Where concerts come from – March 4, 2016

Where concerts come from – March 4, 2016

Gang,

All right, children, gather ‘round and settle down. You’re old enough now, and I think it’s time I told you where concerts come from. You see, when a musician and a concert hall love each other very much …

Actually, it’s even more complicated than that.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is: “Why don’t you ever play in Mytown?” I think folks envision musicians as sort of range-riders, roaming the countryside in search of places to perform. “OK, Stinky, this looks like a good place to camp. You circle the groupies and set up the tent. I got a hankerin’ to be moseyin’ on over to yonder Performing Arts Center and do a show.”

Tom "out on the range"

It’s not like that.

The way it works is that the person in charge of such things at the Performing Arts Center (or club, or theater) calls up Andrea Sabata, my agent at Skyline Music, and says they want to hire me. Or sometimes she calls them. They talk over the broad outline of things and then, if it looks promising, she asks me if I’m interested. I usually am because I love doing shows. Andrea then gets back to the buyer and they thrash out the details. This is usually done, by the way, somewhere between six and eighteen months before the show date.

(Andrea spends her working hours getting the ducks in a row, but this is harder than one would think, and when they refuse to line up she ends up juggling ducks. Now, juggling ducks seems to come naturally to her and she’s very good at it, but at the end of the day it wastes her time and, as one would expect, annoys the ducks. )

So … if you would like me to come and play in Yourtown here’s what you do: call the PAC, or club, or theater and ask for whoever schedules the shows; tell them you want them to book Tom Rush and they should call Andrea at Skyline Music If you have to explain what a Tom Rush is that is not a good sign, but don’t despair. Hang up and call back in a few hours using a different voice and modified script. Repeat this process as needed – enlist your friends to do the same – until they finally cave in. It’s like a medieval siege, really, without the battering rams and ladders. Mind you, if you and your three co-conspirators are the only ones who turn up for the show I probably won’t be invited back.

So there you have it! Upcoming shows:

 

Spring is coming!


Tom Rush

Tom Rush

  • This (heavily doctored) photo started from a family archive photo of my great cousin Pete Conover on horseback in the cowboy country, of what we believe is Wyoming. This is before he died of appendicitis out on the range –– true story!