It’s keeping us pure, passionate and focused—the lack of money, that is
By Eric Pearce, Leftist Marching Band
On a beautiful sunny afternoon in the summer of 2005, our Leftist Marching Band found itself honking (and squawking) some spirited patriotic and protest tunes at one of our semiregular “just for the heck of it” performances. We were in front of the North Church in the center of our home base of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, entertaining, possibly irritating, but hopefully at least giving pause for thought to a group of about 60 or more onlookers.
About a third of the way into our performance, one of our drummers decided to lay his skinless tambourine on the ground in front of him so he could continue playing his drum with both hands. A gentleman from the crowd approached with a dollar bill, looked into the bottomless tambourine with a quizzical expression, shrugged and dropped the note into the ring.
We began shooting our own quizzical expressions—some with a touch of panic—at each other. We were in the middle of playing a song, and the head-shaking and mental telepathy signals of “No, no, take it back, we don’t accept money” just weren’t registering with the kind giver.
In the next moment, a flood of generous and/or sympathetic audience members came forward with their contributions. By the time the song was over, the bottomless ring of chimes was overflowing with $54.61. Now what…?
Money tends to ruin everything: The Leftist Marching Band formed out of frustration and outright disdain for the Bush administration and its policies. Declaring itself “ a pep band for the Left,” it is a band run by consensus that plays for and supports what we deem “good causes” and is open to anyone interested in participating. The band is an outlet for expressing both political dissent and social support in a fun, exciting, active and interactive way.
The Leftist Marching Band gets ready for the HONK! parade in Somerville MA, 2008
One of the very few “rules” we established from the start was that we would not accept payment for playing, as it was declared that “money tends to ruin everything.” The gold we seek is the satisfaction and peace of mind that come with actively supporting what we believe in. The audience appreciation (and occasional antagonism) is the sugar on top.
Our reasoning is that we won’t have to deal with the time, emotion and occasional strife that go with money. As an open band with no money, we don’t worry about people joining to get a slice of the pie; they join to stand in solidarity on the proverbial soapbox and bring pep to those fighting the good fight. We have had folks join simply because they want to play in a band (we affectionately call them Gig Whores), but that’s OK because either the politics become too much for them and they leave, or they become enlightened—and that’s the cherry on top of the sugar.
How do you pay for expenses? One year, in a band discussion forum at the HONK Festival (http://honkfest.org/) in Somerville, Massachusetts, someone said they didn’t think a band could survive without making money. Another asked, “How do you pay for expenses?”
The simple answer is that we survive the same way a person would to keep a personal hobby going: we simply don’t incur expenses that aren’t necessary. We help each other find instruments on the cheap or free. We pay for our own reeds and drumsticks. We carpool to gigs and pitch in for gas.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Good fortune and luck may play a role too, if you believe in that. We have been fortunate to have practice space at no charge, but I guess we’ve been most fortunate to have a group of people who get along and work so well together. We’ve also received a lot of love, gratitude and support from our community.
Now what?! So what did we do with $54.61? We asked the community. An audience member pointed to the historic old church behind us, one with a slowly decaying steeple, and said, “Donate it to the steeple restoration project,” and the crowd agreed.
Perfect! “All in favor?” “Aye!” Meeting adjourned; on to the next song. We squawked out the rest of our Bush-bashing set list, out of tune, full of clams and looking confused. But hey, what do you want for free?
North Church on Congress St. in downtown Portsmouth, NH. photo by Joe Hardenbrook
Thanks for this nicely written, inspiring article. You convey the flavor of being in your band really nicely! And what a great decision that day, given your band’s philosophy, to just immediately give the money away to someone else!
I’m a member of the Hubbub Club in Graton, CA. Our band started about 4 years ago with a similar aversion to money, but we’ve ended up in a different place. We Bubs accept money when it’s offered, and sometimes we even ask for money when it seems appropriate – like when a far away stranger asked us to come play at his wedding for an hour as a “surprise” for the bride. We don’t want to let our fellow artists down by doing something for free that they would normally be paid for. Most of our performances are in the street for free, but we get a fair amount of $100 gigs for community events.
All that money just goes into a piggy bank for HONKs. Those are the only real expenses we have, though sometimes we’ll spend a little to make photocopies for a HONK benefit. And then sometimes we might spend the $40 that wound up in an unknown tip jar to cover part of the tab on some much needed refreshments after a gig.
But no one would join our band for the money! A laughable idea given the tremendous labor of love that it is to be in HONK band.
Recently, we’ve started the process of creating our own nonprofit, to take advantage of larger donations which may be offered to us. Is this is good idea? We’ll have a board of Bubs making decisions about how to spend our money. Yikes! It will be interesting to see whether our wad of cash attracts a new opportunistic type of musician to our band. But what does a musical opportunist look like? If people join because they want free music lessons, how could that be bad? If people join because they want their tuba fixed, then may our HONKing ever increase!
The Carnival Band in Vancouver, BC, has an organizational structure you might want to weigh. Their major economic decisions (how much to charge, whether to accept a free gig, etc.) are made by the Open Air Orchestra Society, which frees the band from getting bogged down in these decisions. Of course, some of the band is also in the OAOS. I think OAOS is a nonprofit, but it follows Canadian law, not US.
They also pay a musical director, the only paid member of the band ( I think).
These arrangements aren’t for every band, but the CB has worked them out over 10 years of near constant activity, and it works for them.
Hi Jean, thanks for your comments. For the record I don’t think accepting money is a bad or negative thing. I just wanted to toot our horn about how not accepting money works well for us and our situation. Also, we generally stick to the activist type gigs and avoid the wedding type gigs (with the exception of occasionally playing for nursing homes or a special request from a band member). Best of luck with your nonprofit plan. I think only you can judge whether it’s a good idea, so let us know how it works out.
Keep on Honk’n Bubs!
Eric Pearce
I’m another Bub and see good in accepting money on the street as it reenforces the givers’ behavior and sets a example for others in giving money to street musicians, a very worthy contribution to the cultural commons.