there seems to be alot of discussion of late bordering on the pecuniary.
i sat in a session the other night with
1 x banjo player with 08 years experience, and £900 hardware
1 x banjo player with 20 years experience and £1300 hardware
1 x fiddle/box player 10 years experience and £3500 hardware
1 x bodran player with 1 x large bag of mints
1 x fiddle player with 5 years experience and £500 hardware
1 x bouzouki/mandolin player with 7 years experience and £1500 hardware
1 x singer, you do the maths
1 x guitarist with 20 years experience and £1500 hardware
elbow pipes player, 4 years experience and ive no idea what theyre worth, lets say a grand.
this gives us 70+ years of experience and over £10,000 of hardware.
dear landlord, can we have some free guiness?
no, i'm doing *you* a favour by letting you play here all night.
Probably all old nasty white guys. Please don't show any more skin than you have too!!!!
But on a serious note-are you bringing in any business for the landlord? That's his/her only motivation for giving you anything.
If your in it for the money buy yourself an electric guitar....
i just wanted to highlight the collective input of a group of session players.
in my area of work, a good rule of thumb for equipment hire costs is 3 to 5% of the purchase value per day. according to my guestimate above, that would be approx £300 to £500 per day.
add to this a table full of expert operators, who with such experience in a purely vocational field would easily command daily rates of well over £200 each, you can see that alot is being brought to the table.
i'm not suggesting we all become breadheads about this;
i do think that the above is worth remembering when you find yourself in a pub that gets the balance wrong.
There's nothing rational about being a musician, especially in folk
music. It's not the cost of the instruments, it's the amount of time
required for training and maintaining skills. The only thing that would
come close I suppose is maybe neurosurgeons.
As Shanty said, the only thing that counts here is: how profitable you are to the landlord, sitting there all night? Do you bring in the business? From his/her perspective, a tone-deaf idiot with a snare drum is way better and worth more than a dozen of Kevin Burkes, as long as he has more impact on the pub's income.
If you are interested in getting anything for playing in pubs, it's best to be lousy, inexperienced, lousy-geared and popular, then you have a better return on investment ratio.
This concept of "creating a demand for something" is not new. Here's an excerpt from H. D. Thoreau's "Walden":
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.
"in my area of work, a good rule of thumb for equipment hire costs is 3 to 5%"
Has he hired you? No. You said it was a session. He IS doing you a favor. All your expensive equipment and years of talent is just a big cartload of baskets that no one is buying(good quote Forrest). If it bothers you that you get nothing from the owner why not give up your session extortion racket and find a cozy kitchen owned by one in your group and buy your own beer!
A p.s. on the Thoreau parable; his first book did not sell nearly as well as "Walden":
... only two hundred copies of it sold in the first few years after its publication. Thoreau financed the volume himself. When publisher James Munroe returned the unsold copies to him in 1853, Thoreau wrote in a journal entry for October 28, 1853, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes over 700 of which I wrote myself--"
Many/most self-produced recording artists know exactly how he felt. But "Walden" sold well from the start, so you just never know.....
If it's not a paid performance aren't you basically asking somebody to pay you, or reward you, for enjoying your hobby? What is the going rate for a stamp collector or train spotter? If you are bringing extra trade to the pub your reward is the satisfaction in knowing that you are giving enjoyment to somebody else.
bounchy chipmunk
bounchy chipmunk
there seems to be alot of discussion of late bordering on the pecuniary.
i sat in a session the other night with
1 x banjo player with 08 years experience, and £900 hardware
1 x banjo player with 20 years experience and £1300 hardware
1 x fiddle/box player 10 years experience and £3500 hardware
1 x bodran player with 1 x large bag of mints
1 x fiddle player with 5 years experience and £500 hardware
1 x bouzouki/mandolin player with 7 years experience and £1500 hardware
1 x singer, you do the maths
1 x guitarist with 20 years experience and £1500 hardware
elbow pipes player, 4 years experience and ive no idea what theyre worth, lets say a grand.
this gives us 70+ years of experience and over £10,000 of hardware.
dear landlord, can we have some free guiness?
no, i'm doing *you* a favour by letting you play here all night.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by nodule mansions
Re: bounchy chipmunk
Show some skin, maybe. You know what they say: "Sex sells."
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by John Galt
Re: bounchy chipmunk
Probably all old nasty white guys. Please don't show any more skin than you have too!!!!
But on a serious note-are you bringing in any business for the landlord? That's his/her only motivation for giving you anything.
If your in it for the money buy yourself an electric guitar....
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by shanty
Re: bounchy chipmunk
i didnt really finish my thrust, sorry.
i just wanted to highlight the collective input of a group of session players.
in my area of work, a good rule of thumb for equipment hire costs is 3 to 5% of the purchase value per day. according to my guestimate above, that would be approx £300 to £500 per day.
add to this a table full of expert operators, who with such experience in a purely vocational field would easily command daily rates of well over £200 each, you can see that alot is being brought to the table.
i'm not suggesting we all become breadheads about this;
i do think that the above is worth remembering when you find yourself in a pub that gets the balance wrong.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by nodule mansions
Re: bounchy chipmunk
There's nothing rational about being a musician, especially in folk
music. It's not the cost of the instruments, it's the amount of time
required for training and maintaining skills. The only thing that would
come close I suppose is maybe neurosurgeons.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by Hup
Re: bounchy chipmunk
As Shanty said, the only thing that counts here is: how profitable you are to the landlord, sitting there all night? Do you bring in the business? From his/her perspective, a tone-deaf idiot with a snare drum is way better and worth more than a dozen of Kevin Burkes, as long as he has more impact on the pub's income.
If you are interested in getting anything for playing in pubs, it's best to be lousy, inexperienced, lousy-geared and popular, then you have a better return on investment ratio.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by Janek
Re: bounchy chipmunk
I'm just trying to imagine what a dozen Kevin Burkes would sound like... then I realized that you can hear it on side two of If the Cap Fits...
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: bounchy chipmunk
This concept of "creating a demand for something" is not new. Here's an excerpt from H. D. Thoreau's "Walden":
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by John Galt
Re: bounchy chipmunk
"in my area of work, a good rule of thumb for equipment hire costs is 3 to 5%"
Has he hired you? No. You said it was a session. He IS doing you a favor. All your expensive equipment and years of talent is just a big cartload of baskets that no one is buying(good quote Forrest). If it bothers you that you get nothing from the owner why not give up your session extortion racket and find a cozy kitchen owned by one in your group and buy your own beer!
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by shanty
Re: bounchy chipmunk
If you want to gain some wealth from the investment of time and money, do a concert for paying customers.
That's how everyone else - Mozart, Victor Borge, The Rolling Stones, Jake Thackray - has always done it.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by showaddydadito
Re: bounchy chipmunk
Free never works. Ask for 50% off your tab. Or, make it a band and charge for perfomances. Only problem? Now your session is now a gig.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: bounchy chipmunk
I still need help on the maths for the singer.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by showaddydadito
Re: bounchy chipmunk
A p.s. on the Thoreau parable; his first book did not sell nearly as well as "Walden":
... only two hundred copies of it sold in the first few years after its publication. Thoreau financed the volume himself. When publisher James Munroe returned the unsold copies to him in 1853, Thoreau wrote in a journal entry for October 28, 1853, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes over 700 of which I wrote myself--"
Many/most self-produced recording artists know exactly how he felt. But "Walden" sold well from the start, so you just never know.....
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by John Galt
Re: bounchy chipmunk
If it's not a paid performance aren't you basically asking somebody to pay you, or reward you, for enjoying your hobby? What is the going rate for a stamp collector or train spotter? If you are bringing extra trade to the pub your reward is the satisfaction in knowing that you are giving enjoyment to somebody else.
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by All Moldy
Re: bounchy chipmunk
If you're able to indulge yourself with all that expensive hardware, the publican might be justified in thinking you're better off than he/she is!
# Posted on September 16th 2009 by Bren