Nearly two weeks ago now was July 1st - Canada's 150th birthday. A few days later, just south of the border, Americans were celebrating the 4th of July. This meant many things; fireworks would be set off, every grocery store's stock piles of hotdog and burger buns would be ransacked, beer and liquor stores would be emptied, bars would be full from coast to coast, DUIs would sky rocket and musicians everywhere from all corners of the continent would be loading up their vans full of equipment to drive to wherever to play shows for next to no money.

See, here's the thing. Canada day or 4th of July in the US are days off for many but for musicians it's one of the biggest days on the calendar and having a gig is a MUST. My band, The Wilderness, were not an exception to this unwritten rule. We were booked for a show in London, Ontario and it would be one of the best paid shows we'd had in a long time. This was not a typical gig for us - we're an original band, and we seldom do just "cover gigs". This Canada day show was sadly a cover gig. None of us were very enthused by the idea, it sounded like a lot of work for not a very high reward. None of us were particularly jumping for joy at the prospect of having to learn and finesse a set of cover songs in the space of a week when we had a set of our own tunes that we had worked incredibly hard at polishing over the last few years. However, we agreed that we'd rather play and work doing songs we didn't particularly enjoy rather than not play at all.

The cover gig is a tough gig, I do them solo fairly regularly. A cover gig usually means you're playing to a "built in crowd" who would be at that bar regardless of whether you're playing there or not. On the flip side, most of the shows we do as a band are where we play our original music, so most of the people who are at the show are there to hear original music, be it from us or another indie band that we might be playing with. Playing to a bar with a built in crowd is great for many reasons:

1. You don't really have to go out of your way to get people in the bar, because they're usually there anyway.
2. The people you do invite can come for free because there wont be a cover charge.
3. THERE MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A CROWD TO PLAY TO! (Although you have to really work to get them on your side... and keep them there)

I am no stranger to playing to an empty room. Many independent musicians know the feeling all too well. For some reason, thats the norm. I've been playing music since I was 12 years old. For the past 5 I've been doing it very seriously, for the last 3 its been my largest source of income and for the last year and a half its been more or less my only source of income. I am still pleasantly surprised when I arrive at a club to play and there are people there to see the show. My band's manager, Mark was telling us how different things were in the 60s and 70s. We're all aware of how shitty the music industry is now and we always hear about how much better it was "back in the day". But in many ways it's true. Back then there were far more live music venues, far more venues that actually paid, far more punters who'd go to shows and happily pay and far more people who were able to make a living of selling records. These days, the touring industry is more healthy then its ever been. The reason why? People aren't buying records anymore so artists have to get out on the open road to make money. Other ways musicians make money in this day and age is by being live jukeboxes. So that's what we did. We'd just arrived back from over a month on the road in the US, driving thousands of miles playing shows to next to no people in the hope to spread our original music further. We were tired, broke and in need of a show that could help pay some bills. So we agreed to do the show and put in the leg work that comes with it.

We rehearsed for about 10 hours in a space in town before we felt ready to play this show. The show was ok, nothing special. There was a good crowd but it was our job to win them over and keep them at the bar, buying drinks until last call. That's your job as a cover musician. We got the venue a few hours before hand, set up our PA system that we bought with our own money, did a very basic soundcheck and then played for 3 hours. After we loaded out and got paid we slept in our bus and drove home the next morning. On the drive home, I got thinking about the previous encounter and crunched some numbers.

I DID SOME CALCULATIONS

HOURS OF WORK
Rehearsals: 10 hours
Driving to and from show: 14 hours
Load in, set up and load out: 3 hours
Show length: 3 hours
TOTAL: 30 hours

COSTS
Gas: $150
Food: $50
Rehearsal Facility: $200
Payment to Manager: $50
Total: $250

PAY
Venue Pay: $600
Merch Sales: $40
Total: $640

SO... $640 minus our expenses of $250 leaves us with $390. $390 divided among the 5 band members would leave us with $78 each. Now, if we were to divide that $78 left over by the number of hours we all worked it would mean that we were being paid $2.60 an hour. The worst thing about this? This was a well paid show for us. Luckily, we put everything we make in this band back into it, because, quite frankly its not worth it to divide up the money between us at this stage.

The thing is, I know for a fact that hundreds of bands and musicians, if not thousands had similar experiences to us that weekend, and will continue to do the exact same thing for many weekends to come. Musicians used to be musicians. Now, musicians are car salesmen, baristas, bartenders and servers. It's no surprise as to why this is the way. Rent is more expensive than ever, the cost of living is more expensive than ever and musicians are being paid less. Why? Because A DJ is cheaper. A Spotify playlist is cheaper. There isn't as much money for the every day musician as there once was. One has to be incredibly savvy to make a living off doing music at an amateur level these days. The money at the top for stars and commercially successful musicians is, of course, huge. I'm not at that level yet, so I suppose myself and many musicians like me will continue working for $2.60 an hour for many years to come.