to others
An excited core cadre of fans who are itching for more

That is priceless.

But! Some small things to help offset the costs a bit:

PRICE WELL - don’t undersell yourself. Ask the venue what tickets usually go for. We found that asking a few dollars more than we were initially comfortable with was an appropriate price.

SELL MERCH - this is incredibly nuanced, because you can spend a TON of money on making/buying merch, and then it is up to you to price it for profit and sell it. But, consider if there is a path that works for you.

ASK FOR HELP - where reasonable, ask your friends to help you for free. Manning the merch table, taking photos, loading in gear. It will be humbling, but ask for people to help boost you along.

TIPS - leave the option open for friends to donate to the cause. You could have your Venmo up at the merch table.

Night Of - Show Up Well, Enjoy Your Show

An article on your first show would be incomplete without talking about the night of the show!

Well, really, let’s talk about the day of the show.

We found it helpful to have all of our gear in a staging area by our door the night before. We had an hour-by-hour plan for who was going where, when, and how we were going to accomplish different tasks.

Here’s why we plan: because things will not all go according to plan!

A plan is not what is going to happen - it is a framework that can help you organize reality and figure out what’s next.

We won’t presume to tell you how you should prepare, but some nuts and bolts that we found helpful were:

FOOD AND DRINK - have a meal and water bottle plan. You may not want to eat, but it is nice to have a plan for when you are going to get food, and where it is coming from.

PRINT OUT YOUR SET LIST - have something legible, so that when you are standing at the mic, you can look down and know what song is next.

PRINT OUT YOUR GEAR LIST - especially if someone is helping you load in and load out, it is nice to have something you can check off.

BRING EXTRA BOXES - you are always more organized coming than going. Especially if the venue is trying to close after your show. We found it helpful to bring a handful of cardboard boxes that we could stow cables, picks, and other miscellania.

PACK YOUR OUTFIT - it is probably best if you don’t load in in your fancy digs that you are taking onstage. We found it relaxing to wear comfies that we could prep in (especially because it was HOT at our first show), and then put on our nice clothes before going onstage.

ASK THE OWNER - make sure you have a clear plan with the venue about the timetables for the day. Know when they want you to arrive, make sure you have ample time for soundcheck (at least 30 minutes), and when they need you out by.

BE A BLESSING - you have a million things going on in your head, but treat the people around you with love and respect. Be it your dad who is carrying in your guitar case, or the bartender working his Saturday evening. Don’t be a diva, be a daymaker.

Get Excited

You have something beautiful to share. Something that is worthwhile. A new song to sing.

This article is to give you some architecture and ideas in which to express your creativity. But the important thing is that you are going to get to stand in front of other people and build a bridge from your heart to theirs.

People will be more impacted than you may know. But get excited for the ride, and enjoy it along the way.