Smokey Joes Live Event : Planning

For months, me and Jordan Pepin have had ideas about holding our own live event/gig and after much discussion over summer we decided that the best way to make it happen is just to dive in and try to do it. While the initial ideas and planning will be done solely by us, we hope to get other people with different skill sets involved to support us and make the event successful.

Roles: 

Charlotte – Venue Liaison, Marketing, Stage Manager, Crew Liaison

Jordan – Artist Liaison, Crew Liaison, Promoter, Stage Tech

Initial Ideas:

The idea of hosting our own gig derived from pure enthusiasm, sitting in our front room chatting about how cool it would be for us to do. We are both keen to learn and grow our experience exploring different areas of the music industry so decided rather than sit and talk about putting on our own gig…. lets do it.

As this our first live event and simply recreational (thus not being profited from), we didn’t want to have any sort of mad concept, instead keeping the ideas quite simple as the main aim of the event is for us to learn. Our main idea is to host it as a pre-party for the Monday night student night at MooMoo Clubrooms. This is to attract students, and promote it to them as something different and exciting to do before they go out to the nightclub.

This pre-party idea is continued as we are not ticketing the event, and using ‘Free shot on entry before 8:30pm’ as a marketing technique to encourage students to arrive early for a free incentive. The gig will finish at approximately 10:30pm,  allowing time for the students to leave and to make to their way to MooMoos.

Venue Liaison:

During discussions, me and Jordan established very quickly that Smokey Joe’s is the venue that we wanted to host our gig in as it is small enough for it to be manageable as a first gig, but it was also attractive making it easily marketable and had a range of drinks for students to buy, continuing the pre-party concept.

As the venue liaison, I contacted Smokey Joes on the 11th September and was pleased to hear that they wouldn’t charge us for the use of their venue. The conversation was as follows:

 

The following week, me and Jordan went in to the venue to meet with the manager who was very accommodating and happy to help us. We booked in our event for Monday 8th October and booked the venue for 7-10:30 allowing us time to set up and conduct brief sound checks before we begin the gig at approximately 8:15pm. The venue is also able to provide us a PA system and mixing desk and gave us different options as to where we could locate our stage.

Risk Assessment

While the venue itself has Health and Safety provisions in place and has hosted many different events before so has experience, we have completed our own risk assessment for the event.

Partnership

As we are holding this as a pre-drinks style event, it is likely many of the audience members will continue to MooMoos following the gig. Therefore, we reached out to the club and organised a partnership deal with GLAM Student Night. They have agreed to offer all attendees of the gig, Queue Jump til 12:30pm, discounted entry and free cocktail.

Crew

Quickly into the planning process, me and Jordan realised that we would need extra help on the day of the event to ensure it runs smoothly. Therefore we reached out to other music students and a wider network of students to help us fill different positions.

Venue Crew – Charlotte Dale, Jordan Pepin, Adam Thorn, Charlie Bennett, Matt Yapp

Sound Engineer – Charlie Bennett

Photographer – Ollie Bentley

Camera Crew – Rob Crockford/ Ross Kinsey/ Owen Scott

Artists – Ryan Nicklin, Sam Burgess, Toby Catt, Adam Thorn, Callum Cutler, Matt Yapp

Tech Spec

Venue – PA System, Soundboard

Callum Cutler – SM58 Microphone + Stand, Acoustic Guitar, MONO Jack Guitar Lead

Adam Thorn – SM58 Microphone + Stand, Acoustic Guitar, MONO Jack Guitar Lead

Samuel Louis – SM58 Microphone + Stand, Acoustic Guitar, MONO Jack Guitar Lead,   Double ended Jack Lead, Backing track, Monitor

Ryan Nicklin – SM58 Microphone + Stand, Keyboard

Photography

Because this is our first gig, we want to have plenty of visuals and photos to document the event and use as promotional material in the future. Through a lot of networking and speaking to friends of friends of friends of friends we have found an amazing photographer and a camera crew to capture the event. Ollie’s Portfolio

Contracts

Following a discussion with Sam and his manager, we were asked to put together a contract to outline both sides of the agreement, in particular in regards to all the footage and photographs we plan to have. I have attached the artist agreement below as well as our camera crew and photographer agreement.

Marketing

To market our event, we created a simple but extensive marketing campaign to try and get students to come to our gig. I have listed the different methods of promotion below and have attached the two promotional posters.

1. Created a Facebook Event
2. Circulated to all students on music courses via a lecturer
3. Circulated in student group chats and asked friends to circulate to create a promotional network
4. Sent to artists and venues to promote

 

Issues

3 days before the event, we had an issue that one of our original acts ‘Perfect Strangers’ pulled out of the gig. Because we had already completed scheduling and all the preparation for the gig, we decided the best option was to try and find a new artist to fill in and replace them. Luckily, we got in contact with a songwriter/pianist Ryan Nicklin, who was happy to help us and put together a 20 minute set and perform for us. Once this was confirmed, we had to edit all the marketing material to change the names and update gig attendees.

Scheduling

The next stage of the process (approximately a week before the event) we put together a schedule for the event, including set times and set up. After speaking to Charlie (our sound engineer),  he told us that he thinks we will need approximately 2 hours to set up all the equipment and soundcheck the artists. Therefore, we will be arriving at 6:00pm with the crew to arrive soon after to help set up before doors open at 8:00pm.