Grapes to Wine to Vinegar to...

[Kelly Asay]

This last weekend was a good one. We played a show at The Astoria Bar out in West Eugene, turned out to be one of our best performances to date, even with the mistakes; many of them mine.

We had the pleasure of playing with Scott Austin's "Sea To City" band; what a refreshing take on indie music, you won't want to miss them if you get the chance. We also had a good friends band: Fulcrum on the bill, also a pleasure, good hard 90's era music with some amazing musicians. Thanks for a great show guys.

I also want to say thanks to Arlo for his willingness to be flexible after I managed to book the show not realizing the other acts needed to be ok'd by him. Turns out he's a booking agent, not affiliated with the bar; then I innocently set the cover price below what his shows go for, another serious breach it turns out; we reached an arrangement that let me save a little face.

This is of course where the grapes turned to wine turned to vinegar; the life long struggle to place value on the contributing parts of any endeavor.

Warning, the RANT is about to begin:

We've seen it in corporate America where CEO's can make millions on the backs of extremely low paid workers, and we can see businesses bankrupt by high worker wages forced on CEO's by Unions, etc. Everyone thinks they are the reason it all happens and if not for them then it would all "go down the crapper on a cosmic scale" to quote a buddy.

Bars, booking agents, and the musicians that provide the entertainment are a classic battle. The funny thing is, it seems like the bar-musician-agent thing just keeps getting worse.

At The Astoria, the place was pretty well filled at 85 covers plus the usual 20 or so band related individuals. Now being a "Vintage" musician in an "Vintage" musician band means we have some terrific vintage fans who like to have a good time and can afford to do it. So mildly put, the bar did well. The poor overworked bartender (by herself mind you) even seemed pleased with the results. So the bar did OK, and we introduced 100 or so new people to the establishment and helped them have a good experience there.

Problem was, the bands managed to make about $27 apiece; not per person, each band. Remember that this amount was provided by the cover charge so it didn't even come out of the bar revenue; this means the bands as a whole made less than 8% (estimated) of the revenue we generated; about 2.5% per band. Oh yeah, and we had to bring our own lights and some PA gear just to perform. Hmmm...seems something is out of whack.

To top it off, the owner wasn't even gracious enough to give us the horseshoe pin, or even mutter thanks.

So an agent needs talent to have something to book and make money with; the larger the talent pool, the less they seem to worry about taking care of the talent. A bar only has a couple of options for providing entertainment, sports, girls, cards, or music; there are a million sports bars, cards are highly regulated, girls are expensive and...difficult, and music, well music is a great way to define your segment and consistently draw a crowd to your establishment, and they are notoriously easy to take advantage of.

A musician, even a band can setup anywhere and entertain; record their music and release it online and even make some money. So why are artists so undervalued here? Why do we as performers accept this incredibly silly status quo?

Now let me clear something up; we'd play for free. We love to play, we all have jobs or businesses, so its not about the money, we love music and we love to perform; unless you violate a fairness principal, then, well...better hold onto your shorts. The feeling of being ripped off, taken for granted and under-valued was tough to take; particularly since we all put out a great show.

Nostalgia tells me things used to be better than that, but I'm probably mistaken. Bummer is, we probably won't go back there, neither will the majority of our friends, family and fans. Somewhere someone must have learned that the better the working relationship, the more profitable it is for everyone. If its you, drop me a line.

--Kelly

[Jeff Tunnell]

Kelly is putting it way milder than I did in an email to all Procrastinators at 2Am after coming back from a great show.

[Kelly Asay]

To clear something up, Arlo didn't insist on the 50/50 split, I offered it, an extra $0.50 a head for him in exchange for leaving the cover at the $3.00 we had advertised instead of his customary $5.00 cover; times are tough, figured we'd do our part to ease the fans entertainment pain a little.

The real culprit in my opinion is the bar owner, himself a former musician. I'd be open to playing again, but only for the door and a split with the bar, probably against a guarantee...and a fee for the pa gear we brought...and a fee for the lights Don brought...and a fee for the posters we made....