Received a call from a local musician, complaining about the pay musicians receive when they play at clubs on Frenchmen Street. “Sometimes I’ll drive in [he lives in a suburb] to play a gig, and I’ll leave with maybe $10 in my pocket for the evening. By the time I subtract out the gas money, I’ll have $1 left.”
“The bands who play Bourbon Street make more than that,” he said. “Not much, but at least they may be guaranteed $15 a set. On Frenchmen we have a problem in that the musicians get maybe 10 percent of the bar when there’s no cover at the door. If there are multiple bands playing that night, and you are the first band on, you don’t make anything because the bands who play later—when the bar is more active—will make a lot more money.”
Tips don't support local musicians.
It’s a perennial problem. Musicians are “employed” but they don’t make a living wage. The issue that music clubs on Frenchmen Street face is that it’s not Bourbon Street, and many of the patrons are still locals. You can charge a lot more for a drink or a beer on Bourbon than you can on Frenchmen for that reason. Thus, a musician, who depends on a percentage of the bar proceeds for gig pay, even with the existence of a tip jar, is never going to make much money. Locals won’t pay tourist prices for alcohol. The amount the bar brings in isn’t ever going to be a big pay day for musicians who play there. It’s just reality.
So what’s the solution to keeping Frenchmen Street musicians playing and also getting them paid?
I spoke with a club operator on Frenchmen Street who says that most clubs on the street pay 20 percent of the bar and there’s a tip jar whenever there’s a band that doesn’t command a cover. “The bands who usually play for a piece of the bar revenue are typically young bands who don’t have a big following, which means they can’t generate enough of a crowd that will pay a cover charge to see them,” he said. “I don’t know who pays 10 percent of the bar, but that’s not enough,” he said. “We pay 20 percent. So here’s how it works for the club: if our costs of goods (liquor/beer) are 30 percent, and we give the band 20 percent of the bar take, that leaves my club with 50 cents on a dollar to pay overhead, mortgage, utilities, rent, labor costs, insurance, taxes and all the rest of the stuff that comes with owning a music club. Plus the band gets the tip jar. We try to be fair.”
The musician who called me complained that street musicians make more than musicians who play in clubs because they get to keep all the money that’s donated to them as they play on the street. “Well, the problem is that those musicians who are playing on the street aren’t playing there legally, in a lot of cases. And it could be problematic,” said the Frenchmen Street club operator. “We don’t so much have problems with street musicians as we do with renegade food operators, who will set up a barbecue grill on the side of the street, and will sell their food for less than the Frenchmen Street restaurants because they have no overhead, and they don’t pay taxes, like we do. But we just see a lack of enforcement to get these illegal operators off the street. They’re hurting our business and the city just doesn’t enforce the laws.”
“It might also be helpful if the Frenchmen Street clubs didn’t have three or four bands a night who depend on a tip jar and a bar percentage for their wage. Maybe that’s a solution.”
Frankly, I don’t know. You can’t put on a cover for a band which is great, but who doesn’t draw a paying crowd. The clubs need to be able to pay their costs to operate. But the musicians also need to make a living wage.
What’s the solution to the problem? How do we keep great local music on Frenchmen and also make sure the bands are paid without raising drink prices to untenable levels, or charging cover charges that the market won’t pay?
