Ahh yes the hometown gig. It is great to be able to play a show in front of all your friends every once in a while. The opportunity to get everyone down to support you and impress those who have never actually seen what it is that you always talk about doing. You get in touch with a local promoter and suggest you would be the perfect support for a touring band coming through next month. You assure him that you can bring loads of your friends to the show because you do have loads of friends…
The problem is, you have loads of friends who are by no means necessarily fans. Whenever you play in this town you call on your friends to come to the gig, but they don’t actually like your music and they’re getting a bit tired of parting with cash in order to be ‘a good friend.’ They all say ‘attending’ on the Facebook event page for this show in order to show support, they tell you that they will pay on the door rather than pre-buying their ticket. You reassure the promoter that there will be loads of people coming on the door and console yourself with the fact that there are over 50 confirmed on Facebook.
Then guess what, it comes to the actual night they are too tired or busy to come. You are left without an audience; the promoter is out of pocket and will probably put a black mark against your name as an unreliable and unpopular waste of time.
All too often we put effort into getting our friends out to local shows rather than looking to establish a base of real fans in the area. It is simply not enough to expect friends to come to all your local gigs without pushing out to people who have never heard you before. I have heard local bands say that they don’t want to do many local gigs in order that those that they do play are better attended. This makes sense if you are relying on your friends to make up the audience each time, but it makes no sense if you want to establish a loyal, loving and genuine local following in your town or city.
Play frequently, in various places and in a variety of ways. You have to connect with your audience and at first this takes a lot of hard work. If you play a range of venues all around your region with many different artists, in different forms (free shows, acoustic, full band etc), talk to people after you play and importantly get email addresses on your mailing list you will be able to attract people (and their friends) to your next show (if they like you of course…) And even when you’ve found new fans do not rest on your laurels, instead you need to be constantly seeking ways to reach more people and from time to time get out of your own town.
On the flip side I know a few bands who have successfully developed massive local followings, would sell out all of their local gigs but it stopped there. Their fan base would only consist of about 300 very loyal local fans because they would never venture outside of a ten-mile radius. They would be hometown celebrities, always in the local papers but never capitalised on what was such a strong foundation on which to build. They showed that you can develop a great local following through regular gigs and connection with the audience but unfortunately this was as far as they allowed it to go.
Don’t confuse friends for fans. After a while you might start to annoy them.
You can make friends out of fans but you can’t make friends become fans. Ideally your friends are fans but even if this is the case you need to look beyond them as your local audience.
