Musician v Publican

Part 78

   Lets talk about gigs for a bit. We all love going to good gigs, we love playing gigs. In fact, that definitely is the reason I became a musician in the first place and it really should be a big driving force behind every musician. I have come across few blog posts about the subject of promoters and venue owners expectations on musicians. My mind is bit divided here... The argument in general is that the venue expects you to play for very little money and expect the artist to bring in a crowd. This is something I am sure every musician have had a bit of a reality check about. Of course your friends and family will come to support you in the beginning, but if you are playing your fourth mid week gig in a month and most of your friends need to get up to go to work in the morning... Sooner or later you will run out of friends to drag out. And lets face it, none of us goes out as much as we used to do. So the argument on the musicians side is that it is the promoters/ venues job to bring in the crowd. They should advertise the concert, stick up posters, hand out fliers, spend half of their day posting stuff up on Facebook. Yeah, that sounds nice to me, but at the same time, I have played long enough in bars and clubs to know that running a bar is a full time job. And so is being a promoter of a venue that has music most nights of the week. What we are left with is blame game, musicians blame the venues and the venues blame the musician. So who's right? Well... neither. Both are hugely misinformed. There are several small venues around me that specializes in entertaining tourists. Yep I live in the tourist strip;-) And i would say there is at least 15 venues in a square kilometer around me, that all fight for a slice of the same pie. I have been in a middle of it for over 15 years now and talked to several bar owners, heard their expectations and in my foolish youth actually tried to live up to their expectations. Now I am glad to say those days are long gone;-) The bar owners really suffer from a bad case of “the grass is always greener on the other side”. The ones who expect bands to bring in the crowd, usually are the ones who eventually decide music is not for their bar and turn on the socker. What they should be concentrating is, how well the musicians can hold on to the crowd that manages to walk in to the bar. Once the owner recognize this big difference, they are on to something. Then there are the occasional mad ones, who have some of the busiest bars in town, and they end up running around the bar blaming musicians that their bar is not full three a clock in the afternoon... You might think I am joking, but I am not, that really did happen... And once a while you have the ones who know what it is about. They get quality music in, make it regular thing. You see people are creatures of habit, they like to wonder in to a bar where they know they will hear good music. These are the ones who have regular customers all year around, and tourists queuing in year after year. These are the ones, who have my respect, and if they are stuck last minute, I will drop everything and help them out. Oh nearly forgot, then there is one more type. The cheapskates ;-) They go for the cheapest and usually worst musician they can get, and wonder why people are running out of their bar... Well, we'll leave them alone.
  Now as to the musicians. We expect to just turn up and play and that should be enough, right? Well... not exactly. Our work is to play a great show and no matter what goes wrong around us, do it with a smile on your face. Be professional, and by this I mean, set up in time, sound check discretely if you play in a bar that is open during the day. Start your set on time and stick to the schedule. Make sure you have all your equipment, spare strings, sticks etc. And work with the crowd. Now these are obviously very specific type gigs, and when it comes to independent music in our dear old Dublin, things change a lot. You are very lucky if you get paid. But I still think that traffic stopping blinder of a show is something that will get you there eventually. You see, your act needs to have value, and that value needs to stand past the point of dragging your friends to see you night after night. Once you have that great show, you will start to build following and filling venues and venue owners will start calling you. And let me just say here, we have handful of great venues here in Dublin that genuinely support the local independent and underground scene. And I am glad to say, it seems like these venues are being rewarded for their efforts.
  I'll leave you with the third part, the promoter. Good promoter is worth its weight in cold! They know what works, and eventually build the venues reputation to the point where they can take risks, and people will come. But this does take years of work and most promoters quit before they get that far. I don't blame them though, as they usually end up getting crap from the bands and the venue owners... So what if instead of blaming each others every one would work together trying to figure out ways to get people in to the gigs? Now there's a fresh thought, lets think about it and come back to it later:-) And let me just say, this is a musicians point of view, I'm sure the venue owners and promoters have their own.
   JPKALLIO.COM 4th of April in the Sweeney's, hope to see you there.
     
     J.P.