John Monnecka - Full-Time Musician - Artist Spotlight Interview
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 John Monnecka Ringwood, New Jersey |
Artist Stats:
Type of Act:
Music Style: Income Range: Territory: Full-time since: Official Website: YouTube Channel: Discography: |
John Monnecka Solo Acoustic-vocalist Acoustic Rock $90,000-$100,000 Local 1992 JohnMonnecka.net Monnecka The Truth John Monnecka |
An interview with insights from a '20 year veteran' full-time musician John Monnecka
John explains his life as a full-time musician from beginning to present. John's success as a local, well paid musician for almost 20 years is inspirational to us all. Every story he shares hold a valuable truth for musicians who play music for a living. After listening to this 45 minute interview, you should ask yourself..."Am I charging enough for my gigs?"
John explains his life as a full-time musician from beginning to present. John's success as a local, well paid musician for almost 20 years is inspirational to us all. Every story he shares hold a valuable truth for musicians who play music for a living. After listening to this 45 minute interview, you should ask yourself..."Am I charging enough for my gigs?"
| John Monnecka's performance video: |
John Monnecka's audio interview video: |
Interview Transcript:
Jill I’ve followed John Monnecka for about seven years now. He’s in the New Jersey area. He is just amazing artist, I just love him. What’s cool is that John has done this for 20 years and he does get paid double or triple the market rate in his area. So I asked him all about that, and he’s going to explain how he sells gigs, how he charges for gigs, and things like that. But more importantly, this guy’s got insight. Twenty years of doing this. He’s got a million great stories, we had a long conversation on the phone and it was very hard to cut out the best parts for you, but I cut out things that I thought would either inspire you, teach you, help you. I really think you will enjoy this interview and to get his full artist stats, his income stats and things like that, visit our Artist Spotlight page at small-timemusician.com and read a little bit more about John. So listen up, you’re going to learn a lot. You’re probably going to have to listen to this interview a few times. You got three parts, OK? So enjoy, and see you next month.
JOHN Where I was, everybody in the band, they’re all artists, they’re all talented, like amazing talent, they can play anything. And this guy stood there at the bar, and I was playing, and he says to me something like, “Let me tell you, you’re never going to be able to make your living making music,” and I was like, “Really?” And all those years ago I was holding down a full-time job, and I was bringing home like $400 a, and I had to wear a suit, I had to work 9 to 5, and I was never really good with authority, whatever. And ten years later I told the guy, you know it’s funny you said that, and it inspired me because I said to myself, “Even on my worst day, if I could get $100 to go out and play, I can play 4 gigs a week and I’ll make more money than I’m making now.”
Jill So basically, you left the job that day and decided you were going to focus on being a full-time musician. Were there people that were just telling you that you were nuts?
JOHN Oh…. No… well, your parents are always going to say that. (mutual laughter). What’s funny, you know, my parents never really supported my music, then all of a sudden, they just accepted it and were like really supportive of me. They still think, oh, you really need a job with benefits and this and that.
Jill You don’t remember when you left your job?
JOHN I remember the day that I left my job.
Jill Just not the year? (laughter)
JOHN I remember it vividly, but not the date. I can tell you a story about that. It was hysterical that day. What happened was, when I first started doing this, I was only playing open mikes and just playing guitar, I was into Van Halen, and just fretting out and doing stuff like that. Then one of the guys at the place was listening to my chops said, “If you can’t play anything else, if that’s all you do, you’re a one-dimensional person.” It’s not like I was going to fight with him, so I said, “Really?” and then I never played electric guitar for like a year after that at the open mike. I just played original acoustic stuff and anything but Van Halen just to prove him wrong .
So I went to an open mic down the street from my house, it was a Wednesday night, and I did a couple of songs. The guy at the place, I said to him, after my number, “If you’re really looking for somebody, I would really like to try and play a gig. I’ve never done my own gig before.” So he said “You were pretty good at the mic, everybody really liked it.” At the open mike I got a really, really good response all the time. So I was thinking, maybe this gives me enough confidence to try again. And the next day he calls me up and says, “Yeah, for tomorrow I had somebody cancel. Can you give me a gig?” And I go, “Sure I can give you a gig!” So I sat down and I typed out the words to 30 songs, figuring I could do 3 sets with 10 songs in each set. I printed out 30 songs that I could do, put them in a small binder and I borrowed a PA, ironically from the guy who was the guy who made me get into all of this because he spoke to my balls, which I also was going to play me his (unintelligible) because he likes me so much. So I started playing at this place. The first gig right off the bat, each night $50, and I go, “Oh, that’ll be $250 if I play a whole week.” I played the gig, I was nervous as hell, and I did really, really, really well after the first fright. You couldn’t ask for more or for a better night for myself. You know, I taped it to see how it sounded. My voice was shaking a little because I was so nervous, and I ended up from that, the guy wanted me for another gig, like another week or whatever. I was like, “All right.” And the next thing I knew people I’d seen in another place told me, “Hey can I come play here?” So now all of a sudden, now I’m doing like four nights a week, so I’m like, so that’s pretty good. So I’m still at this full-time job during the day. I was working for Castrol Motor Oil, in their Finance Department, right? I’d grown my hair longer and stuff, and then, unfortunately, this is where the story sucks, but I was born with a condition, and I’ve had about 40 surgeries for this thing, and I’d had problems that year and I’d had surgery and I ended up having to go back in again. And they literally told me if you get sick one more day you’re fired, which is completely illegal, but I was like well, what am I supposed to do? And my son was an infant at that point, you know, he was born in ’92, and so he’s like a little baby and I’m like a newlywed and whatever it was I ended up getting sick for something, and they called me down, and it wasn’t the boss of my department, because she liked me, and she’s saying “They’re right on me, so you’re going to get fired, there’s nothing I can do to protect you.” So we go down there, and they say, “We’re going to have to let you go and this and that,” and I was like “All right. Fine.” And I walked out. So as I’m walking out my boss says to me, she’s walking behind me, she’s got her hand on my shoulder and she goes, “You know, something just tells me that you’re going to walk out of here and you’re going to be a very successful musician and that’s what’s going to happen with you,” And I go, “You know what? Something tells me you’re right.” And I never, never worked again.
Jill I love that story!
JOHN From that day on it sort of turned out to be like I was getting a chip on my shoulder, saying to myself, “Who are these people who think they’re better than me because they can wear a suit and this and that?” It’s like they don’t know I can make more money than most of them working three hours a day. So, they can all go to hell. Like, I mean, in my mind, like it was such a personal victory for me. I have no stress, I do what I love, I’m not suicidal. I have a certain degree of fame. It’s like a sacred thing for me.
Jill How many hours a week do you think you actually work? Work meaning play, which I know is not like work, but you know what I mean.
JOHN I know what you’re talking about. Well, I just spend some time, but I don’t do it all the time. There may be a day that I’ll sit here and write a bunch of songs. I’m always doing something musical, no matter what. If I’m not playing the guitar, I’m trying to write a song or something, but I’m going to say, I spend like twenty, twenty-one hours --
Jill You’ve got about twenty performances always and then --
JOHN Then I’ll do, well, maybe we’ll make it only five shows, five or six shows, so maybe fifteen to twenty hours ….
You should always be able to go on your own ability because that’s what your sales thing is going to be. Your product is yourself, I mean, you have to rely on that, so if you don’t have any faith in that --
Jill I think it’s amazing that you’ve played somewhere for 20 years. Have you ever played a gig, like a weekly gig, for so long that it becomes stale? Has that ever happened to you?
JOHN Oh, yeah! (laughter)
Jill Tell me what you do. Tell me what you do when that happens.
JOHN That’s when I try to learn new music, for myself.
Jill So you don’t get rid of the gig, you just learn new music and renew yourself?
JOHN Yeah, because it’s tough. As far as venues go, you really don’t have a lot of say, like about what people they employ. Some people will go through some stuff. There was a place I was playing on Fridays, it was an Irish bar. Place opened up, people were going. The guy hired me. I was there like for three years every Friday. The guy loved me, you know? And then he started having problems with his wife. His wife left him, his father died. (pause) He had some issues, a lot of bad things go on. And then he stopped paying attention to his business. And now his business is declining. Now he’s not being good to his customers, so they’re not coming back. And now he’s coming to me, and now he’s starting to get nervous, and he goes to me, “Where are your people?” And I’m like, “My people? They’re your people. I don’t understand why you’re thinking it’s me. It’s not me!” I finally left there like May or June of this year, and I really didn’t work at the time for the whole summer because I couldn’t take this guy’s money anymore. I said to him, “I’m going to do you and me a favor. You can’t afford me, I can’t take your money anymore, I’m leaving,” Because in May he still had the marquis that said, “Snow fall’s coming. Wing specials, this and that,” for September of the previous year.
Jill (laughter)
JOHN So I’m like, “You’re not helping the situation.” He used to have TV commercials. I was on one of the TV commercial, playing, you know, but now all of a sudden like he doesn’t care anymore. So he asks, “What can we do? So I asked my girlfriend. My girlfriend’s a bartender. I go, “What shall we do?” And she says, “Ladie’s Night, 3-dollar anything. So we did it like for two weeks, and the place is packed. And then we’re right back down to nothing. And I was like, whatever. It’s tough. It’s really up to those people to get the people in, so if you play a place that is really lame, for the most part, those gigs will dry up before you let them get stale. People just want to give up.
Jill Right!
JOHN But sometimes there’s a gig that just hangs on. I went from Nashville to Memphis and in Nashville I go, my gosh, they work all the time here but do they pay here? Or is it like New York City where they’re not paying me for what I do, you know what I mean?
Jill What we found, because we’ve been in bigger cities and outside bigger cities and in places like Nashville particularly,-- in Austin you actually have more professional musicians whereas in Nashville you have more wannabes. So what you find in Nashville downtown, those people play for tips. And, now OK, it’s good tips, but still. So you do have to go to the suburbs of Nashville. In the suburbs of the bigger cities, especially Memphis, you’ll get paid more. So we found that we just get paid a lot more in the outskirts of these bigger cities than inside the city. I don’t know what it’s like up where you’re at…
JOHN Like out in San Fran. It’s the same thing, because in New York City, like I would play in New York City and they’d either want me to bring people, which I’d be totally against, or they’d be like “We’ll give you $50.” Or $100, or …And like everybody wants to play, and at that point it’s like a twofold thing. Because there are a million people who are ready to go in there and play for nothing and they’re willing to take those chances. It’s a big city, you know. So you really can’t do your whole book-the-act type thing. You can try it and see if it works. But it never works. The only place you can play in the city are at the restaurants. I was playing a place in New York City during the summer, and it was a really expensive place, it was like $15 for a beer. So they were also giving me $350 to play on Tuesday afternoon.
Jill Do you charge a different rate if it’s a weekday or a weekend? Do you charge a different rate if you’re going to use a tip bucket or not use a tip bucket? Do you charge a different rate it’s a weekly or an annual? Is that about right?
JOHN Yep. I do that all the time. I’ll work with them. I’m basically the kind of person who, in my conscience I feel that I’m a fair person, and my girlfriend thinks I’m way too lenient on people. She’s the the type of person, like it’s this much money, and that’s it and that’s the end of it. And I’m like then you’re never going to work. You can’t be like that. So if I’m going to a place and I’m in a restaurant and there’s ten people there listening to me, and the guy comes up to me and says, “Listen, I can’t afford to pay you $300. Can we try starting out at $250 or something like that?” I’ll be like, “Well, as long as you’re willing to let me go a half hour early” or “I’ll take $200 and you let me go an hour early” or I’ll even start at my $250 gig and say “You let me put out a tip bucket and we’ll see where it goes from there.” You’ve got to work with people, because you can’t go in there and say you want $300 when there’s 5 people in there and if you do, you’re not going to have a job any more. You’ve got to be fair with people and for the most part people will be fair back. If you’re doing a good job for them, you know and if they think you have talent, they’ll definitely stick it out with you.
Jill But do you find that you’re competing with amateur musicians that will take less?
JOHN All the time.
Jill What’s the market rate in your area typically for an acoustic solo three hour?
JOHN I would say $200, $250. Depends on where you shop.
Jill So how do you compete? How do you sell your gig that’s so much more, over market rate. Is it your reputation? You didn’t start out that way, did you?
JOHN Well, yeah, I always tried to get at least $250.
Jill So you started out at the market rate.
JOHN Yeah. And the other thing is, you’ll get guys where they’ll be like, “I can get so and so for $150.” And I’m like, “Well then, get that guy.”
Jill Exactly.
JOHN One of the reasons I think I can sell myself is because I have a sort of book I use, you have to see this book, it has about 3000 songs in it, so it’s like--
Jill You know what, we noticed that you had a very thick book, by the way, but go ahead.
JOHN There are at least 3000 songs in that book and 20% that are in my head. I pat myself on the back that if I hear something on the radio, I can play it, I have a pretty good ear, it’s not like I’m some sort of amazing (?) But if I hear something on the radio and I don’t have the lyrics for it, I can’t really do it. The lyrics are the hardest part for me, so the book is almost all lyrics, there’s no chords written in that book, it’s all like by ear. That’s just because the first thing you do is develop your ear. So people come to me and they’re like, oh well, he can play anything and I really can, so are you going to get that guy for $150 that plays basically like (unintelligible) music or Garth Brooks or this guy who just does rock or something like that or do you want me who can do Garth Brooks, Chieftain, (unintelligible), Alice in Chains. That’s the thing, and I can mimic a lot of voices and stuff so I just basically think I have a lot more to offer than guys for $150.
Jill What you’re doing is sales. I’ve been in sales my whole life and that’s called building value, and everywhere that I’ve ever worked, I’ve always had one of the highest-priced products but we are trained to build value, so that’s really what you’re doing, you’re just building the value of your show versus the amateur guy, right?
JOHN Yeah, pretty much. Also, it’s hard, like I don’t have a huge following. I always tell people, like I also tell them, my job isn’t to bring people, my job is to keep the people that you have.
Jill I totally agree with you, but just for everybody else, what do you tell those venues that say, oh well, it depends on door sales, or it depends on this, or that, you know. How do you handle that?
JOHN I don’t play there.
Jill (laughter) That’s what we do. We don’t play there, either.
JOHN I don’t play in a place like that because that’s a place that’s scamming you. A place generally that will not pay scale, that’s a place that’s not going to be in business long. They don’t have a product of their own that sells well enough to fill their bar, you know what I mean?
Jill That’s good. That’s good advice there.
JOHN If you play at restaurants, like I like to play at nice restaurants and stuff like that or like places that are good draws for people because I know they have something that everybody wants and then when I come in, then it makes it even more exciting for them. It’s like wow, this place has good food and they have singer. That’s great, you know. You go to a place (where) there’s no life in there. It’s just a concrete empty building, they’ve got beers and stuff and I’m up there, it’s just not enough to keep people interested. People aren’t coming to begin with.
Jill So you do mostly the upscale restaurants and the upscale bars or just regular bars, regular restaurants.
JOHN I try to gravitate more to the upscale places but if it’s like The Great Notch Inn (Little Falls, NJ), it’s the most non-upscale place with beer and stuff that you can ever imagine, but that place, people love music and I’ve gotten more work out of that place, so that place is a trade-off. It’s my least paying gig of the week, it’s always been, When I first started playing at Great Notch, of all the gigs I played, everybody else back then was giving me like $250, and I was playing at a place where the guy wanted to give me $75 to play and would give me a check, they wouldn’t cash the check, I’d have to come back to the bank, -- I’d just never played, so I’m cool, I didn’t care, I might just as well be doing something, and I literally took a $10 pay cut to go work at the Great Notch. I was getting like $65 bucks when I worked there, and the most money you can get at the Great Notch for a full day is $180 or $200 but I made like $300 in my tip box alone, so that’s why it was a good place. It was filled with people and it was right on the main highway. I can’t say it was always busy because when I first started there was like 6 people there and then what would happen is all the restaurants around there, like Chili’s and stuff, then they would let out and all the kids who worked there, Great Notch was just up the street, so they would go there and then all of a sudden I started getting a following from there, from that bar, people liked me, and it went from six people to you can’t walk in the place. It was crazy, and 20 years later, here I am, I’m still playing there. It’s funny, too, because I think there’s some important stuff out there that I think that you can’t tell a musician about making money, the only thing, make sure that people don’t underprice themselves, too.
Jill Talk to me about that.
JOHN Well, I look at it this way. There’s two aspects to it. There’s the aspect I’m working. When I play a gig, I play a 3-hour gig, a straight gig, I don’t take a break. That’s 3 hours straight through. So I’m putting wear and tear on my voice, and I’m doing it, and the next day the next guy’s getting what’s left of me on that day. You know what I mean? So if I’m going to charge one guy $300 and the next day this guy wants to give me $150, it’s not fair if this guy’s giving me $300 bucks because I’m going to work the same three hours and this guy’s going to get the same thing that the next guy’s going to get, but I’m going to wear out my voice, you know what I mean? If somebody wants to price me down, I’ll say well, I’ll do 2 hours instead of 3 hours or something like that. I’ll start with $300 as a general rule during the week and then generally go up.
The other aspect, I generally look at what makes sense. You’ll get a kick out of this. If there are two guys on the street and one guy is selling a hamburger for $5 and the other guy is selling a hamburger for $10, everybody’s going to buy the $10 hamburger because they want to know what’s so good about that burger.
Jill (laughter)
JOHN You know what I mean? We do it all the time.
Jill That’s awesome. I like it!
JOHN If someone wants to give me a steady Friday now, I don’t know if I would do it because what basically works for me is playing the same place Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I don’t know, there was a really long stretch of time, I would say probably 10 years of my career that I played 7 days a week.
Jill Really?
JOHN And every relationship I ever had has failed because of music. Due to the fact I always wind up with somebody who just doesn’t understand that I’m working at night. There was a long period of time that I did that shit and it was like if you play Sunday through Thursday at a steady place, that’s great, because it’s steady money every week and you know that’s what your people pay, but Friday and Saturday refreshes you because you have a different thing to look at every week.
Jill That’s exactly the way we do it, too. Because Saturday night is when you get your big money gigs, your private party gigs, things like that, and you’re right, it keeps it fresh. Where you get your same weekly stuff but Friday and Saturday night you get to see something different, do something different, and get paid a lot better than your weekly gigs.
JOHN Yeah. And I also tell people when I’m booking them that if they book me like through December right now a lot of those things are going to carry over, but I tell a lot of those people, “Listen, I’m taking this booking in December but there’s a lot of Christmas parties, and if somebody calls me and they offer me $1000, $1500 to play in their house, I’m going to have to cancel on you, I’m telling you right now. I’ll give you as much notice as I can, but it’s what I do for a living so you’ve got to understand that.”
Jill Right.
JOHN And 90% of the people that I work for are completely on my side of the fence.
Jill Yeah, I believe that, too.
JOHN
Note: he refers back to some guy he told you about that I think has been cut out, so I adjusted this a little The guy’s like, “If you ever get a party, I have no problem with you going for that kind of money.” There was this one guy, when I first started out, it was supposed to be only a $1000 gig. I was supposed to play a set. A lot of times when I take a party I’ll take a (private) party and then get a bar afterwards, and this was down on the Jersey shore and I knew it was only like 20 minutes away from where my second gig was. It was a holiday weekend, like the 4th of July weekend, then the guy was like, “I want you to stay until 10 o’clock.” I was like “I can’t do that. I have another gig. It’s 4th of July weekend and I have to go play over here.” And he’s like “Well, how much would it cost me?” And I told him. And he said, “Done!” And I go OK. And after that he said, “How much straight out?”. And I called up the other place like an hour before I was supposed to be there, and I said to this woman. “Listen, although I know you’re packed right now and I know I’m supposed to be there in an hour, but I’m at a party and this guy wants to give me 3 grand to stay here.” And she’s like “John, I’m really busy, I am packed, but you take that money.”
Jill (laughter) Yeah they are good, They’re real good people to work for and it’s neat because you can pick and choose your clients pretty much, and if you don’t like a client, you just don’t play there any more.
JOHN That’s a good way to say it, “client,” because like whenever you work for somebody who is under the misconception that you work for them, as opposed to someone you are contracting out to, that’s when you have a problem.
Jill Right. Exactly.
JOHN Like, “Dude, I don’t work for you. Like I’m not one of your waitresses you can talk down to.” Like “Stay out of my face.”
Jill Luckily, that’s about one in thirty. But we do come across those people.
(fade in) … except that I like the unique, I like someone like you that’s got the whole package, the vocals, the guitar, the amazing guitar skills and the great cover song selection that you do, because it matches your style. And T and I pulled up your videos the other night, we pull them up a lot when we’re just sitting at home chilling out, and we were listening to one video, I forget which song it was, but you were just ripping that guitar to pieces, right? And we were like, “My God, if I walked into a bar and saw this, I would freak out, and we were just tripping out, and at the end of the video, there was, like crickets, and I’m like, “See? That happens too much! That happens way too often.”
JOHN Well, you know, I have a theory on that. Right there, and it’s pretty much got me through, I’ve never, ever, ever been insulted by life, finishing a song, people on track. I mean it never bothered me and I’ve never taken it personally. Here’s my theory, and you can tell him if he ever gets bummed by this. If I’m playing in a bar, I basically consider myself background music no matter what. If I come in there and they hire me to play, two guys are coming in from work, they’re coming in to meet their friends, have a drink, watch the game on TV, something like that and Oh they have live music, that’s great. So from them I’m expecting that. But if I’m playing at (unintelligible) and somebody paid $15 for a ticket to see me play, they’re going to crap. In the bar they’re not there for me. I’ve tried to explain that to my brother, he’s 7 years older than me, and he’s got this amazing voice, he’s the whole reason why I even play guitar and sing, and I would bring him out with me a couple of times and we would play together and nothing sounds better than brothers or sisters or relative playing together, you know?
Jill Right!
JOHN We used to do the Beatles all the time, like it was our favorite thing, and when we’d get going, he’d be like, “I can’t fight these people, it’s like I’m not up there.” They’re not expecting that, you know. I’m telling you, you can play the whole night and nobody will clap. Maybe at the end of the night, three people will come up to you and go, “That was really good.” And he’s “They don’t know what we played. They have no idea Why weren’t you this or that and blah blah blah blah.” You know what? You made those people happy and that’s all that matters.
Jill When you’re doing originals, you’re probably not going to make a full-time living. I mean, really.
JOHN I tell people that all the time. What’s really funny, it’s like, I’m really super lucky with whoever comes to see me, my friends, anyway, I’m really super lucky with the fact that a lot of people who come to see me want to hear the originals anyway. But the other thing you need to tell those people is they need to have those books. Those are songs people are going to move to, and a lot of times I don’t have songs like that but you need them. You need to do Margaritaville especially. It’s important.
Jill From questions we get, it’s as if some people sort of feel bad about putting a tip jar out. We don’t. We put it front and center. We don’t give a damn. We’re going to ask for everything we can get, but, like, do you--
JOHN It depends. I put a thing out there. I put it out there, and so that people know what the hell it is, I’ll put a dollar in it, or I’ll put $5 in it. What’s really funny, if I put a $5 bill in there, I swear more people will put more $5 bills in there. (Jill: It does work!) And behind it or beneath it I put a list of all my songs. And then if people come up I go, take a list with you. If someone comes up to me and ask me for a re-play, I never expect them to give me a dime. I’m here. This is what I’m doing. If I can do a request for you, I’ll do it. I’m not expecting anything extra for it. But now if you start coming up ten times and your start interrupting me all night to play your songs, now I’m almost kind of leaning towards “Well, you’d better throw something in there because I ain’t no computer.” The other extreme of this is if I get an arrogant crowd of people that are like “Play my song! “Play this!” “Play that!” and they start busting your balls about stuff, That’s when I say, “I can’t hear you. My tip jar is in the way.”
Jill (laughter) I like that.
JOHN There’ll be people who come up to you and they’ll throw like $10 or $5 in the tip jar and they think they own you.
Jill Oh yeah. You can own me for about 5 minutes.
JOHN (double voices) I met a guy, I would be finished with the gig and a guy would come up to me and be like, “I wish you’d play one more song,” or whatever, and I’ll be like, “What do you want to hear?” And I’ll play one. But then I get the guy who comes up and puts a $20 bill in there ansd is like, “How much more is that going to get me?” And I’m like “That will get you one more song.” Like if you want to pay me for another hour, than give me like $200 plus overtime, then I’ll do it, but don’t think that your $20 bill is going to change my life.
Jill John, they’re confusing you with the juke box.
JOHN Exactly! And then it’s funny, because I’ve also said to people, like, oh, people would say, will you play this will you play that and I’ll be like, “The jukebox takes a couple of seconds to switch songs, you know, and if you put money in there.” (mutual laughter) There are several ways you can variously go about it but I never rely on that thing. I’ve had to rely on it in the past but at this point there are places that I play and it’s strictly my friends coming to see me play every week, I’m not expecting my friends to give me money.
Jill Sure. I understand that.
JOHN I take the tips and this is what I try to do, I try to take the tip money if I make it, put it in one pocket and put the other money either away or in the bank for whatever, for my bills, then I’ll take the tip money and I’ll live on that.
I’ve tried to start a band a bunch of times but it never works out.
Jill (laughing) Right. Tell me why your bands never work out.
JOHN Oh, God. (pause) Well, usually I’ve always tried to get (unintelligible) original band just because I figured that would be really good to showcase and that’s where you’re going to get the ultimate pay off if you really want to do that, which I never, maybe shame on me, but I’ve never really looked for (unintelligible) for an electric guitar or anything like that, or tried to do that kind of stuff,
Jill Smart, but go ahead.
JOHN And when you have a band, everybody wants to get paid, everybody wants their money and it’s always like a conflict, and then people think that you’re going to screw them because I wrote all the songs.
Jill That’s always an issue. Tell me one of the best gigs you ever played.
JOHN Yeah, the best one. I think the best one to this day has got to be the Edwin McCain Show. It was funny because I was playing at the Schiavoni and a friend of mine who knew I was a really big fan of Edwin McCain, and I was similar to him in style, you might say, and he said I think I can get you on this bill, and I was like, well, if you want to try, and I’m like, what the hell, I don’t have a manager or anything but this kid seemed like he was into the management thing so I said if you want to try to get me the thing, that would be cool, let’s try it and he contacted the guy and we made up a CD and sent it to, I think it’s Harrington Entertainment Management Company or something like that. And it’s sort of a funny story. He ends up approving me to play the show, I mean he had to sign off, to open up for him, which was the only unsigned act to open up for him, you know, so at that point, now we got more, The Cigarettes was part of that tour and we had to get a whole demographic on how I would appeal to underage smokers and stuff like that . I don’t know, this guy, how he did it but he did everything to make sure that I got this gig, so I ended up getting the gig and it was so funny at the club from what he was telling me, I think the most an unsigned band has ever brought in was something like 100, 120 people, something like that to see them. So, that’s a lot of people. So we sold tickets or whatever and I ended up having like 250 people or something. I didn’t know how many people, you know what I mean, like it was a good head, anyway, like 250 people for the show And I remember the sound guy saying this guy coming back because he’s brought so many people. I did the show, it was really, really good, I sold like a thousand CDs, well, not a thousand, I think I sold like150 CDs that night. It was crazy. People were lining up for autographs, they had no idea I was just some shmuck who was playing great, not until the next day anyway. It was like being a superstar, like I had bodyguards there while I was signing the books and stamp cards, And I did the show, and at the end of the show Edwin McCain’s band were sitting out there and I had a drink with them and everything and they asked do you want to come back on the bus? So I was like shit yeah, so I go and hang out with them and I’m getting on the bus, and way at the other end sort of bowing his head was Edwin going Johnnie Moe! Johnnie Moe! And he’s like “Come on back here, brother, and let me tell you a story.” And I go back there and go “What?” and he goes “It’s pretty funny. When your CDs came in I was doing something and somebody said “Hey they want this guy to open for you on the (--).” And I saw your name really quick and I thought it was a friend of mine, this guy I call Johnnie Moe, so I didn’t think twice on it, and I approved it. (Jill, Oh, man!) But I hear you did an awesome job. So it was just a big goof like that, but I ended up staying on the bus with him until like 4:30 in the morning, both sitting, drinking beers, joking around, having a really good time. After that, every time I saw him, he remembered me. I never tried to get on another show with him or nothing, but just being in that gig and that I brought that many people, that was a rush. It was on a big stage, and after that the guy there would ask what show do you want, because I was one guy with a guitar, they didn’t have to break down whole bands, and they knew I was going to bring in a lot of people.
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