Free gigs

[MusicWorkz]

Remember this phrase, especially in this day and age: "Music money is slow money..."

 

Unless you and your friend are child prodigies, you don't have the talent or reputation to have the majority of your gigs paid. It doesn't change much for you as an adult-you will still have to develop your talent and your reputation. That only gets developed by...gigging.

 

And unless you live in an area with live venues and opportunities that can support paying full bands, you WILL play lots of free gigs. The more you gig in front of people, the better your talent gets and the larger your reputation grows for delivering a good performance.

 

Work hard and you'll get to the point where you can get paid. But NEVER lose the desire to create and play music for the art and love of it..even when you are getting paid, otherwise it becomes...just another job.

[frogmonkey]

Lots of good replies in this thread! David Pierce's post reminds me of a funny saying "The music is free; it's the shipping and handling you have to pay for".

 

Yesterday I played at a private party. It was a going away party for a kid who is joining the army. The hostess (his mother) is a single mom with two jobs. I offered her our lowest, discounted rate at the beginning of our negotiations and she hired us, though it was clearly a lot of money for her. All day I felt guilty about charging her so much money-- when she paid us I tried to give her some money back, but she wouldn't accept. I still felt bad, until I got home at the end of the day, exhausted after packing and loading and hauling and unloading and setting up and playing and playing and playing and breaking down and packing and loading and hauling and unloading. I earned my pay, and the ache in my back was a reminder!

 

I couldn't afford to hire us. When I got married, I talked my own band into playing for free, with a friend subbing on keys I'll play a private party for free sometimes if they're nice and don't have any money. I like to play. We quote a pretty high price to begin with, but we mention that we can work with their budget.

 

OTOH, last weekend the hosts of the private party cried poor, and we lowered our rate. We gave them the same rate we gave the single mom with two jobs. When we got to the party, it was a lavish new post-and-beam house on a hill with copper gutters, a slate roof, meticulously kept grounds. There was a caterer and a bartender and a lot of money being spent. Rich. I was pissed.

 

Oops I'm drifting... My advice to you would be to play as much as you can and worry about getting paid later.

[B3_borne]

burningbusch said: It's really too bad that kids today don't have the opportunities for gigging that were abundant 35 - 40 years ago. In HS, I was in a very popular band. We played every weekend, often both Friday and Saturday.

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My five piece band in the early 60s when we were still in school was playing 125 gigs or more per year...every Friday, Saturday, and holiday night during the school year and we worked 3 or 4 gigs a week during summer vacation. Never worked for less than $150 and most of the time were making $250 or more. That would be the same as $600 to $1000 per night now.

 

Yea ... same here ... but that was another time, with AM radio and Hi-Fi record players. If you wanted to hear good music you had to see it live.

 

Now we have iPods, the internet, free music and cheap kick-ass surround sound, nobody want to get off the couch or pay for anything it seems

[Joe Muscara]

Just because you don't get paid money for a gig doesn't mean there isn't some sort of compensation or reward involved, either.

 

You have to smartly weigh those aspects. There's a lot of "free gig but it's good exposure" BS out there, but in some cases, it's not BS and there's something for you to gain.

[Eric Iverson]

One key factor in whether, or how much, you get paid is:

 

how much of your income depends on gigging?

 

I have a day job, so going to play at church for free is not an issue. Would I play in bars for free? Maybe, but I'd sure prefer to get a few bucks for it, at least!

 

The bar thing would depend on how OFTEN it was. Would I go play at a bar with friends for free, for fun, every 6 months or so? Probably would, unless it was a long drive or I had to lug my equipment up ten flights of stairs... something like that. Would I play at a bar 5 nights a week for free?

 

No way Jose! Because the novelty wears off and you begin to get tired of lugging equipment around, and the expense of maintaining your equipment and travel etc. etc.

 

Would I play at church 5 nights a week for free? I doubt it very much; but they seem happy to have my services free on Sundays - and if I need to take a Sunday off, no one complains too much. (They better NOT....)

[clpete]

I have played a few free gigs over the years and done them without regret. They were either weddings for band mates family or a good cause. About 5 years ago I talked a band into playing a small bar for burgers and beer, but it was a one time deal. We get offers to play festivals every year for free and turn them down. Free publicity is pretty much worthless. In my experience you may get one gig from the exposure. So you played two gigs for the price of one and the free gig is usually more work than the paying gigs.

 

I was recently working out of state and expected to be there for at least 6 months. I took my keyboards and one EON just in case I found a gig. I found an add on Craig list saying they desperately needed a keyboard player right now. Of course, I assumed that if they needed a player now they must have gigs. So I e-mailed them and didnt get a response. A week later I e-mailed again and they got back with me.

 

The contact was the drummer who went on to tell how good they were. He told me that the guitar player and himself new 500 songs and had played together for years in another state. He said they didnt have any paying gigs coming up but they had two really great exposure gigs coming up in about a month. One was a grand opening at an assisted living center and the other was a cancer benefit. He said once we did those everyone would be calling them. I told him to go ahead and e-mail me their list and I would come and audition at their next practice. Then I told him that the free gigs were not going to give them any exposure for paying gigs. I told him that I had played my share of free gigs and they do not pay off, but I will be willing to play them if we click. I figured if they were as half good as they say I could get them a paying gig.

 

I dont think he appreciated me disagreeing with the benefits of playing exposure gigs. I never got the set list. Oh well, Im back home early and got hired in a new band with paying gigs.

 

[DanS]

"The music is free; it's the shipping and handling you have to pay for".

 

Excellent!!