Another question. Genie and Mike are agreed that you can't do pro bono work for one nursing home and expect to be paid by other nursing homes. Makes sense to me.

But what about doing other types of pro bono gigs that aren't in competition with your paid work? I played several times for groups like Kiwanis, and several Jewish service organizations. For some groups, I only played about 25 minutes because I was "guest speaker" at their meeting. A few offered to pay but asked whether I would donate the time. They all invited me to lunch with the group. If I played longer sets, I was paid.

Most of these little gigs led to other requests for me to play, and eventually to some paying gigs.

I've been sporadically working on a CD which -- if I can get it out! -- will probably sell well to these groups. Because of these threads, I have moved the CD project to the front burner again. (It's not my terrific musicianship that will sell CD's for me, it's the sound of my lovely old zither, and my repertoire of old parlor songs and old pop songs.)

Even if they don't pay me, I suspect I could sell a few CD's each time, maybe more than a few. And, each set is only 25-30 minutes, it's not comparable to performing for 40 minutes to an hour.

So. Would this be incompatible with playing for pay at retirement communities, nursing homes, etc?

Thanks for all the marvelous info in this and the day job thread, Mike, Genie, Jerry, everyone. Even if I find I have to avoid nursing homes, this thread is giving me so much valuable info for earning a bit of money from something I love to do.

Rita