myoung6923 wrote:Is that why you guys booked a gig the week before us at Tammany in January? What happened there? Talk about splitting the crowd...
myoung6923 wrote:Well - it's maybe a good idea and perfectly fine for splitting a crowd in half - neither of us will do as well as if we had booked them further apart. Don't forget - we aren't talking about playing a week apart in the same city or town - but a week apart at the same bar.
And - he talked about not going for Tammany because we played there - and that he had "deference" for fellow musicians - no?
It's actually a surprise to me. And I agree that it's bad timing.
However, just for starters, the promoter who books Tammany has been asking us for months to return there, so we accepted the date he offered a couple of weeks ago. So, if there's a beef about the timing of the date, it should be taken up with the promoter, because although I don't actually book Playing Dead myself any more, I seriously doubt the person who does would have checked another band's schedule to see when you might be playing there again. It certainly would not be the smartest strategy in the world to ask for a date a week before or after another band with similar material plays there. One would logically assume the club itself would be aware of its own schedule. FWIW, we were also offered the following weekend there.
I would also point out that this particular club booked us to play the 2009 weekend the Dead were in Worcester (well before you started playing there), and subsequently had your band playing a few nights before and after that gig, so this is nothing new at this venue.
And in response to the "deference" quote, I would point out that Playing Dead did its first gig at Tammany back in 2002, has a relationship with that particular promoter dating back to 2004, and had done weekend shows there before you began playing there, so while we have turned down some dates there in recent months (after you started booking there), it's not as if we're horning our way into some club we've never played before that another band is playing, quite the opposite.
The same was true at the club in Waltham, where we had played a number of times before the other band booked it; in that instance, it was booked the same night we played in Boston and DSO played in Hampton, which was the source of the original thread (which was not started by me but by Ray). (Apologies were made over that oversight, and appreciated.) Playing Dead has also headlined at Doc's in Milford, where your band is booked on a three-band bill on NYE (while we are headlining on NYE at another club), been booked on the main stage at a local festival after which you folks got booked on one of the smaller stages (and took our name off your gig announcement's list of bands at the festival posted on various forums and sent via email, which did not go unnoticed by people who see both bands), twice rescheduled our own dates on the South Shore when your band booked conflicting dates a town over, etc. I think we've quietly gone out of our way not to conflict with other gigs, and have not raised a fuss when things have happened, even suggested people contact you when they offer private dates that we can't play, but it doesn't seem appropriate to me to be called out on a public forum of peers when it's the club who offered dates to both bands a week apart with neither band being aware of it.
A friendly PM would have been more appropriate, as well as an email to the promoter to try and adjust the dates.