Jim Richman wrote:I think the main problem, Josiah, is you not understanding the nature of this thread. It has to do with making a living by playing out in clubs----which at one time you could almost do.
Josiah, you teach drums. This is different from playing out professionally full time and deriving most of your income from live playing. You mention all your paying gigs, yet there are none mentioned on your website. One video of a loud rock band, and that's it. You are not in a position to slag professional drummers about their wanting pay cause you do not play out with the hopes of getting paid like a professional should. Sure there are situations that do not fall in the money thing---but not caring about money is stupid, cause you could actually be doing a job(any job) where you get paid instead of wanking for free.
You do not have a single inkling of where my income is derived from, or what percentages come from where. Or even a clue as to how much I make.
You couldn't even be bother to click on the video on my very lacking updates website, or you would have found like 30 videos from the last year playing with various bands. And that is just the ones I bothered to video, edit later, upload.
More importantly, using your own reasoning, you would have far less stance to talk about it. Since I have a boatload more live playing "evidence" then you do on the web.... but that would be a pretty absurd gauge of how much someone plays out, wouldn't it?
I make 100% of my living playing drums or related activities. Period. The majority of it does NOT come from private teaching by the way.
I don't know of a single professional player that does not teach, at least when they are available. Next you'll start talking about how church gigs and weddings don't count either. What about USO gigs? Trying to draw those lines is just absurd.
The cover bands I play with don't play for anything less then $50/hour/person. While I am in no way responsible for their booking, they don't seem to have too many issues finding gigs. Particularly the honkey-tonk country BS for this area.
Do I think musicians should be paid more? Absolutely. But whining about it probably isn't going to change that, I couldn't tell you what will. What I can tell you is, if you want to make money as a musician now a days, you can't rely on the clubs alone. You have to adapt and be flexible to survive.
Does that mean often playing a late Saturday night gig, getting 2 hours of sleep and having to be up at the crack of dawn to go play a church gig Sunday morning? You bet. I did that every weekend for years. And occasionally still do.
Wouldn't it be grand to just play only Friday nights and clear 3G a month? Heck yes... but that's living in a dream world.
Hey, it's not too big around, but it's short.