In part 1 of this series, professional steelpan musician, Bob Lyons, discussed how he got started in steelpan, where he’s played, how he’s developed his product for clients and how he was able to reach so many fans on YouTube.
Part 2 will dive deeper into his strategy for his clientele, song choices, pricing, contracts and other gig specifics for working musicians.
7. How do you convey to clients the types of performance options you offer? Do you present them with a form to complete or just have them tell you what they’re looking for and go from there?
“I send brides a song list and sometimes they’ll send me back a list of songs to play from that. I don’t encourage people to do this, if they want to tell me what songs to play I pretend to be happy about it and say ’thank you’. I’ve seen the forms DJs send out with all the questions. Ugh! I know how to do my job and I don’t encourage anyone’s advice. I just assume that if they’ve hired me, then THIS is what they want.”
8. What do you charge for performances in terms of your range and how did you come to those figures?
“The prices I quote are usually the rock bottom I’m willing to do the work for. I’m not trying to get rich. I just want to work all the time so that my playing keeps improving. Let the guys with day jobs hold out for more money. For local gigs now I ask for $350 for the first hour, and $150 each additional hour.
“The additional hours are negotiable. If I have to drive 100 miles it’s $400 for the first hour. Duos are double, and trios are triple, because I don’t want to encourage those either. The thing about pan is this: when you start out you’re going to get paid way more than you are worth. Your client is paying for the steel drum.
“Do the best you can, keep practicing, and eventually you will be earning the amount you are being paid. Understand? Practicing doesn’t necessarily help me make more money. It helps me deserve the money I’m already getting paid. It helps me feel better about taking people’s hard earned money.”
9. What’s the best way to get a regular gig at a restaurant or resort? Is there a trick or method you’d recommend?
“I’ve done my share of cold calls and beating the pavement. It never got me a gig. Eventually the phone rings and someone wants to hire me. If the phone is not ringing I practice. That seems to make the phone ring. I’m serious. It works. Practice. Learn new songs. You will be interrupted with a call for a gig.
“Restaurants and bars pay a lot less than private parties. They don’t have any money. If you’re just getting started in this business get those restaurant gigs and develop your repertoire. Put out a tip hat, hand out business cards, and before you know it you’ll have too many private parties and have to drop the bar gig. You’re playing the only instrument with paid on the job training. And no matter how poorly you’re playing people will come up and tell you how beautiful it sounds. So there’s a lot of encouragement out there. You’re not going to get better unless you get out there and start making mistakes and learning from them.”
10. How did you come to determine your repertoire for gigs? Was it selected based on requests or just general understanding of your target market?
“A lot of my songs came from requests. Some of these songs I never heard of, but all the old people know them and love them, and now I love them too. As a soloist I’m able to learn and play my favorite tunes. Like a lot of Beatles’ songs and pop hits of the 60s and 70s. Sometimes they work great, and other times they just don’t cut it. You never really know until you try them out on the gig. Something I love about pan: you have to play songs with great melodies. The more melodic the better. One note melodies don’t cut it. And I want people to recognize every song right away. So I’m only playing the best songs ever written that are also the most popular.
“You know, if you’re playing a song nobody knows, they are probably hearing it as just a bunch of notes. They might as well be listening to wind chimes. When you see them mouthing the words you know you are connecting with your audience. (Hopefully they don’t start whistling along too. Ugh!)”
11. Do you stick strictly with island-style music or do you also do jazz gigs?
“No jazz. No improvised solos. No ‘Real Book’ tunes. And no originals either. Reggae and calypso, or reggae versions of pop hits. I can’t play a jazz solo, and I don’t think anyone wants to hear one anyway. My approach now is all melody all the time. Once I had enough good songs to fill a 4-hour gig I started making the songs shorter so I could fit more in.
“Now I’m doing about 22 songs an hour. Crazy, right? It keeps me on my toes. I don’t get bored. My audience doesn’t get board. People’s attention span is very short these days. Play something they recognize and go to the next song. You’re an entertainer!”
12. What’s the most difficult gig you’ve ever done and how did you over come it?
“On a boat watching the America’s Cup races off the coast of San Diego. Parked for five hours on the ocean swaying back and forth. Then waiting for months for the paycheck. Before the internet we were at the mercy of the talent agencies.
“I still have a resentment about how much they would haggle us down and then keep us waiting three to six months for the money. I’ve never gotten over the way they treated me when they had all the power. The agencies are still in business, but like the bar gigs, I leave them for the new guys. They are still better than not having any gig.”
13. Do you require shade or bring your own generally?
“Of course your pan is going to go out of tune if you play it in the sun. Everyone probably has a story about a gig where there’s a nice big tent for all the guests and the band is supposed to play ‘over there’ on the hot sand in the mid-day sun. My contract says I require shade. This protects me from unreasonable catering managers. I tell them it’s in my contract and they suddenly become flexible.
“Home Depot has great light weight umbrellas that are very cheap. Get both sizes. You’re going to need a base too. With the clause in my contract now I always know ahead of time if I’m going to need the umbrella. No more surprises.”
14. Is there a song you hate playing but know the clients love? How do you go about performing it consistently each time?
“‘The Girl From Ipanema’. The elevator scene in ‘The Blues Brothers’ captures what they song means to me. Pure muzak. But people love it. They’re not joking either. Especially Brazilians. It makes them so happy. And that makes me happy. I only play it by request. And I only play it one time through the form. Two minutes flat. It’s also the only ‘Real Book’ song I play any more. I spent half my life looking at that book. I never want to hear ‘Blue Bossa’ or ’Satin Doll’ again.”
15. What tips could tips could you give pan musicians to help with each of the following categories: performance, booking, setup, equipment to bring?
“I get emailed about my background tracks a lot, so I’d like to just focus on that. This is integral to my growth as a musician. I’ve been working on my backing tracks for 30 years. It’s been part of my pan playing since day one. As the bass player for a large network of steel drum players in Los Angeles in the 1980’s it was my job to provide electric bass and drum machine for any size steel band.
“Eventually, through these close connections with pan players, I acquired a professional set of steel drums of my own. I started practicing my scales along with the drum machine, but I wanted to learn some songs too. So I needed some kind of backing tracks. I realized I could plug my bass into one channel of a cassette recorder and plug the drum machine into the other channel. It was crude, but it sounded human. Not like all the guys using sequencers back then that sounded like robots.
“I soon had a small list of songs I could hack through. Before I knew it I was doing solo gigs all over San Diego. This system of recorded bass and drum machine tracks on cassette progressed and worked fine for me for the next 12 years.”
“Phase 2 of my background music began in 2000 when I bought my first computer. I was thrilled to discover midi-based music notation software that could play back ideas as I typed the notes onto the music staff. The next music software I was introduced to was “Band-in-a-Box”. This inexpensive and easy to learn program revolutionized my music.
“With this amazing tool I was able to learn new songs, make changes to arrangements, and take the updates right out onto the gig. I highly recommend it for anyone just learning or playing music at any level. These days I’m editing midi files with a program called Logic on a Mac. There are many free midi files available on the internet – just search Google. There are also many computer programs you can use to edit midi files so you can change keys, tempos, endings, intros, etc.
“So whether you get your midi files from the internet, write them with Band-in-a-Box, or make them from scratch, midi editing is the key to making your own customized backing tracks. I work on my arrangements for hours every day. I’m always making tiny adjustments and changes to keep them fresh. This is probably why I seem to ‘one’ with my tracks when I’m performing – because we are ‘one’. I’ve traded tracks with other pan players, but I end up never using theirs and they never use mine. I guess because of my process my DNA is in the arrangement and nobody else can follow it. Like it’s linked to me – only.”
“Anyway, as I tell everyone who writes me asking about this stuff, if you don’t know anything about music and you want to play along to karaoke tracks, be my guest. I’ve never needed them, or wanted them, or looked for them, so I can’t help you with that. But, if you want to be a somewhat serious musician and if you have long-range goals for your music, you can’t miss out on the experience of making your own tracks – learning and growing with them as they become part of you. I could never play to someone else’s tracks now. It wouldn’t feel honest. I couldn’t be comfortable. I think it’s better to start from scratch and build on a solid foundation than to take shortcuts that will end up being a setback.
“In closing, you can forget everything I’ve said so far. The music business and technology are changing so fast, most of what I’ve done up to this point won’t apply to you anyway. If you can figure out how to promote yourself on Twitter or Instagram you are way ahead of me already. The secret behind my success is that I’m sober now. I took my last drink in 1999. Not everyone has an addictive personality, but a lot of musicians do. It wasn’t easy, but it got to a point where I really didn’t have a choice in the matter. Now, for the past twenty years, every day, everything in my life has gotten better and better. Not just the music. Getting sober is the single most important thing I’ve done in my life – by far. Sometimes I think sobriety gives me an unfair advantage over the competition. If you’re thinking about getting sober, contact me. I’m here to help.”
Learn more about Bob Lyons at his website: steeldrummusic.net and at his YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLyOGGIjVVk .
