My wife and I often host touring musician friends at our home when they pass through and regularly hear this problem.

My personal thoughts are:

• Large regions of the country would benefit if we thought of ourselves as an ecosystem that works together to make life easier for our talent. By that I mean a consistent talent booking mechanism. In contrast, the reality is one organization books everything X months out while another books everything Y months out with X and Y being months apart. The band has to risk that when they book with the organization that books further out that the organization they need or want to gig through that refuses to book talent till months later will take them on when they open their calendar up for booking. This is a fact of life for the touring band but a miserable one.
  
• However you define local and touring (ideally consistent in our ecosystem), they have different scheduling needs. The absolute top bands in the country often book a year and a half or more out. Local bands often think of wiring in their schedule 3 months out. When I was booking, I started booking "local" bands some 3 or so months out, but in no case would I book a local band 6 months out. My experience was touring bands put their tours together at least half a year out. By booking the touring bands first that took care of their needs while leaving slots to fill with local talent.
  

A story for grins ... a popular local 100 year old pop music swing band (who adapted their music for contra) canceled for January 2020 in early December (they had double booked). We booked a friend of mine, Robb Chapman, on keys who graduated from Yale with a degree in music and Rob Zisette. At winter CDH Rob roped in Noah VanNorstrand to join hm and Robb. A couple days before the dance I got a call from Andrew VanNorstrand who was touring with Audrey because a city on their tour canceled a couple days out. So, at the absolute last minute we had Noah, Andrew, Rob, Audrey and Robb Chapman (my friend). So odd tour grade bookings can occur out of the blue! Here's a YouTube from that night:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czc3sqUKioE

:)
- Heitzso