 I sometimes see social media posts where gigging musicians bemoan what club owners pay.
There are a few variables here. Why are you gigging? For a hobby? For fun? For money? For ego gratification? Equal parts of several options? If you are financially comfortable and just gigging for shiggles and giggles, go for it! Don’t worry about the fee and stop reading right here. If any part of the reason that you’re gigging is for money, are you OK with what you are getting paid? Is gigging fulfilling short or long term financial goals? And no matter what, don’t let your mental axle get wrapped around money, either the money you are paid or that you are tipped. Never use money as a measuring tool for you own musical worth. Try to see everything as the tip jar being half full and not half empty! Gigging is fundamentally about entertaining – don’t let it take on the characteristics of a “cry for help” or an excuse for financial failure. Is gigging your “business”, your “job”, or both and how does it function in your budget? As I have mentioned in other posts, for decades, my finances have been bifurcated: job money and business money. And “gigging” for me encompasses “business” revenue streams including solo gigs, a wedding band, sideman gigs, composer in residence, private teaching, collegiate teaching, designing music/educational software, investing, composing for TV and film, recording, and consulting. I was generating a ton of music and for many years not sleeping a lot! Everyone does this differently. This is how I approached it. In My 40s Before I could put that job money and business money plan into action, I had a lot of credit card debt to pay off and a terrible credit rating. When I got divorced, I assumed all the outstanding debt and it was a lot. For three years, with the exception of my IRA and Roth IRA and a small emergency account I maintained, the goal was to pay off the debt with every penny I could apply to the balance. Everything I bought was paid in cash. These were very lean years. I worked with a financial planner who helped me plot what I would earn through my job and business for every five years until my retirement goal date. With the exception of events of 2001 and 2008, it was pretty accurate. I had something to aim for. I became acutely aware that it is impossible to hit a target if you don’t know what or where the target is. The “job” (public school teacher) was what I did for 7.5 hours five a days a week with a static salary but my “business” was what I did for 16.5 hours five a days a week and 48 hours on weekends and the sky was the limit. I could be a productive or lazy as I wanted to be! I learned how to turn those 16.5 business hours to pay down my debt. I took every opportunity to work and dissolve those revolving charge accounts. No pay check was too small and was always big enough to necessitate a thank you note to the person who hired me. After a few years, I cleared all my debt off the books. I continued hustling and forcing myself to pay my day-to-day out of my business money. If I didn’t make that much during those 130.5 hours every week, guess what - I had to cut back that week, usually on food or leisure. Boiling old bass strings, ramen noodles, three-day-old pizza at the shop down the street, and milk that was less than “fresh” equated to a deeper level of fiscal self-discipline I didn’t realized I possessed. I invested the money from the 38.5 hour a week job in my business. My business was my compounding long-term economic plan. I invested money from my business to help finance my day job master’s degree. After I got the degree, I got a hefty raise in my job. I paid my business back the money I borrowed. I bought a house! I was taking and negotiating increasingly more lucrative solo and wedding band gigs and doing less sideman work where the compensation was static. It meant more work and planning that was not technically related to making sounds on an instrument – contracts, client and venue interaction, always trying to perfect the best set list for gigs, hiring sidemen, etc. but it allowed me to retain more of the fruit of my labors. In My 50s I became more particular with how I booked my business hours. I didn’t take every gig that came down the pike and was still able to max out my IRA and Roth IRA. My job, business, and investment began to gain momentum and take off. The small gigs and the small pay checks (as well as the large ones) I had invested in my early forties had compounded many times over by the end of my fifties. In My 60s I was able to retire from my job at 66 and truly enjoy my retirement totally DEBT FREE. I kept the business going. During covid, I was offered a long term teaching position for a sizable amount. I made a counter offer that was twice as large. They came back with an offer that was $7,000 under my offer. I came back with my original offer. They refused to budge off their second offer. I walked away. And walking away is an acquired skill. It’s acquired by developing a solid financial business plan that results in total financial independence. If You Are Playing Gigs for the Money My way is not the only way – everybody needs to come up with their own plan. The sooner you design, start, and stick to your plan, the happier you’ll be in the long run. A couple of suggestions when looking at the money that club owners are willing to pay: If gigging is not your 7.5 job but rather your 16.5 business . . .
If you find yourself complaining about gig money, find yourself another musician you respect who you can talk to and listen to your feelings. You might have noticed I never said what a good fee for a gig is. That is up to you. If you are happy with the money, you will be happy with the money. If you feel that you are not getting paid enough, that is how you will feel. PLEASE don’t equate what you get paid with self-worth – because it probably won’t work out in your favor. And in the end, it’s not about what you get paid. It’s about what how much of what you get paid is invested and is continuously compounded. Your material music investment should not be based on vanity of any kind. If my material investments didn't return at least a 75% return in two years, I did without and didn't put the money there - no CDs, no videos, no overpriced promotional material. For example, I have designed all my own business cards and stationary over the years. If after decades of gigging, you are able to positively approach your time gigging as an effective way of fulfilling artistic as well as financial goals, you should be debt free or at least close to debt free. By doing the financial and musical homework, you will have had a great career, created a strong business, made life-long friends, played fun gigs, and generated a ton of great memories to look back on. Plus you’ll know a hell of a lot of songs!  Music is a personal journey.
As a teacher, you’ve already started your trip and are only a tour guide for trip that your students are embarking upon. You’ve picked your destination. Grant your students some autonomy by allowing them to pick their own destination. Remember, you’re driving the tour bus – so you control the route they will take 7.5 hours a day. You plan the itinerary with your long and short range lesson planning. Keep a balance in your lessons between what your young travelers want, enjoy, and pursue with the basic skills and knowledge you know will help them arrive at their current destination. There will be bumps in the road – and you know where many of them are from your own personal journeys. Just like any traveler, your students might get tired, frustrated, and uncomfortable along the way – primarily because they have never experienced what is up ahead on the road. You’ve traveled the musical road. Don’t let them over pack. You only have so much time to travel and loading every bit of musical knowledge you possess into their suitcase will make for a labor-intensive trip for them. Esoteric knowledge and deeper theoretical understandings can wait for another day. Focus on what will make music today and the near future. Have them bring the essentials. Give your kids the opportunity to take an occasional break, relax, while still reminding them of the exciting sights and scenes waiting for them around the next corner. And take pictures along the way and revisit the memories. Sing old songs, do activities that they’ve enjoyed doing a million times but still want to do them “one more time”. And remember, as the tour guide, you are expected to do all of this with a smile on your face. Have fun.  “That sounds good to me!” We've heard that phrase hundreds of times in our life. Here are a few thoughts on how it applies to our work as music educators. And believe me, it applies. One at a Time It’s hard to talk and listen at the same time. Best advice: the teacher needs to talk less and listen more. Make sure you repeatedly remind your students that’s what you’re trying to do. Modeling pays off. Lesson Plans When you write out lesson plans, don’t aim to be wordy or lengthy. Just nail the phrases, concepts, ideas, goals, and arks to your learning and teaching. And don’t forget exit strategies and assessments. After you've got it this information down on your cocktail napkin (because maybe you are like me and did it sitting at a bar), read it out loud. The bartender might think you’re nuts but it will pay off in the long run. Does it ring true? Did you leave something out that is more crucial than something you wrote? If so, maybe cross out the weaker idea and include the newly recognized tidbit. Your ears won't lie. They'll tell you what's missing. Learning a Piece of Music We can all be analytical when looking at a piece of music. It's easy to figure out the tessitura of a piece, relate it to our own vocal range, and determine the best key to put the song in. The next step is crucial. Sing the song from beginning to end, keeping mental notes of potholes in your performance. After you're done, reassess the key and take note of the issues you had in certain spots and how you're going to correct. On more than several occasions, I've heard people attempt to do a song that they had practiced in their head but not in their mouth or their hands. The resulting performance was less than optimal. Teach listening. Find opportunities when half your class performs and the other half critically listens. Do it out loud. Listen to your ears. They won't lie to you. Your Temperament When Dealing With Discipline Or Management Issues. This is one of those self-assessment pieces that begs for you to have a recording of your work. Not necessarily a video but at least an MP3. Your words can have profound impact on your students, especially when things suddenly go sideways with discipline or classroom management. Many teachers talk about that “one class”, the one that always seems to be problematic. It’s wise to get in the habit of recording those classes to discover what approaches and words work and which ones exacerbate problems. Analyze and assess your recordings, evaluating your comments and attitude as if they were elements in a piece of music. Was the tempo to fast? Was it too loud? Did your statements have too much or too little honest emotional content? Did your phrasing lead to resolutions that felt natural? Would your approach be characterized as win/win or would an impartial observer view them as aggressive emotional venting? Most of all, if you had the chance to do it all over again, how would you edit your work and make it stronger in the moment? I can't lay claim to this idea. My dad taught it to me when I was in my single digits. By fourth or fifth grade, every Sunday afternoon, anything that I had to write for school, my father required me to read it out loud in front of him. Every time I started to read, I would catch myself saying something that sounded awkward and incorrect. I would look at him and he would just raise an eyebrow and tilt his head to the side. After a while, I figured out that it would be a better strategy to read it out loud to myself before I got to him to avoid all the raised eyebrows. Amazingly, things went better for me during my recitations. When I got my first full-time teaching gig after college and had to prepare remarks for concerts, I asked my father for advice. It was pretty succinct. “Write it down. Read it out loud. Your ears won't lie to you.” I took his advice. I wrote all my concert remarks out and I practiced them until I memorized them. I got to the point where I would write in little mistakes that I could turn into jokes. That worked well with the parent audiences who were already nervous about their child’s upcoming performance. If the first mistake is made by the teacher and he can laugh it off, that bodes well for any potential mistake a kid might make. My dad was right. Eventually, I didn't have to write my remarks out. I had done it so many times and had enough data in my brain from past experience that I could improvise just like a jazz player riffs on a set of chord changes. I hope some of these ideas help. There are many ways to get to “that sounds good to me”. Find your own path. Borrow techniques, tips, and tricks from the people you observe that seem to have the gift of gab while facing an audience. Chances are, the gift they possess is a habit of preparation and editing their remarks before they step in front of an crowd or a microphone.  |
AuthorBoyd Holmes, the Writer Archives
February 2025
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