Stephen,
My biggest problem is the turn over of the folks who do the hiring. I play basically senior gigs - will do about 200 of them this year and just about time I get established with a place the AD leaves and I get to start all over with a new person.

Some of the places I play use an agency who has tried to "wrap up" the senior venues but I told them I wasn't interested in sharing my fee unless they wanted to pay me a hell of a lot more.

I guess my worst gig experience happened about 40 years ago. I got in a car along with 6 other players and 2 other cars, drove from Dallas to Alburque-about 14 hours with trailers-for a gig and when we got there we found out we were a week early. We got paid for the gig and returned the next week and got paid again.

Hammer