Here's a little parable for you, Conrad.

In the early 1960s, I went to hear a singer people had told me about who sang at a posh restaurant and cocktail lounge in downtown Seattle. Clark's "Red Carpet." Some people told me he was a folk singer. Well, he wasn't. His name was Bob Weymouth. He accompanied himself on the guitar, but he sang popular songs, Broadway show tunes, a bit of Country and Western—and a few of the better known folk songs, such as some of the ones recorded by Harry Belafonte, the Kingston Trio, and The Limeliters.

Bob Weymouth was a passable guitarist and a very good singer. Nice, light baritone voice. And he put the songs across very well. We talked a lot between his sets and we got to know each other. He asked me a lot about the coffeehouse, "The Place Next Door," where I was singing on weekends, and I asked him about singing in cocktail lounges and such. "The Place Next Door" paid quite well for most coffeehouses, but the "Red Carpet" paid a whole lot more.

One evening, he showed me a letter that his agent (yes, he had an agent) had sent him. The agent had gotten him an engagement in Chicago, at one of the Playboy Clubs. The letter said that Bob would be paid $300 a week for twelve weeks, with option to renew the engagement. Now, in the early Sixies, $300 a week was a nice chunk of money. The agent went on to say that he was sorry he couldn't get more, but that's all Hugh Hefner paid for a first engagement. But if Hefner picked up the option to renew, Bob would then receive $450 a week. And if he renewed the option yet again, he would be paid $600 a week, and so on.

I commented to Bob that I didn't understand why the agent was apologizing for not being able to get him more money. Then Bob gave me a bit of an education in the finances involved in being a musician.

He told me that first, his agent took 15% off the top (15% is more than the usual 10%, but Bob said he was worth it because he kept finding good jobs for him). Then, he had to pay his own travel and living expenses. And, of course, income taxes and all that. "So," Bob informed me, "by the time I pay all of my expenses, I have only about half of that left."

Reality check!

A couple of times, I was contracted to sing in a coffeehouse in Bellingham, Washington, called "Three Jolly Coachmen." They paid reasonably well. And since I would be there for some time, they also paid my travel expenses and got me a room in a nearby hotel. Sometime later, I was asked to sing at a coffeehouse over on the Olympic Peninsula. Like the "Three Jolly Coachmen," far enough away that commuting from Seattle was out of the question. They paid even better than the "Three Jolly Coachmen." But—they wouldn't pay my expenses, which would have eaten up most of what they'd have paid me for singing there. So I had to turn the job down.

I've had many people ask me to sing at many places, telling me, "We can't pay you, but the exposure will be good for you." Dave Van Ronk once said that he heard that "the exposure will be good for you" thing all the time. He had an excellent response to that:    "People have been known to die of exposure!"

Folk music notwithstanding, a person who has put in the time, work, study, and expense to become a singer that people want to listen to deserves to be compensated for his or her services, in the same way that a doctor, a teacher, or a plumber deserve to be paid for their services.

That's the way the world works, Conrad. If you want to get into the game, one way or another, you've got to ante into the pot.

Don Firth