Primary Blog/Gigging Musician Podcast/Episode 256 - Building Relationships and Delivering Excellence at High-End Gigs

Episode 256 - Building Relationships and Delivering Excellence at High-End Gigs

Thursday, October 24, 2024

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Episode Recap

In this episode, Jared shares the details of a unique grand opening gig at the Kimpton Hotel in Denver. He talks about how his involvement in a local events networking group led to the opportunity and how he negotiated the deal to benefit both his business and his personal life. Jared also covers how he handled the gig's setup, from choosing the right sound gear to crafting a seamless performance. Plus, he offers insights into his process of maintaining professionalism and making lasting connections with event planners.

Best Quote

"I just have so much fun playing, and it's getting easier because I have most of my tunes memorized now, so I can focus on engaging the audience and making sure they're having a good time."

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Transcript

What's up, renegade musicians? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of the gigging musician podcast. I am on my way home from a gig.

It is Tuesday, August 27, and I am still in the middle of moving, so I guess I'm taking a break from moving to play gig. Well, gig is over. It went great.

It was at the Kimpton Claret. C L A R E T, or claret. I don't know how they pronounce it.

Hotel in Denver. It's in an area of Denver, kind of southeast of Denver, called DTC, maybe Southwest, which stands for Denver Tech center. And it's, like, a really built up area that has a lot of, like, corporations and headquarters and things like that.

The hotel was in a really nice area. Lots of, like, apartment buildings that look like luxury apartments. And it was next to a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, which I haven't eaten in one of those in years.

But my family used to love going there, there for, like, special occasions, anniversaries, birthdays, things like that. And, man, now I'm hungry thinking about it. So I'm gonna have some dinner when I get home, but I've got a half hour drive, and I wanted to share a little bit about that gig and how I got it and the result of it.

So, yeah, let's start from the beginning. So this specific gig was a grand opening party that was hosted for all of the, like, investors and other business associates of the hotel management, which was really cool. And I actually didn't find out that that was who it was for until I was already there.

So I don't know. I guess part of it is I get lucky that all these, like, affluent people hire me for their performances. I feel really grateful for it, but I do think I do engineer these opportunities for myself.

So it was a grand opening party, and I was specifically asked to do this by the events manager. Her name is Alicia. And the way that her and I had met and the reason why she knew that I existed and that I would be a good fit for this was because I am a member of the National association for catering and events.

That is a local events industry networking organization. Yes, they are networking organizations for the events industry. These people love to hang out and sometimes get sloshed together and have a good time and then learn a thing or two about, you know, running better events or selling more events, that kind of thing.

And so her and I are both members of it. And then we had attended several of the meetings for it and got to hang out. She was actually.

I don't know if there's a picture of it on my Facebook or not, but one of the meetings for this networking group was at a miniature golf place, an indoor mini golf place. And we were on the same. Like, it wasn't teams, it was.

We were, like, in the same group going together, and we had a good time. And I actually wound up winning that game. But then she.

She was also there when I played because I sponsored some of these events, because some of the events have, like, a cocktail hour component where people just catch up, have a couple drinks, and then there's usually a dj playing in the background.

But because I'm a live musician who wants to get these high end, private event gigs, I offer to sponsor and play for those gigs for free in exchange for the right kind of exposure. And so this gig, she had heard me play several times.

And then when the grand opening happened, she emailed me saying, hey, you know, I've heard you play a couple times at NACE to give you a great fit for it. Are you interested? And I said, absolutely. Let me know what kind of budget you guys have.

And then she came back with, we only have a budget of about $500. And I said, well, that's a little under what I typically charge for these gigs. And she said, well, in exchange, I can offer you a gift certificate for a stay at this hotel.

I was like, done. My wife and I will have a great time. We'll hang out in this DTC area, Denver Tech center, and maybe go to roots Chris or something, I don't know, and just have a good time, stay at the hotel, and it'll be really nice and fancy.

And so we agreed. I wrote up the contract in BookLive, and then I wrote it up for my normal price and then gave a discount that indicated, like, we're trading the remainder of this for the gift card for the hotel. And so she signed it.

I had to submit a wooden nine to the hotel, and then all was great. The interesting thing about this hotel was, in preparation for this event, she sent me a couple Spotify playlists. Not so that I would actually, like, play the songs on the playlists, but this hotel, you know, a lot of brands have a brand identity.

There's this a document that some companies have called a brand Bible, where inside this document, it, like, indicates, here are all of the things that somebody needs to know about our brand in order to represent it well.

For example, color scheme, fonts, logo, and then some of them even have, like, here are what our core values are. And in this Kimpton company, and specifically for each hotel, they also have in this brand Bible, a sonic identity.

So these are the kinds of songs that represent our company that we want playing in our restaurants. And so she sent me a couple of them as their sonic identity for me to get, like, ideas and inspiration of what to play, which was actually kind of cool. And then it did actually shape the music that I played at the gig.

So, fast forward to today. I get to the gig about an hour and a half beforehand. I unload my car, and I valet it.

Actually, before I even valet the car, I go into the space to see how big is it going to be? Is it indoor, outdoor?

Like, what kind of sound setup should I bring? Because for a lot of my gigs, I just bring the Bose s, one pro, small, little battery operated speaker that works great for probably 90% of the gigs, maybe 75% somewhere around there.

And this particular gig, the space wasn't very large, however, it was outside, and there was busy, like, traffic, street noise outside.

It was on the second floor, so we were overlooking a busy street, and there was just a lot of other noise, like, when I loaded in, there was a garbage truck, like, taking the dumpsters.

I was like, okay, we're busting out the big guns. And I don't know, I guess for the past couple of months, I've had my PA system, like, the big PA system with two mains, my mixer, and all that stuff just in my car. I'm glad that it hasn't gotten stolen, because I've definitely parked it on the street for a couple months at this point.

And so I was like, okay, I saw the space. We're busting out the big guns, loaded it up on my cart, which I've got a. I don't know what you call it, but it's a foldable cart that I got at Costco for probably 100, $150, and it has, like, been incredible.

I've used that to load all of my sound gear up for every single gig where I need the big guns. If it's just the Bose s one pro, I carry that all in by hand because it's not very heavy. So I got all that stuff on the cart and then valeted the car and then started to load in and set up the sound gear.

And I really, like, take pride in a neat setup. In fact, if you want to see my setup, I did a live stream in the business, tips for Gigi musicians Facebook group. I live streamed it August 27.

You can go into the archives and check that out and see what my setup is. And it's a pretty neat setup. Like, the cables are organized and taped down.

The only frustration I have right now is I don't know what to do with all the extra cable. So I wind up coiling it underneath the tripods, like, for the speakers. And I think I can get something like a skirt for those tripods to cover all that messy stuff up.

That should actually. I should look into that. That's probably, like, my next big move is getting a skirt for those.

Also, what I really want to do is I want to stop using a. Like, a regular mixer. I've got just a standard looking mixer.

Yamaha, MG, ten, Xu, for those of you who are gear nerds. And what I want to do is I have this Gator rack case. So it's a case that has the same, like, fittings as a standard rack mount that I can actually get a Behringer X air twelve, which should have plenty of inputs.

And that's going to be my new mixer. It's, like, $300. Planning on getting that? And then I'll just run everything into there instead of having a separate mixer out of the case.

And that should clean it up. Plus, I'm also going to get, like, a wireless instrument system to add to that rack. And then maybe a wireless mic set up for ceremony sound.

And I think with that, like, I'll have, like, the perfect setup for all my gigs. That way, I don't have to unload all this gear and have so many messy cables everywhere. I mean, I'm still gonna have cables, right? Because you need power to run to speakers, and you need your speakers to be plugged in via XLR to your mixer.

No way around that. But if I get the skirts to go on the tripods, it should look super neat. Anyway, I just went on a big tangent, so.

Yeah, I got that all set up. Taped down my cables. And then I've been using these valve Velcro cable ties to attach the cables to the pole of the tripod speaker stand.

That way, there's not too many loose cables sticking out on either side. It looks a lot neater. I got that idea from a dj, and then.

Yeah, so gear was all set. I couldn't really sound check until 05:00 p.m. which that was when the gig started.

But I talked with the organizer. The reason for why I couldn't soundcheck is because my speakers were right next to a door for a conference room, that there was an event going on, and they knew that they had until 05:00 p.m. to run their meeting without any interruptions.

So once, like 459 and a half rolled around, I started my soundcheck just so that I, as soon as the first guest arrived, it would sound good.

So I turned up my speakers, balanced myself and the backing tracks, and I've been trying to, like, balance the backing tracks a little bit higher than what I normally would because I think I've, I've had my instrument just a little bit too hot and I wanted to blend better.

And even though it felt a little less than ideal for me just because I couldn't hear my instrument quite as well, I actually did get a lot of great feedback from the guests and even from the event organizer that it sounded great.

So, yeah, once I rolled around, I played 2 hours straight. I didn't, I don't really, like, need a break for 2 hours of playing. I don't know, I just have so much fun playing.

And I made a conscious effort to lean into stages, presents, and smile at the guests and all that. And it's getting so much easier because I have most of my tunes memorized at this point where I don't really need to look at my she music. So I could just look at the guests and smile at them and make sure they're having a good time and getting into it.

And I did notice, like, a couple people, like, bopping their shoulders. This was definitely not a dancing event, but people were still getting into it. And I got, like, some compliments directly from the guests and then from the organizer afterwards.

She actually asked me for a stack of my business cards because people asked for my contact info. Yeah. So played the gig.

It went great at about 650. So an hour and 50 minutes later, all the guests went upstairs because they had an event going on upstairs. And I checked with the organizer, like, hey, there's nobody here.

I'm like, in the clear. She said, yep, you're good to go. So I started packing up.

The bartender offered me a beer. I took a beer just while I was packing up and then packed up pretty quickly and then got my car from the valet. They also had stilt walkers at this event.

I hope I get some pictures from this event because there's got to be some really cool ones. So they had stilt walkers. And so I was, like, chatting with the stilt walkers and told them I recently got a request to play my electric violin on stilts.

And I turned it down because I don't know how. And they're like, oh, we'll train you. I don't know if I want to do that.

It sounds kind of dangerous. They're like, oh, yeah. Well, for you, you would probably use, like, drywall stilts, which apparently there are different types of stilts.

I had no idea. And apparently the tools, the stilts that people who install drywall use are much more stable and even, like, Disney uses them, as opposed to the standard stilts, which just kind of have, like, a stick. Those are not very stable.

You have to balance on your own. But the drywall ones balance themselves. So, yeah, that was the gig, and I think it went pretty well.

I mentioned how I got it, and that's about it. So thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!".

Bye, everybody.

Episode 272 - Making 2025 Your Year of High-End Gigs: Reflect, Refocus, and Rise

Episode 271 - From Fear to Flourishing: Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone to Book More Gigs

Episode 270 - Scam Alert: How to Spot and Avoid Fake Gig Inquiries

Episode 269 - The Power of Strategic Free Gigs: Unlocking High-End Opportunities

Episode 268 - Revolutionizing Strings: Mark Wood on Innovation, Business, and Breaking Boundaries

Episode 266 - From Bass to Solo Act: Steve Lyon’s Journey to High-End Gigs

Episode 265 - How Jenny Peters Built Chicago Elegant Piano and Booked Her First Gig

Episode 264 - How to Book High-End Gigs Through Venue Tours and Strategic Sponsorships

Episode 263 - Getting Paid What You’re Worth: Booking High-End Gigs and Smart Relationship Building

Episode 262 - 5 Gigs, One Weekend: Booking High-End Events and Building Relationships in the Music Industry

Episode 261 - Why Most Musicians Struggle to Make Real Money (And How to Break the Cycle)

Episode 260 - Get Featured on The Gigging Musician Podcast: Share Your Story & Amplify Your Reach!

Episode 259 - Landing High-Paying Gigs: Breaking $3K Solo Performances & Booking Holiday Shows

Episode 258 - Navigating Gig Challenges and Maximizing Opportunities at High-End Events

Episode 257 - New Gear, Big Gigs, and Building Corporate Event Connections

Episode 256 - Building Relationships and Delivering Excellence at High-End Gigs

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