Find the closest major library and get familiar with it. The metropolitan library system where I live offers an easy-to-use computer search system, free computer equipment, lots of helpful staff, and an efficient inter-branch network.
Use the reference department to find venues geographically—you can find folk festival sponsors listed by county, for example.
Broaden your horizons—and your marketability: check out musical scores, or take advantage of the audiovisual section. My local library system carries a lot of titles on Folkways Records. Read musicians’ biographies to get inspiration. One of the most encouraging things I’ve ever read is the autobiographical notes throughout the Judy Collins Songbook.
If you want to work on developing a business mindset, check out the entrepreneurship section in the library, in the section with call numbers of 650 or so according to the Dewey decimal system.
Use the Yellow Pages to brainstorm venues. Find a section that includes potential employers (“Bars,” for instance) and then look to see other sections that are cross-listed to it in the index. Call me weird (actually, I prefer “eccentric”), but sometimes I just read the Yellow Pages. It’s very enlightening and actually a very right-brained type of activity.
Ask lots of questions of the people you know. “Networking” was a buzz word of the ‘80s and continues to be a valuable practice in the ‘90s. If you’re just starting out playing for pay, ask your more established musical friends how they got their starts and see what you can do to mimic their early successful strategies. Did they play at campus-area coffeehouses in Boston or Berkeley? Can you do that where you live? Check local papers to see if there are any venues at nearby colleges. If you’re further along in your career, pick the brain of someone who’s doing what you want to be doing—but find someone with a different genre or market so that you’re not putting your competition on the spot by asking for trade secrets. An exception is to ask if there are any places that they no longer play but would still recommend. Try to think in terms of parallel applications: if you play solo bagpipe, don’t ask a bagpipe soloist where to get gigs; ask a flautist for suggestions. Your markets are different, but as solo performers you may find general principles of marketing to be applicable.
And don’t just talk to musicians. Do you perform at weddings? Tell everyone you know. Everyone knows someone who’s getting married. You’ll be amazed at how many third- and fourth-hand references you can get. Make sure your friends have several of your business cards. (Of course you have business cards.) Likewise, be a good networkee yourself. If you ask for a business card, ask for several. Mention casually that you may find other people to give them to.
Tell people that you’re in business for yourself and that you’re brushing up on your marketing skills. Even if you say no more than that, you will get referrals to other business owners or MBA students or somebody/something useful to your business. My friend Jerry Rockwell has been able to enlist the help of local college marketing classes in helping him to devise marketing plans. Listen to free advice whenever you can—it will be offered frequently. There’s nothing that says you have to take it, but don’t create an impression of unteachability, whatever you do.
Word of mouth is a powerful ally—consider how fast gossip spreads. The fact that you are in business as a musician is good gossip. Start true rumors about what you do. It will come back to reward you.
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