Morning-after regrets/ just venting

[Koog]

In hindsight, it would have been the better decision to politely decline the gig. Since none of us have an advance view through those lenses, there is no sense in recriminations over the decision. Your band was hopeful in broadening your audience and having a better payday. Those are positive ambitions.

It won't be healthy for the band to dwell on it or speculate on assigning blame within the band. You're much better off treating it as a life lesson and agreeing your loss was the price of tuition, the venue manager stiffed you, and you're not going to play there again. Lesson learned, end of discussion, end of story.

Sounds like you've got a good group of musicians with the right synergy to make great music. For me, protecting those things would be the priority.

Good luck and best wishes.

Koog

 

[Cliff Colton]

The bar owner called 14 other bands before contacting you with the same story about the purported scheduling commitment. The owner must have been greatly relieved when you guys took the bait, so it was wrong to pull the plug on the show and cut you loose with half pay. Had the show been a super financial success, you would have gotten nothing more than ‘the agreed amount’, and a reminder that your band is scheduled to play next weekend too.

 

[NZBassman]

Happened to us about 25? yrs ago
We'd played at this place before - there was a reasonably good crowd and we got paid our $400 ($100 each) and they booked us again.
Second time we played there, there were only 3-4 people in the place and management kept telling us to turn down to the point where we were almost an acoustic band.
2 songs into second set manager comes over and said "That's enough for tonight".... she was clearly in a grumpy mood.
We pack up, load out and our rhythm guitarist / gig booker comes out and said they only want to pay us $50...

Just then rhythm guitarists friend turned up - he's well over 6ft tall and looked a bit like WWF wrestler Andre the Giant.
He asked what was happening and why we weren't inside playing and rhythm guitarist told him the story and said "they owe us $400, but refuse to pay us.... "
rhythm guitarists friend says "I'll talk to them"..... comes back 5 minutes later with the $400

To this day I've got no idea what he said to them, but happy we all got our $100 each.
We never played there again

 

[TBird1958]

Closed for further reply per OP.