\u201cI told [my fans] that venues want proof, and I don’t have any proof. And I want you guys to be my proof.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pascal Kerong’A<\/p>\n
The 42-year-old had to convince club owners and promoters that people would pay to see him.<\/p>\n
He decided to bet on his fans\u2019 support. He picked a date in early September and created a ticket page on the event platform Luma. He told his followers what he was trying to accomplish and asked them to buy tickets anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them that venues want proof, and I don’t have any proof,” Kerong\u2019A said. “And I want you guys to be my proof.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bandmates and collaborators were skeptical. Someone interested in managing Kerong\u2019A told him bluntly: “You are not Beyonc\u00e9.”<\/p>\n
Kerong’A said he had moments of doubt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was kind of fighting with myself as well,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in the end, I was like, I’m gonna do this. It doesn’t really matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Initiative and resourcefulness<\/p>\n
His fans were receptive, buying 17 tickets in the first week and 30 by the end of the second. At that point, Kerong\u2019A could show venues he had what it takes to draw a crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusic is something that I quit my economics degree and a guaranteed life for,” said Kerong’A, who came from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014 to study at UT Austin. “And so this is it, I’m gonna go for it, just do it my way since nobody is basically giving me that opportunity, I’m going to create my own opportunity.”<\/p>\n
Kerong\u2019A brought his unorthodox show pitch to HowMuch?! Studios, a recording and video production studio that also hosts concerts and private events.<\/p>\n
What stood out to co-owner Paul Chapin was that Kerong’A was not simply asking for a room and hoping an audience would materialize.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people throw shows around town, and they just expect everybody to show up,\u201d he said. \u201cBut this guy, even before he had a venue picked out, he had already had the show in mind. He was already selling tickets and had the vision for how he was going to expand his reach for the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
On top of the initiative and resourcefulness Kerong’A showed, Chapin said, he came across as unusually direct about what he wanted to accomplish. Chapin and co-owner Phil Kegley quickly decided they wanted to be involved, even though the studio might normally hesitate to take on a show like that on short notice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t want to be the guys that skipped on this opportunity,\u201d Chapin said. \u201cWe feel like it’s just as much of an opportunity for us to work with him as it is for him to have a venue here.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘Real data’<\/p>\n
For Zach Ernst, who handles bookings for legendary blues club Antone\u2019s as well as the Paramount and State theaters, Kerong’A\u2019s approach immediately made sense, even though he hadn\u2019t heard of him or his ticket-selling strategy before being told about it during an interview.<\/p>\n
Ernst said Kerong\u2019A\u2019s strategy offered an unusual way to answer one of the central questions facing a booker: Can this artist actually bring paying customers through the door?<\/p>\n
![\"Kerong'A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1790337251_451_.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Pascal Kerong’A<\/p>\n
Kerong’A performs at How Much?! Studios in Central Austin. <\/p>\n
At Antone\u2019s, Ernst said, he often encourages developing musicians to take a traditionally slow night \u2014 typically a Tuesday, Wednesday or Sunday \u2014 and prove they can turn it into something. The expectation is not necessarily a sellout, but evidence the artist can promote the show and build an audience that will show up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I can give you kind of an off night and you can make a thing, I’m not asking you to sell it out,\u201d Ernst said. \u201cI’m asking you to prove that you can kind of hustle and you can get people to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ernst said social-media follower counts or monthly streaming numbers carry less weight for him than tangible evidence of an artist\u2019s ability to attract an audience. He looks at \u201creal data\u201d like where musicians have played, how professionally they communicate and, whenever possible, turnout from previous shows verified by other bookers and club owners.<\/p>\n
Ernst called Kerong\u2019A\u2019s idea clever and said he had not heard of another local artist approaching the problem quite that way.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor him to be building that list organically, selling the tickets himself and all that, is really cool,\u201d Ernst said. \u201cI would have taken that deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
A victory<\/p>\n
Kerong\u2019A said How Much?! Studios charged him $800 to use the concert space, but took no cut of ticket or merchandise sales.<\/p>\n
The singer was still responsible for making the economics of the show work, and the math was tight. At $15 per ticket, 57 advance sales totaled $855 \u2014 barely more than the venue fee before accounting for paying his band or other costs.<\/p>\n
But the experiment did give Kerong\u2019A a documented record of people willing to pay to see him perform originals \u201cMy Goodbyes\u201d<\/a> and \u201cNever Gonna Give Up\u201d<\/a> mixed in with covers like an up-tempo, muscular take on Seal\u2019s \u201cCrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n For Kerong’A, the audience represented much more than a number to put in future booking emails. When he first began selling tickets, he said he would have considered getting more than a handful of fans to turn out as a victory.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I could get between 15 and 20 people to walk through the door to come to this show, that to me would be almost like winning a Grammy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At his first-ever headline concert in Austin, soul-rock singer Pascal Kerong’A showed little trace of jitters as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,101827,154186,574,154187,154188,27,51604,154189,11647],"class_list":["post-447312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-headline","tag-how-much-studios","tag-live-music","tag-luma","tag-pascal-keronga","tag-texas","tag-ticket-sales","tag-unproven-musician","tag-venues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}