Hi Bill.......you reminded me why I don't move from this cesspool. Good money and plenty of places to play. If you're good you easily command $175-$200. Donny is right about AD's on budgets and stretching their money out but they also make it a point to set good money aside to engage 1-2 top notch acts during the month to balance out the "deplorables (?)"

Anyhow, I think I said this before. The only real answer to today's messy music scenario is to "go where no man has ever gone before" and have the playing field to yourself. Take your keyboard or a keyboard and go on the lecture scene and talk about arranger and synthesizer music and what these keyboards can do. We all know that the general public is fascinated by this new technology. You can do colleges, high schools, libraries, retirement homes, etc. Alternatively, you can do what Michael Feinstein....studies songs and composers and performers and talks about them and plays the appropriate music.

As I recall, you retired as a schoolteacher. So you're used to talking in front of a group. Just put some material together and go for it.

I'm seriously considering doing that myself. There's plenty of work at the nursing homes here for good bucks but I'm really tired of the struggle....sending material out, Q&A telephone conversations, traffic, moody and inexperienced AD's, amateur musician competitors. Going on the lecture circuit is becoming more and more attractive for me.

I got the idea back around 1980. I went to a music demo in the store. When ARP was around, he was demo-ing the whole line. He did an incredible job of orchestrating his songs on those wonderful ARP keyboards. But when he got to the (ARP) sequencer, he did a sequence right on the spot and then played the keyboards around it, he brought the house down. It sounded like the London Philharmonic with him playing keyboards with both hands on top of it. I always think of that as an alternative. You're a good pianist....it's something you might want to consider.

Anyhow, if you're getting frustrated down there going up against the wolf pack consider some other kind of "alternative thinking" that sets you apart.

P.S. I don't think your wife is far off the mark...."why bother anymore, its not worth the stress." Go fishing instead with Don.