Hello again! It’s been a while. Today Tina Olson (the artist formerly known as DJ Luna Lovegood) talks to us about what it takes to put together a wrock show.

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Before we get onto highlighting some time-tested methods to bring together people of like-minds for a celebration of music and literature, we’ll have to travel back to 1990-ish which is around the time that I began attending DIY(Do-It-Yourself) shows and discovering a subculture that resisted some elements of our society that would eventually and often be reflected in the works of J.K. Rowling: Overcoming socio-economic disparities, uniting under common themes of fighting against an oppressive hierarchy; ie. the patriarchy, and in the end, it is the personal relationships we build and maintain that help us endure.

Back then, before the internet, we as artists and musicians were often ignored by the mainstream connections to making a living from our said artform. Most of us weren’t trained musicians, we knew just about three chords as it was the content and contempt for societal expectations that drew in our audiences. We built upon a subculture that had existed for decades before us which meant: practicing in garages, playing dive bars/clubs/fire halls, making our own tshirts with silk screens or spray paint, sending cassette tapes recorded on four-tracks to club owners, and selling plasma to buy new guitar strings. (That last part was optional-who needs the high E string, really.) Our media was confined to college radio shows and physical newsletters that were compiled with typewriters, exacto-knives, rubber cement, and clever access to xerox machines. Our mailing lists were a trip to the post office and the excitement or disappointment of waiting for the mail person to arrive with a response. The larger list at the time that also supported touring bands devoted to these principles was “Book Your Own F*cking Life.”

Leaping forward to 2005, my family became very involved with Wizard Rock after discovering Harry and the Potters being played on one of our local college radio shows. Their live shows were a familiar atmosphere for both myself and the father of my kids. Friendly faces and tons of energy, a merch table filled with very unique promotional items. Plus, as parents, they were family-oriented events that our kids begged us to participate in. As a family with limited resources, each of us now had an environment to be fully entertained while also supporting the underlying common causes: creative expression, early literacy, libraries, and punk rock. 

It was amazing when Harry and the Potters reached out to my son Darius of the Hungarian Horntails to play shows with them. It was full-circle and prompted a response from me to encourage the other burgeoning acts to unite and begin playing shows that I would put together here in Eastern Pennsylvania. Our family had been unveiled through the Horntails as I was also dj Luna Lovegood and their father was also The Cedric Diggories. Later on he and I would become The Greybacks. The first shows I organized were in Bethlehem, PA at the Globe Cafe and Emmaus, PA at the King’s Cafe. The Globe was an effort built by a woman who wanted to provide a safe space for teens in the economically depressed area of South Bethlehem. It was exactly the kind of place that would align with the movement of offering space to young artists who were finding their voices and needed experience with performing live. 

 

• LESSON ONE: Find a cool place that aligns with your objectives. Most people that were in charge of letting us have space adored the ideas of: Family-oriented, promoting literacy, and the fact that this niche tends to attract non-problematic patrons that do, in turn, support the business.
• LESSON TWO: Show up in person, randomly: Catching owners or managers at slow times and buying a coffee to spark up an initial discussion can do more for your cause than inquiries over the phone or email. You get a sense of the real deal. After visiting you should know: If they rent the space, if they provide the PA system, if they split a cover charge, and what the parking or public transportation situation is like. Those things are important to relay to your potential performers and guests. Also, you will get a sense of whether or not this potential space is the right fit of personalities for your event. Not everyone is on the same page and you may run into some shifty, greedy types.
  This is where the concept of performing at libraries struck me sideways too. It’s perfect! I was able to host a few shows with the Bethlehem (PA) Public Library. They did have a rental fee for an inside space, but we had decided to do them outside. That particular library had a beautiful patio and garden with outside electrical outlets they let us use.
• LESSON THREE: Equipment:  This may be another cost to consider. In many of the spaces we have played, they didn’t have PA systems or sound boards, or even people who regularly did sound. Fortunately, you can almost count on one of your performers to be able to handle this wizardly task. We had a local music store that rented equipment that was fairly cheap. There were also occasions of just sharing amps and microphones and doing the best with what you were able to muster. If it’s a super low-key arrangement, assign yourself the task to walk to the back of the room at the beginning of a set to hear if the balances are good and adjust accordingly. When all else fails, go full Bob Dylan pre-1965 and run an acoustic performance.
• LESSON FOUR: Who do you invite to play? I would start with the closest people to the location because that was obvious and my home. Seriously, though, the more local bands you can find, the better your chances are for success at a one-night-only gig. Coalescing with your local indie/punk scene is a good idea, contacting well-known and active performers within the Wrock scene was always good too. Even if they could not get to your event, sometimes they could alert you to others in your area. At times back then it also meant talking to the parents of the performers as many of them were still underage. 
• LESSON FIVE: Timeline: It was common that a lot of the performers did not have a full set to perform, so I was able to invite more performers for a shorter show, like five hours altogether. Later on I promoted shows that were over the course of two days, but my ideas were the same. A full set is usually 30-40 minutes, including set up. If you average each song out and that performer only has three songs to play, you’d have 15 minute sets with 5 minutes in between for the set up. That more than covers the little bloops in between. Sticking to a schedule directly ties into lesson six….considerations.
• LESSON SIX: Consider the performers: While you have taken on the enormous task of organizing an event as the liaison between the venue, the bands, and the audience, plus, sometimes it also means putting up the cash to do everything, the performers are why this is happening. It is this their work that is bringing everyone together. So, making sure their basics were covered was very important to me. Making sure there were sound plans for travel, food, and a place to stay were also things worked out. I always had floor space for those trying to stick to a tight budget. I was also adamant about not charging fees for the shows that I myself could not afford. I also remained determined to offer full transparency about the money I collected through presales. 

The big difference from that 90’s past and 2005 was that the internet had evolved with an explosion of tools for recording and promoting that were formerly so difficult and expensive. The primary site at the time was MySpace, and now we chuckle at this, but there still is something to be said about how Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have yet to come up with a better platform for DIY that combines general, everyday, all-inclusive social media with capabilities of promoting bands. Sites like Bandcamp and Patreon nowadays may also suffer the same issue, it seems only fella artists and bands frequent those sites. 

In 2005/2006 everybody had about the same level of experience with social media = none.

Anyways, social media marketing: An essential element of promoting anything without a budget to spend. I can’t say too much about the best sites since so many platforms have evolved since my last show, but the later shows were best advertised on Twitter and I used PayPal to sell tickets that would cover the costs of the venue, in particular, my local fire company hall.

• LESSON SEVEN: Self-care: Hindsight is 2021: While all of these “Lessons” are pretty solid for putting together a great Wrock show, the most important one I’d like to relay is very personal. During my years of Wizard Rock and participating in the early Harry Potter Alliance organization, I was often an honest mess. Since those years, I have had to face what was boiling over untreated which were mental health issues including anxiety, depression, past trauma, and alcohol addiction. I was the mother of four kids under ten years old and we were living paycheck-to paycheck. Certainly this was not a typical recipe for positive outcomes. In fact, much of the time I spent reacting like a pressure cooker. So, please, know yourself and know that taking on a huge project doesn’t mean more than staying sane. It is always ok to ask for help, let go, and/or start from scratch.