Dear Venue Owner,

We know the struggle your type of music venue goes through to stay alive just serving coffee, let alone being able to provide entertainment. Coffee Houses have long been noted as being the literal breeding ground for today’s popular and classic music. Who can, or should, deny their existence as worthy of staying on the map as live music venues?

Unfortunately, the catch is..most venues like this, aren’t able to pay the musicians a customarily acknowledged form of payment. Like money. True it is, that they have the far reached reputation for not being able to add to the cash availability of a musicians fund supply, but in our eyes, the benefits for the both the musician and venue far outweighs the temporary and limited green garnered. In exchange, for the experience of having a quaint, cozy and listener friendly atmosphere to try out the tunes that will, hopefully one day, become nationally recognized, the acoustic singer-songwriter music played in public remains thriving and coffee houses get the credit. Still, to deny their contribution to our over all music landscape and chastise them for not being paying venues for the most part is career suicide as a performer. If they disappear for lack of interest – or lack of music availability – trust me, we’re gonna miss them and besides, who pays for it? After all, music can be piped in. But can a stage opportunity be equally replaced? See...we get it.

With all that in mind…and more, CoffeeHouseTour.com came to fruition in 2003 providing a searchable database for coffee shop venues to list their venues information, which will in turn be a valuable resource for bookers to snatch up traveling musicians needing and wanting a small gig stop over between cities, along with some pretty awesome music for your venue. And, at the same time, being a valuable tour planning network for traveling musicians. Simple as that. And FREE to those who apply now. 

In order for us to best serve your venue, we need to apply the following guidelines to our working relationship. If there are any concerns, we are happy to address them.

1. We must have specific days/nights to book. Even if it’s just one night a month…it needs to be the same night every month. Example: CHT will book the first Friday of every month, or the 2^nd and 3^rd Monday, or the 3^rd Saturday night…etc. This helps us with our promotions, and eases confusion with who is booking what and when.

2. Please assist us in compensating the musician by:  a.  Allowing them to keep 100% of their tips.  b.  Allowing the act to keep 100% of their merch sales    c.  Permit the act to have a tip jug, in plain site – that staff encourages customers to use at the register. (ie: would you like to tip our musician playing free tonight? – many venues do this, and it’s a great help) d.  Please feed the participating musicians from a special menu or the entire menu, if applicable, and allow free beverages while performing for everyone playing. CHT does not involve itself in agreements for alcohol, so please discuss anything like that with musician(s) on arrival. e. If you currently do pay musicians, we would hope you'd continue doing so for our artists.

3. Please communicate with us when musicians do not send a promo flyer for their gigs. We try to teach good promotions, since many musicians we work with are just starting out. We believe in consequences for them failing to do as asked in their agreement with us prior to assigning them a date. We realize that musicians traveling may not have certain things at their disposal…but we count on them planning their tours properly or at least being able to promote what is booked.

4. Please send us a list of advertising resources in your town. We will include a link on your CHT page leading them to your areas promotional outlets so they can send gig announcements, press kits, etc for reviews and publishing. Even websites in your area that promote live music are helpful. Any help your venue can offer for promoting the calendar is welcome and appreciated. After all, this one’s for you! J

5. Upon a gig's confirmation, we will provide a copy of the agreement that we have musicians agree to specific to your venue.  Please read it over, and we encourage you to have a small stack available at the register on the nights we have music there. We require the musicians to bring a copy of this agreement and sign in, and give it to you prior to performing. But we cannot expect everyone to do it – since we’re dealing with humans. It will be wise for you to follow this through and have a copy on hand for them to sign.

6. Once we agree on a certain night - please reserve that night for only CHT booking and do not book over us. Refer all musicians to us regarding the night(s) we book, and please adhere to the agreement we make in totality. Nothing is more of a nightmare to a promoter or a venue and musicians than unexpected calendar whoas. Once we are on a roll, we try to stay booked 3 months out at least. We thank you in advance for your cooperation. 

7. Please copy and paste to answer these few questions in an email, and email them to Venue Booking Request  – which will indicate you are fine with these booking terms. We will need a copy of your logo as well if you have one.

We would like for you to please post CHT’s logo on your site (right click and save) and promote us as well. Consider top friend trading on your my space –where we will put you too.   

Here is the blurb in bold that should be placed with the logo on your site.  Thanks!  I encourage you to place this info on your myspace as well.

Last but not least! 

We would appreciate a tip jar being put out for CoffeeHouseTour.com.  And once a month, any tips we collect - mailed or paypal’d to us.  We will eventually be going to print with our database of venues, which means even more free promotion for you as a venue – and we want banners, merch material and all this stuff to grow with.  Money helps:) Though this resource is free for all to use, we do take and encourage donations no matter how small from coffeehouse venues, musicians and CHT supporters in general to help us with associated costs so that we can keep it free! Please just keep that in mind and do what you can, when you can. No Pressure! No demands! Thanks!

Peace!  Annette  Warner

"Supporting one another adds strength to courage... and breathes LIFE into Motivation."   ~ Annette Warner ~