Working With AGENTS Booking Agents: Is it true they eat their young? Mauri Slime, the agent played by Steve Lawrence in the film TheBlues Brothers, fulfills the common perception among many struggling musicians that all agents are bottom feeders at best.  However, managers and agents are often the first people thanked by artists at award shows.  Kissing up? Perhaps, but agents exist at all levels of the music business and are often extremely valuable to an artist's career.  At the highest level of the entertainment business, there are three national full service agencies: CAA, ICM and William Morris.

These multi-service agencies include a music department within their may functions.  Underneath the big three are boutique music agencies: Premier Talent, International Talent Group, Artist & Audiences, Agency for the Performing Arts, American Talent Group, Universal Attractions, Pyramid Artists, and Rosebud, to name a few.  Each boutique may be as large as the music department in the big three, and they are formidable players.  For example, Artist & Audiences has both Paul McCartney and Guns N' Roses on tour in the same summer, garnering over 50 million dollars.

For the hoi polloi, local agents proliferate.  In New York City alone, there must be several hundred local agents with offices on Eight Avenue between 42nd and 57th Street,, according to Ashwood (Will) Kavanna, Esq., an entertainment attorney who, in his former life as agent and promoter, represented artists as diverse as Muddy Waters and J. Geils since the 1960's.  A local agent can book you into area clubs, the lounge circuits, colleges, county fairs, and concert halls.  For their trouble, you can expect to pay a commission ranging from 10 to 15 percent of your gig's gross; some may sk for 25 percent or more, but that's pushing it. To get an agent, decide where you'd like to play, then call the club and find out who books it.  Follow up, call the agent, be polite and persistent, and have a good quality demo tape ready.  Need a press packet? An agent may help you with this, but first sketch a preliminary one for your act (Preparing: Building A Press Kit). 

Remember, it's a business.  A good agent looks for artists who are clean (they get burned by drunks and drug users) and loyal.  Be a pro, stay positive, and keep your word, and you can attract the right partnership. -- Elizabeth Rose