I've had good and bad experiences with agents. Most of them are good, but like anything, you have to watch out for the bad ones.

When I was on the road, we had an exclusive with an agency who charged 15%. They kept us booked for a couple of years as much as we wanted (50 weeks/year) but that was a long time ago.

Since then I've worked with a few good and bad agencies, but not an exclusive with any one of them. I would sign an exclusive if they had enough work to keep me booked 48 consecutive weeks a year (I like a little longer vacation now). Around here, for small groups, there is no agency that can offer us even 30 weeks per year so we self-book and use the agents when they have something for us. They now take 20%.

The thing to note is that in the case of small acts and night clubs, the agency will collect the fee from you, but they work for the club. They want to please the club owner so that he/she always comes back to the same agency for entertainment. Decisions will be made in favor of the club.

That means they don't want to mis-book you into a room that isn't appropriate for your group. It could mean the loss of the room.

I've had it happen though, and when I was in a disco band they booked us into a redneck bar because the bar was stuck for new-year's eve entertainment. It wasn't pleasant but not as bad as the Blues Brothers movie wink

We had another were we were booked for the season at a Hyatt playing pop music for the 40 and up crowd. The bar receipts were good, and the bartenders said business was much better than usual. A new F&B manager came in and wanted jazz instead of pop and canned us with 5 weeks to go on the contract so he could have a jazz band. The agency didn't fight it, and put a jazz band in. He scrounged up a couple of one-nighters for us, but we were out a lot of money, and since our contract was with the agency and not the Hyatt, we were just stuck.

But those are the exceptions to the rule. All and all our relationship with agencies has been good.

We do our best to be cooperative with the club managers, we show up a little early, don't take long breaks, and play to the audience unless the manager asks for something different. If he/she does we tactfully let him know our position but also say we are happy to play what he/she wants. We know we are hired sub-contractors.

But we would do that whether an agency booked us or we put ourselves in.

My best advice would be not to sign an exclusive unless there was a minimum amount of bookings guaranteed to you in the contract (whatever you are comfortable with).

When you go to the gig, do not solicit other gigs bypassing the agency. Ask for agency business cards, write your band's name on the back, and have them go through the agency. The agent that put you in the club has the right for all the other gigs that you generate while representing that agency. This will work out with more bookings for you in the long run.

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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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