For Free?

As a musician who has moved around quite a bit, I am no stranger to the free gig. It often feels like when you’re first breaking into a scene, a free gig or two at the beginning are inevitable, just to get your foot in the door.

As the narrative follows, at that free gig you’ll meet people who can get you paying gigs, you can add it to your resume, and you don’t have anything going on anyways, so why not?

While that stuff is probably true, I wanted to add two thoughts to the mix in anti-favor of the free gig. Firstly, your time could probably be better spent doing other things, like, finding paid gigs and not feeling like death.

Secondly, it’s fairly likely that the people you meet at that gig are either new to the scene (like you), or amateur musicians who aren’t looped into the paid-gig scene anyways and are just going to call you for more free gigs.

That being said, since I’m new to Cleveland, I’ll probably do a free gig or two here. Just to get my foot in the door…