Build your target list: 40 well-chosen names beat 400

On 14 February at 9.58am, a band sent their availability to 380 promoters and venues. Everyone in the To field. At 10.12am a promoter in Bristol hit Reply All: “Please take me off this.” At 10.30am, another: “Same.” By lunchtime seventeen promoters from six cities were staring at each other in a thread called “Band available for gigs”. By the evening the band's address was in the junk folder of a good third of them.

For the price of 380 emails they introduced themselves to a whole scene, once, in the worst way available. This chapter is the other method: forty or so venues and promoters where your pitch stands a real chance, one true sentence about each, and a tracker.

Priya opened sixty tabs on a Sunday afternoon. Ten were gone by the first line of their page: “function room, tribute nights and covers”. Nice room, big stage, nothing in it for Wet Pavement. For the other fifty she asked five questions.

• Style. The room, or the promoter who hires it, already books projects close to yours. Close, not identical. Look at the last three months. Nothing you'd share a bill with? Cross it off, however good it looks.
• Size. It matches your tier. When the capacity isn't listed, the photos and the ticket price tell you: a pub with a stage in the corner, a 150-cap room above a bar, a seated arts centre, you can see it straight away.
• Geography. You can get there, play and get back without spending the fee on diesel. More on that in a minute.
• Timing. They're still booking for the period you're after. A club that has already announced its whole spring won't take you in spring.
• Access. You have a credible way to reach the person who actually decides: a promoter's name, an email, an Instagram page that answers, someone you know on a recent bill. In the UK that person often doesn't work at the venue at all.

Four out of five, it goes on the list. Three or fewer, it waits for the next campaign. No “you never know”: every “you never know” costs an email, two follow-ups and one more silence.

Back from practice, a Tuesday night. Dee's driving. Callum has a plan.

Callum: “We need to play London. My mate's housemate runs a night in New Cross.”

Priya: “Sheffield to New Cross, 170 miles. There and back, 340. The van does 30 to the gallon, so about £75 of diesel, the clean air charge if we're unlucky, parking, and a night for three, say £90 in a hostel if we're lucky. Roughly £190 for a Tuesday in a room we've never seen, in front of Callum's mate's housemate.”

Callum: “He'll put us up.”

Dee: “He's got a box room.”

Priya: “London the week we've got Nottingham on the Friday and London on the Saturday, and a fee that covers the diesel. Not before. In the meantime: Leeds, an hour. Nottingham, an hour. Manchester, hour and a quarter. York, hour and a quarter. Hull, hour and a half. There's thirty rooms and promoters in that lot and we know three.”

At tiers 1 and 2, a date that pays for itself is under two hours' drive, or it's chained to another one the next night under two hours from the first. Beyond that you're paying to play, unless somewhere to sleep and travel costs are covered, or the date is strategic: a big support on a touring bill, a festival. Circle 3 isn't banned. You earn it in pairs.

Hence three circles round your town.

Circle 1, under 45 minutes. Your town and the places round it. This is where you have a crowd, so this is where you have arguments. Ten to fifteen names, venues and promoters together.

Circle 2, under two hours. The cities you can play and drive back from, or sleep on someone's floor. Fifteen to twenty names, favouring the cities where you know at least one local band to share a bill with. That band often opens the door before the promoter does.

Circle 3, the next region along. Only in pairs or threes of dates over a weekend: Friday city A, Saturday city B under two hours from A. About ten names chosen for exactly that.

At tier 3 the circles widen, the logic doesn't. A lone date five hours up the motorway only makes sense paid accordingly.

For every name on your shortlist, open the website or the main social account and answer four questions. What styles over the last three months? How often are there gigs? Who's putting them on: the venue itself, a promoter, a collective? Is there a regular night that fits you, a new-bands slot, a monthly bill that always needs a first-on?

What Priya writes for a room in Nottingham, after three minutes on its Instagram:

“The Lace Works. Gigs Thursday to Saturday. Last three months: garage, post-punk, a surf band from Leicester. Monthly bill Cheap Seats, put on by Rough Cut, not the venue, four bands, the poster always says first on TBC. Young crowd, rammed in the photos. Us: yes, via Rough Cut, for a Cheap Seats. Mention the Leicester lot in March.”

That line becomes the first sentence of her email: “Saw the March Cheap Seats with the surf band from Leicester, and our live set would sit well on that bill.” Three minutes, and the email can't be sent to anyone else.

Three more lines, for the rhythm. “Pub, live music Saturdays only, covers and blues: cross off.” “Council arts centre, 400 seats, season booked till summer, box office address: next campaign.” “Miners' welfare, nothing on the website, but a collective called Pit Noise puts six gigs a year on in the concert room: write to Pit Noise.”

Three minutes a name, forty names, two hours. It's the best investment in your campaign, and the one almost everybody skips.

Eight names between Sheffield and Manchester, made up but plausible. For each one, tick the criteria the clues let you confirm, then decide: on the list, or next campaign. Then start your real list: up to ten names, with their circle and your “what I saw” line.

A simple tracker, kept up to date, is what separates a campaign from a run of impulses. One line per name: the venue or promoter, the city, the family, estimated capacity, the circle. Your “what I saw” line. The contact: name, role, email, Instagram, phone if there is one, and where you got it. The dates of the first email and the two follow-ups. A status. Notes.

The statuses: to contact, sent, followed up, positive reply, in discussion, confirmed, not now (with a date to try again), no.

Two rules. Everything that happens with a name gets written on its line the same day. Otherwise you chase the wrong person at the wrong moment; it happens to everyone once, and once is enough. And a “not now” is an appointment, not a no: write the date and keep it. A good share of the dates played by bands who do this properly come from the second approach.

The list you started above exports to a spreadsheet: that's this tracker.

For a 90-day tier 2 objective: a first wave of 20 to 25 names, a second of 15 to 20 three weeks later, and a reserve of ten to replace the noes. Never set off with fewer than thirty qualified names. With ten, every silence weighs too much and you give up before the slow replies arrive. With four hundred, you're the band from 14 February.

Priya finished the Sunday with forty lines and forty sentences. Callum reread the tracker three days later and said London was missing.

Forty lines, forty sentences that prove you looked, a tracker that breathes. You've got enough to write to people. But first, a detour that isn't one: the easiest dates of your campaign may not come from a venue or a promoter at all.