From carl@vanselman.com Thu Oct 09 09:14:03 2003
Subject:Gigs everywhere

I just saw a post on HAM forum about what the hours are when you gig and what the pay is, or isn't!

I thought this was interesting, I wondered what folk on this forum feel about gig times etc.

I gig four to fourteen times per month depending on the season and almost all my gigs start about 8.30/9.0 pm through to 11.0/11.30. I have the odd late gig going on past midnight but we have a rider that earns extra money if we play after midnight. My band does a lot of functions (weddings/parties) so we do get a chance to specify what we need and have a contract signed before the booking is fixed. I'm, of course in UK and I guess it may be different here but most folk I know in bands are pretty much used to similar kind of gig times/length.

My band is an eight piece, keyboard, guitar, bass drums in the back line, up front are four girls who all sing but three of them also play sax. We have a full time sound man who take the same cut as everyone else.

A typical wedding would get the band £900 ($1350 ish) , this is easy to break down to £100 ($150 ish) per person.

Clubs and bars don't pay so well, typically £200/250 ($300-375) means that my take is about £25-27 ($37-40).

Parties are back up at the £900 mark but we often have to get the PA in early in the afternoon, we then usually play assorted CD's as per requests. For party gigs we often leave the PA and soundman behind at the end of the night who then doubles up and runs a 'disco'.

I'm actually really interested to know how it works in USA?

Carl

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