Last weekend was the City of Temple, Texas 14th Annual Bloomin’ Temple Festival with TSE Entertainment selected as the entertainment booking agency for this year’s event. The annual festival turned out to be a great event for the city, performers and all the people who came out to enjoy it.
Have you ever shown up to a huge music festival and thought to yourself, “How does one go about booking the entertainment and then pulling it all together?” Well, take it from a live music booking agency that books a lot of fairs and festivals, It’s not easy. Producing a festival with so much entertainment takes an enormous amount of work by lots of people, especially the festival coordinator.
The Right Entertainment Booking Agency Provides Support to Festival Local Team
Read on to see how hiring the right music booking agency will greatly ease the pressure and headache of booking entertainment for your festival, concert or other big events; all while increasing your profit margins.
After many years of handling the festival itself, the City of Temple decided that the staff resources involved in handling the entertainment portion of the festival subtracted from the many other aspects of the festival. So, In July of 2018, the City of Temple, Texas, decided to join forces with TSE Entertainment as their music booking agency for Bloomin’ Temple Festival 2019. TSE was also hired to help deal with entertainers’ hospitality needs for the festival as well. I, Glenda Black, a TSE Partner, was to be the TSE lead for this event.
What was Temple Texas Parks and Recreation Department’s reasoning behind this decision? It’s a simple matter of resources. If staff people are spending all their time handling booking, contracting and the other aspects of handling the entertainment, they have less time to work on the many other issues involved with putting on a great 2-day festival.
Temple wanted to free up the Festival Coordinator and other staff time. By doing this, she would now have the time to improve upon and focus more of her attention on other aspects and processes of Bloomin’ such as volunteers, fencing, vendors, porta potties, ticketing, kid zone, carnival, social media/marketing and on and on.
Now please understand that this decision to hire a music booking agency did not remove the city from the process. TSE became part of the “Temple Team.” The Festival Coordinator and TSE Lead, Glenda Black, merged as one from the beginning to the end of the booking process. Three other staff members joined Glenda to handle the day of show issues, working as part of the local team.
STEP 1 – Planning: First Step to Entertainment Booking
Immediately, Temple Parks & Rec invited TSE up to their offices to meet with the key players. They spoke and we listened about past years experiences and future wants and needs. Temple would continue forward with 2 stages over 2 days April 26-27, 2019. They would have Tejano & Texas Red Dirt Country on Friday night and Hip Hop/R&B & Traditional and Nashville Country on Saturday night.
A budget was set, and TSE was off to the races to bring back options to vote on. This is where the work really began. Who is available? Who can we afford? Who is on their way up? Who is routing through the area at that time? Who will give us the biggest bang for our buck?
With the research tools that TSE Entertainment utilizes, we were able to find ticket sales data on artists. The Festival Coordinator leveraged her city tools and surveyed the community as to which artists they wanted. Armed with this knowledge we began narrowing down the names on the original lists I generated in each genre. Over time our final list began to emerge with input from many minds. Please note that Steps 1 & 2 were very much intertwined.
STEP 2 – The Meat of Music Booking: Offers, Contracts and Riders
Once the green light was given from the top, TSE would make the agreed upon offer to the selected artist. Once the offer was accepted, the contract phase began. This phase also included negotiating the artist rider (what the bands ask for hospitality and technical wise). Over the course of the next few months, we solidified the 14 lucky entertainment slots. There were many peaks and valleys, but we finally had our 2019 Bloomin’ Temple Festival Lineup. TSE Entertainment was able to help Temple save thousands of dollars by leveraging our buying power!
Friday CEFCO Stage – Michael Salgado, Elida Reyna y Avante, Tejano Highway 281
Friday Mac Haik Stage – Wade Bowen, Randall King, Kris Jones
Saturday CEFCO Stage – Next Town Down Band, Tameca Jones, Dysfunkshun Junkshun, Peterson Brothers
Saturday Mac Haik Stage – Maddie & Tae, Jason Boland & the Stragglers, T.G. Sheppard, Def Leggend
STEP 3 – Advancing the Show
“Advancing a show” is simply confirming and putting into place all the details called for, either as part of the venue’s specifications or as called for in the technical and hospitality riders of all the artists booked for the entertainment. Promotion issue details are also part this part of the process.
As part of this phase, TSE worked with Temple’s Marketing Program Coordinator. Our first step was to determine the announcement date for each artist. This is a very important step! TSE then collected artist media materials and passed those on to Temple. From there, Temple’s marketing team created all of the advertising for the Bloomin’ Festival.
TSE would then handle the approval from each artist’s management for each item (i.e. posters, banners, social media images/videos, radio commercials, etc.). Once approved, these were ready for the public based on the set schedule of release.
Temple already had a vendor to work on the technical aspects of entertainment needs. This vendor headed up the technical production end of the event while TSE advanced the hospitality end of the rider. We each communicated with all of the bands to make sure expectations were set clearly and all parties were on the same page.
Where they handled sound equipment needs, TSE handled room reservations. Where they handled run of show/load in & sound check times, TSE handled setting up meet & greets, radio/tv interviews, agreed-upon bus stock, artist merch, backstage credentials, etc.
STEP 4 – Day of Show: The Fruit of All Your Work
The day of show is when all the fruits of your labor turn into more labor. Glenda said she had never, ever worked that hard in her entire life (before & day of show). Everyone, on Team Temple, including TSE’s additions, collapsed after two 19+ hour days of being on our feet in the sun. Speaking of sun, the weather could not have been more perfect for drawing a huge festival crowd; low 80s during the day and 60s at night!
TSE had four staff members on site that were instrumental in pulling this off. Our all-female crew of Glenda, Linda, Kassie and Ellen were a force to be reckoned with – nurturing, beautiful, friendly, problem solvers & natural-born leaders. From the moment the artists and crews set foot on site until the moment they left, TSE handled all of their hospitality needs…from payment delivery to food & drinks to acting as a Chauffeur/runner to you name it, we did it!
Friday night was a sea of fans at both stages as far as the eye could see. This was the same case on Saturday night. The fans loved what we were able to deliver. 12,000 people came through Bloomin’ Temple Festival 2019. Attendees, representing every walk of life, were there to enjoy the music, carnival, kid zone, food, drinks, friends/family and to celebrate their love of community.
A special thanks goes out to Temple’s Parks & Recreation Superintendent for making TSE part of their festival team. A “hat’s off” to the Festival Coordinator is also warranted. This woman was 110% committed! She is not only pure genius but super fun to work with. She leads by example, is an extremely hard worker, trusts those she has surrounded herself with, and absolutely loves what she does. The City of Temple knocked this one out of the park!
Hiring TSE as their entertainment booking agency allowed Temple to turn their attention to the other things required to make their festival even more special.
TSE prides itself on developing long-term relationships. We hope the good people of the city of Temple join that group. A good sign is that Temple has since asked TSE to help book other events. for them.
Take a leap of faith and call for a free consultation on hiring a music booking agency for your festival, fair, or event, call TSE Entertainment at 1-800-765-8203 or email tsebooking@tseentertainment.com or glendablack@tseentertainment.com.
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