It’s been a rough week, and it’s only Thursday morning and I haven’t really parsed everything yet. Eventually I’m going to have to think it through in a more focused manner and decide what to do about this evening’s events – but for the moment, as it’s 2.42am and I’m mostly writing to clear my head.
It seems the thing to do.
After SERFA’s focus on contracts and advancing and unions my brain was pleasantly abuzz with ways to increase our footprint in the musical world, but pleasantly warm with the knowledge that over the course of almost 20 years of performance, only ONCE has a venue just up and changed the agreement unilaterally, and NEVER have we had a venue renege on payment.
Well – now it’s twice.
Of course, “renege on payment” sounds like I didn’t get paid, and that’s not the case – but when the agreement is “money and dinner” and you show up and they say “yeah, it’s only money now” – that’s reneging on part of the agreed payment. Doing the math, potentially about one quarter of the payment.
So tonight at Hershey’s, cause at least in the Journal I’m calling this “venue” out by name, we rolled in early. I was eager to host my first Wednesday of the month showcase, and yes – I’ve been kind of discouraged because despite everyone talking about how glad they are that I’m bringing different sounds to their stage, generally speaking it hasn’t been taking off. We did one in December as proof of concept with the idea that they’d be monthly after that, and that night was great – unfortunately the booker didn’t put a hold on dates for the possibility of it being a recurring booking and so it wasn’t until April that we were able to start a regular first Wednesday event.
Even though it’s not a listening room environment, even though there’s any number of idiosyncrasies that make the venue not quite ideal (no, we don’t turn off the televisions, yes, we always leave them tuned to Fox news – I don’t think I’ve EVER been in a bar that left ANY news program playing all the time) – I get moving on putting together dates. And frankly, I’ve got a lot of demand for something that I’M putting together and I have no trouble filling slots with really, really amazing performers. I’m very, very proud of this fact, and sharing a stage with Domenic Cicala, Emma G., Laura Baron, Eryn Michel, Mosno Al-Moseeki, Cletus Kennelly, Doug Alan Wilcox, Siobhan O’Brien and Gabrielle Zwi for the next three showcases is awesome… a little disheartening because with every showcase I feel like I’m having to explain away this, apologize for that – and we’ve NEVER had the draw I’d like, but it’s been good music.
TONIGHT – I’m discouraged because of the above, but excited because of the above, and I’m there early because I never allow myself enough time to set up leisurely and eat. Unfortunately, walking into the stage from the rear entrance, I encounter DINERS. A family of 5 is set up and eating on the stage – and beyond that, it’s 5.20pm and they’ve JUST been seated. No early load-in for me!
Siobhan O’Brien has taken a page from the rob book and SHE’S shown up really early as well and so we sit down with Kristen and our friend Sue and our server comes over and I explain to him that Siobhan and I are performers – and tell Siobhan that the venue takes really good care of us foodwise so ta-
I’m interrupted by the server who explains that he’s new there but I might want to check on that because he thought they did NOT feed artists… and I counter with the fact that I’ve been playing here pretty regularly for much of the last year and that’s the agreed upon deal. He says he’ll ask…
Well, a familiar face who’s a usual waitress returns and plops a ripped strip of paper down on the table in front of me. She says “the owner dropped this off this morning. Read it yourself.” In pencil, all caps after something about discounts that I don’t remember is NO FOOD OR DRINK FOR MUSICIANS.
I should’ve snapped a photo. I didn’t because I just wasn’t thinking. Siobhan is immediately saying that it doesn’t matter but I’ve got two more musicians on the way and I’m getting on the phone with the booker. As I’m waiting for an answer from her, I go to the bartender who hands me the money at the end of the night and want to be CLEAR that he’s got payment waiting for me. He assures me that he was shocked by this when he came in, everyone was surprised and that he’s really sorry – but also confirms that there will be a check waiting for me at the end of the night.
I get a text back from the booker. “Call me”.
SHE hadn’t been informed of the change and says she’ll see what she can do – calls the owner and after some argument the owner says that the food for tonight for the four musicians (“but just 4 chicken dinners – no alcohol!!!!” [like, is THIS the problem? Are other bands drinking a WHOLE LOT?!?]) will be covered, but stresses that THIS IS THE LAST TIME.
SO I’m in the process of explaining what’s gone down (and what I now believe to be the deal) with the third musician who has just arrived and the server comes back to me and says “nope, the owner just called – nope – she must’ve changed her mind – no food” and walks away – like we’re bad dogs or something.
So – great – and now, at 6.50pm, after having arrived for load-in at 5.20pm for my 7pm show, they’ve finally cleared the food from the stage – and *I* clear the table – and then the table from the stage. No-one sweeps it or anything. Over the course of the night we play to the crunching of occasional chicken bones that I’ve missed on the stage.
Scrambling to set up is at least where I excel and we’re up and running by about 7.20 or so. Doug goes first and I put his sound put together. Gabrielle is up next. She mentions the chicken bones. Siobhan is up next where, in order to add insult to injury the server who’s been doing all the above communication with the owner decides it’s necessary to slam cutlery onto the table next to the stage. A LOT of cutlery – an ABSURD amount of cutlery – and she’s apparently unable to make this transfer (from the dishwasher rack to the basket – two very mobile items) ANYWHERE else or any more quietly.
As if to tip the whole thing into absurdity, about halfway through the show someone starts playing bass guitar above us. I know there are tenants upstairs. There’s apparently no arrangement about this.
At the moment, this is what I can remember of what went wrong with the show. It was kind of a lot – and beyond being pissed off about this arbitrary (and beyond that, really rudely delivered) unilateral changes to our booking agreement, I’m BEYOND mortified to have to explain all this and apologize to the friends and peers that *I’VE* invited to play for the night.
And they understood – and it has been survived – but that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? The bartender got it right. You apologize. You’re sorry that someone changed the rules. The booker apologized, “if I was in a better place right now I’D pay for dinner” she says – somehow the server feels that the right way to do this is wave a piece of paper at me and then latter slam stuff around like a scolded teenager. Example b is not a professional method of dealing with people even when your boss puts you in a crappy situation…
Because let’s back away from all of my crappy experience: the server’s caught in an absolutely bullshit place. The boss changed the rules on a slip of paper and left it there that morning for the staff to deal with. The booker hasn’t been told. The musician is the first one on the ground who needs to be given this information… and that’s me. The new guy even had the right instincts LITERALLY saying to me “hey, don’t shoot the messenger”…
So, I went around muting the televisions with my sneaky phone app and got on with the night. IF I can get to sleep tonight I’ll have slept on the situation, and I’ll talk it over with Heather, and then WE’LL sleep on the situation – and then we’ll decide what to do with the showcases and ilyAIMY’s two bookings with this venue.
My instinct with the showcases seems obvious. The showcase artists that I bring in won’t be able to trust what I offer because I’m dealing with a booker that I can’t trust because SHE can’t trust that the owner of the venue will honour whatever agreements she lays out. It’s an untenable, embarrassing and spectacularly unprofessional position to be in, but there it is. I think that barring some massive apologies from the top down these are not viable. It’s not a good environment for them in any case. It’s a REAL shame that luminaries from three pretty major local musical institutions came out and saw all of the above so even IF apologies were made, I think word’s going to get out.
My instinct for the band is to pull out of the shows (this month and in November), but the one at the end of the month is a big wedding show for a couple of fans who are actually getting MARRIED at Hershey’s. There’s theoretically additional money being ponied up by the wedding party and in addition, I’d feel bad pulling out of it – I mean, it was crappy when MY wedding band pulled out of the gig – it’s not the same situation but I don’t want to make anyone’s special day less special or more stressful…. And yet on the other hand, the venue’s not going to care if I knock off my showcases. The venue’s not going to care if ilyAIMY never comes through the door again. Maybe the venue will care if we make it clear to someone for whom the place is SO IMPORTANT THAT THEY’RE GETTING MARRIED THERE that because they broke their covenant with us we’re not playing there again. Maybe it’ll get the owners’ attention even a tiny bit to say that sometimes you need to renegotiate, but you don’t just inform people after they’ve shown up to work for you that you’re changing their deal and effectively cutting one quarter out of the night’s pay.
I’m really not sure what the right answer is. I know what I WANT to do. What I NEED to do is sleep on it. Which, now that it’s around 3.30am, maybe I’ll be able to do that.
Bah. 4.04am.
