The Triangle of Getting Gigs

The usual things you hear from working musicians: Don’t be late, don’t be a dick, be prepared… A graduate student once told me a simplified and organised version of the same thing. He said that in order to ‘get gigs’ you need at least two out of the following three things: Be nice/kind, be good (enough for the gig), be reliable. That totally makes a lot of sense so I decided to analyse this further.

Everyone’s standards and values are different, so here are some questions to ask yourself to prioritize the three aspects. If you were a bandleader in charge of finding players for a gig, would you prefer someone who is:

Nice, good, but unreliable.

Good, reliable, but not nice.

Reliable, nice, but not good.

The nice guy who isn’t really good enough and is always late, the awesome player who is so hard to get along with and is always late, or the person who is super reliable but isn’t good enough for the gig and has a bad attitude… unlikely to get called.

It is important for us to bear in mind that these things are not so black and white; in fact, there are a lot of grey areas. First of all, let’s go into a bit more detail for each of these three aspects. One can be good enough for a gig musically but not in terms of performance. To what extent can a person with bad attitude be reliable? Can you really fire a nice guy?

Secondly, subjectivity. 4 out of 5 people in the band might think ‘he’s an alright guy’, but one has fallen out with him before and speaks of him badly. How many times does a person have to be late to be deemed unreliable? How late and late to what? 10 minutes late to a rehearsal or 10 minutes late to sound-check? What is the definition of consistent or the occasional one-off?

Finally, being nice and being reliable are somehow related. The traits of being reliable: never promising something one cannot deliver, or never breaking a promise. Sounds like someone who is nice?