It’s All About Magic. Magic and Numbers.
My husband is addicted to comedy podcasts. He recommends Comedy Death Ray, the Marc Maron WTF podcast and The Paul F. Tompkcast.
In discussing these, I learned about the Paul F. Tompkins 300. The details are here, but the gist of it is simple. If you gather 300 people together in your town, he’ll come and play. Audience directed, audience demanded, full house and guaranteed income.
Who doesn’t want guaranteed income? Who doesn’t want a full house? Let’s see how everyone wins in this simple checklist.
VENUE: A booked house and, depending on the venue, a solid bar tab. They save on promotion and marketing because they don’t need to do more than include it on their calendars. And don’t venues look pretty in demand if they have sold out shows on their books?
ARTIST: Who doesn’t like guaranteed income? For real. Who doesn’t? Who doesn’t want an audience of people who WANT to be there? And perhaps those folks might even enjoy hearing some new rep you wanted to try out.
AUDIENCE: They get what they want! They get the artist that they want to see in a show that they put together. There’s a level of pride and excitement about that that is bound to result in a great show.
I know there are complications. I know that artists are booked years in advance. I know that routing is a bitch. I know that for classical artists, you can’t play a concerto on demand (or maybe you can…that’s a homework assignment for you!). Perhaps fees are larger than what could be obtained by doing this. But I imagine that an artist that’s willing to let her audience call the shots on where she plays wouldn’t mind a smaller fee for that particular gig.
So we come to the question - what’s the magic number? Is it 300 like Paul F. Tompkins? Or is there a different number? Are Magic Number Concerts a possibility? I’d absolutely love to find out!
(And I can’t write about Magic Numbers without including a link to this band. Just ‘cuz I’ve always loved them! Or this one, too . I better stop while I’m ahead.)
