"Double bookings".... Fuming isn't the word

[Modman]

Hey everyone!


I just thought I would need to rant! Last night was supposed to be the debut gig for my funk/soul band but end up getting there finding another band setting up in front of you saying there's been a double booking. I don't personally deal with the bookings as someone else in the band does and they were chasing the person in charge of booking. Apparently the landlord and the person in charge of bookings decided not to communicate with each other and thus causing this horrible situation with 3 hours and fuel wasted.
The venue in question was The Huntsman in Rochester, just in case you were wondering.

Has anyone else been in this situation before?

[Truckstop]

Yep!

Nothing more you can do other than ask if they wouldn't mind admitting fault and paying petrol money.

I always make venues/promoters sign a contract that makes everything their fault in the event of something like this happening. A short phone call to the small claims court usually makes sure you get paid.

The contract would say that the band are entitled to 50% of the agreed fee in the event of gig cancellation or double booking if not made aware at least 7 days in advance.

Bad luck

[gary mac]

Yes it is hellishly frustrating.

I like Truckstops contract idea but can't see many pub landlords being willing to sign up.

[sprocketflup]

Contracts are a great idea, stops all sorts of devilish shenanigans ( and non-shenanigans) being played by both parties if done right

[mep]

Join the club. We were messed around big time by a landlord. We told him months ago he had double booked and he promised to move the other band. With less than a week to go he still hadn't and cancelled us instead with the lame excuse that the other bands fans were better behaved. This was based on a one off incident on new years eve when a friend of our drummer shows up and was kicked out for inappropriate behaviour. We had been playing the venue for years and almost all gigs were great. We immediately cancelled all our remaining gigs and have since got gigs with other pubs in the town.

[ubit]

[quote name='mep' timestamp='1434184864' post='2797370']
We immediately cancelled all our remaining gigs and have since got gigs with other pubs in the town.
[/quote]


Bet that showed him !

[Les]

Feel for you Modman, it's a lousy situation. The reality is though that it doesn't happen that often with basic confirmations/phone calls so try and let it go
and concentrate on the next gig.

You can usually tell when something goes horribly wrong if it's just a genuine balls up (we all make them) or it's complete lack of professionalism.

Then you can make a choice to go back to the gig or not. Sounds like yours was heading for disaster if there are 2 diaries running at the gig rather then a genuine balls up though.

[JTUK]

[quote name='gary mac' timestamp='1434184392' post='2797365']
Yes it is hellishly frustrating.

I like Truckstops contract idea but can't see many pub landlords being willing to sign up.
[/quote]

Or have you back after you 'forced' this on them and get them to pay up.

Pubs, by their very nature, are very casual affairs and I wouldn't be going to war for
those sums involved. If I felt that strongly, I wouldn't play there again...which might make
the chasing of the money worth doing, but for £50 I'd probably get over it pretty quickly.

No doubt, it is frustrating tho..

[bonzodog]

Unfortunately this does happen and even more so if there is an agent involved too. I book the gigs for my band and always ring the venue a couple of days before to check now to avoid problems. With facebook being a popular way to advertise i always follow pubs facebook pages too to make sure they are advertising us.

[odysseus]

Not recently, but it happened a few years ago. We turned up to a pub in St. Austell, the landlord denied ever making a booking and told us to go. As we left, a couple of young lads were carrying record decks in - it turned out that the landlord was taking the money from the brewery for a band, getting a couple of kids on decks for £50 and pocketing a nice £150 difference. Tosser.

[Modman]

[quote name='odysseus' timestamp='1434191723' post='2797459']
Not recently, but it happened a few years ago. We turned up to a pub in St. Austell, the landlord denied ever making a booking and told us to go. As we left, a couple of young lads were carrying record decks in - it turned out that the landlord was taking the money from the brewery for a band, getting a couple of kids on decks for £50 and pocketing a nice £150 difference. Tosser.
[/quote]

Ouch! That's harsh!

[Truckstop]

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1434187798' post='2797397']


Or have you back after you 'forced' this on them and get them to pay up.

Pubs, by their very nature, are very casual affairs and I wouldn't be going to war for
those sums involved. If I felt that strongly, I wouldn't play there again...which might make
the chasing of the money worth doing, but for £50 I'd probably get over it pretty quickly.

No doubt, it is frustrating tho..
[/quote]

Well, it's less a legally binding contract and more an email that outlines everyone's responsibilities. All they have to do is return it with a confirmation that they've read it and then we all understand exactly what we're expecting from each other.

No-ones forcing anyone to do anything. If they don't want to agree to our conditions then I'll look for a gig elsewhere. I'd rather sit at home and watch TV with the wife than pack up the car and drive half an hour to a pub to be told to go home and lose money doing it.

I don't think it's unfair to make sure that the venue knows that they need to inform the band if there's a double booking or face paying out some compensation.

I know it's a bit overboard and a bit formal but I've been let down many times before and it's a habit I picked up when I was depping regularly. This way, you never lose out. We offer a service and we need to be represented properly.

[jazzyvee]

One time the band I was in were booked for a 21st party in a huge marquee somewhere in Stratford-on-Avon and we arrived there only to find that the marquee came with a band which was one of those old time jazz bands. The family were really great about it and said they would pay us anyway because it was their fault. We offered to play alternate sets with the band that was there but the jazz band were not keen on that idea so we went home with money in our pockets and no gig.

Edited June 13, 2015 by jazzyvee

[gjones]

My brother in law turned up to a pub, where he was booked for a solo set, to find another band set up and ready to go. He complained to the landlord, who confirmed that it was him that was supposed to be playing that night.

It turned out that the band had actually been booked for a gig at another pub down the road, and had mistaken this pub for the one they should have been playing.

The landlord told them to take all their gear down and sling their hook.

[odysseus]

^^^^ Haha epic!

We turned up at a pub in Hayle once during a football World Cup. Everyone wanted to watch the game, so the landlord gave us our money and we went straight back to HQ and got some beers in. I can live with that....

[chris_b]

Double bookings are par for the course when playing in pubs. Most landlords can't run a pub successfully so are not going to excel as live music promoters. This week we've discovered a pub and gig (a pretty crappy one at that) has closed. No one bothered to tell the bands. Our gig was in a couple of months.

We send posters a month or so before the date (surprising how many "go missing" so the gig isn't properly advertised).

We then phone at the start of the week to confirm the gig. Hopefully any problems are discovered then and we don't have to travel in vain.

If you don't take these precautions, you have to make sure you're always the first band at the gig.

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='odysseus' timestamp='1434191723' post='2797459']
Not recently, but it happened a few years ago. We turned up to a pub in St. Austell, the landlord denied ever making a booking and told us to go. As we left, a couple of young lads were carrying record decks in - it turned out that the landlord was taking the money from the brewery for a band, getting a couple of kids on decks for £50 and pocketing a nice £150 difference. Tosser.
[/quote]

Hmmmm. The usual structure is that the brewery pays a pre-set amount to the landlord to subsidise all his entertainment ... how he spends it is usually up to him. If he can save money by putting on a couple of kids with decks, then he has to weigh that up against how many people will come to see that rather than a real band etc.

In west London a typical annual subsidy is £12k - £15k p.a. A landlord can spend that on a band every Saturday for £250, or he can spend it on poker nights, or quiz nights, or he can mix it up.

That's why you can turn up and play to three men and a proverbial and still get paid at the end of the evening. There's a bigger picture.

Doesn't excuse a landlord shafting a band he's booked, but does partially explain why he might want to ...

[Truckstop]

That reminds me, once played a gig in Hayes (West London) on the same night of the second Froch/Groves fight.

So we played from 9 til 10.15 and the fight started shortly after. The fight finished at around 11.50 so we played our encores and then packed up!

[Jazzneck]

Bury St. Edmund's a fair few years ago.
We arrived and doing our load in when another band turned up claiming it was their gig, too.
Polite words with the landlord didn't get us any closer to an understanding.
So us and the other band had a chat, after which both bands loaded up and moved on down the road where we set up an impromptu Jam in another pub.
Had a great time, passed the hat around and got enough for burgers and other fuel on the way home.
Original pub never put on a live music night again and gradually went downhill whilst the second pub has gone on to bigger and better things - funny that, innit?

[Damonjames]

I feel for you, it's a crappy situation probably
Made worse by the anticlimax of what should have been your first gig.
While the blunder is definitely the pubs, we usually check in with the venue in the lead up to a gig and monitor their Facebook page if they have one. Have had a similar situation at one of the venues we play regularly, but it was the other bands mess up. If you keep your side professional, it can often make up for others lack thereof.
If the pub is worth deing with, they should offer at the very least to give you another date asap by way of apology, I'd be adding £50 to the fee for this though to cover lost cost. If they don't do anything but shrug their shoulders I'd just move on. Plenty of good puns about!

[JoeEvans]

I think the contract thing is right. I used to book bands for a venue, and I would email out a summary of my understanding of the conversations I'd had with a band: time, date and place, tech spec, fee and rider, set length, cancellation arrangements etc. The band confirm it, I PDF it and send it back to them with the word 'Contract' on the top. Then everyone knows exactly what the deal is and there's less potential for arguments on the night. If the promoter isn't doing this, it's fine for the band to - it makes everyone's lives easier.
Just as an aside, I learnt a lot about live music as a business in that job. it was amazing how few bands had good photos available to download on their website so that I could do a poster for them, and how few had decent bits of film on Youtube I could put up on the venue's website and Facebook page. It was a decent-sized venue, 400-capacity, so it wasn't tiny local bands, either. As a promoter, I didn't care if my audience hadn't heard of the band if the material was available to show them that it was going to be a good night; by the same token, I couldn't book anyone, however good they sounded, if there was nothing out there to show my punters by way of films, photos, website, reviews etc.

[blue]

[quote name='gary mac' timestamp='1434184392' post='2797365']
Yes it is hellishly frustrating.

I like Truckstops contract idea but can't see many pub landlords being willing to sign up.
[/quote]

Yeah, I guess for bigger high profile venues and where there's significant money involved a contract is always good. We only see them for festivals and fairs.

The bars we play aren't going to look at or sign any contract.

Blue

[stevebasshead]

Been double booked a few times and even triple booked once! One pub told us we got double booked because they kept two diaries, one upstairs and one downstairs.

There are lots of good ones of course who know their job and are very band friendly, but there are some where I wonder how they manage to dress themselves in the morning...

[Phil Starr]

[quote name='stevebasshead' timestamp='1434324430' post='2798693']
Been double booked a few times and even triple booked once! One pub told us we got double booked because they kept two diaries, one upstairs and one downstairs.

There are lots of good ones of course who know their job and are very band friendly, but there are some where I wonder how they manage to dress themselves in the morning...
[/quote]

Bad luck Modman, we've had the usual double bookings but never actually on the day. Pubs closing down and not telling anyone is really common too.

I've not had a rant about just how badly run a lot of pubs are for a while. Unbelievable really.

How many pubs ever publicize any of their events at all. I used to go round pubs for bookings to find the majority of them had no internet connection at all, never mind a website. When was this distant time? Three years ago. When you do find a website will it be up to date? They usually have a blank events page, even if you know you are booked there, contact details are often incorrect, menus five years out of date, and so on. Try and find out which pubs locally have a quiz night on, good luck with that!

For most pubs advertising a gig is down to a board outside and a single poster inside. The only people who see it are their regular customers. It's great for them to spend £250 entertaining a few regulars but given the nature of their business financial suicide. I've invited friends to see us when we play in their local and most of them were completely unaware that there were regular gigs there. Most pubs seem to want to keep their plans secret until after the event.

One local pub has bands every other week, they never advertise so no-one knows if it is a band week or an empty lifeless pub week. Why?

There's never much in the way of creating an event either. Happy hour or a meal deal, to get people in for an hour or so before the band, perhaps a drink offer on gig night or whatever. Simple things like considering where to put the band, clearing a space, having a power point, access for moving gear, safety issues around heavy speakers and trip hazards are completely unregarded at most venues.

There's often no consideration of the music. Why book a dance band if their is nowhere to dance? Why book a rock band into a pub which normally has quiet acoustic acts or a pop band into a bikers pub. A bunch of 20 year olds playing screamers to a bunch or 50+ drinkers doesn't work too well either. Who are you trying to attract with your £250 investment? Which bands would best serve that aim, not a question ever asked in my experience.

Also look what is going on in other venues around you. One of my bugbears is towns where all the pubs have a band on Sat nights and inevitably share the limited audience, but no-one does anything on a Fri.

Now I've sympathy for a lot of landlords, they work long hours and there's no training. Why should they know about promoting music events? But a pub running bands once a week is investing £13,000 in a year. they wouldn't do this without thinking it through in any other area of their work, so why not talk to people about music if you don't know enough. So many pubs are failing to attract enough customers to survive. Bands are running low on venues and audiences, but people are always looking for things to do and the standard of pub bands has never been higher. Pubs that stick with regular music and do it well are usually rammed on a weekend. Internet sites that will promote your events abound and are cheap or free, there's no excuse for running a secret event, if in doubt then ask the bands for advice. Why don't breweries and Pubco's offer training? Grrr

[chriswareham]

The contract thing reminds me of some local pubs I played as a teenager. These pubs would provide a contract that required you to basically sell the place out in advance to stand a chance of getting paid, and had rules on behaviour so draconian that they could always wriggle out of paying on even the most busy nights. What that hadn't considered was that our entourage was a bunch of students and ne'er do wells who promptly occupied one pub until we were paid. A local copper arrived at one point and actually sided with us since we were causing no trouble (and I doubt he fancied taking on 50 odd punks, crusties and goths).