OT: Being asked to waive fee to play benefit event.. Grrr!!

[drawback]

I don't know whether it's been mentioned before, but a band I was in back in the 80s used to discount ourselves if one of us believed in a charity or in some cases, wanted to help the event (wedding, birthday) out.

 

We discounted our rate by 25%, the benevolent band member played for free, and the other three got paid normally.

 

We did an annual fund-raiser NYE event where we made the deal to include spouses and ourselves for the meal, had a lengthy break at midnight, got paid the regular NYE rate, then each of us donated half of it back to the charity for a tax donation. All on the books, win-win.

 

 

[Phred]

I have two quick storied about this:

1) The singer in my band got his old band from the 60's back together for a benefit concert / local bands from the 60's reunion show. His old keyboard player is no longer with us, so he asked if I would fill in. He was pretty desperate so I said yes, even though it was an unpaid night (for a charity I can't recall). About a week before the show, the event organizer emails 'reminding' us that because there were so many bands, that we all had to buy our own tickets to play at the event. !!! Two days later a followup email was sent saying that we no longer had to buy our own tickets, and that they were sorry for the confusion.

 

2) An acquaintance of mine asked my band to play a charity event of his for free. I talked it over with my band, and they said ok. It was a pretty big hall and I mentioned to the guy that our PA wouldn't likely fill the hall, but we could play to the dance floor, and the back of the room would be able to talk etc He was totally fine with that, and all was good. A few days later he shoots me an email saying that a DJ (a good friend of his with a couple iPods) was going to split the night with us and we would do 2 sets instead of 3. The DJ also wanted to use our PA gear because he doesn't have his own. hhmmm (This is where it gets interesting) However, the DJ is concerned that our PA isn't loud enough for him to fill the hall and wondered if we could bring a 'few more speakers' to place around the hall to fill in the sound. At this point I was still trying to make something work (young and naive I guess), and we were exchanging emails back and forth. Well they accidentally sent me an email chain that was originally only between the DJ and the organizer. The DJ said something like, "This guy (referring to me) is being a pain in the a$$, it's hardly worth the $100 that you are paying me". That's when I finally bailed.

[Baldwin Funster]

Yeah the share your PA thing. My band at the time played an Ohio Pumpkin festival where we brought our PA . Turns out they wanted to have a chaw spitting contest and hog hollering contest before our sets. I was sicker than any gig I ever played but that's a different story. It was bad enough that tobacca spitters were using our mics (not my personal ones I assure you) but the Hog callers were yelling at the top of the lungs through our PA cabs (not my personal ones I assure you) without a limiter for protection. The quickly toasted the horns on my bass players JBLs which sounded like hell for months thereafter until I nicely bought him a couple of diaphragms and showed him how to replace them. Never share the PA with farmers at a fruit/vegetable festival, you will regret it.

[nadroj]

Every charity gig we've played, we've got at least 3+ well paid gigs from, not to mention all the food/drink we can have on most occasions. We don't do many - mainly annual events that we're asked back to every year. We have one in a couple of weeks, and I'm looking forward to it, even in this dry winter spell where we've only got 1 gig every two weeks or so.

 

I suppose it also depends on how busy you are - we don't mind free gigs now because we know that when April comes that'll be us out every week until November.

 

Different strokes though, and I suppose if you've been at the game a while, playing anything for free is a bit more than an inconvenience.