Booking Information for Prospective Performers

Please e-mail us at booking@shadygrovecoffeehouse.com before submitting your material. If you want to be considered for a performance at Shady Grove Coffeehouse, you should have, and be prepared to share with us, a detailed plan for promoting your performance. The success of your performance will influence not only your payoff at the end of the evening, but also whether or not you will be scheduled for a return performance. If you do not have a track record of drawing a substantial local audience (i.e. 75 or more paying customers), then there are other venues that are more appropriate for what you are doing and we will be happy to refer you.

We DO NOT regularly book and CANNOT NORMALLY PAY opening acts.

The Shady Grove Coffeehouse presents folk music, broadly defined.  Our definition of folk includes, contemporary singer-songwriters, bluegrass, early country and string band music, blues, Celtic music, and much more.  Our performers are professionals on the regional and national coffeehouse and festival circuits.

We have an attentive, knowledgeable audience.  The Shady Grove audience loves to sing along, will cheerfully engage in good-natured banter with the performer, and tends to buy a lot of CDs. Performers regularly comment on how enjoyable their shows at Shady Grove are: our venue is a naturally great-sounding room (and we know how to make it sound even better with our PA), and our audience is warm and welcoming. 

Our performers typically play two 45-50 minute sets.  Payment for performers typically consists of a guarantee against a percentage of the admission proceeds, and varies considerably depending on the act.  As already noted, our audience buys CDs in quantity: performers typically substantially augment the fee we pay them with CD sale proceeds.  We do not take a percentage of CD sales; we do provide a volunteer to staff the CD table.  We are also happy to provide home hospitality to our out of town performers; and can arrange for motel rooms at reduced rates, on request.

We book by consensus of the volunteers who run the coffeehouse and try to book a season in advance, so it is unlikely that we will be able to book you on your fall tour if you contact us in August.  Unexpected openings do occur, however, and we make exceptions for performers we are anxious to present.

If we ask that you send us a CD, we would prefer that you send us a complete recording of a live performance in front of an audience with little or no editing; we want to hear your performance warts and all.  Please don’t send us a recording of your performance with a full bluegrass band if you’re touring as a solo banjo player – such a recording doesn’t give us any idea what your performance will be like.

Technical Information