Back It Up

Be great, push your songwriting, study your influences, and interact with your audience.

Interacting with your fans in the online and offline spaces is one of the most important things you can do as a band.  From social networking, to email, to live-chats, to live concerts, meet-and-greets and merch-table conversations, forging a relationship with your fans is a very important part of being in a developing band.  That’s not to say that should you be so fortunate as to have massive international success that you should be any less interactive with your fans, but no doubt the frequency and methods will probably change, and that’s okay… fans will come to understand that, especially if you’ve involved them from the beginning, and recognized them for helping you spread the word.  They will actually feel like they had an impact on your success, even caused it, and you need to acknowledge the role they played in your success. And often.

That said, interacting is part of the promotion and marketing of your band… it’s not the essence of what your band is.  All the interaction in the world isn’t going to get you very far if you’re not a great band to begin with.

So be great.  Be really great.

Work on your songs and your songwriting… don’t just write a song once and assume it’s done.  Keep tightening it, honing it, experimenting with it, adding to it, stripping things away from it… there are lots of ways to try and make the most out of your songs… push yourself to make each song you’ve already written, even better – even more memorable.  Could you do it?  How?

Take a very detailed look at your live performance too.  One idea is to make a list of the bands who influence you, find out what concerts of theirs are available on DVD and get the very best ones.  The ones where that band is in their prime, and their most magical performance has been captured forever.  Do this for all your influences, and don’t just watch them… study them.  Repeatedly.  Learn what they did that made that performance so incredible… watch it once for the musicianship,then again for the energy, again for the intensity, the emotion, the staging, the movements, the imagery… leave no detail unnoticed.  Keep watching and learning.  Think about your own way of incorporating some of those things into your own band’s performance.  Don’t just outright copy your influences, but know that it’s okay to learn from something, take the influence, internalize it, relate it to your music and your band, shake it up a little and try it out your own way.  Never just walk on stage and play your songs for the room.  Always play them like a two-ton weight is hurtling down on you and the only way to stop it from crushing you completely is by playing your songs as powerfully, intensely and meaningfully as you can.  Imagine that the more heartfelt you play, the longer you keep that weight from crushing you.  Mean every single word you sing, feel every note you play, and love every beat you make.  It’s music, it’s supposed to make people feel something!  It’s not necessarily about who can jump around the most on-stage, or who can make the craziest looking singing-face, but you must believe and feel everything you do on stage, with every ounce of your being.  And not only do you have to believe it, you’ve gotta make the audience believe it too.  Make them feel what you’re feeling.  Make them realize beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you’re doing on-stage at that moment is the most important thing you’ve ever done in your life.  Because at that moment, it should be.

Do that, then get interactive with your fans.