Music Festivals For Local Bands

By Michael Fitzgerald


Music festivals take place in major cities all across the country, everywhere from Chicago, IL to Austin, TX. They also can take place is off-the-map locations, like deserts in the Southwest or forests in the East and Midwest. The amount of music festivals on both a local and national level has grown exponentially over the past five years alone. But no matter the size of the festival, they always seem to be attract massive audiences, which creates an amazing opportunity for lesser known bands and musicians. Many record labels and A&R representatives take special note of these events and the bands that perform well on them, for local bands lucky enough to earn a timeslot on them.

When a group gets to play with a bunch of other bands and for lots of new fans, like on one of these music festivals, they have the opportunity to network with more people than they would on a regular local show. Music fests can also be a great opportunity for bands to sell more CDs, T-shirts, and other merchandise - the more merch they can push at a music fest, the more the people attending will take interest in the band as they see other concert goers wearing their T-shirts. For a band at a local level, a T-shirt with the band's name or logo on is the single most effective way for them to get their name out into their music scene.

As more and more cities continue to host these events, and they continue to snowball in popularity, undoubtedly more and more local bands and musicians will get "discovered" at them. There are already many, many, success stories out there of local musicians being discovered like diamonds in the rough at local music festivals alone. For example, at Gorilla Music's CMF just 3 years ago, Jeff Blue (an A&R rep most well known for discovering Linkin Park and working with them on their first album) discovered guitarist Lance Dowdle on the local band DNA. Jeff would later help Lance get signed to Atlantic records, and in turn become guitarist for the national rock band, Emphatic.

Playing on a show where a talent scout or label rep is in attendance is a great way for a group to get discovered quickly. Currently, Jeff Blue is again in search of undiscovered talent, this time by working with Gorilla Music to put on The Jeff Blue Contest Tour in cities all across the country, where bands will compete for a chance to go to Los Angeles and actually write and record a song with Jeff himself.

Gorilla Music music fests, like The Cleveland Music Festival for example, have always been great opportunities for local or unknown bands to get attention in their city. Unlike most other music festivals across the U.S., Gorilla Music's fests have National headliners but are really designed to showcase local bands and musicians as much as humanly possible. This differs from most house-hold name festivals which book almost entirely regional and national bands, leaving very little chance for local bands to get much notice. The next chance bands working with Gorilla Music will have to play on one of their music festivals will be The Dallas Music Festival, taking place at Deep Ellum venues this summer.




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