When I started booking bans in 1985, a band that wanted to work found its gigs the same way bands had for generations: by knowing somebody. You knew the man who ran the Grange hall, or the woman who organized the summer concert series, or the fellow who called the contra dance on the first Saturday of the month. The phone rang, or it didn't. A booking agent was mostly a person who knew more of those somebodies than you did, and who was willing to make the calls you didn't have time to make.
Forty years later the tools have changed almost beyond recognition, but that basic arrangement hasn't. A venue still wants to know, before anything else, whether the act will show up on time, play well, draw a few people, and be pleasant to deal with. A band still wants to know whether the room is real, whether the money is real, and whether the person on the other end of the email will remember them next year. Everything else is detail.
Why traditional music, and why now
Sweet Songs is now part of Verve Music, and with that change I've narrowed the focus to the music I know best: traditional and world music, string bands, bluegrass, Celtic and Irish music, and klezmer. That isn't a judgment on any other kind of music. It's simply where I can be useful. I've spent most of my life playing fiddle and mandolin, and I studied this music formally as an ethnomusicologist, so when I listen to a band in these traditions I can hear what they're doing well and where they would fit.
New England is good country for this kind of music, and it has been for a long time. The region's contra dance tradition never really died out the way square dancing did in much of the country, and the long revival that followed in the second half of the twentieth century kept a steady demand for fiddlers, pianists and small dance bands. Irish sessions, bluegrass festivals, klezmer bands at weddings and community celebrations, string bands at farmers markets and town commons: the audience is out there, scattered across hundreds of small towns, and much of it is served by volunteers and small presenters with very little time to go looking for new acts.
What a booking agent actually does
People sometimes imagine a booking agent as a gatekeeper who takes a cut and sends you a date. The real job is mostly unglamorous. It means keeping track of which venues still present live music and which closed or changed hands last spring. It means knowing that one series books a year ahead while a brewery books three weeks out, that one presenter wants a tight forty-five minute set while another wants three hours for dancing. It means writing a short, clear pitch that a busy volunteer can read in thirty seconds and forward to a committee, and then following up politely when nobody answers.
For the past several weeks I've been doing the groundwork: rebuilding and re-checking a database of New England venues and presenters, confirming which ones are still operating, and noting what each one actually books. A list is only as good as its last check. A closed restaurant or a dead email address does nobody any good, and I'd rather send ten letters to the right places than a hundred to the wrong ones.
What I'm looking for
I'm putting together a small roster to start with, a handful of acts I've listened to carefully and believe in, rather than a long list of names. The acts I'm most interested in are solo performers, duos and bands based in New England who play in the traditions above, who have their own recordings online (a Bandcamp page is ideal, because it lets a presenter hear the music in a minute and buy it in two), and who already play out, even if only locally. Original material is welcome alongside traditional repertoire. If you already have an agent, I'll respect that.
Submitting is free. There's a short form that asks about your music, your instrumentation, where you're based and what kind of work you want. I listen to everything that comes in, though I can't promise representation or bookings to everyone who writes.
If you'd rather write first, the address is verve413@gmail.com. Festivals and concert series are already planning their 2027 calendars, which makes this autumn a good time to get your materials in order and your name in front of the people who book them.
Good music still travels by word of mouth. My job is to make the mouth a little bigger.
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