Making money out of solo acoustic covers – pub gigs

Can you make money out of playing acoustic covers? Yes you can if you learn enough popular songs and you play and sing them to a decent standard. Pub gigs are the fastest way to earn from covers as long as you’re confident, cheerful, resilient and have your own PA or acoustic amp and mic.

You may need the contacts, transport, persistence and the emotional skin of a rhinoceres to cope with being confronted by an audience of exuberant drinkers in 21st century Britain but you can do it.

People might dance alone in the middle of a half empty room or singalong in a packed pub like a shouting football crowd, they can clap, cheer, moan, threaten you a yard from your face or simply stand with their back to you talking loudly. They could tell you they are sure you are going to be famous or that they are certain you are a worthless loser. You will have to face up to it all.

Get used to it.

Before the pandemic I was being paid everything from £50 to £150 for playing in the pubs, cafes and bars of the north west of England. It is a lot more fun playing with your mates in a band, or a duo, with people you have known and hung out with for years but the overheads are low for a solo acoustic artist.

Something which Oasis songwriter Noel Gallagher has pointed out about money-making “vastly overrated” superstar Ed Sheeran. Solo artists don’t pay for extras like a van and share fees with a band therefore keeping the costs down ensuring bigger profits, Gallagher points out in interview.

Having played gigs since the 1980s I can reassure you that there are musicians who get paid more for their gigs than I have. Often they push themselves in a permanent state of go getting by phoning contacts, working on social media and making posters while perfecting songs at home. A full time living dreaming ambitious work out.

There are other friends who consider the whole playing covers thing a merciless drag ensuring a low level of anxiety and depression born of endless experience of audiences talking over your set or trying to grab the microphone from your hands to sing their own drunken rendition of A Team. Each gig chipping away at the idea that you are a real musician with your own songs on the road to somewhere better than another shift in a fast food restaurant.

It definitely helps if you have a delusional notion of your own musical genius untouched by any lack of audience participation, as I anticipate many wannabe superstars will have. Either way, you have to be able to love or tolerate pubs and you will have to slog it out if like a World War One trooper in the trenches to earn enough money to cover rent of anything over £400 a month for a single room.

Realistically you’ll have another source of income – a job in a fast food restaurant or coffee shop, a state pension topped up by a job pension, wealthy parents, a carpet fitting business, an online job in social media providing key word articles. Anything and everything. Then it can become a fun way to earn a bit extra at the weekend for the sheer joy of playing.

Before you even start you need to get on those YouTube guitar teaching sites or hire a guitar teacher, queue up for a couple of songs at a singers night, learn perfect covers and make up happy happy sets to deliver with discerning wisdom to an anoymous crowd. Get yourself good and ready to perform live with the new gear that you just acquired and off you go.

Personally I started singing along to records as a child, took guitar lessons in 1981 and played in bands irregularly until fronting ambitious indie folk acts full on towards the end of the 21st century. I became a full time guitar teacher and musician in 2005. Over the years I’ve worked briefly in HMV, Waterstones, Thresher, the NHS, Marks & Spencer and with a teaching agency in Burnley, Lancashire.

Playing acoustic covers in pubs progressed to work on cruises and function gigs. Sometimes in the middle of a song it smelt like victory. Often it was a hard working slog. It definitely took me places. Good luck.

https://www.budgetguitarist.com/performing-solo-earning-money/: Making money out of solo acoustic covers – pub gigs

Check out the link above for a different slant on paid solo performance by Richard MacLeMale based in New York and writer of Budget Guitarist. There’s a lot of info out there waiting for you.