This Ain't a Scene, It's a Submarine Race

Back in April, I got my collection of short stories called Book in Black published. But with very little support from the publisher, when it came to getting the word out on my book I felt just like a leaf on a tree in a Michigan December: alone and all shriveled up - "I was in the pool!"

The first thing I did to let people know about my book's upcoming release was to simply tell them about it. Since people like to talk, gossip, chit-chat, whatever, the buzz was spread around in a snap. Now I had people intrigued. Next, I decided to dig my hands into online communication techniques and I set up a website, e-mailed everyone in my address book, and lastly, I put it on Facebook. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Facebook was by far my best tool. I made around 2/3 of my sales because of the social networking site. The final step in my advertising campaign was to get into the press game, and I had three local newspapers write a feature about me and my book.

Writing Book in Black was fun and so was marketing it. But what always intrigued me was how local bands get themselves recognized. With the abundance of talented musicians out there today, there is so much more competition; how does one band possibly stick out over the others? I wasn't created with enough fingers to count how many people I know who were a part of a band at one point or another.
The Greniers, some family friends, have a son who played bass in a band called Long Black Sedan (who has since broken up). They gigged it up numerous times in metro Detroit bars and even had one of their songs played a few times on 89X. I was told that they got on the radio by just being heard so many times that eventually the right person heard them and voila - airplay.

My uncle has been in various bands since his own college days. Now he doubles as an accountant and a "rock star," playing for the Lansing-based cover band, Any World. While he has a solid career and a family, he is settled enough to let not making it big get to him. Playing local gigs on the weekends, being in a band is purely for joy. And let me tell you, they can certainly do a mean Bowie. But when he was in college, a "rival" band known as The Verve Pipe was able to become commercially successful. They built their strong following by playing in college towns around Michigan, eventually cracking into the mainstream music scene in the mid-1990s.

I talked to Joe Dowd, guitarist for the metro Detroit band, the Submarine Racers, about how he is going about getting noticed. This is the second band he has been in so he already has some experience about what does and doesn't work.

"The best type of advertising is word of mouth so I would hope that someone would hear our music and pass it on to their friends," Dowd said in an interview conducted on September 16, "I have been playing guitar for 6 years. I played in a band before this. I found the best way to get the name out there is to play as many live shows to as many people as possible."

The Submarine Racers recently release their debut album, King Man, but are still working on getting a lot of people to hear it. As for the live shows Dowd mentioned, they are in the works of getting some set up. The greatest asset they have going for them is the fact that they have an album that portrays their wide variety of music (King Man contains thirteen songs, ranging from hard rock to funk).
And what turns fans off?

"Shitty music is definitely a way to turn off fans," Dowd bluntly told me.
He is correct. No matter how well you market yourself, if the product is no good, then why would anyone want anything to do with it?

"I think what makes us more attractive to consumers is that we have songs that cover different genres," said Dowd, who hopes to one day own his own recording business, "And when I wrote the music for the songs, I did it for the sole purpose of writing musical expression. I did not really care if the songs are what is considered popular by the media."

The Submarine Racers have already begun to market themselves in the area, utilizing some of the same techniques that I used for promoting my book. They have played a few times for friends, passed out CDs to various music-lovers, and even advertised themselves via Facebook.

What's next to come? Who knows what clever guerilla marketing techniques may emerge, but they definitely will keep on playing, in hopes of being discovered by the right people. They could even become the next Verve Pipe. First, though, they'll strive to be the next Long Black Sedan.