From jake92028@yahoo.com Mon Oct 18 03:40:31 2004
Subject:Re: Up All Night


Most of our gigs are 8-12pm and we take breaks depending on the
crowd. If they're just having a good time and paying as much
attention to each other as the band, we'll break about 3 times for 15
minutes or so. If they're paying attention to the band and really
listening, we'll play for 2 1/2 hours straight, take a 15 minute
break and come back for an encore of our best and most requested
songs. None of the band seems to get tired, kind-of like everyone's
endorphin level goes up as feedback to the positive reaction of the
crowd. I grew up and started playing in California with bar/live band
hours 9-2am, 5-6 nights a week; then worked a few years in Nevada
where some of our gigs were midnight until 6am, 30 minutes on, 30
minutes off swapping sets (and some gear) with another band. The
other Nevada stuff was usually three 45 minutes to an hour long sets
with varying breaks in between depending on whether you were
headlining that particular venue versus sharing or opening with/for
someone else. I also worked Hawaii off and on for a couple of years;
all the big clubs had cabaret hours = open until 4am, liquor stopped
at 2am. We played five sets 45 minutes on, 15 minutes off until 1:45,
took a half hour break while they herded all the customers out and
cleared away all the liquor before letting them back in. Then we
played one long set from about 2:15 to a bit past 3:30 when they
started clearing out the drunks first before the okay customers had
to leave by 4am. In Southern California now, except for the bigger
cities, it's either one band late afternoon to early evening then a
second band until 11-12pm or just one band doing a straight 8-12pm
with breaks pretty much up to the band as long as they're not abused.
The 8-12pm hours are fine with me now, but I could play later.
Believe it or not, the tips with a bar crowd are often as much as, or
more than the pay. Walter j