Yesterday I put the first $100 in my pocket playing electric guitar in a rock band type format & doing a standard 3 set gig since.....1996. After in the late 90s I was doing an acoustic blues duet, then I went dormant, and then mostly did a lot if church events, and few big events as a conference attendee for fun. So it's been a long times I've gotten paid to crank it up. In my entire playing career, I've only done the open 'jam' thing twice,,,so that's not really my thing. What was cool about yesterday was, in this five piece group, some of us had just met for the first time and of course, we'd not rehearsed, but had a catalog of songs we all sort of knew or could pickup up on the spot. The two other guitarist handled lead vocal well and we just went for it. Out side of us having a few tunes where we needed to watch each others hands for changes and a few songs that could've had tighter/more organized endings we were pretty damn good. A particular conversation in between sets was pretty fun.. She said, 'wow, your were really great on that last song' and I said cool, "I've never heard of it before, never played it before, and didn't know what it was called." She was like "huh?" The entire night wasn't that much on the edge, we did lots of standard classic/70's bar tunes some country, etc. Certainly not bragging about the money but it feels good to make a little cash, have some fun, the band was good and we'll probably do a little more of these in the future.
Having fun and getting paid for it. I've been there a few times. It's a blast! The hardest part is getting only a few hours sleep and going to work the next day. The fact that you were with some cats you just met is crazy. A testament to y'alls generally proficient chops!
I've been a weekend warrior for 40 years next month. I've never needed the money to pay the bills (I've always had a real job), but it sure makes it nice to keep buying and trading guitars and other equipment. Getting paid to play is pretty sweet.
