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POINTERS FOR THE JOB SEARCH
Look for opportunities to book and promote bands
in local clubs. Get involved
with your college concert promotion
organization. With that experience, apply to
work with a local or regional promoter, or for a
building manager that promotes
some in-house concerts.
"It is becoming increasingly difficult to
become a promoter because of all the
national tours going on. It takes a lot of
money."--BB
"My best advice is to make allegiances with
certain artists and promoters. Try to
get yourself a job with a promoter or venue and
learn before you go out on your
own. You need to be very well financed,
too."--JS
BILL BACHAND, GENERAL MANAGER AND CHIEF
OPERATING MANAGER,
CELEBRITY THEATER, AND PRESIDENT OF MR. BILL
PRESENTS
Between graduating from the University of
Michigan in 1968 and opening a
country nightclub in 1984, the closest Bill
Bachand had come to a career in the music
business was a short stint selling guitars. In
the intervening years, he also sold cars,
assembled an apartment and duplex conglomerate,
and operated a real estate broker-
age company in Arizona. One of those pieces of
real estate, a Phoenix dive bar named
Toolies, was on the verge of bankruptcy when
Bachand took it over. With a little
cleaning and some judicious advertising on the
local country radio station, the club
was turning a profit within 90 days. A year
later, the club tripled in size at its new
CASE STUDY:
"Listen to the radio, what program directors
say. Do your research. If a
radio station isn't playing an act, it is going
to be hard to sell tickets to
see that artist. In fact, it is
impossible."--BB
"Pay your bills. Make sure that you always have
enough money when the
artist arrives to pay them, even if the show
stiffs. Otherwise you'll get
blackballed and people won't work with you. Do
the job right, do the best
you can, and make sure everybody gets
paid."--BB
"I'm sort of like a doctor, in that I'm on call
all the time to bands, man-
agers, and agents. They are on different time
zones, whether it be Europe
or California, so I'm dealing with things night
and day. I tell people
when I'm about to hire them, `You live this
job.' "--JS
CAREER
TIPS
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