So...there was this third installment of the "no, The Scene's not broken, but we can make it better!" BandCamp originally scheduled for Sunday, December 7th and meant to be focused on how local H-town bands can get their shit together to actually tour and play shows outside of the Houston Metro area. (Which is a big leap, believe it.) Sadly, due to schedules & such not syncing up right, well, it didn't happen.

Er, kinda. Actually it did happen, albeit in abbreviated form -- Gretchen Schmaltz of The Western Civilization & her own solo-acoustic gig was there, along with Marie of The Snake Charmers and the folks from Wayside Drive, and according to the excellent recap by Dryvetyme Online's Adam Newton, the thing ended up being less about how to book a tour and more about what folks would like to learn about the subject. Which is cool, so the thing doesn't sound like it was a loss or anything.

Now, though, "BandCamp: TOURING" is really, truly on, for real this time. It'll be held this coming Sunday, January 4th (from 1-3PM), over at the Caroline Collective art/work space, and it promises to be even bigger & better than originally planned. Gretchen will be back (and trust me, she's no stranger to touring DIY-style), along with new co-presenter Sara Winter of Warehouse Live(!), and they'll be talking about all the ins and outs of touring, including contacting booking people (hint: sending Random Booking Guy a badly-written email saying "hey! book my band r u suck!" doesn't work all that well), logistics-type stuff, and promoting from the road.

The best part, though, is that the BandCamp folk are taking proposals for tours from any & all interesting H-town bands -- the band whose proposal gets picked will have their proposed tour booked for 'em by said BandCamp experts, who'll be blogging and recording the whole damn deal so those interested can see how it works & why. Yeah, read that last sentence again: if you want to tour, come up with a proposal (how long, what region, your budget, etc.) and the BandCamp people might book it for you. How fucking cool is that? Admittedly, I've never toured outside of Houston (one-off shows in Austin & San Antonio don't really count), but just booking shows in town can be a ridiculous pain in the ass, so this is a sweet deal. Not sure of the formats proposals need to be in or whatnot, but come up with something and get on over to the Caroline Collective on Sunday to hand it off.

As an added bonus, there'll be a product demo by a company called Commerciant.com, who sell a handheld credit card reader. If you can afford one, well, you may no longer need to fret that Fanboy X would love to snag a copy of your $10 CD, but they only brought $20 to the gig and already blew $15 of it on some other band's t-shirt, eh?

Labels: H-Town News, Musical Crap, Public Service Announcements, Things To Do, Things To See

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