BIDA Band Booking Timing

Booking is challenging, from both an organizer and musician perspective. I just had a conversation with a musician who's in multiple bands, where they shared difficulties scheduling a tour. They'd reached out to a few dances about 8 months out asking about dates, and one dance responded that those dates were already booked while the other responded saying that was way too far in advance to book anything! This is a hard problem to solve.

In this post, I've outlined the booking approach Bret Casey and I, as the current BIDA band bookers, have agreed on with input from the rest of the board. As BIDA bands are currently booked through November, we'll start with this cadence for the upcoming Winter season, booking in late July.

Hopefully this transparency helps bands know what to expect from BIDA, helps us have a more consistent booking schedule, and might start a broader conversation with other regional dances about how we can get our booking cadences more in sync with each other. 

Booking in Seasons

We have split up our year into four seasons, which we will aim to book about 5 months in advance. This means overall we would be booking about 5-7 months out. BIDA currently has evening dances on first and third Sundays, and afternoon dances on fourth Sundays.

Fall Season: Sept - Nov

Booking window: late April
9 dances

Winter Season: Dec - Feb

Booking window: late July
7-8 dances
We usually have to skip at least one dance in December because our hall has a standing reservation for a holiday event.

Spring Season: Mar - May

Booking window: late October
6-8 dances.
One dance in March will usually be Beantown Stomp talent. We often have to skip a dance in each of April and May due to conflicts.

Summer Season: June - July

Booking window: late January
4 dances
We have a break for the summer every year because our hall has no air conditioning. Our last dance is the 1st Sunday in July. We start back up in September.

Traveling & Touring Bands

We recognize that 5-7 months might not be enough advance notice for bands who are coordinating tours or from far away. If a band is traveling from far away or coordinating a tour, we're open to making an exception and booking farther in advance. Our hope is that 5-7 months will be enough in advance for the majority of cases for bands based in New England.

To be considered for an exception and booked farther in advance, at least one of these must be true:

• traveling from more than a ~4 hour drive away from Boston

• coordinating a tour with ~3+ gigs or ~7+ hours of travel time

• we get many inquiries about this, feel free to reach out with specifics about why you need an exception and we will work with you

How to Get Your Band Booked

Booking bands is a mix of us reaching out to bands we know and folks reaching out to us. If you'd like to be top of mind, email us at bida-musician-booking@googlegroups.com . We aim to respond to all inquiries within a week. If it's been longer than that and you haven't heard back from us, feel free to follow up! Please keep in mind that BIDA is run by volunteers.

Including a video or two of your band playing will help us get to know your sound. The ideal video is a long clip at a dance, showing a full dance from the 4 potatoes to the applause afterwards, so we can see how you fit your playing to the dancers and vary it up over time. A full clip of your band playing at rehearsal that shows a set is also great. It's difficult to get a sense of a band from a highlight reel with only short moments included.

BIDA is a very in-demand dance. We always have more bands interested in playing for us than we have dates available. We do our best to spread our booking out across many styles and musicians, and to balance local, regional, and national groups. Unfortunately we can't book every band we'd like to have play for us, so don't get discouraged if you aren't booked right away. Hopefully we can have you play someday!

We're so lucky to be part of a vibrant community of musicians and dancers. Thanks to all the musicians making this music for us all to enjoy together.