I’ve been performing music in public for almost four decades at this point if you count a disastrous trumpet recital in the 5th grade as my “live debut”. There are many elements that go into a successful public performance but I’d like to focus on one element, which is what I call the “Performer’s Social Contract with the Audience”.
In doing a little “google-fu” before writing this blog I ran across an article by Hal Galper (who happens to be one of my favorite jazz educators) with a similar title. His definition of this contract is a little different as it is specific to Jazz performers and audiences but it is still a good read: The Social Contract by Hal Galper.
The impetus for this blog (and the conversation I have on an almost weekly basis with my students who are already gigging) is the idea that some bands just can’t seem to engage their audiences or keep gigs. A big part of how the bands I play in are successful have to do with how they manage the expectations of both the audience and the venue with their own musical needs and ideals.
Let’s discuss the venue first:
Any bar, restaurant, club or venue that will have live entertainment in addition to their primary business of serving food or drinks is hiring music to support their main cause, which is earning money. There is nothing wrong with that since the venue wouldn’t exist without customers spending money and hopefully keeping the venue profitable enough to continue but unless you are a name artist who is filling the room completely every night on your own you are a vendor who is providing a service, much like the guy who brings the beer for the bar or the service that cleans the restrooms or hauls away used cooking oil. You are being paid to provide a service which is entertaining the customers, hopefully keeping them in the venue spending money and providing an atmosphere that will inspire repeat business in the future.
Mistakes that bands make that work against them can include playing too loudly (which not only keeps the audience from talking to each other but keeps them from being able to order food and drinks from their servers), not keeping the contracted schedule (late starts, early ends, breaks that are too long), not playing music that makes sense for the event/venue or crowd (Judas Priest tunes at a wedding? Blues jams with long solos on a Friday night in a college bar? Fusion tunes at a reggae night?) and just being generally unpleasant to the staff and customers. It seems like these should all be common sense ideas but the reality is that I still see people making the same mistakes year after year and they still wonder why they don’t get hired back. Be easy to work with and that will go a long way towards having regular gigs in consistent venues.
The audience is a separate consideration:
When you step foot onstage in a public place and expect the people in the room to pay attention to you, you are entering into a relationship of sorts. The average paying gig in a bar or restaurant is in front of a room full of casual music fans who are out to have a good time. This is NOT a serious music audience that is here to appreciate your genius. These are folks who are wanting to dance, eat, drink, maybe meet a new friend or two and generally want to have a good time. They did not buy concert tickets to see you. With this in mind, you have to consider the fact that in return for attention, applause, appreciation or even just sticking around to spend money and make the venue happy enough to have you back again you need to entertain them. Give them something that THEY enjoy. Usually, that does not include five-minute guitar solos, obscure B-sides from your favorite band or your Bono-like political rants. It means playing music they are familiar with and/or can dance to. It means to entertain them and keep it fun. It means keeping dead time between songs to a minimum, and hopefully do things to keep them engaged. That can mean different things to different bands. In our band during the first set while folks aren’t quite dancing yet there might be a “Name that one hit wonder for a free drink” contest or inviting a birthday girl or boy on stage to shake a tambourine for a song.
When I first graduated college in my early twenties I was like many other recent graduates of music school. I took myself way too seriously and I really didn’t understand how the world worked as far as getting paid to play music. We didn’t think that we should have to dress a certain way on stage because our incredible musicianship should be enough. We were going to play the hip music and not that crap that the older bands were playing because we knew better. You know, we knew better than the guys who had been doing it successfully for several years already. That attitude didn’t last very long because…none of us could hold on to gigs.
By this point, many of you may be thinking that this doesn’t really relate to you because you play jazz or original music and you aren’t slogging through the cover band jungle prostituting your musical souls for money (like I do a couple of times a week). And in some regards, you might be right. But at the end of the day, the basic calculus of live performance and being able to perform on a regular basis is pretty similar regardless of what it is that you do. I’ve always felt that once you step on a stage in public, your role changes from “artist” to “entertainer”. That doesn’t mean that your art should suffer if you are playing original music or performing jazz or other improvised music but you should still consider some of these ideas and how they can impact your success as a gigging musician. You can be an artist and still behave like a professional musician without compromising that art. You just have to figure out how to engage the audience that you want to play for. And in the long run, you might discover that you’ll have more opportunities to share your music (and make a few bucks).
This is the part where I invite the experienced musicians among you to share your own tips and/or horror stories either in the comments on this blog or wherever you ran across this post whether it be on Facebook, the forums, Instagram or anyplace where you might contribute a little knowledge to the community. 🙂
