I have to apokogize for the scan here…it is fuzzy but I can’t re-shoot it.

A most remarkable bit of business for me.  A guy brought me a tear sheet from a magazine and asked me to paint the girl.

I got it done in four hours.  Delivered it to him still damp.  I believe I got 400.00 for her

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

 

“I like trumpet players but if all I hired was trumpet players my show would fold”
                                                                             Jackie Gleason

T.O. had a soft spot for country music.  There’s nothing wrong with that except it was difficult to get a house at The Bar with a country offering.
There were exceptions of course.  Back In The Saddle, a seven piece ensemble that delivered smooth Western Swing and Chuck Wagon and The Wheels whose brand of Western Swing was a bit more irreverent but every bit as much fun.  Shagbark Hickory was another of the groups that did well carrying a pedal steel it the mix.  Tom Rigney’s ‘Sundogs’ did consistently well with their brand of Cajun Zydeco music.

 
But what brought in the girls was rock and roll.

 
Uncle Rainbow, any of Mark Ford’s bands (and there were several) Daddy-O and such like.  You really couldn’t go wrong with bands like that.  Stu Blank rocked the old upright piano so hard he broke strings on it!  There was Merlin, featuring a guy named Carlos playing a harp of all things
There was System 9, one of those “wedding bands” that made up for lack of original tunes by delivering accurate covers of just about any rock or pop song you could think of.
The bands on that list were, at a local level anyway, truly great bands.  But those bands were not available at all times so you had to try other local groups hoping to find a new, emerging group that might catch the public eye.  That was always a risky business because there are just so many low draw nights a saloon can take and still survive over the long run.
Some bands did better than others of course but it was a gamble when you ran a new group since few new bands really drew all that well on their first few appearances at The Bar.

 
 Still, the idea was to draw women and to do that the band you book had better make the girls dance.
However, T.O. was not a dancer.  Music did not move him like it moved the ladies and their lusting beaux.  There is nothing wrong with that, either, so long as you realize who you are trying to please and hire what your patrons like.
There were some bands he did not like.  He did not like them “because what they played was not music.”  He had the normal human failing of thinking that if he liked or disliked a certain type of music, why, he was providing the world with an example of excellent musical taste.  We all feel that way to a degree.  For most of us we are thankfully limited to controlling just our own CD and TV fare.  When running a saloon however you have to try to figure out what brings in customers and your own brand of music may not be it.

 
One of the music forms T.O. hated was Fusion, that admixture of rock and jazz.  Another band type he disliked was any band that played “metal” or “alternative” rock.
There was one such band we shall call “Razed Cain” (although that was not the band’s name) that we shall use as an extreme example of Saloonkeeping Gone Wrong.

 
 Here is where the Jackie Gleason quote mentioned at the start of this writing comes in.
You cannot hire bands as if you were buying CD’s for your stereo.  Your saloon is not your living room.  Sometimes you have to hire what you don’t like if it brings you money.

 
I didn’t particularly care for the music of Razed Cain either.  They played too damn loud and their vocals were unremarkable (to me).  But their front man and lead guitarist was a darkly handsome, obnoxiously arrogant, young man who played a style of guitar that did not interest me but the girls just loved.  They would flock to see that band and dance to their music.
The leader of Razed Cain offered us a deal.  He wanted us to charge a seven dollar cover for one of his shows.  This was an unheard of high price for The Day.  The normal cover fee was 3.00, sometimes 4.00.  Along with this high cover charge the band would just work for the door.   I had to ask T.O. since Razed Cain was one of his least favorite groups.  He OK’d the deal figuring he’d be getting a band for free and Razed Cain would be cutting their own throat.

 Razed Cain absolutely packed the place that night!

T.O. sat by the side door darkly, drinking beer after beer after beer…

Finally he could stand it no more.

He made his way through the crowd and got up on the stage.
The crowd grew quiet.  Many of the patrons had no idea who he  was.  The musicians, however, knew T.O. by reputation had an inkling of what was to come and those of us that were crew knew what was going to happen and could only watch helplessly…

He was brief.  I’ll give him that.

He proceeded to tell the patrons (in a packed venue, mind you) what he thought of Razed Cain and their music.  He also made a point  to tell the patrons that they had terrible taste in music to even listen to this kind of thing to begin with….
He finally finished his rant and got off the stage glowering pugnaciously at any and all as he went to his seat and had the duty bartender call him a cab.
Razed Cain tried to pick it up from where they were interrupted but never quite got off the runway for the rest of the evening.
Some patrons assured me they would never return as they left.  I think most of those did return because of habit but some hardcore Razed Cain fans probably never returned.

 
 The event described was probably the most extreme example of hosting at its worse.  These incidents didn’t happen often but an inebriated owner publicly unhappy with the band du jour was a Loose Cannon in its most draconian form.  Over the years there were a few more such incidents but none were quite as provocative.

 
On another tack there is always a problem of a creeping rise in volume in a live music club.  It happens.  You try to stay on top of it.  Some bands are just difficult to deal with for that kind of thing.

Actually the crowds seem to like loud bands.  Where it got to be a problem was with Crew.   At a certain volume level the bartenders and waitresses could not hear each other well enough to get the orders right.
I would approach the sound man and tell him/her to get the band in hand and sometimes that worked.
Sometimes it did not.
So I would go to the head of the band, between songs, and give them the word.  That usually worked.  I wasn’t all soft and sweet with them but I wasn’t rude either.  I had played in club bands and I knew how it was from the musician’s standpoint.  They truly cannot hear how they sound to the patrons.  On one of the nights Razed Cain was playing I asked him twice to turn down and he wouldn’t.  Finally I went to him looking overjoyed and I said “You did it!  You finally did it!”
“Did what?
“Your playing is so loud we can’t hear the singer at all!  Thank you!”
That worked.

 
T.O., if in his cups, sometimes thought it was better to just get in there and “help”  the sound tech and sometimes actually tamper with the mix because, of course sound tech was an overrated skill that anyone could do.  Alcohol never seemed to improve anyone’s attempts at controlling a soundboard but he felt he was capable of ‘fixing it’ after he’d had a few.  One night he did this so “well” that the  sax player in the band had to be restrained from packing up his instrument and quitting the gig.

 
Or he would stand in front of the band waving his arms down as if he were Johnny Carson telling and audience to quiet down.  Letting the world know he thought the band was too loud.  It probably was.  But there are more effective, less public ways to get your point across.
Having played in bands I told him it’s too hard for a band to turn down in the middle of a song while they were playing.  They had to do this between songs.  He would look at me as if I were daft and pantomime a guitarist reaching behind himself and turning down an amp.  “That’s all they got to do…”

 
T.O. certainly was not like that every night.  However it must be said that it is a problem when that obnoxious drunk in the corner is the owner and not someone you can cut off or send home.  Not everyone knew he was the owner which meant that some customers saw it as a Saloon that could not maintain order.

 
Even with bands he liked he could be a problem if he had too much to drink.   Alcohol’s consumption past a certain limit seldom brings out the best in anyone.

 
It got so I had to avoid booking bands I would have liked to have booked again.   Some I felt, if given a fairly regular opportunity, might build a following at The Bar but if T.O. didn’t like certain bands he discouraged me from hiring them.  So the bands booked themselves elsewhere and their fans followed them.
Away from The Bar…

 
There is no way of knowing whether the bands I would like to have hired and could not would have fared better over time.  Sometimes even a popular band would lose its edge and attendance will drop because people got bored with what was perceived as a same-o same-o lack of fresh material.
I can’t even say that the kind of embarrassing scenes I described here had that much of an affect on the overall business since, after all, it was just a drunk getting out of hand and who has not seen a drunk get out of hand in a saloon?  There have been stories, tales actually, of bars that have brawls every weekend that still manage to stay open and apparently thrive although no local bar could make that claim.  The Bar was not noted for having much in the way of fights.  In that respect we did well.

 
Gleason’s adage still applied
“I like trumpet players but if all I hired was trumpet players my show would fold”
Hiring bands to suit your own taste will, in the long run, cripple your establishment because what you, as a saloonkeeper, like often has no connect to what the partying public likes.

 
As time went on it seemed like no matter what kind of band we hired the crowds were on a decline.  The sure fire bands that always seemed to draw were getting very scarce.  The video cassette, the rented movie and ordered in pizza was making a dent in the business.  People found ways to stay home and have fun and avoid the risk of an alcohol related ticket.  When they did go out they drank less because of the real fear of harsh fines if caught driving even a little over the legal limit.  And finally,  the clientele started to age.  Some got married and became parents.  Partying on weekends was curtailed because it was hard to budget and famly  responsibility crowded the saloon life out.

… and the younger folks migrated elsewhere looking for the newest Hot Spot.

 

The nightclub business was losing its sparkle…

                                                                                                      
I really can’t remember how I met Dan but I do know we were looking for a doorman at the live music saloon called Barney Steel’s in Redwood City where I was the de facto manager.  I suspect it was through a mutual friend, Jan Condran, a waitress on my crew at the time.
 
If a perfect doorman ever existed he was it.  We had him for about ten years I think. 

Our bar did not attract a violent crowd but on a few occasions his gentle, wise, manner would get set aside and this brief but effective Grizzly Bear would pop out and, with little fanfare, settle the situation of the moment.
 
The rest of the time he was amazingly congenial, never seeming to tire of greeting customers with “Good evening, Welcome to Barney Steel’s.  The cover tonight is ___ and the band tonight is ____”
Endlessly…!     Always with a smile.
 
But he was much more than that.  I’m sure I share the same kind of memory as others in his deep listening and gentle responses as I/we vented our latest mental or moral trouble. Always the guy to encourage someone’s efforts.  A man of infinite wisdom and wit, wit that was never at someone else’s expense.
 
Most nights he was working I stood next to him a lot of the time to check the customers as they came in and occasionally give him a break so he could go on a “parking lot check” with someone.  I’d go on a ‘parking lot check’ with him from time to time too, where rumor has it certain herbs may have been smoked.  I can’t remember…
And we talked.  We talked for hours about “Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax…of Cabbages and Kings” as Lewis Carroll would say.  
 
I never saw him drunk.  Ever.  Maybe two beers a night if that.  A man who led by example.  He had a drive of about thirty miles at the end of the night and he would not risk a DUI… 
We had a lot in common, he and I, but at the same time we were very unalike, myself being everything they attribute to an Aries.  His Steady Mellow and my Intensity harmonized pretty well.
 
He was a pretty good pool player.  He never rattled….
 
After the bar shut its doors we drifted away to do other things as people will and we saw less of each other.  Distance and busy lives… we all know how it is.  And a visit from time to time, more of an incidental crossing of paths, were not be the same as the bonding we had at that bar.  A bonding we both missed.
 
But when someone Takes Flight suddenly like this I regret the opportunities missed to communicate, to have had at least one more dinner… one more e.mail…that kind of thing… too many things unsaid…
 
The Dan I knew never seemed troubled or worried but he must have been so at times because he was human with the same pains and pressures of life all of us face…some of the pains he had to go through  took their toll.  But you never knew because he hid it and made it About You.  You got his full attention.  Didn’t matter what it was that had you in a flutter and flurry, he would talk you down in his own inimitable way.  

Jan aptly put it this way  “He always knew the right words and his talent for getting you to realize the answer to your own question was uncanny.”
 
He would answer any question and even when his answer was “I don’t know.” you felt better anyway…
 
When I grow up I want to be just like him.

Tags: Dan York, Doorman Dan

Another segment of a project The Rise and Fall of a Saloon In The Latter Part off The Twentieth Century. These excerpts are not chronological. In fact very little logic prevails…

 

Book My Band Part One  ~ Conception and Birth

Most bands start out as a bunch of friends gathering at each other’s houses and learning (hopefully) how to play their instruments.  Sometimes this is done via music lessons but that is the rarity.  A large percentage of these formative bands are started by groups of friends with just a marginal understanding of their instrument.

This level of band is called the ‘garage band’, a name gained by the fact that most of the gatherings were banned to the garage by the parents who owned the garage.
Most garage bands and their musicians are inspired by some current popular group.  The classic example of this is how so many young men had no idea they even wanted to play guitar until they saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.  Suddenly millions of hormonally stoked youth saw themselves as being on the receiving end of money fame and, most importantly, groupies.

They also found soon enough that you don’t get much fame, money or groupies in a garage.
It was thought that they must make The Record

And to make The Record they needed to become, if not Famous, at least very well known.  And one of the ways they gain notoriety is to “Play Out” and hopefully get paid.  And get groupies so they might get laid in the process…
Critical decisions had to be made.   A band name must be chosen and it must be a name that evoked some kind of imagery.  Only then could they have cards printed and when they had cards printed they were officially a band.  Cards trump musicianship.  Cards gave Identity.

They played parties, usually for free.  They played any event that would have them.  In the latter part of the twentieth century there were even things called “Battle Of The Bands” often sponsored by musical instrument manufacturers and were usually well attended, if noisesome, events where bands competed usually for the prize of a “record contract”.  It is uncertain whether these contracts ever produced a record  however…
For the most part the settings they played for didn’t pay at all.
To get paid they needed to build a repertoire, a list of songs that everyone in the band could play reasonably well for four hours.

Why?

So they could Play Out in local Saloons and Make Money and get Famous.

In the latter part of the twentieth century there were indeed local saloons that would pay bands to play for their patrons.
There was something like a multi leveled circuit of bars and saloons that depended on and, in some cases, exploited the small musical groups looking to get ahead.

The entry level bars had the bands playing in a corner, usually cramped, with no visible stage and no in-house sound system.  These joints usually cited ‘experience’ as the best pay they offered with some vague hint at ‘maybe later on’ paying something.   There never seemed to be an end to bands who would sign on to such venues.  This was exploitation of course because the “maybe later on”  promise of more money never materializes in that kind of venue.

But it served to winnow out some of the worse bands.  Quickly, too!

As time went on and the surviving bands gained some following they would graduate to venues like The Bar that actually paid money.  A good band could do fairly well playing the local circuit of saloons like The Bar that actually had a stage and a real dance floor.  They played saloons like The Bar as more or less bread and butter as they set their sights on the next level, the large stage and road shows.  Those venues often had them again playing for free (or close to it) as ‘opening acts’ for the ‘headliners’ and eventually being a ‘headliner’ themselves.
Getting to this level increased the Fame factor and usually made getting The Record more attainable.
But that’s not what this is about.  This is about one of the bars on the circiut…

The Bar was a very good room for music.   They had overhead stage lights, a fourteen channel sound system, good microphones, monitors, a rock steady stage and a parquet dance floor.  The Bar was better suited for live music than most of its competitors.  The Bar charged a cover on weekends and if a band was a good draw everyone made money.

There were some bands that seemed to have been around forever and saw frequent bookings… bands like Stu Blank and His Nasty Habits, Back In The Saddle, Mark Ford Band, Merlin, Uncle Rainbow, Daddy-O,  Chuck Wagon and The Wheels… most of those bands are just dusty names now but there was a time when those bands would just fill The Bar with happy folks on the strength of their name alone.

However the bands  starting out did not have the name impact.   Nor does a new band have a real  following. 

To build up a following what some of them would do was to create a mailing list where they would take the name and address of their ‘fans’ and send monthly notices of where they were playing.  Saloons did this too and sending such notices by US Post Office could be an expensive proposition.

Nowadays, of course a band will have a website with pictures of the musicians (still looking sullen and unhappy).  They will have audio clips and some will also have links to YouTube usually showing the band at a live venue sounding terrible along with being badly photographed.  Perhaps this is why many of the bands look so sullen.  They just don’t sound good and they know it.   A little smoke here… a mirror or two there.

So we have our former garage band with cards, repertoire and mailing list ready to go big time and hit the local club circuit…

Now all they needed to do was to get hired by the paying venues.

Book My Band Part Two ~ Sparkle

The section “From the Bar ~ Make ‘Em Dance” makes the following claims:

 A successful live music saloon is successful only if they can attract women.
 Women, when they go out to saloons, fully intend to be entertained and I think it’s safe to say the majority of them go because they want to Dance.

If a band could not deliver the Dancers, as a rule they were not booked more than once.

From the Saloon’s standpoint there was no shortage of new bands to choose from.  All of them had freshly printed business cards with clever names.  Some had 8 x 10 glossy photos of the band members all in a row looking stylishly sullen.  Why bands think a photo of a line of sullen, largely unhandsome men is attractive to the public deserves further study but I’ll leave that to others.
Some bands even had a demo cassette.

Ideally the best way to audition a band would be to see it at a competing venue.  This was not always possible and sometimes  all The Bar had to go on was word of mouth or a demo cassette and an occasional 8 x 10 photo.  A pursuasive “manager” or band spokesperson could be valuable too.  As indicated, a demo cassette was of value.

The Rule for a band is if you make any kind of demo tape is to lead off with your best song.  This is because the person booking the bands is not going to listen to the whole tape.  Some bands were clever enough to blend a series of partial songs to give the booking person an idea of what they had to offer but long demo tapes seldom got a full hearing.

What the band booker finds is that unknown bands tend to have a sameness in their sound and this works against them.  This sameness is usually because, when they built their repertoire, they didn’t strive for Sparkle… the indefinable thing that makes a band stand out.

The bands that got a lot of work were distinctly different.  Sometimes it is one or two members who were really superb musicians.  Sometimes it was a person of uncommon beauty or voice.  Sometimes it was the simple but effective method called “rehearsal” where the bands would get together and focus on Really Sounding Good.  Rehearsals are not fun and a lot of work which may be why many bands withered and died.  But a well rehearsed band had a bit more polish, more Sparkle than the bands constantly ‘winging it’. 

What we have established is that to get steady club work you have to have a band that made people move on that dance floor.

But to get multiple bookings the band had to have Sparkle either in their music or their presentation or both.

The Bar booked primarily rock and roll because that’s what the customers (read ‘women’) wanted.  There were some country flavored bands that did remarkably well but those country bands that did well were definitely closer to the infinitely more danceable Western Swing than they were to the Johnny Cash/Merle Haggard format.

Even the tried and true bands did not hit big at every booking.  It was discovered that you could not book the same band on a Friday and Saturday back to back and expect good revenues on both nights.  Also booking a band more than once a month was risky largely because the bands were only locally famous.  Not even the most loyal fan could afford to attend every venue their favorite band played.  There are only so many times anyone would pay money to hear the same local band play the same set list they did last time.  Having to listen to “Proud Mary” done more than once a month by someone not Creedence Clearwater Revival could be a strain.

Another factor was that a band that did very well at other venues, particularly the Other Place, did not always do well at The Bar .

So they had to try new bands from time to time to fill in the gaps and hope to stumble on the Next New Hot Band.   This was a risky business because a band that did not draw was a liability and few bands were a sure thing.
 
T.O. once said it took $700.00 in the register to cover the expenses on any given Band Night.  This was in the day when a premium drink sold for 1.85 and the cover charge averaged 3.00.
So the pressure was on to make the new bands bring in a house… have their following come to The Bar and make enough of an impression at the register and at the door to get at least one more booking.
The Bar needed to make money and it was up to the bands to bring in the crowds…

Book My Band Part 3 ~ Payday

There is a long tradition that is a never ending point of contention between musical acts or bands and saloons.  And of course it involved money.

Most saloons and most bands at that level in the circiut were non-union.  Had they been unionized things would have been pretty straightforward.  The house would pay (and the band would accept) whatever prevailing union scale was with the rare exception of the band being a guaranteed high draw which would allow them to demand more.
Since The Bar was a saloon that did not subscribe to union hire the two factions, Band vs. House (“House” in this case being The Bar) would be at odds, each faction trying to get the best deal for themselves.
The house usually charged a ‘cover’ of one to three dollars a head.  There were rare bands that warranted a four dollar a head cover.  There just weren’t that many bands that could get it.

There were three different ways the house paid for musical services:

      1.  The house pays a flat rate for the band.  House keeps the cover charge fees.
      2.  The band takes no money from the house instead they take the Gate, all of the cover charge fees.
      3.  The house pays a certain amount to the band (usually about twenty dollars per member) plus a percentage (usually about thirty or forty per cent) of the door receipts.

There was an understanding that the house would provide “drink tickets” comping band members a certain number of drinks.  This could really add up figuring the rate of four tickets per bandsman if the band had any size to it.
The above listed pay rates are always decided when the booking is made, before the band comes to the club.  It is never a thing decided after the end of festivities.

All bands were expected to commence playing at 8 and stop at 12:45.  They scheduled their breaks so they either played four moderate sets or three long sets.  Breaks were up to the bands.

The Bar usually provided the sound tech and the person collecting the door charge.  Sometimes the band brought their own sound tech but if they did this The Bar did not pay for him or her.
The cover collector was usually the bouncer or what passed for a bouncer at The Bar.  Being we had so little in the way of truly problem customers the bouncers were generally pretty genial people.

Ideally, from the house standpoint, the door fees would be such as to cover the doorman, sound engineer and the band.  On a really good night the door could actually cover all of these expenses.

This seldom happened of course, but it was a nice idea.

Very important was the factor of “draw.” ‘Draw’ is the band’s ability to attract a house on name alone.
The other factor was, of course, advertising.

Bands were expected to have a following.  The bigger the following the more negotiating power the band had, they were expected to notify their fan base when and where they were to be playing

The saloons were expected to put the world on notice who they had upcoming also.
The Bar had a ‘band board’ that had an easy to read list of who was playing that week.    This board was visible from any point of the room and had the weekly band roster there for all to see.  In fact, it was posted at the hallway that held the rest rooms.  If you had to go pee you saw the band listings.
They also saw to it that The Bar’s musical offerings were listed in what free local print media and newspaper listings that were available.  The Bar had a good sized mailing list and printed flyers to put on the tables and available at the door.

Neither faction, house nor band, ever thought the other did as much as they could or should to bring in a good house.

There is one ongoing argument between bar owners and band leaders that contiues to this day…

“You don’t advertise enough…”

The music business at the saloon level was a hard, hungry life…

That’s the way it was…

And I’m sure that’s the way it still is…

Tags: bandstand, booking