By Christopher Schlegel

One night in between sets at a bar gig this guy came up to me and asked how much money I was making that night.  I told him that I was making $100 (and I also added that this was a decent amount for a typical beer joint gig).  He seemed amazed, “Wow!  A hundred bucks for playing guitar for a couple hours one night?!”

I suppose this might sound like an exuberant amount (if you have no idea what to expect in this context).  However, let us take a step back and analyze the details with a bit more scrutiny.

• 30 minutes loading equipment.

• 1 hour drive to job location.

• 30 minutes unloading equipment.
• 1 hour (roughly) setting up equipment.  Actually this is always a bit longer as you have to wait for and/or track down your bass player that usually gets lost on the way to the gig and is ALWAYS late even if not lost.

• 30 minutes sound check.

• 30 minutes grabbing something to eat.

• 4 hours playing music (with 3 breaks 10-15 minutes apiece).

• 1 hour (roughly) breaking down equipment.  Actually this is always a bit longer as you have to wait for and/or track down your bass player that usually wastes time trying to chat up some drunken girl instead of working on equipment.

• 30 minutes loading equipment

• 30 minutes looking for the bar owner, arguing with him over the amount you were supposed to be paid, listening to his tales of woe at the amount of money he lost that night, refusing his offer of beer and/or illegal drugs instead of cash and finally his grudging handing over of (hopefully) most of the money he promised in the first place.

• 1 hour drive home.

• 30 minutes unloading equipment

This amounts to about 12 hours.  Divide this into $100 and you get $8.33 per hour.  This, you will notice, doesn’t include the years it took to learn your instrument, the time it took to find musicians to form a band, the time it took to practice the tunes you played, the time it took to find a gig in the first place and so on.  Furthermore, there is also no health insurance, workman’s comp, retirement plan, et cetera.  Why do we even bother?  Ah, yes for the thrill of being able to play the latest crappy Top 40 hit song for drunken people while they go about parading their lack of social skills and attempting bizarre mating rituals which involve something they call flirting and (something they call but which is not quite) dancing.