Gig Etiquette for Guitarists

By: Jim E. James

Paul Reed Smith and Martin Simpson

Playing live is a must-do for almost any band playing original music. Not only does it get your songs out in front of an audience, and hone your chops, it can also be tremendous fun, and if you’re lucky you might even earn a couple of bucks on the side. But, well before you get to the point of shredding your electric guitar as a stadium headliner, you’ll be playing small bars and clubs, often on nights that several other bands are playing. For the most part this can be an enormous amount of fun.

Unfortunately, any musician with more than a few shows under their belt has stories of playing shows that have been soured by the way the other bands on the bill have acted. While sometimes this can be because those bands were just arrogant or inconsiderate, I think often these errors are made inadvertently, by well-meaning musicians who just don’t know any better. If you’re new to playing shows, here are a few things you can do to be cool to the people you’re playing the show with.

Contact Person

Some bands like to take collective decisions and share the organising work around. That’s fine, but the guy organising the show will prefer it if there is just one point of contact in the band for them to talk to. When you’re trying to coordinate 4 different bands for a night, there are few things as frustrating as being referred to different band members every time you need to sort something out.

Time

By far the most common way a band can derail a show is by pushing the running time of the show back, and holding up when the next band can start their set. There are three ways that a band can hold a show up: taking too long to start, taking too long to play the set, and taking too long to get off stage.

Be ready to load your gear on as soon as the previous band has finished playing. Don’t wait until they’ve completely vacated the stage to start bringing your equipment on, there just has to be enough space so that you won’t be in the way. Once a couple of cabinets and some of the drum kit is off the stage, you can start bringing your stuff on. If you’re able to, assemble your band’s drum kit off stage and carry it on. If the band is taking too long to get their equipment off stage, it’s quite acceptable to help them carry a few items off as a way of giving them a “hurry up” signal.

Sets often run over time simply because bands are trying to cram in too many songs. As difficult as it might be to choose which songs are your favourites, you’ll have to bite the bullet to avoid running over time. Sometimes a band might cancel at the last minute with no time for a replacement to be found, and you will be asked to play for extra time – in these situations it can be quite handy to have few extra songs up your sleeve.

If your start time does get held back, you should do a quicker set. It doesn’t make a lot of difference if the late start time is not your fault.

If you’re not the last band for the evening, don’t play encores. Your drunk friends at the front of the audience might think it’s a great idea, but if there is another band due to play after you, then it’s not.

If you’re the last band on for the evening, there might be a little bit of leeway to take some extra time. But don’t push it. The mixer might not appreciate being made to work later than they have to, and the other bands might be waiting until the night’s over so that they can get paid.

As soon as your set is done, start bringing your equipment off stage. Your friends will come up to talk to you as soon as the show is done, before you’ve had a chance to attend to your gear, and it can seem rude to blow them off just because you have gear to carry. In these situations, just shake their hand and say something like “Hey, I really gotta get our stuff off stage before I can talk.” Start by taking the larger items off stage first – the drum kit, amplifiers and speaker cabinets. This will give the next band the most room to bring their gear on quickly.

If you have a band where the lead singer doesn’t play an instrument, it’s not cool for them to go talk to people while the rest of the band attends to their gear. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the band is fine with it, it’s a really bad look to the other people involved with putting on the gig.

Cancelling

The first rule of cancelling your shows is – don’t cancel your shows! If you say you’re going to play a show, then do it. Don’t change your mind.

That said, sometimes something will happen and you just can’t play the gig. Your bass player might not be paying enough attention while doing the laundry and end up ironing his fretting hand, your singer might have a nervous breakdown and end up in the psych ward, your drummer might all of a sudden decide he’s had enough of rock and roll and hop on a plane to India to join an ashram. In fact, I was once in a band where all three of those things happened. Luckily we didn’t have any shows booked that week. But I digress.

The point here is that sometimes, despite your very best efforts and intentions, something might happen that means you just can’t play the show. If you have to cancel, it’s good to let people know at the earliest opportunity, and by the most direct method. The best way is to call up whoever is in charge of organising the gig on their cell phone, and leave a message if they don’t answer. Some people can take a few days to check their email or facebook messages.

When you do cancel on playing a gig, one way you can make life easier is by organising another band to replace your spot on the bill. But don’t do this without asking if this is something they actually want you to do. I once got an email 4 hours before a gig from a dude who had pulled out of the show telling me he had organised a replacement, when we had already organised a replacement for his slot. So I had to frantically track down their contact details and let them know that the gig wasn’t actually available. The net result of this guy’s “helpful” actions were just to waste everyone’s time. Don’t be like him.

If you have to pull out of playing a show, it’s good manners for as many members of your band to go along to the show anyway, to pay the cover charge and show your support, even though you’re no longer playing that night.

Gear Etiquette

Sharing gear between bands can be a great way to make changeovers quicker and load-in and load-out easier. But don’t just assume that you borrow other people’s gear.

If somebody is playing with an uncased amplifier, don’t pick it up by grabbing the tubes or the tube shields. They’re not handles.

Don’t just help yourself to other musician’s stands or cables while the bands are changing over. That’s a real asshat move. And when they realise that something is missing while they’re packing their gear away, you’re going to look like a real idiot when they interrupt your set to ask for their cable back.

It’s About Being Considerate

And for the most part, being considerate is not rocket surgery. You’ll usually get it right by putting yourself in the shoes of the other musicians you share a stage with, and the people in the venues that put you on.

This is not just about doing the right thing by people. There is a big element of self interest involved. An original band needs to play shows to build up a following. But the vast majority of bands who are just starting out playing original music don’t bring in a great deal of money to venues, either at the door or in drink sales. This means that good gigs can often be hard to come by. If people have a good experience booking your band for their venue, or playing on the same night as your band, then that can make the difference between whether or not you will get asked to play more or better gigs, or whether they’ll make those phone calls will go to somebody else.