Pro Tips

The speaker, Dan Flannery, shares his upcoming musical performances and expresses his gratitude for the support he receives, including tips from his audience. He recounts a recent gig where an old friend, Tom, went above and beyond by collecting tips from everyone in attendance, resulting in a generous donation of $174. Dan emphasizes the importance of tips for musicians like himself who invest time, travel, and equipment into their performances. He appreciates the financial and verbal support he receives and acknowledges the growth and improvement he has experienced over his 61 years of playing guitar. Dan also mentions other performances where tips are the sole compensation. He concludes by expressing gratitude for the support and feedback he receives and looks forward to future interactions. Happy Tuesday evening and welcome to the Sunday column for August 15th, 2023. My name is Dan Flannery and it's good to be with you again. I've had a couple Northwoods performances since we last met and both of those are mentioned in today's post. My next gig is Wednesday, August 23rd at the Walbino Bandshell from 5 until 7 p.m., weather permitting. Hope you can join us for that. We had a great time there at the Bandshell in early June. Hope this one equals those good times. I have a few more gigs after that in the near future, including a trip to River Falls on the 26th of August at the Belle Amie Vineyard, that's B-E-L-L-E, Amie is A-M-E. That's on the 26th, as I mentioned, and a closer to home show at Lena's Dairy Fest on September 9th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., that's L-E-N-A, not L-A-O-N-A, L-A-O-N-A. I'll keep you posted for other gigs and you can also find upcoming events by searching for my name, Dan Flannery, in Facebook events. Okay, enough promotion. Here is today's post and it's titled, Pro Tips. Your full support is appreciated more than you know. Lately I've been writing a lot about playing guitar for fun and profit, mostly fun, and I swear on a stack of used guitar strings that someday soon I will write about something else. But today is not that day. Our topic today is the profit side of fun and profit, mostly. It's about tips, which don't always equate to profit, but they are money, so there's that. Let's backtrack about 11 days when I played a late afternoon, early evening show for the Super Reunion Weekend in my hometown of Leona, Wisconsin. The gig was scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m., but by request I played until 6.35, and all-in-all It was a fun night, with many encouraging comments from the hometown audience, considerable catching up with old friends, and a good base compensation for my services. And ordinarily that would be good enough, but this is about tips and old friends and how the combination warmed my heart. I met Tom Wieniawski, some people call it Wienowski, but I'm not certain that's right, about 53 years ago. He was maybe 9, and a member of the Leona Tigers Little League team. I was around 13, and was asked to keep the team's scorebook that summer by Del Phillips, our family's new neighbor in the town of Caswell, and one of the Tigers' coaches. We had just moved to our new cabin property in the town of Caswell, and I didn't know many people in the area. On the other hand, there really weren't a lot of people in the area. But I think Del took pity on me, the new kid in the very rural neighborhood. Del's son Tim was on the Tigers' team, and we'd gotten to be good friends, mostly playing basketball in the barn at the Consolidated Farm where Del, Tim, and Grace, that's Del's wife and Timmy's mom, where they all lived. Del picked me up on the way to Tigers games and brought me home afterward. He stopped on the way home to shoot trap at Kvore's Rainbow Club. Tom and Tim, actually, Tom didn't play a lot that spring or summer, but he struck me as a funny young guy, and we spent a lot of time in Del's station wagon and on the bench. He was one of the first non-relatives I met before entering the Leona School District. Anyhow, that was 1970, and this is 2023, and we're still friends, and here's how I know. The Leona Super Reunion gig was fun for sure, but the tip bucket that sat in front of me as I played was lonely, not much activity. Over the first 90 or so minutes of the show, just three or four folks had deposited a few very appreciated pieces of currency. That's when Tom Winowski walked from nearly the back of the audience to put his own very appreciated tip in the bucket. As I often do at times like this, I said thanks into the microphone and through the PA system, followed by calling attention to Tom's selfless act. I might have called him a role model for America's youth and suggested that others follow his example, and that sort of thing usually gets a laugh from the audience, and it did in this case too, but it didn't end there, as it sometimes does. Tom held up the tip can to show where he had left his cash donation, and my old classmate Jim Lane called from the rear of the crowd, bring that back here. So Tom did that, brought it back there. He also brought it everywhere else, from one side of the park to the other, from those sitting near me to those along the street. He solicited tips from pretty much everyone in attendance. It was kind of cool. No, that's actually wrong. It was cool, not kind of cool. It was cool. Tom brought back $174, including the tips that were already in the can, but still, $174 went to the guitar picker and the singer. That's me. We counted the money after the gig. I thanked my old friend Tom more than once. It was an uncommonly nice gesture by him, one I didn't expect when I made the role model comment, but it was also uncommonly generous by the people who gave, and I was moved by it all. Thank you, everyone. Tips are important for people who do what I do. We invest a lot of time, travel, and equipment in performing these gigs, and the base pay, which is also generally very appreciated, doesn't always cover those expenses. A two-hour show, an hour away from home, is closer to a minimum of a six- or seven-hour commitment on that day, including setup and teardown of gear, and that gear sometimes needs repair or replacement. Both happened to me this summer. And don't forget the hours and hours of practice. Reaching a decent level of competency in any profession doesn't happen solely because you have talent. That talent needs to be polished, practiced, and put in front of an audience as often as possible. To that end, my 500th show, whenever that was, was probably a lot better than my first show. I'd been playing guitar for 61 years. As Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh has said, you can't wait until you're really good to play in front of people. You got to go play in front of people and suck. While I'm far from getting rich on this new effort, tips make the effort more worthwhile, and I humbly and genuinely appreciate every bit of financial and verbal support. I've played three times in Goodman's Music in the Square performance series, coordinated by my sister-in-law, Joan Flannery. At each of the performances in that series, Joan walks through the audience seeking tips, the sole compensation. Performers in the summer concert series in Wabino's band shell, where I'm playing next week, also play only for tips. So it helps a lot if I practiced enough to be good. The audience deserves that much. On Sunday afternoon, two days ago, I played my first job at Ruby's Bar, that's in the lower level of the Goodman Clubhouse in Northern Marinette County, and I tried a different, more direct, kind of funny approach for bringing attention to the tip bucket. Just so you know, I announced almost 90 minutes into the gig, there's a damn tip bucket on the floor in front of me. Feel free to use it. People laughed, probably because you don't hear such brazen requests that often, but by the end of the gig, I'd collected $61 in tips. One of the donated $5 bills offered by a local couple sitting at the bar in front of me was marked damn tip. Well played and funny, and I'm grateful for that and the money. As I packed up my gear, a lady on her way out walked over to me with three $1 bills and complimented my playing. I thanked her back, and I really meant it. Those moments are pretty humbling. They show you that you never truly know where your friends are. Sometimes you've known them for 53 years. Sometimes you've never seen them before. It really is the thought that counts. My thanks to all of you. It's very much appreciated. That's the Sunday column for the 15th of August, 2023. My name is Dan Flannery. Thanks much for listening and reading. Appreciate your support and your feedback. Have a great evening. We'll talk to you next time. Bye.