This was amazing in so many ways. The venue lost some money (around 250 euros) but we reached a largely new audience, even if there were only thirteen of them, plus three on the guest list and a couple of volunteers. We also got some potentially very good recordings of the entire concert, courtesy of the sound technician who tipped me off on this gig.JOZeldenrust wrote:Woohoo! Just booked my first gig ever. On Tuesday March 10th, Krista Detor will perform at Willemeen, with support from Mary Had a Little Band. It's ridiculously short notice, but Krista Detor is an Americana singer/songwriter, and that happens to be the genre where I can reach a lot of potential customers on very short notice: I lurk around all the same sites they do, and I know some of them from other gigs.
Willemeen never put out so much publicity on a single day. I'm actually kinda proud.
The evening was wonderful. The atmosphere was very relaxed. Krista Detor and her husband and guitarist, David, were happy to have a place to play and pay for another night in a bed, and we were very happy to get the chance to hear her play. But over the last few days I had the chance to to keep up with her MySpace page a little more closely, and I had noticed some pretty interesting stuff:
Her MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/kristadetor
This is us: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... d=53915302
This is her gig next Thursday: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... d=53915302
This is her gig the week after that: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... d=53915302
And the 27th on BBC radio 4: http://music.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse ... d=53915302
Not only is she a vocal Darwinist, she and her husband are generally wonderful, smart, inquisitive people. They decided to stay for a bit after the show, and have a chat with the audience and staff. Though the concert ended at 10:45, and the bar closed at 11:15, Krista, David, three out of five people from the opening act, four staff members and a friend of mine were still having very interesting conversations about an astonishingly broad range of subjects - evolutionary biology, the attitude of the Dutch toward the German occupying force in WWII, the origin of capitalism, Indiana turning blue, the differences between the Dutch and the American education system, etc. - until well after midnight, when one of my colleagues remembered that march 11th is my birthday. It had been mentioned off and on throughout last week, but I had forgotten about it myself, so when I came back from locking up the vault, I was welcomed with "Happy Birthday", and I got a copy of the new album.
At 01:45, only staff remained. We had the last few beers in the crate and cleaned up the joint. This was quite a big chore because I had used the kitchen to cook dinner for the acts + entourage (Turkish: Iskender kofte and falafel, quite a hit), eleven people total. Around 04:00 we were finally done. Everything was shut, locked and closed, cleaned or checked. Earliest I've locked up the place so far.