You are in three bands. A cover band most weekends, a tribute act that works a few months a year, and whatever sub calls come in.
Somebody wants to hire you. Which of those three websites do they go to?
None of them, because none of them is about you. A freelance player needs one page with their own name on it, and it is the single most useful hour of web work you will ever do. Bands come and go. Your name is the one thing that stays on the marquee for your whole working life.
Bands Come and Go, Your Name Stays
Think about the last ten years. How many acts have you been in, and how many of them still exist?
Every time one ends, whatever presence you had inside it goes with it. The band’s site comes down, the page goes quiet, and the work you did there stops counting toward anything a new employer can see.
A site at your own name does not do that. It accumulates. The tribute act you left in 2023 becomes a line on your list instead of a dead link.
Get your name as the domain if you can. If it is taken, add your instrument or your region rather than a number. You want something you can say out loud on a phone call without spelling it twice.
What a Bandleader Needs to See
Somebody is about to hand you a Saturday night. Here is what they are checking, in order.
- What you play, and honestly which styles you cover well.
- Acts you have worked with, by name. Current ones first.
- Whether you read, whether you sing, whether you bring your own rig.
- Where you are based and how far you travel.
- How to reach you today.
That is a one-page website. You could write it in twenty minutes.
Be specific about range. “Versatile” tells a bandleader nothing. “Comfortable in classic rock, Motown, and top forty, and I sing harmony” tells them whether to call you, which is the only thing they are trying to work out.
If you sub, say so plainly, and say how much notice you usually need. Bandleaders calling on a Thursday are looking for exactly that sentence. The whole sub-call process turns on somebody finding this page in about a minute.
Clips That Show Your Range
Two or three clips. Not twenty.
Pick them to show different things. One where you are clearly holding down a busy dance floor. One where the material is a different style from the first. One where you are singing, if you sing.
They should show you playing with other people, in a real room. A bandleader is not judging your tone. They are judging whether you lock in with a rhythm section and whether you look like somebody they would enjoy standing next to for four hours.
Keep them short. Thirty to sixty seconds each is plenty, with a line under each one saying what act it is and roughly when.
And prune. A clip from eight years ago with a lineup you have not played with since is doing you no favors. Two current clips beat six historical ones.
Availability and How to Reach You
Make this stupidly easy.
An email address you actually read, on the page, in text. A phone number if you are comfortable with that, because a bandleader filling a hole on Thursday is going to call, not fill out a form.
A short line about your general availability helps more than you would think. “Usually open Thursdays and Sundays, weekends book early” saves everybody a round of messages.
If you use a contact form, keep it to three fields and make sure it actually sends. Test it from a phone on cellular, not from the laptop that built it. I have lost count of how many broken contact forms I have found on working people’s websites, and every one of them had been quietly eating messages for months.
Keep It Simple
One page is enough to start. Really.
Name at the top, what you play, who you have worked with, two clips, how to reach you. If you want more later, add a page for the acts you are currently in and a page of photos a bandleader can use when they announce you.
What to leave off: a gear list. Nobody hiring you cares, and it makes the page read like a classified ad. Same for a long history of every band you have ever been in, and anything about your influences.
Also leave off anything you will not keep current. A blog you update twice and abandon is worse than no blog. An outdated “upcoming dates” list actively works against you, which is the same trap that catches bands.
The point of the whole page is one sentence: this person is working, they are easy to reach, and here is proof. Everything that serves that sentence stays. Everything else is decoration.
And it has to be yours, at your own address. A social profile is rented ground, and the people who hire freelancers are looking for something more permanent than that.