What’s Your Draw?
God, I hate those three little words. If you are a musician, and you are in a band,
and you have attempted to book said band at your local bar, you have undoubtedly
heard these words. These days it’s the
club owner’s best friend and the working musician’s worst enemy. It’s their weapon to get us musicians to play
for less and less money. Some booking
agents (aka “promoters”, who do anything but) are even pitching “pay to play”
gigs, although they won’t call it that.
How do you compete in an environment like that? Yeah, I
know. “Get off my lawn, ya brats.”
But seriously folks, the cat’s outta the bag and there’s no
turning back. Pandora’s box has not only
been opened, it’s been blown to bits. In
short, I believe the explosion of the computer age has completely devalued many
of the creative arts. The explosion of
inexpensive instruments and other gear has put all this stuff in the hands of
way too many folks who delude themselves into believing they have talent and
muddy the water for the rest of us who actually deserve to be seen and heard.
But I digress.
At what point did it become the band’s job to draw the
ENTIRE crowd? I’m sorry to break it to
you, Mr. Club Owner, but if the draw isn’t to your satisfaction maybe it’s
because your club SUCKS or maybe you don’t do your part and ADVERTISE your
business once in a while. Geez, maybe you
could write a press release or something. Hey, here’s a novel idea: clean the fucking bathroom once in a while.
You won’t even put up the cool new full color flyers that we
gave you. Those things cost money, dude
-- money that you just took from me because we didn’t draw. Sorry man, you have to do more than just open
the damn doors and collect the money.
It’s a two-way street.
“Oh, we only made $600 at the bar, so we’re only going to be
able to pay you $300”. Excuse me, if we
didn’t play at all you wouldn’t have made squat -- because you don’t have any
REGULARS. Your place was EMPTY until me
and my friends showed up. How do you
make money during the week?
How about you make your place different from the rest of the
millions of pubs out there? What’s your draw, Mr. Club Owner? You do your part first -- then we’ll talk
about “our draw”.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but the article
linked below really inspired me.
Apparently, I’m not alone.
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