One of the opportunities at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance conference, from which I recently returned, is a set of workshops to choose from in a number of time slots. A couple of the ones I chose were based on their practical applications. In particular I went to one on “Booking and Touring” and another one on optimizing your website. I carefully avoided workshops (there were several) on social media. In past years I’ve gone to them, always hoping that someone could come up with a strategy that would make social media feel more feasible and thus useful. But I’ve finally learned that no one can do that – the social media workshops always (no matter what they say they’re doing) imply that you need to be active simultaneously on many different forms of social media, and they prescribe approaches that I doubt would work for the types of fans I have (or am likely to acquire). So learning to avoid those workshops already led to a less frustrating NERFA experience. The touring workshop was perhaps not pitched at quite the right level for who was in the audience (in large part because several of the people on the panel were agents or worked a lot with agents, and the audience was mostly musicians booking themselves). But I did learn a few things. It was the first place that brought up the idea of “thinking outside the folk music venue box” for what types of places might be interested in my music, and also making use of your emails to fans to ask for recommendations for venues. A few other useful suggestions including picking places to move into (when trying to expand your geographic range) that you have connections – where you grew up, went to college, etc.) so that the first time out you can nudge people you know to show up. And to think about that first time as a building process, rather than a money-making process. (David Roth, who was on this panel, talked about doing a first performance somewhere for free or cheap to show who you are; the next time you can make more money.) A lot of the suggestions were things I’d figured out, about moving up in types of venues, about timing of when to try for certain types of shows, about mining similar (or just ahead of you career-wise) musicians schedules for possible venues. And that it’s better to have an over-full show in a small space than a mostly-empty big venue, so don’t overestimate your draw. And the importance of getting whatever you’ve agreed to in writing (even if it’s just that you send an email saying “here’s what I think we’ve agreed to”) that can be used for future reference. Ah, and one of the most useful things discussed was “taking it to the next level” and the danger of playing too many local shows (and, in particular, too many free local shows) for stepping on your own audience. And, finally, that your email list is still the most important resource you have, so you really want to get people to sign it, and they’re often reluctant to do so. So David Roth offers a free mp3 (that they couldn’t otherwise get) to people who sign, and someone in the audience mentions that she leaves one clipboard at the merch table, but (in part because people might be reluctant to go there if they’re not planning to buy a CD) has a second one she sends around from the stage at some point during the show. The website workshop, similarly, didn’t provide any enormously new information, but helped frame things I should be doing, and involved looking at websites of people actually in the room to see what worked or didn’t. I’ve known that I need to re-do my website, but had been thinking of doing it in the context of the release of the next CD. Now that that latter process is delayed, I should probably just make a go of renovating my website in the nearer future. None of this was especially new information and none of it is earth-shattering. I guess that’s how it is, really. I just have to put my head down and do it. Most of us, I think, become performing songwriters because we love to write or love to perform. Unfortunately, to be able to do that, we need to wear these other hats. So I guess it’s time to put them back on and get to it.