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I have gotten a couple July 4th gig offers and it has got me thinkin'....what are the highest paying one-time gigs you guys have done?

i was offered $5000 to show and play mary had a little lamb but i turned it down.....seriously...being offered $250 to show up and play dvorak 9. that's like $25 a note!!! no rehearsals!.........all kidding aside, i don't leave my house for less than $500 a service. of course, i have no gigs but does that really matter???(the dvorak gig was true)

I think I got like $20 to play my bass in a jazz combo for some lame poetry reading thingy do. Yeah thats about it.

One time I had a strange gig where we got paid the fee everyone else got. (some $900 in real money )
Only thing was, the horns only had to come one 2 1/2 hour rehearsal and the concert and only had to play the 1st and last pieces on the program. The strings had to do 5 full days of rehearsing and a very long concert for the same money.

I played in a tuba quartet in a country bar. Yep they were line dancing to tuba music! They let us pick a cowboy hat from their store (had to return it), we got free drinks, dinner and $10 each. Did it to say I played in a country bar - never walked into one since.

In 1979, I got free pizza & beer at the Rock Bottom Lounge at N. Texas State University (now UNT) when playing tuba with Fred Lepowitz on guitar as "The Cheeto Brothers". Lackluster act in most ways, but we had one act that got the crowd into it and shot beer sales through the roof: we'd start playing blues, and after a couple of choruses I'd take a (mercifully short) tuba solo. During my solo, Fred (about 85 pounds soppin' wet) would climb up onto my shoulders, then pick up the solo next chorus, as I carried him around the pub playing the bass line. We'd stop at tables and flirt with the girls, work in lots of familiar tunes (we'd transition from the blues into, among other things, a version of "My Bologna", a couple of months before Weird Al came out with his version) -- drunk college kids loved us!

Lotta fun, and nothing to report on income tax (well, not back then anyway; do you have to report food nowadays as payment in kind?)

Oh, I did pick up $50 a week to play euph in a Jr. College concert band one semester (by the way, kids, take note: one year at NTSU/UNT + too much beer, pizza and playin' around = the next year at a Jr. College) because they needed someone to play the part. Worked out to $17 an hour for a college kid in 1980, on his third-best instrument -- not bad. The best cash I ever made playing (no pro here!) $20-$50 here and there a few times since then, but I never really made any attempt to make music profitable.
_______________________________
Joe Baker, who often wonders whatever became of Fred -- a fair singer and guitarist, and brilliant songwriter, but too ADD to learn to read music.

The most I've been paid is $100 for a commencement at a university. It was four services but they fed us quite well so it was pretty cool. Food would have been fine for me as pay.

Ralph

I made $100 playing trombone in a big band my senior year in high school and about the same playing a tuba in a Christmas cantata the same year. I probably made more money playing while in high school than I ever made for playing out of it (not counting scholarships)

The only time I was ever paid for playing was for Church gigs with a quintet. They asked for us 4 different times. We each got $50, but I always gave mine back.

My billing rate for data warehouse consulting however was $350/hour. It's surprising how many companies are willing to pay that rate.

I got paid somewhere around $250 to simply be a back-up trombone player for a gig. They hired someone from out of town and something happened and they weren't sure if he was going to show up. So I was hired to be there just in case and move some equipment around. I did manage to play on some make shift big band charts. Total time there was about 4 hours, but I only played for about 20 minutes.

During my 20 years as a country-rock rhythm guitarist,vocalist,trumpeter,I made roughly what my wife earned as a union printer at a big city newspaper.Every year our pay was within a grand of each one's total.Mardi gras gigs pay double the rate for an evening of music and New Year's Eve gigs can be treble the usual rate.
My pay rate has jumped up since I joined John Reno and the Creekers due to the fact that John is a much better negotiator than I am.We now get dinner and a drink with each gig and sometimes they pay rent for our P.A.system and supply some beefy guys to move our equipment for us.
Music festivals and county fairs -pay 3-5 times the usual rate and they may add a hotel (or use of a boat in the harbor) for a place to stay.We gave a C.D. to a burger vendor in the street and he gave us unlimited burgers free and played our C.D. in rotation on his big stereo for the week's duration of a music festival.C.D.s are a great source of revenue if you can play that material live on the gig.People will run up and ask if that last tune is on a C.D..If it is ,you just sold one.
tubatooter1940
www.johnreno.com/

It was a cold and windy December day in Peoria, Illinois, when I, a high school freshman, made five dollars riding atop a circus wagon at a Christmas parade with my sousaphone and four assorted union musicians. No written music or rehearsals--just faking seasonal pieces in the cold. It took three months to get my five dollars from the union rep.

Fast forward 38 years (not playing for 36 years). I got $20 for doing German oompah and US patriotic numbers shortly before an Independence Day fireworks show.

$25 in 38 years of playing. How long before I can justify a shiny Willson CC?

Once my quintet got paid $240 each for a gig we didn't have to play! It was some shipping ceremony of some sort..We had several rehearsals, did a sound check, and guess what? The captain of the ship (who was a China man) didn't like brass music! Frankly speaking all of us would have preferred to play anyway, but we definitely wouldn't mind more gigs like that!

schlepporello wrote:

LV wrote:

Dean E wrote:...38 years of playing. How long before I can justify a shiny Willson CC?

Dean! It's not the dough, but rather the dues! You've paid yours! Buy the horn!!!! You've earned it!!!!

To H.... with earning or justifying the horn. If you're playing frequently and are well enough off to afford it without crippling your household, GIT IT!

Thats right,guys,us boys gotta have our toys.

$15,000 for writing and recording 7.5 seconds of music.

After our first rock gig in college, which I think lasted over a New Year's weekend, we paid maybe 12 bucks apiece because we couldn't get enough people to come out and buy drinks themselves.

Now that it's coming back to my mind, I think I remember that covering the cost of our new (used!) gear had something to do with it, too.

MellowSmokeMan wrote:$15,000 for writing and recording 7.5 seconds of music.

*ding ding ding ding* We have a winner!!!

I'm might be missing something MellowSmokeMan, but what was that for, a company jingle or something?

bigboom wrote:I'm might be missing something MellowSmokeMan, but what was that for, a company jingle or something?

Logo music for a fortune 500 company. The payment was for the demo only. So far the music hasn't even been used. If and when they do use the music, I will receive another payment in the six figures.

Keep your fingers crossed.

-MSM

I wonder how much the Intel "chime" is making for somebody...