I have an explanation why the blade that came with my new saber saw didn’t last long. The blades cost half as much as the saw. I had to buy a whole roll of tarpaper since there seems to be no reasonably priced moisture barrier for a single door. They have these kits with a tape-like roll of plastic. For the same price, I got the tarpaper.The whole day was taken up by these few tasks. The bright side, I was calculating, is that once this door is in place, and it serves its purpose, then in four months it will have paid for the car I used to haul it in. I can’t really fully unpack until the new room is done. Which is fine, because I have too much stuff anyway. One thing I don’t have is a staple gun. Fred lent me an electric model. That folks, was my exciting June 18 of this year.
The rain also kept me indoors so I caught up on all the record keeping. Now that I have two refrigerators in operation, I can compare dates, and anything bought at El Presidente (supermarket) has to be used up with a day or two. These are the same brands as Publix et al, so somehow the produce at El Presidente is a day or two older when it hits the shelves. Including the door and several new tools, the new spare bedroom has now cost merely $492. Except for insulation, there should be no big expenses left. Just remember, this part of the project has nothing to do with the plumbing or electrical. That’s not my department.
Speaking of records, I now have a $3,500 band. This includes gear I don’t use every show and some practice gear kept permanently here. I have nothing excessive; this is a small one man show with potential for a guest or three. Even today I still encounter people with a broken guitar, a leaky cord and a cranky amp who “want to start a band”. This is comparable to people with a Dell computer who “want to start a home business”. Talk to somebody before you try anything of the kind. For example, I know that it cost me $6.25 to go to Marvelous Coffee a week ago Monday. After you are 25, it is iffy whether you should still be shelling out your own money to promote yourself musically, and the cost does not end at just advertising.
This tells you that as a solo musician that you are not going to make much of a living in this part of the jungle. The small Florida clubs don’t have the chair-occupancy count required to hire a good house band. At 34 chairs, Jimbo’s is larger than most in the area and their budget is zero dollars. The reasonable alternative is to form a “bar band” that plays more often for less money and get used to it. That is, unless somebody can invent something other than a bar that would hire a steady band around here. I already know that band must be a duo and must play up to 40% country music (which I have always disliked) and less than 10% Blues (which I dislike even more).
You like my management style? Let’s continue. These gigs cannot be more than 12 miles away. The ideal situation is a Thursday through Saturday house gig for $360—that is all you are ever going to get around here. That is, $120 per show and it will be a struggle to find that. In return, the band has to sell $160 worth of extra beer per evening. If the club markup is $1 per bottle, a 40-chair club must move an extra forty beers per hour on top of their normal quota. Don’t expect that to happen no matter how great a show you put on but the right duo might just pull it off.
What is the right duo? Rule number one, you cannot get away with doing the same 25 songs every other band does in this town. Far too many people are trying that already. There are also far too many overweight fifty-something guitar players doing music which is basically out of date by two generations. This can be justified because of the age group of the clientele, as in the next time a Florida woman tells you she is 35, ask her what that equals in “man-years”. Then duck. Rule number two, your stage show has to go far beyond technical virtuosity and blabbing over-long between songs.
