Live auctions, and working the room with your auctioneer

Where a live auction loses money

Not during the bidding. Between it.

A lot closes, the room exhales, and thirty seconds of shuffling paperwork later the energy that pushed the last item over its reserve is gone. The next lot opens into a flat room and opens lower. Do that eight times in an evening and the difference is real, even though nobody in the room could tell you when it happened.

That gap is a music problem, and it is the one thing a band is genuinely better placed to fix than anybody else in the building.

What we actually do

• Walk each lot in. Something short and rising as the item comes up, so the room is already leaning forward when the auctioneer starts.
• Hit the close. A sting under the hammer. It marks the moment, and it gives the room permission to make noise.
• Hold the gap. Music under the reset so the silence never arrives.
• Lift the whole room before the big lot. Your auctioneer will tell us which item matters most. That one gets the most setup.
• Give it back cleanly. Every cue ends where the auctioneer wants to talk, not two bars later.

In character, in costume, and out in the crowd

We do this in character and in costume, as the racing drivers the band’s name plays on, and we work the film’s lines into the night rather than treating the costume as something to be photographed and forgotten.

The practical part is the wireless microphones. We are not stuck behind the PA: we can be in the aisles, at the tables, next to the person who is one bid from winning, and pull the room into it. A gala audience that has sat through a seated programme for ninety minutes responds to a person arriving at their table far more than to a voice from a stage.

Played straight for the length of the night, not as a gag that wears off after one song. If your event is black tie and you would rather we were not in costume, say so and we will dress the part instead. It is a choice, not a condition.

Your auctioneer runs the auction

Worth being exact, because it is a licensing question rather than a modesty one. Conducting an auction in Texas requires a licence. We do not hold one, we do not call lots, and we do not take bids. That is the auctioneer’s profession and we stay out of it.

What we are is the rest of the room. We are glad to work with whoever you hire, and we would much rather speak to them a week out than meet them at the door. Ten minutes on which lots are the big ones, where the breaks fall and how they like to be handed the room is usually all it takes.

If you have not booked an auctioneer yet, hire a licensed one. It is a regulated profession in Texas and the good ones raise more than they cost.

Working with the professionals you have already hired

A gala usually arrives with an auctioneer and a host already booked, and the useful question is whether the band makes their job easier or harder. We are the easy vendor to work with here, and this is what that means in practice.

• Your auctioneer runs the bidding. That is their licence and their job. We play the lots in and out and hold the room between items, and we never touch the auction itself.
• Your MC runs the programme. We work to their running order rather than our own, and they can cue us mid-set. We bring the song down, they make the announcement, and we come back in.
• We start and stop exactly on the cue. Not two bars later. A gala runs to a clock that somebody else is holding, and a band that finishes when it feels like finishing is the problem in the room.
• If you have no MC, we cover the announcements. Both frontmen share the microphone. That covers the announcements, and it is a smaller job than hosting a long programme.

The sound is up long before the auction, and it is ours

We bring a full PA and stage lighting and set up early, so the system carrying your auctioneer is the same one that carried the welcome, the speakers and the dinner music. Nothing gets handed over mid-programme and nobody discovers a feedback problem at the moment the biggest lot opens.

That matters most for the auction itself. Your auctioneer needs a microphone that reaches the back of the room at the moment the bidding gets quiet, and a paddle raised at the far table has to be seen and heard. Where we are booked as the band, that system is already in the room and already set, so it costs you nothing extra and there is no second vendor to coordinate. Speakers, wireless microphones for the programme, and lighting on whoever is talking.

The rest of the night

An auction is usually the middle of a gala, not the whole of it. We cover the arrival and dinner stretch acoustically, the programme and the awards, and then a full dance set once the paddles are down and people want to stop being an audience. That side is on the corporate events and galas page.

What we need from you

1. The run of show, and how many lots.
2. Who your auctioneer is, and permission to talk to them beforehand.
3. Which lot is the one that matters.
4. Whether the venue lets us load in early enough to have the sound up before doors.
5. Whether costume is right for your room, or whether you want us in black tie.

Announcements, and music that never stops

Both frontmen share the microphone, so the person making an announcement is not the person who has to count off the next song. It is a difference in structure rather than a claim about talent, and it is the reason the room does not stall between items while somebody finds their place.

The PA is ours and it runs the whole event, not only the sets. Recorded music as guests arrive, through dinner, and in the gaps between sets, then the band. It is a laptop through our own system rather than a turntablist, and we would rather say that plainly than dress it up.

What plays and when is your call. Send a list and we will run it, or tell us the feeling you want in the room and leave it with us. If you have booked your own DJ or a dedicated host, we work to them instead and put them on our system.

Common questions