Curtains Up!

Here are a few more shots from the impersonators convention in Orlando. Here’s the previous post in case you missed it.

Bonds, James Bonds: Glenn and John as Pierce and Sean's 007s.

Bonding Time: Dennis Keough as Sean Connery and Mark discussing Red October.

The Daily Buzz interviews Joe Manuella, Robert DeNiro impersonator.

Lightning Rod: a trio of Rod Stewart impersonators check out Gig Salad.

Lets be friends: The spectacular Three Amigos impersonation team

A young Elvis (Harold Schultz) has entered the building.

In the last blog, I introduced some common ceremony music standards that you might like to include in your repertoire. For the reception, there are many directions you can take, depending upon whether the music will be used simply for background to dining, or whether it’s up to you and your band to get everyone up on their feet for dancing. The most important thing to keep in mind is to play the style of music that you play the best.

To get you started, this is a short list of some reception music standards that you might wish to consider including in your repertoire:

Timeless Wedding Reception Favorites

Ethnic Favorites:
1. Mexican—“La Bamba”
2. Greek—“Never on Sunday”
3. Italian—“Tarantella”, the Italian Wedding Dance
4. Italian—“Musetta’s Waltz” or “Quando Men Vo”
5. Scottish—“The Highland Fling”
6. Polish—“The Dollar Dance”

Silly Dances to Get Everyone on the Dance Floor:

1. “The Chicken Dance”
2. “The Hokey Pokey”
3. “YMCA”
4. “Old Time Rock n Roll”

This is a brief excerpt from my new book, “The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings” published by Hal Leonard Books. I’m sure you can think of more tunes to add to these lists. Add them in your comments below and help out other musicians to get a good start playing at weddings.

View Anne’s new book–see some individual sample pages

This book is available wherever Hal Leonard Books are sold: music and bookstores, and through online retailers (including barnesandnoble.com, sheetmusicplus.com, and amazon.com).

I may sound like I’m shamelessly promoting my book, but I’d really like to have some constructive feedback about it. I fully intend to write future editions, so your thoughts would be of great help to me. Please feel free to respond with your kind constructive comments, and certainly, respond with wedding favorites that you would like to add to the above lists.

My best to you,
Anne Roos
Celtic Harp Music by Anne Roos
http://www.celticharpmusic.com

We had a great time in Orlando last week hanging out with the country’s very best celebrity impersonators and look-alikes. Everyone from Cher to President Bush were there. Mark was mistaken for Elvis, though he wasn’t wearing a costume.

Steve with Brent Mendenhall as President Bush.

Glenn Reichle as Pierce Brosnan (obviously) sporting his Peace/Love/Gigs Gig Salad shirt

Steve with John Allen as Sean Connery's 007

Steve and Mark with Betty Atchison, Cher Impersonator

Steve and Mark with Lisa Irion as Cher

Willie Nelson Tribute Artist Marion Deaton sporting his Gig Salad gear

Dale Leigh and John Morgan as Bill and Dubya

Steve with Michael Jackson Impersonator Matt Macis

Do what you do best, and you’ll love what you do. The music you play that resonates within you carries your own fingerprints. Even if other musicians can play the same songs as you do, what you bring to these songs is uniquely your own.

To get you started, this is a list of some wedding music standards that you might want to consider including in your repertoire:

Wedding Ceremony Music– The Common Requests

The Top Ten Classical Music Requests (in order by composer):

1. “Air in G” from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D (J.S. Bach)
2. “Ode to Joy” from Symphony No. 9(Beethoven)
3. “Trumpet Voluntary” or “Prince of Denmark’s March” (J. Clarke)
4. “Clair de Lune” (C. Debussy)
5. “Hornpipe” from Water Music Suite (G.F. Handel)
6. “Wedding March” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (F. Mendelssohn)
7. “Canon in D” (J. Pachelbel)
9. “Allegro From Spring”, first movement theme from The Four Seasons (A. Vivaldi)
10. “Bridal March” from the opera Lohengrin or “Here Comes the Bride” (R. Wagner)

Wedding Ceremony Music Alternatives (Because Not Every Bride Wants to Enter to “Here Comes the Bride”):

Favorite choices for Christian weddings:
1. “Amazing Grace” (American Folk Melody)
2. “Ave Maria” (F. Schubert)
3. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” (J. S. Bach)
4. “The Lord’s Prayer” (A.H. Malotte)
5. “Simple Gifts” (Elder Joseph)

Favorite choices for Jewish weddings:
1. “Dodi Li” (N. Chen)
2. “Erev Ba” (O. Avissar & A. Levanon)
3. “Siman Tov” (traditional Israeli song)
4. “Sunrise Sunset” from the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”

Favorite choices for Celtic weddings:
1. “Mairia’s Wedding”
2. “Star of the County Down”
3. “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”
4. “Skye Boat Song”
5. “My Wild Irish Rose”

This is a short excerpt from my new book, The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings published by Hal Leonard Books. I’m sure you can think of more tunes to add to these lists. Add them in your comments and help other musicians to get a good start playing at weddings. Next time in this blog, we’ll tackle timeless reception favorites.

View Anne’s new book–see some individual sample pages

The book is available wherever Hal Leonard Books are sold: music and bookstores, and through online retailers (including barnesandnoble.com, sheetmusicplus.com, and amazon.com). I may sound like I’m shamelessly promoting it here, but I really would like to have some constructive feedback about it. I fully intend to write future editions, so your feedback would be of great help to me. Please feel free to respond with your kind constructive comments, and certainly, respond with wedding favorites that you would like to add to the above lists.

My best to you,
Anne Roos
Celtic Harp Music by Anne Roos

Our Springfield, MO headquarters is getting a facelift. More like an overhaul actually. The second floor will go virtually untouched, but the downstairs and exterior has been gutted and will be brand-spankin’ new. Over the years the building had taken on a variety of businesses, including a radio station that chopped the space up into smaller rooms and added a drop ceiling and carpeting. When all was stripped away, a great exposed brick wall, an old oak plank floor and heavy wood ceiling beams were discovered. Why anyone would cover bricks and wood up is beyond us, but naked it shall stay.

Our Springfield, MO building is getting a face lift

John Steiner in the archway

Barenaked building: the gutted first floor

Upstairs

Across the Street: The old City Hall

The upstairs

Mark Steiner striking a pose

What the new face will look like

Outside looking in

Workers tearing stuff down

The CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast (brain child of Kevin Breuner) is just another way for like minded musicians to reach out and share their experiences, tips, know-how, mishaps and mistakes with a global community that is no longer limited by time and place, age or experience. iTunes voted the CD Baby DIY Musician Podcast the best of 2007 podcasts.

Kevin interviewed me in an episode that aired on August 1, 2008. Here is the show info:

Episode 030 : Anne Roos - How to Make Money Playing Weddings

Making a living as a full-time musician is a dream-come-true for most of us. But many artists are so busy looking for their “big break” they forget to consider the more common and obvious sources of income in their own community. Anne Roos is a Celtic harpist who has made a successful career in playing weddings. She entered the field as a novice and learned a lot along the way. She’s recently wrote a book called “The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings” published by Hal Leonard. You’ll be surprised at how much there is to know about this profession. Join Kevin and Anne as they explore the ins and outs of playing and profiting in the wedding business.

View Anne’s new book–see some individual sample pages

Anne Roose's Musician's Guide to Brides

The book is available wherever Hal Leonard Books are sold: music and bookstores, and through online retailers (including barnesandnoble.com, sheetmusicplus.com, and amazon.com). I may sound like I’m shamelessly promoting it here, but I really would like to have some constructive feedback about it. I fully intend to write future editions, so your feedback would be of great help to me. Please feel free to respond with your kind constructive comments.

My best to you,
Anne Roos

Dear Musicians,

Here is my maiden voyage into posting on the blogosphere! Steve here at GigSalad.com was kind enough to give me a voice, so here goes…

Within my new book, The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings, I introduce many ways to make wedding gigs successful gigs for all musicians. Since I fully intend to write future editions, I wanted a forum to find out what works for you at weddings. Perhaps you’ll have some additional ideas that I did not come across during the writing of my book.

So, let’s start with the first topic…From the first chapter of my book, I spell out 10 personality and skills that a musician needs to be successful at playing weddings. They are:

1. Be content with taking directions from the bride and those she appoints to oversee her wedding, no matter how strange you think her expectations of you may be.
2. Educate the bride about the services you have to offer.
3. Politely stand your own ground when necessary.
4. Possess a willingness to offer helpful suggestions about how to select wedding or reception music, without actually making up the bride’s mind for her.
5. Accept the fact that you will be performing background music while people are talking and mingling.
6. Perform smoothly and with confidence.
7. Look good. No, look GREAT!
8. Realize that you can learn from bridezilla stories, those horrible nightmares about crazy brides that you, other musicians, and wedding vendors experience from time to time.
9. Know that a positive attitude makes you a magnet for enjoyable, high-paying wedding gigs.

And

10. Love what you do and success will come.

Do you have additional items to add to this list? Do you have any stories to share relating to these general abilities and attitudes that musicians should possess to be successful wedding performers?

Let me know, and I’ll check back and add a new topic in a week or so.

My best,
Anne Roos
Celtic Harp Music by Anne Roos
www.celticharpmusic.com

And if you would like to purchase my new book, The Musician’s Guide to Brides: How to Make Money Playing Weddings, with 324 pages of helpful wedding gig info, you can order it from all retailers that carry Hal Leonard Books, including Barnes & Noble, Borders Stores, and Amazon.com.

Real gigs. Real customer service. Real cheap.

We give our members gigs 4 different ways:

1. The Gig Salad PromoKit. Your PromoKit is an easy to use souped-up digital press kit that you can easily send to agents, event planners, competitions, wedding planners, venue owners and more with the click of a button. Visitors find your Gig Salad online PromoKit through search engines, through our ads, and by word of mouth and can use our Gig Lead system to make contact with you.

2. Direct Contact. Visitors to your PromoKit can contact you directly by phone, email, or through our streamlined Gig Lead system. They can also visit your website through a link in your PromoKit, driving traffic to your own personal website and helping increase your website’s rank on Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.

3. Gig Soup. Our members have full access to Gig Soup, our NEW gig bulletin board, available ONLY to Gig Salad members, where new gig opportunities and leads are added daily by corporate clients, festival producers, concert venue owners and party planners!

4. The Gig Salad Network. Gig Salad members are automatically included for FREE on Gig Salad Network websites that apply to their talent category, including ElvisSalad.com, WeddingBandSalad.com, JazzSalad.com, MagicianSalad.com… and many more to come! Your profile on our Network sites links directly to your Gig Salad PromoKit.

Your PromoKit includes:
-200mb for audio/video… upload 50+ songs, videos, 200+ photos
-Placement in 11 different talent categories that you choose
-Easy-to-use, easy-to-edit PromoKit you can update anytime
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-and much more!

Are you listed on Gig Salad yet? Get your gig on!

It’s been a busy couple weeks here. Today we launched Jazz Salad, a hub for finding local and regional jazz performers, from sax players to jazz singers, from jazz bands to swing bands. Bands can sign up for a free text listing, or simply join Gig Salad and get a free premium listing. Get your gig on!

Calling Elvis Impersonators and Elvis Tribute Artists everywhere! (or at least in North America) We have launched the latest website in the Gig Salad Network: Elvis Salad! Listings are free, of course, for Gig Salad members, and those Elvii who are not yet members of Gig Salad can get on the site for free by creating a text-only listing. Those who get the full-color treatment on Elvis Salad are those Gig Salad performers who have selected Elvis Impersonator / Elvis Tribute Artist as their main Gig Salad category.

Are you among the elite Elvis Impersonators and Elvis Tribute Artists looking for a free listing on ElvisSalad.com? Join Gig Salad and you’ll instantly appear on Elvis Salad, in all your Blue Suede glory.