First proper paid gig....lessons learnt

[DorsetBlue]

My band played their second gig on Saturday night, our first paid one (previous one was for a charity). The actual gig went well and was well received, with the lady whose Wedding Anniversary it was (we play 50s and 60s R&R) thanking us at the end.
The gig was a little hard work for the money though, as we were playing as part of an entertainment package along with the drummer's DJ sessions. So there was a lot of waiting around for our set and then a little afterwards, before we could pack away. All in all, we were there for 6 hours. I think we should probably concentrate on pub gigs from now on.
The main lesson learnt though was.....don't leave your Helix turned on unattended (the DJ/Drummer put his kit on auto-pilot for a while). When we went in to get ready for our set, someone had fiddled with my settings (probably one of the lady's young grandchildren) and I just managed to get it back in a reasonable state (there is a foot switch still assigned to some unknown function - which seems to do nothing when pressed) ready to start the set. Last issue was the volume knob had been turned down - DOH!

[discreet]

Weddings are a pain in the arse and have to be priced accordingly. As you discovered, there is a LOT of waiting about. Typically you have to be their early on to set up, play long sets and then wait until the end before you can pack up. 6 hours is actually not bad. People think weddings are good money, but when you work it out, the hourly rate per person is not that great. You have to enjoy playing and hanging out with your bandmates. Yes, I know.

[DorsetBlue]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1509984685' post='3403028']
Weddings are a pain in the arse and have to be priced accordingly. As you discovered, there is a LOT of waiting about. Typically you have to be their early on to set up, play long sets and then wait until the end before you can pack up. 6 hours is actually not bad. People think weddings are good money, but when you work it out, the hourly rate per person is not that great. You have to enjoy playing and hanging out with your bandmates. Yes, I know.
[/quote]

I don't think we will be touching Weddings with a barge pole! This was enough and it was relatively relaxed.

[Marc S]

Yes weddings are often a bit of a pain. Generally, you're hanging around longer. Often, you need to supply more gear (as some pubs / clubs have a house PA)
And you're expected to arrive earlier and sometimes, leave later as well. As you & discreet have said, there's also the usual waiting around between sets, waiting for the DJ etc etc

However, you can usually charge quite a bit more for weddings & family parties than you'd get paid for pub gigs. Around this neck of the woods, there seem to be less and less pub gigs for full bands, and the fee doesn't seem to have increased in a decade! Also, I find wedding / party crowds are a bit more willing to dance, and get on the dancefloor sooner. I like doing both, but have done far more pub gigs in my time. You can get to a phase where you find a lot of pub gigs seem to be the same as one another. Good to do a bit of both IMO - but make sure you're charging appropriately for the extra time / hassle of a wedding gig...

I heard an anecdote re wedding gigs once (it's probably not true, but I like the ethos of it); customer says to band member
"What, you want £800 to play at my daughters wedding? £800 just for music?"
"Fair enough" says the band member "Phone up and ask 5 plumbers what they'd charge.... for 5-6 hours.... on a Saturday night... finishing past midnight, and see what they say!"
"tell you what" he continued "we'll do it for half their quote!"

[Monkey Steve]

Never minded the hours for parties and weddings (though, only ever played a couple) but the OP flags one thing that really does wind me up, which is that everybody thinks it's OK to come up and mess about with your gear (or as may be the case here, to let their kids muck about with your gear). that and the fact that nobody has come to see you, so basic civility can go out of the window as you become regarded as the hired help.

And unlike a pub gig where you can tell them to eff off, you do feel a bit more like you have to be nice and let them get away with it.

Lesson learned - pack away/switch off anything that can be packed away/switched off when you're not on stage. that way all they can muck about with are the drums, and that's not your problem

[musicbassman]

Golden rule for weddings - ALWAYS hide the drumsticks, as there'll always be someone who wants to come on stage and show off while the band's taking a break, especially after a few beers.

[taunton-hobbit]

Weddings are a total pain in the *rse - I've done a few over the years -

[TimR]

[quote name='DorsetBlue' timestamp='1509984266' post='3403025']
...

Wedding Anniversary

...
[/quote]

[TimR]

6 hours for a party is pretty standard. You don’t want to be setting up while guests are arriving and you certainly don’t want to be packing down before the party officially ends. Ideally you’ll be playing right to the end anyway.

At any gig, you should have a policy that the stage is out of bounds to punters and that one member of the band is within eyesight of all the gear at all times.

Edited November 6, 2017 by TimR

[taunton-hobbit]

Quack - thanks Tim - anniversaries can be worse - that subtle glow of lust wore off years back...........

[blue]

[quote name='DorsetBlue' timestamp='1509985485' post='3403038']


I don't think we will be touching Weddings with a barge pole! This was enough and it was relatively relaxed.
[/quote]

This is my take

Weddings are fine if your an experienced dedicated professional wedding band. If your not a wedding band your wedding gig experience might be less than stellar.

Blue

Edited November 6, 2017 by blue

[gelfin]

No one seems to have mentioned how often wedding partys fall into disarray and drunken arguments and fights break out.

The best / worse one was when the best man got up to speak handed an album to the bride full of photos of the groom
in uncompromising positions with various other females that he had been with very recently.

I have never seen anything like what ensued.

[discreet]

[quote name='gelfin' timestamp='1510008833' post='3403286']
...handed an album to the bride full of photos of the groom in uncompromising positions with various other females that he had been with very recently.
[/quote]

Oh God, I live for such moments. Two friends of ours married each other, I gave it three months. Turns out I overestimated by a factor of ten.

Edited November 6, 2017 by discreet

[blue]

[quote name='Monkey Steve' timestamp='1509987129' post='3403061']


Lesson learned - pack away/switch off anything that can be packed away/switched off when you're not on stage. that way all they can muck about with are the drums, and that's not your problem[/quote]

2 points, We've played weddings, but I'd rather not. We're a blues/rock bar band. However, I'll take the money.

I would think with a stage, pro lights & sound, pro looking band would mitigate any monkeying around of gear by unauthorized guests.

At pubs and bars I guess anything can happen. I never gig my expensive basses at bars, Not that I have any inexpensive basses now that I think about it.

Maybe I should think about one of those Harley Benton copies.

Blue

[ezbass]

Private parties (wedding or otherwise) are mostly a pain in the butt as you are technically the hired help and are treated as such. Often, the people hiring you really like your band but a good chunk of the audience may not and you are seen as a distraction/being in the way (unless it’s a themed party, a particular decade or genre, for instance). On the other hand, pub/club gigs are where people have come to see the band, at least in the main, and the venue is tailored to live music, whereas parties may be spread over several rooms and you might find yourselves playing to just a few folk, or even no one. Fights break out in both instances, although weddings seem to have a higher proportion. Kids and adults need to be told to stay away from the gear no matter what type of gig, usually a mention of, ‘you break it, you buy it,’ and the sums involved puts it into perspective for them. Our singer once told a pub with some rowdy drunks that, if they didn’t keep away from the stage and our gear, we’d stop playing and pack up. Her school ma’am tone set them right. In short, I’d rather play a pub/club than a party, even though party money is better.

[FuNkShUi]

[quote name='Marc S' timestamp='1509985615' post='3403042']
I heard an anecdote re wedding gigs once (it's probably not true, but I like the ethos of it); customer says to band member
"What, you want £800 to play at my daughters wedding? £800 just for music?"
"Fair enough" says the band member "Phone up and ask 5 plumbers what they'd charge.... for 5-6 hours.... on a Saturday night... finishing past midnight, and see what they say!"
"tell you what" he continued "we'll do it for half their quote!"
[/quote]

Whoever told you that must be a clever bloke

We play mostly weddings, and i do enjoy them.
But there is no doubt, you're often hanging around 3 to 4 hours before playing, to be able to set up at a time which suits the wedding planner etc.
Worst part is, they mostly run late and you could have turned up two hours later anyway!
But at someones wedding, you cant take that chance. You just have to turn up when they say.
There are definitely Pro's and Cons to it.

[stingrayPete1977]

I don't mind using that down time to my advantage, if I'm at home I'll be doing something or other where at a wedding gig I don't mind being first there to set up the pa and my kit then I'll sit in the van and read or annoy you lot on here for an hour or two.

[PaulWarning]

done 3 weddings in about 10 years, it's true what everybody has said, we did got down a storm at one wedding though, my own daughters, of course we weren't getting paid but the sight of my ex wife and my new partner dancing side by side was payment enough

[thebrig]

[size=2][size=4]Worst gig I ever played was a few years ago at the Woburn Abbey Estate, it was a very high-end works dinner party for the company our keyboard player worked for, and because he was quite high up in the company, he was there as a guest, so after setting up, that was the last we saw of him until we were due to play.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]It was a SIX course dinner which was due to start at 5pm so we had to be there around 2pm to set up and sound check, and because it was a Thursday, the rest of us had to take a day off work to do the gig.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]When we arrived we were told to go through the back entrance next to the kitchen so as not to disturb all the posh guests who were busy drinking and chatting in the marble halls etc..[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]Once we had done the soundcheck, we were then asked to leave, again through the back entrance and not to come back until 9.45pm, we were due to play at 10pm.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]As we all lived too far away to go home and come back, we spent around SEVEN hours in a local pub trying not to get so drunk that we couldn’t play.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]Quentin Willson, the Top Gear presenter was booked to do the after-dinner speech, but he went on and on and didn’t finish until 11.15pm, in the meantime we had spent another hour and a half waiting in a small room next to the kitchen until we got the call.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]When we finally took to the stage, the manageress of the venue told us we must finish at 11.55pm sharp, or she will switch off the electricity supply to the stage, and then after playing for just 25 minutes, we were told we had to hang around until all the guests had left before we could start packing away.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]To sum up, we took a day off work, we left home midday to get to the venue, got home at 3am the following morning, meaning we had spent 15 hours in total plus a 100 mile round trip in our cars, doing this gig.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]It was our first function gig, and naively, we agreed to do it for just [b]£250[/b] because we were told other gigs would come our way from the company on a regular basis, the rest of the guys thought it was good for our CV doing a real “posh” gig like this, but I was the odd one out and left the band a few days later because I just didn’t want to do any more gigs like this.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]BTW, I always wondered how much Quentin Willson got paid. [/size] [color=#222222] [/color][/size]

[discreet]

[quote name='thebrig' timestamp='1510053023' post='3403505']
[size=2][size=4]To sum up, we took a day off work, we left home midday to get to the venue, got home at 3am the following morning, meaning we had spent 15 hours in total plus a 100 mile round trip in our cars, doing this gig.[/size][/size]

[size=2][size=4]It was our first function gig, and naively, we agreed to do it for just [b]£250[/b] because we were told other gigs would come our way from the company on a regular basis, the rest of the guys thought it was good for our CV doing a real “posh” gig like this, but I was the odd one out and left the band a few days later because I just didn’t want to do any more gigs like this.[/size][/size]
[/quote]

Good grief. The crap you put up with is really par for the course (mostly). But £250?? I'm not surprised you left. A pro function gig like that should be charged at around five big ones. And I bet QW got even more than that.

[thebrig]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1510053272' post='3403514']
Good grief. The crap you put up with is really par for the course (mostly). But £250?? I'm not surprised you left. A pro function gig like that should be charged at around five big ones. And I bet QW got even more than that.
[/quote]I would bet that he DEFINITELY did!!!

A few week's earlier, I had secured a wedding booking for the band for a £1,000 which we were all pleased about at the time, but the thought of all the possible hassle involved put me off, so I left before we did it, I did offer to play the gig if they couldn't find a replacement bass player in time, but fortunately they did.

I left on good terms and I have depped for them, but weddings and functions was not what I wanted to do on a regular basis.

I've played in rock bands since then and I really enjoy playing to an appreciative audience on the pub and club circuit, and although we don't get paid so much, the hourly rate probably works out more most of the time.

[Sibob]

This thread is an interesting read to me. I play a lot of weddings/functions etc, and I find them easy. Yes of course they're more structured, there's more waiting around, and you have to deal with some strange requests and people trying hard to organise everything to within an inch of it's life.
But really, it's simply about knowing how to deal with those things:

[b]Songs: [/b]If you market yourself as a band with a specific set-list, then it makes song requests easy to decline. Typically a client will have seen you play elsewhere and so book you for how you sound/the songs in the list. We don't offer any song requests (unless we already know them) other than learning a first dance.
Easiest way to deal with a song request whilst you're playing so they don't continue to hassle you whilst you're vamping around an intro? Say "Yes sure, it's coming up later". They'll forget and/or be too drunk to remember. Or "We've already played it". Best one we had was "can you play sweet home alabama"......whilst we were playing sweet home alabama.

[b]Waiting around: [/b]You're somewhere with your instrument, and hopefully a relatively quiet room, get practicing, take a walk, talk to your band members....you're still getting paid.

[b]Versatile:[/b] It's easy to be versatile. "Oh can you play a little later and not have a break?" Fine by me, prefer it actually, really get into the groove over two hours. Some singers need to pace themselves in these situations, but I'd argue if they can't do it, they probably aren't match fit, or the keys are wrong. Weirdest one we did was a function in a terminal at Heathrow, some marathon they run on the runway. It was like 3-4 songs every 20mins over the course of 3 hours or so. Very odd, but fun, and got to chat to some interesting people, eat free food/drink and hang out in a closed airport with 400 runners. Getting through Security was a bit of a ball-ache, but whatever, there are worse things.

[b]Standard requests:[/b] "Can my son/daughter/wife/dog/boss play your drum kit" No....'it's an insurance thing', no guests on stage/playing instruments etc etc. Just a case of being firm.
The most prevalent request we have is "oh let me wear your hat".....because people apparently never see hats in real life. Answer: "Sure, it really smells though, maybe don't smell it, needs a wash"....they'll forget about it pretty quick in most cases, and if not, good luck to them.

To me, most of the above are basically the same as pub gig requests!!

'Possible hassle' seems like an odd reason to give up a gig that is likely paying you £150-£250. If you consider that you're playing for free (because it's fun and helps you improve) and realise that you're being paid £41 an hour (£250 over 6 hours) in some cases (more or less is possible) for lifting some gear/listening to people talk at you/eating free food.....you start to realise it's not too bad. I mean whatever works for you, if you want to play £50 in pubs, absolutely fine, but if you can get them, I consider weddings functions easy wins. There's the odd total dud, but I think I've probably had two or three in around 10 years.

Si

[Dan Dare]

Not just the drumsticks that need putting away. A pal left his beautiful vintage Martin 0042 on a stand whilst waiting to play at a wedding (silly of him, I know). Whilst he was out of the room, some idiot picked it up and my pal found him strumming/thrashing away, singing to his mates. Said idiot, being of a clumsy disposition, had scratched the top quite badly with the pick.

[musicbassman]

i did a lot of high-end function work in London back in the '80's. I can think of two occasions where the event overran so much with after dinner speeches etc that the band never played at all.
Obviously we still got paid, but it did all seem a bit pointless.

[thebrig]

For me, apart from the hanging around, I generally didn't like the type of songs we had to play at weddings/functions, admittedly, we played them quite well, especially as our keyboard player was exceptionally good, we could knock out Elton John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down" or any other songs with quite large arrangements, and they would always be well received, but deep down, I love the rockier side of music which is why I left the band.

I'm happier now playing in a rock band for just £50 a man, and I'm sure the bass player who replaced me in the function band is happy spending more time at gigs to earn maybe £250 a man.

It's definitely horses for courses, methinks.