I have just written and deleted a thread entry that had the word "I" in it 30 times or more. What "I" wanted to say (or ask) is does anyone else have a problem with getting bookings that pay really really well but only require minimal skill?

Where the crowd is large and disinterested and all you have to do are popular folk songs purely for the money. Arguably a form of prostitution.

I only work a four or five times a month but I am increasingly cherry picking the high interest (but low pay) bookings and wondered if anyone else does the same.

Is it woth singing Wild Rover to a pissed up crowd for £75 or Callum Moore to a small folk club for what amounts to travel expenses?

I am not rich but don't need the money so I suppose I can afford to take the high moral ground and this is obviously allowing me to "cherry pick".

I promise not to post another serious thread again.

Spot.

- LH

Alex Campbell could do that (well Callum Moore hadn't been written yet, but you know what I mean.)

As to prostitution, well, I've always been kindly disposed to the Magdalenes of the world, and see no reason to make highly abstract and ungrounded moral quibbles about making good music. If you aren't making good music, why that's another issue! :>)

A

15 years ago I walked off the stage of the Yorkdale Inn in mid set, and haven't played a gig I didn't want to since. I teach most of the time now, and do local festivals and folk clubs, with two or three forays into the States per year. Only put out new albums when I feel like it, and my stress level is virtually non-existant now (which is probably why I laugh when Mudcat gets really silly, rather than getting pissed)

Hey Spot, make 'em pay through the nose for "Wild Rover"!

Cheers

Rck

The Happy Hookah

Take the money and run

But....have a close knit circle of kindred souled, demanding, friends who hold YOU personally accountable for your individual growth and high standards.

Work Hard, Have Fun, Meet Your Maslowian Potential.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

That's the most perfect post I have ever seen with your name on it!

Thanks.

A

Any pictures as a rabbit?

- LH

I must admit that I haven't read this entire thread so I am answering only your question.

First you are not a prostitute. You are a working musician who apparetly is good enough to be gigging four or five times amonth.

Are all the jobs perfect? No and they never will be either. But they atre jobs and each one has something that teaches and you benefit by beyond the money.

How many coffee house jobs befpre an attentive audience for low pay do you get? 1 in 5 maybe? Thats good ratio.

My band plays about 50 gigs a year. Some are low money and some are good money and a few are rediculous big money. And the best ones are the concert jobs that pay relatively low. Its the Wildrover/\Rambler Gambler songs played to drunks that allows us to do what amounts to pro bono work for others. And for me its worth taking every embarrassing penny they pay me so I can play on a stage in a restored opera house in Warren, Pa. every year or so.

Don

- LH

Now well, on the off chance I 'have to' (ya, I know... you never HAVE to play anything... But you know the situations I'm getting at...) I try to look at it this way... Sure, so sometimes some dufus in the crowd thinks that Lightfoots' "Wreck of the E. Fitz." is the BEST shipwreck song ever! (More often than not they think it's the ONLY shipwreck song ever...) so ya... sometimes I'll knuckle under and play that p.o.s. song...

but I will also follow it up with a GOOD shipwreck song, like Merry Ellen Carter or Captain Torres for instance...

.-)

First - if your gigs are in your hometown - get some of your friends to come, at least occasionally and make a bit of a ruckus to get other to pay attention - or at least to clap really loudly.

Second - those type of gigs aren't the only situations like that. Take to a professor teaching Freshman Comp. some time - ask them how many in their "audience" are interested in the subject.

Not everyone thinks that prostitution is a horrible thing in all cases.

Play loud, play fast, and duck when the bottles start flying.

pax yall.

But then, I gave up the idea of singing professionally years ago when it became apparent that much of it would involve trying to be heard over the people yelling -- YELLING! WHY DO THEY HAVE TO YELL????? -- in a smoky bar and being hit on by guys who had enough alcohol in them to think they were very smoove, but also enough enough to render their brains completely short-circuited. Yick.

So maybe I can be sanguine about educating the ignorant because I haven't been dealing with them directly for years and years. Good thing -- I might have ended up in prison for clocking some idiot with my mic stand.

ww

However, in my experience, gigs can be difficult to pre-judge, even at the same venue. When playing as muzak in a restaurant or bar, you can sometimes find that you establish a rapport with an individual or group among the audience that makes the whole session take off. In contrast, I have had the unfortunate experience in a Folk Club where the material that I was presenting was obviously not to the liking of a vocal minority of the audience (being disinclined to sing many Irish songs doesn't help here). Hecklers can be fun, but there are limits.

There isn't an easy answer. You can regard the muzak gigs as paid practice (with the added bonus that you might "join hands and contact the living"). You can restrict yourself to playing only where you think that you can get an attentive hearing (but even then, you can't be sure). You can, of course, just sit in your own room and sing and strum to yourself and your nearest and dearest (something of a waste if you have any talent).

Or you can take risks, suffer the odd rejection, and enjoy the good gigs when they come along.

Alternatively, find another means to earn a crust.

Prostitution doesn't mean you can't ever come out on top of the situation!

Calum Moore was written by Andy Mitchel of Ullapool (Scotland) and is a powerful ballad about drunkeness and wife beating. Goes down like a lead parachute at Wild Rover functions.

Jeri

Aw Thanks (he says blushing shyly)

As usual a good collection of experiences and advice. I think I will still do the thrash folk stuff but I promise to look harder and charge more :-).

Spot.

If it were a non-paying audience in a pub, well, that I could understand.

Murray

I bear the scars (physical and mental) to this day!

But for that one traumatic gig, and a few decidedly so-so ones, there have been many more that were pleasurable for me, and, by all appearances, for the audiences, too.

Things never got as bad for me as they did for one singer that I once roadied to a gig in Glasgow. He'd had trouble with some of the audience last time he had played there, so he carried a pistol in his guitar case! It was only a replica (this being the UK and 1969 and not the US) - but they weren't to know! Fortunately the gig went well, but I had a few anxious moments that night.

"You win a little, lose a little, sometimes you sing the blues a little."

Alan

Kendall, if by chance you haven't heard Tom Russell's newest, Borderland, get it, and listen to "California Snow." You really orter.

P. (I really don't work for Russell as a flack. Honest. I just like his stuff a lot.)

slave: one that is subservient to a dominant influence; a drudge, or toiler

rape: to sieze or take away; to despoil

all legitimate definitions and uses of the words.

The word derives from the Latin "prostitutus" = offered for sale.

Unfortunately "harlotry", the more accurate and less ambiguous term for the sexual context of "prostitution" has rather lapsed into desuetude.

Wipe your literary nose, Mrzzy - you can use the shorts of any passing lexicographer! (I think you mean "snob", don't you?)

Alan (The Merry Pedant)

Taking MMarios dictionary definitions I have felt sometimes that some of the bookings I have done fit at least 4 of the definitions.

RichM also has a point. Songwriting depends sometimes on avoiding the cliche which occasionally requires using words in one of their wider or little used meanings.

I am sorry if my wider use of the word upset you in any way.

Spot

If you want to rail against blatent misuses of words (such as my current pet peeve, the total disregard for the difference between "bring" and "take") I'll be right there with you. But imposing your understanding of a word as its only meaning sounds like a mug's game to me.....

cheers,

david

I very often have to separate the meaning of cripple from one of a person who is disabled and use it only as a 2 x 4 stud that goes partly up a wall. I remember when gay meant overly cheerful and a sticking ones finger in a dyke, or dike, could save a nation and be there by propelled into folklore.

I don't mind that a person can show me some disrespect but does it follow that I was disrespected?

If we have to ponder what a word we know well may really mean in the context it is in then we are sacrificing clear communication for something ambiguous. And at the same time it is this ambiguous nature we apply to some words that creates some of our most wonderful poetry.

Don

Murray

However, there is a definite (ha ha) difference between dictionary definitions and usage. I haven't heard anybody use gay to mean happy since the 70's, unless they were quoting somebody. And slavery, to the descendents of the African slaves brought to America, does NOT mean doing anything you dislike even if you get paid. Hmmm - sounds like prostitution... wait...

We just filled in with a bit of humour and a few songs.

"Wild Rover" is beginning to look (Figuratively speaking) a non starter.

Spot (who changes his mind more often than his socks) :-)

Why is it that if an musician takes a gig that makes enough money to pay the bills, they've "sold out." But if a white collar 9-5'er does the same thing, they're a "good provider" or "taking the best opportunities."

I personally feel sad when I think a performer has sacrificed quality for money, but to a lot of people, being a musician is a JOB. We all like to have jobs we enjoy, but why is it that we hold musicians (or artists) to a different standard?

Spot

The odd thing was that only two years later, an 11-year-old child snickered at hearing the song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" because it had that word in it. His mother knew what it meant. How soon we forget...