hi

I used to run folk clubs featuring guests some years back.

I used to do my sums a bit like banjiman. I live in the North West of England so we don't have the distances that you have to travel in the US.

My pricing procedure for booking guest acts was a fairly simple one.

Call the guest or agent - agree a date/time - negotiate a fee. This could take some time with some guests but eventually we would agree.

My costings were done by knowing what my average attendance on guest nights has been. Factor in a price for things like past performances at your club; popularity of guest etc etc.

Some performers would negotiate a straight fee, others a % of the door or a mixture of the two. I have to say that most guests booked were very understanding about payments and I never really had any problems.

Here in the UK as far as I know we didn't operate a tips jar but I knew most of the guests well and would always buy them a drink.

Floor singers doing a spot could expect a couple of pints or so.

I don't remember having to take into consideation travel costs. Although on some occasions we have put up guests to save them having to pay for accommodation.

The venues I used didn't charge me for the rooms but were pleased to receive the extra custom on what would have been dead nights for them.

I am talking here solely about folk music.

Also before this I was semi-pro for many years playing rock & roll and jazz. This for us was different. In the early days we had problems with getting paid at all by some unscrupulous venues and so we joined the Musician's Union. So the negotionations were different. We asked Union rate and usually we got it. There were special gigs where we got more, others where we accepted less. As I remember it travel was factored in where appropriate.

Can I say that the fees were much much less for folk musicians than for Rock and Jazz.

Cheers

MikeL2