Hi Jim,

I am the Friday band and caller scheduler for the Chattahoochee Contra Dancers (CCD) in Atlanta.  (CCD dances every Friday and 1^st, 3^rd, and 5^th Tuesdays).

• I schedule on a quarterly basis (Q1: Jan-Mar, Q2: Apr-Jun, Q3: Jul-Sep, Q4: Oct-Dec)
• Our Steering Committee sets the ratio of touring (aka Out of Town – “OOT”) vs. local bands for each 13 Friday quarter.  My current marching orders are to fill 5-6 Fridays with OOT bands and the remaining 8-9 with local-to-Atlanta bands.  There is currently no cap on the number of OOT callers I can book in a 13 Friday quarter.
• When possible (which it isn’t always) I try to keep OOT bands/callers from ‘date clumping’ so that there is an even sprinkle of OOT talent across the calendar instead of 5 OOT bands in a row followed by 9 local bands in a row
• OOT callers and band contacts may pro-actively contact me about booking gigs as far in advance as they want to.  I frequently take bookings for more than a year out.
• I make booking decisions on my own for OOT bands that have played for us before but if a request comes from an OOT band that has never played our Friday stage before I notify the Steering Committee members who serve on our Band Selection Committee.  They do reference checks, watch videos, listen to sound files, etc and then get back to me with a decision about whether I should add the new band to our ‘vetted’ list or not.  (i.e., they give me permission – or not – to book the request)
• I also loop in the organizers of our two other area dances (Gainesville GA and Sautee GA) to see if we can turn the request into multiple gigs and help promote each other’s dances
• If a band/caller can’t commit to a requested date when they first contact me (which they frequently can’t until they hear back from other dance organizers on the proposed tour) I pencil them in and leave it that way until they can either commit or someone else contacts me about the same date – at which point the first band has to either commit or give the date up.
• I also proactively reach out to OOT bands that may be interested in setting up tours down the East Coast or in the Southeast.  Because touring band needs to string together multiple dates, I initiate this contact several quarters out.
• If, by the first month of the current quarter, I don’t have a full roster of OOT bands scheduled for the next quarter I start proactively reaching out to regional bands who may be able to play a one-off or set up a mini-tour.   My goal for any next quarter is to have all OOT band/caller gigs in place by the beginning of the second month of the current quarter.  
• At the beginning of the second month of the current quarter I send out an availability email to my ‘Music and Mic Magicians’ listserv (aka the pool of local bands and callers who have been vetted to play our Friday stage).  When they return their information bands and callers have annotated the dates I sent out with “preferred date,” “available,” “not available,” and “can work but would prefer not.”
• I wait until all responses have come in (this takes a few weeks), fill out an availability table with everyone’s info (8 callers, 9 bands), and use that information to assemble the band/caller jigsaw puzzle keeping in mind:
• How many gigs a given local band /caller has gotten over the last 4 quarters (on a rolling basis)  -- our goal is equity of playing/calling time
• Which callers and bands have worked with each other over the last 4 quarters – our goal is to honor band/caller preferences while giving everyone in our local pool a chance to call/play with everyone else in our local pool.
• What bands and callers ‘match’ well with each other’s style
• Date spread (e.g. I try to avoid scheduling a band/caller for a Friday close to the end of one quarter and then again at the beginning of the next one)
• Date preferences – I try my best to keep everyone blissfully happy but this is not always possible
• Other idiosyncratic factors, as they arise
• Once I have the puzzle put together I send the filled out availability table, with everyone’s booked gigs highlighted in yellow, out to the listserv, post it to our website, and deal with for requests for schedule changes as they pop up.  (Letting everyone see who is available to be booked for a given week, not just who ended up being booked for a given week, promotes transparency and helps if something comes up at the last minute because bands/callers can use the availability table to contact each other about switching dates on their own, if I’m not available for some reason to do that for them.

See also specific answers to your questions below.

-Kimbi Hagen

On 6/25/18, 4:49 PM, "Organizers on behalf of jim saxe via Organizers" <organizers-bounces+jethi=icloud.com@lists.sharedweight.net on behalf of organizers@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?

Option A

    * How far in advance to you seek to book your talent? 

As far out as desired for OOT bands and callers, on a quarterly basis for local bands and callers. See above

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; ...)? 

See above.

    * 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?"? 

No set policy for this.  I case by case it based on past experience with the bands and callers in question.

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

The approach outlined above works fairly well for us because Atlanta is blessed with a deep pool of musical and calling talent, as well as being within a relatively easy drive of Asheville (which is a magnet for top tier touring and regional bands).

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

Q: How do you spread both the pleasure (everyone wants to call / play with them!) and pain (no one wants to call / play with them!)  -- A: VERY meticulous records of who has called/played with whom each quarter all the way back to when the dinosaurs first invented contra dancing.

    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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