Bluegrass Band Websites
Creating your own Homeplace on the Web

STORY BY SHERRI CHEKAL

You’ve spent weeks searching out the best instrument, picking on at least a hundred different ones at music shops all over town. And then a great deal of money on the barrel head for that special instrument. Got together with several other musicians and hammered out set lists and harmonies and everything sounds great. You begin playing gigs and get your own fan following. Now it’s time for a web site. Why trust something so important to your sister’s cousin who’s learning computer in middle school? Your web site is perhaps one of the most important promotional tools you have in your band arsenal!

So often, professional promotion of a band seems out of reach for most bands. Money is tight, so it’s the first item to get cut from the band budget. However, it’s the most important tool these days! It's your silent salesman, out working 24/7 to help promote your band and your hard efforts. It provides fans with a schedule and directions to shows. It gives promoters a chance to listen to your wares and evaluate you for potential gigs. It offers you and the band a source of pride and an archive for your band’s photos and events, and in this day and age, it’s essential! Don’t trust it to something that “might” be able to get you something that at best is functional, yet amateur. Just like any other service, there are always the high end of graphic artists offering complete packages for thousands, and there are professionals all through the ranks that can help you with very reasonable prices.

A good graphic artist can add a dynamic edge to your image. They can establish a band identify through type and a good logo. They can carry through that identity with business cards, flyers, posters and other promotional materials. They can design your CD products and make t-shirt designs that help to promote your band and raise funds at shows. When you find the right graphic designer, they become a silent member of your band.

You can find many designers available through your own network of friends and family. Occasionally you can find someone through a print shop or local copy shop. However, it’s often more economical and reliable to find a freelance designer. They will always give you more attention for a flat fee and will often become good friends through the years of helping to promote you. You can ask at local colleges through their design departments for suggestions of students that would be eager to help you with great new fresh design for next to nothing! Once you find the designer of your dreams and suits your pocketbook, make sure to treat them well... a few free tickets to events, a t-shirt, free cds and of course, cash! They can make or break your first impression with big promoters!

If you can find a designer that is also a web site crafter, that is the best combination. You need a good web site to get your band’s goals and aspirations to take flight. Ask to see other examples of web sites they have created. They may not be musical related and in fact, might be the local plumber, a daycare or a friend’s home business. Yet, it is easy to see how this designer approaches the idea of web site design by visiting all their sites. Another important bit of homework is for the band to surf the web and find other web sites that they find attractive and suit the “look” that you might want for your own site. Giving your designer a head start will save time and money and avoid needless proposals and designs that are no where near your ideas.

Don’t be afraid to ask for their fees up front. Graphic arts is a service, just like auto repair or home improvement. Many graphic artists work on an hourly rate, however it’s easier to budget when you have a designer that offers a package rate for a complete web site. That way if you know the site and design will cost $500, the band can save up and be ready with the money without any surprises. The costs of services will vary from area to area, larger cities seem to have higher rates for graphic services. Don’t be afraid to ask about trading services! I personally know bands that have done gigs in exchange for a web site! However you can work it out so that both sides benefit, that’s great!

A good web site will have several key elements. Good design, ease of use and updating and attractive interface that keeps visitors attention. Band sites need several basic areas of attention: the band biography and information, schedule, music, photography archive and perhaps a news information section. It’s very convenient for promoters and the media to offer a press kit or press area where their graphic artists can download high resolution photography for printing flyers, web site placement and newspaper coverage as well as downloadable band information in a word processor format. If you have CD’s or other band merchandise, a selling area would be great as well. You can also be a good internet neighbor and provide a links area to share your favorite web sites of other bands, festivals, instrument dealers and luthiers as well as just fun sites. These are the elements that need to be included in your web site. Discuss this with your designer and make sure that they understand your musical industry with a little research into other top performers web sites. Often these sites are designed by very high priced designers and you can learn a great deal from how they approach the site and apply some of those principles to your own site.

The more material that you can provide to your artist, the smoother the process will go. Write up your band biography and that of your members before hand. Make sure that you have at least one good band photo for promotional needs. If you can supply this in a digital format, high resolution, that is a great plus. If you have a schedule of shows, be sure to type or write it up with complete details, including the show times, directions to the event and a web site link. Whatever you can do to make it easier on the graphic artist, you will be rewarded. One of the most frustrating parts of a designer’s work is having to stop the creative process to find basic information and data. You wouldn’t want to stop the band in the middle of a great break to dust off your guitar, don’t hinder the artist by giving them a hodgepodge of information to have to wade through.

When you have your site designed and ready to go, and everything is approved and proofed, it’s time to consider hosting the web site. In this day and age, you should realize that domains (the actual web address of your site) can be bought for less than $10 a year. And hosting (storage space for your actual web site) should not be more than $5 a month. Anything more and you are definitely paying too much. So often a client will come to me and they are paying like $20-$30 dollars a month for their 6 page web site! That is simply too much. There are hundreds of internet hosting providers on the web and a little hunting will get you at least 5 or 6 top rated sites that will provide good quality hosting plans to suit your band’s needs.

Do not rely on “free” hosting sites. These sites often have long and difficult web address that make it difficult for your fans and potential promoters to find you. When it costs less than $100 a year for your own perfect web site address, don’t go cheap. These free sites depend on advertising to provide your hosting, and the last thing you want is to have a church seeking to hire you and the free hosting ads are displaying less than desirable advertising of drugs and sex meet-up sites and other very unsavory situations. You need to have control over your image and these free sites only make you look cheap and unprofessional.

One of the most under utilized and most important facts to a successful web site is the art of web site optimization. Ask your designer if they are aware and fluent in web site optimatizion. If they have no clue, you might want to seek another designer. Website optimatizion is a very complex task, however, it’s something that you need to address. Making your web site friendly to search engines on the web is very important. Adding key words and meta-tags to your web site coding helps the search engines to rank and sort your site and makes it easy for potential visitors to find you by typing in your band name, or members of the band, or even the region that you play in. Many bands get gigs merely because their web site comes up high on the Google listing when they type in “bluegrass band in Mapletown USA”. You need to make sure that your web site is prepared to fit the industry standards of optimization!

I’ve provided links to some of the band web sites that I have designed in the past. Be sure to check through and get some ideas for your own band web site! Putting your best foot forward on the internet super highway will give you an edge over those bands that stand back in the shadows and just hope someone notices them!

Websites I've Designed for Bluegrass Bands and Venues

www.ErnieThackerRoute23.com

www.HardlineDrive.com

www.DeepwaterBluegrass.com

www.StraightforkBand.com

www.CopusHill.com

www.FamilyPrideBluegrass.com

www.CountryStageMusicPark.com

www.BluegrassJunction.com

www.GlassCityOpry.com

www.PennyRoyalOperaHouse.com