Thanks for the informative and quick response BizResearcher! Please take a look at our Starting a Business Guide. It has a lot of useful information that can help you get started. Here is the information regarding registering your business. Lastly, please feel free to use Business.gov's Permit Me Tool. By putting in your city/state and type of business, it will generate a list of relevant permits and licenses you need. If anyone has more information, please feel free to add!

You will need to register your band's name, or the name of the business the band is part of, with your state or local agency that registers business names. You will also need to keep careful records of all money collected and paid out to band members. Your state tax or revenue office can tell you whether you have to pay sales tax on services in your state. If so, you will need to obtain a sales tax permit. If you consider the band members to be employees, assuming the same people play each time, then you may be required to withhold Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance from payments to them. If you have different members in the group from time to time, then they might be considered independent contractors. In that case, you will need to provide them with a form 1099MISC at the end of year. The form will indicate the total amount paid to the person throughout the year and they will use it when filing their taxes. You might want to make an appointment with a SCORE counselor or a small business development center counselor to be certain you are covering everything so you don't have any nasty surprises later.