Our unofficial motto is “we’re a great place on the way somewhere else,” which means we may not be your anchor gig in the Southeast, but we could very well be a great fill-in venue as you travel through the area. Or maybe we could be your anchor gig! Either way, you can see by our list of past performers that we have presented some of the top musicians in the field; we’re proud to say that our standards are high!
We try to book about six months in advance, and usually fail miserably. Six to 18 months in advance is more realistic. We do just 16 shows per year, so there is a lot of interest in a very few slots. We very rarely do shows in December, and sometimes November is left empty as well. We book almost exclusively on Fridays and Thursdays, with Fridays almost always being preferred. We NEVER do Saturday shows in the Fall! College football is a religion in this part of the world; if we tried to compete with football, we would lose. Every time. Yes, even if we book you. No exceptions.
Our “usual deal” is: the performer gets 100% of the door money (and 100% of the merchandise sales, as always.) The usual admission is $25 at the door, $20 in advance, but that’s negotiable. (Don’t ask about those times performers demanded a too-high price and then wondered why the crowd was so small. Better yet, don’t be one of those.) We still offer in-home housing for those who want it (and can sometimes offer a really cool loft space) but if you prefer a hotel, you must pay for it. (We can make a recommendation that no one has complained about yet.) And even if you choose the hotel route, we’ll still offer dinner on the day of the show. (And fair warning: if you want a hotel room during football season, you probably won’t find one with an affordable rate, much less a vacancy, on a Friday.)
Having said all of that, keep in mind that almost nothing is written in stone, and some rules are made to be broken. That doesn’t mean we WILL break them and sometimes we can’t even if we wanted to… but who knows?
For booking information, contact Bailey Jones at baileyjones@mindspring.com (EMAIL is by far the quickest, easiest and most reliable way to contact us!) or 334-741-7169 (though, again, your chances of getting a timely reply increase a thousandfold if you EMAIL instead of telephone), or drop promotional material and sound samples to us at
P.O. Box 3367,
Auburn, AL 36831.
A few things it might be helpful to know:
There are many music styles we present, and many we do not. Every musical style is worthy of being heard somewhere, but for many of them that place is NOT Sundilla. It’s no reflection on you, it’s just not what we do. So no offense to heavy metal groups, rappers, hip hop artists, DJs, EDM bands, but we’re not for you.
And, while we’re in a college town, we don’t draw a college crowd. It’s not that we don’t want to, but we can’t seem to draw students to come to a Sundilla concert. (Yes, they are missing out, but it’s their choice; we can’t even pay them to come.) So if your appeal is strongest among college students, you’re looking in the right city but at the wrong venue.
We know that there are many great musicians who call this area home, and who are perfectly qualified to be booked at Sundilla. But there has always been a strong local music scene, and local musicians have plenty of opportunities to play in Auburn, and their fans have numerous opportunities to see them perform. At Sundilla we strive to bring in the best musicians from other cities, states and countries, musicians who, if not for Sundilla, would rarely if ever play within 100 miles of Auburn. “If you want to see them in Auburn, you’ll have to see them at Sundilla” isn’t all we are about, but it is one of our goals.
That being said, we consider ourselves strong supporters of the local music scene, and local musicians. We love telling people about great shows in the area, as long as they don’t conflict with one of our concerts. We tend to be especially supportive of performers and venues that are supportive of us; that’s just human nature.
We do 16 shows per year, and try to keep our calendar up to date. Some months we’ll do more than one concert, but there are months we won’t do any (December is usually one of those months.) So if you’re looking for a date in February and notice that we already have two shows scheduled for February, the chances of getting booked that month are pretty much zero. Again, no offense; somebody just beat you to it. Please keep trying!
PLEASE READ THIS!!!!>>>> NOTE: Though our shows are held at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall, their phone number is NOT— I repeat, NOT— the contact number for Sundilla! The above number, 334-741-7169, IS the correct number. If you use the AUUF number as the contact number, callers will be connected to a phone that isn’t at the venue, and will talk to someone who is not connected with Sundilla and probably can’t help at all. The same applies to the mailing address for Sundilla. Our mailing address is P.O. Box 3367, Auburn, AL 36831. If you send anything to the venue address, the chances are good that we will never see it. And we do quite a few shows at Pebble Hill, and the same rules apply: their address is NOT our address, and their phone number is NOT our phone number. Just because you want it to be does not make it so.