Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Musicians!

From today's email bag:

Dear Kevin,

This jazz trio wants to charge me $1,200 for just TWO HOURS! Isn't that incredibly expensive?

Signed,
Anonymous Economist

Dear AE,

This is always disheartening to hear from folks. But today, I thought I'd write a thorough response. It's a little testy, but I hope it's useful for people to read.

The question above is one professional musicians hear with some frequency, and represents an implicit view: that playing music is a hobby, and not a viable profession. You might be right, but if you don't mind, here's a bit of analysis:

If the trio's leader is paying himself for doing the job of marketing and managing and contracting the equivalent of one person's income, that's four persons who need to get paid. Let's say it's the piano player (who by the way is bringing his own, $2k setup (keyboard, speakers), and he also runs the gig, start to finish. Making all the phone calls to find those musicians - you follow? And managing the musicians, from advising them of the attire, to making sure they get fed.

So that's $300 each, ergo $1200. As the guy doing all the extra above tasks, the leader would walk with $600.

And is that really for two hours? Not so much. That's two hours of performance time. But not work time. For me, from the time I packed the sheet music, sound system, instrument, and drive there, unload, set up, play, and then the reverse, no gig is less than six hours of work. I only got paid for two of them, and apparently, at that, too much.

$300 is what many of the better waiters at any good restaurant makes in SF every night, five nights a week. They didn't spend $20k learning to do it, nor 20 years of practicing. And they got paid while they were learning at a lower rate.

And they work every night.

If that doesn't make the fee seem a tad more reasonable, how about this: you are offering grown adults the same wage somebody makes in about three days at a minimum wage job (when you factor in health care), and that most lawyers in San Francisco bill for hourly.

Hope this gives some perspective, and some insight into some the awkward silence that ensues when asking adults to work for insufficient compensation. It is, forgive the pun, quite maddening.

Best of Luck,
Kevin

At the Mill with the Jazz Man

This is a program from when it was effortless to weigh 170 lbs. That is to say, it was a while ago.

Towards the end of my stay in Europe in January, I was able to make plans to visit my friend and fellow musician Hepi Kohlich (Hepi is a nickname for Heribert, though I’ve never known another Hepi!). He kindly invited me out to his “new” digs on the Western outskirts of Vienna, Neulingbach, and I spent the day with him and his eight-month pregnant partner, Julia.

We spent the day wandering around, and later Hepi gave me a lift back into Vienna, as he had a gig at a place where I used to hang out in 1988, called The Tunnel. He was doing the job that we pianists are most frequently paid to do: accompany singers. In this case, amateur singers. He was patient and professional, as always. I met my friend Joe, a journalist who has lived in Vienna for 20 years, and who had taught at the same school where I taught a few years before I got there. After gabbing till quite late, I returned downstairs to listen and ponder the fact that I had been first come there before some of the waiting staff were born. Egads.

The day with Julia & Hepi was a blast. They mentioned that they lived next to an old mill, and when we went for a long walk, that the there was a museum nearby. I didn’t understand that the other part of the house they lived in now was the museum! They opened a door (I expected perhaps a closet on the other side of the door), and instead was the inside of an actual mill that had been used up into the 1930s. The owners of the building were a couple with a strong interest in history, and the place was filled with implements and books.

It was two floors of nicely displayed materials, including explanations of how the equipment worked, and artifacts from all aspects of Austrian life.

The program is a page of the Mattersburg Culture Center’s advertisement, referencing the concert that I gave back in 1990. Hepi was also an instructor of mine at that time, and he kindly agreed to play the vibraphone in several duets. He was a blast to spend time with then, and now. Note the picture & reference to San Francisco? Oh, the strange, strange fates we weave. I never had a big plan to move to Mattersburg or San Francisco, and that's about all the two towns have in common!