GRRL028: Pay-to-play, promoting, and self-respect with Jenna of SoCal Indie Musicians

Jenna Alonzo joined me over Skype to talk about her website SoCal Indie Musicians, which she uses as a platform to help herself and other bands promote themselves and book shows, either through her blog or one-on-one.

Artists featured: Black Jacobins, The Black Heartthrobs, Frequency Within

For this episode, Jenna Alonzo joined me over Skype after her tour with her band Frequency Within. Hopefully I’ll be able to get the whole band together for an interview in the future, but this episode is actually about her website SoCal Indie Musicians, which she uses as a platform to help herself and other bands promote themselves and book shows, either through her blog or one-on-one.

After you listen to the interview, scroll down a bit in these here show notes and check out all the blogs Jenna recommends to any DIY musician. You’ll also find links to SoCal Indie Musicians’ social media and her Facebook communities.

Thanks to Jenna Alonzo for joining me for this episode! And as always, thank you to Glenn Greggs of Wait Think Fast Production for being the stalwart financial support for the show. Don’t forget to check out their weekly radio show on WCOM, on Tuesdays at 9pm Eastern Time, for radio plays written by North Carolinian playwrights. The intro and outro song is “Drive” provided by Polish.

Listen Here
http://traffic.libsyn.com/grrlongrrl/GRRL028__Pay-to-play_promoting_and_self-respect_with_Jenna_Alonzo_of_SoCal_Indie_Musicians.mp3

Download episode 28 at Libsyn [40 minutes; 36.7MB] or stream from these websites [iTunes | Stitcher | TuneIn | Google Play]

Show Notes

What pay-to-play is, why venues or promoters even do it
Jenna’s experiences with pay-to-play and her thoughts on it as a music fan, and then as a musician
What makes a good partnership between a band and a venue?

Programme in Fullerton

Built-in crowd… or not? And knowing your goals and audience
[9:00] Frequency Within – “Static Ground”
The purpose of SoCal Indie Musicians blog

Lots of tips on marketing and booking so she doesn’t keep repeating herself

Education in music business and reading as many blogs and books as possible (look below for links to her recommended resources)
Learning from mistakes… everything as a new experience. “You can’t really do anything wrong.”

Call back to GRRL022 with Sarah of Spotlights

“You can’t do everything on your own all the time… even if you want to.”

SCIM growing, other people helping

What do you look for in a band to decide you want to work with them?

“I listen to everything.”
“If the song itself is really great, then I’ll check them out further.”

Red flags/pet peeves: seeing symptoms and signs of bands she doesn’t want to work with

June rants a tiny bit about show attendance

[22:00] Black Jacobins – “War is Hell” (Facebook) (CDBaby)
What do women and nonbinary folx need to know about the business of music that’s specific to them?

Stand up for yourself, basically

Some rad venues

51 West in Arizona – a coffeeshop/venue
The Smell in LA – DIY, completely not-for-profit, and volunteer run

What are steps to make Orange County venues safer/opener?
Putting your safety and feelings above your career

Article mentioned in the episode: “This Is Why Wax Idols and King Woman Dropped Off Their Tour with Pentagram” by Cat Jones
From the article: “I’ve gotten extremely used to being discredited, scoffed at, made fun of, told that I’m a bitch, that I’m crazy, that I’m delusional, that I’m a nobody, that what I think doesn’t matter, that my band doesn’t matter—I’ve been told all of these things by so many people, and I’m used to it. But I don’t believe it. So I refuse to allow myself to be treated that way, no matter what people say to me and how people treat me. And I’m not going to let my bandmates get treated that way. Absolutely not. I’ll never sit back and watch people that I care about get disrespected and treated like shit, and watch them feel bad and uncomfortable, and not do anything to help them. It’s just not going to happen.” — Hether Fortune

[34:30] The Black Heartthrobs – “Everything’s Alright”
Officially announcing the 2017 Grrl on Grrl & Cinema Spartan merch giveaway…

Links

SoCal Indie Musicians Blog/Website & SCIM Facebook
SoCal Female Musicians – closed Facebook group, very active
YouTube channel
Her band Frequency Within

Jenna’s Blog & Book Recommendations

Grassrootsy  – Independent Musicians with first-hand experience share insight.
Indie on the Move – Various blog posts & video interviews with industry professionals.
Disc Makers  – Major Music Industry Insight; usually related to recording artists.
DIY Musician (CDBaby)  – Major Music Industry Insight as an independent musician
The Small Venue Survivalist  – Sound Engineering
Music Think Tank  – Music Business
SonicBids   – Live Performance & Booking
BMI  – Major Music Industry – Songwriters
Tom Tom Magazine – Female Drummers
Bitch Media – Female Everything

From an email to me:

As far as books go, they get outdated quickly and a lot of them say the same things about the old music business.  Everything relevant & new you can find as Blogs & on YouTube.  I did, however, purchase Ari’s book “How to make it in the new music business” which is excellent so far and came out in December 2016.  He’s very real and his writing alternates between using “he” and “she” making the reading experience more comfortable.