Well, I thought I would add to this thread with my latest experience with booking gigs at Senior Independent Living venues. After reading this thread I decided to send a Promo card to various venues. I hand addressed the pre-printed cards and mailed 100 of them to select senior Independent Living venues. Guess what? After 3 weeks I have gotten only 1 call from those I mailed to. And folks, that is about the way it goes these days. Several years ago I got about 20 calls and gigs for every 100 mail outs.

Another issue has come up - pricing. I got on the phone and called several of the places I sent cards to and much to my surprise NONE of them came close to paying my hourly fee. Apparently there is a group of folks playing these gigs for just about HALF of what I charge!
So, after working at over 100 of these upscale Independent Living places over the last 10 years the Corporate owners of many of them have changed and they want to pay very little for entertainers regardless of the desires of the residents! Very disappointing.

Well, this all leads to me deciding to limit my bookings to those who care about the residents and want decent entertainers for them. Fortunately, this all happens at a time in my life when cutting back is probably not a bad idea. Luckily, I still have enough venues who call me that it will keep me working 2-3 times every week at the price I charge. I guess it is not all that bad because most of the places I now play have booked me thru 2020. Also, through the years none of my music income was needed for our household expenses but allowed me to buy whatever equipment I wanted and treat my wife to many dinners out and several nice trips.

Seems a shame to know that the places elderly folks decide to call home care about nothing but
the money they collect from those elderly folks. Several of my very good Activity Director friends have walked away from these jobs due to severe budget cuts for activities. To put this in perspective - most of the places I play charge anywhere from $5000.00 to $10,000 a month fees and are very upscale and still they are spending very little on the residents.

Well, just thought I would add this to this thread.

Deane