The deadlines are fast approaching for local and regional bands to submit for two really cool festivals planned for this summer in the Omaha. Both events offer a unique opportunity to get your act in front of lots of eyeballs unfamiliar with your music and overcoming this obstacle is the difference between constantly slogging it out in local clubs for a few dozen fans or scoring better gigs opening for national touring acts, making real money and building a substantial fan base.

The vast majority of bands or solo artists draw less than 75 attendees at shows and that includes all types of music: indie, metal, folk, funk, etc. So, one strategy for artists is to forgo building a local fan base and just hit the road and hope that after achieving some cred on the road Omaha will take notice and start attending the shows. This worked for the first Saddle Creek artists and is still working for some of the newer signees of the label.

Other locals work to score plumb local gigs, an opening slot supporting a national act or a performance slot at a hot local event like Playing With Fire or the Summer Arts Festival where a large chunk of the audience may be unfamiliar with the music with the hope the band might win new fans.

The Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards is sponsoring a Summer Showcase on July 18 at multiple venues in downtown Benson with the desired goal of increasing awareness amongst the public and the voting academy of the amazing array of artists the are offers.

Bands that have been associated with previous OEA events feel strongly that the OEAs have helped them draw more fans and achieve greater success by performing at the OEA Nominee Showcase last December or performing at the main awards show. With new releases due from Conor Oberst, Tilly and the Wall and the Faint, this summer the OEAs believe it is very important to have events that level the playing field, increase awareness to all the great music around here and prevent the same artists from winning year after year.

Deadline to submit is June 9 and details and application can be found at OEA-Awards.com. And, I hope the local indie bands submit because they have a tendency to take the Groucho Marx approach to these types of events – they wouldn’t want to be a part of any club that would have them as a member. Here’s hoping they reconsider.

Tony Lange’s Mid-American Music Festival scheduled for September 3-7 is working towards a different goal. MAMF will also use downtown Benson for the showcases and Lange’s festival adds venues that don’t normally program live music to provide as many live music options as possible.

The hope is to create a legitimate annual Midwest music festival in the same vein as South by Southwest – a chance for area, regional and national acts to showcase themselves for fans and industry professionals in the evenings coupled with daytime seminars that offer substantial information about the business of music.

Tony reports a tremendous amount of submissions thus far and is considering adding more Benson venues to allow for more showcase slots. Hurry, the deadline to apply is the end of May and details can be found at MidAmericanMusicFestival.com.

These two events are exciting for the city because they not only offer more opportunities for local artists to bring their A game in front of music fans but both activities could be marketed by the city as tourist attractions.

If you Google me you’ll find a comment I made to the press about three years ago saying Benson would be the city’s hot spot in about 6 years (from then) and it looks like that’s on track.

OK, Visitors and Convention Bureau, I’m available to free-lance helping to promote the city and I promise not to come up with goofy slogans about red meat.