I played last night in brooklyn and the band and I tord the place down. We were supposed to get payed but the club owner didn't want to pay because the promoter didn't bring in enough people. I was so fucking mad that my band members had to take me outside to keep me from smacking the shit out of the promoter. Anyone been through any similar situations?








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you'll run into this deal a lot until you start contracting your gigs. write up a nice little contract with your agreement with the venue and payment and send a copy to the venue and keep a copy for yourself. do this enough before hand that you can get the signed contract back in the mail before the day of the show. but back int he day when my bands would just email a band or venue and they'd say "yeah, you can play. theres a spot" we'd just take that and show up and got stiffed a lot.


and making a big deal about not getting paid is also a good way to not be asked back.

When my band does get paid for a show, I consider it a pleasant surprise. And usually if we do it's just enough for the band to make a Taco Bell run on the way home lol.








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hey.

It happens occasionally. The best thing to do is be completely upfront about the cash; bringing a contract for someone to sign is usually shunned and you'll get a bit of backlash for that.

What I do is send an email detailing the arrangement- it's seen as less confrontational and it also provides a written agreement of sorts detailing the terms should things end up in court.

If you are stiffed on what is a legit deal (emails passed and so forth) then you have grounds to take the person into small claims court but you have to ask "is it worth the gain to go through all the BS?" If the amount is over $500 then perhaps. If it's not, then the best thing to do is chalk it up to a loss and make sure you don't make the same mistake again.








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givethedrummersome wrote:

I played last night in brooklyn and the band and I tord the place down. We were supposed to get payed but the club owner didn't want to pay because the promoter didn't bring in enough people. I was so fucking mad that my band members had to take me outside to keep me from smacking the shit out of the promoter. Anyone been through any similar situations?

It happened to me a few weeks ago...

I was playing a gig at a bar, the weather was crappy, as it so often is in the North-East, and the crowd was thin... Halfway through the second set the bar manager asked us to stop playing and take a cut in pay because the crowd wasn't going to get any better. We simply said "NO", we're here, we moved the gear in and set it up and just because there is no crowd is no reason for US to not honor OUR commitment to play until the bar closes. The Bar manager said, sorry, we're closing now, you'll have to get paid less.

When situations like this happenm, YOUR next move determines your legal rights...

If YOU have lived up to your end of the bargain and are willing to stick it out and play till the end, then the bar owner is obligated to honor his agreement and pay you. If you AGREE to play a shorter time for less money, you have changed the contract in a mutally agreeable fashion. If you have PLAYED until the end of the night and they STILL want to short you in pay, refuse to leave until you are paid in full. They want to go home too.

In our case, the gig where the bar manager was trying to short-pay us turned out OK. We told him he hired us to play music for HIS crowd. If he had no crowd to play to, he still owes us for playing. If you want entertainment, hire a band... if you want PEOPLE, hire a bus driver. He's bitching at the wrong guys. We explained that to him and we ALSO explained that we WERE going to get paid or the police would be called AND we would take him to small claims court, thus wasting a LOT of his time.

We got paid, and we will never accept a gig there again.

Here's the deal. Don't let these guys push you around. If they try to short pay you, don't put up with it. Push back, in a LEGAL and PEACEFUL way. If it means he'll never hire you back, don't worry... he'll short ya next time too, so you don't want to GO back.








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BillRayDrums wrote:

It happens occasionally. The best thing to do is be completely upfront about the cash; bringing a contract for someone to sign is usually shunned and you'll get a bit of backlash for that.

What I do is send an email detailing the arrangement- it's seen as less confrontational and it also provides a written agreement of sorts detailing the terms should things end up in court.

If you are stiffed on what is a legit deal (emails passed and so forth) then you have grounds to take the person into small claims court but you have to ask "is it worth the gain to go through all the BS?" If the amount is over $500 then perhaps. If it's not, then the best thing to do is chalk it up to a loss and make sure you don't make the same mistake again.

I've never had an issue with a legal document. In all matters of business contracts exist.

If you work as a sub contractor to a venue then it is an absolute must to have a contract. After some time of employment perhaps it becomes less of an issue, but the first few times...c'mon...you have to.

If a club owner has issues with signing a simple contract with easy to understand verbage, then he's going to have an issue with paying you.
A contract is a simple thing. It simply states that upon us (band) up holding our end of the agreement that the club must up hold the payment end as well. It works both ways, the club has a right to hold you to you doing your job. Plus if set times and other information is included it helps you not have to bother staff/mgmt with questions like when do we start, and do we get a bar tab?

For anyone interested I will send a legal "fill in the blanks" contract to help you out. You shouldn't feel guilty for safeguarding your butt.

To the gentleman who's text I quoted:
Please don't take this as me trying to pick on you or start crap, it's just something that I feel is an absolute in this industry. Nothing at all personal. I did some fill in La Nouba stuff a while back, and it was amazing. Do you Know Charlie Denard?

J









Last edited by Jiggarelli on Mon Apr 30, 2007 12:54 am; edited 1 time in total

Yea our band has been screwed 2 times this month. and each time we drove at least 2 hours to get to the shows. oddly enough...the venue owner at this one place told us, and the 2 otherbands, that he should have booked 2 locals and 1 out of town band.

He had booked 2 out of town bands, and 1 out of state band on this night.

He told us no crowd would come in and offered us some cash and free booze, which was nice.

But when we asked if we could go ahead and play anyway, he said no becuz he didn't want to have to run the sound.

all 3 bands wanted to play and had agreed it was cool enough to play for the bands and what few people were there.

and it was a NO go!

I remember playing a gig in a pub many years ago where we were supposed to be playing 2x45 minute slots for about £70. Halfway through the second set, the landlord pulled the plug as the regulars in the other bar wanted to watch boxing or something on TV and couldn't hear as we were playing. As we were packing up the landlord gave us £30...as we'd not played the full set!!!!!We argued with him but he wasn't having any of it......
I believe the bass player made a mess on the toilet floor shortly afterwards...








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Here in Baltimore, theres not a huge music scene. If you're playin out you get paid based on the number of people that you bring, unless you're a cover band booked for the whole night, and a lot of places require the preselling of tickets, by the band. There was a place that for almost 2 years we were their go to band. First night we played there, every other band had dropped off the bill. We found this out when we showed up for load in. We went from playin a 45 min set to playing for 3 1/2 hours. From then on, if a band cancelled or they just hadnt managed to book anyone else we'd get a call, usually thurs night or fri afternoon and we were there to play, whenever they needed us. We never sold tickets, half the time we didnt even have time to promote. One night, and it was one of the last minute nights, as we were leaving the owner tells us that we owe $40 to the bar. We never picked up our tickets and that would have been the bars cut. We argued...citing that we never sold tickets and that we broke our backs for them on a regular basis. In the end...we paid to play, we never played there again AND we advise other bands not to play there.








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Tama
Saluda
Evans
Pro-Mark/Vic Firth

My band was scheduled for our first show and the bar closed down without notice a week before the show. it was major BS. So as you can imagine we didn't get paid let alone even got to play.

this happened to me one time with my old band, we were actualy covering for another band, the bar owner called us a day before the show to see if we could do it, so we did the shwo and at the end she didnt have any money for us we were pissed, she sayd it was because there wasnt alot of people in the show... shit not our foult, taht she didnt advertise the show and noone whent...she finaly gave us half of what she sayd she was going to give us...but alot of band that had playd there alwyas complained that they never got payd for playign there, well, taht place whent back rupt and shut down,....oh whell.....

but hey it happens.. you just got to be more careful, sometiems a contract helps, but if its a smal gig, they probably wont whant to sign a contract, and will probably hire a band that is not woried about the pay and just whants to play








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The old "You didn't advertise enough" Vs "You didn't bring in enough people" debate rages on.

I've been both a promoter and in bands, and I can tell you it's not easy for either party.

Sometimes you put on a band, and expect them to pull in great numbers of people, advertise everywhere... and it comes to the night, and hardly anyone shows.

Is it because the promoter didn't advertise, or is it because the band didn't have the pulling power they thought they did?

Sometimes it's a bit of both, and both parties need to understand that.

If it's a DIY gig, then the band needs to be flexible in that sometimes they'll lose a bit of money or will only get petrol costs out of it.

If it's a professional band, hired by a business/venue, then the business has an obligation to pay them as agreed. It's the responsibility of the business to ensure they promote and hire a band that will bring in customers for their establishment.

So you can't really apply one set of rules for all gigs.








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One thing that happened to me recently with getting shorted on time (since people are also bringing that up in this thread) is something that really made me angry. A few days ago, my band was playing a gig that was supposed to be 3 bands on the bill. It's all original bands, so 3 is a pretty good number since the show usually starts around 10 at that place and goes til about 1:30. The first 2 bands usually get about a 45 minute set, and then the last band gets to play until close. Well, one of the other bands brought another band along with them. That band went on first, and preceded to play for an hour and 15 minutes. This screwed up the entire night. Then the second band took 20 minutes to set up. The majority of the crowd was there to see us, it was a lot of our friends because we had done a lot of promoting. So we finally take the stage to do our set, and 5 songs into an 8 song set list (which we already cut down) we were told that we have to be done so the last band has time to play. While I understand they needed to play too, I was very mad. If they hadn't brought along that first band none of that would've happened. Not to mention people started booing because they wanted to hear our full set, and then the majority of the crowd left, leaving them about 5 people to play to. 3 of which were the guys from the band they brought.








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