Mike's Blog
Mike Lawson is a dear friend of ours and his insight and advice is just too good not to pass along. Please check out his blog regularly for great info.
The Lawson Letter
(from www2.gibson.com)
Cover me, I'm going on stage...
February 4 2009
Its a funny world we musicians put ourselves into when we hang out the shingle to declare ourselves artists. Those of us who write songs and perform them live will either enter a phase and go through it, or enter it and never come out of it, wherein we declare that we are songwriters and don't do "covers."
That's a slippery slope, folks, to use a term I can't stand to usually use. Here's the deal. I don't care if you're the next Bob Dylan, there is no reason not to perform cover songs as part of your concerts. Even Bob Dylan, perhaps the greatest single songwriter ever born on this earth, started out singing covers and continues to play covers to this day in his live concerts.
Ok, so you're an AMAZING songwriter. I get it. And you might be able to put on an entire concert of riveting original songs that everyone in the room loves and leaves singing after you've planted the latest ear-worm into their unsuspecting heads. But in most circumstances ... more
Playing for the Door
February 4 2009
Ok, by now you've read my rant on pay to play scam clubs. There is some reality here to deal with, outside of the pay to play world, of getting paid to perform but not getting a set fee, and that's the door gig.
First and foremost, always and I mean always, try to get a guaranteed fee for your work. Its usually best to just get a set fee for the performance. However, sometimes it is to your advantage to get a piece of the door as well, or have your fee based on a minimum you're certain to make for showing up and playing, and a bonus from the number of people coming into the place when you play. If by all accounts 100 people should come through the door and pay a $5 cover charge, then get the club to guarantee you $250-300, against 75% of the cover collected. This both covers your nut for a local gig and also rewards you more if you're creating a nice following for your act. Remember, you don't get a piece of the register, you get a piece of the door.
The club owner makes a lot of money selling that booze. A lot of money. Yeah, he's got hard costs, but entertainment has to be a part of that business model or else he can't sell booze to begin with, right? Let's remember, nobody wants to sit in a bar with no sound in it.
Not for long ... more
Pay to Play?
February 1 2009
To quote Peter Griffin, "You know what really grinds my gears?"
For musicians, its this hideous pay-to-play scam perpetrated on stardom-seeking musicians in major cities like Los Angeles and yes, even Nashville, Music City USA.
The scam basically goes like this: Shiftless nightclub owner (who secretly hates musicians) says its a privilege and honor to play in their fine establishment with your unknown band. After all, it costs him a lot of money to open his doors, why should he let YOU in on his good thing? Yes, its such a big deal and honor for you to play this fine club that instead of them hiring your band for a fee and making the money back with a cover charge, your band pay him. Yep, your band gets nothing in the way of pay and has to not only cover the costs for the sound guy that evening, but guarantee the bar owner than "X" amount of people are going to walk through those doors and buy a ticket or pay the cover charge.
If fewer people than the club owner demands come in that night, the musicians have to make up the difference. Yep, you read right. Now not only is the performance of the band worth nothing to the club owner whatsoever, but he thinks so little of your group that he's going to charge you money if he doesn't think enough people came into the club. I recently heard of one where the club owner wanted $1200.00
... more
