Photo Credit: bradleygee

If you follow us, you know we had a gig at El Sombrero Restaurant last Saturday night.

We had a great time and from all the indications, so did everyone else. There was a lot of dancing in a room with no dance floor (the aisles were packed), a few of “That’s my most favorite @#$*in’ song” proclamations and then singing every word along with us, a request for a ‘foot’ song (I don’t think I can tell that story by myself if I wanted to, but ask me sometime and I might try) and a couple of impassioned pleas to the bartender to let us sing ‘One more song’ at the end of the night. But the one that got me thinking was when one of the dancers danced close to us and at the end of the song was looking around to the side of us and on the floor, looked at us and asked

“Where’s your tip jar?”

And we replied in unison “We don’t have a tip jar”.

First, let me tell you, I’m all for tipping. If you want to tip us, we’re going to let you. We just don’t have a tip jar. And that got me to thinking about it and why we don’t.

I think that like all things, tip jars can be used well and abused. That goes for musicians as well as anywhere else you see them. I expect to see tip jars when I see:

• Someone Busking
  It’s the way they’re making money, after all
• A piano player at a piano bar or a house band that appears more than once a month at a venue
  They’re usually taking less money per performance, they take a ton of requests and are building a fan base and that’s the way people will show their appreciation

Where I don’t expect to see tip jars:

• A band playing at a festival
  It’s a one time shot, or you’re looking to get asked back next year
•  A band booked into a venue once or on a long rotation (every other month)
  Same reason as above

Jim & Tim setup at El Sombrero

Last Saturday’s gig falls into that second category. In that case it’s not about us, it’s about you. Now before you go thinking I’ve gone all saccharinely sweet “our music is all for you” on you, there’s a business reality to that statement too. If the owner thinks that having us back to play will get you back as a customer, we’ll be back to play.

So dance in the aisles, tell us that’s your most favorite song, sing along with us, beg the bartender to let us play longer, tell the staff you’re having a great time listening to us play and even ask them when we’ll be back there. Have a great time and let the staff know about it. If that happens, we’ll all be back together to do it again.

And if you feel like it, feel free to tip us. We’ll take it, just don’t expect to see a tip jar at our gigs anytime soon.

Where is your tip jar? originally appeared on Jim & Tim on July 10, 2012. Tweet This

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Just finished updating our song list and the grand total came out to 68 songs.

The quick math rule of thumb we use is that the average song is three and a half minutes long. So take 68 multiplied by 3.5 and you end up with 238 minutes worth of music, or just 2 minutes shy of 4 full hours…If we played them back to back, non-stop with no talking in between. Which never happens.

Depending on the gig, we play anywhere between 1 – 4 sets and a set is either 45 or 50 minutes. That means we basically have 5 full sets worth of music at our disposal.

So how do we pick a set? It’s different every time. While we have some “standards” (considering we play covers, does that go without saying?) we use most of the time,  what order they go in depends on the gig itself. But yes, we like to try and mix it up  so that if we have fans coming to multiple shows, they won’t hear the same songs in the same order every time we play. We use a 15 song base for a set. That gives us some wiggle room at the gig to see how it’s going and make adjustments on the fly, because the best plan is to plan for the plan to not go as planned and make it work from there.

So that’s how we do it, one gig at a time.

And we thought you might like to try it and pick your perfect set from our song list (And I wanted to play with the polling plugin – Jim).  Below is our full song list as recently updated. Pick 15 songs that you think would be the perfect set and then click the Vote button. That’s all there is to it.  Enjoy!

To pick a perfect set originally appeared on Jim & Tim on February 16, 2012. Tweet This

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