Back in 1998 I formed my first band. We had a set of material and a gig offer on the table. We didn’t have a band name and couldn’t think of one to save our lives. So we booked the gig anyway put suggestion cards on the tables and bar. We plugged it as a “come on down and name our band” event.

My hair was bright red at the time. I was adamant that I did not want a reference to my hair color in the band name. There were already other female fronted bands with red headed singers that already did that.

Until someone came up with the name Edible Red. At first I didn’t want to go with it for reasons mentioned above. But it was catchy and rolled off the tongue. It was a little racy, but women overall loved the name… so we went with it! I had that band for ten years… we toured internationally, made all kinds of merch, got a record deal, got a couple songs added to Touchtunes Jukeboxes and had our ten minutes of fame on MTV which ended as quickly as it began.

We later changed it to edibleRed. It was a great band, but I firmly believe if we had gone with some of the other choices that night the band wouldn’t have gone as far as it did. The name was memorable, marketable and not at all our idea.

Try it if all else fails. Book a gig. Put suggestion cards out on the table. Let someone else name your band. It’s a good reason to coax your friends out to a gig.