View Full Version : Tunes for Beer?
Last Friday my brother and I walked into a pub in the tiny village of Legan in Co. Longford, Ireland. We arrived with a guitar and a mandolin. Anyway it wasn't long before the entire pub demanded we get our axes out of their cases and sing them a song or two. Well this turned into a great night and we didn't have to buy a drink all night long. This is quite a common situation in Ireland.
Is it the same in the States? or elswhere??
Can you walk into a bar and drink for free if you play a few songs??? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
For some of us that's the only kind of compensation we'll ever get for playing.
arbarnhart
Sep-26-2005, 8:57am
You bet - they put a beer in each of my hands so I can't play...
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif
kudzugypsy
Sep-26-2005, 8:59am
alright!
when i was in college, we would go down to the tourist district and play long enough to get some beer money - often, we'd make enough for a weeks worth of drankin'. of course, this only worked during the tourist season.
a funny story...the first time we set up, we had all kinds of folks driving by - honking and in general, harassing us. bewildered, we only made $2.49 for playing 2 hours. we knew we werent THAT BAD - turns out, we had set up right in front of a gay bar. i had no problem with this in general, but we learned the lesson of location, location, location. after that, we set up in a better spot and would usually get $40-60 for 2 hours of pickin'.
oh yeah, you gotta play to the crowd, so learn duelin banjos, orange blossom spc and rocky top
Michael H Geimer
Sep-26-2005, 3:38pm
Mmmmmm ... beeeeeeeeeer.
Easy money. There is always someone falling off his stool who's ready to taunt you with the line, "So can you play that thing?" Beers follow ... as do requests for Dueling Banjos, Skynyrd, etc.
I actually get free coffee every morning when I stop in the place where I regularly play on weekends.
there is a coffee house owned by someone i know in a town nearby that i play at once in a while that doesn't pay, but has a tip basket and my friends and i always say-"20 bucks and all the coffee you can drink- priceless!"
sunburst
Sep-26-2005, 3:54pm
When I was younger, worked for someone else, and had actual vacation time, I went to Idaho for a fishing trip with a friend.
One evening we went to a saloon where it was reputed people often jammed. We sat and had a beer with nothing much going on, and my friend finally asked out loud, to no one in particular, "Do you ever play any music in here? we've got our instruments in the truck."
A big, burly, black bearded guy turned and looked at us and said, "Why didn't you guys say something? We thought you worked for the forest service or something!"
We had beers waiting for us on the bar for the rest of the night.
Keith Wallen
Sep-27-2005, 10:40am
I don't have that happen hear in Dayton, Ohio but when I go to Southern KY where all my family is from and go into a bar if they find out you play then its the same as your story plus we usually leave the bar w/a 12 pack or so.
Keith,
Now that is really civilised http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif I ain't been offered a take out yet
Aran
thistle3585
Sep-27-2005, 11:45am
I don't know about anywhere else, but I would say there are more corporate owned, or franchised, bars in our area than locally owned, and they aren't interested in any sort of entertainment unless its on a big screen tv. The locally owned bars seem more interested in karaoke and video games then anything else. I wonder if thats a statement about our culture more than anything else.
All in all, it doesn't do me much good because I don't drink.
mrbook
Sep-27-2005, 1:33pm
The jazz musician Eddie Condon once said something like, "Everybody will buy a musician a drink, but nobody will get him a ham sandwich."
Michael H Geimer
Sep-27-2005, 2:23pm
" don't know about anywhere else, but I would say there are more corporate owned, or franchised, bars in our area than locally owned, and they aren't interested in any sort of entertainment unless its on a big screen tv."
- thistle3585
I was told that same thing last year by a tourist from England. She said every pub in her town had gone corporate, and now all the musicians are gone. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif
Another time, there were some actual Watsons out from NC and they told me I reminded them of Doc ... 'cause I was just sitting around singing old songs for the five or six people in the pub that afternoon ... just playing for the sake of playing. Even they said the impromptu stuff just doesn't happen much anymore.
So for me, it's not really about the beer. It's about keeping real folk music alive, keeping it cheap or free, keeping it live, and keeping it local.
Real Music, made fresh each day by Real People.
I'm totally with you on that one, it really is about keeping real folk music alive!!
It has to said that in Ireland it really is everywhere, there are a lot of great pubs with music nearly every night, some of it is guys who play the same Irish ballads every night and have been doing it for 20 years and hate it (You can feel that coming through) and then there's those who are totally astounding and blow you away! But it is for the most part the traditional Irish style that is played and I just can't get enough bluegrass these days.
I suppose you allways want the thing that isn't allways readily available!!
adgefan
Sep-28-2005, 7:56am
I was told that same thing last year by a tourist from England. She said every pub in her town had gone corporate, and now all the musicians are gone. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif
This is correct, unfortunately. Our jam was recently told not to return to the pub we had frequented for 8 months with no complaints. We weren't given a reason why, though I suspect we were disturbing the other customers from the football on the huge tv screen.
We spent a couple of weeks trying to find another suitable venue, but sadly everywhere in the area is now a "family pub" (i.e. full of kids running around) or devoted to showing sport on tv and karaoke etc. We finally found what I can only imagine to be one of the last "real" pubs in our area, and thankfully, they already had bands practice there so were more than happy to accommodate us.
The most disturbing thing for me was whenever we entered a pub and asked to speak to the landlord, they would tell us it didn't have a landlord but a manager as it was a "managed pub". It makes them sound like branches of McDonalds! Whatever happened to spit and sawdust pubs, eh?
sunburst
Sep-28-2005, 8:45am
I live about 4 miles from a very small town in one of the few counties in Virginia with no stop lights and a rural economy.
There is a coffee shop "in town". Each Wednsday evening there is a jam session, and usually there is music on Fridays and Saturdays. No electric instruments allowed, with exceptions for electric bass. The place is also a used book store, is open most days, and is a cool place to just hang out.
There's no beer, but otherwise it seems to me the place is serving the function of a pub.
steve in tampa
Sep-28-2005, 11:32am
We played a volunteer benefit for Katrina survivors a couple of weeks ago, and got the classic "folk music paycheck" of a sammich and a beer.
LeftCoastMark
Sep-28-2005, 1:36pm
I play regularly at a Farmer's Market here in St. Barbara CA. No beer. But at the end of the morning, I'm usually stocked up with all of the fresh roughage that I can handle! You can keep your beer.
Home Grown Tomatoes Forever!
mrbook
Sep-28-2005, 1:59pm
A few weeks ago there was a segment on one of the TV news shows (CNN or Fox, maybe both) about a pub in Scotland or England where you can get a chip planted under your skin (I'm not kidding)that kicks in when you enter. By the time you reach the bar, your favorite drink will be poured, and they will call you by name and start running your tab. You probably won't find a guy playing music in the corner for free beer, though. And, come to think of it, I know a couple places that will do that without the chip.
sunburst
Sep-28-2005, 2:19pm
The Big Brother pub?
Imagine volutarily submitting to that invasion of privacy!
Michael H Geimer
Sep-28-2005, 3:37pm
Whaaaaaat?!? That's so ridiculous! ROTFLOL!
I just can't imagine being enough of a regular that I'd get something surgically implanted in order to patronize a bar ... that didn't already know my name!
Can't you just hear some computerized speech-reader robotically broadcasting the name ... 'Norm!'.
Next up ... WiFi iPod enabled pubs that push the costs for the music onto the customer too! That way a pub can ditch the jukebox, and claim to support the music their clientelle wants ... which is sort of a good idea, but I fear it will likely kill off whatever remaining places where live, local, impromptu stuff happens.
The future is uncertain (so says the magic 8-ball).
jim simpson
Sep-28-2005, 6:15pm
I used to play with a banjo player who said the military was doing the chip implant thing. I suspect he must have had one installed in him! I think I might have swallowed a planted one at Dunkin Donuts. When they see me driving up to the drive thru, they tell me to come to the window and there is my Late' already prepared, I don't even have to stop at the speaker thing.
Now have I told you about my UFO experience?
Lining your hat with aluminum foil "foils" the implant reception, so you can go around incognito. Only works for cortical implants, of course.
PCypert
Sep-28-2005, 7:32pm
I think the military has been keeping tabs on banjo players for quite some time through imbeded chips. They don't ever seem to know any better.
Paul
Yeah Paul, and if you look at all the banjo players on the tracking screen they are all circling like that pattern on the new show "Threshold" http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
That's way too bad about the corp pubs, is nothing sacred? I knew a couple of BG'ers that went to Ireland and had a great time going to all the pubs. Guitar and mando and tenor and lead singers. They said what was a riot was all the folks in there as the nite went on tighen' one on and trying to sing along with the choruses of these old bluegrass tunes they'd never heard before. I wish I could remember some of the things they mutated the lyrics into, priceless indeed.
Watchin' the Bob Dylan special on tv the last couple of nites has made me wish for some good places like what was around then to play and listen to music in. For the record, if I was playing for beer it would be a short set....