Fri, June 8th: Annie B. solo/acoustic 10pm-12am at Pridefest (at the Summerfest Grounds) on the new Womyn’s Lounge and Café!

Sat, June 9th: ABVC 12-12:45pm at Pridefest (at the Summerfest Grounds) on the Miller Stage

Sat, June 16th: ABVC at The Dam Jam in Racine: Johnson Park Pavillion, 6200 Northwestern Avenue (7pm, please check back for EXACT timeslot!)

Thu, June 21st: ABVC 6-8pm at Sounds of Sussex: Weyer Park Main St & Elmwood Ave, Sussex, WI 53089 – Bring your lawnchairs! Concessions will be available!

Sun, July 1st: ABVC 2-3:30pm at Summerfest! Briggs Stage!

Wed, July 4th: ABVC at The Village Inn: 411 Main St., Alpha, MI. 9pm performance, 9:30 Fireworks, and more ABVC afterwards!!

Sat, Aug 4th: ABVC 6-6:45pm at Artbeat in the Heat Music & Arts Festival: 2625 S. Greeley St., Milwaukee

Fri, Aug. 10th: ABVC 5-6:30pm at Festival in Kenosha, please check back for more info & the address!!!

In the meantime, feel free to continue requesting ABVC on all of your favorite radio stations all around the Midwest! If you haven’t already, hopefully you’ll hear us on YOUR favorite radio station soon!!

April 7th at the Bradley Center for a Bucks Pre-Game show! They have tickets as low as $5!!! ABVC performs from 6:30-7:30pm

April 14th at Goose Island in Wrigleyville with fellow Milwaukee band Ikarus Down! ABVC takes the stage at 10pm! 3535 North Clark Street, Chicago

April 15th at McBob’s (4919 W. North Ave., Milw) – Kicking off “The Good Deed”: A new charity whose mission is to help women with everyday life while recovering from breast cancer surgeries. Raffle for a large screen TV, $300.00 Mc Dermott Pool Cue, $100.00 cash, and other fun gifts to bid on. ABVC from 3-4:30pm, D.J. Andrae Dean to follow. $20.00 gets you all you can eat buffet, tap beer & soda. Entire event goes until 8pm.

April 21st at Lo-Cash Live! Annie will start the night out with a bunch of solo/acoustic originals at 9:30, then ABVC goes on at 10:45pm! FREE SHOW! 124 West National Avenue, Milwaukee

“I promise to post blogs here, sharing some daily activities & the work I do to achieve my career goals, and especially, to give inspiration to all, whether you are – or are not – an artist yourself! And, when I do win that Grammy, YOU can say you followed me all the way! Enjoy, and SEIZE THE DAY!”

Sometimes you need to take a break, a Breather (the name of my 2nd band… before we changed our name to Shut Up Marie)! You need to step back & regroup. Take a look at your priorities and be open to re-prioritizing. I am kind of there right now. Perhaps it was triggered by my home life becoming unmanageable while my mom’s health is needing more & more of my attention these days. Perhaps it was reinforced by our website stats/activity dropping a bit in the last 2 weeks and I can’t really think of any reason that would have happened. I don’t know what is happening, but I need to take a step away for a bit, so I can take on a different perspective, and figure it all out. I need to figure out what I need to be doing differently.

At the exact moment I saw the first “NO PARKING – ANY TIME” sign on my drive home from visiting my mom tonight, Paul McCartney sang the words “ANY TIME, any day, you can hear the people say…” on my car radio. It kind of freaked me out a bit because I’m not much in the habit of looking at the traffic signs on the side of the road while I’m driving (which explains why I often miss the “SPEED LIMIT 30″ signs). WHAT will happen ANY TIME? Like, is something supposed to happen any time now, or at any given time, or all the time? And, WHAT IS IT that’s supposed to happen or be happening any time?

I’m very curious and also cautious about taking a break since I might miss an opportunity if I do take a break. Or does it mean that I need to take this break in order to to re-prioritize and the opportunity will come from that? I guess my gut has always been able to generally provide the answer, so I will let that happen.

In the meantime, ABVC has been nominated for 2 WAMI Awards: Best Pop Band, and Song of the Year (for “Coffee Beans”. So excited about that… the Awards Show is April 15th. Oddly enough, I have 5 “gigs” in 3 days over that weekend… 2 in Appleton, 2 in Milwaukee, and 1 in Chicago. Lots of traveling that weekend.

Of course, I almost lost my head at the Coffee Beans Music Video Launch Party last Friday. I forgot my computer at home and we had no other way to play the DVD and get it on the big screen unless I drove home to get my ‘puter. Made our whole night run about 45 minutes late. Rick Rand told me I need to stop planning these big, involved events so I can just play & sing and not have any other worries. That’s some really good advice.

I am hoping to eventually reach out to all the festivals in my database but it’s very hard given the sheer numbers I have in festival listings. Perhaps I need to focus on the Midwest and hope I can land a few big ones like Wakarusa and of course I hope we get booked for Summerfest again. I should call Vic about once every 3 weeks these days.

The high point of the day: Finding out about our WAMI nominations!
Low point of the day: “Rejection” e-mail from the an ArtWalk after getting a VERY promising e-mail 2 weeks ago when they asked, “Would you be available for one or both days of the Art Walk Event, and what is your fee? Thanks again.” They decided against having music at the ArtWalk at all this year. I was bummed. It’s not that they didn’t like us… they just decided to do things differently this year and I thought for sure we had this gig.

“Life goes on!” -Lennon/McCartney

Thanks to all who were involved in the nomination process!

See the complete list of nominees at JSOnline.com!

The 2012 WAMI Awards Show will be hosted by the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center (400 W. College Ave.) in Appleton, WI on Sunday April 15, 2012 beginning at 7 PM. Come out for a great night of music, networking, and celebrating our AMAZING musical talents here in Wisconsin! In the meantime, enjoy footage from a few great music festivals ABVC played last summer!

ABVC is submitting for music festivals all over the Midwest & the U.S.! PLEASE “Like” ABVC on Facebook to help the band get into these festivals!

Help out also by visiting Wakarusa Festival’s Facebook page, “Like” this page, and post that you’d like to see Annie B & the Vagabond Company in the lineup this year!

As I gather info on my European festivals campaign, I see how many of the summer festivals all over the world & even local summer music series are actually already booked now. I guess people who have been doing this a long time already knew this: “Book for your summer events in the previous fall & winter, and book for your fall & winter events in the previous winter & spring.” I am realizing that I am now looking at 2013 for lots of the festivals & concert series I am trying to get ABVC into. Wow. Some bands don’t even last more than a year.

I blogged about this over a year ago: A friend of mine was talking about his band falling apart, and he said to me, “Yeah, bands are only good for about two years anyway!” OMG… this is the wrong attitude!!! You’ll be lucky you get into a festival sometime in that first year!

My boyfriend works for a company that sells cutting edge equipment which helps to make pharmacies more efficient. He has been working for this company for over 2 years, knocking on these doors for over two years, and made very little sales in that first two years. But he has finally gained the trust of the people he has been calling on for two years, and is finally making real sales, finally making real progress selling products to big companies like Wal-Mart and Walgreens. It started with baby steps. The company sold one piece of equipment to one smaller store in the region, and in the meantime building relationships with companies all over the U.S. Then one day, two years later, BAM! The sales possibilities are literally endless. Is that how I need to look at the progress of ABVC “selling” what we have to offer? I am sure you know we’re not looking to play small clubs & dive bars for the next 10 years. So, is it possible to break into those big-time venues & festivals? Well, YES, provided your product is FANTASTIC, cutting edge, whatever you want to call it… it needs to stand out and be better than the rest.

Hence, the FIRST piece of the puzzle…….

My boyfriend’s company sells products that are superior to MUCH of what’s out there right now being used by pharmacies to improve workflow. They got the first part right.

Hone your skills. Here I echo Helen Hunt. When I had the opportunity to ask her for her one piece of advice for someone trying to make it as an actress, he said, “Study, study, and study more until you HATE it, and then study some more.” So I thank Hollywood Fred for cracking the whip on ABVC. His words: “Rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse some more.” I pray to God we stand out. (I think we sound tight.)

But even with superior product, you still have to give it a couple years. And you have to follow up and BUILD RELATIONSHIPS. My goal is to get on the radar screen of everyone I am targeting, so that they WILL book us, maybe not for 2012, but for 2013 and/or 2014.

See how far ahead I’m thinking? Does that seem ridiculous to you?

IMHO, one big reason why SO MANY bands never get anywhere is because they don’t give it enough time. Believe it or not, there seems to be a “6-month itch” for bands! If the band isn’t where they want to be, they get antsy and often this is when the band breaks up. Band members seek & find other “more promising” projects, and move on. Musicians, have YOU noticed this? I have. Every project that I’ve been in goes through it. 6 months! How the heck do you expect to do much of ANYTHING in 6 months. Baby steps. We have to remember how important those baby steps are. 2 YEARS worth of baby steps, perhaps!

Keep the Faith. Don’t give up. Set 1-Year and 2-Year Goals, and START WORKING on them. Knock on doors. If they don’t answer, knock again next week, or next month. Keep knocking until they say YES or NO. AND, if they say NO, knock again in 6 months with a new feature of your product. Maybe they’ll like your new feature. Either way, they’ll remember you, & if you were nice & respectful of them & their time & demands, they will give you another listen.

You’ll get what you want eventually. As long as you keep asking nice & offering something good, something they can use.

OMG, the plays on YouTube is freaking me out a little bit! Bugsy entered the 2nd Annie B. video he produced, “Over Me,” into a video contest and it went from under 3,000 views to over 15,000 in a week or less! Now our job is to get views for these videos in Europe. I found a list of European music video blogs and wish I had the time to start contacting those folks! I just posted for more interns for Annie B. Productions earlier this month.

Also had a nice long talk with Diana Lopez a few weeks ago and she gave me some great suggestions on our Europe campaign.

The Vox Concert Series last Friday was a great experience… The incredibly talented songbird Jackie Bristow flew up from Austin and we had a lot of fun hanging out all weekend, playing 3 shows together… The show at Best Place on Saturday night was a blast, and the show in Chicago on Sunday for the Chicago Acoustic Underground was also a lot of fun and I was happy with the HUGE turnout on a Sunday night!!! Lots of e-mails to add to my MailChimp list… I have been over 1,000 people on my fanlist for a few weeks now and that’s a good sign. I have heard more than once that the “magic number” you need in order to start seeing a good turnout at your shows is about 1,000. I can say that this seems to be correct.

The BIG job now is contacting all those European & US festivals that are in the database Carmen is working on… she seems to be making some pretty good headway quickly… Thanks, Carmen!!!

There were some videos taken for my shows this weekend and it’s ABOUT TIME I got some solo/acoustic videos up on the site! Enjoy!!!

Thanks again, David McGrath!!!!

You will learn a lot of the things Annie B has learned about the entertainment biz over a period of 19 years… instead of learning everything all on your own, you will benefit from this expertise and experience in order to move YOUR career forward faster than ever before!

Interested parties, please e-mail AnnieBBooking at gmail dot com with the following information:

1. What is your specific of interest? (visual art, music, artist marketing/promotions, acting, etc)
2. What is your experience in this area? (what have you done in this field so far?)
3. Are you available to commit to at least 6 hours/week during the following times: M-F 8am-7pm, and Saturday 10am-4pm? Can you commit up to 10 hours/week?
4. What time slots are you available from the above?
5. What are your career goals? (generally, like “making a living playing music” or “artist management”, etc)
6. Why would you make a good intern? (what are some qualities you possess that would make you an attractive candidate for this position?)
7. Do you have your own transportation?
8. Do you have a laptop that connects to WiFi? (This is a MUST.)
9. Do you know how many words per minute you can type? If yes, how many?
10. Would be able to commit to 6-10 hours/week for at least 3 months?
11. Are you looking for college credit? (College credit may be a possibility if we are able to set up a meeting with your academic department chair.)
12. Please include your name AND phone number!

Depending upon your performance, after 3-6 months, this position may turn into a paid position ($10/hour to start). Our location is in the (Northeast) Milwaukee area.

ALL ABOVE QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED COMPLETELY. The best way to respond is to copy & paste the above into your email, and type in your answers right below each question.

We are unable to answer any questions about this position unless an e-mail is received from you with all the questions answered completely.

Again: Interested parties, please e-mail AnnieBBooking at gmail dot com with the above information!