Here's some questions I get asked a lot. If you have a question you don't see answered here, I'm just a phone call or an e-mail away:
Q: How much do you charge?
A: It varies, but it's probably less than you think! I'd like to be able to just post a flat price up here, but every situation is different (travel time, size and quality of venue, schedule conflicts, etc). Please contact me to describe the where and when, and I'll let you know exactly how much.
Q: Is that a lot?
A: No! It's cheap! In general, it's obviously a lot less to hire one guy than a whole band. I may not be the cheapest single act out there, but I'm a lot more affordable than some well-established guys I know. Besides, sometimes my friends and family come out and spend more than it costs to pay me!
Q: Do you travel, or just play locally? Weekdays too?
A: I generally prefer to stay close to my home base in South Florida. However, I've been known to travel up to three or four hours out of town under certain conditions (Gigs in the Keys come to mind!). I also work during the week just like most folks, so a five hour drive to fill a Tuesday night probably isn't going to happen. Weekday nights IN town (Between Jupiter and Hollywood, FL)? Sure, give me a call.
Q: How long have you been playing?
A: I started on guitar about 25+ yrs ago, and I've been in professional bands for about 16 years, and been on a LOT of stages in different musical situations. I've also played weddings, corporate functions, festivals, special events, private parties, you name it. The Solo Show has been happening for about five years and it just keeps getting more and more fun for me!
Q: Do you play Classic & New Hits? Acoustic? Rock? Blues? Country? Reggae? R & B? Jazz? Oldies? Sing-Along Classics? (insert genre here)?
A: Yes! Absolutely! If I can handle it with my voice and guitar, have a Backing Track for it, then I can pretty much do it. My goal is to play everyone's favorite popular song. Not just MY favorites. Have a look at my Master Songlist page for examples. Sorry, no death-metal, hardcore underground punk, gangsta rap or other guitarless DJ music.
Q: It's too (loud/quiet). Can you please turn it (down/up)?
A: Of course! Easily and immediately, without any musician attitude you might get from other soloists, duo's or bands. It's your room.
Q:Do you have good stage gear?
A: Yes, no questionable rental stuff here. Besides nice guitars and digital amplification, I own a complete State-of-the-Art BOSE pro-audio system, a small lighting setup and a van to haul it all with. It will also easily fill small to medium-large venues with good quality sound at all the volume you could handle.
Q:How do you make your backing tracks?
A: Every song I do is worked over carefully in my home recording studio before going live. New tracks usually start out from scratch, and once the individual parts have been recorded separately (drums, including any special percussion, keyboards, brass, orchestra, extra background guitars, out of sync harmony vocals, etc.) I mix it down and save as an uncompressed file and then convert it to digital audio. When the digital track is finally saved to an Apple iPad (via iTunes), it then goes direct to the BOSE P.A. I use, where it then sounds like a real band where each member is playing his part in support of the 'frontman'!
By the way, in case any musicians read this and are thinking of asking, my tracks are not for sale! These are popular cover songs, after all, not my own compositions, so of course I can't sell them!
Q: How, specifically, do you get your 'full-band' sound live?
A: When I first started planning a Solo act about five years ago, I looked into the setups other guys were using. Many singles, back then, were using MIDI keyboards or sound modules live, usually with some kind of laptop PC or disk based hardware sequencer. And some guys were just playing along to a terrible sounding drum machine running the same canned loop all night long. Today, digital audio has become so reliable, authentic sounding and easy to manipulate that I only use real digital audio tracks live! I can still change up my set lists on the fly or respond to requests quickly - and the technology today blows all that old school stuff away!
Q: Do you book through agencies?
A: Even though I am not exclusively represented by anybody, I do have side relationships with several local agents who sometimes call me with gigs. However, I primarily book myself whenever possible, but I would never cheat an agent out of a deserved commission. If you found out about me through the services of an agent, it's only fair that you book through them.
Otherwise, we're fair game to deal direct (saves $$$ for both of us!).
