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:	post by ShadowSD at 2011-03-21 16:17:54

There are lots of good points here.

It's true that expenses have to be paid to put on a show, and it's also true that a show with only a $5 door is probably going to have a problem paying both the bands well and covering the bills (unless the draw is north of 100 people).

As a result though, I also have to agree with Josh that promoters for local shows should not expect to get paid unless the show does REALLY well. Having spent a number of years booking shows at different venues in CT, MA, and RI, I always started with the premise that I didn't get anything for simply booking the show or posting a thread online. I'd even run the soundboard myself for free to reduce expenses so that everything aside from the expenses of the show (venue rental, doorperson, ticket-making cost, PA system) went to the bands. The real trick is keeping overhead down by finding venues that don't have an exorbitant rental or that don't need an external PA; avoiding both at the same is tricky (some places have both issues, like the ones I used to book unfortunately), but it can be done. Some venues are actually smart enough to realize that keeping all the alcohol sales is a steal for them even if there's no venue rent at all.

As for the idea of bands that headline should get a bit more, I think this is quite fair. While something like nine out of ten of our shows in the last seven years have involved us headlining, on a few of those occasions where we headlined and didn't get a guarantee, things weren't always split fairly (including once where we got a significantly smaller share despite bringing 100% of the people), and I had to wonder exactly what the place was thinking. If all the bands are equally known then the band playing last shouldn't get a bonus, but if you've been playing for a while and broadly established yourself with lots of shows, it's perfectly fair to get more than a band that started playing out in the last year or two; we played almost a hundred shows from 2002-2003 and the vast majority we were a support band just playing wherever we could, sometimes getting paid a little but in many cases making zero even if the headliner got a few hundred bucks, and with no complaints. Not that that should be the case for openers, but it took a while to become a headliner on a regular basis, and we knew that's how it would be; everyone has to pay their dues. Even from 2003/2004 on as we went on to play headlining shows where we'd often make $300 or $500 or better, we've still at the same time mixed in occassional shows with our friends' bands (like this Guru show) even if we all we could expect is gas money. After all, no band in their right mind can expect to make $300 on a five dollar show/five band show.

Arrowhead, I hope you have luck talking to the Guru directly, I think for the reasons described in this thread the promotion company itself isn't to be trusted, but if you can get anything going at this venue on your own I think it would be very worthwhile and we'd be happy to play anything you put together. We have a sound system if the one there belongs to the promotion company and you don't have one. I've considered even calling Guru myself to see if we can book a show there directly, but let me know first if you have any luck and we'll go through you.

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