Pro tips: Your full support is much appreciated
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| The FlanGig tip bucket: A vital member of the solo band. |
Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about playing guitar
for fun and profit — mostly fun — and I swear on a stack of used guitar strings
that someday soon, I’ll write about something else.
But today is not that day.
Our topic today is the profit side of “fun and
profit.” Mostly. It’s about tips, which don’t always equate to profit,
but they are money. So, there’s that.
On August 4, I played a
late-afternoon show for the Souper Reunion Weekend in my hometown
of Laona. The gig was scheduled for 4-6 p.m., but by request, I played until
6:35. All in all, a fun night, with many encouraging comments from the
hometown folks, considerable catching-up with old friends, and good base compensation.
Ordinarily, that's enough. But this is
about tips and old friends, and how the combination warmed my heart.
I met Tom Wojnowski — some people pronounce it Why-now-ski,
but I’m not sure that’s right — about 53 years ago. He was maybe 9, and a
member of the Laona Tigers Little League team. I was around 13, and was asked
to keep the team’s scorebook that summer by Del Phillips, our family’s new
neighbor in the very rural Town of Caswell and one of the Tigers’ coaches.
We’d just moved to our new cabin property, and I didn’t
know many people in the area. On the other hand, there really weren’t a lot of
people to know in the area.
But Del took pity on me. His son, Tim, was on the Tigers team, and we’d
gotten to be friends, mostly playing basketball in a barn at the
Consolidated Farm where Del, Tim and Grace (Del’s wife and Timmy’s mom) lived.
Del picked me up on the way to Tigers’ games, and brought
me home afterward. Sometimes, he stopped on the way home to shoot trap at
Cavour’s Rainbow Club.
Tom didn’t play a lot that spring/summer, but he
struck me as a funny young fella, and we spent a lot of time in Del’s station
wagon and on the bench. He was one of the first non-relatives I met before entering
the Laona school district.
Anyhow, that was 1970. This is 2023, and we’re
still friends. Here’s how I know.
The Laona Souper Reunion gig was fun, for sure, but
the tip bucket (pictured) that sat in front of me as I played was lonely. Not
much activity. Over the first 90 minutes, three or four
folks had deposited a few appreciated pieces of currency.
And that’s when Tom Wojnowski walked from near the
back of the audience to put his own very appreciated tip in the bucket.
As I usually do, I said thanks (into the microphone and the PA system), followed by calling attention to Tom’s selfless act. I
might have called him a “role model for America’s youth” and suggested that
others follow his example.
That usually gets a laugh, and it did in this case, too. But it didn’t end there, as it
sometimes does. Tom held up the tip can to show where he had left his donation, and my old classmate, Jim Lane, called from the rear of the crowd,
“Bring that back here!”
So, Tom did that. Brought it back there. He also
brought it everywhere else, from one side of the park to the other, from those
sitting near me to those along the street. He solicited tips from pretty much
everyone in attendance.
It was kind of cool. No, that’s wrong. It WAS cool. Very cool.
Tom brought back $174, including the tips that were
already in the can. But still, $174 went to the guitar picker and singer. Me.
I thanked my old friend Tom more than once. It was an uncommonly nice gesture by him.
But it was also uncommonly generous by the people who
gave, and I was moved by it all.
Tips are important for people who do what I do. We
invest a lot of time, travel and equipment in performing, and
the base pay — also generally very appreciated — doesn’t always cover those
expenses. A two-hour show, an hour away from home, is closer to a minimum six-
or seven-hour commitment on that day, including set-up and tear-down of gear.
That gear sometimes needs repair or replacement. Both happened
to me this summer.
And don’t forget the countless hours of practice. Reaching competency in any profession doesn’t happen solely because you have talent.
As Joe Walsh has said: “You can’t wait until you’re really good to play in front of people. You gotta go play in front of people and suck.”
To that end, my 500th show was probably a lot better
than my first show. I’ve been playing for 61 of my 66 years, and I've practiced a lot.
While I’m not getting rich on this new effort, tips make it more worthwhile. I humbly appreciate every bit of financial — and verbal — support.
I’ve played three times in Goodman’s Music in the Square
performance series, coordinated by my sister-in-law, Joan Flannery. At each performance in that series, Joan walks through the audience to collect tips,
the sole compensation.
Performers in Wabeno’s summer concert series at that
town’s bandshell — where I’m playing from 5-7 p.m. next Wednesday, August 23 — also
play only for tips. So it helps a lot if I’ve practiced enough to be good; the
audience deserves that much.
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| Being blunt sometimes pays off. |
As I packed up my gear, a lady came over with three $1 bills and complimented my playing. I thanked her, and meant it.
Those moments are humbling. You never know where your friends are.
Sometimes, you’ve known them for 53 years. Sometimes, you’ve never seen them before.