Most of us are, by nature, really nice people. When there’s a noble cause or need, we’re all too glad to chip in. Truthfully, there are a lot of important, meaningful charitable causes out there who could well use our services, and since most of them are non-profits, well it would be nice if we could just donate some of our time, staff, trucks and gear to the cause.
It was just about a year ago when sound company Sound Image joined forces with Toby Keith’s touring rig, along with Brown United staging and Bandit Lites, to help create a hugely successful mega-benefit concert (FOH, Aug. 2013, cover) to help the United Way of Central Oklahoma’s Tornado Relief Fund in the aftermath of the disaster.
From Farm Aid to Live Aid to hundreds of smaller local and regional events, benefit events seem to be on the increase — a good thing for the world, your personal karma bank, the organizations themselves and the general public, who get to support a good cause while having a good time and enjoying some great music.
The Latin phrase pro bono publico — usually shortened simply to pro bono — refers to professional work donated to the good of the general public. It often relates to lawyers, who may take on a case for a client who cannot afford their services, in fact, under ABA rules, attorneys are encouraged to donate about 50 hours per year to such clients. The practice of pro bono can extend well beyond the legal trades and into other professions as well — even sound companies.
As Shakespeare himself has said, “Therein lies the rub.” We all like to chip in occasionally, but the problem is that, for many of us, a sizeable chunk of the gigs we do are for charities and/or various benevolences. While it may be good natured to donate time and or services to each of them, if we did that, then we might wind up as the needy ones requiring financial assistance.
A Typical Example
A typical example might be what’s described as a simple one-hour program that starts at 3 p.m., with some speeches and a girl who is going to play guitar and sing a couple songs. Seems easy enough. Now it’s an outdoor event for 500 people, so that will require you and a couple hands on your crew. Loading the truck is pretty fast — about 20 minutes. There’s 40 minutes of travel time to get you there at 1 p.m. to be set up an hour before it kicks off, so you’re starting out at noon.
When you arrive, you find that the nearest AC power is 200 feet away (luckily you packed plenty of cabling), and hopefully someone was there to actually open the gates and let you in. There’s another 1,500 feet of cabling you have to lay out and dress across a large concrete area where the seating is, so that’s a couple of rolls of gaff tape at least. Once you’re set up, the guitarist shows up with a Strat and says the rest of the band (band… what band?) is running late, but it’s just a five-piece combo and, of course, they are picky about their monitor mixes.
About 20 minutes before the start, the person who talked you into taking this “one-hour” gig tells you that the Friday getaway traffic is really bad and they’ve decided to hold the start until 3:30. That, at least, gives you a bit of extra time to deal with the musicians. It finally kicks off at 3:30, but with a few long-winded speeches and the band’s set stretching out to 45 minutes, it eventually winds down about 5:30. But not for you, as you’ve got about 45 minutes of load-out/cable winding and pulling gaff tape off 150 feet of snaking. Then after the hour’s drive back (bad time for traffic), you can probably be unloaded at the shop by 7:30. So it’s a crew of three for 7.5 hours (22.5 man-hours), plus gas and expendables — for a “free” one-hour gig.
Fortunately, they don’t all go like that (some are worse), yet it’s enough to get you to think twice before taking on those pro bono gigs. But will we write these off completely? Probably not, because helping out is a good thing — every once in a while — and that’s the kind of people we are.
Big News at FOH
Speaking of people, our resident scientist Phil Graham and his wife Jessica gave birth to a healthy (6-pound 12.5-ounce) baby boy at the Atlanta Medical Center on June 27. Mom and baby are doing just fine, and Phil’s taking this month off to re-adjust to a new life of sleep deprivation. We heard unconfirmed rumors that the baby’s first words were “RT-60 calculation” and “Thiele-Small parameters,” but in either case, congratulations to all!
