[Organizers] Questions about booking performers for a series

[Mac Mckeever]

 In St Louis, we are fortunate to have a lot of bands who are very good and want to play for us - so we try to rotate thru them to be as fair as we can.  On top of that, about 1/3 of the dances are regional/traveling bands.  We usually book about 6 months ahead - so those traveling bands know they need to contact us very early.  We contact each band individually and give them a choice of open dates until we fit everyone in.
Of course - no system is perfect - so we do a small amount of rearranging after the fact.
Callers are booked after the bands so we can match them up with bands they work well with - but again - we  have a lot of callers and about 1/3 events have visiting callers - so we try to be as fair as possible.
Mac McKeever
    On Monday, June 25, 2018, 6:49:06 PM CDT, jim saxe via Organizers <organizers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:  
 
 Hi, folks,

I'd like to hear about different people's approaches to booking bands and callers for a dance series. For example:

* Do you ask a bunch of bands and callers at once for their availability dates and then try to fill in the schedule based on the combined responses, or do you contact folks sequentially on an "if you're available for date X, you've got it" basis?

* How far in advance to you seek to book your talent?  Does it vary for different people (callers vs. bands; locals vs. out-of-towners; top-tier locals vs. others; musicians who don't want to commit too far in advance because they might get offered a wedding gig; ...)?

* What if a band or caller asks you about some date and you were planning to ask someone else that you'd prefer but might not be able to get?  or if you ask about availability of band X and your band contact comes back with something like "No can do, but what about (lower cachet) band Y?" or "... what about most of band X with substitute fiddler TBD?"?

* Have you found ways to mix different approaches to booking so as to get "the best of both worlds" instead of the worst?

* Are there other questions you think I should have asked and, if so, what are your aswers to them?

It would be easy to go on at length about the *potential* plusses and minuses of various ways of doing bookings.  What I'd prefer is to hear about *ideas that have worked well in practice* for other organizers.

Thanks.

--Jim

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