Gig canceled POST-setup

[B3bluesman59]

If they pull this again with a signed contract, they can be taken to small claims court, and there will be no problem collecting -- then never playing (or eating, drinking, hanging out) there again

________________________________________________________________

Even getting a judgement in small claims court does not guarantee that you will get paid. Some of these club guys know every trick in the book to keep from paying. And you will end up spinning your wheels for a long time to come. I use a signed contract for every gig I play, mostly private country clubs and private parties and ask for 50% upfront for the private party gigs. The country clubs have never been a problem....I use the contract just as a reference point for starting time, venue, whether food/drinks are included in the gig,any special request for the gig,etc. A contract puts everyone on the same page for the details.

[Josh Paxton]

Wow FunKey, that is a crazy story.

 

Unfortunately it was pretty much par for the course for that band. They set the benchmark of bullshit and stupidity by which all other stupid bullshit bands and gigs in my life have been judged. While a few have been in the ballpark, to date none have matched them.

 

The guy told you everything was on and then miraculously events unfolded such that they cancelled? And didn't tell you?

 

I'm sure the "miraculous events" were simply that the Imbeciles couldn't get it together to get on the road in time. Making this determination only after a four-hour delay was entirely consistent with the way Dicktard thought and operated.

 

If you're talking to them at ALL anymore you're a better person than I.

 

I didn't until two or three years later, when Dicktard was desperate enough to call me for a gig. I sat politely through his spiel, then asked what the gig paid. He named a figure. I said I'd do it for X amount more -- X being the amount I determined he owed me from the previous experience. He caved, and I did the gig. But as I grew older and wiser, I decided that no amount of money (at least none that he could pay me) was worth dealing with him, and I haven't worked with him since.

 

At some point after my stint with that band, a humor magazine was soliciting submissions for "open letters" to whomever you might feel like writing one to. So I wrote one to him, based on the experiences of my first road trip with that band. (The fact that there was even a second one tells you how young and green I was at the time.) It didn't get published, but maybe this crowd will appreciate it:

 

-----

 

To the guy who managed that one band I used to play with:

 

If you hire musicians from New Orleans for a gig in Boston, under the premise that you're going to fly them there and back, then make sure to get the airline tickets well in advance. Don't wait around until they're sold out, and then call everyone three days before the gig and say, "We have to drive, we're leaving tomorrow morning at ten."

 

If you find yourself unexpectedly having to drive to a faraway gig because you couldn't get airline tickets (though I don't know what else you expected when you waited until three days beforehand to try and get them), then use the money allotted for the tickets to rent enough vehicles and hire enough drivers that the band can at least travel in marginal comfort. Do not cram fourteen people into one fifteen-passenger van and split the driving between yourself and your half-wit brother.

 

If you're going on an absurdly long road trip with fourteen people crammed into one van, and you tell everyone you're leaving at ten in the morning, then for chrissakes, leave by, say, eleven or noon. Not six in the evening.

 

If you've left eight hours late for a ridiculously long road trip, then explain to your thirteen passengers that if there is to be any hope of stopping at a motel on the way, you need to make up for lost time and drive as efficiently as possible. Do not spend fifteen minutes out of every hour stopped at a gas station because somebody wants another bag of pork skins.

 

If you've been on the road for twenty-seven hours without stopping at a motel because you've spent a total of seven of those hours stopped at gas stations for somebody to get another bag of pork skins, then do not insult the band by telling them it's only three more hours to Boston when you've just passed the "Welcome to Baltimore" sign. A few of them will probably have some concept of geography and math, and may call you on it.

 

If you've spent thirty-six friggin' hours driving nonstop (except for the nine hours of gas station breaks) from New Orleans to Boston with fourteen people crammed into one van because you couldn't be bothered to get off your fat ass and get the airline tickets that we know damn well the promoter paid you for, and the band has checked into the hotel but has to go immediately to the gig without so much as a shower because you're running so late, then for the love of the deity you keep invoking to deflect attention away from your own astounding lack of competence, make good and goddamn sure you've got directions from the hotel to the venue. Do NOT make the band late for the gig by turning what should be a fifteen-minute drive into a two-hour exercise in human stupidity because you're too much of an imbecile to get or understand simple directions.

 

If you're not only unable to accomplish any of the above on the way to the gig, but you also turn around and make the return trip into a virtual replay of the same nightmare, then understand that certain members of the band may be upset about the situation by the time you get home. The best response to this is to think about what is upsetting them, and consider the possibility that their reaction might be at least somewhat justified, and maybe give some thought to how you can avoid such a scenario in the future. The proper response is not to simply decide that they must have lost their mind, and therefore need to be fired from the next gig with two hours notice.

 

If this is not merely a description of an exceptional one-time incident, but in fact a completely representative example of the way you run your band, and you see nothing wrong with it and no reason to change it... well then, what more can I say? Just keep driving around town in that awful, gaudy, ghetto-status-symbol car you paid for with the exploitation of other people's talent, and continue to be the most widely disliked human being I personally know.

 

---------

 

If the end sounds a little bitter, yeah, I was at the time. But now after years of that individual's absence, I'm feeling much better.

[MonksDream]

Wow, FKS! Just...wow!

[MonksDream]

the sponsor had seen, not heard, our setup and thought it LOOKED too loud and that they wanted us to tear down

 

Was the sponsor a

by any chance?

LOL!! Not that I recall but they are definitely cut from the same cloth!

[Moonglow]

All of a sudden the bar manager comes over and.....he told us that our missing guitar player just called and was on his sailboat and completely forgot about the gig..

In our case, our guitar man was in jail! Fortunately, the bar owner agreed to pay us in advance (there were a few hundred people already at the venue....), which we used to bail the dude out of jail. Our drummer and I had to go to the jail in full band attire (think: long hair, Spandex, chains, etc.)....man did we ever receive a variety of disparaging looks. IIRC, we made it back to the gig and didn't start all that late.

 

[Michael Wright]

"Hi, I'm the keyboard player with Dicktard and the Imbeciles*."

 

Small World!! I think I worked for them too!

[HammondDave]

You could always use this rider... GREAT WHITE RIDER

 

Amazing that the rider covered everything... well... almost.

[kanker.]

All of a sudden the bar manager comes over and.....he told us that our missing guitar player just called and was on his sailboat and completely forgot about the gig..

In our case, our guitar man was in jail! Fortunately, the bar owner agreed to pay us in advance (there were a few hundred people already at the venue....), which we used to bail the dude out of jail. Our drummer and I had to go to the jail in full band attire (think: long hair, Spandex, chains, etc.)....man did we ever receive a variety of disparaging looks. IIRC, we made it back to the gig and didn't start all that late.

I just got back from playing in the house band for a jazz jam session where the bass player didn't show up, and with the Super Bowl in town, everyone else you'd want to play was working. Organ time - with every non-playing drummer you can imagine. No bass players showed up to sit in. LONG night....