If you are looking for somewhere to go tonight, the gig guides below have it and we will send you straight there. If you run a room and want music in it, or you play and want more nights, keep reading. Open Dawn is a Perth booking agency run by a working musician, and this is the honest lay of the land.
We do not run a gig guide, and building one would not help you. These already do it well, and they cover far more of Perth than we ever would.
Perth's long-running music paper. The listings run from pub acoustics through to touring shows.
What is on →Hundreds of Perth gigs listed at any time, filterable by night and by area.
Browse gigs →Better for ticketed shows and touring acts than for the free Friday at your local.
Upcoming shows →Every night Open Dawn books is sent to those guides.
The listing credits the venue and names the act, because a gig nobody knows about is a gig with a thin room. It costs the venue nothing and takes nothing from them, which is the only kind of promotion worth attaching to a booking.
Four rough categories, and they want completely different things from a performer.
Later starts, louder rooms, a crowd that came out for the night rather than for dinner. Bands and high energy sets earn their keep here.
Its own scene with its own regulars, and a crowd that will listen properly. Originals go further in Freo than almost anywhere else in the metro.
Family rooms early, a different crowd after eight. Sunday afternoons matter more here than anywhere, and the wrong volume empties a beer garden fast.
Music sits under the conversation rather than over it. A soloist who can hold a room at low volume is worth more than a band that cannot.
The hard part was never finding a musician. Perth has hundreds.
The hard part is knowing which of them holds your particular room on a particular night, briefing them so the volume and the finish time are right, and having somebody to call when one of them is sick on a Friday afternoon. That is the work, and it is the work Open Dawn takes.
You approve the night. We choose the act for the room, brief them, confirm it in writing, pay them and their super, and send one invoice with a tax invoice for every night. $360 plus GST for a three-hour set, $350 a set when you book two or more nights in the same week, which is $1,040 back over a year on two nights a week and $1,560 on three.
No lock-in, no notice period, no exit fee, and never an invoice for a night that did not happen. One set is a complete booking, so a venue can try the whole thing for the price of one night.
The steps, the prices and the areas we cover, on one page.
Book live music →The full picture: how the app works, how the invoicing runs, what happens when an act pulls out.
See how it works →Some of the musicians we book into Perth rooms week to week.
Meet them →We are always listening for performers who suit rooms we book.
Open Dawn is run by a working musician, so the terms are the ones we would want ourselves: a set fee agreed before the night, no commission taken off the top, paid on a set day each week, and super paid on top rather than absorbed. We brief you properly on the room before you load in, because an act sent in blind is being set up to miss.
If you play covers or originals around Perth and want more nights, get in touch through the contact page and tell us what you play and where you have played it.
The X-Press gig guide and Whatslively both list Perth gigs by night and by area, and Songkick covers the ticketed and touring shows. We do not run a guide of our own, because those already do it better than a booking agency would.
$360 plus GST for a three-hour live set, and $350 a set when you book two or more nights in the same week. That works out $1,040 back over a year on two nights a week and $1,560 on three. The performer brings their own instruments and PA.
The metropolitan area, from Northbridge and the city out to Fremantle, the coast and the northern suburbs, and we travel beyond it for the right booking. Tell us where the room is and you will get a straight answer rather than a maybe.
It depends on the room and the hour more than the genre. A late Northbridge crowd and a Sunday afternoon beer garden want opposite things from the same performer. We match the act to the crowd you actually get, which is the part that decides whether a night works.
Get in touch through the contact page and say what you play and where you have played it. The fee is agreed before the night, no commission comes off the top, you are paid on a set day each week and super is paid on top rather than taken out of the fee.
Call 0491 616 579 or send the form with the venue and the nights you have in mind. You will get a straight answer, and a night you can try.