No, not at all; frankly, you seem way too intelligent and reality-based about all this stuff to even be a musician in the first place.
HAHAHAHA well thank you! You have to be smart with anything you do in music, I mean, there is cold hard money and lots of it being invested in our project. Smart decisions, smart investments = eventual success (hopefully, or at least that's what I'm aiming for! haha)
But it seems like your frustration was overriding your logic a bit there. The frustration is completely understandable ("really? After all we go through, you can't just get by with a couple less hours of sleep?"), but I don't think it leads to a valuable strategy. That's why I threw out "the customer is always right" mantra. Of course in reality, the customer is NOT always right, and they're frequently wrong, but it's something that the store owner says to his remind his frustrated cashier how to run a successful business. The real meaning is "the customer is a friggin' jackwad, but we must treat him AS IF he is right, because it's fruitless to try to change his behavior, so we should just focus on what WE can do".
Ya, I thought about this last night and you are right. You have to think, a 23 year old kid in a power metal band pouring every penny he's had since highschool into 2 different music projects gets a little flustered sometimes and maybe vents a bit. haha, I cant help it. I love what we do, I just wish people WOULD be that way. I know they will never do that and we have to go out of our way to make it easy, convenient, and most of all, enjoyable for our fans when coming to see the shows. The question is NOW, how do we make weekday shows appeal to a large crowd? Something new has to be done, and the person that figures it out will be headliner over Firewind!!! haha ***gets pad and starts scribbling ideas***
So I think this is my main disagreement with you. If by "LOTS", you mean the 75 people who come out on a Tuesday, then ok. But that's all I would put in the group of people who have even *considered* the concept of "supporting the scene" when deciding to go to a show.
I mean, 75 people isn't bad for a Tuesday night for most bands. I mean, I was surprised when over 30 people came out to the UTPOM show in NYC on a tuesday, but that's considering Seven Kingdoms has played there once and Creation's End maybe twice at that time? ehh, not sure but Milton would have the info on CE
People can pick on bands like Blackguard or Powerglove but they are the ones that have the young kids lining up to see them play on a week day. SX played on a fucking tuesday at Firestone Live and there was almost 400 people there. easily 50-75 for blackguard (all wearing blackguard or a day to remember shirts, congrats to victory records for making a cross over) and easily the same for Power Glove! TOUR TOUR TOUR with BIG BIG BIG bands is what they have been doing. I think the days of little bands going out together on tours is slowly becoming a gigantic waste of money when considering that the ONLY way for a new band to tour and get exposure SUCCESSFULLY is to, well, steal the "older successful" band's crowds with something new and fresh. At least this is what I believe will increase a young bands fan base. And its just rewarding on those shows to open for 1,100 people and then to have them buy all of your CDs at the merch table
You get what you pay for..... if you are smart.
I was actually just informed that the Firewind kick off date in St. Pete @ the State Theatre had "maybe 50 people" there for Firewind via Keith our drummer. That's just Disappoint, but again, why would a tour of that size start on a Sunday???????
Lines like this make for a motivating speech, but I only really hear this type of language when people are talking about shows that no one goes to! If you went to any show with 1000 people and gave them that speech, 900 of them would say "uh, I don't know what that's all about dude, I'm just here because I like this band!"
Well at that point I would take the line from Chris of Widow and start just thank thank thanking those people for KEEPING the metal scene alive and then go into how Trve and awesome everyone is, haha!
So by appealing to the group of people receptive to the "support the scene" argument and encouraging them to skip a little sleep, you might increase that number from 75 to 85. But if you can increase the number from 75 to 1100 by playing on a weekend, that seems like a more effective strategy.
My theory,
TOUR:
Jump on the biggest possible shit you can get on. Again, bands like our size best spend their money on supporting big national tours. If you do 6 week long stints with 30 people or less at each weekday show, you will spend almost as much as going on a national tour with a big band playing in front of LOTS of people. Why wouldn't you do that? Just to put it out there, Imagine how the UTPOM tour would have gone if all the bands had toured on Big Nationals at least twice EACH? probably double or triple the amount! but then again, who knows! its just a theory
Numbers will go from 30, to 50, 75, 150, 300, 400, 600 then finally 1000. Of course this is an average (weeknights proven terrible) but generally that number should grow as long as you DELIVER every night, are EXCEPTIONALLY personable and thankful to your fans, and again, smart with your touring decisions. Once you saturate your sub genre (say ours is power metal) then you start looking towards the cross overs, where you can play in front of MASSES which will in turn equal more fans.
I mean Trivium is on tour with Dream Theatre, who saw that coming 5 years ago???
