Travelling 5.5 Hours For 1 Gig

What's up gigging pros! Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. And for those of you who are watching this on my YouTube So if you're on the podcast, go check out our YouTube channel. I channel, the BookLive YouTube channel. Welcome. Thanks for tuning in to the first episode of Gigging Musician TV haha. But I figured I would give a little recap of the gig I played believe the channels just called BookLive. And you'll see this this past weekend. It was a high paying wedding gig in Moab, episode and hopefully, many future ones my first time doing double duty recording a podcast and a video at the same time. Utah. And many of you know I live in Denver. In fact, that is the golf course in Denver. Well, a suburb of Denver called Arvada. And so yeah, Moab is about five and a half hour drive away from where I live, beautiful drive, through the Rocky Mountains, saw some snow, and it's only October. And then saw these gorgeous, like Canyon, like winding roads that we had to drive through with tall towering mountains. And just so cool to see all of that. And I did all that to go and play a wedding, it was actually just a cocktail hour, at a place called the sunset grill in Moab, Utah, and gorgeous place. In fact, the grill like Moab is a small town with a bunch of bars and restaurants and gift shops and things like that. Moab if you've never been there is a very outdoorsy town that is surrounded by like several national parks, including Arches National Park, and then I think like a bunch of others to Canyon lands. And then so many people go there to hike to mountain bike to ride four wheelers. And it's just a really amazing outdoorsy town. The sunset grill is perched in on the side of one of those mountains overlooking the town. And, you know, true to its name, I played during sunset. And you could just watch the sun setting over the mountains. And it creates this beautiful orange glow is like literally something out of a painting, which was just amazing to see. Although for most of the gig, my back was turned to it. This gig, as I mentioned, it was a wedding cocktail hour. And I'm going to actually I did a live stream to my full time Music Academy Facebook group, showing you guys or showing our full time music academy group, what the gig looks like. And I'm going to actually put that in the video version of this podcast. So if you watch it on YouTube, you'll actually see my gig setup, and how it overlooked the whole city. And the sun wasn't quite setting when I took it because I set up early, you know, but you'll you'll get a good sense of what I was dealing with there. It was amazing. So I got this gig, it was actually one of the first gigs I booked since moving to Denver. And it's a wedding. And I took the video to show people that weddings are not as scary or as intimidating as you might think. They are one of the highest and most consistent gig types available to us if you want to actually make money with your music, because it's gonna ruffle some feathers. You can't make real money playing bar gigs. And so, weddings are great for that. They're consistent in that so many weddings happen across the country. And there are easier ways to market to them, rather than the other gig types. And so I'm going to insert that video. I think I will do it right here. So come join me on the video episode. And I'll see you on the other side. That full time musicians. It's Jared, it's my birthday. I'm planning a wedding in Moab, Utah. They just wanted to give you a little walkthrough. This is a cocktail hour. So you can see what's going on. The wedding party has not arrived yet. I think they're on their way. But I'm all set up. So let's do a little walkthrough. How about that? Alright, so this is where they'll be coming through. So your nice little ornamentation on the ground there. And then just a couple tad and eat it. So cute. Halloween themes. Love it. And then here is the cocktail hour space. It is actually a restaurants the sunset grill in Moab Utah. So here is my setup. And now it's kind of hard to tell you've got some Hozier playing, shooting into the boys. They got giant Jenga and then some cool tables bars over there. And then that's just gorgeous. Gildan in Portugal and Haiti hit agenda. Sorry, I'm excited to play. It's gonna be a good time. And hope you enjoyed this walkthrough and hope this makes a little less intimidated to play why Greetings. Alright, we are back. So I hope you guys enjoyed seeing that. Again, weddings are a lot less intimidating. It was really just like a private party. In fact, it was a private party. They did not hire a professional wedding planner. It happened at a restaurant. And there were literally like patrons on the other side of the restaurant that could hear my music. That was basically like I was playing a bar gig. But I was paid 10 times what many people would get paid for a bar dish. So yeah, weddings are awesome. I know a lot of people think that weddings are like, I don't know, they're a couple a couple of things that usually come to mind. One is like I don't want to deal with brides villas. And I will tell you, brides, villas are rare. In fact, if you attract a lot of brides villas, typically, that means there's something about your personality that is attracting that type of person. And so I'm sorry to be so blunt about it. But like, you know, if you operate on a more professional level, then you will repel people who are looking to cause problems. So that's one of the big things. The other thing is people are worried that like, weddings are a lot of hassle and a lot of logistical headaches. And, you know, to an extent that is true, like compared to a bar gig, where you just show up and play the gig, and go home, you do have to worry about more logistics, you have to plan ahead, you might have to work with a wedding planner, you might have to work with the venue. And then there might be timing details, like, you know, the ceremony starts at 330. So you got to be there an hour ahead, have soundcheck already done. And then, you know, play when you're supposed to play. And that's true. But guess what, you're still getting paid a lot more than a bar gig. So like your hourly rate is way higher, even if you're setting up early, you're still getting paid a lot more per hour, even for the time that you're not playing. So, in my opinion, the hassle is worth it. And then some people might say, well, playing weddings is selling out. And I'm gonna say, yeah, it is. Because you're making a lot more money, you're literally selling out your music, meaning you no longer have inventory for that night to play a bar gig. But as I keep mentioning, you make way more per gig playing weddings than you do playing bars. And so yes, it is selling out. But there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, the musicians who are willing to market and sell their music have a lot more success than those who don't. And those of you who already have that mindset shift, you know what I'm talking about? But those of you who don't, maybe this rubs you the wrong way. But think about it. And think about, you know, what is the impact of getting money for your music. It's pretty huge, right? And so that's what I'm suggesting is, you deserve to get paid. what you're worth, and more are your musical performances. And in my opinion, that's one of the only ways we can ensure that music as a industry survives for the long term. As Lord knows, the streaming services are not going to be increasing the amount they pay to musicians anytime soon. It's just the way the industry is designed. It's not designed in favor of the musicians. So yeah, I hope that opens up your eyes a little bit to some wedding details, like why you might want to play them. And that cocktail hour was literally like a bar gig for me. I started playing at 530 finished at seven. It's great time nobody interrupted me. I worked out a playlist in advanced with a couple. And it was all stuff that I enjoyed playing. So the only difference is, you know, I got paid a lot more for it. So anyway, that is that for now. I will be doing an upcoming Wedding Gig Challenge to help you Book Your First Or Next Wedding Gig. I think right now we're still on the Corporate Gig Challenge. Either way, if you go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/challenge You will find our next challenge. And I hope to see you in it because these high paying gigs they're the gateway to making a lot of money with your music. And my challenge is the gateway to those high paying gigs. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast and the first episode of Gigging Musician TV. I hope you enjoyed it. And there will be many more to come. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!" Bye everybody.