Eachyear in the
fall,
since2014,
I've been sharing counts of how many weekend and festival gigs
different bands and callers have been doing. Over the course of the
year I collect bookings
in
a big spreadsheet, trying to check each dance weekend's website
about a month before the event when they're likely to have a their
performers listed.
I got into this as kind of a "market research" thing for the Free Raisins: how many
weekends are there? What are the bands that are getting booked a lot,
so I can go see what they sound like? Since then I've played a lot
more of these events, and have a better handle on it, but I've kept
the list because having a big pile of data means I have what I need
for posts where I look at the gender distribution
of musicians or callers,
make heatmaps, or track when in the year these events
tend to be (which is, not in December, and hence this post
coming out in October and not November).
It's also fun to see who's playing a lot each year, and the waves of
bands ramping up and down. One thing you can't get from this data,
though, is whether this is driven primarily by band interest (reaching
out to weekends to get booked, cutting back to focus on other things)
or organizer interest (booking bands who seem new and hot, avoiding
bands that aren't novel). Here's what this looks like for the
ten most-booked bands 2014-2019:
It's not that clear, but if you know what you're looking for you can
see some of what's going on:
Great Bear deciding to retire in 2018 while still very popular.
Buddy System ramping up, first playing techno-contra slots and
growing from there into an excellent acoustic duo.
Wild Asparagus, by far the longest-running band in this group,
maintaining a very steady run.
The Free Raisins playing fewer gigs after I had kids, and then
more fewer gigs because we're not touring anymore.
Elixir first cutting back, and then playing more again with subs
I'm sure there are more stories that this chart could accompany, but I
don't know what's going on with the other bands well enough to tell
them. (And I'm not sure I have the above ones entirely right either.)
Each year in the fall, since 2014, I've been sharing counts of how many weekend and festival gigs different bands and callers have been doing. Over the course of the year I collect bookings in a big spreadsheet, trying to check each dance weekend's website about a month before the event when they're likely to have a their performers listed.
I got into this as kind of a "market research" thing for the Free Raisins: how many weekends are there? What are the bands that are getting booked a lot, so I can go see what they sound like? Since then I've played a lot more of these events, and have a better handle on it, but I've kept the list because having a big pile of data means I have what I need for posts where I look at the gender distribution of musicians or callers, make heatmaps, or track when in the year these events tend to be (which is, not in December, and hence this post coming out in October and not November).
It's also fun to see who's playing a lot each year, and the waves of bands ramping up and down. One thing you can't get from this data, though, is whether this is driven primarily by band interest (reaching out to weekends to get booked, cutting back to focus on other things) or organizer interest (booking bands who seem new and hot, avoiding bands that aren't novel). Here's what this looks like for the ten most-booked bands 2014-2019:
It's not that clear, but if you know what you're looking for you can see some of what's going on:
I'm sure there are more stories that this chart could accompany, but I don't know what's going on with the other bands well enough to tell them. (And I'm not sure I have the above ones entirely right either.)
Anyway, here's the raw data for this year:
Bands:
Callers:
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