Oof…my band just got fired!

[WillyW]

I'd have burned some bridges, but that's just me.

 

[DJ Bebop]

It seems ridiculous to me to fire a band for attracting too many paying customers to the venue.
Usually the problem is the band attracting too few paying customers.

Or drives away the few you have.

 

[newwavefrank]

It seems clearer..
Band produces a good night and overwhelms ztaff on the night.

Experienced hands on medical leave so the ship is dodgy.
Instead of fixing issue, ....

But they did fix the issue. Most of us don't agree with the way they fixed it because it doesn't serve our interests as musicians. I've spent 40 years booking my bands, working with club owners to make things smoother, and I can agree with most of us that there are some obvious solutions to make things better on band night. I have also run my own businesses in other industries for 30 years, and I can easily see many very valid reasons why having band night may not be a good idea for this venue. Many of the comments seem to be of the opinion that more dollars in the door is ALWAYS better. I can absolutely say that is not always the case. Trying to bite off more than you can chew to make a few more dollars on an occasional night may very well not be a good idea for them. Could they come up with entirely new systems which would only be in effect on occasional nights? Sure. Does that mean they are stupid or bad managers for deciding not to? Absolutely not. They made what struck me as a reasonable, although disappointing, decision.

 

[QweziRider]

Someone needs to get this place on the Bar Rescue reality show

I don't know, I kind of binged in and out on the show this past weekend, and the number of now closed bars on episodes I watched outnumbered the bars still open.

 

[soulstew]

My little cocktail jazz combo played a local winery for a few years before Covid, and attendance grew to the point where the last eight or nine gigs they had to set up folding chairs, and the staff (mostly family members) ran themselves ragged from start to finish. When Covid hit and everything shut down, I texted the owner saying when things opened up again, the next gig was on us, as a show of solidarity, and as a thanks to them for giving us our first gigs.

When things opened up eventually, I reminded them of their free gig, but they have never had live music again. A few weeks ago I talked to the mutual friend who has suggested us to them, and that friend told me the owner had told him that it was it was too hard to find extra help, and too much work and stress on their small staff trying to keep up when we played there, and they were already selling all they wine they produced without live music.

I actually get it. Not everyone needs live music to sell drinks, and the struggle to fill service positions these days is real.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

There's a similar plot twist in the Winery entertainment business in my neck of the woods.

Many of them stopped having bands instead choosing to cut the budget & book inner - reflective yawn-inducing acoustic types and label that as live entertainment.

Too many crowds were simply enjoying the music and not going thru the wine tasting protocol at the bar.

Wow! My brother-in-law works at Peju in Napa where he is their wine educator - basically helps people understand the nuances of what they are tasting. Wineries LIVE from the results of the wine tastings. That's a huge part of their annual sales. It's not unusual for people to order half or full cases of wine from selections they've sampled, and Peju wines are not cheap.

I guess I can understand their logic. I don't like it much, but I guess I can understand that. Drinking beer is soooo much easier . You don't have to figure out so much what it is about what you're drinking, just if you like it or not. At the price of good beer, you can still do that. At the price of fine wines, ...not so much.

 

[40Hz]

It seems ridiculous to me to fire a band for attracting too many paying customers to the venue.
Usually the problem is the band attracting too few paying customers.

I think there's a fundamental disconnect between the band and the brewery. The brewery wanted to be a brewery that also offers live music. Meanwhile, the BL wants to create a local music scene - which means running a music venue that has a brewery attached to it. And that's apparently not a business the brewery wants to be in nor is equipped to handle.

Important rule when running a small business I call the Pure Play Principle : Your brand can only establish and build a reputation for one thing. So it's essential to know what business you want to be in. Anything that dilutes that branding is something to think twice about - unless you want to go into a different business entirely. Running multiple brands and multi divisional business operations are the prerogative of large and mega corporations with deep pockets.

 

[lunarpollen]

On the surface it seems like a crazy business decision, but if they couldn't handle the size of the crowd, they couldn't handle the size of the crowd... I would speak with the manager again; he probably is well aware of how ridiculous the situation is even if he has to deal with the reality of the situation, and will likely be happy to have you back again when and if they become equipped to handle the size of the crowd that your band draws, unless your band has simply grown too popular for a venue of that size and type, in which case it's a sign you need to start playing bigger and better-paying venues...

 

[Rojd]

I was involved in the micro-brewing industry from 15-20 yrs ago. From my experience, brewers tend to be creative artists good at their craft, but not business people.

 

[bherman]

havent read the whole thread but at some level based on my experience with playing at a number of breweries around here, I can understand why the venue took the direction that they did. I've since left the band, but for a few years I was in a newGrass band that had a strong local following. We often played at a brewery and a distillery in our "home base" town. Both venues were quite busy even when they didn't have live music, and often when we played at either place they would be so mobbed that it resulted in the same situation - long lines for drinks, kitchens backed way up, etc. In today's labor shortage reality, it would probably be even worse. If customers come to a venue to enjoy beer or cocktails, along with live music, and they have a hard time getting served, they're less likely to come back.

 

[ThunderV]

I didn't read all of the comments........It sounds like the bar underestimated how many people you were going to draw and were totally unprepared for it. I could see the owner complaining that you talked a big game while booking and didn't deliver. My band has sold bars out of beer before midnight and not once did we feel like it was our fault.........as a matter of fact the owner actually apologized to us for not being prepared for the evening. We live in such a backwards world these days when you get fired for bringing too much business to............well a business.

 

[azureblue]

two things --
1- this is why you always get a contract for your gigs.
2 - the manager is nuts - teh bar got overloaded because of her not preparing for the increased crowd, so she dumps the band. I used to play in a band that was noted for filling up the venue with dancing people regularly. I recall one very happy manager coming up to us on the last set and declaring "you guys made them drink the bar dry! When can you come back?"

 

[ThunderV]

This reminds me of a micro brewery that I went to.......Iliked one of their beers so much........I asked to buy a keg for my home bar. The bartender (also the owner) looked at me and said.......I can't afford to sell beer at those volumes. I think this is the difference between the old days when people would open a bar with a bank loan and would do anything to get a solid customer base......and now when everything is "kick started" by "go fund me". No I'm not a boomer.

 

[Shepsdad]

There was a bar near me a few years ago that had all kinds of headaches from the town code enforcement people. When they had live music, the place was packed, the parking lot would fill up, and people would park on the street in the neighborhood behind the bar, which got the residents in an uproar.

More than once, the fire marshal told them to shut it down due to exceeding occupancy.

The place built a really nice outdoor area for live music, but couldn't really have night shows because the neighbors would complain.

They finally threw in the towel and did away with live music all together.

Without knowing if any of the above scenarios are in play, I wouldn't be too critical of management.

 

[ChrisB2]

Running a small business. Try it sometime

OMG. No $#**!!

 

[Not Again]

If one of the local enforcers were at the place when you guys packed it, he probably told his boss the place is doing better than the owner said, therefore the weekly insurance (protection) payment needed to go way up.
Mob guys don't work door deals, they pick up cash once a week. Or things happen.

 

[Passinwind]

There's a similar plot twist in the Winery entertainment business in my neck of the woods.

Many of them stopped having bands instead choosing to cut the budget & book inner - reflective yawn-inducing acoustic types and label that as live entertainment.

Too many crowds were simply enjoying the music and not going thru the wine tasting protocol at the bar.

Yep. I played a lot of winery gigs that the local dance class crew would come to and they took up a lot of space but drank very very little. It made the winery look really busy when you drove by and they actually often did better on less busy days than on the music nights. They had one of the best weekly open mics I've ever played, but after a few years it was just creating too many headaches, and eventually they sold out and moved on to something else.

At another, much bigger, winery where it was more of a wallpaper gig we were explicitly expected to have a glass of the good stuff on the bandstand and to be able to recommend things to taste, preferably flights. They comped us a lot of great wine and we alll got into the cork sniffing, secret stash thing for a few years. They shut down their 3000 seat amphitheater eventually too though, but the tasting room stage we played on is still going strong. We did pre-shows for ZZ Top and Bob Dylan, it was utter madness. I can see why they stopped, it's out in a rural area with only one road in and out and bringing in sound production for bands of that caliber was a monumental task.

 

[Lance Bunyon]

Welcome to 2023. The microbrewery industry doesn't know it's @$$ from it's elbow.

 

[51PRI]

Ha! Never been fired for having too much of a draw

Same here. It's hard to understand!

 

[pfschim]

Not a "got fired" story, but related to the OP's situation.
Years ago (gosh, decades ago ) I was in a fairly popular regional touring band that did medium sized bars with a dedicated stage live music area (most of which had connected restaurants too.)

The band was popular and drew a pretty large dedicated audience to venues we played at. Once, after a pretty crushing Fri night gig, I was talking with the manager and I said that he had to be pretty happy with the night given the huge crowd we drew. He was cool, but he said that while it might seem that a big crowd .. in addition to the usual customers, was great for business, the reality was that there was a definite break-even point between the clubs ability to serve the patrons effectively (and keep them happy customers) and the overall size (and energy) of the crowd. Huge additional attendance messed up the servers ability to manage orders, and actually kind of choked sales at the bar because it was TOO crowded and tended to piss people off. I was surprised to hear it, but it was a lesson learned. Of course, we did not try and reduce our crowd draw in any way, and the place continued to book us for several years (I left the band after a few years).

There is another relevant thread here about What's Wrong With Crowds in 2023 (sic) that covers a lot of different stuff, but there is a theme in there about certain kinds of venues as well as certain age groups who go to those venues. I definitely see an ongoing trend in wineries and brewpubs where I currently gig (NCal) where they want music, but they really just want background sound and do not want to be music centric.