Author Topic: Bars and Bands (Read 113 times)

flaxattack · « **on:** May 28, 2008, 07:12:19 AM »

When i was younger so much younger than today...
i went to my bar. The bar had its own following. People would come hang out,drink, maybe sneak out to the parking lot to smoke a joint and have a good time. If the bar threw in some music fine and dandy.
Now that i am older and playing out in Ct; it seems that the band coming to play is supposed to almost required to fill the joint with people. Well if you are a classic cover band then your age group is in the 50s and those people typically dont hang out past 10 o'clock when the band first goes on for the most part.
As the case saturday night with my first gig with the new band. The place was pretty empty. Holiday weekend whatever. Well half way through the second set the barmaid called the lead singer over. then the drummer went downstairs. after a few minutes came back up and said we were done for the night since the place was empty and the owner did not want to pay us for the full night. So we got half our pay and left.
Its a catch 22- if you bitch for your money you arent coming back. Not that i would want to anyway.The owner was also not happy that the bass player i replaced was no longer in the band as apparently he would bring in people for dinner. We all know the economy sucks and one of the first things to cut back on is paying 10bucks for a burger if you catch my drift.
So my question is- when did the game change?
You own a bar- if you cant bring people in to pack the joint you shouldnt be in business. When did it become the bands job to supply the patrons?
i realize that one might expect some friends to show up but......
This buttscrew left us wondering if the tunes we play are wrong, if we are approaching things the wrong way etc. i was tempted to see how the old band was doing as they were playing nearby but my logical side said why bother. its over with them
ok i am venting... thanks

keith_h · « **Reply #1 on:** May 28, 2008, 07:49:55 AM »

It's been going on for a while now. It's even to the point around here where some bars want you to come in and play for free (or a tip jar) on the promise that they will pay you for future gigs if you bring in people. Don't know if it still this way but at one point it was common for club owners in LA and NYC to say Here are the tickets to your show. Now go out and sell them. It was up to you to promote your show and sell your tickets. Thank goodness they haven't gotten to that point here.

In discussion I've had with local folks I think it is the club owners knowing there are lots of middle aged boomers who will do just about anything to play out. So why pay? It really does make things hard for the professionals and serious semi-pro's. It really has become a large area for arguments down here and suppresses pay. As a result I know a number of folks that have dropped out of the club scene to go the corporate and festival route.

Keith

2400wattman · « **Reply #2 on:** May 28, 2008, 07:53:24 AM »

Thanks to the drinking age, thanks to Kurt Cobain and thanks to bar owners/managers. However with the current state of mind of average 18-20 year olds the drinking age should be raised to 25! Nirvana and the rest of those bands was the nail on the coffin for the majority of clubs lack of attendance simply because nobody wanted to hear that crap! Bar owner/managers as a whole DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON ADVERTISING and therefore an empty room is all your fault....ya right. If you live locally you should at least put up flyers in the club and on cars two weekends before you play but radio should be done by the club. Now I did live and play up north for about 5 years and what I noticed about the bar scene up there is that none of them did radio ads. They were mostly local-neighborhood bars where only the folk of that area would frequent. If a bar was more than a 10 minute drive from home it was'nt close enough.
I guess what I'm getting at is you should'nt expect too much out of that enviroment but if you start doing well, get someone you really trust to take cover charge at the door and not their guy.

bsee · « **Reply #3 on:** May 28, 2008, 07:54:24 AM »

The purpose of a band in a bar is to draw people in and to keep the people who wander in from leaving. Some places will pay you a flat rate, some will charge a cover and pay you from that. These have been the rules in the game around here for at least the past 20 years or so. I couldn't tell you what went on before that.

Yeah, bars have their regulars. They probably have them whether you show up to play or not, so why pay a band if that's all you're getting? We've seen the occasional place where some of the regulars aren't into the music and might not stay as long on nights we play. If you do that to a bar, you better bring in a bunch of people to replace the regular that left early.

The first time or two you play a new place, you better draw your own crowd if you want to keep coming back. We would have loved to play every Friday, but instead only played at each of four places once every other month so we didn't wear out the fans we had in each area. Once we had been playing a place for a few months, we could get away with a slow night here or there without the kind of thing you had. With the exception of a holiday or bad weather, we had very few slow nights since we would turn the local regulars in each bar into fans who would show up and bring friends when we were coming back. Once this kicked in, we didn't have to worry so much about getting our personal friends to show up.

I always thought of it as playing for free and getting paid to move my gear around. Playing only half the night isn't half the work of playing the whole night, so half the pay isn't fair. It may be what happens, and it may be what you gracefully accept if you want to play there again. My band enjoyed playing so much that we would have stayed the rest of the night for the half pay. On the other hand, if we packed a place in pretty well, we would also get the occasional $20-50 a man on top of our promised pay as a bonus. We also played for bar owners who worked in their places and really enjoyed the music, so that helped a lot.

In this case, it sounds like this band has played there before on some number of occasions. Has this ever happened to them before?

gtrguy · « **Reply #4 on:** May 28, 2008, 09:54:17 AM »

It's a tough one. You can balance it out by realizing that corporate events pay $1200 to $2500 because they have no clue what's going on in the bars.

Around here the pros are hurting and moaning about it when the casual bands take away gigs. However, it's a market. Bands are there to sell booze and door amounts for clubs and when they figure that out, it works better. Also, it's amazing how many bands still don't understand that they need to play what the crowd wants to hear. It's really not about musical excellence, it's about entertaining the crowd.
Dave

ivartshiva · « **Reply #5 on:** May 28, 2008, 01:02:47 PM »

Friends: This is an interesting thread. I?ve experienced the early-home dismissal a few times, and I?ve thought a lot about these issues: pleasing the bar-owner, drawing a crowd, creating a following, playing to the crowd vs. playing what moves you/the band, figuring how drinking age and law enforcement affects people going out to hear bands, and competing with other forms of entertainment.

For myself, I only go to a bar to hear a band that interests me, ?cause I don?t drink and because I?m a musician and I want to check them out. Law enforcement is not an issue to me ?cause I?m sober and I don?t go out to meet with friends, chase women (thankfully) or to aimlessly hang out (life?s too short). I?m old but I?ll stay out late to hear someone I really love. But I think I?m not your typically bar-going drinking dancing fool. I don?t know what motivates them, and they?re probably different in this college town as opposed to say, a non-college town in the Midwest, a big city on either coast, or any touristy type place where people are throwing money around as part of a vacation extravaganza. All those demographics seem to come into play, as well as the type of bar you?re playing in. Try an extended psychedelic version of ?Born on the Bayou? in a VFW hall and watch what happens ? we did!

We?ve been trying to float a roots reggae/dub outfit in a college town that has decades of support for jam bands, psychedelic and eclectic music, and have done much better than in the classic rock format I played for years with another band. Maybe we sucked, but those classic rock fans were usually casual music listeners out more to drink, dance and pick up women than to take a musical journey of spiritual introspection and political awareness. Ahem? well so we hope. Our best gig yet as the reggae band was in the basement of a University of Vermont dormitory called Slade Hall (once again a venue made famous by Phish) for the crunchiest dreadlockiest bunch of underage college students I?ve ever played for, but who really liked our music, I mean they were really into it. We had to take the music to them, and of course played for free. Similarly, we?ve had our most fun playing reggae festivals, where we are losing money but playing for the faithful (like a bluegrass or blues festival would do, draw the fans of that genre).

Conclusion: 1) Always play only what you love, how else can you give 100%? 2) Bring the music to the people that want it, rather than expect them to come find you (and have to pay for it to boot); 3) Forget about playing live for any decent amount of money, make recordings and sell them by the mp3 on the internet if you want to make money.

Probably a lot of pros on this board, how do they make ends meet? I haven?t a clue?

Michael

mike1762 · « **Reply #6 on:** May 28, 2008, 02:25:14 PM »

My bands were (for the most part) trying to promote our original music. THAT was always a tough sell for bars. There were a few concert venues around Atlanta where up and coming (or up and going nowhere!!!) bands could play. We would often get a token amount for these shows, but towards the end of my career I experienced the phenomena that Keith spoke of. We handled it by:
a) Play covers at a bar for pay
b) Then book a show at a concert venue
c) Buy all the tickets with the proceeds from the cover gig
d) Give away the tickets to our concert
e) Play our own music (which was all we wanted to do)

I think I grossed about $0.33 from 12 years in the music business. I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

hb3 · « **Reply #7 on:** May 28, 2008, 02:34:57 PM »

Re: pay-to-play in LA.

It's back. Big time.

dadabass2001 · « **Reply #8 on:** May 28, 2008, 05:14:47 PM »

Yep, around Chicago as well. I also think clubs are suffering because of Illinois' smoking ban, three of the larger clubs in DuPage County have gone belly up recently.
Mike

kmh364 · « **Reply #9 on:** May 29, 2008, 10:35:21 AM »

If you wanna play the infamous Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ you can...but you gotta sell the tix. I wonder if Bruce had to sell his own too?

mike1762 · « **Reply #10 on:** May 29, 2008, 12:42:55 PM »

I guess I'm lucky in that I get my fix from writing and recording. Although I enjoyed the years I spent playing out, the aggravation and hassles that go along with it make me content to sit in my studio and doodle.

gtrguy · « **Reply #11 on:** May 30, 2008, 09:37:09 AM »

There is a great online book titled Cover Band 101. that I bought. It was the best $20 spent on the music business that I have ever done. I play in a cover band and love it! I like watching people enjoy themselves and dance. I am not into wowing them with my talent or anything. However, we all play for differant reasons.

I find that making a band work requires another whole area of knowledge that is interesting and a challenge. But - I do not make my living with it. The pros I know around here are looking pretty worn around the edges lately.

Some of the places we play already have a crowd. Some expect you to bring your own. After a while we have settled on playing clubs we like to play where the crowd likes our stuff. We also do as many corporate gigs as possible.

I have seen musicians around here make fun of cover bands as well. All I can say to them is try making one work before you laugh. It's not easy and it's not always about the music or talent involved that leads to success. You have all seen the 'shredder hero' at the local Guitar Center jamming away like mad and wondered why he/she has to do their gigging in a music store to get a crowd.

Hard work and patience for me, coupled with realistic expectations of what I can do.

ivartshiva · « **Reply #12 on:** June 03, 2008, 01:52:25 PM »

Very sane post, David - Thanks for the lead. Some of those Complete Idiot's Guide to... books are excellent too (on other topics), if I can set aside my ego enough to get past the title. Sounds like you've come to grips with that issue pretty well.

Michael