When it comes to guest list spots and +1s, “free” can cost you.
At most small listening venues and house shows, I’ve found your average audience member is expecting, even happy, to pay to hear music. So really it’s been years since I’ve dealt with any major frustrations around a guest list. The closest thing to it might be asking a house concert host if your friends are welcome at their private event.
But I do remember the days of touring with a seven piece band, rolling into some dive, gathering up the guest list names (which always somehow seemed to take hours), and then sad-laughing later about how half our audience got in for free. Oh, the glory of rock and roll.
Anyway, I just read a hilarious and spot-on rant by Ryan Kattner about the RIGHT and WRONG way to ask if you can be on a guest list. You should check it out if you’re ever in the position of asking for a guest list spot or, as a musician, granting guest list spots and +1s to your friends, fans, and family.
After all, having too many people on the list can effect the bottom line, or worse, your reputation.
What’s the most ridiculous guest list request you’ve ever gotten? How often do you add someone to your list who never shows up? Let me know in the comments.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.